By Joan McDaniel August 13, 2014
What is a Farmers Market?
I don’t mean a store front with a sign that says “Farmers Market”, I mean a place where there are real farmers with real food grown from the real earth or from real animals they have raised from birth. What about the real hand-made crafts made by real local artist, a basic art form that is also becoming rare.
In other words where else can you go to find REAL food, flowers, fruit and people.
In a word I mean a REAL Farmers Market – Click to Find Your Local Farmers Market
So Why Would You Go To a Real Farmers Market?
Like the Cowboy and Indian of Yesterday, the Family farm and the farmer are becoming a dying breed
Why would you go to a Farmers Market? F is for food, farmer, freshness, friendliness, fun, flavonoids and because he is a dying breed sorry dying doesn’t start with f but it is true.
America is losing its generations of local farmer’s. The number of, small farms are decreasing fast.
Industrialization is Good but?
We pride ourselves on our networks and world distribution systems, but we have lost touch with our food. Modern factory farming and shipping methods involving thousands and thousands of miles by large and larger industrialized food producers. As the industrial food giants grow and our rural farmland disappear, all the freshness, friendliness, fun and flavonoid are going with it. Not to mention the word REAL.
What is Seasonal Food?
If you are eating food fresh from the farmers market or from your garden it will be seasonal. Today because of larger distribution produce is available all year-long. But just how good are these vegetables? Good to get vegetables all year-long but where were they grown? Thousands and thousands of miles away. Seasonal food means it’s fresh. To get fresh food it has to be when it is harvested. There is summer, autumn and then there is winter food.
What Is In Our Food?
We no longer know how our food is grown, if it contains toxic ingredients like GMO’s” God Move Over” Generically modified food. We hear stories of animals loaded with antibiotics being raised in inhuman close quarter cages all of their lives. It seems massive food production is more concerned with the bottom line theirs not yours. Shelf life sometimes seems more important than your life.
Help keep our rural farmland from factory farming. Visit your local farmers market .This is one person’s opinion but I have cause read on
I bet you don’t know what a flavonoid is? It has to do with the energy and power of fresh food and nutrition. I’ll get to it a little later. First – Why do I go to the Farmers Market?
So Why Do I Go to a Farmers Market?
I was Very Sick.
I first started going to the market almost two years ago, and now it is a regular routine winter or summer. You see I had been very sick and knew that the only way to get well was to eat as fresh food as possible.
I knew that meant starting a garden but my green thumb wasn’t any stronger than the rest of me for I could hardly stand up. I didn’t know much about fresh vegetables. For a start, I knew I liked green leaf lettuce but what else? This search got me out of the grocery store then into the health food store and eventually I got to the my local Farmer’s market.
The artist, farmers and vendors seemed to welcome my greenhorn knowledge and concept of things. As time passed I planted my own green leaf lettuce and other vegetables helped and encouraged by the people in the market. There isn’t any trade secrets or secret formulas just good ol’ experience and tradition. Of course, they wouldn’t explain why their produce was three times the size and quantity as mine I guess that goes to the experience part.
As to the fun part with each passing week I got a little stronger and it was fun seeing my friends and hearing the great music. I have fun just talking about it. The farmers are busy but still they have enough time to answer my million and one questions. I not only learned how to cook the food, I learned how to grow, plant, and raise it on my own.
Now I’ll get to the flavonoid part
Carotenoids and flavonoids are naturally occurring pigments that have powerful antioxidant properties. They are what gives fruits and vegetables their vibrant colors. There are over 700 different ones depending on the type of fresh fruit or vegetable and its color. They can only be found in Fresh food straight from the farm or garden.
To Understand “Fresh” You Need to Know Some Other Words
When you use the term “Fresh” when you apply it to food you start using other words like antioxidants, carotenoids, enzymes, flavonoids, health, immune system, free-radicals, free-radical damage, minerals, nutrient, oxidation, and vitamins to name a few.
Note: you did not see terms like “added, artificial, fortified, ingredients, natural, or supplement. In fact you don’t even see a nutritional food label for the food just came off a tree or out of the ground and may even have specks of dirt.
You may see the term “Fresh” on a sign outside a grocery store or outside the Produce section of the same local Grocery Store. The stores “Fresh” food doesn’t have any dirt but does have a Point of Sale sticker. The produce has been soaked and the dirt has been washed off normally by Chloride (Bleach) or other chemicals.
What is Fresh Food?
You may not know it but Fresh means the food is still alive. I don’t mean alive in like it will carry on a conversation with you or even know what’s going on in the world outside. I mean it is still breathing and converting the sun’s rays to energy. The longer your food sits on a ship, truck, loading dock or store shelf or your refrigerator it loses more and more of its antioxidants, carotenoids and flavonoids or nutrition and vitamins.
Once the food is harvested it slowly stops breathing. When anything stops breathing it loses oxygen. Oxygen is necessary for life. Without oxygen you have death. Some fruits and vegetables have low respiration rates and can last longer others can’t last very long.
Why Does Your Body Need Fresh Food?
Note: I didn’t say Food. I said Fresh Food. You need food for energy but you need fresh food for the antioxidants they contain. You may call these antioxidants nutrition and vitamins. Fresh food helps give you body’s immune system the ammunition it needs to fight disease and keep you healthy. Your immune system uses inflammation to fight free-radical damage. See below
A Brief Lesson and Quick Look At Atoms
When you talk about inflammation the following terms come into the discussion. Antioxidants, decease, free-radicals, illness, immune system, and oxidation.
The concepts of how the human body works is complex. In fact understanding its complexity, and effectiveness boarders on magic, miracles, mysterious and spiritual powers. The energy in the body and its ability to heal is still being researched and understood or many cases miss-understood.
Not to over simply, but basically all illness starts with inflammation. Damage from free-radicals over time causes a chain reaction which causes serous illness. Free-radical damage to the cells happens when we take in more toxins then nutrition. These Toxins are found in the environment and in incomplete nutrition. Processed food and including foods high in sugar are incomplete and they cause free-radical damage.
Inflammation is your immune systems response to fighting disease. The only way to stop free-radical damage is to give your immune system the ammunition it needs. The ammunition you system needs are antioxidants.
During my research I found this diagram. It seems to explain what I’m trying to say. All I know is I stopped my inflammation and slowly got well by what I ate including the food from the Farmers Market.
Free Radicals and Antioxidants
Some Terms
Antioxidant – Can only be found in fresh, non-processed food. There are many types of antioxidants depending on the type of fresh food. These different forms have different names including the flavonoid I talked about.
Basically an antioxidant is any substance that prevents or slows the process of oxidation, which produces cell-wall erosion and cell death. This cell death is caused by a chain reaction of free-radical damage. Antioxidants neutralizes the free radical. It provides the missing electron the free-radical destroyed. It is the ammunition your immune system needs and in a word “Puts the Fire out” and prevents further inflammation
All Illness is Cause By Inflammation
Inflammation is your immune systems response to injury, and stress to the body. This includes the damage done by free radicals and other toxins. Generally the immune system uses inflammation to isolate the toxin so that it can be destroyed by the body. In today’s world our immune systems are being overwhelmed with more and more toxins both from the environment and our food. The immune system needs ammunition that you give it from the food you eat.
Cell Wall Erosion – If the cells in your body do not get enough energy the wall of the cell weakens and dies. The cell is powered by what is called Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). If the ATP has cells damaged by free radicals it becomes weak and cannot hold the cell together and the cell is destroyed.
Free-Radicals – Free radicals are missing and electron. Free radicals are a normal body process and are responsible for biological oxidation. “Oxidation” reactions are also called “biological rusting”. Free radicals are toxic renegade molecules that attack and destroy other molecules. This is a normal body process. This is how your body gets rid of old cells and makes way for the new.
But when the body has too many free-radicals causing a chain reaction your immune system is overwhelmed. You wouldn’t eat a tomato that has turned black. It has turned black because it contains toxins. Toxins are free radicals. These free-radicals have an acid balance and feed off thus destroying oxygen and cause cell destruction and death (tomato turns black). Remember processed food and processed sugar are considered to be a free-radical.
Accumulation of damage over the years results in degenerative tissues and loss of function that typifies fatigue, loss of energy and old age.
Oxidation is a natural process where cells die. This is a natural process. Cells do not live forever and are completely replaced over a period of a month or so. But in today’s world where there has been a major increase in toxins from the environment and foods with incomplete nutrition, the oxidation process is now out of control. Our immune system is working overtime and in many cases is overwhelming.
Basically oxidation causes rust in iron. Oxidation is illustrated best by when you cut an apple it will turn brown once it is exposed to oxygen. The enzymes cause this change and the fruit decays almost right in front of your eyes.
Toxins – are poisons
There are additional causes of inflammation such as environmental toxicity, not drinking enough clean water, lack of sleep, and lack of exercise all contribute to low levels of chronic inflammation. But diet is the main cause. Inflammation often goes undetected for many years until disease finally emerges.
Lesson over
How do you tell the difference between a true fresh vegetable and one that has traveled hundreds of miles ripening in a box rather than the sun Color and TASTE. There is a major difference between a grocery store tomato and a fresh from the ground tomato. Your bodies aren’t the only one that notices the difference your immune system now has real ammunition to fight diseases.
This is how I got well and now I am telling the world. Protect yourself, your health and your local community DON’T LET THE FAMILY FARM DISAPPEAR.
Next lesson is buy your food fresh from your local Farmers Market.
Sources
For a complete article read Dr. Mercola’s The Ultimate Guide to Antioxidants
http://www.thesweetbeet.com/vegetables-nutrients/
http://ezinearticles.com/?Carotenoids-and-Flavonoids-Are-Important-to-Your-Health&id=4747711
http://www.axiscw.com/2012/08/05/lees-summit-chiropractor-decrease-inflammation/