Food

We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy

than in endeavoring to think so ourselves.

           Confucius

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves;

we are underlings.

          William Shakespeare

The Spirit is beyond sound and form, without touch and taste and perfume.  It is eternal, unchangeable, and without beginning or end; indeed above reasoning.  When consciousness of the Spirit manifests itself, man becomes free from the jaws of death.

           Upanishads

Lisa also felt that the current state of our physical health is likely due to eating food that is no longer compatible with our physical bodies.

Today’s foods are saturated with fats, sugars, artificial flavorings, chemical additives, pesticide residues, bacterial contaminants, genetically altered organisms and who knows what else? Plus, the major factor driving prices is not the cost of any actual food that might still be in these products, but the cost of packaging, advertising and long-distance shipping.

The powerful forces of corporate power has been applied both in politics and the marketplace to pervert our food economy and drive away the farming practices of old. During the past half century, control over our nation's food policies has shifted from farmers and consumers to corporate lawyers, lobbyists and economists.

People began to sense something was not quite right with their food.

Organic food topped $15 billion in sales in 2004 -- triple what they were only seven years earlier. Sales are increasing by roughly 20 percent a year (compared to only about 2 percent for all other foods) and are expected to reach $30 billion four years from now. Nearly two thirds of American shoppers bought some organic foods last year -- up from about half the year before.

In today's schools, the idea of lunch has been reduced to corporate-delivered sugars, fats and calories, helping produce a growing epidemic of childhood obesity and gross ignorance of what food should be. Why?

School cafeterias are eliminating cooks and even kitchens, for their "meals" come prepackaged from food-service corporations or are contracted out to hamburger, pizza and other fast-food chains. Two-thirds of America's middle schools and high schools sell sodas and junk-food snacks, usually under exclusive contracts that bring big corporate money to the school system

The farming lands are under serious attack and massive relentless mechanization depletes topsoil at the rate of 3 billion tons a year and water at the rate of 10 billion gallons a year. Currently there are approximately 2,500 pesticides, herbicides, and food additives used by the food industry. The soil our food comes from has been changed in our modern world. Chemical fertilizers have caused the protein content of vegetables to decrease and the vital trace minerals we need are no longer being replaced. Artificial fertilizers restore only 3 to 6 of the 20 minerals removed by plant growth.

And now the need to produce ethanol over feeding humans places more stress on farming lands.

Composting is preferred to fertilizer because good composting returns to

soils all the 20 minerals removed by plants. When trace minerals are lacking

from the soil the enzyme levels in plants also diminish. Enzymes are vital

to many life processes including digestion. Enzymes contain large protein

molecules with added trace minerals such as zinc, selenium, manganese and

copper. Mineral deficiencies and imbalances in plants grown in polluted areas using contaminated water contribute to enzyme deficiencies in the general

population. Lack of trace minerals in enzymes and the presence in the body

of metals that damage enzyme function (lead, mercury) contribute to the declining health suffered by many populations.

The idea that diet and nutrition had anything to do with health was ridiculed by the various medical bodies even back to the 1800’s. The Louis Pasteur version of the "germ theory" that promised to save all mankind from all future diseases was replaced once synthetic drugs became main stream thus never giving nutrition a second thought.

Magnesium deficiency can cause, trigger, or worsen 22 diseases including

heart disease, osteoporosis, migraines, severe muscle cramps, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol. However, magnesium is either ignored or

outright rejected by a medical establishment that promotes patented medications with innumerable side effects for all these conditions.

All vitamins and minerals are coenzymes and cofactors in the metabolic processes of the body. Lisa found they are depleted by drug therapies and poor diets. For example, statin drugs create a deficiency of coenzyme Q-10. And diets deficient in B vitamins and magnesium are responsible for elevating homocysteine, an amino acid that is a much greater marker for heart disease than cholesterol. Even gene expression is controlled by vitamins. For example, studies of genetically altered obese mice show that if those mice are given sufficient B vitamins in their diet, they don't become obese. In a vitamin deficient diet they express their obesity.

Virtually every bit of food you eat has been treated with some chemical

somewhere along the line. Dyes, bleaches, emulsifiers, preservatives, flavors, buffers, noxious sprays, acidifiers, alkalizers, deodorants, moisteners, drying agents, gases, extenders, thickeners, disinfectants, fungicides, neutralizers, anticaking and antifoaming agents, conditioners, curers, hydrolizers, hydrogenators, and many others. The food technician can make stale food appear fresh, permit unsanitary practices, mask inferior quality, substitute nutritionally inferior or worthless chemicals for more costly ingredients.

Sugar, dairy, and wheat make up the most commonly eaten fast foods and junk

foods on the market. Sugar in our bloodstreams is a mere 2 teaspoons, yet we

drink sodas that contain 10 teaspoons in 12 ounces.  Dairy is suspect of triggering juvenile onset diabetes and cancer. Wheat has been hybrid to resist frost, pesticides, and herbicides and not to enhance nutrient content, yet it is eaten by most people several times a day in the form of toast, bagels, rolls, sandwiches, cakes, pies etc.

Cows are injected with Bovine Growth Hormone that is supposed to stimulate

more milk production but instead produces cancer causing hormones and

mastitis in the cows. Mastitis-or inflammation of the cow's udder, is

treated with antibiotics even though cows are given these drugs as part of

their daily regimen in food. We drink the milk. We cook with the milk. And doctors puzzle over latest ineffectiveness of anti biotics and super bugs..

Poultry consuming glufosinate-tolerant GM maize were twice as likely to

die compared with controls.

And yet the madness continues.