Regeneration and the Family Farm

Everyone knows that our bodies need food in order to survive. As science progresses we learn more about what defines real human food, and what qualifies as fake food.

The Free Dictionary by Farlex offers this definition: 

Material, usually of plant or animal origin, that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to produce energy, stimulate growth, and maintain life.

Whenever I make a journey up and down grocery store aisles I find many things other than real food that meets this definition. Processed and stripped of those essential life-giving ingredients. It’s filler but not food.

Of course the Federal Department of Agriculture permits a certain amount of once-upon-a-time real food material into processed foodstuffs. Cowing before big business, this federal agency doesn’t mind these substances being passed along as food simply because they determine, often with the help of businesses with vested interests, that those fillers do no harm in themselves. 

Reasons to cut out processed food

Read here about ten surprisingly processed foods

One of my favorite and enlightening quotes comes from Harvey G. Cox, Jr. in his book The Secular City. Written almost fifty years ago, Cox points out how human engineering was so advanced at that time that it is a matter of routine to manipulate masses of people to perform as organizations want them to. That is to say, thirty years after the Nazi propaganda minister, Paul Joseph Goebbels, rose to power with Hitler, propaganda advanced to near perfection as a means of controlling populations through desire and artificial rewards. The old carrot and stick approach works. 

Manipulation is easy. Television programs and movies do it all the time. The secret is in sound. It’s the soundtrack, Dummy.  Loud music stimulates emotions, and emotions stimulate appetite. Follow that manipulated emotional experience with images of double-bacon cheeseburgers and smiling faces, and you’re ready to consume. You might even want to crawl into your car at this point, to head for that drive-through window. Just the thought of it makes you warm to the idea of upgrading your vehicle. Then those images of shiny new cars and trucks flash across the screen, with more uplifting music filling the brief interludes between seductive verbiage. You’re ready to buy or lease that new vehicle … as soon as you drive away from the fast-food place.

What does this have to do with family farms?

The answer is also simple. Small family farms are generally the source of real food. Large factory farms are the starting point of mostly processed foods.

Emotional eating and feeding your feelings

The expense of processing food in factories, often requiring an investment of millions of dollars, necessitates large-scale production. Massive amounts of raw foods go in, and truckloads of processed products go out. If this system allowed for nutrition to be retained in those foodstuffs, it would be great for humanity. Large quantities of food would be produced and sold cheaply, yet still make a decent profit for the producers. And there would be enough to feed the starving in this world (there is actually more than enough). Another way to view this problem is: the foodstuff that comes out of those processing factories is so bad that it takes persistent manipulation of the population to keep selling the fake food. Because this fake food leaves eaters hungry for real food, they consistently reach for more, and undernourished appetites respond predictably to manipulation. Producers sweeten the deal, literally, with huge amounts of high-fructose corn syrup, the number one cause of obesity worldwide.

Gardeners who grow their own food know “how sweet it is” to eat from their self-assisted harvest. Small farmers who grow organically also understand how blessed they are to eat of their naturally processed soil; sunlight, water and mineral-rich dirt combine to process raw materials into wonderfully flavorful and highly nutritious edibles. Participants grow healthier bodies, not obese ones.

In a healthy body, regeneration of cells takes place readily. As long as the right ingredients are added in, new cells replace those used up. If the basic ingredients are missing, this natural regeneration is slowed or does not take place at all.  Cells die off or are used up but not replaced. When this happens in our vehicles, most people understand that parts have to be replaced or the car doesn’t function. It should be that simple when “driving” our bodies. Worn-out cells need to be replaced or the body fails.

Small organic farms are the key to regeneration of healthy bodies. We all need what these farms produce. Our lives depend on nutritionally loaded food, and the only source of nutritionally loaded food, containing all the essential minerals, vitamins and amino acids, is organic produce.

It should go without saying that health care is not something bought from an insurance company or a medical facility. Health care comes from what we eat and drink.

Goebbels wrote:

Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized.

Rather than look to others for a solution to what ails you or society, contemplate these words from Harvey Cox:

What we are seeking so frantically elsewhere may turn out to be the horse we have been riding all along.