No, not 33b Acacia Avenue - your only home for your whole life.
Your body.
How much do you think about your body? Not just whether you are beach-ready but your entire body, in detail, what it does automatically, the individual components. What they need to keep on working for you. This is not just another soap-box entreaty to not eat Ultra Processed Food - although that would transform your health from the very fist mouthful. Today, it is the most important decision you could make to lay down an investment in your future, whatever age you are.
Pause reading: Go and watch The Christmas 2024 Royal Society Christmas Lectures from Professor Chris Van Tuleken, or read his book, Ultra Processed People.
Right, done that? You will now have a much better idea of the complexity of tasks that the human body carries out without any intervention from you. Day in, day out. All it requires is for food to be put in at one end and for waste to be cleared from the other and by some miracle it will deal with everything else you manage to throw at it. Up to a point.
So now imagine the home that you live in, your address at the present time. Imagine opening your kitchen cupboards or freezer and finding every packet labelled with ‘Take Care - Poison!’ or ‘Beware - Causes Blindness’ -‘Ingredients can cause organ failure’ ‘Care - No Natural Food Ingredients Whatsoever’ ‘ Contents Not As Described’ ‘May Cause Male/Female Infertility’
All in lurid yellow and black packets with red wording. Skull and Cross Bones Imagery.
Not just food but washing products - dishes or clothes, surface sprays and wipes, cosmetics, shampoos and other hair dyes and products, nail gels, tattoo ink, plug-in ‘air-fresheners’, clothes sprays, deodorants, absolutely anything containing ‘fragrance’, sunscreens, wipes. Medications both over the counter and prescribed.
So we have cupboards and drawers, freezers and fridges full of hazardous products which fully meet the regulations as they are currently published and all manner of substances that can be used as a ‘processing aid’ (see below) and not named at all. In summary these are:-
Definition: Substances used during food processing that are not intended to be part of the final product.
Residues: May remain in trace amounts but should not affect the product's safety or characteristics.
Labelling: Not required unless the processing aid involves any of the 14 major allergens.
However, this allows for quite a range of substances to be introduced which wouldn’t otherwise make an ingredients list. (ref: ‘Swallow This’ Joanna Blythman.)
If we then fill our lovely home with a contaminating, choking, carcinogenic smoke and sit in it we would be hard put to explain to Social Services when they visit wanting to know why we are poisoning our children!
It is personal choice to do all of these things to yourself but the results are there staring us in the face, in the Doctor’s waiting lists, the bariatric surgery overload, and the neurotoxic effects especially in children, and damage to our endocrine systems - the increase in infertility - and the toll on the environment. However, to inflict it on our growing children is a crime.
Do yourself a favour, make one change today, and another next week, do some Spring Cleaning of your home - your body - start today. Take one packet from your cupboard and look at the list of ingredients. Anything there you recognise? Google the items on the list, research each one and then decide whether it is worth troubling your complex, incredible body with the decisions on how to digest it. Pay particular attention to all of the non-food related products in your house. I know initially there will be lots of ‘but I need that because’ excuses to work through, I get it, but is the price worth paying? Challenge yourself to do some non-supermarket shopping. Ditch The Big Shop - you will be amazed at just how small that list can be. Come back to me and ask for alrternatives - you will find they are cheaper, more effective and non-toxic.
I also challenge farmers to get organised. A monthly Farmers’ Market with Venison Burgers, gourmet chocolates and coffee and somebody selling eggs is not fit for purpose. My local Farmers’Market Facebook Page has not been updated with any information since adding the dates for 2023!
There are many town and city shops lying empty, group together and stock a shop with what you have so there are seasonal offerings six days a week. Bring what you have, it doesn’t matter, it would be truly seasonal, fresh and people would support it. One till, self service - you need to bring what you have to the people that need it, not the people who can drive out of town to a Farm Shop and do their shopping - they are sorted. I used to take produce to the Country Market (WI) every Friday. It opened at 8.30 am, there was always a queue waiting and the produce - fresh fruit and vegetables, cakes, eggs, flowers were all gone in under an hour.
I have quite a few hospital visits in my life and each entrance has a large, local display of fruit and vegetables with queues of people - visitors and staff buying bags of the produce. I am sometimes tempted to risk the hospital car park just to buy some when I don’t have an appointment as it is always in good condition and reasonably priced! Again, sells out by mid-afternoon as a rule.
The point being, there is always another way. Just because you have always done something doesn’t mean changes cannot be made. Just small steps to start with and you will be amazed and your body will be relieved and able to function as it truly should.
Welcome Home.
Resources
Check one packet - Google the ingredients and what side effect each can have both in or on your body, and including environmental effects
Re-read my SUGAR Substack - if a very commonly used artifical sweetener can kill my dog I don’t want it in the house
Research local non-supermarket shops - speak to them - many of them will deliver if needed
Research local milk deliveries with real milk - they also deliver other related items as a rule
The more you stay OUT of supermarkets the more money you will save ( this is a Universal Truth! )
Report back on your findings please