Eating Like a Kardashian- Table Leg #4

I was shocked, absolutely shocked. I thought the Kardashian reality show would really be about them, but instead I found a humiliated ex olympian pretending to be surprised by pooping chickens relocated to his million dollar bath tub, while his overly made up, adult step family lounged around the family room downstairs looking at each other…in the middle of the day.  They talked about inane, scripted things that made them look so stupid I don’t know how they live it down in their other real life. If you thought the “fairytale wedding” was a farce, their “reality” show epitomizes form (the appearance of value) over substance (actual value) at it’s Hollywood best.

QUALITY HAS CHANGED
But before I get too condescending towards this bunch, is it possible that our very own groceries are a part of the Kardashian clan… appearing to be real, but under scrutiny coming up deficient?  What I mean is, because of chemical pesticides and fertilizers used in modern, industrialized farming methods,  our soil has been depleted of many minerals and living microbes which used to find their way into our food. Though vegetables and fruit may be engineered to look more beautiful than ever, but they are deficient in the micronutrients they are supposed to have for our benefit.  In other words, the beautiful, flawless apple you just bought from your local grocery store does not contain many of the life giving micronutrients which were present in the apple Eve took a bite of. 

“In 2003, News Canada reported that fruit and vegetables contain far fewer nutrients than they did 50 years ago. Potatoes, for example, had lost 100% of vitamin A content, 57% of vitamin C and iron, and 28% of calcium. The report examined data from the US Department of Agriculture involving vegetable quality. Over the entire 20th century the average mineral content in cabbage, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes, declined from 400 mg to less than 50 mg.” (1)

AMERICAN DEFICIENCIES
According the the United States Department of Agriculture, 9 out of 10 Americans are deficient in potassium, 8 out of 10 in Vitamin E, 7 out of 10 in calcium, and 5 out of 10 in Vitamins A, C, and magnesium. (2)  And Kim’s “fairytale wedding” ended 72 days later in a bitter divorce.  What will be the outcome of our unseen diet deficiencies?

ORGANIC IS BETTER QUALITY
In order to eat fresh produce that has not been stripped of its nutrients, the savvy shopper is forced to wander over to the organic table.

“Virginia Worthington, a clinical nutritionist who earned her doctorate in nutrition at Johns Hopkins, published a review in 2001 of 41 studies comparing the nutritional value of organic and conventional produce. After tallying the data across all the studies, Worthington concluded that organic produce had on average 27 percent more vitamin C, 21.1 percent more iron, 29.3 percent more magnesium and 13.6 percent more phosphorous than conventional produce.” (4)

That is why Organic Food is the fourth and final table leg of Orange Tree Lane, because I believe it is an important shift that all of us need to make in order to give our bodies more nurturing food.

RECIPES THIS WEEK
As always, this week I especially enjoyed the Fish and Greens recipe because it is so nutritious and simple to make with wild caught fish and organic kale.  I used the leftover tofu tartar sauce to make the best tuna salad ever!  This week I made a few more of my regular favorites, like the scrumptious, yeasty Overnight Blueberry Pancakes and my husband’s annual Fresh Apple Cake for his birthday.  And finally, making extra Sweetheart Chicken was so easy to put on top of Angel Hair and Cherry Bows the next night. 

If you haven’t already, find the organic section of your store’s produce department and just look at what they have there, or go to your local farmer’s market and look there.  Then the next week you can start by replacing just apples or potatoes with the organic alternative because those two are heavily contaminated in the growing process.  If you remember the Kaizan way, one step at a time will eventually get you there, and in a good mood too.

Don’t let your menu live the Kardashian way, but eat the Orange Tree Lane way instead by incorporating more of Table Leg #4, Organic Food.

Molly

(1) & (2)  http://caltonnutrition.com/micronutrient-deficiency-pandemic.aspx
(3)  http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2012/01/24/new-study-plant-rich-diet-reduces-mortality-from-heart-disease-stroke/
(4)  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/25/HOG3BHSDPG1.DTL&ao=all