Paying the Price of Agricultural Abundance

How toxins get in our food.

During the 19th and early 20th Centuries, miners used to carry a canary into the mines as an early warning signal for contaminated air. The fragile birds were more sensitive and would show the effects of poisonous gasses earlier than the miners, giving them time to take action.

Well, the canaries are dying again. According to Audubon magazine, "each year, more than 67 million birds are killed by pesticides applied legally to U.S. farmland." It might be well past time for us to take action.

While the above statistic should be viewed as a warning signal, it is not an early one. Unfortunately, we may be seeing our own version of the canary in the mines with our children. Like the canary, growing children are more sensitive to environmental toxins than adults. According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer incidence among children under age 15 increased 32% between 1950 and 1985.

Some researchers estimate that up to 90% of cancer incidence is the result of exposure to environmental toxins and poor clearance of those toxins.

No one questions the well documented fact that man-made carcinogens in our food supply are a major source of toxin exposure to people in the United States. It is estimated that modern farmers now have a choice of some 50,000 pesticide formulas and about 700 different chemicals.

The agricultural industry is not solely to blame. Homeowners are contributing their share of pesticides with around 70 million pounds of the stuff being applied to U.S. lawns every year. In fact, the forerunners of many of the compounds now used in home pesticides were chemical weapons that were developed during World War II.

Many of these chemicals act on insects in exactly the same way that nerve gas acted on soldiers. When insects (and birds) eat from treated fields, they show the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning – quivering muscles, excessive tearing and salivation, failure of the respiratory muscles and, ultimately, asphyxiation.

The bugs are winning!

It's creating a vicious cycle. Insects and weeds have an amazing ability to develop resistance to the stuff that we use to try to kill them. And the more resistant they become, the more chemicals must be used. Some sources estimate that farmers are spraying 2-5 times more than they were spraying 30 years ago.

Even so, the bugs are winning. Again, according to Audubon magazine, despite the heavy spraying, it is now estimated that there are over "535 insects, 210 weed species, and 210 plant diseases that are resistant to at least one pesticide." (This is exactly the same situation that we are beginning to see with antibiotic-resistant microbes.)

In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote her best-selling book, Silent Spring. It was about America's increasing dependence on pesticides, and it predicted the situation that is confronting us now. Farmers today use four times more pesticides than they did when Silent Spring was written.

That's why we have toxic residues on our food.

Are tomatoes becoming our fabled "poison apples"?

Let's look at just one food – tomatoes. Most conventionally grown tomatoes start as greenhouse seedlings fed with synthetic fertilizer. Next, they are transplanted to a field that has been sprayed with methyl bromide (a chemical so toxic that is it scheduled to be banned in 2005). As the tomatoes grow, they are sprayed every couple of weeks with fungicides and insecticides. They may then be picked early and artificially ripened with ethylene oxide gas.

In an on-going FDA study called theTotal Diet Study, which analyzes hundreds of foods each year for more than 100 different chemicals, tomatoes were found to be full of potentially toxic "stuff," including chlorpyrifos, dicloran, endosulfan, permethrin, diazinon, lindane, phosphamidon, PCBs, tri (2-butoxy-ethyl), and, last but not least, DDT, which was banned in 1972.

Does this mean we should swear off tomatoes? Or stop eating commercially grown agricultural products altogether? No. To do so would be not only foolhardy, but would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is much to say in favor of the abundance such chemicals have helped us achieve. However, there are steps we all can take to minimize the potential dangers that these chemicals present.

How to eliminate toxins from the body.

The first defense against chemical toxins is a diet high in organically grown foods and low in industrially processed foods. The recent proliferation of organic farms, organically raised beef, health food stores and organic food sections in many supermarkets have made alternatives to a toxic diet.

If all natural organic foods are hard to find in your area, search for them, or demand that your local grocer carry them whenever possible.

And remember this. The human body has an amazing ability to detoxify itself. This ability, however, can be seriously compromised when the internal organs – particularly the liver – are not in peak health.

Why you need targeted supplements.

To achieve and maintain optimal health, it is essential that your body receive the correct nutrients in the correct proportions for your individual metabolic needs. Two of the most important nutrients in detoxification are antioxidants vitamins C and E.

But simply supplementing with these two vitamins is not enough to ensure protection – and in fact may cause additional problems if you over supplement. There is more going on here than most people suspect.

That's why the PrivaTest was developed. It is an accurate, scientific way to take a snapshot of your most critical metabolic markers to determine the status of your nutritional health and your body's natural ability to detoxify itself.

In a nutshell, the PrivaTest looks at three areas of your metabolism: Urinary Sulfates, Urinary Lipid Peroxides and Urinary Nitrates. These three areas were selected for testing because research is showing that poor or altered function in these pathways may be the root cause for many of our modern degenerative health challenges.

The results of your PrivaTest are analyzed to determine where you may need specific nutritional support. Based on this analysis, and comparing it to your individual biometric data (height, weight, age, gender, etc.), it is then possible to prescribe a custom formulation of nutritional supplements designed to support and maintain optimal health of your body's systems, and thus its natural ability to detoxify itself.

Whatever you do, however, it is essential that you be aware of dangers posed by many of the foods we take for granted in this country, and of the steps you can take to minimize them.