We want real food

We've all experienced tasteless organic produce before: bananas that hardly registered on the taste buds; apples with all the sweetness and flavour of household soap, tomatoes that tasted like cardboard....Many industrialised countries, including the UK, once had fertile soil which has been systematically stripped of its crucial minerals by industrial farming, leaving our fruit and vegetables tasteless and a nation in chronic ill health, says Graham Harvey (www.wewantrealfood.co.uk).



It was 19th-century sugar refiners such as Abram Lyle, of Lyle's Golden Syrup, who made it possible to put a sweet taste in junk foods. Before they started turning out their deadly white crystals, sweetness had long been associated with strength and vitality.

In nature, sweetness is often linked to rich sources of essential trace elements, including zinc, magnesium, copper and boron. Sweet-tasting natural foods such as ripe fruits, berries and honey contain minerals as well as sugars. For early man - the hunter-gatherer - there was an evolutionary advantage in developing a sweet tooth. It was a means of selecting the ripest fruits, which would be at their most nutritious.

But fresh foods no longer taste sweet. Many are deliberately harvested while under-ripe, to lessen damage in transport and to extend shelf-life. In addition, they have been robbed of many of the trace elements they once contained, although this is disputed by some food scientists. A revolution in the way the foods are grown has taken away the very nutrients that once promoted good health. Our staple foods have been "dumbed down". As a result, Britain - like other industrial countries - is suffering a tidal wave of sickness.

Degenerative conditions, such as heart disease, arthritis, diabetes and asthma, are reaching epidemic proportions. One in three of us will be struck down with cancer at some stage in our lives. Mental illness, everything from depression to dementia, is also rife.

Could food really be responsible for the health catastrophe that has overtaken the western world? It seems scarcely credible. Yet the fact remains that our basic foods have been changed. They are now subtly different from those eaten by human beings through all of history.

Britain is 50 years into a mass experiment in human nutrition. We all eat basic foods that have been stripped of the antioxidants, trace elements and essential fatty acids that once promoted good health. Is it any wonder that our body-maintenance systems are breaking down in middle age or earlier? Sounds familiar? Read on