Archive for June, 2009
Conventional food is grown using chemical pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. These chemicals are not harmful in
small doses, but many people fear the long term exposure to them may lead to serious diseases.
If you’re like me, you want to buy organic food only when it promotes health. The EWG (Environmental Working Group) has compiled a list of fruits and vegetables that rate highest in pesticides and refer to them as the “Dirty Dozen”. They did research and found out that some crops demand higher doses of pesticides to ward off unwanted pests, while some produce grows just fine without all the added chemicals. Read on to see the complete list of the “Dirty Dozen”.
Organic food is nutritionally superior because natural fertilizers contain a spectrum of nutrients that add to it’s quality. Non-organic food is grown with extra nitrogen which helps it grow big and look good, but it lacks the antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that come with organic fertilizers. Even if you can get over the idea of eating traces of bug killer, it’s still wise to choose organic for the added nutritional benefits. It’s true that produce today contains only a fraction of the nutrients that our grand parents ate. Quality has been sacrificed for looks and durability.
In addition, fruit and vegetable juices are good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.) provide a healthy portion of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E. Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium, iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily assimilated during digestion.
While fruit and vegetable juices are the most common form of juice, wheatgrass juice has been getting a lot of attention lately because of the denseness of nutrients it contains.
The primary advantage of truly fresh wheatgrass juice – juice made from raw, live, soil-grown wheat grass, is the apparent high level of life force energy that it contains. It is one of the few truly fresh foods available (sprouts are another). The grass is alive and growing right up to the time it is juiced, and hopefully you are drinking it within a few minutes or so of juicing.
Most of us get our green veggies from markets, and they were picked days ago and refrigerated – losing vitality the whole time. (It is an even worse situation for fruit, which may be picked weeks before you eat it, and in some cases, held in cold storage for months – losing vitality the whole time.) In contrast, one can grow wheatgrass indoors, and enjoy it when it is truly fresh.