Everything you need to know about artificial rippening, hybridisation and food additives.

Our World Has Changed
Our lives have become a whirlwind adventure and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to take it all in. This has created a demand for convenience, pre-packaged food. We now have the most diverse food supply in recorded history. Supermarkets are huge and are filled low-nutrition, high energy, additive laden products. The truth is you could set fire to the bulk of what the supermarket chains sell. And that includes the fruit and vegetables. Fresh produce (and I use that term loosely) is first grown with an abundance of pesticide chemicals. They are then picked when they are not even in the realms of ripeness and then placed in cold storage for up to 3 years. Finally they are artificially ripened using toxic chemicals and if your lucky the produce will continue to get sprayed with these chemicals as they rot on the supermarket shelf.
Our lives have become a whirlwind adventure and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to take it all in. This has created a demand for convenience, pre-packaged food. We now have the most diverse food supply in recorded history. Supermarkets are huge and are filled low-nutrition, high energy, additive laden products. The truth is you could set fire to the bulk of what the supermarket chains sell. And that includes the fruit and vegetables. Fresh produce (and I use that term loosely) is first grown with an abundance of pesticide chemicals. They are then picked when they are not even in the realms of ripeness and then placed in cold storage for up to 3 years. Finally they are artificially ripened using toxic chemicals and if your lucky the produce will continue to get sprayed with these chemicals as they rot on the supermarket shelf.
We may have an over abundant food supply, but it is in no way superior. We may have more exciting lives to lead, but we have alarming rates of depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD), autism, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), cancer, suicide, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and the list goes on – all are linked to a poor diet.
But is it a poor diet by choice, for some it is, but others truly believe they are doing the right thing by their body and it is very unsettling to find that you’ve been duped.
What is more unsettling is the lack of regulation and disclosure in our food supply. Additives are approved under very dubious conditions and when independent studies prove the undesirable effects of these chemicals, the food giants launch their own funded studies – you can just imagine their findings.
How do we turn back the clock and return to a more natural way of life and reclaim our health? The answer is, we replace our flowerbeds with a veggie patch and start making meals from scratch, just like our grandparents and the generations before them.
“Well I don’t have time for all that” I can hear you say. Think of the time you spend dealing with unruly children, or what it would take to recover from a serious illness, like cancer, we all know someone who has been there and its not pretty. As for the gardening, kids love to get their hands dirty and research shows that they are more likely to eat fresh produce or try something new if they have been involved with its care and production. Gardening has also been shown to be a great stress reliever.
To those who say that they couldn’t possibly give up their favourite treats, there is no need to. The body is a fabulously resilient machine that can cope with few treats a week. The problem is that the large majority of the western world treats everyday like its Christmas. It isn’t really our fault; it is a consequence of a generation living through the great depression and then World War II. The baby-boomer generation got spoilt with all of the food and treats that their parents missed out on – who can blame them? However, all parties must end sometime. It isn’t doing our bodies any favours by constantly indulging in treat food. A treat is a treat, not an everyday occurrence. Human beings are supposedly the most intelligent creatures on the planet, yet we are the only one’s that deny our body of proper sustenance. If you examine a food label, it appears to be a cocktail of chemicals and numbers that the average person has no understanding of. The scary fact is that food companies don’t actually have to disclose all the ingredients of a product. If an ingredient is less than 5% of the whole product it doesn’t have to be declared. As we are discovering, the 5% is adding up and it is getting increasingly difficult to find completely additive free food. Currently 4 multinational companies own 40% of the world’s food supply. These food giants have become very savvy at marketing and food labelling. A label can very boldly state that there are no preservatives added, when they are in fact laden with food additives. This is achieved by either adding a whole ingredient such as vegetable oil or vinegar that contains the preservative, or by using a synthetic antioxidant or sorbate that technically isn’t classified as a preservative, even though it has the same function.

The best way for consumers to make a difference to our food supply, it to choose bands that are additive free. It won’t take long before the multi-nationals realise that their market share is dropping, thereby encouraging more additive-free products to become available and reducing costs by increasing the competition.
There are also many petitions and open letters to send to food companies and Food Standards Australia (our regulating body), to demand the removal of these additives. This has worked in other countries, particularly the UK. Some damning research came out by South Hampton University that clearly showed the link between particular food additives and behaviour. Europe has never used many additives in their food supply and are highly regarded for their superior health, despite their increased alcohol and tobacco use. It’s not the Mediterranean diet; it’s the low additive food supply. Many food additives that are used extensively in Australia are banned in many parts the world due to the demonstrated adverse effects – why is Australia so far behind the rest of the world?