The Truth About Your Food: Through the Eyes of the Worlds Best Urban Farmer

"By far the best investment you can make is in yourself."

- Warren Buffett

Freshly picked assorted tomatoes - September of 2021.

We've all done it.  You go to the grocery store, fight for the best parking spot, snag the shopping cart with the squeaky wheel that keeps locking up and veering to the right, then you get very annoyed at everyone else in the store as you walk around, you then wait in the checkout line while the person behind you loudly pops and chews their gum to the point to where you want to rip your ears off .  Finally you make it to the front of the line, buy your food for the week, go home, put it all away, eat the food over the course of the week and repeat.  I pose to you a very simple question:

Why?

As the self proclaimed, Worlds Best Urban Farmer, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way.  I've successfully gained independence from the food system by simply growing, eating, and preserving my own food from the backyard of my house that is my urban farm.  This urban farm provides me with over a years worth of food, plus a steadily increasing bounty as the soil health improves.  Combining old world farming with a modern lifestyle is really quite plush and easy on the pocket book (once you get it going), plus you know exactly how your food was grown.

If you look back in history, it's a very miniscule amount of time where humans have gone to the grocery store for food.  Before then you would just grow your own food (and/or hunt), trade your bounty with your neighbors or go to a small market in town to buy whatever you need and sell any excess you have.  You didn't simply walk into a store and look down an aisle containing 100 different types of cereal.  Cereal probably didn't even exist.  I'm sure if you had a time machine, went back in time and explained modern day grocery stores to people 150+ years ago these stores would seem like the worlds most heavenly place ever.

What if you also explained to these same people, sure these big grocery stores are convenient and easy but the vast majority of the food contained in these stores isn't actually food, they're food-like products that are not made from real ingredients.  Furthermore once you eat these food-like products on a regular basis you're very likely to become overweight and develop health problems which leads to needing medical care, prescription drugs, and who knows what else.  If you do eat the few items in the store that are actually food, the vast majority of those products are grown with a crap ton of chemicals which, you guessed it, have a high likelihood of causing you health issues over the long term plus these same chemicals destroy the soil turning farmland into barren deserts but no one seems to care about any of that.  Oh, by the way, you live in a country that doesn't have affordable health care for everybody so you're likely to go bankrupt from these medical bills.  All the while the companies that make these food-like products, actual food products, and chemicals to grow the food will point their fingers every which way putting the blame anywhere but on themselves.  What would this person say?  Would that information even register?  Would these heavenly grocery stores still seem heavenly?  I imagine they would look very confused and say, "What the hell are you talking about?  This is food (as they hold up a crown of broccoli)."

The truth about the food that the vast majority of us eat is really quite simple:  it isn't food.

Look at the ingredient list on the packaging of your so called "food" then try to pronounce any of the ingredients.  Go for it, I dare you.  In fact, I double dog dare you.  Then try to explain to someone what any of those ingredients are.  I'm betting there is one ingredient that will be high up on that list that you will know and will be able to pronounce:  sugar.

We all know what sugar is and it's usually very high up on the ingredient list which means that product has a lot of tasty sugar in it.  Why would food companies put a bunch of sugar into our food-like products?  Because it is addicting as crap.  We all absolutely love this legal drug that is likely one of the larger chainlinks breaking in the ever increasing collapsing health of your average American.  So our food companies put it in all of our foods since we all love it so much.  Plus with it being addictive, they know we'll be back for more, fast!

These food-like products make up about 90% of your average grocery store.  In one small corner of these stores you'll find the produce section.  Aha, the beloved produce section!

The produce section doesn't get off easy either, you can almost guarantee that all of this produce was sprayed with a royal crap ton of chemicals so the food would grow while keeping the weeds at bay in the field.  Organic produce generally doesn't get a free pass here either, the majority of "organic" farms just use "organic" chemicals, in larger quantities for the same effect.  Very small amounts of research has been done on these organic chemicals but the studies that have been done suggest that they are potentially just as harmful as normal chemicals since they're usually used in larger quantities.

Let sum up the other sections of the store:

Bread = Sugar

Milk = Sugar

Meat = Meat from "ranches" where the animals can barely move and live miserable lives and go to mega slaughter houses where the meat from thousands of miserable animals is combined together.

So there you have it, that is the food in your typical grocery store summed up in a nutshell.  Your best bet is to avoid the grocery store at all costs aside from your non-food items.  What is the alternative?

Well, you can grow your own damn food at your house instead of growing grass.  Or you can find a local farm and ranch in your town that has growing practices that align with what you want to support and buy food from them.  Or you can do a combo of both of those options.  It's really quite simple and with how expensive health care is in this country, none of us can afford to eat food that has a high likelihood of making us sick*, so don't do that.  Eat healthy food, grown in a good and sustainable way that's good for you and the earth!

*It's very important to point out that you can still come down with a myriad of deadly diseases no matter how healthy you eat or how healthy you are.  Having said that, eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle gives you the best chance possible of avoiding diseases, but you might still come down with something and die.  We're all going to die one of these days, that's a fact of life.