How Did We Get Here?

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  The Standard American Diet (SAD) grew out of America’s push for shelf stable food needed for World War II. Ancel Keys, who created the K-Ration (and named it for himself), carried the novelty of sterile food into the 1950’s for both civil defense (think nuclear bomb shelters) but also a very lucrative processed food industry. Canned and dried food were more profitable and easier to deliver at scale than perishable fresh food. Americans adapted to the convenience. Coming out of the 70’s the Big Food industry (formerly tobacco corporations) scaled up to make highly processed foods even more tasty, available, and addictive.

The Problem with highly processed foods is that other than calories (carbs/sugar), they are nearly devoid of nutrition. They mostly consist of GMO grains (starch), seed oils, and sugar. The government also permitted Food Corporations to add thousands of unregulated and little known substances. Some additives extend shelf life. Many make food more addictive. Try eating just two Oreos or a one ounce “serving” of Fritos someday.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and the MAHA movement are grappling with the food and nutrition  science right now. The main problem is that as humans (and by human I mean our gut biome and its trillions of microbes). We were not adapted to gain nutrition from sterile, highly processed foods. 

Each adult carries around 4-5 lbs. of bacteria, fungi, and viruses in and on their body that are absolutely essential for life and health. These microorganisms digest our food and deliver the nutritional components to our bodies through the gut lining. They also wage constant war against harmful bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The microbes in your gut even send signals to your brain being both instigators and benefactors of your cravings.

Much of what we humans do is destructive to our gut world (biome). We: use anti-bacterial products, take anti-biotic medications and NSAIDS (like Tylenol and Ibuprofen), eat sterile food with added chemicals, and consume empty calories like chips or soda. All these wage war against a healthy gut balance and cascading chronic diseases. 

Almost all chronic disease is begins with inflammation. Americans on the SAD diet are consuming starches/sugar that create blood sugar (glucose) spikes. Up until recently, doctors believed that this only happened with diabetics or pre-diabetics, but that has been revised. When cells are flooded with glucose they send the only signal they can: inflammation.

Bottom line: Our bodies need real food: vegetables, greens, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy from clean sources and filled with nutrition. The plants and animals, in turn, create the nutrition we need from what they eat or consume. The mission of Clean Food For Georgia is to educate Georgians and facilitate better food sources. 

  There are two basic types of farming. One uses soil. The other uses dirt. Soil is living and must be kept so with care. A teaspoon of soil contains more microbes than people on the planet. Dirt does not contain many microbes at all. It is dead. It is kept dead by disturbing the surface over and over (tilling), and by poisoning all the living matter (with chemical nitrogen, pesticides, and herbicides). This is intentional and the design of large-scale monocrop farming that is the dominant mode in the United States. We call this industrial farming; if follows the factory model of inputs, processes, and outputs, all accelerated by mechanization.

A few farmers continued to practice traditional farming employing crop rotation, a variety of crops, and livestock integrated. These small or family farms were pushed aside almost with glee by the Ag Industry, Chemical companies, Banks, and Governments (Federal and State) beginning in the 70’s and continuing until today. They were deemed inefficient and backward.

While financially very successful and legitimately claiming to feed the world, monoculture farming at scale has some persistent and growing drawbacks. Being dead and lacking structure, dirt doesn’t hold rainfall, is prone to erosion and runoff; the soil amendments wash off into watersheds as pollutants. While the food is abundant, many who receive it, whether in Africa, or in U.S. cities, experience chronic diseases rooted in metabolic stress. As cells are flooded with glucose from grains and added sugar (almost the only content of ultra processed foods), The lack of nutrients leads to deficiencies across our whole society.

Farms that focus on Soil Health are often referred to as Regenerative; Regenerative Farming and Ranching has grown since the 1990’s as the science of Soil Health has advanced. Regenerative Farming is characterized by five pillars: 1) Very limited disturbance-no tilling, 2) Soil Armor: the soil is always kept covered by plants or plant litter, 3) Living roots left in the ground year round. 4) Diversity of plants and animals in fields, paddocks and in buffers around the farm, 5) Animals integrated into the growing cycle. The cattle graze, trample, and leave fertile wastes behind that help build soil structure and nutrition. Cattle herds are often grazed for only a day on a field or paddock and moved to fresh pasture. Cattle who eat grass develop healthier meat and better fat content. Cattle were meant to eat grass, not soybeans.

The key to Soil Health is the underground biome, which is now better understood due to evolving science. Plants in soil connect to mycorrhizal fungus in a symbiotic relationship. The plant provides carbon from photosynthesis. Fungi, made of carbon and dependent on the plants, trade carbon for other resources. The vast networks of fungi deliver water and nutrients in a way that is specific and productive, They become an extension of the plant’s roots. The fungi have complex systems that mine the soil using enzymes and acids they create. Plants growing in live soil can have up to 15 times the nutrition of industrially grown crops. We call these foods “nutrition dense.”