Nations endure only as long as their top soil.
~Henry Cantwell Wallace
U.S Secretary of Agriculture from 1921-1924
We are made of the stuff of the earth.
Our daily bread comes from the plants that form the roots of the human food chain. they provide us with important macronutrients, the carbohydrates and sugars, proteins, fats and oils that are manufactured through photosynthesis and are needed to fuel our bodies. Plants also provide us with important micronutrients, the vitamins manufactured by plant and the minerals absorbed from the soils, which are obligatory fro healthy cellular function.
Vitamins and minerals serve as essential components in enzymes and coenzymes (helper enzymes), the biological catalysts that speed up chemical reactions necessary for cellular function. they work in concert to either join molecules together or break them apart in the myriad of chemical reactions that take place every second within the living cell. Simply put, without enzymes and their essential vitamins and minerals, life could not exist.
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This we also know: chronic mineral deficiency leads to disease. Consequently, it is not surprising that any degradation in the mineral and the nutrient content of our soils leads to a commensurate increase in nutritionally related disease in both animals and human populations.
The bottom line is that our physical health ultimately depends upon the health of our topsoil.
The alarming fact is that foods--fruits, vegetables and grains--being raised on millions or acres of the land that no longer contain enough certain needed nutrients, are starving us--no matter how much we eat of them. -US Senate Document 264
The remarkable thing about the above declaration, found in US Senate document 264, is that it was issued nearly eight decades ago--in 1936. Since that time, the United States and other industrialized nations have been losing arable land at an unprecedented rate. In the united States topsoil is eroding at a rate today that is ten times greater that the rate of replenishment. in countries such as Africa, India, and China soil erosion exceeds the replenishment rate by 30 to 40 times. Current estimates place the chronological reserves of our global topsoil at less that 50 years. as the topsoil goes, so go the nutrients--and so goes our health.
Findings released in 1992 RIO Earth Summit confirmed that mineral depletion of our global topsoil reserve was rampant throughout the 20th century. During that time, US and Canadian agricultural soils lost 85% of their mineral content. Asian and South American soils dropped 76% while throughout Africa, Europe, and Australia, soils mineral content was depleted by 74%. Little has been done since to forestall the inevitable exhaustion of these precious minerals stores.
In March, 2006 the United Nations recognized a new kind of malnutrition--multiple micronutrient depletion. According to Catherine Bertini, Chair of the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition, the overweight are just as malnourished as the starving. in essence, it is not the quantity of food that is at issue--it is the quality.
Source: Nutrisearch 5th Consumer Edition
