I have three words for you, eat real food; food that your grandmother would have recognized as food. Eat food that usually doesn’t come in a package. Real food or whole food, with minimum processing, contains a virtual pharmacy of nutrient, phytochemicals, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and healthy fats.

Remember how you eat is as important as what you eat. That brings us to organic foods. The whole idea of the organic food movement was a desire to return to basics. This movement valued a time and place where animals were not fed growth hormones, steroids, and antibiotics.

Agribusiness interests aside, how a food originates can make a big difference in is nutritional composition, and how it was produced makes a big difference in its chemical composition.

People have lived and thrived on high-protein, high-fat diets, on low-protein high-carb diets, and on diets high in raw milk and cream. And they’ve done so without the ravages of degenerative diseases that are an epidemic in modern life – heart disease, diabetes, obesity, neurodegenerative diseases, osteoporosis, and cancer. Here’s what they haven’t done; thrived on food with bar codes, or for that matter thrived on food you could pick up in less than a minute at a drive-through.

So I purchase most of my food at farmers markets or health food stores such as Whole Foods, Henry’s or Mother’s Markets here in Orange County, CA. I may pay a little more, but I know what I’m buying and cooking.