Deeper Shade of Green

 I am sure you have by now heard of all the benefits of eating local, unprocessed food. And I am sure you thought about it, and even tried to do it, but somehow ‘life’ intervened and you just never got around to it. Thus you continue buying processed food from your local supermarket.

Well after reading W Five’s: Safe to Eat? story, perhaps you will reconsider. Not only is local organic food better for the environment on many levels, but now, it appears, it is also much more safer to eat. Why?

Under Canadian law, “Produced in Canada” (and similarly, “Produced in USA”) doesn’t mean all the ingredients come from our country. Only 51% of the ingredients must come from Canada – the rest can come from anywhere in the world – and it does. The places our food comes from often have dubious, sub-par standards on hygiene  and food quality. Like china for example. The Canadian Food inspection Agency is supposed to protect us, but it has too few inspectors and thus calamities are dealt with once they occur. There’s nothing preventive about that strategy.

So what can you expect in ingredients broad from abroad? Malachite green, for example – a chemical that can cause cancer. And it is very common  in farmed fish coming from China and being sold in Canadian markets.

The moral of the story is that don’t think businesses or the government have your health as top priority. Thus it befalls you to make sure you know where your food comes from. Buy local, visit farms, make your own garden or green house (even if you live in an apartment) and consider going vegetarian. After all, the biggest problems we always have with our food comes from meat.