herbal2

I can sum up everything we should know about diet in a loosely translated bit of wisdom by Randolph Stone, (The Father of Polarity Therapy, who believes that we should periodically fast as well as cleanse and de-toxify.) He says that food is harmful or nourishing depending on how lovingly it is prepared, and how thankfully it is consumed. That bit goes very, very deeply into how much of a role our mind and spirit play when it comes to what we put into our bodies.

There is so much information and misinformation about diet "out there". Our diet is directly influenced by our ethnicity, geographics, family preferences, social habits, religion, and in no small way by fad. There are emotional implications to the way that we eat and how often we "need" to eat. For most of us, it isn't a survival issue, so you can already presume that we are consuming more actual food than we absolutely have to. That being said, herbs come into play for most of us as a means to boost our nutrition and to avoid or correct problems.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MINERALS

Most of our nutrition should come from the food that we ingest, but today's food products contain far less of the vitamins and nutrients than it did due to overuse of the land which contributed to mineral depletion, and the fact that the very food itself was manipulated long before the 1900's for ease of commercial production and transport at the expense of the nutrition. Most Americans have never in their lives eaten a tomato or an ear of corn that wasn't a hybrid, created for "market". I won't go into genetic engineering here. No matter how you look at it, or what you eat, unless you are growing your own food, or have a source of pesticide free food that is grown on rich, undepleted soil without chemical fertilizers (organic does not necessarily mean more nutritious) you get plenty of fiber, but you are NOT getting all of your nutrition from your food.

Herbs, if they are "farmed" for high production and sales, processed in modern time saving methods, are also lacking the essential minerals that you would normally expect, and there is no way of quickly and commercially producing an herb that is going to have equal concentrations of the beneficial elements or compounds as that same herb, slowly growing without artificial manipulation in its natural environment, surrounded by its companion plants.

PAY ATTENTION, HERE: IT'S THE MINERALS

In my agricultural classes, we spent a great deal of time working out complex tables of "TDN" (total digestive nutrients - that's the viable nutrition actually available to and retained by the animal after the food has been processed, or digested). Only healthy animals will thrive, attain full growth, and reproduce without problems. By the 1950's, agriculture as a business, defined that most stock losses were due to major nutritional problems in animals raised for food. If you are in the "business", you want THE most return on your dollar. That means no wasteful overfeeding, and every bite HAS to pay off. It is no secret to the agriculture industry that there are no more minerals left in the soil! Cows, horses, pigs, rabbits, sheep, chickens, you name it,
are ALL given mineral supplements. RELIGIOUSLY! Why?
There is not enough mineral content in THEIR food which is grown on the
SAME depleted soil as OUR food! The risks of financial loss due to developmental and health problems, are too great for the serious agriculturist to ignore. No mineral supplements equals: sick, deformed and non-producing animals which equals: NO PROFITS.

So, where you get your herbs, how they are grown, collected, processed and packaged, influences the "TDN" of the final product. You get what you pay for, in every sense of the word. Buy your own herbal supplements as if you were a fine, thoroughbred racehorse, knowing that the
herb itself needs the minerals to produce its magic.