If you’re not sitting down, please sit down before you read this. If you don’t already know this, it might be a lot to drink in, pun intended.
Our food and water supplies are used against us. Some are as bold to say they are poisonous, and by the end of this blog you will be able to see that for yourself. I’ll include links so you can see it with your own eyes. As always, don’t merely take my word for it.
Growing up on a farm gave me firsthand experience to how animals were raised, fed, and sheltered. Our farm was largely self-sustaining. This included pork, beef, chicken, eggs, and endless canning or freezing of the vegetables and sweet corn we raised. I naively believed all animals were cared for in a similar manner and all foods were grown by working with the earth and environment.
It was over a decade into me relying on grocery stores when I finally began questioning how did the food get from live animal status to the grocery store shelf, and what I discovered was appalling. Hopefully I am not talking about anything you don’t already know. In the past decade great effort has been taken to draw awareness to the realities of factory farming. If this topic is new to you please indulge yourself in documentaries such as Forks Over Knives, Food Inc, What the Health, or Fed Up to get a better idea of the conditions of the animals as well as chemicals being used in our foods.
The animals are not treated well. They are kept in large quantity in small living quarters; much like prisoners are. Due to the propensity this creates for illness they are injected with antibiotics to prevent disease. All of the decisions made about the care of the animals are driven by profit margins and how large corporations can produce more food and make more money with a lower investment. The one thing I did learn on the farm was the middle-man makes a killing, no pun intended. What we were paid per pound for the animal as the farmer was FAR less than what the consumer is paying per pound at the grocery store. The processing isn’t that expensive. Do your own research and will discover it’s true.
In addition to the animals themselves, we must also consider our produce. This is not only food we eat, but also the food being fed to the animals. The chemicals being put on plants (think wheat, corn, vegetables, fruits, etc) either gets consumed directly by us or by the animals before going to slaughter which then become our food. The fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, and glyphosate are all used to again drive yields and profits.
Our bodies are not designed to process this many chemicals at such large rates. Every processed food you purchase, from a box of pasta to your favorite bag of chips, was manufactured from plants that were dowsed in chemicals to ensure greater production which leads to higher profits. Those products are not on the shelves because they are healthy for you. The same can be said for the food pyramid and the American Standardized Diet.
With all of the blood labs I review, rarely do I ever see a person whose gut health markers are optimal. The diet and lifestyle we eat are literally eroding the tight junctions in the gut (intestinal lining) and creating health issues of all kinds: anxiety, depression, hormone, blood sugar, thyroid, cholesterol, and more.
Here are three simple tips which will have the greatest positive impact on your overall health:
- Know your food source whenever possible. Find locally grown foods like eggs, grass fed beef, chicken, vegetables, and fruits. Inquire about how these providers grow their foods/animals. The healthier the foods you eat, the healthier you will be. When unable to find local nutritious sources, look for non-antibiotic options at your grocers, shopping the external aisles of the store as to avoid as many processed and packaged foods as possible.
- Use olive, avocado, and coconut oils in your kitchen. Check the labels and do not purchase products made with seed oils such as soybean, canola, sunflower, vegetable, etc. The latter oils are not as stable. Why does it matter? The cells in your body are surrounded by the cell wall which is made from lipids (fats). If you are consuming toxic oils, your cells will be made from these toxic lipids. The building blocks of your body are cells, and these cells will die without the cell wall. It’s a simple switch with an enormous positive impact to your health! Without a healthy cell, you cannot have a healthy tissue, organ, organ system, or body.
- Do not buy products with high fructose corn syrup and reduce sugars and sugar substitutes as much as possible. Sugar is in everything these days so it’s important to check the label here too. And why high fructose corn syrup? It’s been shows to contribute to diabetes, inflammation, heart disease, cancer, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease more than regular sugar. You’ll find high fructose corn syrup in a lot of unsuspecting products like spaghetti sauce, condiments, etc so one final reminder to check labels before buying!
Water. What’s in the water? Cancer is incredibly common where I grew up which is also a large agricultural area. An area that relies upon putting large amounts of chemical on the crops being grown to ensure profit. It’s believed these chemicals are a large contributor to the cancer rates being so high in that area.
While it might be shocking to hear, this doesn’t actually make tap water any safer! Chemicals are added to the water system and these chemicals create contaminants to the water. When I looked up the local water source I found it had 28 contaminants and 14 of those contaminants were over the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) health guidelines. This nifty website even tells you how many times these contaminants are over the guideline and which contaminants cause cancer. Check it out for yourself by searching your zip code at www.ewg.org/tapwater. Here are the carcinogens and the amounts over the EWG’s guidelines in my local water source which I stopped drinking nearly a decade ago:
- Arsenic: 1,670 times over guideline
- Haloacetic acid (HAA9): 527 times over guideline
- Bromochloroacetic acid: 233 times over guideline
And we haven’t even talked about fluoride yet. Fluoride has been added to our water source since 1949 and is a neurotoxin. Neurotoxins affect the brain. The thing about toxins is that they are in a lot of things as you’re beginning to see. Additionally, they are in our hygiene products and cleaning products we use regularly. Mixing these toxins together actually increases their potency and effects. Toxins disrupt our endocrine system (hormone balance), have implications on our immune system, affect mental health, and rob of us mental acuity.
Back to fluoride specifically. You’ve been told to believe our teeth need fluoride so it is a must have. The reality is the Standard American Diet is a dental nightmare. Instead of adding neurotoxins to our bodies, living a lifestyle consuming healthy foods from healthy food sources would benefit dental and overall health far more than consuming fluoride.
The government has worked diligently to prevent you from knowing the truth about fluoride too. In fact, Rachel Levine, Assistant Health Secretary, suppressed the national Toxicology Program Report in 2022. This report included 55 studies, and of those 55 studies 52 of them show a decrease in children’s IQs as a result of using fluoride.
The only way this report came to be released was in a court ruling. The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Fluoride Action Network. The EPA is being represented in this lawsuit by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ/EAP asked for an indefinite delay of the trial and for the report to be blocked, but the judge ruled against them allowing the report to be released and scheduled the next hearing in the case in this past April (2023).
Your tax dollars fund the DOJ. The same DOJ that was requesting the report and studies be kept from the public. Studies which would help us improve our health and the brains of the next generation. This is the same DOJ that prosecutes criminal cases claiming they have the best interest of the people in mind.
These contributing factors in our food and water systems induce confusion, diminish cognitive function or the ability to think critically, slowly rob you of your health, wellness, and freedom. When you don’t feel well physically you also don’t feel as well emotionally or mentally.
In addition to the tips I mentioned above about food, ensuring you drink and bath in filtered water will also improve how you feel. Not all filters are created equal so do your research and be sure to get something more powerful than a carbon filter (commonly known as Britta).
When you’re ready to go a step further in taking your wellness and empowerment back, a great place to begin is detoxing from the chemicals you’ve been exposed to for many, many years. I strongly encourage this professional detox because if you don’t get the toxins out of your cells AND out of your body, you don’t truly detox. Many of the programs you find online rid the toxins from the cell and not the body.
You depend upon food and water to sustain life so commit to providing your body the type of food and water that will sustain wellness too!
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Peace & Love,
Janessa