May 22, 2006 - Day 6 - Week 7 - Cauliflower and Broccoli

The diet of modern America has compromised the integrity of our waistlines, health and over-all well being. When the cover of many magazines and the lead stories in bold type is simply one word OBEISTY we know we have crossed the line.  Men, women and children of all ethnic and racial profiles are over-weight.   It does not take me to reinforce what the medical, nutritional, and sports professions do on a continual basis, but there must be a correlation between what we eat and our health, maybe even our tendency to get sick.   Food choices in the most abundant nation on earth are beyond what our ancestors could have ever imagined and yet we by and large are making very poor choices.   Our selections we make with are fork are taking their toll on our internal ecosystems as well as the environment.  As someone wiser than I stated years ago ‘we are what we eat.’

In June of 1992 I attended the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro Brazil where I met David Hall from Australia.  An agri-business farmer who 30 years ago began to get sick from the chemicals he was using on his farms vowed he would try and find alternative soil amendments that would do no harm, either to him or the earth. In the 20 plus year process of discovery David examined the connection between human health and diet.  During our 12 hour flight home to Los Angeles, David explained that we are essentially eating de-natured food. His negative description of conventional farming was compelling, to say the least, and I began to realize that essential minerals were now missing in most of the food I was eating.

He asked me one simple question:  “Peter, why do you think you have such an enormous vitamin industry in your country? “   He answered his own question by stating that our soils have been depleted of the minerals we need for good health and nutrition.  A plant is a mining machine that takes the nutrients from the soil.  When we only put nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous back in we neglect the trace minerals and many other minerals we need for optimum health.  This along with our becoming a fast food nation has created the perfect storm that is destroying the health of millions.

David, ahead of the curve, created a product to put minerals back into the earth’s soils.

Today, twenty-five years after David Hall patented his product called Eco-Min scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey are seriously proposing the theory that minerals in certain foods have cancer prevention qualities.  Yes, what I and others have long suspected, cauliflower and broccoli are really good for you. 

Always a balance of good news and bad news in life:   The bad news is I must eat more cauliflower and broccoli.  The good news is that I must eat more broccoli and cauliflower.

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