My Quest with Food Part 2

When I went on my elimination diet, which you can read about in My Quest with Food part 1, I truly wanted to learn more about why my body was reacting to certain foods. Was I having allergies, sensitivities to food, or intolerance? I felt completely na¯ve and wanted to start learning more about my relationship with food. After all, we're supposed to treat our bodies as a temple, right?

My first step in learning was watching the documentary Food Inc. I'd heard so much about the film and wanted to take the time to learn more. With my health so focused on allergies, I was reading books about allergies, intolerances, and the make-up of foods and the industry has become, which started a twinge to my insides.

After watching Food Inc, the twinge was confirmed with even more than I ever imagined. The movie only skims the surface however. A friend recommended I read The Unhealthy Truth, a book that truly made me see why food allergies develop, in part by the process of how our food is being grown, specifically genetically modified. I learned that once foods started to become genetically modified this is when people started developing food allergies or sensitivities. This reading has a great resource of other books and movies, which I'm still reading and studying. As consumers, we need to know what is truly going into our foods and what we're putting into our bodies, or the bodies of our children.

A few facts that knocked my socks off:

· Soy in the modern Western diet is NOT good for you. In other countries where soy is eaten it is consumed quite differently and not genetically modified as our food is. Soy is not digested well in animals with one stomach, which in turn just makes us fat.

· Aspartame in your body turns into formaldehyde.

· We as consumers are paying for farmers to thrive on producing genetically modified foods. These are cheap to produce, which is why all of our foods contain either corn or soy. How many products that you purchase have high fructose corn syrup? These foods are produced not only for people, but animals. Farmers get subsidies from the government to make these foods.

· Animals are held in such small living quarters that they basically live in their own feces, get sick, are administered antibiotics until their bodies can't stand it anymore. At which point, they are slaughtered for our enjoyment.

· Agencies that SHOULD be in place to protect people only sell out to the highest bidder. Ex. The FDA allows the inclusion of modified foods because companies that have market share in producing these have paid big bucks to ensure their inclusion in food. Also, the U.S. is the only country that has their administration of food and drugs attached. To me this means that they feed each other. Bad food causes individuals to buy more drugs, and the vicious cycle continues.

I'd already been cleaning out my pantry since most foods that I owned included foods that contained allergens to me: nuts, soy, dairy. I've been left with the question posed, "Where do I go from here?" several times. I don't feel bad not eating soy anymore knowing that it doesn't truly have a place in my body. I don't have any desire to drink diet sodas anymore and I take a lot more value in eating organic meats and participating in locally grown markets.