Saturday, March 14, 2009

Industrial scale, bacteria and food safety

If there are going to be plagues in the "last days" as scriptures predict they will likely come about in part due to the weakening of our immune systems from eating industrial and refined foods. Industrial foods because of the culture of sterility we've inherited due to large-scale industrial processes and a reversed sense of what is safe (with mass-distribution safety is always compromised). The sterile canning process attempts to eliminate all bacteria, thus we associate bacteria with sickness and death. The trouble with this view is that it works against nature. The canning process also invites botulism because botulism thrives in environments where other bacteria cannot live. When we ferment foods, bacteria growth is encouraged and nature dictates that the good bacteria overcome the bad rendering fermented foods intrinsically safe while at the same time providing a health-sustaining boost to our immune systems. Three great videos: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3 (thank you Sandor Katz). The trouble with refined foods is that we destroy the symbiotic relationships in foods as they come from nature by separating the parts from each other (white part of wheat and bran, etc). The symbiotic relationships in the whole foods often help prevent disease, too.