(127-1) February 6 2015. This is The International Year of Soils. If we are what we eat—which physically we certainly are—then we need to care about what we eat. But what we eat depends on un-polluted air, water, and un-depleted top soil. We don’t have them.

TOXIC NEW WORLD

GOOD NUTRITIOUS FOOD CAN ONLY BE MADE FROM GOOD  INGREDIENTS

GOOD INGREDIENTS CAN ONLY COME FROM GOOD SOIL  COMBINED WITH UNPOLLUTED AIR AND WATER

ALL THREE ARE VANISHING BY THE DAY

APART FROM THE PROFOUNDLY NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF HERBICICIDES, INSECTICIDES, ROUNDUP, AND ANTIBIOTIC OVERUSE, WE ARE EXPERIENCING A MASSIVE DECLINE IN THE NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF OUR FOOD—WITH HEALTH CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE PLAIN TO SEE

THE SITUATION IS MUCH MORE CRITICAL THAN WE SEEM TO REALIZE

The following came from that invaluable resource, www.mercola.com

• At present, nearly 60 percent of California's water needs are met by groundwater⁴ that does not have time to recharge at the same rate it's being used.
• Air and water pollution are worsening.
• Everything is getting more toxic, and according to a wide variety of scientists, we are looking at no more than 50-60 years' worth of "business as usual" before we reach a point at which nature will no longer sustain us on any front, be it water, air, or soil quality.
• 40 percent of agricultural soils around the globe is currently classified as degraded or seriously degraded.
• Modern crop breeding and genetic engineering is also exacerbating malnutrition and hunger rather than alleviating it. Take wheat for example, which today contains half the micronutrients of older strains. The same goes for fruits and vegetables of all kinds. Most are bred or engineered to withstand pests. Very little attention has been paid to the nutrient content, which has precipitously fallen. To receive the same amount of iron you used to get from a single apple in 1950, by 1998 you had to eat 26 apples!

Both our thought leaders and out media do a seriously lousy job at keeping us informed about the issues that really matter. The quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, bathe in, cook in, and the quality of the food we eat really matters.

It’s about as fundamental as you can get. Yet, by and large, we pay scant attention to it. We assume, I suppose, that the Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration keeps an eye on such things.

Well, they do—but erratically and inadequately—and when they are up against the massive financial resources and lobbying power of Big Business, they tend to back off.

A case in point is antibiotic overuse. Roughly 80 percent of the antibiotics used in this country is fed to intensively reared food animals to prevent them being killed by disease—a high likelihood otherwise given their appalling living conditions. These are a cruel disgrace—(an issue unto itself). We, in turn, end up eating the meat which results and, over time become antibiotic resistant. This means that a whole host of ailments, which could have been cured by antibiotics in the past, are now life-threatening. Within the foreseeable future, it seems highly probable that most antibiotics will be rendered ineffective.

Already 2 million people a year are affected by this situation and 23,000 die. The solution is to forbid antibiotic use unless an animal is actually sick. The CDC has advised that, but—crucially—has not made it a regulation. Overuse continues much as before. We are heading at full speed towards an absolute health catastrophe.

No one represents the consumer when it comes to food quality.

It gets worse because Big Food then proceeds to do terrible things to the raw material they buy—as cheaply as possible—so the end result is a combination of over-processed poor ingredients. laden with salt, fat, sugar, chemicals, and fillers in excessive quantities. What are fillers? They are something cheap designed to bulk the item in question at the lowest possible cost. Soy is probably the most popular. Others are decidedly less appetizing. For instance ‘meat content’ can cover all kinds of unpleasant things.

I don’t think it is a real mystery why Americans are sicker while alive and die several years before the citizens of many other countries. Lifestyle is much blamed—and that is certainly a factor—but there is ever increasing evidence that the quality of our food chain is seriously deficient (from soil to supper—so to speak). It’s not a case of one weak link. Every link is flawed.

If you eat mediocre food, you’ll have a mediocre quality of life—and it will be shorter.

VOR words c.445.

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