Minerals, as we all know, are vital for life. Getting enough calcium, vitamins and colloidal minerals is essential for keeping our body running well and rebuilding the cells on time, and with all the proper building blocks.
However, we cannot live on mineral and vitamin supplements. God gave us food to eat, not mineral supplements. After all, let’s ask the question: why do we take supplements? Because those minerals and vitamins are not sufficient in our diet. There’s not enough mineral colloids in our vegetables, nor in the grass and grain that the animals eat who provide our milk, butter, cheese, eggs and meat. Mineral supplements are a crutch–a very necessary crutch, but a crutch, nonetheless.
I used to have the impression that we could just give our animals whatever minerals were lacking in their pasture and they would be healthy. However, I realized last year that that is not the true path to health. Those minerals need to be in the soil, so that the soil grows healthy, nutrient-dense plants with well-built proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Then the animals who eat those plants will also be healthy.
The same thing applies with our own food. Let’s suppose, for a moment, that you decide to be really cheap on your food budget. So you go around to the back of the grocery stores and find their old, reject, half-rotten produce that they set out by the dumpster. You load up those boxes into your car. You also find some meat in the dumpster that is past its expiration date, but it hasn’t yet turned to compost in the package. Inside the store, you buy a couple gallons of oil and several quarts of blackstrap molasses, and when you get home, the UPS guy has delivered the package of mineral supplements that you ordered the other day. You cook up the half-rotten broccoli and carrots that you found in one box, making sure to add the right amount of oil and molasses to add minerals, oils and sugars to the food, to make it more digestible. You stick the dumpster roast in the oven, with a mineral-rich herb concoction and some more oil and blackstrap. You make a salad with the limp lettuce and mushy spinach from another box, and make up some salad dressing with oil and vinegar, being sure again to add some more blackstrap. At supper time, you set your offering on the table, and tell everybody to be sure to take their supplements. The rest of the family looks at what you set on the table–and begins running for the bathroom, the back yard and the trash can to empty whatever their stomach may already contain. You eat your concoctions–and are sick with food poisoning for the next two days.
Silly? Let’s say that instead, you buy your veggies and meat inside the grocery store. The vegetables are low in the minerals needed to make healthy, nutrient-dense foods, and the steer that your roast came from was fed low-mineral GMO corn. Not only do they not contain enough minerals to make you healthy, but they were not healthy themselves. The vegetables have free nitrogen that was never turned into protein because there wasn’t enough calcium to make the plant work right. Therefore, the plants do not contain all the building blocks for cells that they could have, nor all the anti-oxidants that they should have. God’s garbage crew–insects- -should have eaten it themselves, but thanks to the insecticides that the farmer sprayed on, the garbage crew is dead and the garbage is on the shelf for you to buy. It is also deficient in natural sugars and oils, important for making food digestible. The roast is deficient, not only in minerals, but also in vitamins and healthy fats like Omega-3 and CLA because it was not fed the diet that God meant for that steer to eat. The apples you buy for dessert are full of reducing sugars, which turn brown when you expose them to the air. This indicates a lack of antioxidants and nutrition in general. You bring all this stuff home and cook it up, making sure to re-mineralize your food, and pass around the supplements at the table. But that does not turn the free nitrogen into protein, or replace the missing Omega-3 and CLA. In short, you add some stuff back in, but you are not dining on healthy food.
Dr. Carey A. Reams, a pioneer in growing nutrient-dense food, said that the Bible is the best health book ever written. We need to go to God’s Word to find out what we should eat. So what does it tell us?
In Psalm 103:5, it says of God that He "satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s." Notice what it says: "good things". I don’t believe that means mineral supplements, or low-quality lettuce. "Good things" means food that is high in minerals and nutrition, high in antioxidants and good fats, and well-built because it received good nutrition while it was growing.
This passage tells us that God satisfies our mouths with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagle’s. What does that mean? Periodically, an eagle will go off to a secluded spot and molt. Its claws and feathers drop out, and are replaced with new ones. When it comes back, it looks like a new eagle, even though it may be many years old. That eagle can even live up to 50 years of age.
In the same way, our bodies are constantly rebuilding themselves. Every six months, if your body is working right, your system replaces every cell. It has to replace that cell with something. If you are eating garbage, your cell will be replaced with one made from garbage. In order for your youth to be renewed like the eagle’s, you need to consume "good things"–nutrient-dense foods.
Low-mineral food is, according to Dr. Arden Andersen, garbage. He said: "Insects are Nature’s garbage crew… God designed insects to take out that which is not fit to eat. But we’re smarter than God, right? So we kill the garbage crew, and we consume the garbage, and then we wonder why we’re sick…" (Quoted from memory, probably somewhat paraphrased)
So, should we take mineral supplements and re-mineralize our food with things like blackstrap molasses? Of course, if you need to. If you’ve been eating garbage for forty years, you’re going to be mineral-deficient, so it makes sense to take supplements to "jump start" things and get your body back into shape. If the best peas you can find are low in minerals, then by all means, add some oil and blackstrap molasses. But if you want to have true health, you need to eat "good things", not garbage.
I suggest that everyone get a copy of the most recent edition of Nourishment Home Grown by A. F. Beddoe. (The latest one–the 2004 edition–is available from http://www.advancedideals.org/) This is a great book for the backyard gardener. It will teach you how to grow your own nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables. It also has a section with tips on how to get the best produce when shopping at the grocery store, how to add minerals to deficient food, and how to test the nutrient density of food that you grow or buy.
Another good place to look is http://www.crossroads.ws. It has a free, online e-book explaining the basics of nutrient density.
If you need a source for soil amendments to add minerals to your soil, a great place is Lancaster Ag Products (http://www.lancasterag.com/). Although they are in Lancaster County, PA, they do some shipping, so you may not actually have to go to Pennsylvania for soil amendments.
Learn what you can about nutrient-dense food. Your health depends upon it.