Matthew eating pesto
Clean living is a lifestyle where you care for your body in a way that pleases and respects God and the Earth that he created for us. At the risk of sounding preachy… God made us in his perfect image and in the Garden of Eden he provided us with the perfect nourishment to care for our perfect bodies inside and out. Unfortunately, soon thereafter sin stepped in and started to mess everything up.
Nowaways we live in a world of imperfect, lab-created, processed food that is aimed at lowering a corporation’s bottom line instead of providing nourishment for our bodies. From the Merrian Webster dictionary, the definition of food is material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.
Perhaps that is why most Americans complain of low energy and disease – we are not eating real food. Processed food is not made up naturally occurring versions of essential micronutrients and supplementary substances that our bodies crave, hence the obesity and disease epidemic that our country faces. Most of the ingredients listed on nutrition labels are unpronounceable and cannot be found living in nature. They do not come from the earth, they are man-made. With the world’s expanding waistlines and increase in disease, obviously our laboratory efforts are not working.
So, what about organic food, is it worth the hefty price tag? Based on all of the research that I have done, the answer is yes. If you have not yet read this article by Michael Pollan, you should. It will open your eyes to the amount of garbage that organized farming has managed to get into our produce, grains and other seemingly unspoiled whole foods through sick soil, synthetic fertilizers, copious numbers of pesticides, toxic and carcinogenic preservatives, manufactured fungicides, and the list goes on and on. You would be amazed at the things that the FDA allows into the conventional food chain (elements of the lethal injection, confirmed carcinogens, disease generators, etc.). It definitely does not seem like they have the consumer’s health in mind.
And it’s not only food. It extends to the toxic cleaners that we use in our households, the pharmaceuticals that we administer to our children, and the cream that we apply to our faces. All of these products can contain some pretty scary chemicals that I assume God would not want us have near the bodies that he created in his perfect image.
So, what can you do to help your family to avoid the fate of those who follow the Standard American Diet (SAD)… live clean!