Eat...Well

In spite of the vast knowledge we now have about the human body, it has become next to impossible to eat well. People spend more time in the doctor's office than ever before, grocery stores are stocked with worse food than ever before, there are more medicines for more exotic diseases than ever before, there are more additives to our food than ever before, there is more mental illness than ever before and the list goes on. Because of this and other things, I have begun to wonder about the correlation between additives to our food and the medicines people have to take.

It's easy to see the obvious correlations between things like smoking and lung cancer, alcohol consumption and liver disease, drug abuse and mental stability. But if these things affect the body adversely over time, why should we think that other things are not capable of similar effects?

As a mother of many children, I have endured a great deal of pain and difficulty. Through trial and error, study and application I was able to discover some of the things that affected my body in both positive and negative ways. That knowledge helped me to survive some of the challenges I faced in having children and raising them. I tried to take advantage of the new discoveries being made as well as tried and true principles of good health. Since learning and practicing all of these things and gaining a measure of health because of it, I have been a little discouraged by the absence of really good food and the almost overwhelming presence of it's opposite.

Now, I don't expect everyone to eat like myself. I realize that there are various tastes in this world and I can accept that. But I also think it should not be so difficult to find something worth eating. Twenty-five years ago, a good friend of ours, who happened to be a retired doctor, took us aside to speak to us, knowing that we were just starting our family and that we might need some of his wisdom. Of all the things he could say to us then, he chose one thing in particular which I have always remembered. He said that he wished that soda had never been invented. He then proceeded to tell us some of the problems it had caused in his patients. He graphically described the suffering and difficulty these people had brought upon themselves by the consumption of that ONE product.

Naturally, I was appalled. I never drank much soda, but after that, I stopped altogether. Thanks to that little insight, I have been able to avoid some of the things that doctor was warning me against. The trouble is, there are a million products out there with no warnings attached and no doctor saying, “You'd better not eat that.” We are free to choose for ourselves, what we will eat and what we will not. But in all the choosing, I have learned that the body, though resilient, is also very sensitive. When I take in something that was never intended to be ingested, my body reacts. If I do it more, it reacts violently. But an interesting thing happens when there is an overload of the system by things that the body considers as non-food. I learned from another doctor that when the body is fed inappropriately, the cells of the body change or mutate. This mutation causes the cells to reject real food and treat it like a virus, or the enemy. This condition is extremely common, today.

Sadly, I see many children who outwardly shun real food, as though it were dangerous, and consume nothing but chemical concoctions and over-processed non-foods. Often, they will refuse to eat anything else. Then, we have a significant number of children who cannot function without their behavior-modifying medication. Is there a correlation? Could one be causing the other?

If these questions were only about food, then perhaps we could just laugh and say, “Oh, well.” But when we see the relationship of diet, medication and crime, then maybe it's time to wake up. Good health is no accident, no amount of money can purchase good health and there is no magic pill. Good health must be earned one day at a time and all our knowledge will be wasted unless we are willing to apply it. Passing a law that prevents McDonalds from using certain kinds of oil in hopes of lowering America's colesterol is like putting a bandaid on a heart attack. It just isn't going to help.