How Far We've Come (or Gone)

The standard North American diet today is a trip. Un-natural, un-sustainable, and most definitely un-healthy. Here's my general overview on the degression of our diets...

Before, we foraged for wild fruit, or grew our own fruit, picking and eating it fresh, and eating in accordance with what the seasons provided. Now, we eat mangoes and bananas year-round, grown in Central America, sprayed with herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, picked far before ripeness and nutritional peak, shipped hundreds of miles by plane, train, or truck, and finally, displayed for us in our local supermarket amidst the myriad of other produce items sourced from all over the world. But it's fruit, and fruit is good for us, and we need 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables per day, so our Food Guides tell us, yes?

Before, we drank milk from cows, goats, and sheep that ate their natural diet of grasses and greens, and were free to roam out in the sunshine and fresh air. We drank this milk fresh, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, and often fermented! Now, we drink milk that has come from hundreds of different factory-farmed, never-see-the-light-of-day, antibiotic-pumped, diseased, supersized, overcrowded, corn-eating cows all across the country, combined into one big vat, pasteurized, homogenized, and packaged in estrogen-leaching plastic.

Before, we ate bread made from fresh-picked, stone-ground whole wheat and rye kernels. Now, we eat bleached white bread made from genetically modified, hybridized, allergenic wheat that has been refined to the point of providing literally zero nutrition.

Before, we ate meat of wild game or fish, living in a clean environment and eating their natural diet. We did not just eat select cuts of muscle meats, but rather, utilized nearly every part of the animal for food, tools, or clothing. Now, we eat meat from dumb, overweight, diseased pigs, cows, and chickens that are fed antibiotic-laced corn and soy, packed like sardines into factory-barns, wallowing amongst their own faeces.

Before, we drank water fresh from natural springs or artesian wells coming from aquifers deep within the earth. Now, we drink beverages made from chlorinated, fluoridated, metallic tap water, filtered from the same source that our toilets flush to.

How far we’ve come!