Against The Grain (Industrialized food system)
Photo courtesy of Dan by Free Digital Photos
*disclaimer* Please don’t fuss at me and call me phony if you see me eating a double stuffed Oreo:) Being against the grain is my goal.
Let me start from the beginning and share with y’all where God has taken me to give me the disgust and rebellion I have for our industrialized food system. About 3-4 years ago I took my husband to a farm tour for his birthday. (Seems random but he and I are fascinated by them) It was a dairy farm in SC called Happy Cow Creamery. On the tour he explained where our supermarket milk came from and why they were different. They fed their cows GRASS. Huh? We looked at each other and thought, well don’t all cows eat grass? I know to a lot of people reading this are thinking how could you have not known all of this. Basically comes down to how you are raised, your education, and what is available to you. We knew no different. He began to explain that the milk from the supermarket was from cows who ate a diet of corn feed, received antibiotics due to their confinement and diseases, and were given hormones to increase their milk production. (Though most claim this isn’t true) It’s not just in milk but in all dairy products we use every day. He explained that cows were made to eat grass and the health benefits increase dramatically when the milk is from grass-fed cows compared to corn-fed ones. They gave samples of the milk and oh my word, no comparison, delicious!
This was a huge eye opener for us. We wondered who else knew about this secret. Nobody in our family did. When we got home I began to research where I could buy that same quality of milk around here locally. Turns out there are a lot of people out there who do know about this, it’s just not easy to get your hands on. If any of you are research queens like me than you know one thing always leads to another… Turns out there are also select places with grass-fed beef, pasture raised chickens, grass-fed hogs..etc WHAT??? You mean to tell me this whole time I’ve been eating food that is sub par. My risk of getting food borne illness, heart disease and cancers is all increased due to what these animals are consuming including chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones. I thought I was eating real food that was good for me!
As we all know with most things done the right way you have to pay for it. All of these grass-fed meats and foods that have the least intervention cost the most. As a society we are constantly penalized for going against the grain, rather that be financially, emotionally, or even educationally.
Turns out even a tomato from the store has been chemically altered to give it its shelf life, color, and vitality. It really blows my mind at how much the food system feeding our country is able to get away with, yet it is illegal for me to buy raw milk in NC. Just about every week there is some sort of recall on these foods deemed safe to eat.
We all need to start questioning our own food safety and be our family’s advocates. It is no secret that the leading cause of death is heart disease. This is REVERSIBLE by our diets. It is my opinion that we are being tricked and schemed into a money market as what “healthy” really means. I can remember a time when I used to buy lean cuisines and key lime flavored low-fat yogurt. Unless you have educated yourself these labels look like they are healthy options. THEY ARE NOT! They are horribly processed.
Through all of my research I have had times of being completely overwhelmed at where to start to gain me and my family’s health back. The conclusion I have come to is that this is the most basic and easiest diet to follow. REAL FOOD! I need to mimic not what my grandmother fixed at her supper table but my GREAT grandmother. This includes fruits and vegetables grown in season with no interventions. Meats raised on what they were born to eat and milk from the town near by. They had no minute rice or cream of mushroom soup. They used what was available, local, and what they grew. This may sound difficult but it was an art. To be truly creative in the kitchen and put real ingredients together to make a masterpiece. (Even if that masterpiece was a simple homemade biscuit.)
There is the issue of time spent on gardening or money spent at farmers markets. When you think about it… it sure does cost a lot of money for your stent or cancer treatments and it’s an awful lot of time wasted in the hospital or not feeling the way we were meant to feel.
God didn’t design us to eat the way we have been eating. We know what to do but we put our heads in the sand just because it’s easier. It’s time we go against the grain and feed our bodies what it is meant to have, REAL FOOD! The good thing is we can start off small and work our way up. Start by not having fast food. We all know how terrible it is for you and you can save money. Dig in and start finding information to encourage you and show you the benefits of eating real stuff you can pronounce. The truth is we have all been starving ourselves. Not of calories but of vitamins and minerals essential for living, this is all a form of malnutrition. Let’s feed ourselves again!
Did I mention the food from real ingredients taste 100 times better? Even the Oreos don’t taste as good anymore:) Any one else with me? Interested in joining the food revolution? Did you have a moment like we did that stopped you in your tracks and got you thinking? If so, subscribe and share!
Here is part I of my series: Against The Grain (Birth Control)
I will be adding more to this series, so subscribe so you won’t miss it!
Sharing this with: The Prairie Homestead, A Mama’s story, Raising Arrows, The Modest Mom, What Joy is Mine, Growing Home, Time Warp Wife, Thankful Homemaker, Mamal Diane, Teaching What is Good, Mom’s the word, conerstone cofessions, A proverbs 31 wife, Some of the best things in life are mistakes, Let this mind be in you, A Wise Woman Builds her home, Deep Roots at Home, Graced Simplicity, Raising Homemakers, Women Living Well, Hope in Every Season, Jill’s Home remedies, Little Natural Cottage, Our simple country Life, Raising Mighty Arrows, The Purposeful Mom, Happy and Blessed Home, Homemaker by Choice, Your Thriving Family, My Joy Filled Life. New Life Steward, Hometead simple, Let this Mind Be in You,
18 Responses to Against The Grain (Industrialized food system)
Hey Y'all! My name is Brittany Styron. Sweet Country Roots is a place I hope to encourage, inspire, and bring a chuckle. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and join conversations about marriage, babies, homeschooling, frugal living, good food, and an old fashioned way of thinking.
Love this post. I’ve been trying to share this message myself. Wish others would educate themselves on the GMOs and such in food.
LOL. I love your disclaimer!
I feel the exact same way. We are starting small. We have chickens, a huge garden in the summer but I feel like I’m still not doing enough. I could do more especially since I’m home with my kids. Love this post!!
Love this! The more I learn about where our food comes from the more disgusted I feel. I am writing an essay for college about GMOs and I was amazed to discover how little testing is done for GMOs to reach our grocery shelves. According to the FDA website, the seed developer (Monsanto, or other biotech company) completes a safety assessment on their GMO. The FDA looks over that safety assessment, and if satisfactory, passes the GMO. Crazy but the FDA DOES NOT complete their own safety assessment; rather, they let the seed developer do it! Thought that was interesting if anyone finds this stuff interesting.
I also love your disclaimer! Mine is tortilla chips. I just love munching on them.
I’m trying to eat real food. I’m not perfect, but I keep on going.
I came over from the Monday’s Musings linkup and I’m glad I did.
Thanks for writing this. I struggle with an off-and-on passion for this topic. I think I get overwhelmed by it and let things slide a little (a lot?). But I’ve really been convicted lately that I need to be more consistent. Finding real food (grass fed, raw) etc. is very difficult and raw milk is illegal here too. But, I need to do what I can and make the changes I can make as we go along.
thanks for the reminder! Pinning this onto my healthy living board.
Well I miss read and thought it said against food illustrations my mistake. BUT you raise a good point about the food industry. I have a kid who’s allergies are to chemicals,and other things you find in food today. (Same kid, while pregnancy my morning sickness was to the same thing. Not fun) its amazing what you find in things today when you think they are clean foods.
Candice
Excellent article! And it is so true that when your taste buds get acclimated to real and whole and natural food, even Oreos don’t taste as good anymore! I have not been able to eat as unprocessed as I’d like but we try.
Thanks for linking up today.
Great post! I completely agree. Things are a little different here in the UK, but the basic principles are just the same. One thing we’ve done to counteract the coat of buying ‘real’ food is that we only eat meat at weekends (unless it’s leftovers!). It’s not always easy to cook with just vegetables, but we had been feeling that our ‘meat every day’ diet was too rich and too expensive and not very healthy, and recent studies seem to have proved us right. X
Here’s the link to the research I mentioned: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/eating-animal-protein-may-be-as-harmful-as-smoking-scientists-claim-9169335.html
I’m totally supportive of the grain-free diet and eating plenty of grass fed beef, etc. and hope to receive via e-mail continuation of “Against The Grain” future articles.
I read this a while ago and got busy 😉 Where do you buy your meat? Grocery store? Farmer? We’ve started growing heirloom variety veggies, fruits and even have some apple tree seedlings that will hopefully make it to try to get around the huge cost of organic produce. I bought a huge upright freezer( scratch and dent at LOWES, woohoo- half price!) and try to get the good meats and milk on sale to freeze, but its still so pricy 🙁
We are trying to start an heirloom garden this year too! Last year we purchased 1/4 of a cow for meat. I loved doing that, we just haven’t found a place for this year yet. I try not to buy a lot of meat just because the quality I want is so expensive. When we find a farmer I’ll let ya know!
Okay thanks!
And, my daughter went on a field trip to Happy Cow last year!
First world problems muddied by well-disguised propaganda (I don’t mean you — I mean purveyers of organic and grass-fed animals. They are out to make a buck, never forget that). I agree that food should be grown at home when possible; that it should be prepared at home with whole ingredients as much as possible; and that all milk products should be whole fat (because that’s the way it comes from the source). But let’s not confuse a blessing with a curse. Simply putting food on the table is a grace in most of the world and we should thank God that we have the luxury of worrying about things like grass-fed versus corn-fed. The fact that we have access to nutritous food at all makes us richer than most everyone else on earth. To split hairs about the pedigree of livestock raises our nutirition to the state of Old Covenant Law and degrades our freedom in Christ. He said what goes into our bodies ends in the sewer and is of little importance. What comes from our heart is what matters. And for some people (not you or your readers — you all seem quite lovely) food purity becomes not only a quasi-religion, but also a witchhunt, with devotees on one side of the aisle and “impure eaters” on the other. Whether my beef comes from Wal-Mart or Whole Foods, I will praise the Name of the Lord and call Him good for providing it. Be careful that Satan doesn’t entice you into calling a blessing from God “subpar” because you dislike where it came from. I know you’re very pregnant — not an attack! I love your blog and you are the sweetest mommy ever. And GOOD FOR YOU for standing up against things like debt and contraception. Just my $0.02 on the whole “food thing”. I come from rural farm people in NC and have a unique perspective. Agreement is not required. 😀
I agree to a certain extent with you. Yes, I do see the market out there for organics as a money maker when all are not truly what they say. For that, I do try to be careful what foods I am spending my money on. I also agree that food on the table is a blessing, but I don’t feel like I am being ungrateful for researching and trying to get the purest of foods possible. My stance for writing this post was to show how much things have changed over the years. I wanted to show how uneducated we have become as a society on what real food actually is. This post is written for people who DO have choices of what they eat. Thank you for your different perspective and for the compliments:)
Our bodies are indeed a temple of the Lord. If we eat low quality food, our health, physical & emotional will suffer. I’d rather be bright-eyed, able to function to my fullest in serving the Lord. And I think that starts with eating quality food like God had designed it to be in the first place. We get most of our food from “Miller’s Organic Farm” in Bird in Hand, PA. They also ship by FedEx, make deliveries into NY, NJ, NC and FL.