Better health through a changed diet: How food impacts our wellbeing

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March 25, 2022

How much does the food we eat affect our health?

Can the food we eat make us healthy or unhealthy?

Does it really matter how food is grown?

The answer to these questions cuts close to each one of us.

Our youngest son Nathan always had a bit of a weak stomach. He would often get stomach aches that took a few hours to go away. However, when he turned 13, it got much worse. He had the flu. Then he caught a stomach bug. After all that was over, his health continued to deteriorate

One in three days, he would wake up with extreme stomach pain. He would curl up on the couch for a few hours till it passed, then would be in a brain fog for hours afterward. He missed 45 days of school at the end of his 8th grade year. He lost weight and became visibly gaunt. We would wake up every morning wondering if today would be a good day or a bad one. The stress weighed on all of us as we arranged our lives around Nathan’s health. We came to dread the phone calls from the school to pick up Nathan because he was sick. Even family vacations became a struggle of trying to do things when he was well and resting when he was sick.

During this time, as we searched for answers, we visited a dozen different specialists in 4 hospital systems. They drew blood, ran tests, and poked and prodded every part of his body. Invariably, at the end of the appointment the answer was the same: “His liver/spleen/intestines/gallbladder/heart/kidneys are functioning correctly. Does he have any friends in school? Maybe you need to stop babying him so much so that he stops pretending to be sick.” No doctor took the time to move beyond the prescribed testing to probe what was really going on, and when they couldn’t figure it out they blamed the victim. We were increasingly frustrated as Nathan became malnourished and no one would acknowledge that there was a problem.

We finally ended up at a wellness clinic with a chiropractor who focused on human health. He looked at the stack of blood tests we brought and after a thorough interview suggested a change in diet plus supplements. Nathan was to cut out gluten, dairy, and starches, even though his blood tests said he was not allergic to any of these things. We were dubious about the approach, but willing to try anything.

Within a week on this diet, Nathan radically improved. In two months, he gained 20 pounds. As he felt better, we began adding foods back into his diet. Eventually, we discovered that even though his blood tests show no gluten intolerance, he could not eat foods made with conventionally grown and processed wheat.

It was only through this process of identifying what was happening to Nathan that I began to really understand that the food we eat affects our health. As a farmer it was profoundly humbling to realize that the way we grow food could be making people sick.

The variety and production methods of food affects the health of the body it feeds. Our food system has concentrated on making more food cheaply with no regard for the implications for human health. The industrial approach to farming has resulted in a chemical shortcut for every natural process that often leaves us with unhealthy food-like substances that we mistake for healthy food.

Wheat varieties grown because they produce a lot of bushels in a chemical fertilizer environment and then commercially processed will have a different effect on the body than an old world variety grown naturally and processed in a stone mill. Bodies like my son Nathan’s have a violent reaction to this type of grain, but other people can get a low grade inflammation that goes undiagnosed for years and leads to chronic illness.

Grass fed beef has a different nutrient profile than grain fed feedlot beef. While you can actually taste the difference between the two types of meat, there are also real health benefits that come from each animal being able to balance its own diet with various plants found in the pasture. Each individual animal is much healthier which leads to beef with a far more diverse nutrient profile.

Pasture raised eggs have a much different nutrient density than confinement house raised eggs. Once again, the chicken is able to actually go outdoors and balance its own diet on the pasture. Their yolks are noticeably orange and more nutrient rich.

Since Nathan’s illness, we have spoken with so many people who have similar health struggles. Because conventional agriculture, food processors and medicine fail to recognize the importance of how food is grown, they suffer in silence. Conventional medicine treats them with pharmaceuticals to mask their symptoms but not solve the problems. The health crisis we see today is deeply connected to a lack of healthy food.

Most importantly, Nathan’s illness and subsequent cure have solidified our commitment to growing healthy food. While we can’t change public policy, we CAN grow the healthiest food possible on our farm. We can commit to doing everything in our power to see that our food makes people's lives and health better. And we can provide this food directly to people who are concerned about the health of their food.

I would love to hear about your food health journey, leave a comment below to get the conversation started.

Want to learn more?

Read this blog post to learn more about how we grow food you can trust here at Red Hill Farms.

Check out Fred Provenza’s book, Nourishment, or this research paper on soil health and nutritional density.

From field to barn! How we harvest potatoes at Red Hill Harvest!

This week on the farm, potato harvest was all we had on our minds! The weather has been a challenge during this year's harvest, from being too dry early in the season to 10 days of rain in late September, but hey, that’s farming. This week's goal is to get as many of the remaining potatoes out of the ground and back into the storage. Here’s how we do it! Step 1: Prep fields for harvest - Before a field of potatoes is harvested, the tops of the potato plants must be killed. This tells the potatoes to put all their energy into growing thicker skin instead of growing in size. We terminate the potatoes 2-5 weeks before harvest, depending on the variety. (Some varieties take longer for the skins to set.) In a non-organic system, potatoes are terminated using a chemical desiccant. This is a very effective way to get the potato vines to die and leave the field ready for harvest. However, we must take a different approach to the 50% of our potato crop that is certified organic. Once our organic potatoes have matured, we will run a flail shredder through the fields to mulch the vines into tiny pieces, killing the plants and sending them into full skin development mode. While we wait the 2-5 weeks before harvest, weeds tend to pop up now that the crop canopy is gone and sunlight reaches the soil. We often run the flail shredder or our weed burner ahead of the harvester again to help separate potatoes from other materials during harvest. Step 2: Dig - Once the fields are prepped and the conditions are right, we head out to the fields to bring in the spuds. We have a harvester that can dig two rows at a time. We chose this smaller machine because it matched well with the destoning system we use in the spring. To briefly explain the long process of planting, we make a bed of soil, use a destoning machine to pull the rocks from the bed and lay the stones into the tire tracks, and finally, we plant two rows of potatoes in the rock-free bed. Using this system, we can limit the damage caused by handling potatoes and rocks together. Here’s how the harvester works… First, the potatoes are dug out of the ground and transferred onto a slatted conveyor belt. This conveyor is the first separation method, removing all the loose dirt and small rocks. The remaining material continues up the belt and onto the main separation table. This table has a series of counter-rotating shafts that grab onto vines, mud clumps, rocks, and other foreign materials and pull them down below and back into the field. From there, the potatoes go to another conveyor, where we have two people standing to remove all of the foreign material that the harvester missed. At this point, it is crucial to get all of the rocks that the destoner missed out of the potatoes because the next stop is the truck! The potatoes ride up the conveyor and into the truck, which drives alongside the harvester. Once the truck is full, it returns to the shed, where it gets unloaded! Step 3: Unload - When the truck returns to the shed, we back it up to our ELIMINATOR… Dun, Dun, Dunn! Ok, maybe it's not that scary! The potatoes unload from the truck and ride up yet another conveyor, which dumps onto a star separation table. The table allows any soil that may have passed the harvester to be removed from the potatoes. Then, the spuds get one final hand grade. Removing all of the material before the potatoes head into storage is important. After the final grade, the small potatoes are removed. These potatoes are not desirable for making french fries and do not look nice in a package with bigger potatoes, so we remove them and pack them separately. Once sizing is complete, there are only two more conveyors before they reach the bins! We use an automatic bin filler, which uses sensors to fill each bin to its optimal level. After the bins are filled, they’re off to the cooler! Step 4: Storage - Most potatoes in the United States are stored in bulk, which means they are stored in one big pile. We choose to use the bin method for variety separation and quality. The first reason is simple: we grow over ten varieties of potatoes on our farm. It is much easier to keep them separate in bins rather than piles. Most importantly, though, we use bins to keep the quality of our potatoes high. With varying field conditions, potatoes in one area of the field may be more prone to rot. Rot will spread like a disease in storage if not properly addressed. Separating the potatoes into boxes can better control an outbreak of rot; we only lose 1,000 lbs of potatoes rather than the whole pile. This method takes a lot more time and money, but it is necessary for our operation, especially storing potatoes for nine months like we often do! Each bin is labeled with the variety, field name, and date harvested. The organic potatoes are then put into a cooler at 38-40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the non-organic potatoes are put into a cooler kept at 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit. Why do we store them at different temps? Almost all of our non-organic potatoes are sold to vendors who make fresh-cut French fries! If the potato's temperature gets colder than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, it will turn dark brown when fried. YUCK!! On the other hand, we keep our organic potatoes at a colder temperature because they keep much longer. Also, we do not use a sprout nipper, so the cold temperature helps to keep the potatoes from sprouting while in storage. As a small farm, we choose the smaller, simpler equipment and storage techniques to give us the ability to produce many different types of specialty potatoes. The spuds we raise would not fare well with the large equipment used in other parts of the world. Many farmers use various techniques to bring in the crop for their unique situations. We plan to continue to adapt our harvest methods as new engineering technologies are discovered. I hope you learned something about how we harvest potatoes today! If you have any questions, please email us at info@redhillharvest.com or call (570) 900-1566. If you’d like to try some of these potatoes for yourself, here are some of my favorites! Organic Purple Potatoes Organic Red Potatoes French Fry Potatoes Baby Yellow Potatoes

3 reasons why you should (NOT!) go vegan.

A recent study by Vegetarian Times shows that 7.3 million people follow vegetarian diets in the U.S.A. alone, and the number is rising daily! It’s almost understandable why this trend is rising in a world full of fake news and food mislabeling. Recently, I did some research concerning these common misconceptions. Without further adieu, here are the top three reasons people go vegan (and the truth about these polarizing issues). #1 Environmental Impact Over 90% of all meat produced in America is raised in CAFOs. (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) What is a CAFO, you ask? CAFO stands for Confined Animal Feed Operation and includes all farms that raise more than a set number of animals. For example, a CAFO of cattle is 1,000 animals, whereas a CAFO of chickens starts at 30,000. To learn more about CAFOs, click here. Large amounts of carbon emissions are released into the atmosphere in a CAFO. Feed needs to be grown, processed, and trucked in. Then, after feeding, the manure must be trucked out and spread onto farmland. This large amount of trucking and processing makes many of these CAFOs detrimental to our environment. Arguably, the most significant environmental concern in our region (Mid-Atlantic) is the over-application of manure. If you drive through PA, NJ, MD, NY, or VA, you will see countless large poultry CAFOs. These farms generated millions of tons of manure, which was more than they could ever use to add fertility to the soils of their farms. This led to manure being over-applied, causing runoff and the pollution of streams and rivers. To help solve this problem in our community, the government (taxpayers) have financed a facility to dehydrate poultry manure to divert it away from the area. What should you do? Becoming vegan simply does not mean eliminating environmental issues. Each system of raising food has its own set of problems. Fruit and vegetable farming, processing, and trucking can be as bad as animal production. For example, most of the produce we eat on the East Coast must be shipped from California or other countries before it reaches our plate. Click here to watch John Dutton from the show Yellowstone simple explanation on the issues of veganism. Knowing where your food comes from is essential to combat these environmental issues. You can make a difference by sourcing your food from farmers who use green practices such as cover cropping and rotational grazing. Cover crops pull carbon from the atmosphere into our soils, helping to counteract animal carbon emissions. Rotational grazing leads to a healthy level of manure distribution throughout every acre without additional hauling. Invest in a farm whose practices work with nature rather than against it and whose goal is to regenerate the environment rather than sustain it. #2 Animal Welfare In large confinement operations, animals are contained by the thousands. Although farmers must follow USDA’s requirements for sq. ft./ animal, disease can spread quickly when many animals are confined to a small area. Recently, the avian flu has been all over the news. This disease travels through wildlife and transmits to poultry through their saliva. It is a significant threat to poultry production in America. Poultry is often raised in a confined house in a controlled environment. This environment is created to help keep the birds from getting ill from rain or cold weather. While it does a very good job of keeping them safe from the elements, it also weakens their immune systems because they are never exposed to harsh climates. When events such as the avian flu happen, problems arise because the flocks are not suited to protect themselves from this illness. We witnessed how this disease affected our local farms. A recent outbreak led to over 40,000 birds being killed due to their weak immune systems, which is a big problem for American farmers. The final and most concerning animal welfare issue in the vegan community is the treatment of animals. Farmers often hire laborers to help with the day-to-day chores of farm life. These workers see so many animals daily that they can lose respect for the animals they care for. While every farm is not this way, we can not turn a blind eye to the fact that this mistreatment of animals does happen, and it is an issue that needs to be fixed. What should you do? This one is very straightforward. VISIT YOUR FARMER!! Find a farmer who is willing to show you around their farm. Don’t trust a label in the supermarket; find a farmer you can trust, and be sure to ask him/her about their practices. By visiting your farmer, you can know the food you put on your table was raised with respect and care. #3 Health There’s no denying it: the cheapest meat you find on the supermarket shelf was likely raised using GMO feeds, antibiotics, and artificial growth hormones. These factors are beginning to appear as significant factors in the chronic disease epidemic our country is facing. Eating fruits and vegetables has undeniable health benefits for our bodies and well-being. However, vegetable and fruit farmers often use chemicals to control their fields' pests, which leads to the same problems production animal farming brings. Another reason people are turning away from meat is for heart health, which is a legitimate concern with very fatty animals such as grain-fed beef. This fat contains cholesterol that is very high in saturated fat, causing many people with high cholesterol and heart issues to go vegan. What should you do? There’s no denying that a diverse diet is key to health. However, meat provides essential, natural nutrients not found in fruits, veggies, and nuts. So, where do you turn for healthier meat? Stop going to the supermarket and head straight to your farmer. Buy grass-fed or pasture-raised meats, which are leaner and have less saturated fat than their grain-fed counterparts. Grass-fed beef is becoming increasingly popular because of its higher concentration of CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid). This acid helps to aid in weight loss and lower cholesterol. You can learn more about the fantastic benefits of CLA by clicking here. Why grass-fed or pasture-raised? The microbes in a ruminant animal's (AKA Cow’s) gut make CLA. There is a higher microbe count in grass-fed beef because the plants they eat are alive and full of bugs! Recent studies have shown a 300%—500% increase in CLAs in grass-fed beef, making it a much better alternative to manufactured supplements, often made from seed oils like safflower and corn. Knowing all of the facts is essential before you go vegan. Don’t let yourself be misled by flashy marketing campaigns or cool packaging in the supermarket trying to persuade you to buy their food. Purchase your food from farms that you can visit. Talk to your farmer and ask him/her questions about how your food is raised, and make sure they know WHY they follow the practices they follow. It is now more important than ever to have food you can trust. Click the link below and contact us to schedule a farm visit today! Talk to a farmer you can trust today! Red Hill Harvest Phone:(570) 900-1566 Email: info@redhillharvest.com

Farm Stewardship at Red Hill Harvest

Last Easter, I shared the fact that we always try our best to nurture our community and environment through decisions based on our faith, ancestorial knowledge, and new information gained from experience and education. I want to share with you, exactly how we do this day in and day out on our farm.

Better health through a changed diet: How food impacts our wellbeing

More from the blog

From field to barn! How we harvest potatoes at Red Hill Harvest!

3 reasons why you should (NOT!) go vegan.

Farm Stewardship at Red Hill Harvest

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