The term “whole food” has been bandied about so loosely that many people confuse it with organic. Make no mistake, they do not mean the same thing.
“Organic” refers to foods or ingredients grown without the use of artificial pesticides, fertilizers, or hormones.
“Whole Foods” is food that has only one ingredient: itself in its natural form. It’s a food that hasn’t been processed into another state. Whereas organic foods can be processed and still called organic if they are made with organic ingredients. For instance, you can have a package of organic cookies in which the cookies have been made with organic ingredients, but this is still considered a processed food because the ingredients have been altered from their original state.
While it is certainly admirable to eat organic, it’s just as admirable to include as many whole foods in our diet as we can.
Our bodies, our digestive systems, have evolved to use nutrients provided by foods that grow naturally on this planet.
Vitamin supplements do not replace the nutritional value of whole foods, because these supplements only resemble selected parts of a food. They also don’t contain the complex, interwoven structure of nutrients and enzymes found in whole foods.
Let’s look at the transformation of a potato into a highly processed potato chip;
First, the potato is peeled, losing fiber, iron, and calcium along with the skin.
Then it is washed, rinsing away carbohydrates, vitamin C and minerals.
It’s sliced, washed again, and fried, removing water, and destroying B vitamins while adding fat.
Then it’s salted, flavored with spices and given artificial coloring.
Finally it is preserved with chemical preservatives.
The result: Shelf life increases, along with 70x the fat content, 20x the sodium content, ½ the carbs, and less than 1/3 the fiber, iron, vitamin C and thiamin of a baked potato.
The safest bet for getting full benefit of our foods is packaging. Look for packaging that was designed and made by Mother Nature.
Robert