In Part One of this series, I wrote about why eating whole food is far better nutritionally than eating refined and processed foods. Have you been looking at foods from the viewpoint of what's whole and what's not? Excellent if you have!

Again, I am not here to tell you to be vegetarian, vegan, paleo, mediterranean, Atkins or any other specific diet plan. All of these programs or philosophies can be vastly improved using the basic foundation of food knowledge I'm giving you here.

Now let's take a further look at the quality of your food. True, you are going to have a much higher quality of food if you are choosing whole foods. But beyond that, I want to show you the next important basic concept in your foundation of knowledge about what to eat.

Step Two: Choose organically grown and raised foods

The first obvious question is, "What is organic food?" I'm sure you know that organically raised crops are not treated with chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. All the better for the environment, the soil, and the health of you and your loved ones. But more than that, organic farming includes restoring the soil so it is healthy and full of minerals. Organic food is also not supposed to include genetically modified organisms (GMO's) also known as genetically engineered.

In turn, the organic label on meats or poultry require that they are fed with organic food and are not raised using antibiotics or growth hormones. They are also supposed to be allowed outside to pasture.

When we are talking about eating only organically raised or grown foods, we are actually entering a sphere beyond just the health and well-being of you and your family. We are now talking about helping to protect our future ability to raise and grow nutritious food and to prevent further destruction of our land and water from chemical and synthetic substances. We are talking about the ability to feed our population in the future because current industrial agriculture methods are highly destructive to the life of our soil, depleting it of minerals, weakening the ability of the crops to resist disease and pests and ultimately destroying the soils ability to support growing crops at all.

The organic farmer is not only growing crops without dangerous chemicals and pesticides, he is also rebuilding the soil by growing and turning under crops like clover and other fast-growing grasses and plants which will then break down in the soil and release precious minerals back into the soil. This is only one of the ways that organic farming (or organic gardening for that matter) actually revitalizes the land so it can sustain growing crops better and better. Rebuilding the soil takes years and the requirements to be able to label a food "organic" vary from country to country. The US Department of Agriculture has an extensive site giving all the regulations and requirements for products to be able to use the 100% organic label.

As you can see, eating organic food is really a part of eating whole food. After all, Monsanto's chemical fertilizers are certainly not food at all, much less whole food!

"But isn't organic food more expensive?" you ask. Yes, organic foods are a little more expensive. Even a brief look at the USDA requirements for farms and their products to be certified as organic will show you that there is a lot of work to be done in order to qualify. You are paying for the cost of keeping your food clean and safe in an industry (farming) that is no longer the bucolic, country-style, down-home center of production.

I can tell you from my own experience in raising three boys that eating organic food is economical in the long run. We had practically no illness in the family, no so-called allergies, and little use or need for doctors. That means minimal medical costs. I believe eating pesticide and chemical-free food could have contributed to that. But more obvious to me was when, on occasion, I didn't have organic food available and had to use non-organic foods. Those were the days when the boys simply could not stop snacking and eating. They were never as satisfied and the food bill essentially was higher because of that. As soon as I got organic food back in--yes they still ate a lot, kids do. But they were not constantly looking for something to eat all day long like they did when we were not able to eat organically.

Farming and food production are industries just like any others. They are led by what makes a profit and as you probably know, farms are more like factories in the way they are run. You may not be interested in some of the political and social aspects of food production. But I can tell you it is rife with vested interests who don't care what the long-term result on the population will be as long as money is made. Most recently I read in Natural News about a Kansas farm that is growing experimental rice crops using human genes.

Eating organic foods, along with eating whole foods is one of the basic steps in knowing what to eat!