There are so many topics to discuss which affect our health that it is hard to choose just one at a time. My motto is Unhealthy Soil = Unhealthy Plants and Animals = Unhealthy People. With that in mind, let's discuss meat, fish and meat substitutes. I just read an article by some well meaning person who was bragging that chicken and soy are good for you ? WRONG!

If you consider how our ancestors developed in the last 10,000+ years, you will realize they ate non-chemical meats, berries, and nuts ? things that they could forage. They ate deer, buffalo, birds and other types of meat. The common thing all these meat sources shared was that they were grass fed and loaded with Omega III's and other beneficial fatty acids. However crude it was, they also caught fish. If they were inland it was fresh water, but if they were close to the ocean it was sea food.

The land was also untouched and the grasses and other plants grew and died and went back into the soil year after year. Because of this, the meat from the animals and fish in the streams (or sea food) were loaded with trace minerals. The nuts and berries were also loaded with trace minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and enzymes. With this combination, we had healthy soil, healthy plants and animals, and healthy people.

Fast forward to the present - what do we have today? Grain-fed chemical beef, chemical chicken, cancerous fish from fresh water, toxic sea food, no trace minerals from fruits and vegetables, and genetically engineered grains grown with toxic fertilizers,herbicides, pesticides and fungicides.

We see all kinds of articles suggesting that chicken is healthier than beef. Before you get all warm and fuzzy with this thought, think about the things that go into the average cattle and chicken diets before they get to your grocery shelves.

Are you ready for a picture of the preparation of cows and chickens before they make it to your dinner table?

The calves are born to mothers who have pesticide tags stuck in their ears for flies. They eat grass from land that has toxic fertilizers and is probably sprayed with herbicides to kill the weeds. (If the soil was healthy and fertile, you wouldn't have weeds). The calves are supplemented with grains from fields without trace minerals and exposed to herbicides, pesticides and fungicides ? unhealthy plants.

They are weaned from their mothers and put into a feed lot. There they have steroids and/or hormones injected into their ears, are fed a very concentrated grain diet with a little fiber, and ingest antibiotics which are added to the food to prevent disease because they stand around without exercise putting excrement on each other.

They have chemical wormers sprayed on from their heads to their tails to prevent parasites. Their feed also has to be sprayed with Arm and Hammer (TM) baking soda to prevent gas (from the grain diet) that can kill them. Because of the super-acid stomach, they produce E-coli in their guts that if leaked into the meat can kill us. I need to add here that because of the grain diet these animals have no essential beneficial fatty acids ? the good stuff for our health.

Now, measure chickens against beef. Chickens have been bred to grow and mature quickly. With their diet (50% chemicals and grains grown with toxic chemicals) they mature in 6 weeks. They have to be harvested at 6 weeks because if they go to 8 weeks, they will die of heart attacks (the heart does not grow at the same speed as their bodies).

They also have part of their beaks removed so they don't kill each other. They are confined in houses (usually 100 feet by 40 feet wide), and walk on manure and shavings from previous lots. One of my favorite things about their diets is the arsenic (a heavy metal) put into their feed to make them eat more. They stop feeding the arsenic 5 days before slaughter, and want you to believe that there is no residual in their bodies ? NOT TRUE!

Also, if you read on the label that store bought chicken is Free Range, don't believe it. The latest deception is that they build a little sun room on the side of the industrial chicken house so the chickens can go into this room ? hence Free Range. Real Free Range chickens are allowed to graze on grass, eating bugs, and allowing their manure to fertilize the land as nature would normally allow.

Just in case you think that substituting soy beans for protein is a good thing, let me dispel that idea. Soy beans are for the most part (85%) genetically engineered. This means they can tolerate more herbicide, which you get to eat. Herbicides are a leading cause of cancer.

They are GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) because the large corporations who invented them did so to make money, not to feed the world or make a new nutritious food source. GMO foods have almost no nutrition. These corporations are trying to destroy our God-given plants, so we have to eat their dang foods! We still have no idea of the diseases that will crop up in people and animals because of these unnatural foods.

If the GMO is not enough, then think of the other toxic chemicals used to grow the crops. Remember that soy is also loaded with phytoestrogens. These estrogens can increase a woman's breast size. Is that so they can get larger and then have a better chance of breast cancer?

As long as we are talking about phytoestrogens and soy, we need to consider soy milk for infants. If you have a new baby, would you go to the doctor and say "Doc, I feel strongly that my baby needs estrogens. Can you give me a script for the little tyke"? As silly as this sounds, that is what happens to babies on soy.

So I ask, what does the estrogen do to these babies? Does it make little girls mature at 7 and 8 years old? Does it make little boys more likely to become homosexual? I don't have an answer ? just questions.

I also need to add that seafood can provide beneficial fatty acids, but how many PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) and how much mercury do you want with your diet? PCB's are a very toxic chemical associated with cancer by being stored in the fat of animals, fish and humans. This was banned in 1976, but has been dumped in our rivers and oceans. It doesn't biodegrade easily and persists in the environment for many years. Mercury is a heavy metal from many sources, but is a common pollutant from smoke stacks of electric generating plants. Michigan has more falling with rain than the EPA says is safe.

The only salmon readily available that is free from chemicals (we have been polluting the oceans for years) is salmon from Alaskan waters.

Beef from the store is unhealthy. The plastic wrap and styrene containers leak gas and chemicals which cause cancer and depression. Even the organic beef from health stores is not healthy because the grain diet destroys the beneficial fatty acids ? no Omega III's, CLA's, etc. This being said, you can buy grass fed non-chemical beef from farmers all over the US, if you just take time to do learn how to find them.

The chicken in the stores is also unhealthy, but you can learn how to find pastured poultry. These are chickens that live on grass, bugs, and live healthy lives in the sunshine. You can find pasture chickens that produce healthy eggs. These eggs are wonderful with their bright orange, upright, great-tasting yellows.

It is hard to eliminate GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) like soy and corn, but it can be done. We don't need grains in our diets. Grains are unhealthy for cows (they are grass eating machines) and they make them fat. Grains do the same to humans. They make us fat and unhealthy, particularly when grains are striped of all nutrition (white bread), pesticides and herbicides are left behind, and toxic fertilizers are used to grow the crops.

You might think when you buy a bag of fertilizer that you are getting 100% fertilizer, but that isn't true. Fifty pounds of fertilizer will be made up of 1/3 to 2/3 industrial waste. The waste may be reasonably neutral, but it might be toxic with heavy metals ? lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and/or other toxins. When toxic metals can be passed off as trace minerals, they can be given to fertilizer manufacturers, added to fertilizers, and spread on our farm land and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is not involved.

If the waste was to go into a land fill, the EPA would be involved and the disposal would be very expensive. Mercury is one of the most abused metals in the food chain. When the government tried to clean up our air, they required scrubbers on the smoke stacks to collect the mercury. After collecting the mercury, the electric utilities had to get rid of the waste, so "look out farm land, look out food".

We need carbs, but not unhealthy non-nutrient carbs loaded with chemicals.

So, some of the solutions to better eating and better health are grass-fed, non-confined beef, chicken, lamb, and pork. No grains ? particularly anything white. Buy as much organic food as possible and begin looking for "therapeutic food" (so healthful that it improves your health instead of hurting it) from producer networks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Robert Bard OD is a licensed optometrist and has been for many years. For the past 20 years, he has been researching the effects of toxic chemicals on the environment, animals and people. He has become an avid reporter and speaker covering topics on toxic chemicals as they relate to food, disease, medicine, water and land. Along with his wife Judy, he raises miniature Hereford and Lowline cattle, as well as goats, that are grass fed without drugs or chemicals. He also restores hay meadows and pastures with organic fertilizers. For more information, visit Dr. Bob's site at http://www.drbobthehealthbuilder.com and sign up for his free weekly newsletter.