In Pursuit of Food Quality

BY EVAN FOLDS

Sometimes simple questions do not have such simple answers. Try this one. What is food? One definition is as follows: “Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.”If you sit with this definition for a moment, it begs more questions than it answers. What exactly is “nutritious”? Should food “maintain life” or should it enhance life? How do we determine real food from fake food? After all, what is thepoint of food?

These are critically important questions that we should be debating in grade school as well as in the public domain. Instead, we serve empty, conventional, and sometimes processed food to kids in cafeterias, and our elected leaders are relatively silent on the growing epidemic of disease that is rooted in the deficiencies of our food system. Meanwhile, the markers of healthy agriculture continue to move in the wrong directions.

The truth is that our elected leaders are never going to do the work. They are collectively on the side of industry that has worked to sway our eating habits through a dangerous form of food science that has fooled the discernment of our taste buds to tell us what to eat using artificial and sometimes toxic flavors, processes, textures, and colors. This same industrial monster is patenting as many life forms as possible and attempting to corner the global food and seed markets.

To compound the problem, crops are more toxic than ever and losing their nutritive value. For example, conventional agriculture in concert with the government calls for the genetic modification of commodity crops so that we can use poisons on them. At the same time, our food has lost its nutrient density. According to USDA data, one would need to eat 26 apples today to get the same amount of iron just one apple had in 1950. Plus, we are eating fake food on a level never before seen with estimates saying that up to 70% of the average American diet consists of processed foodstuff. Add this up and what do we get? Empty people.

Imagine if we had leaders holding hi-level summits on the topic of nutrient density in food? What if the incentive structure of the US Farm Bill encouraged the growth of nourishing foods instead of commodities grown for cows and cars? What if, even on a base level, we started connecting the dots between agricultural and environmental toxicity and disease?

Instead, we get crickets from our leaders. We have doctors being trained on how to manage symptoms with pharmaceuticals rather than being educated on how to heal using nutrition. We are offered a sick care system that amounts to a band-aid that, if taken at face value, represents the most brilliant business model in the world - keep people ill and sell them the “solution”.

What if, even on a base level, we started connecting the dots between agricultural and environmental toxicity and disease

Simply put, when it comes to food and health, we have lost our way.

A first step in fixing the food system is to get closer to our food. We need to develop personal agriculture and grow edible plants. We are now further from food than at any point in human history. How many people out there know their farmer?

A second step in reclaiming our food system is becoming aware that each one of us has a seat at the table. Even if we do not grow any food, or cook very often, eating is an agricultural act, and our buying power is what drives the market. The tagline to my company, Be Agriculture, is “What we think, we grow”. It has always been my belief that our efforts must involve massive grassroots education, and our purpose must be to demand quality from the food system using our buying power.

The human story starts with agriculture. Growing food where we live is what allowed us to put down roots and specialize into the communities and civilizations that we can take for granted today. Fast forward through the industrial and the green revolutions, and we find our agriculture in shambles with the core mission of nourishing people abandoned long ago for a focus on efficiency and profit.

We have even established and repeatedly upheld the legal notion of corporate personhood that grants human rights to corporations. Everyone can see the manifestations of corporatism in our world, it is very well documented and what amounts to an open secret within our current government. So why don’t we fix it?

One reason is that corporatism itself resists correction. Besides the fact that it is far more lucrative to keep people sick and uninformed, is it realistic to ask and expect power to give up control? Unfortunately, the world does not work the way that it should. We must give this issue a name and banish it in all of its forms; we must develop strategy and practice discipline to support those things that reinforce what we would want if we were asked.

Another reason we are not making the progress we want is mediocre food. Rudolf Steiner considered our slumber in relation to our spiritual majesty a matter of nutrition. In 1924, in response to a question asking him why people do not carry out their spiritual intentions, he said, “Food no longer contains the forces people need to bring their will into action”. Explains a lot, doesn’t it? Could it be that the source of our struggle to be loved in the world is rooted in malnourishment? Is it possible that by fixing our food that we can fix ourselves?

The answer is a resounding, yes. Living food is fuel for love. I have seen it happen with my own eyes many times over the years, and it is the driving force behind my work. The scope of this article will not allow a complete review, but living soil methods are how we can heal the world. There is no better cross-disciplinary approach to education than gardening. There are no better means of cleaning up the environment and growing healthy people than regenerative agriculture, and there is no more potent direction to a thriving future than a focus on food quality.

Currently, there is no market for food quality. Ponder that for a minute; is this not the point of food? The question becomes, how do we put food quality first?

The issue of food quality has three main arenas – economy, methods, and nutritional value. Over the last century of agriculture, like most aspects of the human organisation, we have abandoned quality in favour of cheap, artificial methods and profit at all costs. This amounts to a race to the bottom line, one that we are now hitting with the full force of life and death. Degenerative and auto-immune disease is off the historical charts and, in many cases like autism, increasing in a catastrophically unsustainable way that evades explanation from popular science and threatens to bring down our social structures. There are now many dedicated and brilliant people connecting these dots, but there can be no doubt that our current approach of toxic rescue chemistry and fake food is killing us.

The only way to prioritize food quality is to measure it. Fortunately for us all, there is a group of changemakers called the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA) working towards this vital mission for planet Earth. The BFA is developing a spectrometer called the Bionutrient Meter that will work to deliver consumers and farmers real-time data on food quality in the field or at the point of sale.

This effort is profound. Not only does it establish the first market for food quality on Earth, but it also provides an incentive for farmers to expend the energy and resources to grow nutrient-dense food and be compensated for it. Plus, it will aid in the development of methods farmers can use to regenerate their soil and grow more nutritious crops. Preliminary work has proven the possibility of success for the project, and work is already underway with 300 of the first generation meters having been built and distributed at their recent Soil & Nutrition Conference in December 2018.

There can be no doubt that our current approach of toxic rescue chemistry and fake food is killing us

can use to regenerate their soil and grow more nutritious crops. Preliminary work has proven the possibility of success for the project, and work is already underway with 300 of the first generation meters having been built and distributed at their recent Soil & Nutrition Conference in December 2018.

It is only recently that the spectroscopy technology reached a reasonable price point to be affordable for consumer use, and it is estimated that in the next couple of years, this technology will be in smartphones. Rest assured, the food revolution has momentum and is well underway. This project needs your support; reach out to them for more information at bionutrient.org.

The issue of food quality is for everyone. All of us eat, and we all want the health and joy that proper nutrition brings. We can change the future of food for the better by standing up, being heard, and taking part; by using our buying power and putting our will into action. With some intention, intuition, imagination, and inspiration we can deliver a better world one bite at a time.

BIO

Evan Folds is a regenerative agricultural consultant with a background across every facet of the farming and gardening spectrum. He has founded and operated many businesses over the years - including a retail hydroponics store he operated for over 14 years, a wholesale company that formulated beyond organic products and vortex-style compost tea brewers, an organic lawn care company, and a commercial organic wheatgrass growing operation. He now works as a consultant in his new project Be Agriculture where he helps new and seasoned growers take their agronomy to the next level. What we think, we grow!

Contact Evan at www.BeAgriculture.com or on Facebook and Instagram @beagriculture