This is one of the most common questions asked at our Olive Retreats. My answer is undoubtedly Yes, we need more micronutrients! If you want to stay healthy and if you aren’t vegan, you buy your food in regular shops and supermarkets, then Yes, you do. And, of course, if you find it worth the money and effort to take them. I guess the question is; Is it worth the trouble to stay healthy? Well, only you can answer that. I think it is. I want to live without health issues. I don’t necessarily want to get very old, but I do want to be able to live well and for me that is to not be limited by pain in my body or mind. If it costs a bit to buy supplements, I prefer to spend it on supplements rather than on a meal at a restaurant.
The soils have been depleted of their micro nutrients all over the globe because of modern agriculture. Pesticides, which prevents crops to remineralize, and other industrialized ways of farming has left us with depleted soils at times when we are in more need of micro nutrients then ever before. We have created over 100 000 new chemicals, that are in our environment. We all inhale and ingest them through the air, water and food. There is no way we can totally avoid them. I’m not saying that all of those chemicals are dangerous but it’s enough if 10% of them are for us to get a more toxic environment in nature and therefore in us. We will never be cleaner than our nature. And if you eat chemicals, smoke, take drugs…of course you need more nutrients.
The way the body tries to get rid of these baddies is through our detox systems, and for that to work we need vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and all the other small but so essential nutrients in our food. The thing is that the food contains less of these than before, so we get more toxic, more inflammation and more disease. The last 70 years we have steadily gone from small scale farming to huge industrialized farming, hurting everyone in the production chain, except maybe the companies that get cheap raw materials to produce crap ‘food’ that we buy believing their publicity. Ignorance is not always bliss! This farmer knows how dangerous it is.
The industrialized farming has no focus on nutritional value for us or happy cows, they have their focus on making money and as long as we buy food with the main desire of it being cheap, we will not have the quality of the food we need for it to be healthy. Most authorities in all countries know this. There are plenty of studies, every year, showing how many nutrients a banana or a broccoli contains compared with a few years ago. I read these reports all the time. I find The Composition of Foods, from the Food Standards Agency in the UK, a good source. The Swedish reports are excellent and very open. All countries have their own studies. This one is from University of Texas.
All of the studies find that we’ve lost about 50% of micro nutrients in our food. So to compensate for the loss of say vitamins you would have to eat at least 50% more food to get the same basic nutrients (and unfortunately we’d get heavier too). That is probably what our bodies feel and signal to us, and one of the reasons why we eat so much more, is because we never satisfy our need for micro nutrients. If we instead take at least basic herbs known to contain a good amount of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals with the food, we make sure that we cover for the loss of nutrients, maybe also for some of the extra detox we need in our environment, but if you already have a health issue I suggest you take more. Ask me, others, google, learn, and try new ways to be healthy. Then feel and let your body tell you!
O· L I V E 