Food production is another important component of nutrition and health. This is a complex issue with lots of factors, some of which you cannot control. For example, food grown in healthy soil will supply necessary trace minerals to the food, but when soils are pressured for large-scale production, essential trace minerals can be lost.
However, you can make many choices:
- Buy organic foods for all or some of your diet (check the ‘dirty dozen’ list for those that are most heavily sprayed).
- Buy meat from producers who don’t use antibiotics.
- Reduce your intake of fish high in mercury. The EPA recommends eating up to 12 ounces of fish that are lower in mercury weekly, including shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish and avoiding shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish.