How Chemical Fertilizers Are Destroying Your Body, The Soil, and Your Food

Written by Thomas Corriher Saturday, 05 April 2008 00:19

For around seventy years, people have been assured that poor quality soil is no longer an issue, so long as they rely on products from the chemical industry.  Synthetic fertilizers are believed to infuse nutrients into soil, enabling plants to prosper.  I began to question those beliefs soon after I relocated to Mocksville, North Carolina (USA), in October 2006.  The clay soil here is extremely poor, so we made use of synthetic fertilizers hoping to achieve good crops.  Our success from this was dismal.  I was unaware that synthetic fertilizers tend to replenish only nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous; awhile depleting other nutrients and minerals that are naturally found in fertile soils.  Thus, modern farming leads to nutritionally deficient foods.  These foods are also laced with chemicals, and most troubling, pesticides.  Conversely, organically grown fruits and vegetables have been reported to have significantly more antioxidants, polyphenols, and enzymes than commercial produce.  It is not just your soil which is losing out here: it is your health.  The nutrients that are found in the plants you consume have a vital impact in maintaining your well-being.

Omega-3 oils are one of many nutrients which are rapidly declining in our foods.  A lack of omega-3s is known to lead to heart disease, some cancers, mental disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder, and Alzheimer's Disease.  Most of these conditions were rare, or merely occurred in society's most elderly before the chemical industry provided ways for us to become its guinea pigs with the foods that we eat, and the drugs that we are told we must consume to counteract the effects of our chemically altered diet.  For seventy years, it has been a win-win for the chemical industry's money counters.  One of the reasons why nutrients such as the omega-3s are declining is the use of chemicals instead of nature.  I feel that it is important to mention that another reason for nutritional deficiencies is because fruits and vegetables are now being picked prematurely.  For instance, tomatoes are now being made to look red using synthetic ethylene instead of sunlight, but that is a topic for another time.

"Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers increase the amounts of toxic nitrates in dietary intake.  According to the National Research Council, 6 of the top 7 and 9 of the top 15, foods with oncogenic (cancer causing) risk are produce items with high nitrate content from pesticides or nitrogen fertilizers.  A 12-year study comparing organically grown versus chemically grown showed that chemically grown foods had 16 times more nitrate (a carcinogen)."

"Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume.

Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies that cannot be remedied until depleted soils from which our food comes are brought into proper mineral balance?

The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains), now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals, are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat.

No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them.  The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them aren't worth eating as food.  Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume.

This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling.  In fact, a realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the textbooks on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it.  Nevertheless, it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot - that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned?  But it isn't; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet may be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain.

Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago (which doubtless explains why our forefathers thrived on a selection of foods that would starve us!)  No man today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his stomach with the mineral salts he requires for perfect health, because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them!  And we are turning into big stomachs.

No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of many calories or certain vitamins or fixed proportions of starches, proteins and carbohydrates.  We know that our diets must contain in addition something like a score of mineral salts.

It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease.  Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer and shorten our lives.

We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for normal function of some special structure in the body.  Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency.

It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform.  Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.  Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein and carbohydrates we consume.

This discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions of science to the problem of human health."

The line, "No man today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his stomach with the mineral salts he requires for perfect health" is a good explanation for the the existence of rampant obesity.  The fatter that a person is; the more his body is starving for wholesome foods.

Moreover, studies have proven that synthetic fertilizers kill a large percentage of soil's naturally occurring microorganisms.  These bacteria would normally break down organic matter into plant nutrients, and help convert nitrogen from the air into a plant-usable form.  Other useful soil bacteria are "disease organisms" which keep cutworms, chinch bugs, grubs, and other parasites in check.  It takes almost six weeks for soil to partially recover biologically from a poisoning by synthetic fertilizer.  Considering many fertilizer producers advise the reapplication of their synthetic fertilizers every three months explains why so many potentially fertile areas of soil are merely wastelands, in which the essential microorganisms are dead.  Soil deprived of its microorganisms undergoes a rapid decline in soil structure, and it loses its essential ability to retain water, air, and nutrients.  Plants grown in such depleted soil are weakened, and are extremely susceptible to damage by diseases, insects, and drought.  Healthy soil, which is rich in beneficial microorganisms, encourages the natural immune systems of plants, limits the population of plant disease organisms, resists parasitic insects, and creates the ideal conditions for growth.

There are many additional reasons to grow organic crops that have not yet been mentioned.  For instance, organic crops are generally far more flavorful, since they contain many more nutrients.  A person's mouth can actually taste the difference between God's goodness and man's sorcery.  For the environmentalists out there, growing organically embraces the principle that agriculture should meet the needs of the present without harming future generations.

Unfortunately, switching to an organic fertilizer is not a quick fix for soil; especially when the soil has been bombarded with synthetic poisons for years.  It could be several years before the soil regains the fertility that it once had, and this may lead some growers into the false belief that organic farming is less productive.  Hence, fertilizing with chemicals is like a drug addiction.

Organic fertilizer is almost always manure from cows, horses, poultry, pigs, and sheep.  The problem with manure is that the animals can only make nutrient-rich manure if their food source is also nutrient rich.  Because of this, grass-eating animals raised on depleted soil will serve very little in encouraging your own garden to prosper.  Many organic garden advocates encourage others to travel to local farms for manure instead of the gardening section of Walmart, or another giant retail chain.  This is because the people who sell their products to those stores will be much more likely to use synthetic products on their fields and crops, because they hope to achieve a quick and easy profit, but their animals will yield depleted manure.  Of course, purchasing directly from a farm is not always an option, and taking a risk with retail manure is far better than using chemicals.

For those who cannot grow their own crops for practical reasons, farmers markets are usually the next best option.  Many of these farmers grow their crops organically, but cannot afford the cost of certification.  Ask to find out.  The readers of this article may either heed or ignore my suggestions; but at least they will know the long-term effects of their decisions about fertilizers, and the foods that they choose to eat.

 

Additional Reading
	Chemically fertilized foods are damaging to children and fetuses - Consumer Reports Organic IS healthier, say food scientists - The Telegraph Fertilizer Differences and Consequences - Nature's Way Our Chemical Addiction - Nutrition 4 Health Detailed Worthington Report on Fruits, Vegetables, and Grains (PDF)