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Home Articles REAL Food Organic, Local, Traditional Organic& Local Eat Local. Eat Organic. - A Return to Basics
Eat Local. Eat Organic. - A Return to Basics Print E-mail
Written by Susan McCreadie, MD   
Simply put, we are what we eat. My body is my temple, and I chose to fill it up with the most wholesome scrumptious foods, period. The vast majority of the food I feed myself and my family is organic. Why bother? Is it really worth my money, paying more for organic? Is it really worth my time, traveling around to different markets and stores for local food? Yes. 
 

Organic foods are grown as nature intended, without herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, or genetic modification.  Organic foods have been shown to have higher levels of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and antioxidants. Plus, eating organic food decreases your body’s and our planet’s toxic load. Its easy, if there’s a choice, I choose less toxins. Its not only better for me and my family, its better for EVERYONE. By eating organic and using organic products, you are supporting less chemicals for our planet!
 
Decreasing your toxic burden is key to maintaining health. Many children I see in my practice are in toxic overload. Their body is saying 'I'm FULL!, Stop!' Our body is designed to detoxify our outer world, to keep our inner world pristine. Eating and living organic decreases the work your body has to put into UNnecessary detoxification, to keep your inner world clean. If there’s a choice, choose organic.

Local foods are grown close to your home, cutting down on the average 1,500 mile commute from farm to plate. Like organic food, local foods have also been shown to have higher levels of nutrients.  They are fresher and vine-ripened, being harvested after full maturation, allowing their full nutrient value to come to fruition. Eating local helps diversify the diet - you often end up trying local seasonal fruits and vegetables that you may have never heard of AND actually like them! And, buying local stimulates your local economy. 
  
Preston Maring, M.D., associate physician-in-chief at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Hospital persuaded Kaiser to start farmers’ markets at over 30 of their hospitals! As she says, “If we can just get people to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, we can really impact people’s health.”
 
The Standard American Diet [S.A.D.] is often void of fresh organic and local foods.  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fruit and vegetable consumption has remained essentially the same for the past ten years, showing that less than one in four Americans eat the recommended 5 servings a day.  The CDC also found in the year 2000, that poor diet and physical inactivity was second only to tobacco use as the most preventable cause of death in the United States! 

Now that’s SAD.  The American diet is filled with so called convenient foods that are often packaged, processed, pasteurized and contain partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, additives, preservatives, colorings and dyes.  There really isn’t much alive in the average American diet.  In the manufacturing of packaged foods, fragile enzymes are destroyed, along  with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.  These so called convenient foods that can sit on a shelf [sometimes for years] are not so convenient for our health. Americans are filling their tanks with empty calories from poor sources of protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and we are paying the price!  

“Eating fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy diet reduces the risk of obesity and chronic disease, such as diabetes, some cancers and heart disease.”  ~ Heidi Blanck, Ph.D., senior scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Eating local is a great way to eat REAL food full of phytonutrients and enzymes that speak your body’s language.
  
An easy way is to do this is to eat more colorful fruits and vegetables; their color comes from their phytonutrients. Some examples: RED in tomatoes and watermelon, contain lycopene shown to protect us against some cancers. ORANGE in carrots and sweet potatoes, contain alpha and beta carotene which forms vitamin A in the body, keeping our eyes, bones, and immune system healthy.  YELLOW and GREEN vegetables contain lutein and zeaxanthin that help prevent age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.  GREEN in broccoli and kale have indoles and isothiocyanates which help clear toxins from our body.  BLUE and PURPLE have anthocyanins and proanthocyanins, both antioxidants, which help keep our hearts and brain healthy. Variety is key for a nutritionally balanced diet, the more variety of foods you eat, the more likely you are getting all the nutrients you need.
 
Life is coming full circle - before freezers and microwaves, before processed foods with long shelf lives - we bought food every 2-3 days, local and fresh, and made it ourselves [imagine]! Convenient foods are not convenient for your child's health. Let’s return to the basics - cook as our grandmothers cooked - buy local, eat fresh and make our food ourselves so we know what we’re eating.  A return to simplicity - it’s all in your frame of mind.
 
Susan McCreadie, MD is a Holistic Pediatrician and co-founder of nourishMD. She shows parents how to find REAL health for their child, so they can stop treating their child's symptoms and instead find solutions that help their child heal from the inside out.