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Crapples! (Why Americans are slowly dying of malnutrition, and without knowing why.) By Dr. Mark Rosenbloom MD

Remember the old saying 'An apple-a-day keeps the doctor away!'? Today, apples are more likely to make you diabetic and contribute to heart disease than anything.

Just from a nutritive perspective - 100 years ago an apple used to give you 33% of the RDA (or recommended daily allowance) of iron, now it gives you only about 1%, with similar numbers for calcium, magnesium, fiber and other vital nutrients. In other words, it should say:

'33 apples-a-day keeps the doctor away'


But in truth... even a few apples per day could actually make you sick from the genetically increased sugar content.

And it's even worse for other fruits and vegetables. Today's Corn for example has less than 1/1000th the vital minerals and other essential nutrients it had a brief 100 years ago.

This is primarily the result of soil depletion; utilizing the same soil year after year. Using chemicals as fertilizers to trick the plants into producing beautiful fruits and vegetables is also a huge problem. These fruits and vegetables are on their way to becoming no more nourishing than flavored cardboard! Without the fiber!

Genetic manipulation is another problem. There are two versions of this, both of which cause problems;

1. The old-fashioned way, whereby we select mutant fruits and vegetables that have characteristics that increase profit by making them bigger, shinier, sweeter, add shelf life etc. This increases yield and attractiveness at the cost of nutrition and health; breeding up to 10 times the fructose content and adding to the diabetes and obesity epidemic.
   One such example is the red delicious apple. Still a very red, very shiny, beautiful, huge apple. How disappointing to bite into it and find that it has almost no taste or nutrition whatsoever... just 'sugar'.
2. Then there are the genetically modified fruits and vegetables. For example, there is a new strain of apple genetically modified to not brown when exposed to air. This science experiment is about to be released to the population in the very near future, without regard for the potential health consequences of aborting a central process that mother nature had put into place for reasons not yet clearly understood. Imagine leaving a cut apple out for several days to a week, but when you go to eat it, it is as white as ever, so you don't have any way of knowing how long it has been out. Do you still think it would be safe to eat it after losing its protective skin and being exposed to air, light, heat, and bacteria for all those days?

Finally, todays fruits and vegetables are riddled with chemicals, hormones, wax coverings, pesticides, growth factors, even drugs and other substances are taken up into the fruits and vegetables.

What to do? This is a big problem without an easy solution. There are 3 ways to cope:

1. Eat 'organic' whenever possible. This is just smart, as it means you do not get excessive chemicals, hormones, pesticides, or (usually) genetically-modified foods (eg GMOs). However, if you go this route, you will also need to supplement your fruits and vegetables with carefully selected supplements, because even organic produce has still been depleted of essential minerals and nutrients through soil degradation.

2. Ideally, start your own garden and grow your own fruits and vegetables year-round. Research the seeds carefully and make sure they will lead to fruits and vegetables with the nutritional breakdowns you want. And grow these fruits and vegetables in a nutrient-dense soil, with optimal soil regeneration techniques. Of course, this isn't practical for most people, so we also have option #3, which you might do separately, or in conjunction with options #1 and/or #2:

3. Find a farmer in your area who is doing options #1 and #2 on a larger scale, and support him or her in their efforts by ordering from them and spreading the word to friends and family. These are called CSA farmers. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. These farmers offer an excellent solution, and some of them even deliver. However, they are teetering on extinction, as this type of farming is comparatively very costly to the farmer and it is difficult for them to compete with grocery chains. So if you want this to be an option in either the near or distant future, you will want to act quickly while they are still in business.

For those who live in the Chicago area, one such CSA farmer who offers top-quality produce, free-range poultry and eggs, honey, and grass-fed beef is 'Farmer Wayne'. He also delivers, and you can reach him, (or order from him) through his website: www.YourFoodFarmer.com

Until next time, Good Health is a choice... choose 'well'.

Dr. Mark Rosenbloom MD
LIFEFORCE
www.LIFEFORCEmed.com