Don't Be Fresh With Me!
Another view on fresh foods and a Thriving Life
Fresh foods means vitality. Look at a plant leaf in the morning sun = it faces up, making itself available to more sunlight. Then watch that same plant/leaf later in the day, it will be wilted and tired.
This is the state of most people, and they do not even know it.
Research has shown most Americans do not eat vitality rich foods. And that means getting sick, lost productivity, less joy in life, and much worse…
How To Spot Stale Food/s:
By study, most foods lose 50-80% of their “vitamin c” (really it measures ascorbic acid levels) within 24 hours. Most health food store - or any store - produce is 2-5 days old = vitamin c deficient = Americans have sub clinical scurvy?
Overall Items to Check:
Smell
Taste
Texture
Appearance
Softness/sticky in a bad way
Expiration date is NOT a good/healthy marker of food vitality - except in some cases
Packaging for damage check - in canned goods (which lose 30-80% of their nutrients in processing), boxed items, and other packaging should not be damaged.
Now let’s look at individual categories of foods:
Fruit - brown or black spots, excess mushy softness, yeasty/moldy smell, surrounded in bowl by other moldy fruit, kept in moldy damp environment are all bad signs
Fruit should be firm bot not hard, look bright and appealing, and in some cases ripens more fully off the tree or plant.
Vegetables:
ANY softening, yellowing, browning, of greens are not good signs.
Any roots that are overly soft, discolored, and smell bad are not to be used.
Most vegetables need to be grown at home or purchased at a Farmers market for best freshness.
Eggs - see videos on links below - egg yolks should not disintegrate once broken open into a bowl - if broken carefully, eggs should NEVER smell bad
Fish - should not have an off smell, and if really slippery and slimy likely it is old
Meats - most meats are aged somewhat - so if treated well and stored well do not rot but are digested by the enzymes in the meat itself = called High Meat in The Primal Diet. However, most Western people would get sick eating this so we look for red - red meat, and any graying, off colors and really bad smells means throw it out
Grains and beans and nuts and seeds - ALWAYS FRESHEST IF STILL IN OUTER SHELL, any GROUND FLOUR food is stale and inflammatory in 7 days after grinding. This includes rolled oats and any rolled grain, steel cut oats, and any processed grain, bean, nut or seed. Once out of the shell most nuts and seeds, and especially their nut/seed butters are stale within a month or two or three.
Light / Heat / Oxygen are the aging factors.
Watch Here for Craig’s presentation on Fresh Foods.
