{"id":1269,"date":"2018-07-17T21:38:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T01:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2018-07-18T08:18:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T12:18:39","slug":"fools-for-flavor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/2018\/07\/17\/fools-for-flavor\/","title":{"rendered":"Fooled by Flavor: The Dorito Effect or The Nutrient Density Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

One of the Harvest Partners hens forages among flowers on the pasture.<\/p><\/div>\n

Fools for Flavor<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his book\u00a0The Dorito Effect:\u00a0 The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor<\/em>,<\/u>\u00a0Mark Schatzker reveals what we’ve known here on the farm for a long time:\u00a0 Just like animals, our bodies are designed with the ability to choose foods based on the nutrients we need.<\/p>\n

We’ve observed cows, sheep and goats choosing particular plants in the pasture to satisfy the needs of their own species, stage of life, body condition and even to correct various medical conditions.\u00a0 \u00a0Release\u00a0animals into a new pasture, as we do daily, and they immediately\u00a0seek\u00a0out flavors that provide the nutrients their\u00a0 bodies need.<\/p>\n

In his book, Schatzker shows how the artificial flavorings in the foods people eat trick their bodies into thinking the food contains needed nutrients when, in fact, it doesn’t.\u00a0 Before artificial flavors were introduced in the 1950s, each food had to stand on its own nutritional merit.\u00a0 Foods with poor nutritional qualities just didn’t taste good and people would reject them.\u00a0 But with the advent of artificial flavors (and so-called “natural flavors,” which are just the same chemicals obtained from natural sources) people have begun consuming large amounts of low nutrient density food.\u00a0And that’s a recipe for an obesity epidemic.<\/p>\n

Artificial flavors deceive our bodies into thinking that a food is filled with nutrients.\u00a0 However, when we eat it, we get empty calories and none of the nutrients we actually crave.\u00a0 In response, our bodies tell us that we need more nutrients.\u00a0 So what do we do?\u00a0 We eat more of this “great tasting” nutrient deficient “food.”<\/p>\n

Pour Some Sugar on Me<\/strong><\/p>\n

But artificial flavors aren’t the only problem.\u00a0 If we’ve seen it once, we’ve seen it a thousand times:\u00a0 We and our family members, friends and neighbors (mostly unwittingly) feed\u00a0ourselves\u00a0and\u00a0our\u00a0children foods laced with sugar and corn sweeteners.\u00a0 Here’s the picture.\u00a0 It’s a family reunion picnic or a pitch in dinner.\u00a0 We parents fill the plates of\u00a0our\u00a0children with the main dishes–hamburgers and hot dogs with buns and condiments, potato salad, pasta dishes, baked beans, pickles, slaw and so forth.\u00a0 \u00a0It turns out that every\u00a0item on this list includes added corn sweeteners or sugar (even the beef patties might contain dextrose, a corn sugar.)\u00a0 Astonishingly, the children often find the “real food” dissatisfying and move rapidly to the dessert line before finishing their plate.\u00a0\u00a0It’s ironic, isn’t it,\u00a0when we parents urge\u00a0our\u00a0children to eat their plate of high-carb and sugar-filled foods before getting dessert!<\/p>\n

The added sugar makes an otherwise nutrient deficient food palatable (even crave-worthy) but leaves the body starving for nutrients!\u00a0 The result:\u00a0 more eating, more calories, less satisfaction and low nutrition.\u00a0 Obesity and chronic disease are sure to follow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Veggie Tales<\/strong><\/p>\n

The solution, we’re told, is to eat a diet high in vegetables.\u00a0 Vegetables are healthy!\u00a0 This plea comes from the same people who told us for decades that eating foods high in cholesterol, such as eggs, raises our blood cholesterol (it doesn’t.)\u00a0 These are the same people who told us that we should ditch the butter and eat hydrogenated soy oil formed into butter-like consistency.\u00a0\u00a0And yes, they’re the same people who created the fraudulent “food pyramid” recommending a whopping 8 servings of carb-laden grain-based foods each day while\u00a0strictly minimizing satisfying, nutrient dense foods such as meat and dairy products.<\/p>\n

The truth is, vegetables, if grown properly in mineral-rich, living soil, can provide a host of important trace (and some macro-) nutrients.\u00a0 But keep in mind that vegetables are mostly water and tend to be far less nutrient dense than animal products.\u00a0 Also, remember that virtually all plants, including the garden veggies we love, have inborn defenses against animal (and people)\u00a0 consumption (Read the details\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>.)\u00a0 It’s important to practice traditional forms of cooking to minimize or protect yourself from these toxins.\u00a0 And finally, we’ve already\u00a0cataloged<\/a>\u00a0the significant decrease in important vitamins and minerals in most vegetables grown nowadays\u00a0as a result of our impoverished soils.\u00a0 The bottom line is that, while carefully selected vegetables are important in our diet, they aren’t a panacea that can replace nutrient-dense animal products.<\/p>\n

The Mystery Solved<\/strong><\/p>\n

Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel prize winning biochemist, proclaimed, “You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.”\u00a0 Way back in 1936, the U.S. Senate filed a report that acknowledged that our soils had already become so deficient in the proper minerals for raising animals and growing crops that foods, “being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contains enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us–no matter how much of them we eat!”<\/p>\n

While farming techniques have changed since then, at least one important thing hasn’t.\u00a0 Farmers are still\u00a0rewarded according to\u00a0the\u00a0quantity<\/em>\u00a0they grow, rather than being paid for the nutritional\u00a0quality<\/em>\u00a0of the food they produce.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>They add the primary chemical fertilizers of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) — “NPK” — to get the abundance and size they need for market, but our soils are still badly imbalanced in major minerals such as calcium and magnesium.\u00a0 And they’re\u00a0missing a whole slate of essential trace minerals such as manganese, boron and molybdenum, to name just a few.\u00a0 Further compounding the problem is the widespread use of synthetic fertilizers such as superphosphates and herbicides\u00a0like glyphosate (Roundup.)\u00a0 These\u00a0tie up soil minerals for decades, making them unavailable for crops, livestock and the food you eat.<\/p>\n

You can fix this problem right now by shifting your food expenses to local farmers\u00a0who\u00a0heal the soil<\/a>, feed animals their species-appropriate diets and produce foods with\u00a0high nutrient density<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fools for Flavor In his book\u00a0The Dorito Effect:\u00a0 The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor,\u00a0Mark Schatzker reveals what we’ve known here on the farm for a long time:\u00a0 Just like animals, our bodies are designed with the ability to choose foods based on the nutrients we need. We’ve observed cows, sheep and goats choosing particular plants in the pasture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harvestpartners.farm\/connect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}