Dear Farmers To You Families,
For many years I have noticed that the category or specific item of food I ate had far less effect on my digestion and health than the extent to which the food was processed. Ultra-processed foods strongly disagree with my body.
In my talks to parents, nutritionists and medical professionals, people often single out dairy, grain or fats as categories of food they have eliminated or advised others to eliminate from their diet. Now science is finally showing us that this “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” is missing the true issue we have to solve.
At Farmers To You, one of our closest held values is a near total avoidance of ultra-processed foods. In my family, we quickly realized that eliminating ultra-processed food was the most important step in cleaning up our diet and getting back to eating food as it should be.
This week NPR and the news channel 1A featured an interview with infectious disease doctor Chris Van Tulleken from the University Hospital of London. Van Tulleken’s book is Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food. His definition of ultra-processed food is anything or any ingredient you cannot make in your kitchen. With clear examples, he points out that our food has been so highly engineered that it tricks our body’s self-regulatory systems, makes us hopelessly addicted to it and results in our inability to regulate how much we eat at any sitting. This is especially true for children. These foods are incredibly difficult for our bodies to digest and offer very little (if any) of the nutrition our bodies need to be healthy and grow healthily. Dr. Van Tulleken tells us that currently 73% of the food in the American food system – what is available at supermarkets and at restaurants — is ultra-processed.
I encourage you to listen to the interview. I listened to it twice! I started Farmers To You because I knew how hard it was to source food that was not ultra processed. We continue to add to our product selection at Farmers To You, but always with the same high standards of NO ultra processed foods. Natural state ingredients and minimally processed foods (such as milk turned into yogurt — but free of stabilizers, emulsifiers, flavorings, colors and added sugars) are what we all need for good health. Listen, learn and enjoy.
