BryantheRyan.com Challenging conventional wisdom about nutrition, fitness and overall health

The Case Against Supermarket Fruits and Veggies

photo credit: rick

In this two part series of why never to buy food from the grocery store again, I will attempt to answer why we never have seasons in grocery stores and why the meat that we eat is not only killing ourselves, but the environment in which we live.

In this article grocery store fruits and veggies will be the topic of discussion.

Why we eat fruits and vegetables

Vitamins, minerals, fiber and countless other "phytonutrients" are the backbone of our world's current movement to eat more fruits and vegetables. Not to mention that these foods contain zero fat or cholesterol.

Considering that the majority of us buy our  produce from a grocery store, I want to bring up a topic of great debate. How healthy are the fruits and vegetables sold at our chain supermarkets?

Many people around the world would agree that an apple is an apple and an orange is an orange, no matter where they come from. Wrong.

Vegetables and fruits found the grocery store faintly resemble their biological cousins that are found in the wild. Wild apples never grow to be the size of a baseball, yet many of the apples that are sold in a grocery store are the size of softballs.

Why is this bad? Well fruit is composed of two things, fiber and sugar (and other vitamins and nutrients) when we eat an apple the size of a bowling ball we consume far more sugar than nature ever intended us to eat.

Why is our produce so big?

All of the produce that is available on grocery store shelves are what are now popularly called GMOs or Genetically Modified Organisms. These organisms are plants (and animals) that have their DNA altered by scientists in some way to express certain traits such as size, color or the repelling of bugs and herbicides. Although these may sound like god sends in terms of food production around the world, that is far from the truth. GMOs often require significant amounts of fertilizers, water and other chemicals in order to grow to their full potential.

Also, no significant research has been conducted to prove if the nutritional qualities of these plants and animals is affected.

I am not condemning these products by any means, I am simply leery of human beings messing  with what mother nature has put in place.

Pesticides and Fertilizers

The produce that we buy at Wal-Mart or any other grocer does not come from mom and pop's family farm. These products are produced on global scales to provide our country with red tomatoes and white onions all year round.

In order for large amounts of these crops to be grown we must plant them in huge fields and spray them regularly with herbicides and pesticides to ward off any weeds and insects that will inevitably ruin a crop. Not to mention the airplane tanks full of chemical fertilizers that are unloaded on these crop fields to ensure that each onion, orange and mango becomes as big as humanly possible.

It would be convenient if all of these substances simply did their job and then left the piece of produce in its natural form. This is not the case. These chemicals are absorbed in the fruit and stay there until consumed, when our bodies are then left with the responsibility of figuring our what to do with them (cancer anybody?)

Where does our produce come from?

I bet you have a very hard time answering this question. And no it is not the grocery store, maybe I should have rewrote it to ask where was your produce grown?

Like I said earlier these crops are grown on massive farms, yet we never realize that these farms dot the landscape of not only our country but our globe.

This is very apparent in the winter months. Any fresh produce that is sold in a grocery store during winter,  strangely appears to be the same as in the summer, travels a great many miles to reach your food hole.

I used to buy organic apples.... until I found out that they were grown and shipped from Chile! That is some 2,000 miles away. Needless to say, I decided that I did not need to eat apples.

This goes for countless other fruits and veggies in the grocery store. Oranges, mango's, pineapples, grapefruits, kiwis and bananas are all fruits that can only be grown in tropical climates. That means that the six pack of nanners you just bought, traveled over 1500 miles in order for you to eat them. Makes the $.50 a pound you paid for them seem insignificantly small huh?

Did you know that oranges are not even orange? They are picked green and then sprayed with gas in order to be turned orange. And that tomatoes are picked green and sprayed with gas to turn them red so that they will last longer in transit to a grocery store.

What can we do?

Well their are many things that we the consumer can do.

If you want to follow my lead, you can simply refuse to buy or eat vegetables or fruits from a grocery store. Only eat produce when it is in season and can be purchased from a local farmer,  a farmers market or picked from your backyard.

In lue of this practice you can learn how to can certain veggies and fruits as well as freeze them if you have space and eat them in the middle of winter. Trust me when I tell you that eating garden fresh broccoli that I picked from my back yard during the dead of winter is quiet refreshing.

Only buy locally raised food, and if you can't get local, buy organic. Even though much of the organic produce available at large food retailers is shipped from great distance (apples from Chile). Always local over organic and if you can find it, organic local produce is even better!

So what do I eat in the winter?

I eat lots of eggs from my neighbor, beef from a local farm and organic and raw almonds and sunflower seeds*. I also eat spaghetti sauce and salsa that my mother canned in the fall and frozen veggies that I zapped when they were fresh in the summer.

*Ok I'm not an angel. The almonds and sunflower seeds are grown in California and the coconut oil that I fry my eggs in came from Florida. It is organic and extra virgin though!

I know this is inconvenient as our grocery store never has any growing seasons, ever. This idea is so out of whack with the natural ebb and flow of the world that it is sickening to think that apples can actually be available year round without the use of fertilizers, pesticides and the altering of DNA.

Reality is easy to over look, especially when our culture promotes the habit of pulling a veil on all issues that will deter us from our habitual day to day grind. I understand that it is not easy to go against the staus quo. I know that it takes self will and determination to change what you have been doing for the last 20 years. But know that the actions you carry out on a daily basis is the defintion of who you are. What makes you any different than everybody else?

Don't be afraid to take the jump, I recently went 5 months without eating a fruit or vegetable and I'm still healthy and fit. As of right now I am enjoying the fresh strawberries, asperagus, spinach, and brocolli that was grown within a 5 mile radius of my home.

-Ryan