Our diet has changed dramatically since the 1930’s, when we first started to change from natural farming processes, developed over thousands of years, to scientific farming processes. These changes have run in parallel with lifestyle changes, disease pattern changes and food processing changes.
The Problem: An Abrupt Change in Our Food
Factory farmed animal products, while an unimaginably huge industry today, were essentially inconceivable fewer than 100 years ago. If you didn’t live in a rural setting where you likely raised your own animals, the milkman delivered dairy products from a not so far away dairy. Meat and poultry could be purchased from a local butcher who may have even known the animals personally. Growth hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified feed were never fed to animals. So while it may seem that our recent ancestors ate “too much” of these products, they were eating the healthiest kinds of animal products, those raised on grass, outdoors.
Conventionally raised produce contain far fewer vitamins and minerals than they did a half-century ago. You can credit pesticides and chemical fertilizers with disrupting soil quality, depleting it of vital nutrients.
The Solution: Nutrition and Health Supplements
Historically, food was neither stripped of nutrients, nor loaded with chemicals, antibiotics and hormones. We slept according to the rhythms of nature and our biological systems were under much less stress. But the modern world has taken a huge toll on our bodies and minds and the stress of keeping our head above water is quite different. We may not have needed to supplement our diets then, but in this day and age, supplementing with key nutrients is essential. The basic premise behind supplements as I see it is to augment our systems so that they can function optimally and do what they were designed to do. Supplements merely supplement a healthy, high-quality diet—they won’t replace one.