Dirt Poor

Have you heard of the expression 'dirt poor' - roughly means extremely poor.

We are not here today to rant on about money, but rather the poverty of nutrients plaguing humanity today.

Everything is on the rise,including diseases like heart disease, cancer, obesity, malnutrition and many other diseases despite us moving forward in our medical advancements. Have you ever wondered why? what is the root to all of this evil?

Health is influenced by numerous factors, thus termed multi-factorial. This means its not just about the one thing, its about the bigger picture. your pedigree, where you live, your job, what you eat, what you do daily all have a big impact on your end result.

eg, causes of acne

You are what you eat, and this is true in so many profound ways.  we are merely biological machines that need a constant uptake of nutrients for conversion into biochemical energy. energy to live and change the world. but unlike a car that uses fuel to propel it ahead, we assimilate some of our food to make new cells, for repair, and thus it becomes part of us.

But what we all fail to ask is whether or not the quality of our food is preserved over the years. when we shop at the market or the grocery store we tend to pick the biggest and prettiest fruit or veg thinking that its the best of the lot.... is it really?

I was reading a book by Dr Ross Walker - Highway to health ,antioxidants and you.I was fascinated to come across the fact that out soil today is depleted of nutrients and hence so is the fruits and veg that grow on them.

OUR SOIL TODAY!

There is an estimated over 7 billion people around the world today, and all of them, including you and me need to eat. so we cannot grow our crops the traditional slow and steady, small patches of tender love and care style.

In this modern age, crops are mostly genetically modified so they become bigger, stronger and more resistance to disease and plague. but we forget to focus on the effort to make them more nutritious. crops grow faster, and have bigger yield. rice used to take a year to grow and harvest, now we see crops that can be grown n harvested 3x per year. but all these practices are coming at a price. they are depleting our soils... and hence what we eat is just an empty fiber pod with little to trace nutrients.

Table 1. Average Yields of Major Crops in the United States, 1950-92 (Tisdale et al., 1999)
Year	Corn (bu/acre)	Wheat (bu/acre)	Soybean (bu/acre)	Alfalfa (ton/acre)
1950	37.6	14.3	21.7	2.1
1964	62.1	26.2	22.8	2.4
1972	96.9	32.7	28.0	2.9
1982	113.2	35.5	31.5	3.4
1992	128.7	41.4	37.0	3.6

A landmark study on the topic by Donald Davis and his team of researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century. Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition. - taken from Scientificamerican.com

Every delicious looking carrot you eat today is less nutritious than the one you ate before it.

taken From a study by 

Dept of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin - Madison

And this is a worrying situation. because much of our health depends on what we eat. I am not even talking about the amount of pollution and junk that gets in your food like pesticides and stuff which definitely makes us more sick.

So what now?

well, we still need to eat our fruits and veg. in fact, we need to eat more. It is said that to achieve the same amount of vit c that your grandfather had in one orange, we, my friends need 8 now!!!

are you willing to go that extra mile to keep yourself properly nourished? eat 8 oranges a day, few kilos of veg, oh my, i cant imagine.

Well, luckily humans are smart and they invented this thing called vitamins and supplements. In his book, Dr Ross Walker - a cardiologist, advocated the use of supplements as a mean of prevention. He said that 50% of cardiologist take supplements but only a hand full will advice their patients to take. Why is that? Alot of Drs are evidence based and they wait and wait for research to be done and it takes years, sometimes until indefinitely. Its hard to do trials regarding the long term effects of supplements and antioxidants and thus we have little evidence despite it being around for so long.

But whatever it is, the facts are undeniably obvious. our foods are not as nutritious as they were before and they are not likely to change for the better any-time soon. we need to make modification on our health and take up supplements to fill in the gaps. What supplements you choose is equally important because companies these days are geared for profit and that could result in some shady practices like adding fillers, preservatives, dangerous compounds and so on.

Supplements are not substitutes for a healthy lifestyle!

All too often I come across people who just want a magic pill for everything. they say "oh so now i take these slimming set, That means i dont need to exercise?" seriously, this is a joke. please read up on my previous articles touching the benefits of exercise.

The point is, even with supplements, you still need your fruits, your veg, your nuts and legumes. You need to have proper sleep, put in some exercise, have a hobby to reduce stress. I told you in the beginning of this blog, health is a multi-factorial thing, you need to ensure you can change as many of the factors as you can. what you cannot, you leave to fate!

Key message, in case it wasnt already staring in your face,  - live a healthy lifestyle, take your supplements, be happy and hopefully you will die of old (very old) age and not heart disease or cancer..