Ever wonder why so much of our store-bought food is over processed the way it is? Are those big food companies really protecting us from “bad” food, or are they covering up “bad” food?? Let’s briefly examine the food industry.
It’s important to know that most of our food or food ingredients that are used are there because of one reason: They can be planted and harvested quickly and efficiently with machines… NOT because they have any kind of health benefit for humans.
That’s not to say that every single crop brought in by machine is bad. In fact, in the vegetable world I can say from personal experience growing for a local cannery that those pea harvesters, bean pickers and sweet corn snappers are truly works of wonder!
What is a cause for concern is the fact that these machines harvest ALL of the crop, good, bad or ugly. When this variable crop enters the factory, it’s basically impossible to separate out the unripe, overripe or diseased crop from the good crop. Since this can’t be accomplished on an acceptable scale, the only thing that can be done is to process the entire product which reduces the quality down to a lower point of consistency. This idea of consistency has been “sold” to the American public for so long that when most consumers come across the taste of real food, they think it’s bad in some way. How sad is that?
So what can we do to change this pattern? Quite simply, buy local food that’s not only grown locally, but processed in a small local facility or in someone’s kitchen. This pretty much ensures that someone has hand-harvested at the peak of ripeness, hand-sorted for quality and tossed out the undesirable product so you get only the top quality food full of the nutrients that nature puts in. So go shop at your town’s farm market or drive out to a local produce farm and enjoy the REAL flavors of food!
Healthy trails,
Dale