Nutrients: Our Crisis In The Making
Posted on Mar 17th, 2006
by 
Rob
Rob
STOP!
Seriously, whatever you're doing... stop right now, if just for a moment. Please hit the emergency brake. And yes hit the emergency brake even if you're at full speed, unless of course you're reading this while driving a real car in which you should probably just pull over and use your normal breaks.
Chances are you're stuck in perpetual motion without any of your roots deeply seated in the unmoving stillness from which you are arising moment to moment.
If that last sentence lost you, chances are you are absolutely positively stuck in perpetual motion - a serious condition called: GSYF - meaning "generally speaking your fucked"
Ok, I'm just kidding on that front - but let's just say that that you've got quite a few cards stacked against you... nonetheless STAY WITH ME. This will help.
What I'm about to share with you is important, dare I say critically important?
If you don't stop, if you don't step off the restless donkey (that's your conventional thinking mind by the way) there's a really really good chance you're going to miss this. Trust me on this front, you don't want that to happen. None of us do.
Nutrients in our food have been and are being depleted.
Sounds like not such a big deal right?
Hell, as I just wrote that I thought to myself, "that doesn't sound quite right" - But that's the bare bones of our situation. That's the truth. I'm not going to sugar coat it and try to dress it up like santa riding a harley with his beard stuck in the transmission.
It's not flashy, doesn't seem like a crisis, but as you'll see and I'm sure agree, it is. Hopefully, with your spine awake and alive (i hope) or at least a little more awareness moving through your body-mind, I'll have your attention for the rest of this blog and perhaps together we can collectively move in the right direction - or at least a skillful direction.
Here we go...
We've known for at least 15 years that our food supplies are being depleted of nutrients.
Example: in '91 the UK's Medical Research Counsel found that vegetables had lost up to 75% of their nutrients since 1940 - thanks Yvon Chouinard, CEO of Patagonia, as I was COMPLETELY ignorant of this problem prior to reading Let My People Go Surfing.
This study also found that meats had lost half their minerals and fruits had lost about two-thirds of their nutrients when compared to their 1940 counterparts.
It's kind of like Bat Man with all his cool gaggets, he's been training, meditating and dedicating himself to helping people verses Bat Man with a TIVO watching local news broadcasts all day and night but never leaving the lazy boy...
Studies continually confirm this trend: our whole foods - those veggies, chicken and yummy fruits - well, they just ain't what they used to be.
But hey, we never new anything different - so who cares, right?
Wrong.
Here's something that's really shocking - at least it has been for me. For the first time in human civilization we have a situation where we have people who are actually overfed, yet they are under nourished.
Think about that for a moment.
In fact I just did again and now I'm thinking that this might be the first time this has ever happened with any form of life here on earth. Not sure on that one...
Regardless, this is seriously messed up. For the vast majority of human's existence on earth we've consistently struggled to get enough food. Now a sizable section of us here on planet earth have gone in the complete opposite direction.
Nutrient depletion is just one part of the complex puzzle creating this situation, nonetheless, I have no doubt its a major player.
The body, yea the upper right quadrant integral folks, needs nutrients. It doesn't need "calories" - the body doesn't give a rats ass about calories - that's just a unit of measurement we use to look at our food. The body though, it needs, looks for, craves and in some rare cases will eat an 1800 calorie burrito in one sitting or in even rarer cases an entire coffee cake at 3am... all in hopes to get those much needed nutrients.
So when our food has less and less nutrients in it, it only makes sense that we crave more and more. This isn't helped by the billions spent on marketing that the US and UK are in particular guilty of spending on fast foods and junk foods that are nearly void of any nutritional value.
But hey, anything for a buck...
Craving more, eating more, yet getting less - where does this all lead? Well, looking at the right quadrants - the exterior of the situation - it looks a little bit like this.
Here in the US, over 1000 people die every single day because of obesity. We're getting closer to the 500 Billion dollar mark in health care spending on obesity and its related diseases. When we hit the trillion dollar mark - this country in particular is fucked. I'm not sure how much longer we can hold this dysfunctional trend together.
Something's got to go.
Another cost is found in the interior of this situation - yea the left side of the quadrants - let's dive into the upper left just for fun eh? God love you integral folk!
We're talking about your experience, what does this lack of nutrients do to your experience? More specifically what does it do to your awareness? Your vitality?
I think it goes without saying, your vitality plummets like the US and global approval ratings of George W. Your experience starts to settle into a rut of dependence - always looking for something outside of oneself for the answers. Awareness, well this gets slowly dulled down into a nearly unconscious state where not even american idol can wake you up from your suffering.
Awareness resides in both the felt experience of the body, and the felt experience of the mind. It's the interior felt experience of the body-mind. It's not just a mental thing.
Ask yourself this, when was the last time your body vibrated with vivid awareness? Your mind crisp and clear, open and patient? When was the last time you felt so alive that you cried just because the moment was so incredibly valuable?
Now, a 1940 chicken breast and 2 carrot sticks isn't necessarily going to give this to you but it certainly isn't going to hurt.
In fact, I'm in a frame of mind where the integrated balanced life needs nutrient dense - calorically compact food...food that can elevate the body-mind. Integrally informed spiritual practice, for example, requires fueling the body-mind in this way so that the gross and subtle bodies can rest and be dropped in service of our ongoing enfoldement and evolution.
The body-mind's vibrance acts as a platform from which we continually develop instead of the depleted body-mind that acts as a hindrance and "boat anchor" as Shawn Phillips would say.
Alright, here's my two cents on moving in a more skillful direction.
It's the nutrition shake.
(Please don't ask me to dress this up to deliver an unconscious spark of excitement... while that's fine for Pepsi I just can't do it for the nutrition shake. These need to be consumed with intention and awareness, not hype to trick people into looking in the wrong direction so they don't realize they've essentially put complete shit into their body...)
If you read my blog - "i'm addicted to chocolate" - its no surprise that I'm a fan of Full Strength. Here's the deal though, Shawn, Tom and I (check em out here on Zaadz) have been tangling with this issue, this crisis cresting on the horizon over the past two days or so and we truly believe the nutrition shake may just be one of the few paths foward.
Unfortunately, not all nutrition shakes are the solution at this point. Right now, I think there's only one. The rest of the industry seems to be in a downward spiral competing to see who can create the cheapest nutrition shake that "people will still drink."
That's just sad.
Full Strength is headed in the other direction, and I think it stands as one of the few answers to our dilemma. How do we get the nutrients we need consistently without eating ourselves out of a planet to live on?
While organic food cropped in my mind as a solution - I'm sad to say they too suffer from the same problem - although it's a little better. With the sheer number of humans on earth and the number growing thanks to some of my family in Arkansas (9 kids!!!), the more food we grow and the faster we consume, the less nutrients will be in our food.
So what to do?
Please share your thoughts if you're feeling the inspiration as we all need to consider and challenge ourselves to face difficult issues such as this one.
For the time being their is nutrient dense - calorie compact Full Strength, if this isn't the food of the future, I hope we find a better one. If not - we're all going to be telling our kids:
"sorry, but we worked hard collectively as a fairly integrated global culture for decades to make sure we could hand this treasure to you... here you go: GSYF! I love you, now go do you're homework"
For those of you interested in trying some "Chocolate Love" as I've started to call it - or some Vanilla here you go.
Seriously, whatever you're doing... stop right now, if just for a moment. Please hit the emergency brake. And yes hit the emergency brake even if you're at full speed, unless of course you're reading this while driving a real car in which you should probably just pull over and use your normal breaks.
Chances are you're stuck in perpetual motion without any of your roots deeply seated in the unmoving stillness from which you are arising moment to moment.
If that last sentence lost you, chances are you are absolutely positively stuck in perpetual motion - a serious condition called: GSYF - meaning "generally speaking your fucked"
Ok, I'm just kidding on that front - but let's just say that that you've got quite a few cards stacked against you... nonetheless STAY WITH ME. This will help.
What I'm about to share with you is important, dare I say critically important?
If you don't stop, if you don't step off the restless donkey (that's your conventional thinking mind by the way) there's a really really good chance you're going to miss this. Trust me on this front, you don't want that to happen. None of us do.
Nutrients in our food have been and are being depleted.
Sounds like not such a big deal right?
Hell, as I just wrote that I thought to myself, "that doesn't sound quite right" - But that's the bare bones of our situation. That's the truth. I'm not going to sugar coat it and try to dress it up like santa riding a harley with his beard stuck in the transmission.
It's not flashy, doesn't seem like a crisis, but as you'll see and I'm sure agree, it is. Hopefully, with your spine awake and alive (i hope) or at least a little more awareness moving through your body-mind, I'll have your attention for the rest of this blog and perhaps together we can collectively move in the right direction - or at least a skillful direction.
Here we go...
We've known for at least 15 years that our food supplies are being depleted of nutrients.
Example: in '91 the UK's Medical Research Counsel found that vegetables had lost up to 75% of their nutrients since 1940 - thanks Yvon Chouinard, CEO of Patagonia, as I was COMPLETELY ignorant of this problem prior to reading Let My People Go Surfing.
This study also found that meats had lost half their minerals and fruits had lost about two-thirds of their nutrients when compared to their 1940 counterparts.
It's kind of like Bat Man with all his cool gaggets, he's been training, meditating and dedicating himself to helping people verses Bat Man with a TIVO watching local news broadcasts all day and night but never leaving the lazy boy...
Studies continually confirm this trend: our whole foods - those veggies, chicken and yummy fruits - well, they just ain't what they used to be.
But hey, we never new anything different - so who cares, right?
Wrong.
Here's something that's really shocking - at least it has been for me. For the first time in human civilization we have a situation where we have people who are actually overfed, yet they are under nourished.
Think about that for a moment.
In fact I just did again and now I'm thinking that this might be the first time this has ever happened with any form of life here on earth. Not sure on that one...
Regardless, this is seriously messed up. For the vast majority of human's existence on earth we've consistently struggled to get enough food. Now a sizable section of us here on planet earth have gone in the complete opposite direction.
Nutrient depletion is just one part of the complex puzzle creating this situation, nonetheless, I have no doubt its a major player.
The body, yea the upper right quadrant integral folks, needs nutrients. It doesn't need "calories" - the body doesn't give a rats ass about calories - that's just a unit of measurement we use to look at our food. The body though, it needs, looks for, craves and in some rare cases will eat an 1800 calorie burrito in one sitting or in even rarer cases an entire coffee cake at 3am... all in hopes to get those much needed nutrients.
So when our food has less and less nutrients in it, it only makes sense that we crave more and more. This isn't helped by the billions spent on marketing that the US and UK are in particular guilty of spending on fast foods and junk foods that are nearly void of any nutritional value.
But hey, anything for a buck...
Craving more, eating more, yet getting less - where does this all lead? Well, looking at the right quadrants - the exterior of the situation - it looks a little bit like this.
Here in the US, over 1000 people die every single day because of obesity. We're getting closer to the 500 Billion dollar mark in health care spending on obesity and its related diseases. When we hit the trillion dollar mark - this country in particular is fucked. I'm not sure how much longer we can hold this dysfunctional trend together.
Something's got to go.
Another cost is found in the interior of this situation - yea the left side of the quadrants - let's dive into the upper left just for fun eh? God love you integral folk!
We're talking about your experience, what does this lack of nutrients do to your experience? More specifically what does it do to your awareness? Your vitality?
I think it goes without saying, your vitality plummets like the US and global approval ratings of George W. Your experience starts to settle into a rut of dependence - always looking for something outside of oneself for the answers. Awareness, well this gets slowly dulled down into a nearly unconscious state where not even american idol can wake you up from your suffering.
Awareness resides in both the felt experience of the body, and the felt experience of the mind. It's the interior felt experience of the body-mind. It's not just a mental thing.
Ask yourself this, when was the last time your body vibrated with vivid awareness? Your mind crisp and clear, open and patient? When was the last time you felt so alive that you cried just because the moment was so incredibly valuable?
Now, a 1940 chicken breast and 2 carrot sticks isn't necessarily going to give this to you but it certainly isn't going to hurt.
In fact, I'm in a frame of mind where the integrated balanced life needs nutrient dense - calorically compact food...food that can elevate the body-mind. Integrally informed spiritual practice, for example, requires fueling the body-mind in this way so that the gross and subtle bodies can rest and be dropped in service of our ongoing enfoldement and evolution.
The body-mind's vibrance acts as a platform from which we continually develop instead of the depleted body-mind that acts as a hindrance and "boat anchor" as Shawn Phillips would say.
Alright, here's my two cents on moving in a more skillful direction.
It's the nutrition shake.
(Please don't ask me to dress this up to deliver an unconscious spark of excitement... while that's fine for Pepsi I just can't do it for the nutrition shake. These need to be consumed with intention and awareness, not hype to trick people into looking in the wrong direction so they don't realize they've essentially put complete shit into their body...)
If you read my blog - "i'm addicted to chocolate" - its no surprise that I'm a fan of Full Strength. Here's the deal though, Shawn, Tom and I (check em out here on Zaadz) have been tangling with this issue, this crisis cresting on the horizon over the past two days or so and we truly believe the nutrition shake may just be one of the few paths foward.
Unfortunately, not all nutrition shakes are the solution at this point. Right now, I think there's only one. The rest of the industry seems to be in a downward spiral competing to see who can create the cheapest nutrition shake that "people will still drink."
That's just sad.
Full Strength is headed in the other direction, and I think it stands as one of the few answers to our dilemma. How do we get the nutrients we need consistently without eating ourselves out of a planet to live on?
While organic food cropped in my mind as a solution - I'm sad to say they too suffer from the same problem - although it's a little better. With the sheer number of humans on earth and the number growing thanks to some of my family in Arkansas (9 kids!!!), the more food we grow and the faster we consume, the less nutrients will be in our food.
So what to do?
Please share your thoughts if you're feeling the inspiration as we all need to consider and challenge ourselves to face difficult issues such as this one.
For the time being their is nutrient dense - calorie compact Full Strength, if this isn't the food of the future, I hope we find a better one. If not - we're all going to be telling our kids:
"sorry, but we worked hard collectively as a fairly integrated global culture for decades to make sure we could hand this treasure to you... here you go: GSYF! I love you, now go do you're homework"
For those of you interested in trying some "Chocolate Love" as I've started to call it - or some Vanilla here you go.
http://www.fullstrength.com
Peace, with much gratitude
Rob
Peace, with much gratitude
Rob
Access: Public
food
June 2008 
greetings
hey this shake has questionable ingredients. i would recommend not putting it into the body and putting in the garbage where whey went before protein over-consumers and their product-pushers found that it is high in protein, but protein that is not assimilable in the human body. look up whey protein on google and find a source that provides info that isn't brought to you by the money-makers. the stuff is cheap and harsh on the body. the body doesnt absorb protein, it uses amino acids. for good amino look to seeds and greens. the cow that provides whey gets their aminos from grass. go to the source, no middle-cow, the nutrients are sun charged and alive. since grasses fibers are too hard to digest go for the dark leafy greens, like kale, and chard. hemp seeds and flax have great ratios of beneficial aminos and goji berries are a complete protein, too. hope this doesnt sound like i am tryin to be a bummer, but whey is not human food.
here is a product that was developed for the whole food eating weight lifter people that uses real food in the ingredients:
http://www.rawfood.com/cgi-bin/order/index.cgi?id=630478844206&d=single&item_id=1017&c=Supplements&sc=Protein_Products&tc=
I have to say, Rob, I was impressed with your blog until I realized you were plugging your buddy's product. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but you know better than this, don't you? Aside from that, the product looks like many of the same old things we have on the shelf at the health food store where I work for the people who insist on buying whey and soy protein without understanding what it does to their bodies. They are both difficult to break down, and soy and whey protein islolates are questionable even more than the whole concentrates. I think “waking vision's” suggestion looks like a much better product, one that I would happily put in my body. I agree with him about the hemp and flax seeds, goji, and leafy greens. New Chapter's Berry Greens is a great source of greens. There are a few hemp and flax/hemp protein shakes out there, and they are whole. I am aware of the depressing trend of depletion of nutrients in the soil which is passed on to even organically grown foods, but you can buy whole food state nutritional supplements that have the amounts of various nutrients verified and listed on the label. There are multi-vitamin mineral supplements like this made by companies such as MegaFood and New Chapter. You can use Celtic Sea Salt as a great source of trace minerals. YOu can buy biodynamically grown produce, and you can grow your own after building your own soil with organic matter. YOu can buy produce from small, local, organic farms. The smaller ones often do things that build the soil, so that organic doesn't simply mean free of pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers. You can visit some of them. Or you can rely on a lab-produced whey protein shake, proabably not using whey from hormone and antibiotic free happy cows, with chemically isolated USP (read “sterile”) nutrients added to it. Whatever floats your anchor. Just be aware, if you are not already, that a tomato has so many individual compounds in it that chemists stopped counting at 10,000 with no end in sight because it became absurdly obvious how futile it was to try to produce anything like it in the lab. The human body and its cells are structured and evolved along with plants full of nutrients in the human's ecosystem. Giving the human body sterile, chemically isolated piles of white powder labeled with the tiny handlful of names we have for the few nutrients we have identified with their corresponding purposes in the body is a pathetic substitute for what the body needs, nutrient rich food.
This sounds like it's going to be battle. For the record, I currently use a whey protein powder to go along with my lifting and am happy that I have actually put on 8lbs in the past month. I would love it if I could obtain those types of results from eating just grasses and whole foods. Could you all provide some scientific studies that actually show the benefits/detriments you have spoken about so the argument is fleshed out more than opinions.
Peace
Joshua
i have been corrected by a coworker who says that whey is a good healthy protein. i have also heard that isolates are not healthy, but i do not have any research to back it up. i would still choose hemp seed meal first personally, because it is a whole food. apparently the only parts of cow's milk that are hard to digest are the casein and the lactose. sorry for the egoic rant above. I do stand behind the recommendations for whole food state nutrition, and no, I don't have the studies and links to back them up, but seriously, look up some of that stuff on the internet. the info is out there.
Ok,
Here’s what I do know, but work with me here as my expertise is not in the science of nutrients - although I’m learning quite a bit day by day.
The number one ingredient in Full Strength is Iso-Chilled Whey Protein Isolate. This is different from other forms of whey protein isolates in that most others are made with a flash heat process. Here’s the major difference, the flash heating process destroys more of the bio-available fractions in the protein rendering these forms of whey protein isolates less useful for your body. The iso-chilling process creates the isolate and preserves more of the bio-active fractions, thus making this form of whey protein the finest form of whey protein available.
The reason whey protein isolates are so sought after for 4 major reasons.
#1. They are the most readily absorbed into the body (including the brain). This is because of it has higher levels of bio-availability than any other form of protein
#2. They are incredibly rich in amino acid content - including the two vitally important aminos glutamine and cysteine. Apparently these are the direct precursors to the most powerful free-radical fighting amino gluthathine. So whey (not just isolates) plays a central role in combating aging.
#3. Gluthathine - in addition to combating free-radicals, also enhances the immune system. Although there are also other nutrients - immunoglobulins and lactoferrin - that are present that positively trigger the immune system.
#4. Finally its low on milk sugars, low in fat and low in calories, which when you look at the problems associated with macro nutrient imbalances or overconsumption of calories is huge!!!
If you really want some science on this subject:
Rankin, J.W., “Role of Protein in Exercise,” Clin Sports Med 18.3 (1999) : 499-511.
Bounous, G., et al., “Whey Proteins in Cancer Prevention,” Cancer Lett 57.2 (1991) : 91-4.
Bounous, G., et al., “The Immunoenhancing Property of Dietary Whey Protein Concentrate,” Clin Invest Med 11.4 (1988) : 271-8.
Bounous, G., and Gold, P., “The Biological Activity of Undenatured Dietary Whey Proteins: Role of Glutathione,” Clin Invest Med 14.4 (1991) : 296-309.
Agin, D., et al., “Effects of Whey Protein and Resistance Exercise on Body Composition and Muscle Strength in Women with HIV Infection,” Ann N Y Acad Sci 904 (2000) : 607-9.
With regards to Evalution’s orientation towards whole foods, I’m generally in agreement. Things get a little sticky when we start looking at this shake in particular as its not classified as a supplement in terms of its ingredient labeling. This nutrition shake is labeled as a food, just like any other packaged whole food.
While some of the ingredients undergo a processing, and thus some lose a portion of their bio-availability, like the Whey protein isolate (although the iso chilling process preserves about 90% of these bio-active fractions), others are a whole food source themselves.
For example the Beta-glucan rich rolled oats is a whole food source that plays an essential role in creating the carbohydrate matrix of Full Strength. This helps with lasting and stabilized energy and it helps regulate insulin in the body. These oats are also heart healthy.
While whole foods are declining in nutrient value, which was the central thrust and question of this blog, this shake - more of an after thought in the blog - does raise some interesting questions. Does this nutritional “vehicle” if you will deliver some of the lost gains that have been incurred in whole foods?
For example, Full Strength has one hell of vitamin and mineral complex in it. Its got 500% more vitamins than the Centrum supplement. In the face of declining vitamin and minerals in whole foods, is this useful? My bias is yes. And I’m assuming - although I don’t know this for a fact - because these vitamins and minerals are delivered in a balanced meal their absorption into the body will be much better when compared to the “one a day” supplements where most of the vitamins are urinated out of the body.
On the mineral front, this nutrition shake uses “chelated” minerals which makes them more available for absorption into the body. Yes chelated minerals involve a type of processing (which in this case makes them more - yes more - available for the body to take in. These chelated minerals were created because most people don’t get the necessary amount of minerals from whole foods in their diet…thus back to the original problem of declining values of nutrients in whole foods.
Additionally when you consider the essential fats vital for cellular health, fat loss and energy along with the pro-biotics in Full Strength which enhance nutrient absorption and “gut health” this shake starts to look pretty damn good for what it does for the body. Literally you’re body can take in more nutrients in the “foods” you eat after the shake. (which points to an entirely different problem of many people’s inability to take in all the nutrients available in their foods - even though they are significantly lower…)
When you toss in tyrosine, which helps facilitate mental focus along with taurine, known to help nervous system functioning and the body’s utilization of nutrients I find myself not wanting to go without this nutrition shake in my life.
So, my personal practice in the face of decreasing nutrient depletion in whole foods is to use Full Strength, I don’t know if this is our long term solution. I can see how science and food engineering may be able to improve on what Full Strength has done today and may be able to integrate whole foods with “supplements” into well balanced, healthy foods that can help people live the healthiest possible life possible.
With that said, I’m also in agreement with Evalution’s orientation to more sustainable agriculture practices, which I have much to learn about myself. Furthermore, Evalution is dead right on the subject of our present understanding of what’s in whole foods. We’ve only identified a sliver of all the nutrients that are in whole foods. I have no doubt we will continue to discover more, but whole foods in their “traditional” sense are vitally important - literally.
And that’s primarily why I posted this blog. We need whole foods, but there is a crisis coming. Of the nutrients that we know of, they’ve been rapidly depleted over the past 50 years. Where are we going to be in another 50? What are my kids going to face? This honestly saddens my soul.
As for my the nutrients that we’ve yet to identify, are some of them entirely gone now - extinct like an undiscovered insect that might have saved lives in our disappearing rain forests? Disturbing…
Nurtrition shakes can’t touch this problem. Its a problem of …???
Peace,
Rob
hmmm. good points.