Hippocrates was revered for his great teachings, one of which was:  “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”  Yes, we need to look to nature for health and healing.  Natural foods contain a vast array of naturally-occurring phytonutrients.  “Phyto” means plant.  In addition to containing the always-important vitamins and mineral complexes, plants contain the genetics to be able to produce thousands of additional phytonutrient molecules, many of which have medicinal qualities.

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Most of today’s foods are only a shadow of their former selves.  They have been bred or genetically-modified without thought for their nutrient content.  They have been produced on soils lacking essential nutrients needed to produce medicinal-quality foods.

Plants actually have a lot greater array of genetic material than we humans do.  They have to create their own food through photosynthesis.  We can’t do that!  They also create certain compounds to protect themselves from pests and diseases.  Some of these special compounds are useful to us to prevent or treat our own diseases.  This is where many medicines start.  The drug companies isolate specific phytonutrients which have certain effects and then create similar patentable molecules.  Unfortunately, this is not the way of nature.  Isolated compounds do not have the same effects as those with naturally-occurring complimentary phytonutrients.  Also, similar, but not bio-identical, compounds do not have the same effects either.  Then we can get undesirable side effects.

Phytonutrients are also what we sense as flavors.  Oranges taste like oranges and cinnamon tastes like cinnamon because of the varying arrays of phytonutrients.

Growing plants in properly balanced soil allows them to express their full potentials for forming phytonutrients because they have the raw materials they need to do so.  If plants don’t get the specific nutrients they need as building blocks, the production of specialized compounds will stop.  The plant may not die, but it cannot express its full potential either.

The love and care we give our plants by our supplying the raw materials they need will return to us many fold when we eat them.  The plants will supply us with abundant yields of tasty foods, packed with health-giving phytonutrients.  It all starts with a comprehensive soil analysis, followed by amending the soil.  Plant leaf tissue analysis can also help us know what the plants need so we can help them out with foliar nutritional sprays.

Go forth and grow yourself some medicinal quality foods with long forgotten flavors!

To your health,

Dr. Jana Bogs

Learn more by clicking around on the various pages on my website, www.BeyondOrganicResearch.com.  For a more indepth look, check out my book, Beyond Organic…Growing for Maximum Nutrition and Flavor.  It is available on my website (with free shipping) as well as on Amazon.com, where the e-book version has hit #1 in two categories.

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