Want to Eat Healthy and Fresh? Visit Your Local Farmer's Market

I'm currently reading a fascinating book titled "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (Penguin Books, 2007). In this New York Time's bestseller, Pollan details some of the history of food in America. One of the interesting facts is when the Pilgrims and other Europeans landed here they were a wheat based society. The American Indians and those in South America had economies based on corn. Corn was much hardier and easy to grow than wheat. If the Pilgrams hadn't learned to plant corn they probably wouldn't have survived. You know the story. But corn may also be our downfall.

Today corn is in almost every processed food on the market. Most of the "other" ingredients in a package of food are derived from either corn or his crop rotational brother, soybeans. Cheaper corn syrup has replaced all of the cane sugar in out soft drinks and may be responsible for the obesity epidemic that is running rampant across the United States. One study has some 70% of all Americans being overweight. Then there's fast food, or should I say fats food. Just recently New York City has banned trans fats, a nasty bi-product of the hydrogenation process used to make shortening keep longer. And here's the kicker: New research suggest that the problem may not be from eating red meat, but rather what the meat you are eating has eaten.

The majority of cows in the United States are now corn fed, where in the past they were grass fed. This results in two problems: the cows can't digest the meal very well and get gas which is a major contributor to the global warming when they release all that methane into the air. The other problem is that the meat from the corn fed animals is low in Omega 3 fatty acids and high in Omega 6 fatty acids: Omega 3, good for the heart, Omega 6, not good.