This article introduces my readers to the way modern food is processed, and the main changes that have happened to our food supply in modern times, and why these changes have happened. I conclude by telling my readers to educate themselves well about the food they eat.
Introduction: Is Food Still Our Best Medicine?
Perhaps the best-known quote from Hippocrates is, “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.” But how true is this piece of advice from the Father of Medicine today? Back in Hippocrates’ day, pure, whole organically grown and raised foods were the norm – you might say that, way back in those days, all we had was Mother Nature. But, the truth is that our food supply has changed a lot since Hippocrates’ day, and a lot of those changes have not been good. Hippocrates’ maxim of letting our food be our medicine and our medicine be our food still holds true, provided we acquire and eat our food in a fresh, natural state, but once we depart from this pure, natural state in our acquisition and consumption of food, we open the door to all kinds of corruption and abuse. In this article, we will be taking a brief, introductory look at the state of our food supply today, and how it is different from the fresh, natural food that was eaten in Hippocrates’ day. We will also be looking at how and why these changes came about, and how we can best return to eating our food in as natural a state as possible.
No one in their right mind who is familiar with today’s highly processed “junk food” could ever claim that this kind of denatured, devitalized food could ever be used as medicine. Ann Wigmore, the founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute, once said that the food we eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest acting poison. – 1. And when she talked about food being poison, she was talking about today’s denatured, devitalized, overly processed “junk food”, which has been robbed of the vital nutrients necessary to support life. An architect would never dream of making a huge building that would withstand the test of time out of inferior materials, and neither should you consider building your body and its health out of inferior quality foods. Therefore, it behooves us to learn all we can about the food we eat, and then use that knowledge to acquire and consume only the best foods we can get. Yet too many people today are woefully ignorant of the food they eat, even though their very life and health depend on making wise, informed choices about what they choose to eat.
The big, existential problem when it comes to food is that we absolutely need food and drink to sustain us and maintain life. Hippocrates summed this truth up in his doctrine of Pepsis, which means digestion and metabolism; because of our Pepsis, or the digestion and metabolism of vital nutrients to maintain and replenish the physical structure of our bodies, said Hippocrates, every man and woman, in fact every living organism, is absolutely dependent on its natural environment. And the faculty of our bodies that is responsible for metabolism, nutrition and growth is called the Natural Faculty in Greek Medicine. Because food and drink are absolutely necessary for the sustenance and maintenance of our physical bodies, there is the strong temptation to cut corners and accept food – any kind of food – to “fill our tanks” and keep us going. But cheap, low quality junk food leads to a low, devitalized mode of living, so it behooves us to seek out, and consume, the best quality food we can get. It’s amazing how many people I have run into who will only put the highest octane fuel into their cars, but when it comes to food for their bodies, or their own physical vehicles, will think nothing of going out to a fast food joint and getting the cheapest stuff they can find. There’s only one thing wrong with that: You can always go out and buy another car when the one you have breaks down, but you can’t go out and buy another body – you’re stuck with the one you got.
The Food Processing Industry: From Subsistence Farming to Factory Farming
Back in Hippocrates’ day, and in fact throughout the vast majority of human history, the transportation, processing and acquisition of food was a fairly simple, natural affair. Farmers eked out a living from their family farms, and sold the surplus food they produced to others in their local community. The human population that lived on this planet was still relatively small, and it was still a relatively simple affair to get food from the growers to the consumers – from farm to fork, if you will. But all that started to change with the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century as goods started to be mass produced in big factories, and the population started to move away from rural areas, where natural food was readily available, into the big cities. Suddenly, the journey of food from farm to fork got a heckuva lot longer. With this big change, the challenges involved in this process got a lot more difficult and numerous, and a lot of the solutions that were adopted to meet these challenges, while expedient, were far from perfect. In short, a new industry was born out of the industrial revolution – the food processing industry. Why not process our food the way that other products are processed on an assembly line? The challenges that had to be met and solved were as follows:
Preventing Spoilage – This is probably the single greatest challenge that the modern food and agribusiness industry faced – making sure that the food didn’t spoil on its much longer journey to market. And one of the best and most satisfactory solutions that was adopted was that of refrigerating or freezing the food. Heck – in colder regions, you can put food outdoors overnight in cold or freezing temperatures and it will be perfectly fresh and edible in the morning. In other words, the microbes that contaminate and spoil food need a fairly warm temperature in order to be active and do their dirty work, and drastically lowering the temperature was, in many ways, the most natural and least invasive way to prevent spoilage. The food could always be heated up prior to consumption, and that was all fine and dandy. Since body temperature is a pretty warm 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius, Greek Medicine says that we should not eat our food in an overly cold or refrigerated state, but that we should consume it warm or hot, or at the least in a moderately cool or room temperature state. Sadly, this sage advice is all too often ignored, as too many people are addicted to the thrilling, chilling pleasures of cold smoothies, ice cold drinks and, of course, ice cream.
Preservatives – Preservatives, or substances that are added to food in order to lengthen or preserve their freshness and shelf life, are also a fairly old, or even ancient, idea that goes back a long ways. Perhaps the oldest known preservative is salt, which was used in a variety of ways. For example, Jesus’ famed companion Mary Magdalene hailed from the town of Magdala, a port city on the Sea of Galilee whose main industry was the production of salted fish, preserved against spoilage by the addition of large quantities of salt. Some say that it was from this industry that she derived the financial means to support Jesus and his band of wandering disciples. Closely allied to this was the process of pickling food or vegetables – adding salt and other substances, like vinegar or citric acid, to the food to keep it in a stable state and prevent spoiling. Many pickled foods, such as German Sauerkraut, Japanese Nuka Miso pickles, or Russian or Eastern European Borscht, are rich in healthy probiotic bacteria that support optimal intestinal function and regularity. When refined sugar became available in medieval times, it was discovered that it could also act as a preservative – and hence the advent of a wide variety of syrups, conserves, jams and jellies. Honey can even be used as a preservative – ancient jars of honey have been discovered in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs that are still edible today.
Natural substances like salt, and other substances like refined sugar, can be added to food to lengthen their shelf life and prevent spoilage, but it must be remembered that these substances have their drawbacks as well, especially for those who have a condition that compromises their metabolism. Most obviously, if you suffer from diabetes, you should stay away from sweet syrups, jams and jellies; if you have high blood pressure, it is advisable to stay away from excess salt, as well as too many foods that are preserved or pickled with it. As with so many other things in life, one must weigh the pros against the cons before deciding whether or not to eat the food in question. When it comes to more modern food additives and preservatives, it is a much more mixed bag still. On the relatively benign side, there are food additives and preservatives that are pretty natural and harmless, like Carageenan gum from Irish Moss, a kind of seaweed, that is used to emulsify or stabilize certain foods in order to keep them from separating; Locust Bean Gum, taken from the seed pods of various trees in the Fabaceae, or Bean / Pea family, is also quite natural and harmless. On the other end of the spectrum, certain other preservatives, like Sodium Nitrate and Sodium Nitrite, which is used to preserve many lunch meats from spoilage, have been linked with various forms of cancer, like stomach cancer. – 2. And then, there’s a whole bunch of others that fall somewhere in between these two extremes – not the best stuff on earth, but not real delterious or harmful either.
Pasteurization – Louis Pasteur, the formulator of the germ theory of disease and a big hero of modern medicine, is credited with the invention of the pasteurization process that bears his name. Basically, pasteurization is done to liquid foods like milk in order to lengthen their shelf life and render them a lot less prone to spoilage and microbial infection; Liquid foods like milk, and even many juices, are subjected, bit by bit, to quick bursts of high, intense heat to kill any lingering microbes that might be in them. While the public health authorities are the main advocates for the pasteurization of milk and other liquid foods, in order to reduce the risk of microbial infection and spoilage, the fact is that the pasteurization of milk denatures the natural enzymes present in the milk, as well as the protein molecules that are in the milk, rendering them a lot harder to digest, especially for those with slow, weak or frail digestive systems.
As a person with a slow, weak digestive system, I can personally attest to this fact; when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, I used to go hiking in the summer, and after a hike, I would love to drink a bottle of cool tangerine juice to cool me off after a long, hot hike. The only problem was that this tangerine juice was “flash pasteurized” (This is actually a euphemism, since all pasteurization happens in a flash.). And because it was pasteurized, it was rendered a lot harder to digest, and even hours later, when I cooked and ate my dinner, the sour acids of the tangerine juice would still be lingering around in my stomach to upset the digestion of my evening meal. Anyway, those who are familiar with the natural food business will know that there have been ongoing legal and legislative battles in many localities between the proponents of raw milk and the public health authorities, who want all milk to be pasteurized. Drinking spoiled or infected milk is an obvious health hazard, but so is drinking milk that is a lot harder to digest, and which generates a lot more phlegm than it otherwise would have; ideally, you want both. All too often, “junk food” that keeps forever on the shelves has also been denatured and devitalized; this prompted a natural food advocate to write that we should only consume natural foods that will spoil easily, but to eat or consume them before they spoil.
Canning – Canning is a fairly old food preservation technology that is relatively desirable and safe; I say “relatively desirable and safe” here because it is obviously not as desirable as eating the food in its fresh, natural state. The canning process consists of putting food, usually in a moist, wet or semi-liquid state, into artificial containers made of tin or stainless steel; these hermetically sealed containers are often lined with plastic on the inside to prevent the dissolution of the metal into the food. The safety of the canning process depends on the maintenance of strict cleanliness and freedom from microbes within the cannery, or canning facility; in addition, certain natural preservatives, most notably salt and oil, are often used to further discourage and prevent spoilage. “Canning” can also consist of putting preserved food into mason jars, where they can be stored and consumed at a later date. Back in the sixties, when the threat of nuclear war loomed large, people were instructed to build fallout shelters and stock them with large quantities of canned food for survival purposes. Canned food was also a mainstay of soldiers’ rations during World War II and other wars, and greatly aided military logistics.
Dessication, or Drying – In Greek Medicine, it is said that there are two basic qualities or ingredients that are essential for all life, including microbial life, to manifest, and these are a moderate amount of heat, and a moderate amount of moisture as well. We have already seen how freezing and refrigeration can preserve or greatly lengthen the shelf life of food by depriving microbial life of the requisite heat necessary to support their cellular metabolisms. Food can also be preserved by drying it, or by depriving microbial life of the moisture or aqueous environment necessary to conduct the metabolic reactions essential to life. Here again, drying is a very old technology essentially, but one that also has modern offshoots, like freeze drying; as a whole, it is a very safe and reliable food preservation technology that is remarkably free of any serious threat to one’s overall state of health.
The Native Americans would slice buffalo meat into thin slices and dry them on racks out in the sun; once thoroughly dried, this dried meat, known as pemmican or jerky, could keep for long periods of time, or virtually indefinitely. Besides meat, other foods that are commonly dried are mainly fruits, as well as some vegetables, including sea vegetables. Dried foods can be added to a pot and cooked up in stews, soups and porridges when desired, or they can be eaten in their dry state. There is one potential health hazard with many dried foods, especially when it comes to dried fruits, and that is the addition of sulfur, or sulfur dioxide to the dried fruit; many individuals are sensitive to it, particularly in their delicate oral and throat mucosa, and it can aggravate other conditions, like food and respiratory allergies. How can you tell if a dried fruit has been sulfured or not? Many dried fruits, such as apricots, will maintain their original color when sulfured, but will turn a dark brown, or a much darker hue, when left unsulfured – and of course, the unsulfured dried fruit is preferable health-wise. Barring this, the ultimate test of whether a dried fruit has been sulfured or not is to savor its taste or flavor. Other additives to dried fruit are much more harmless and innocuous.
Smoking – Smoking is actually a specialized form of drying food; during the smoking process, the food in question is slowly dried and deprived of the majority of its moisture content. To aid in the preservation process, the food is often salted as well. In addition, smoking adds a certain subtle, savory smoky flavor to the food. How safe is smoked food? Although the majority of people seem to be OK with it, there are those who are sensitive to it, as the more volatile constituents of the smoky aroma can provoke irritation of the bladder and other delicate mucosal linings in sensitive individuals. Some have even linked the frequent consumption of smoked foods to certain forms of cancer, like stomach cancer. Sodium Nitrates and Nitrites are a common additive to smoked foods, particularly to sliced lunch meats, and they have been linked to certain forms of cancer – so beware.
Homogenization and Emulsifiers – Besides getting spoiled or contaminated with harmful microbes, another undesirable thing that can happen during the long journey from farm to fork is that the food separates. There are basically two solutions to this problem of separation: You can either homogenize the food by forcing it through a very fine meshed sieve, or you can add emulsifiers to the food to prevent separation. In the world of food additives, emulsifiers are usually quite safe and natural; two different emulsifiers I have already written about in this article – Carageenan gum and Locust Bean gum – are perfectly safe and natural. A typical emulsifier is a thick, gummy substance that is rich in natural adhesive properties that help to hold a food together; many of them could also be called soft, soluble vegetable fibers. Eggs or egg whites are also a common emulsifier in foods, especially in baked goods, but when it comes to eggs, those who are allergic to eggs should avoid prepared foods that contain them. Homogenized milk is milk that has been forced through a very fine meshed sieve under high pressure.
Hydrogenated Fats and Trans Fats – A big problem with fats and oils is that they can go rancid, with some fats and oils going rancid much more quickly than others. A careful savoring of an oil, or oil and fat-rich food’s flavor will usually reveal whether or not the / its oil has started to go bad, and rancid fats and oils will usually have a bitter aftertaste. Sometimes, even the smelling of oil-rich foods like nuts will tell you if they have started to go rancid or not, and the rancid smell of a certain nut or seed, once experienced and identified, will tell you if the nut is fresh and safe to eat or not. When it comes to fats and oils and their shelf life, the general rule is that poly-unsaturated vegetable oils, while frequently hailed as being heart healthy, go rancid a lot more quickly than animal fats that are saturated, or other oils like Olive oil, which are only mono-unsaturated. Vegetable oils that have been artificially hydrogenated or saturated have certain practical advantages over those same vegetable oils in their original unsaturated state; namely, they keep for much longer before going rancid, and they are solid or semi-solid at room temperature, which is a property that lets them be used as emulsifiers as well. Most margarines and vegetable shortenings have been artificially hydrogenated, and this hydrogenation at high temperatures denatures the basic shape and configuration of the hydrocarbon chain, rendering it a lot harder for the liver enzymes that digest and metabolize fats to handle. The body’s digestion and metabolism of fats and oils is actually quite complex, and so is the problem of figuring out exactly how beneficial or harmful to one’s health a certain fat or oil is. In fact, Dr. Udo Erasmus has devoted a whole book to the subject: Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill. – 3.
Artificial Coloring Agents – Artificial coloring agents are often added to processed foods in order to give them a more desirable or natural color or hue. Many of these artificial coloring agents have very undesirable or deleterious effects on one’s health, however; therefore, I would avoid them wherever possible. You might say that these artificial coloring agents completes the list of additives that can be added to highly processed, denatured or devitalized foods to make them appear more attractive and palatable than they really are. Just think – you can add preservatives to retard or prevent spoilage, you can add emulsifiers to hold the food together and prevent separation, and finally, like an artist putting the finishing touches on a painting, add artificial coloring agents to give the food a desirable color. When all is said and done, the “food” that stands before you on the supermarket shelf may be a real work of art – but is it really natural?
Conclusion: Only YOU Can Protect and Preserve Your Health!
Navigating the ins and outs of today’s complex and multifaceted food marketplace can be a very precarious and difficult undertaking indeed. And because of this intricacy and complexity, it behooves you, as a human being and a food consumer, to really educate yourself about the food you’re eating – what it is, where it comes from, what is done to it and how, and much, much, much more… After all, your very life and health depend on it. You gotta know all its ingredients – so above all, READ THE LABELS! And if there is anything on the labels that you don’t quite understand, by all means, google it up online, and do your research on it. Legal codes and regulations may vary from country to country, or even one locality to another, with some countries offering much better protections and guarantees regarding the quality and purity of the food that is sold than others, but ultimately, the responsibility of eating a healthy diet and therefore safeguarding your health falls squarely on YOUR shoulders. Having lived on this planet for over seventy years, and having traveled to many different countries, I can personally attest that you can find unhealthy “junk food” and really trash your health just about anywhere you go – but why do that??? Isn’t it much better to eat well, and to be healthy instead?