You Really Are What You Eat: The Jackson Litchfield Guide to Eating Clean, Nutrient Dense, and Toxin Free

It’s amazing how long it takes science to come back around to what the old adages have always told us about eating for optimum health. Consider these wise sayings about the role food plays in our health:

“Eat to live, not live to eat” (Socrates, circa 425 B.C.).

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” (Hippocrates, circa 400 B.C.),

“You are what you eat” (Victor Lindlahr, 1923).

Although we live in a much different world today, these sayings are still true. Of course, they had purer food then. Still, they resonate with deep truths. They speak to avoiding overeating and gluttony, to eating to nourish body, mind, and soul, and suggest that instead of synthetic forms of medicine, we should look to food as a curative (even in the days of Socrates, they had the poppy, bear in mind).

Today, remembering these old sayings is important, if and only if, we strive to eat as pure as people did before the apocalypse of the industrial industry, before the pollution of our food with industrialized oils, GMOs, hormones, pesticides . . .

It’s important that we take the time to question each and every food we put into our bodies because each and every cell of our body is constructed with the nutrition derived from the foods that we consume.

You cannot think well, work well, and sleep well, if you have not nourished the body with what it needs—good trace minerals and nutrient dense foods rich in good for us things like fatty acids, protein, and vitamins. And we cannot get these from polluted foods that come from stripped soils without any nutrients left in them.

So nutrition is life and eating right today means eating clean, eating nutrient dense foods, eating the right kinds of foods, and avoiding toxins.

So, what I’m going to discuss today is how to fuel your body for long life, maximum energy, and how to avoid the kind of toxins that promote disease.

First, let’s look at toxins.

Is It Possible to Avoid Toxins in a Toxic World?

Is it possible to eat clean, nutritious food in a polluted world? Getting quality, nutrient-dense food is a problem today with our modern, industrialized “diet of weak poisons” (Rachel Carson, Silent Spring). Today, most of our vegetables are richer in pesticides than in nutrients, and our meat is more loaded with hormones, antibiotics, and GMOs than protein.

Then there is the issue of our soil, so stripped of minerals that it is nearly impossible for us to get important compounds, like iron, into our diet in the way they are best absorbed, naturally. Researchers from the, Nutrition Security Institute, an important organization that wants to begin replenishing our soils and reestablishing nutrients in them, notes that

Food grown in nutrient deficient soil lacks the nutrients needed to keep people healthy. Studies reveal that the nutritional values in food have declined significantly over the past 70 years. The declines in the nutritional values in food have been attributed to mineral depletion of the soil, loss of soil microorganisms along with changes in plant varieties.

Without adequate nutrition from food, we become susceptible to disease. Simply stated … a lack of nutrients leads to malnutrition … malnutrition leads to disease. Wellness stems from eating nutrient rich, flavorful food. A critical need exists to provide assurance of the nutritional values in the food we eat.

So, what do we do in the meantime? How do we get healthy and stay healthy in a world so rich in nutrient-empty, toxic food? In a world which even the potato and the apple are on the now-infamous Dirty Dozen list published by the Environmental Working Group of the produce never to eat unless organically?

I believe that we should never eat anything that’s not organically grown or pasture fed anymore, and that the extra cost is very worth the damage you risk to your body of not doing so.

I’d like to teach you how to avoid five of the most dangerous poisons in the modern diet and how to find health enhancing, nutrient rich food. Eating clean is the number one way to ensure yourself maximum energy, strong muscles, a strong, fat burning metabolism, and to avoid illnesses and disease of all kinds.

As Chris Kresser notes, until the last two hundred years or so (with the American and British agricultural revolutions) human beings lived an existence devoid of all kinds of diseases that can be blamed on a toxic diet, such as diabetes, obesity, infertility, insomnia, and degenerative diseases like osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

So what are these toxins that are putting our health at risk?

I believe there are five:

1. Hormones, pesticides, GMOs, and other poisons in our produce, dairy, and in our meat
2. Sugar
3. Industrial Seed Oils
4. Cereal Grains
5. Refined, processed soy products

Most of us won’t get sick from eating a small amount of pesticides, sugar, cereal grain, soy, GMO, corn syrup, and industrial seed oil. But if we consume these “anti-nutrients” in high doses over an extended period of time, our risk of developing diseases because of these dietetic poisons rises significantly.

Plus, they’re everywhere in everything. From fish (mercury and pollutants), to hormone and antibiotic saturated meat, to pesticide infused vegetables and fruits, not to mention refined flour and grains which are a rich, plentiful source of poison in themselves, virtually every component of the food pyramid is infected with toxins.

So, let’s look at five of the biggest ones, then, and let’s see if that way we can eliminate them all.

First, Hormones, GMOs, and Pesticides

 Hormones in = hormonal imbalance. It’s not rocket science

 A client of mine recently went on estradiol patches as she was going through peri-menopause and was feeling so tired that, as she put it, she felt like she was merely dragging her carcass from place to place. A doctor put her on estradiol patches and she gained 20 pounds. She has since gone off the patch and the weight is coming off, but, as she said, “It’s the slowest weight loss I’ve ever experienced with clean eating and working out.”

Our modern cattle are actually fitted with a hormone implant device, like the hormone patches women are prescribed during perimenopause and menopause, that flood the cattle with six hormones: three synthetic hormones and three steroid hormones, that are given to them to make them produce greater product yields (both meat and milk) including

• Estradiol
• Testosterone
• Progesterone
• Estrogen compound zeranol,
• the androgen trenbolone acetate
• and progestin melengestrol acetate.

These hormones wreak havoc on our hormonal balance, just as a hormone patch would that is placed on any individual. They flood the body with hormones, which is why hormone patches are prescribed to women losing their hormones. Why? Well they fatten up people, so . . .

I mean, is it so ludicrous to posit that throwing our hormones out of balance can lead to imbalanced hormones? Or that hormonal imbalance can lead to diseases and disorders that all caused by some kind of hormonal imbalance, whether it’s an abundance of insulin, or an abundance of thyroid, or a lack of testosterone?

Hormonal imbalances lead to diabetes, thyroid cancer, hypo and hyperthyroidism, obesity, hyper and hypocortisolism, Hashimoto’s disease, Addison’s, and, of course, adrenal fatigue, adrenal insufficiency, and adrenal burnout. All of which cause another chief killer of first world countries today, obesity.

Several studies have already linked beef and pork consumption with breast cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and kidney cancer. And the majority of our eggs, milk, cheeses, poultry, red meat, turkey—all of these, are polluted with not just hormones, but also dangerous omega-6 fatty acids, antibiotics, and GMOs.

In his article “Grass Fed Matters,” Dr. Pearlmutter notes that

More than 95% of the meat consumed in America is highly inflammatory as it comes from grain-fed cattle. This is meat that is high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats, often laced with antibiotics, and keep in mind that the grain used to fatten these animals is typically a genetically modified product (GMO). This is the meat that generates these statistics related to breast cancer. No surprise here!

Diabetes is a hormonal disorder, and if the world conglomerates that be would permit some studies allowed on the true relationship between hormones in food and hormonal disorders, we might be able to cure many of these diseases. But, apparently not. Believe me folks, if “they” would allow them, studies would have been done long ago. But today, researchers merely theorize about a connection between these factors and disease.

But it doesn’t take a degree in microbiology and endocrinology to make this connection, and although the biological impact (curiously) upon adults has never been studied, we do know at “the fetus and the pre-pubertal child are particularly sensitive to exposure to sex steroids”

(Swan, et. al., 2007). Today, these hormones are causing girls to start menstruating earlier than normal and are decreasing sperm count in young men to a “sub-fertile” concentration.

 

GMOs

We keep hearing “No GMOs,” “No GMOs.” Do you know why it’s so important not to eat genetically modified foods?

On top of pesticides and hormones in our food, we now have to worry about the nutrition being bred out of our food altogether because, to make plants stronger, because they’re putting pesticides inside food, not just spraying it on them, to make them more resistant to other pesticides. They actually release insecticides onto predators when they get near, such as rodents and insects.

So, we’re crossbreeding plants with GMOs with other hardy plants already given GMOs in order to create these super-pesticide-infused plants that can thrive so everyone can profit from our destruction.

The problem is, the insecticides they do spray on foods now will have to become stronger and stronger in order to control these hardier crops, much like our bodies are becoming resistant to antibiotics from their over-use.

Do we really need pesticides inside and outside of our food? One day, we’re going to pick up a tomato with 0 nutrients left in it.

 

Pesticides

If we’re not eating local, fresh, and organic, we’re in danger of consuming some 50 toxins on every food that we eat. In fact, when Americans for a highly toxic pesticide, chlorpyifos, 93% of Americans tested positive for it.

According to one analysis, pesticides are used in about 60% of the foods we consume. Although for many years, the effects upon mankind of ingesting pesticides day after day was unknown scientists are now learning how damaging these contaminants are to humans. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued a study linking pesticides used on crops with serious childhood diseases and disorders such as ADHA, cognitive deficiencies, birth defects, and childhood leukemia.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWP), by “eating organic, we can reduce the amounts of toxins you consume on a daily basis by 80%”

Even more reasons to go organic? It might just save the world. A new study published by the Rodale Institute titled “Why Organic Farming Could Save the World,” researchers stated that “If every piece of cropland on earth and every acre of animal pasture were converted to organic methods, we could not only stop climate change in its tracks, but we could reverse it.” (6)

Eating organic has many health benefits as well

• Organic food is richer in flavonols (60%) and flavanones (50%) which are anti-cancer and high-cholesterol fighting nutrients
• Organic foods contain 40% more disease fighting anti-oxidants
• Organic foods are richer in phytonutrients, phenols, and anti-phenols, which occur that are not found in pesticide treated fruits or vegetables.
• Eating just one organic fruit or vegetable is the equivalent of eating several extra servings of non–organic fruits and vegetables, giving us more nutrition with less calories.

  

The Dangers of Omega-6 Fats

 You’ve heard that Omega 6-rich fish oil is healthy for you, right? Well, it is. In fact, both Omega 3s and 6s are both crucial for our health. It is just that the balance of these oils in our modern diet has become so skewed that the imbalance of these fatty acids is dangerous to our health.

Until recently, industrial oils were not a part of the diet. Until the FDA and ADA began promoting them somewhere along 1970, they weren’t even eaten regularly. People used lard, bacon grease, and other fats like these for frying their eggs, or the even more popular Crisco, a trans-fat rich, hydrogenated oil that is just bad, bad, bad.

Ancestral man ate a diet in a 1:1 range ration of Omega 6s to Omega 3s while today’s man eats a ratio of 16:1. And researchers believe this is a cause of many relatively new plagues in America such as inflammation and obesity related diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Today, the oils lowest in cost for the average consumer, who often cannot afford healthier oils such as olive oil, are industrial seed oils that are highest in Omega 6 oil and completely absent of any Omega 3s, such as

 

                        Omega 6           Omega 3

Safflower                     75%,                 0

Sunflower oil              65%.                 0

Corn oil                        54%                  0

Cottonseed oil               50%               0

 

And the problem with this type of diet is, as Kresser tells us in his article “How Too Much Omega-6 and Not Enough Omega-3 is Making Us Sick”: “the question of how much omega-3 to eat depends in large part on how much omega-6 we eat.”

The problem is, we don’t eat enough Omega 3 to balance out the huge glut of Omega 6s we are ingesting. That, and that we don’t need to be ingesting this much fat, period.

Today, our tissue is becoming virtually saturated with dangerous, saturated fats, especially in the USA, where the average person’s tissue is 75% unsaturated fat. WOW.

Just what this is doing to our health is leading to all kinds of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, IBS, autoimmune diseases, and cancer.

Omega 3 fatty acids are rich in healthy DHA and HPA help to neutralize the effect of Omega 6s, so it is important to try to reduce our that steep distance between the amount of Omega 6s to Omega 3s.

One meal at McDonald’s, for example, will give you a whopping, deadly dose of 6,400 mg. of Omega 6. Women, for example, should only take in about 11 grams of Omega 6 and even that should be balanced by 1.1 mg of Omega 3.

 

How to Lower Your Intake of Omega6?

1. Cook in and don’t eat out—at all.
2. No store bought fried foods (French fries, chips)
3. Stop cooking with any seed oils

3. The problem with sugar

Sugar is interpreted by the body as a toxin, as studies evidence. We’ve known this now since 2012 or so. A more recent 2015 study conducted by Robert Lustig, department of pediatrics at the University of California, found that when reducing sugar to 10% of calories for 9 days in children:

Overall, their fasting blood sugar levels dropped by 53%, along with the amount of insulin their bodies produced since insulin is normally needed to break down carbohydrates and sugars. Their triglyceride and LDL levels also declined and, most importantly, they showed less fat in their liver.

I think today, we are all beginning to wish we had never tasted sugar. Imagine, how good unsweetened everything would taste if our taste buds had never come to associate “good” with “sweet.”

We can reverse this now programmed response to sugar if we deprive ourselves of it for a while. It’s really hard to give up, but it can, and should, be done.

Why is sugar so bad? Well, it makes weight loss and the burning of fat impossible, promotes plaque in the arteries, and results in the spiking of insulin, too much of which promotes diabetes and insulin resistance—which in itself leads to all kinds of health problems, especially obesity, which is a death sentence in and of itself if not addressed.

How Sugar is Toxic (and Undeniably Fattening)

Whenever you ingest sugar, insulin is secreted and the body seeks to immediately remove the sugar out of the body because the body thinks sugar is a poison. That’s why the pancreas swoops in and tries to flush insulin out of the body. It also stores sugar in the muscles and converts sugar into stored fat, cholesterol, and triglycerides.

Insulin also makes fat burning an impossible, because in the presence of insulin, we store fat . . . without it, we burn fat. See, fat burning is really activated by an enzyme called hormone sensitive lipase, which only becomes active when insulin is absent. So get rid of sugar, and you’ll get rid of body fat.

If you keep spiking insulin all day with meals and snacks, there is no recovery from the insulin spikes. You need to space your meals further apart to avoid constant spiking and no snacks either—insulin is released every single time you eat, you know—every single time you eat—anything from a salad to a cracker.

If Insulin keeps pumping and pumping, after a while, you’ll develop a big belly, insulin resistance, and you’re all set up for type II diabetes. So stop eating sugar, stop spiking insulin,and watch the pounds fall off.

4. Cereal Grains—Did you Know They Are Trying to Kill You?

Whole grains are not necessarily healthy. So stop thinking WHOLE GRAIN = HEALTHY and start thinking ALL CEREAL GRAINS ARE UNHEALTHY.

We’ve all heard the terms gluten intolerance and wheat belly by now. And all this comes from the fact that over time, any plant tries to invent certain natural “poisons” within it to ward off predators.

If you’ll just keep in mind that every single thing on the earth evolves to survive, you’ll understand why. In fact, if you look at the oldest animals on the planet, they’re always the ones that blend in most with nature. The oldest fish taste horrible, as well. They develop flesh that repels predators, even other fish. You never see anyone eating a Coelacanth, a living fossil that is some 65 million years old – because it is supposed to have flesh that tastes so repulsive it’s impossible to eat. It reeks of poisons. That’s because it has evolved enough to stay around 65 million years. We will evolve too, if the world lasts long enough.

Grains, like these kinds of animals, are old, and they’ve developed other ways to ward off predators besides gluten. In fact, they have many, such as

• producing toxins that damage the lining of the gut
• producing toxins that bind essential minerals so that whatever eats them will be harmed not nourished
• and producing toxins that prevent predators from absorbing what they need most from their food, protein.

In other words, cereal grains are trying to kill predators, like us.

As Mark Sisson states “We do not need grains to survive, let alone thrive. In fact, they are naturally selected to ward off pests, whether they be insects or hominids. I suggest we take the hint and stop eating them.”

Scientists know this. Doctors have to know this. Why isn’t it talked about more? Because processed foods in America and other nations are beyond billion dollar industries. What would we do if we lost them?

Gluten is one defense mechanism of plants. It’s one of the “poisons” grains invent to try to ward off predators, like humans . . . And this is why it’s not tolerated well by the body.

Although cereal companies, Quaker Oatmeal and Nabisco’s Cream of Wheat, for example, have worked so hard to make us associate oatmeal and hot cereals with big time comfort, the major cereal grains such as wheat, millet, corn, oats, rice, barley, sorghum, and rye are toxins to our systems and can interfere with our absorption of nutrients, protein, and create disorders such as leaky gut.

If we get rid of cereal grains, then, we can flush our bodies of toxins, get ourselves to a maximum level of health and enhance our ability to absorb nutrients from our food, which will, in and of itself, eliminate so much hunger and cravings, because our bodies will be getting what they need with less food, allowing us to (finally) lose weight more easy.

5. Soy—Another Toxin—Big Time

Soy is in some quite obvious products today such as soy milk, soy creamer, tofu, tempeh, and miso. However, it is also loaded into all kinds of foods that are packaged and processed. Just look on labels on everything from macaroni and cheese to salad dressings and there it is—soy lecithin, soybean oil, soy flour, or soy isolate. In fact, the average American gets almost 10% of their daily calories from soy!

And soy is filled with toxins, hormones and all kinds of bad things including

• trypsin inhibitors that inhibit protein digestion and affect the pancreas
• phytic acid, which inhibits our absorption of all kinds of important minerals from calcium to zinc.
• phytoestrogens that raise estrogen and affect breast tissue in both sexes, leading to man boobs, infertility, and breast cancer.
• toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines;
• MSG, consumption of which causes a 300% spike in insulin and causes insulin resistance

So as you can see, soy is a loaded gun, too.

Now that we know how to get the bad things out of the diet, let’s talk about how to get nutrient dense food in.

2. Eating Nutrient Dense: You Have to Understand How Nutrients Work

Our body works much better when we give it healthy food and virtually all food has a range of different parameters of health. There is organic kale and inorganic kale, there are healthy fats and unhealthy fats, and there are empty carbohydrates and healthier, complex carbohydrates.

Whenever we start to put something in our body, a good question you should ask yourself before you open up the fridge or panty is “How much energy will this give me? Is this a nutrient-dense food?”

Understand Your Fats, Protein, and Carbs

First, understanding fats.

Some fats are super good for you. In fact, fat is an essential component for our brains, our bodies, everything about our health, but it important where we get our fats and how much of them we eat. But some are super-deadly.

Trans fats: The most toxic 

Trans-fats, those fats we pick up in those grease-laden foods like McDonald’s french fries and any packaged baked goods you can imagine: Little Debbie’s, Ho Hos, King Dons, packaged doughnuts, pies, cake, and muffins. Stay away from these as if they have leprosy.

Polyunsaturated Fats: Omega 3sand Omega 6s 

Polyunsaturated fats are found in walnuts, sunflower seeds, flax seeds or flax oil and fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring, albacore tuna, and trout. Also corn oil, soybean oil and safflower oil.

What you should do with these types of foods is to limit them to 4 percent of your daily calories, for example, 7g of a 1,700 calorie diet. 

Monounsaturated fat

Monounsaturated fats are found in olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, avocados, peanut butter, and seeds and nuts.

These are fine to consume but you must be aware that monounsaturated fats contain Omega-6s and should be used in moderation with Omega-3s to balance them out. 

Medium-chain triglycerides

The healthiest sources of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) are found in coconut oil and palm kernel oil. You can eat these kinds of fats every day in moderation. Coconut oil is an especially good cooking fat, because it has a high smoking point and no aftertaste at all. Unlike other fats, MCTs are used by the body differently—jn a good way. In fact, medium-chain triglycerides, are metabolized more like carbohydrates than fats and quickly used for energy.

Long-chain saturated fat (LCSFs)

 LCSFs are your Omega 3 fatty acids. The majority of fats you eat should be LCSFs. Good places to get them are from plants and fish.

Walnuts, flaxseed, and canola contain the omega-3 fatty acid ALA,5 which is a metabolic precursor of the very-long-chain oils contain Omega-3 fatty acids such as EPA and DHA and the most concentrated food source of EPA and DHA is fatty fish such as albacore tuna, salmon, mackerel, sardines, crustaceans, mollusks, squid, and herring.

Why are they healthy?

First, they provide balance for Omega 6 fatty acids, which decrease some of their deleterious effects. Two, they’re great for heart health in all kinds of way, and potentially other diseases such as cancer, especially breast cancer, and diabetes. Overall, research is proving that omega-3 fatty acids may be a key to overall good health

Know Your Carbs

Carbohydrates are broken down into three categories

1. Fructose
2. Glucose
3. Indigestible fiber

 

Glucose

Glucose is a monosaccharide, which is found mostly in plant foods such as cruciferous vegetables, peanuts, beans, lentils, sugar beets, dairy, and tubers. Also fruit is another rich source of this simple sugar, virtually every fruit imaginable.

Glucose is essential for our bodies and it helps form essential molecules in the body, such as glycoproteins, is a source of energy for brain cells and other cells in the body, and plays an essential role in our immunity.

We actually produce glucose in our bodies, and the fact that we have evolved anatomically enough to do this evidences the vast important of glucose to health.

Trouble only arises because this consumption of toxins in our diet damage our metabolism and our ability to process simple starches. Then, glucose does not pass from the gut into the bloodstream as it should. When this happens, we increase the risk of diabetes and insulin resistance.

Most people today do have some kind of metabolic damage due to a toxic diet or sedentary lifestyle. If you are pre-diabetic, diabetic, or highly sedentary, you may need less simple starches like potatoes and fruit, especially.

Fructose

Fructose is one of those dangerous words, found in dangerous substances, like high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is found in fruits and vegetables, and although it has nearly the same chemical structure as a glucose molecule, it affects the body much differently.

In the body, sugar is interpreted as a toxin. When fructose is ingested, then, this simple sugar is directed toward the liver, our big “detoxifying” organ. If consumed too often, however, it damages the liver leading to fatty liver disease (which affects a third of Americans today now, and probably for this reason).

Anyone with metabolic problems, a damaged metabolism, and especially if they have liver, kidney, or pancreas issues should avoid fructose, and everyone in the world should avoid the kinds of concentrated fructose in high fructose corn syrup.

Foods rich in high fructose corn syrup that you might not know about (and some that you do)

• Stove Top Stuffing (in extremis)
• Soda pop, sports drinks, and, yes, Gatorade
• Sara Lee’s Heart Healthy Bread
• Pepperidge Farm’s whole line of whole wheat bread
• Wonder bread
• Thomas English muffins
• Brownberry breads
• All cereal
• Powerbars, candy bars, and hard candy
• All condiments from ketchup to salad dressings
• Anything produced (just about) by Kellog, Nutrigrain, or Nabisco
• All cough syrups

Understand Fiber

To sum up many lengthy studies, all fiber is not created equal, and while vegetable fiber, from fibrous vegetables, is healthy, fiber from grains isn’t. Vegetable fiber does all kinds of good things for the body, and you should eat lavishly of fibrous vegetables such as split peas, regular peas, avocados, lentils and other vegetable-fiber rich foods. This type of fiber prevents obesity, relieves constipation, and improves cardiovascular problems. It also prevents insulin resistance and regulates blood sugar.

But grain fiber, don’t believe the hype. In a recent study of men who had suffered one heart attack or more and who went on a high fiber diet, 22% more men died than in the control group.

Also, indigested fiber can lead to all kinds of gut issues, because pathogenic gut bacteria feed on it like crazy.

Understand Proteins and Fatty Acids 

Proteins are healthy as long as you avoid toxins and balance Omega 3s and 6s. Some proteins such as nuts, poultry and dark meat chicken are very rich in Omega 6s and should be eaten with a healthy balance of Omega 3s or limited. Seafood and red meat are rich in long chain saturated fats and Omega 3 fats as well.

Finally, Eat Nutrient Dense, Good-for-You Food 

If you want to eat a nutrient dense diet, you need to avoid cereal grains, refined carbohydrate and other things that come in boxes or packages (like the list of packaged foods rich in HFCS above), eat local and organic, and pasture fed meat, cheese, and dairy.

Pasture fed meat and dairy

If we want to avoid hormones in your food and avoid GMOs, pesticides and other toxins, you must steer clear of animals that may have been injected with hormones or that have been fed GMO enriched grains, or we, too, are ingesting all of these hormones and toxins.

Plus, studies show that pasture fed meats and dairy are richer in Omega 3 fatty acids, as well as major vitamins and minerals we need to survive, from Vitamin E to vitamin B12, calcium, and beta carotene.

Studies even show that if you change nothing else in the diet, if you begin eating pasture raised meat and dairy, you’ll lose 6 to 10 pounds a year.

In short, there are five major reasons to eat pasture raised animals and dairy

1. It tastes wonderful;
2. You’re avoiding toxic substances of all kinds
3. You’re promoting a healthy environment
4. It’s richer in minerals and vitamins
5. It’s a healthy source of Omega 3 fatty acids

Go Local and Organic

Local, organic, food, unlike industrially grown vegetables, is allowed to achieve maximum nutritional potency on the vine because it is not picked early, and studies have proven that vegetables such as peppers and, especially tomatoes, need to be vine ripened to reach full nutritional potency. As Frith notes, “Total vitamin C content of red peppers, tomatoes, apricots, peaches and papayas has been shown to be higher when these crops are picked ripe from the plant.”

Also, since farmers are less concerned about “big yields” you can will get produce from better quality plants that have been treasured, not treated with chemical, and which, consequently, yield nutrient dense vegetables. As the authors of SustainableTable.org note, “farmers involved in local food systems often place a higher value on plant varietals that are more nutritious by virtue of their variety (i.e., not bred for yield alone) or by their method of production.”

Local food is local—not transported from miles and miles away. Consequently, it’s not been bruised, bumped, and has not had the chance to develop disease, decay, and mold.

Don’t Eat Refined Anything in Pollutant Filled Plastics or Toxin Filled Boxes

Refined everything in the food industry is creating an epidemic of health problems all over the world.

The refining of foods from high fructose corn syrup, to refined white flours and sugars found in bagels, most bread, crackers, pastries, cookies, candy, all of it, not to mention other toxins in our food like soy and industrial seed oils, as we discussed earlier—the harm these foods are causing that are now coming to light are serious and pervasive in their reach.

Studies confirm that the toxins and emulsifiers in foods from salad dressings to bread are causing leaky gut and gut permeability, which leads to serious health problems, and that soda, even diet soda, causes kidney stones, damage to the kidneys, increased threat of renal diseases, and increases the risk of stroke because of their high content of phosphoric acid. In short, avoid anything considered nutrient empty, junk food.

Conclusion

I hope you found this detailed, lengthy guide to nutrition in the 21^st century helpful, and I’d love to hear your comments and questions about eating nutrient dense, avoiding toxins, and understanding nutrients.

Thank you,

Jackson Litchfield