Do we need to develop better "bioenergetic food" supply chains?
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I think there are a lot of potential problems currently and in the pipeline for a lot of the foundations of the bioenergetic diet. Orange juice is one example of a supply chain that seems to be getting more and more fragile as time passes: https://x.com/bioenergeticfar/status/1793692949521322133
Milk seems to be getting a higher and higher phosphorus content with some milk having more phosphorus now then calcium. If conventional fertilizer is used to fertilize the grass or grains fed to cows or goats it contains a much higher amount of phosphorus then calcium probably further worsening the ratio.
Most fruit people are getting through fresh fruit, juice, dried or frozen is to some degree under ripened and generally from some mass produced source that tends to be lower quality. Generally it doesn't compare to flavor or qualitywise to tree or plant ripened versions before even factoring in the quality difference that comes with practices that enhance plant function/metabolism.
As population increases and a greater percentage of the world develops out of poverty demands for food will increase while the current global foundation for global food production becomes shakier and shakier through soil, water table depletion, increased conventional fertilizer cost, soil contamination, etc ...
I think many of us should look to improving our local "Bioenergetic food" supplies. Whether than be through growing high quality food in our back garden, community gardens, or small or large acreage farms!
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You raise some very important issues. I hadn't heard that about the Ca:P of milk changing, but its not surprising really, when organisms aren't cared for properly, everything deteriorates.
I'm saddened by the acidic orange juice I usually end up with from stores. I don't have a brix meter with me but I guess it would be low.
Hopefully we will see more farmers switch to regenerative agriculture and the situation starts turning around.
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@bioNRgetic_brain I haven't been able to find the studies again but https://x.com/NangaParbat1618/status/1783166241324019767 mentions that the Swedish state has been seeing a steady decline in the calcium relative to phosphorus.
I think the pretty extreme issues many citrus growers are having with disease will lead to many having to explore alternatives.
Seems there is a big move towards regenerative but how big it will be as a percentage of total food supply is a different question. With the current standard of the food supply there is a lot of room for upside in food quality.
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Another aspect is about the health of the livestock we eat, especially from factory farms of chicken and pigs.
Consider that both chickens and pigs are fed with the worst food imaginable that makes them overweight and obese. Fed PUFAs in their carbs, and given food to maximize the food conversion ratio, with the goal of maximizing weight in the shortest time poasible to increase profits. These livestock are very sickly, and the area these animals grown in are made as sterile as possible, in order to avoid exposure to any pathogen coming from the area surrounding the factory farm. It's unavoidable that they would rely on antibiotics to survive till they are slaughtered.
Which is these livestock fall prey to mass epidemics like bird flu, or whatever you call it in the case of pigs. The years leading up to our own COVID scare, were years involving mass cullings of chickens and pigs, if you will remember.
In normal times where we face no chicken or pork supply shortages, we need to remind ourselves we are eating livestock that are so immunologically compromised.
If this is the protein source we regularly eat, we probably have to at the very least eat more beef, as beef may be raised better in that they still eat grass containing more nutrients, and they still get sunlight in contrast to the boarded up conditions in factory farms.
But eating wild caught fish from the seas and lakes rather than farm-raised fish would give us access to fish that thrive rather than merely survive long enough to be processed into food.
But this is where living close to the sea and its bounty offers some advantages that living in a landlocked country cannot provide unless there is a large and healthy inland lake.
I live in an archipelago and enjoy some advantages that previously didn't, living in US cities where the food supply is not nutritionally fulfilling and I had no choice but to take supplements. But now, I take very few supplements.
I have experienced amazing improvements in my vision which I would not have if I relied on the beta-carotene that is the vitamin A in most supplements. The beta-carotene so much favored by supplement companies over retinol, I believe, would not have done to my eyes what eating beef liver once a week has done for me.
But beef liver is easily available in the US. One thing I haven't heard Peat advocate is to insist on eating organic. It's probably because paying an insane premium for organic in places like Whole Foods makes it unrealistic for people with average salary. Rather than not eating beef liver from regular cows because it's not organic, it still is better to eat beef liver from non-organic sources. As one is still going to get retinol than be organic-driven and be deficient in retinol.Which is by far superior to beta-carotene.
Temporal thinking is the faculty that’s
engaged by an enriched environment, but it’s
wrong to call it “thinking,” because it’s simply
the way organisms exist... - Ray Peat Nov 2017 Newsletter -
@yerrag said in Do we need to develop better "bioenergetic food" supply chains?:
But beef liver is easily available in the US. One thing I haven't heard Peat advocate is to insist on eating organic.
A lot of what they are calling organic is just animals given organic feed, I've noticed. I've bought organic fruits and vegetables and they never taste good.
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I have lost track what really defines organic. It has mattered less with time, as the meaning keeps getting watered down.
Trust in the system isn't there, and I wonder if I'm the bigger fool for paying a premium for someone:s ability to skirt past regulations to call what he sells me organic.
It's simply better to know a farmer and for that to happen you have to go local. Organic certifications are just as useful as having a piece of paper certifying one as a doctor or a scientist. And they just do the bidding of their employing in falsifying science into a scam.
Don't trust the system. Trust a person. Easy to say but hard to do in actuality because we don't make time to know. The pressures of every day life leave little room to roam your locale and meet the folks who work the soil and till the land.
At the end of the day, I cross my fingers and hope I'm not taking in enough poison as I get my daily nutrients through food.
