By Tony Elliott / Divine Caroline
In today’s society, it seems a new disease is discovered weekly. Since bacteria and viruses continually mutate themselves to become immune to whatever drug we use to fight them, it is not surprising to find drug resistant strains of bacteria such as salmonella, which has cropped up recently in peanut butter.
It is a constant battle between medical science and the microscopic world of germs in the sense that when we come up with a drug that will kill a certain bacterium, the germ as a whole will almost immediately begin to develop immunity to the drug.Antibiotics are the most widely used in fighting diseases and the easiest for germs to acquire immunities against.
Hormones are another helping hand to the bacteria and virus community in the fact that they cause the body to react in similar fashion to steroids, therefore diminishing the body’s immune system and making it more susceptable to disease.
Thus, we know that the overuse of antibiotics and steroids can act to build up the immune system of germs, while at the same time weakening the human immune system. This proves to be a very serious Catch-22 in the fact that humans are bombarded on a daily basis with a barrage of both antibiotics and hormones in the food we eat and in the tap water we use.
Tap water contains many drugs; although minute, it poses a health threat to the consumer over time as the body is subjected to them on a daily basis.
Since most city water supplies come from treated sewer water, the process of purifying the water takes out the harmful impurities. However, the filtration is not accurate enough to remove everything. So certain medications, antibiotics, and steroids top the list of those able to escape the purification process.
The avenue that carries these drugs at the highest level into our bodies is through the meats we consume. Beef, poultry, and pork are filled with hormones and antibiotics, as it is part of the animal’s diet until it is slaughtered for consumption—a diet these animals are put on to assure maximum weight and health of the animal, so it can provide the most consumable meat as possible per animal.
However, what we end up with are meats that taste differently and are not as tender as the meat from the ’60s or ’70s. Steak, pork chops, or chicken lacks the flavor and texture as it did decades ago. This is due to the hormones used to fatten the animal, the antibiotics used in the feed. The daily mixture for most farm and ranch animals also consists of the flesh of animals left over from the slaughtering process. This is true of poultry as well; all this animal feed is grains and reprocessed animal parts. Aside from the hormones and antibiotics in the meat we eat, we also are subjected to having to eat the flesh of animals who have been subjected to generations of cannibalism from this type of ingredients used in feed processing.
There are ways of making sure that you get meats that are not put through this kind of feeding process. You can do this by making sure that all meats you buy, including poultry, are organic. This means that the animal is raised by eating only natural products. This drastically cuts down on the amount of antibiotics and hormones we inadvertently consume.
Milk is also a product which carries harmful medications. It is produced from cows that eat the same contaminated feed as animals which are raised for meat.
So going organic is a viable defense against harmful medications in our food supplies and the taste is overwhelmingly better with organic products. Our immune system will improve as well when our bodies are not subjected to a daily barrage of medications that weakens it. It doesn’t matter how minute these medications are in our water and food supply; the body will react when it is continually being resupplied with these drugs. Some of these medications do not disperse as fast and are simulated through the body as others, which poses a hazard from the buildup of certain drugs found in what we consume. The only safe way to live is to become aware of what is in the food we eat and the water we drink. Our health depends on it.