(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 3 A billion microorganisms in a teaspoon. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-19 You can read previous chapters at “You are what you eat, drink, breathe, touch….” here on daily Kos. Please share. A billion microorganisms in a teaspoon. I don’t know who did the counting. Some articles place the amount as equal to all the stars in the Universe and others. more than all the people in the world. Living soil has billions of microorganisms. We didn’t know this until a microscope strong enough to magnify 400 times was invented. We couldn’t see the microorganisms and yes, even extremely small insects. In 1958, as one of my achievements in a course on agriculture, I qualified to go to the National Soil Judging contest. I don’t remember ever hearing anything about microorganisms or even living soil. We studied and judged soil structure measuring the depth of topsoil, and the amount of sand, clay and rock below the surface. Today even the U.S.D.A. (Dept of Agriculture), posts: “Many people don’t realize that soil, especially healthy soil, is full of life. Millions of species and billions of organisms make up a complex and diverse mix of microscopic and macroscopic life that represents the greatest concentration of biomass anywhere on the planet. Bacteria, algae, microscopic insects, earthworms, beetles, ants, mites, and fungi are among them. Altogether, their value has been estimated at $1.5 trillion a year worldwide… What these low-lying creatures lack in size, they make up for in numbers. Consider bacteria, the soil microbes with the highest numbers… You can fit 40 million of them on the end of one pin. In fact, there are more soil microorganisms (microbes for short) in a teaspoonful of soil than there are people on the earth… Like other living creatures, the organisms in the soil also need food and shelter. Some feed on dead organic matter, and some eat other microbes. As a group, they cycle nutrients, build the soil and give it structure. The healthiest soils are those with a diversity and abundance of life. Farmers with the healthiest soils nurture that life by creating a diversity of plant life above the soil surface, with year-round ground cover, no tillage, and judicious pesticide use.” 1 No plant can be a healthy plant with vital nutrients unless it is grown in a healthy, living soil. It follows then, that no plant eating animal will receive all the vital nutrients necessary for a healthy body unless fed food from a healthy soil. In addition, no animal that eats meat (humans) will receive all the vital nutrients unless that meat was raised and/or supplied with feed from a healthy soil. If I am a vegetarian, my grains and vegetables need to come from crops grown in a healthy soil. If I am, as many Americans are, a meat eater, then these products also need to be based on a healthy soil. We worry about calories, vitamins and minerals, sugar content and fat content and may even be concerned about other things in our food, but seldom are concerned about the other organisms that live both in the soil and our bodies. We are not only what we eat, but what we don’t eat. Going back to my earlier life, in 1959, as my first job out of high school, I applied anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, (a caustic gas) in the ground between the corn crop rows. This application alone would be enough to begin the destruction of micro life in the soil. Today, the corn seeds we plant have a poison applied to keep the wire worms from eating it. Then we apply weed killer after the corn sprouts to keep the rows nice and neat with no weeds growing. Eventually more weed killer is applied to some crops to encourage faster dry down for harvesting. Any and all of these poisons eventually end up in some measure in the killing of our soil. The bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, fungi we have killed off have another purpose. They attack the sand, rock and clay in our soil to extract minerals, those 90 plus minerals we need for a healthy life, and they enable the plant roots to take up those minerals so that our food is enriched with them. By continuing to apply more and more of the partial fertilizers, (NKP), with maybe a couple more trace minerals, the quantity of crop has increased many fold (corn from 40 to 200 bushels per acre), yet the corn has less nutrient value than before. We are producing empty calories and then wonder why people eat so much. Too bad, it doesn’t stop there. Along with the lack of access to trace minerals, but with the addition of Nitrogen fertilizers, the corn plant itself has been bred to produce more volume utilizing the additional fertilizer. Now we have an ear of corn which has larger kernels as well as more of them. The increased size is not because of more minerals, that size comes from an increase of starch or as we call it, carbohydrates. To get the minerals we need for our blood and body, we now must eat additional quantities of carbohydrates. Some weight loss diets restrict the carbohydrates leaving us starving for needed trace minerals. I have used the example of corn, but almost all plant life that we eat any more has been over-fertilized for growth and starved for needed minerals affecting both the taste and texture of the vegetable or fruit. But using corn to further our example, corn as well as oats, milo, soybean meal, hay and many other products are fed to our animals that produce food for us. These animals are often housed, hundreds at a time, in buildings, with all their feed brought in from mineral depleted fields. Dairy herds may number in the hundreds, the same goes for hogs that never have space to even turnaround. Beef cows are fed in pens where the manure is knee deep. Chickens lay eggs in cages that only allow them space to turn around and the chicken fryers are in enclosed pens where dust hinders their breathing. The animals raised on these crops not only taste different, but the meat, the eggs, the milk, all can be tested and not only will be deficient in nutrients but will have other changes. If there can be measurable changes, if this happens in farm animals, then couldn’t we wonder if eating plants deficient in trace minerals would not also have an effect on us as humans? Would the same hold true when we eat animals raised this way? This book started with comments about the minerals in our blood. Our blood circulates throughout our body furnishing our cells with the necessary ingredients for a healthy life. Common sense will answer the question… “Do we need all these minerals? Just as important, Is it necessary that we get these minerals and other nutrients in the proper ratio? Who knows just what each one does either by itself or in coordination with others?” The U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health thinks so. Popping a pill each day to make sure we have these items can be as harmful or helpful. From their site: “Vitamins and minerals are essential substances that our bodies need to develop and function normally. The known vitamins include A, C, D, E, and K, and the B vitamins: thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyridoxal (B6), cobalamin (B12), biotin, and folate/folic acid. A number of minerals are essential for health: calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, sulfur, cobalt, copper, fluoride, manganese, and selenium. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015–2020 recommends that people should aim to meet their nutrient requirements through a healthy eating pattern that includes nutrient-dense forms of foods.” 2 They go on to say; “Multivitamins/multiminerals (MVMs) are the most frequently used dietary supplements, …MVMs cannot take the place of eating a variety of foods that are important to a healthy diet. Foods provide more than vitamins and minerals. Many foods also have fiber and other substances that can provide health benefits. …evidence to support their use for overall health or disease prevention in the general population remains limited.”2 IBID. If we are taking a 100% supplement, we may be overdosing with unwanted results. In addition, there is no evidence that taking these supplements will prevent chronic diseases. In fact, taking excess Vitamin A may cause birth defects (preformed retinol form, not as beta-carotene). In addition, if you take any blood thinner, you need to talk to your doctor before taking multi-vitamins that might contain vitamin K. We have already addressed the decrease of nutrients in our food in our present day and the U.S. Dept of Agriculture acknowledges this. What is not addressed is all of the 90 plus minerals found in our blood. The many trace minerals found are too numerous to address with normal tests. In addition, time and effort have not been utilized to find out all the purposes of these trace minerals. It becomes more important to get all of our nutrients from our food which is raised in a proper manner on fortified soil. You will note that there are dangers in taking multi-nutrient pills. Most health sites will recommend that you ask your doctor. The problem with that is that most doctors studied how to cure diseases and their medical school, if it taught anything about nutrients, barely touched the subject. This doesn’t mean that no one has not examined the subject. There are many articles in medical journals addressing different diseases and how nutrients may affect the onset or continuous effects of these diseases. Yet, many times, the doctor will just prescribe a pill or shot without examining the cause. There are some who think that the only vitamin that we can duplicate and take as an effective supplement is Vitamin D. I don’t know. With so many supplements advertised, somebody thinks they are effective. The same is true of minerals as I have noted. Can inorganic minerals be absorbed by the body? I don’t know and don’t know if anyone does. The one factor that has little disagreement about is that the best way to get those minerals and vitamins is through healthy food. —------------------------------------------------ References, Notes, 1 NRCS US Dept of Agriculture Healthy soils are full of life 2 National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Vitamins and Minerals Vitamins and Minerals Additional Readings: Eco Farm an acres USA primer Charles Walters Page 37 and 40 –16 Hybridization ““The reason I mentioned cobalt, “wrote Halbleib,” is that we found (on the 16 farms in test) that no hybrid picked up cobalt, and in all the tests the hybrid was short seven to nine minerals, always exhibiting a failure to pick up cobalt…The core of vitamin B-12 is cobalt. “ Read “How the Food Industry is Killing Us” available everywhere, even for free at your library. Just ask! Now is your best chance to find my book, “How the Food Industry is Killing Us,” available for a promotional price at @Smashwords as part of their 2023 End of Year Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/ through January 1! #SmashwordsEoYSale #Smashwords [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/19/2212500/-Chapter-3-A-billion-microorganisms-in-a-teaspoon?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/