We have all had a great meal somewhere (at a fancy restaurant, at the neighbours or at home) and some time after, maybe a few hours, a few minutes, or the next day, we ask ourselves: “What did I eat?” or, “Where did I eat?”
Once, after eating in a Mexican restaurant, my neighbour said, “You must have a cast-iron stomach to eat that hot food.” Good Mexican food never bothered me. Some people can’t eat sea food, or drink milk, or eat anything with wheat flour in it. Jeannie is very sensitive to gluten, but I also had a nurse friend who was celiac and became deathly sick if she ate anything with gluten in it. Sometimes she had to go to emergency and have her stomach pumped or she would die. Some people are mildly or severely diabetic, and some even avoid drinking milk, unless it is a certain brand and labeled lactose-free. Recently, Jeannie had a bloated and upset tummy for more than a day after eating great tasting french fries from a famous chip wagon. She later found out that some fries are dipped in flour before they are fried. That makes them crunchier. There was enough gluten from the flour dip that her tummy was upset for two days.
Thirty-some years ago while combining a grain corn test plot for a neighbour, I noticed four varieties of corn that had no wild animal damage even though the field was beside the woods. The rest of the 20 varieties were damaged by racoons, deer, squirrels, bears, and birds who picked the top kernels off the cobs. Ever since, I have wondered: what do wild animals know that humans don’t? A later check showed that those four un-touched corn varieties were new GMO varieties. A test done on our farm a few years later showed that both GMO and non-GMO corn varieties digested in the cows stomach equally as long as the GMO variety that was not sprayed with glyphosate.
Several years before that I had started to keep a mental note of foods that caused my stomach to be upset. I then noted that it was the foods made from those GMO crops that were probably sprayed with glyphosate that made my tummy upset. Only a couple years ago, after eating at a Mexican restaurant, I had a very upset tummy. I asked myself, “what did I eat?” After ticking off everything that I had for supper at that restaurant, the only thing that could have been derived from a GMO crop sprayed with glyphosate was the rice, if it came from the U.S. Most rice in the U.S. is GMO rice. Now we only buy and eat rice grown in India because there are no GMO consumable crops in India.
The very sad thing is that very few of the foods that can cause sickness or even death are marked on the label that may contain who knows what. Some non-GMO crops are sprayed before harvest with a desiccant which kills the crop and any weed in the field and lets the entire crop to dry down evenly and not require swathing before combining. Some people are still not sure if they are gluten intolerant or sensitive to residual glyphosate on the grain. Today, many of our so-called foods are a mix of many different things and residue from crop spray. All our foods are supposed to be safe, according to the FDA, Health Canada, the EPA, and other government agencies that are there to protect us. I have several former employees in colleges and universities and government agencies that have since disclosed different information.
Our animals are fed like our best athletes and their rations are blended with computer accuracy and sometimes foods in their rations are selected using atomic weights of the different minor elements in each foodstuff. There isn’t a nutritionist on earth that could take the items in your grocery cart and balance a ration for you, because of the giant mix of who knows what that is in many so-called foods!
Some pets today eat pet food that costs more than $100 per bag, prescribed by their veterinarian because of allergies to some grains or spray residue on the grain. Those special pet foods usually come from another country outside of North America. Our economy has changed from a county where forestry was the number one economy, to agriculture, after the U.S. killed our softwood lumber industry many years ago.
Now healthcare seems to be the number one industry in our county. How many doctors, nurses, pharmacists, X-ray technicians, lab workers, medical secretaries, nurse assistants, kitchen staff, maintenance staff, mechanics, CLSC staff, snow plowers, grass cutters, gardeners, cleaners, taxies, medical transfer staff, ambulance drivers, etc. can you name? Many years ago a local doctor said, “you are what you eat.” Let’s be more particular about what we eat!
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
