The Complexity of Food

When I was a kid growing up in the 1950's and early 60's, milk was delivered by a milkman, eggs came from my grandmother's hen house, and vegetables were only store bought in winter. Soft drinks were a rare treat, and I don't think I ever tasted a Swanson TV dinner until I was a teenager. I remember walking down the narrow aisle of the local grocery store with my mother and pointing in vain at the frozen section of Chicken Pot Pies and Swanson pre-prepared meals, and my mother saying, "that's not food."

On Halloween, my mother dutifully took our sagging bags full of candy away from us and gave out an alloted treat once every couple of days, and then threw our halloween bags away by the end of a week.

When a Mcdonalds opened in our town in the late 1960's, I had to sneak out with friends in order to try one of the hamburgers and shakes. Mcdonalds wasn't my mother's idea of food either.
I guess in today's parlance, one would call my mother a Food Nazi. She viewed sustenance as one of two things: food or junk.

Today there are many more choices and monikers for what we put in our mouths and for what we feed our horses:
whole food, fast food, slow food, raw food, processed food, refined food, functional food, vegan food, organic food, genetically modified food, non-genetically modified food, fortified food, antibiotic-free food, grass-fed food, cage-free food,range-free food, pesticide-free food, hand-crafted food, artisan food....

The definition of whole food is simply: foods that are unprocessed and unrefined; what was known in my childhood simply as Food. Think of it as food that has nothing added and nothing taken away.

The word "whole" is derived from the Greek root "holon" which means both a single organism and the entire universe, and signifies that these are single entities but are synergistic and woven together to form the whole. The word "food" traces back to the Olde English word "fode" which means to foster, to nourish and to encourage growth. So philosophically, the concept of "whole foods" is rooted in an integrated universe in which foods contain the spectrum of essential synergistic nutrients that when consumed foster in us a balanced vitality and wholeness. (The George Mateljan Foundation)

Refined food is food that undergoes many commercial processes, resulting in the loss of nutrients within the food. The advent of grain refining for white flour resulted in approximately 60% of calcium lost, 77% of zinc, 71% of potassium, 84% of magnesium, 85% of manganese, 75% of iron, and 98% of Chromium (Senate Document 264, 74th Congress, 1936).

Refined food cannot meet basic health needs, so synthetics are added to refined food to provide some form of nutrition.

Processed food refers to whole food that has been adulterated through applications of high heat, spray drying, emulsification, etc. The FDA maintains a list of over 3,000 chemicals that are added to processed foods. These compounds are used to stabilize, texturize, preserve, sweeten, thicken, add flavor, soften, and to add color. Some of these compounds which are known to be toxic to animals and humans are allowed by the FDA because they are used at low levels.

Because processed foods have a low nutritional value, they have a higher ratio of calories than whole food. This phenomenon is known as "empty calories."

Fortified food can be either processed and or refined, and refers to the synthetic additives in it. When we see breakfast cereals with a banner on the box exclaiming Fortified With B Vitamins, you can be sure those B vitamins did not come from the grains themselves.

Functional food are foods that provide a specific and beneficial physiological effect on health, performance and well-being extending beyond the specific actions of basic nutrients. The science of functional food focuses on the physiological effects of various bioactive compounds,and non-nutrients such as fiber and probiotics. Yoghurt, for instance, is a functional food, even though it has also gone through processing (pasturization).

Let's say your horse needs extra vitamin C for immune system support. You also know that the bioflavonoids in citrus are powerful antioxidants. You could feed whole oranges and lemons to provide the vitamin C and bioflavonoids and be feeding a whole food that is also a functional food.

When it comes to horse feed, whole grains (oat,barley, wheat, corn, soy) can be considered a processed food due to the high heat milling process used by commercial mills in North America. The good news is that because these grains are in their whole state, they have not been through the refining process which further de-natures the grains. Also they are not generally adultered with chemicals in the milling process. They are of course subjected to herbacides and pesticides when cultivated. Commercial horse feed with various food stuffs labeled "wheat middlings", etc, are actually both processed and refined. Synthetic nutrients have to be added to commercial feeds because there are few nutrients left after processing and refining.

Commerical feeds are a convenience like fast food. It's a lot easier to feed a barn full of horses a commercial feed than it is to feed whole food. Similarly it's a lot easier of us to stop at Mcdonalds or Taco Bell and pick up a meal than to shop for whole food and prepare it when we get home.

We treat food as a commodity when in fact it is a necessity of health and well-being.

I may have been a grumpy kid when I didn't get a snack of Twinkies and wasn't allowed to gulp Pepsi, but I'm grateful now to the connection I have with food based on my mother's insistance of what food is.