The tool for determining if a food is truly ‘natural’
This tool is designed to aid you in filtering out all of the hype-foods on the market today that are marketed as ‘healthful’ or ‘natural’ which may actually prove to be harmful. For example, the chemical sweetener Aspartame that was hailed as a ‘healthy’ sweetener when it entered the market is now known to cause neurological failure disorders and brain tumors. If you would prefer not to be the guinea pig for the next new ‘all natural’ food, this filter is the tool for you.
This filter is essential because we are constantly bombarded with new and exciting advertising telling us we need their new, patented, heart-healthy blend of super whatever-it is, followed by a group of individuals testifying how it cured them of everything from boils and bad breath to ugliness and poverty. It separates us from the ‘health-hype’ and allows us to make truly healthful selections.
The main component of the filter is what I like to refer to as The Cave Man Factor. This is where we examine how a food was produced or processed and ask: “Could I reproduce that process in a cave?” I consider any process that could be done by a cave man (or out in nature with no equipment) to be a natural/acceptable practice, because he would not have access to technology that might render a food harmful.
Just as a note, I don’t object to a machine doing a job a person could do. For example, I can chop things very finely and grind them with a mortar and pestle, or whip together ingredients with a whisk. Using a blender just makes that job easier and faster. It is when a food can only be produced with “high-tech” man-made equipment or chemical processing that I figure it’s not something nature intended for us to consume, and carries the potential of being very hazardous to the body.
For example, the commercial process of ‘hydrogenating’ oils. In a vacuum chamber, the oil is bombarded with hydrogen until it is saturated. Because the process is not governed by a natural process, and is forced upon the oil, the saturation is undiscriminating, and will plug up the enzyme sites on the fat molecules that allow it to be broken down and used. If we then eat the oil, enzymes have no place to break it apart and the body tends to store it instead. It is stored especially in the liver and gall bladder, and along the venous structure of the body, seriously hampering their function and being nearly impossible to remove. If we stop to consider for a moment, that the hydrogenation process could never hope to be accomplished in a cave, we could avoid the issue entirely.
On the other hand, if I crush a handful of olives between two rocks, the oil runs out. I think a cave man could handle that, and so can my body.
So if we first know how a food is produced or processed, we can then determine if it seems feasible that a cave man could reproduce the process. Finding out how things are made is usually as simple as looking it up on the internet, however, some products I have had to contact the manufacturer directly for details.
In contacting companies over the years, I have encountered a few who will not share with the consumer how their foods are made. It is called ‘proprietary information.’ If a company is unwilling to share with me what they are doing to my food, I would rather not chance that they may be doing something harmful. The first time I encountered this was with the product ‘Bragg’s Liquid Amino’s.’ Going from the ingredient list, it sounded pretty good, just soybeans and water, but it didn’t look like soybeans and water, and after using it for a while, I noticed that my family was having the symptoms of a food reaction to it whenever we used it, and heard of others reporting it was mucus-forming. So I decided to contact Bragg’s, and while they love to go on and on about what they didn’t do to it, they also would not tell me what they did do. This, coupled with the food reaction symptoms, caused me to search for a replacement product.
I found Ohsawa’s Nama Shoyu, which is a soy sauce that has been produced by a simple culturing method that has been handed down for generations. They are very proud of their process, and even picture it on the bottle. I have used it now for over 5 years and never had a food reaction to it. Because I am not willing to ever play the part of the guinea pig again, products that won’t share their processing method with me do not pass through my filter.
Once we have determined that a food could be produced in a cave, we need to observe to see if it would stay edible after whatever process we subjected it to. This is important because there are natural processes can that render a food inedible or harmful. Grape seed oil is one such example. If you ground the grape seeds in a mortar and pestle (in your cave) fine enough to get the oil out, (which would be a lot of seeds and a lot of work, but do-able), in a very short time the oil would go rancid without further processing or the addition of a preservative. Rancid oils burn the tongue and irritate the liver, inducing nausea because their chemical structure has bonded with oxygen, making them harmful to the body.
There are hints, obvious to the casual observer, which allow us to recognize nature’s foods for humans and even to know how they are best used. This phenomenon I have named Nature’s Clues. The oil tasting bad and inducing nausea is one of nature’s clues: a big hint that it is not good to eat, and indeed, as modern science examines it on a molecular level, we find that it can be harmful in it’s oxidized or rancid state. Exercise caution: modern processing often bypasses these clues by the use of a preservative or extensive further processing. Most preservatives and further processes are in and of themselves harmful, and can be used to mask the clues that nature would give us.
Olive oil, on the other hand, stays good for a year or more after pressing, with no other process performed. Again, nature’s clue that it was meant for consumption.
Most oils on the commercial market today, even the ‘healthy’ ones, have had some process performed or preservative added to stabilize them for the shelf. If the nature of the product after we have produced it is such that it has to be preserved, then it no longer passes through the filter.
I have had people approach me about using grape seed oil, lauding it’s incredible health benefits and producing lists of testimonials. I thank them for their kindness, but refuse, because I know that many things must be done to grape seed oil after it is pressed to keep it from spoiling, and it does not go through my filter. In Kal’s herbology practice, we have noticed a strange pattern in many health conscious individuals that use a large quantity of grape seed oil: after time they develop an itchy skin condition. I am not interested in joining the ranks of that industry’s guinea pigs, and the filter allows me to bypass that hazard.
Whenever the food you are selecting is not obviously in its original state, this tool becomes priceless. Because shopping even at the finest health food store is not a failsafe in getting truly healthful food, I encourage you to adopt your own filter. If the foods you select for your plate are mostly in their original state, and the remainder pass through the filter as being truly natural, you will be giving your body the ultimate building blocks that will facilitate healing in your body, moving it toward its ideal.
Health Principle #2