Garden Fresh Co-op

Several excerpts from a very informative email I just received – by Jeannette Leduc at OrganicsPlus

You Need 10 Servings of Vegetables to Equal Just One Serving from 50 Years Ago!1

• Just One of the Vital Minerals Lost was Regulating More than 300 Critical Body Functions.
• The Same Thing Is Happening to Your Fruit.
• And, It’s Getting Worse…

These days, the produce you buy at your local grocery store just doesn’t have the nutritional power that fruits and vegetables had just a few decades ago. Over farming, soil depletion, commercial fertilizer, hybrid crops and genetic modifications are slashing the nutrients found in your fruits and vegetables.

You’d have to eat 10 servings of spinach to get the same level of minerals from just one serving about 50 years ago.2

Producers create “hybrid” forms of your fruits and vegetables – not for their ability to store nutrients – but for their color, weight and shelve life. Why? So they’ll look nice and pretty when they sit under the fluorescent lights of your supermarket.

You may think they look nutritious, but “under the hood,” they contain little more than indigestible cellulose, sugar and water…..(snip)

Your Food Supply has Changed:
You’re Eating Fruit with No Vitamins… Vegetables with No Minerals…

We first began to know that there was a problem back in 1936. A group of doctors introduced Document No. 264 to the floor of the United States Senate. It was a dire warning that the mineral content of the soil was eroding. Vegetables were losing their power and people were at risk. Unfortunately Congress did nothing.

Today, we’re feeling the effects…

For instance, just look at the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) nutritional values for fruits and vegetables today compared to 1975.3

Take a look at the loss of vitamins and minerals Since 1975:

• Apples, vitamin A is down 41%

• Sweet peppers, vitamin C is down 31%

• Watercress, iron is down 88%

• Broccoli, Calcium and vitamin A are down 50%

• Cauliflower, vitamin C is down 45%; vitamin B1 is down 48%; and vitamin B2 is down 47%

• Collards greens, vitamin A is down 45%; potassium is down 60%; and magnesium is down 85%

According to USDA’s own numbers, the vitamin and mineral content has dramatically plummeted – in just 30 years!

Notice minerals like iron and magnesium have dropped by more than 80 percent. That’s from commercial farming technology and powerful fertilizers that practically sterilize the soil – leaving it with little to no mineral content.

If the soil doesn’t have minerals, there’s no way for vegetables to absorb them.

And that’s bad news for your health… Magnesium regulates over 300 body functions every day and is so critical to heart health and healthy glucose metabolism.*

But the story doesn’t end there. I wasn’t the only one to realize your fruits and vegetables don’t pack the nutritional punch they used to… A report from the University of Texas in Austin, also tracked the decline of nutrients in produce.

They reported findings at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis. They found significant drops in a wide range of produce across the board, including a  20 percent decline in vitamin C and a 38 percent plunge in vitamin B2.

What’s worse, fruit and vegetable growers create “hybrids” for the sake of making their produce “look better.” They actually create new versions of all your favorites so they have more water, more sugar, more pith (The indigestible support tissue like the white fibrous netting around an orange section) and less of everything else.

Growers call this the “dilution effect.” For them, more water and more pith helps their produce ship well, look good and weigh a lot. But it virtually wipes out their vitamin and mineral content.

The plunge in nutrients in your produce over the last 30 to 50 years is bad enough. But it is rapidly getting much worse. Genetic hybrids are pushing nutrient values even lower.

A popular broccoli hybrid called “Marathon” is an alarming example:

By the USDA’s own admission, levels of calcium and magnesium in the Marathon hybrid are 35 percent lower than other hybrids. The hybrids themselves are 50 percent lower in calcium and magnesium than “normal” broccoli. And the “normal” broccoli has less than half the calcium and magnesium than broccoli did in 1975!

In less than 50 years, the mineral, vitamin and antioxidant value native to fruits and vegetables has been virtually “destroyed” – robbing you of the natural vital nutrients you need every day….(snip)

You Have Over 280 Deadly Chemicals and Toxins Flowing through Your Blood – And they’ve Been there Since the Day You Were Born…

Living in the 21st century affords you many luxuries. High-speed computers… cell phones… air conditioning and plasma TVs… but the chemicals and industrial solvents that make them possible are poisonous. And they’re flowing through your blood as you read this letter.

In 2005, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group published the results of a sobering study. After analyzing the blood of newborn babies from around the country, they discovered 287 chemicals and other toxins.5 One of the pesticides that turned up the most was a by-product of DDT – a pesticide banned in 1972.

They also found:

• 76 chemicals that damage cells in humans and animals.

• 94 that are toxic to the brain and nervous system.

• 79 that are toxic to a developing fetus.

At this point in history, we’re being poisoned before we take our first breath! But this is not limited to newborns. Not too long ago, PBS aired a Bill Moyers special called “Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report.” In it, Bill Moyers volunteered to have his blood and urine tested for chemical and toxic threats.6

The results were not surprising: Eighty-four distinct chemicals, solvents and toxins that are known to be harmful to your health. These chemical residues – termed the “chemical body burden” – are present in every human being on this planet, regardless of where you live or what you do.

Dr. Michael McCally of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who led the research team for the Bill Moyers report made this comment: “Current ‘normal’ body burdens of dioxin and several other [chemicals] in humans are at or near the range at which toxic effects occur in laboratory animals.”

The message is clear: Studies on animals show that the average person is carrying enough toxins to cause serious DNA damage…..(snip)

To Your Good Health,

Jesse Cannone

1 Heinrich, Elmer. The Root of All Disease.
2 Heinrich, Elmer. The Root of All Disease.
3 Vegetables without Vitamins. Life Extension Magazine. March 2001.
4 Better than Vitamins. Newsweek. April 25, 1994.
5 Environmental Working Group. Body Burden – The Pollution in Newborns. July 14, 2005. http://www.ewg.org.
6 http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html

The facts presented above really explain why you need to grow your own food to control the variety and quality of seeds grown if you can grow a garden. If not, MyOrganicAcres provides a way for you to have a virtual garden grown for you organically from heritage seed varieties for maximum nutrition and flavour with the produce shipped fresh to you in a couple of days. As a free or basic member of MOA you also can purchase produce from a growing network of organic farms through the Farmer’s Market.

Filed under: Organic Health & Nutrition, Politically Organic |