What is Disease?
Evolutionary Fact: Biologically man is a wild animal and his biology is adapted only to wild foods. The nutrients that these raw foods contained provided the perfect amount of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, enzymes, trace nutrients, as well as; some co-factors yet unknown to science today; all working symbiotically to sustain life itself. These foods were pure, organic, free of neuro-toxic chemical pesticides, artificial fertilizers and were grown in mineral rich topsoil that still contained its “life force”. In fact, it is the nutrient composition of the soil and only the quality of the soil which our foods are grown in that….. was, is, and forever will be – the rate limiting factor in our ability to sustain our fundamental evolutionary life force.
The great physician and philosopher Albert Schweitzer said “man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He [man] will end by destroying the earth”. Modern chemical agriculture or “agri-business” tells us that the plants that are sprayed with chemicals intended to kill insects are safe for human consumption. Well, if the insect eats the plants sprayed with chemicals and he dies, and if the birds eat the plant sprayed with chemicals and he dies. Then the reader is left with the question, whom will be next?
History tells us that for thousands of years, primitive man was a forager, roaming and eating the foods that were available to him in his immediate surroundings. He was completely dependent on the changing seasons, fresh local foods and the migration of animal’s (i.e.) natural foods. Pure, fresh and local foods were the foundational dietary staples that have sustained our predecessors for thousands of years.
About 10,000 years ago, as evolution progressed, man discovered agriculture and started to plant crops and work the land making foraging less necessary, thus people became more situated and built more permanent residences. This trend toward an agricultural society resulted in man’s food supply becoming more stable, storable and accessible due to more modern cultivation and agricultural practices. Since then man has coexisted in symbiotic harmony with the land and the food which it supplied.
Trouble started around 80 years ago when the advent of modern food manufacturing practices introduced the concept of the “super-market”. Society, especially housewives; were seduced with media images of nutritious, delicious and superior foods. Of course this ability to gather a wide selection of foods from just one location was obviously very convenient. No longer did the housewife have to grind her whole grains into flour by hand and make the bread from scratch. No longer did we have to prepare home-made foods from fresh and live enzyme rich foods grown in the garden as nature had intended. With the advent of the supermarket we were “free” to buy convenient and “better” food products provided by giant profit-oriented food corporations that made us believe that this “convenience food” which was produced and “enhanced” by “modern farming techniques” was better for us. Better techniques that allowed us to freeze, refrigerate, modify, color, seal into cans and preserve foods with magical chemicals to prevent spoilage.
Unfortunately, this modern trend of convenience food drastically altered mankind’s intended food supply and began the deleterious trend of soil depletion as well. Our modern present day system of agriculture is completely different from what we started out with many years ago. Currently the majority of society consumes these “modern foods” that were produced only through the aid of artificial fertilizers, chemical pesticides and growth enhancers which were intended to grow our food faster and more efficiently.
By the 1930s, most of the topsoil and soil ecology started to decline and diminished crops of mineral-deficient vegetables, fruits and grains begin to appear. Interestingly, chronic, degenerative diseases began to escalate at this time including such diseases as, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, lupus, osteoporosis, and dental caries. It’s no surprise that all animals get their food directly or indirectly from plants, and the plants get their food from soil. Therefore, mineral deficient soil may be one of the greatest original sources of disease in the world today. In fact, according to D W. Cavanaugh, M.D., of Cornell University, “There is only one major disease and that is malnutrition. All ailments and afflictions to which we may succumb are directly traceable to this major disease of “malnutrition”.
Malnutrition is defined in Mosby’s medical dictionary as, any disorder concerning nutrition. It may result from an unbalanced diet or from eating too little or too much food. It may also result from improper body use of foods.
“Malnutrition” or rather “deficiency disease” is a condition resulting from the lack of one or more essential nutrients in the diet. It can be caused by failure of the body to absorb the nutrients from food (if the food contains any nutrients that is) or digestive problems which are, unfortunately, all too common in today’s society judging by the volume of symptomatic remedies available lining our drugstore shelves.
Artificially produced foods do not provide the vitamins, minerals or enzymes that healthy soil ecology can provide and therefore the foods which grow in these nutrient devoid soils also lack the vital nutrients necessary to sustain good health, thereby directly causing malnutrition [i.e. disease]. The price for this modern convenience is food void of the precious nutrients necessary to sustain homeostasis and, subsequently results in signs and symptoms of dysfunction in the body, which if ignored leads to disease.
Of course there are some other reasons for our poor modern dietary trends which include the erosion of the family meal, dual-working families, odd working hours etc. Also, fast foods are becoming more convenient and cheaper as the fast food giants spend millions of dollars annually on advertising trying to convince consumers of the benefits or savings that their brand of hamburger, microwave dinner, carbonated soft drink or beer has to offer. Society is ever increasingly consuming larger amounts of unnatural hydrogenated fats, refined sugars, and processed foods while the ever changing economic climate is slowly and insidiously altering our eating habits and taking us further away from our originally intended food supply.
In the end, all of these factors lead to a diet that lacks the proper nutrients necessary to sustain good health and a disease-free society. The most common diseases today are a direct result of our present day dietary habits which include many types of Cancers, Cardiovascular disease, Obesity, and Diabetes to name a few.
