heal yourself

by Trevor Toerien
(Johannesburg, South Africa)

I am inspired by what Joel is doing for humanity. Unltimately he is not only healing the land and producing the most nutritous food. He is allowing us to heal ourselves by eating proper nutrition and creating a healthier society. Imagine the effect that this kind of living has on our health, less sick people, less doctor's visits, less disease...


*************************************************

We all need to heal ourselves, Trevor by how we eat. You know the old adage - "You are what you eat". How true!Like you, to me Joel Salatin is indeed an inspiration and whose principles we need to adopt.

I thoroughly recommend any of his books as they are easy to read - it is as if he is right in your living room just chatting and giving advice.

I just say thank goodness for people like Joel Salatin who is really on a crusade to promote cottage industries as it used to be and to do away with factory farming which as spawned disease, contaminated food and ill-health since inception.

I am currently reading one of his earlier books, "You can Farm" and in there he quotes a Times article which says that 10% of chickens that you purchase from the supermarket is pure fecal soup due to the conditions in which they are raised.

In small cages not more than 14 inches by 22 inches are 8-9 chickens that don't even have space to sit down and these are stacked 3 stories high. In most cages he saw there was at least one dead chicken which gets trampled on by the others until it decomposes and falls through the cage bottom. They are de-beaked so that they don't cannibalize each other and they live like this for 10 months and then culled and then a new lot are brought in.

So are these the eggs you want to buy? Because if you do you are helping to carry on a system that is absolutely deplorable and very unhealthy. Apparently the ammonia stench that comes from these factories literally makes your eyes water. Is it any wonder that we end up with cases of bird flu? It is places like this that has caused this to happen.

How did mad cows disease happen? Because we fed herbivores meat in order to fatten them up quicker. How does that even seem like a good idea in the first place except for greed and money.

Can you heal yourself on meat fed beef or caged and diseased birds?

50% of food consumed by Americans is prepared outside of the home. This includes fast food outlets, TV dinners, restaurants etc. This is a statistic that is now common in most so called first world countries.

Can we heal ourselves with food that is made with more salt than we need that hardens our arteries or saturated fats that go on to clog up those arteries and had unhealthy kilos to our frames. It is this that has ended up in people being obese and sugar diabetes being two major health problems that are causing a severe drain on the health industry.

These are modern diseases that didn't exist to the extend that they do less than 50 years ago and they are caused solely from what we put in our mouths.

More depressing is that some children don't recognize a potato in its natural state but all know what French fries are. And this is not the only example.

"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." What has happened to the mothers of this world who should have passed down the joy of cooking and good nutrition to their daughters and sons?

Farmers 30 years ago in the USA used to get 35 cents to every retail food dollar. Today it is closer to 8 cents. Why? Because you have centralization, monopolization, rules and regulations and bureaucracy that disempowers the farmer from selling what he wants to, to whom he wants to. And yet factory farms can churn out second grade food that if most people saw, wouldn't eat all in the name of commerce.

Heal ourselves? Yes, we need to. We need to be informed as a consumer. We need to question more where our food comes from. We should eat local, eat fresh, eat organic. We must boycott the factory farms and change the way food is produced because at the end of the day it is your right. It is your right to eat clean food, and it is your right to stay healthy.