About 10 years ago, Luke and I made the conscious decision to start eating cleaner foods after watching an eye opening documentary about the state of food production in our nation.

As with most things, not everyone understood what we were doing and why it mattered.

The number one objection; “I’ve never eaten organic food and I’m perfectly healthy.” Even, “My grandmother never ate organic and she lived to be 97 years old.”

Well, that is fantastic. But things have changed a little in the last 100 years.

When our parents were kids, their food came from their neighbor’s farms: milk from their cows, eggs from their chickens, veggies from their gardens. When their cows got sick, they either got better or they died. They weren’t pumped full of antibiotics from birth. Their cows ate grass from fields, not mystery pellets from factories. When it was time to get meat, a farmer went out back and did the deed. This same farmer had taken care of that animal since birth. (I’m simplifying here, but you get the point.)

Historically, when planting fruits and vegetables, the ancient practice of companion planting was practiced. Vegetables and flowers were planted in consideration of how they benefited one another. did they attract or repel the right kinds of bugs? When weeds appeared, they were picked by hand or left alone. Crops were planted in season and rotated regularly to care for the earth.

Now, seeds are modified to be resistant to weed killer so that crops can be sprayed with pesticide and herbicide by crop dusters. The technology is incredible but the execution has life threatening effects on humans, insects and animals a like.

Thanks to modern science, the population has grown. There are simply more mouths to feed and food has become big business. There are massive companies finding the fastest and cheapest ways to yield the highest amount of food. Unfortunately, these practices involve genetically modified seeds that can withstand harsh chemicals, chickens that are modified to grow faster and bigger and other livestock given regular doses of drugs and fed by-product loaded with the same toxic chemicals.

Our parents and grandparents simply didn’t have to worry about the same level of contamination.

This change translates into every aspect of our existence. The food we eat, the clothes we buy, the furniture we sit on, the products we use to clean our bodies. As technology advances, these are less and less just vegetables and just cotton and just wood and just soap.

And so it does matter if your food, clothes, furniture, shampoo have less toxic chemicals. These chemicals are in everything. They ARE affecting our health. We are being exposed to them at an earlier age and higher frequency than previous generations.

There is good news, folks! As we buy safer products for our family’s and our homes, companies will create safer products for us to buy. We drive the market. When we demand better, when we demand the best, and we keep looking until we find it, companies are going to follow suit.

The documentary we watched year ago was Food, Inc. I highly recommend it no matter where you are on your journey to a cleaner lifestyle.

Here are a few articles about the effects these chemicals are having on us.
Sperm Count Zero
Early Puberty – these chemicals can also contribute to obesity
Reproduction
Breast Cancer

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