In learning about nutrition, we often hear that certain foods contain a certain amount of vitamins and minerals. This is especially true in fruits, vegetables, and other produce, but very few people understand the truth about this information, which is that most of the published values about this nutritional content are not correct. This is especially true among minerals, and that's the point of this story.

Most of the produce you buy in a grocery store does not have anything close to the mineral profile it is supposed to have according to nutritional textbooks. This is because minerals are not manufactured by plants, whereas vitamins and phytonutrients are. When plants create such nutrients, they synthesize them through chemical and energetic processes that can only be called miraculous. But as capable as they are, plants do not create minerals. Minerals have to be absorbed through the soil, and if they are not present in the soil, then the plant's roots cannot take them up, and therefore they will not be present in the plant.



The nutritional and mineral profile of the plant ultimately depends on the mineral content of the soil. Since soils today are so over-farmed and depleted of all but a few basic minerals, most of our produce lacks the minerals they should contain. For example, a lot of plants absorb selenium when selenium is present in the soil. But when selenium is not present in the soil, of course it's not available to the plant. The plant gets grown and taken to the store and sold and consumed anyway, even though it doesn't have the levels of selenium that it should contain according to traditional textbooks.



Interestingly, tomatoes can be grown to look very good cosmetically, even though they lack selenium and all the minerals that should be present. It really only takes three minerals to grow tomatoes or other vegetables. Of course, those vegetables will be nutritionally deficient, which means they won't be as healthy as they could be. They won't be as resistant to disease and pests, and they won't taste nearly as good either. So if you are eating tomatoes or produce grown in nutritionally depleted soils, then you are consuming inferior produce, and that's what's available in stores today.



Here's a common question about minerals and produce: How do tomatoes or other plants know which minerals to absorb? The answer is that each plant has a different mineral absorption profile. A tomato will absorb a certain number of minerals (around 56), and it will absorb no more. It will only absorb the 56 that it is programmed to absorb.



Grasses for example, will absorb over 70 minerals. Sweet potatoes, or yams, absorb more minerals than potatoes, and some plants absorb fewer minerals. Some plants absorb only 20 or 30 minerals. Each plant has a different profile of what it will absorb. Of course, it can only absorb what is present in the soil. So even though a tomato should contain 56 minerals, you may be eating a tomato purchased at the grocery store that only contains 12 minerals or 7 minerals. You are missing out on all the minerals it could have.



This is why it's a great idea to eat Brazil nuts from time to time, because Brazil nuts are the only commonly available nut that's grown wild in naturally mineralized soils. Brazil nuts are mostly wild crafted, meaning that they are collected out in nature from wild plants, and they are very high in selenium. In fact, just eating three Brazil nuts a day gives you the minimum daily requirement for selenium. Of course, selenium is a very important mineral for preventing Alzheimer's disease, preventing cancer and many other disorders. It's also a great anti-viral mineral.



The point of this is that, when we read in a book that Kale is a great source of calcium, or that broccoli is a good source of selenium, we really have to imagine an asterisk behind that statement. Kale may be a good source of calcium if there was calcium present in the soil in which it was grown. Broccoli may be a good source of selenium, but only if selenium was present in the soil.





The gift of natural disasters to replenish soils

As bad as things look today in terms of produce mineralization, it's only going to get worse in the foreseeable future. The longer our soils are farmed with large-scale commercial farming techniques, the worse the situation is going to get and the lower the mineral content will become. This is why floods, tsunamis and even volcanoes are very good for humans in the long-term, because they recycle the soil and deposit more minerals and new nutrients onto lands that can be used for farming.

Following the late 2004 tsunami in Thailand, the soils there produced outstanding crop yields because ocean water had been deposited onto the land. Ocean water contains all the minerals we need, and those minerals helped create an abundance of crops in the following season.



Back at the dawn of human civilization when we lived along the Nile, the river regularly flooded and would bring nutrients and minerals back to the croplands. That is what sustained early human civilization. The dawn of agriculture was dependent on the flooding of a river. Had that river not flooded and that land been farmed over and over again from generation to generation, the civilization there would have died due to malnutrition. It could not have sustained itself.



Much the same is happening in the United States today. Our civilization is crumbling for a number of reasons related to health. Our population is more diseased than any population in recorded history. Our mental capacity is diminished more than any other population. We have health care costs that are bankrupting our corporations and bankrupting our economy. We are on the verge of a collapse in part caused by a lack of mineralization. It sounds simplistic, but it's absolutely true. Health is the foundation of all abundant civilizations. Without health, there can be no trade, education, peace or abundance. Without mineralization, there can be no health.



The next time you go shopping for produce, don't trust the mineral claims on fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. If you want to boost the mineral content of the foods you buy, buy organic. Organic foods almost always have higher mineral concentrations than conventionally grown foods.



If you really want to do it right, grow your own food and apply diluted seawater (or trace minerals water) to your soil. That will give you the healthiest, highest mineral density plants available anywhere in the world. You can only grow them yourself because I'm not aware of any commercially grower using seawater, which is a great oversight. The source I recommend for seawater is called OceanGrown.com. They will sell you concentrated seawater that you can then dilute and apply to your garden.



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About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org



Secrets of soil nutrition: Why the minerals in soil determine the s...

A key question that is often asked about ecological agriculture, including organic agriculture, is whether it can be productive enough to meet the world's food needs. While many agree that ecological agriculture is desirable from an environmental and social point of view, there remain fears that ecological and organic agriculture produce low yields.



Below is a summary by Lim Li Ching, a researcher with Third World Network, of the available evidence to demystify the productivity debate and demonstrate that ecological agriculture is indeed productive, especially so in developing countries.



A recent study examined a global dataset of 293 examples and estimated the average yield ratio (organic : non-organic) of different food categories for the developed and developing world (Badgley et al., 2007). For most of the food categories examined, they found that the average yield ratio was slightly less than 1.0 for studies in the developed world, but more than 1.0 for studies in developing countries.



On average, in developed countries, organic systems produce 92% of the yield produced by conventional agriculture. In developing countries, however, organic systems produce 80% more than conventional farms.



With the average yield ratios, the researchers then modeled the global food supply that could be grown organically on the current agricultural land base. They found that organic methods could hypothetically produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without putting more farmland into production.



Moreover, contrary to fears that there are insufficient quantities of organically acceptable fertilizers, the data suggest that leguminous cover crops could fix enough nitrogen to replace the amount of synthetic fertilizer currently in use.



This model suggests that organic agriculture could potentially provide enough food globally, but without the negative environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.



For the entire article, please click on the Source Link below.



Sources:



Organic Consumers Association December 19, 2008





Dr. Mercola's Comments:





I’m continually amazed that so many policymakers find it hard to believe that organic and sustainable farming can actually produce enough food to feed the world.



If you’re still unconvinced, I highly suggest you read the whole article linked above. As you’ll read, one recent study that examined a global dataset of 293 farming examples found that in developing countries, organic systems produce 80% more than conventional farms. And a review of 286 projects in 57 countries found that farmers who used "resource-conserving" or ecological agriculture had increased agricultural productivity by an average of 79%!





“It is clear that ecological agriculture is productive and has the potential

to meet food security needs … Moreover, ecological agricultural approaches

allow farmers to improve local food production with low-cost, readily available

technologies and inputs, without causing environmental damage,” Lim Li Ching

writes.



Really, the question we should be asking ourselves shouldn’t be ‘Can organic or sustainable farming feed the world?’, but ‘How can food production possibly continue as it is?’



The Modern Food System is Crumbling



There are so many problems facing the food system that it’s hard to even pinpoint a place to begin, but I’ll start with factory farms -- the modern world’s “solution” to raising animals for food.



It may surprise you to learn that such farming creates some of the worst pollution in the United States. The Farm Sanctuary points out that farm animals produce 130 times more waste than humans. And agricultural runoff is the primary reason why 60 percent of U.S. rivers and streams are polluted.



Meanwhile, in areas where animal agriculture is most concentrated (Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Illinois and Indiana round out the top five states with the most factory-farm pollution) bacteria known as pfiesteria is common in waterways. Not only does pfiesteria kill fish, it also causes nausea, memory loss, fatigue and disorientation in people!



Aside from the pollution, factory farms use vast quantities of resources. According to FactoryFarm.org, industrial milking centers that use manure flush cleaning and automatic cow washing systems, go through as much as 150 gallons of water per cow per day.



Energy costs are even steeper.



A 2002 study from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that industrial farms use an average of three calories of energy to create one calorie of food. Grain-fed beef is at the top of the list of offenders, using 35 calories of energy to produce one calorie of food! And this does not even take into account the energy used to process and transport the foods, so the real toll is even larger.



So when I hear someone extolling the virtues of “modern” agriculture and wondering how “organic” or “sustainable” farming could possibly be the solution, I maintain the fact that we have come to accept inefficient, industrial practices, including dousing our food with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as a viable way to grow food is the real wonder.



And what about genetically modified foods, which were “supposed” to end the global food crisis years ago? Well, lest I open up another can of worms entirely (GM foods are easily one of the biggest threats to both mankind and the earth today) I will suffice to say that Genetically-Modified crops have NOT increased yields as promised.



In fact, research by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) found that Genetically-Modified soy decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soy, and up to 100 percent failures of Genetically-Modified cotton have been recorded in India.



It is quite apparent that the food system began its dramatic decline the second the world turned away from the farming practices of our ancestors, and began to attempt to outdo nature with technology. What is needed is clearly a return to nature, and that is what organic and sustainable farming practices are striving to accomplish.



How to Support Organic and Sustainable Farming Movements



If you have the time and the space, I encourage each of you to consider starting your own small-scale “farm” in your backyard. It takes just a small patch of land, or even several large containers, to grow ample amounts of produce for your family.



I also suggest you steer clear of foods that come from factory farms or any large industrial farms, and instead support sustainable agriculture movements in your area. After declining for more than a century, the number of U.S. small farms has increased 20 percent in the past six years. This is in large part a result of the growing demand for locally grown foods, which is slowly but surely shaping the business of food in the United States.



So please realize that each and every one of you can make a HUGE difference.



To find sustainable agriculture movements in your area, from farmer’s markets to food coops and more, please see this comprehensive list.



It is important to understand the impact you have when you spend your money on factory food. Changing your shopping patterns by supporting local agriculture will not only help improve your health, it will also help improve the environment and bring back our rural communities.







Related Links:





How to Avoid Being Fooled at the Supermarket





What is Wrong with Environmentalism?





The New American Food System





Organic and Sustainable Farmers Can Feed the World





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