I think most people in this day and age are starting to understand the concept that for animal-based foods, the health of the animal and whether that animal ate what it was meant to eat in nature greatly affects whether that food is healthy for you to eat, or not healthy, and whether it
has nutritional imbalances.
But with this article, I want to expand this discussion from just the diet of the animal to another possibly even MORE important factor that nobody is really talking about. And this directly relates to one of the MOST important substances in your body that you probably ARE deficient. In fact, most people are deficient in this.
More about that in a minute, but first, let's make sure we're on the same page with quality of the diet of animals in our food supply.
For example, as you probably already know, grass-fed beef from cattle that roam outside in grassy fields is MUCH healthier for you than typical grain-fed beef from a factory farm feedlot. The unhealthy grain-fed beef has been consistently shown to have lower levels of vitamins and minerals (particularly Vitamin A and E) and lower levels of the healthy fat, CLA compared to properly raised grass-fed beef. We also know that grain-fed beef has an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 fats to omega-3 fats compared to grass-fed beef, which contains ideal healthy ratios of these fats.
Another example would be chicken… Unhealthy chickens that are raised in factory chicken houses, never see an outdoor environment, and fed unnatural amounts of grains are going to produce a significantly less healthy chicken meat for your meals compared to a chicken that spent most of its time outdoors roaming fields and eating greens, seeds, bugs, worms, and other natural items that chickens like to eat. The chicken that ate a natural diet roaming outside is going to have more vitamins and minerals and healthier omega-3 to omega-6 ratios compared to the chicken that lived a horrible life inside a factory farm chicken house, and ate unnatural amounts of grains to be fattened up quickly.
This also applies to your source of eggs… healthy hens that roam outdoors and eat what they are supposed to eat naturally (not piles of grains) will supply healthy eggs for your consumption… unhealthy hens in factory hen houses fattened up on nothing but grains will produce less healthy eggs with lower vitamin and mineral content, less carotenoids, and lower omega-3 levels.
I know this for a fact, as I get my eggs from a local farmer here in Colorado where the hens get 40 acres to roam on daily and eat whatever their little hearts desire…all the greens, bugs, worms, etc that they want. Their eggs have thick strong shells and DEEP orange yolks indicating super high levels of nutrition and carotenoids in those yolks. Compare that to the thin weak shells and pale yellow yolks of most eggs that you'll find at grocery stores or restaurants which came from factory raised hens. It's a shocking comparison when seen side by side, but sadly, most people in this day and age have never seen what real egg yolks are supposed to look like, and have never experienced the quality nutrition that those egg yolks were supposed to have.
Ok, so I think we're pretty clear on the fact that the diet of an animal directly relates to how healthy that meat or eggs (or even milk or butter) will be for our consumption as a food source. But here's a vitally important aspect of how an animal is raised that almost nobody is talking about…
How much sunshine did those animals receive?
Yes, if you know a lot about nutrition, I think you know where I'm going with this… how much vitamin D is in that meat, dairy, or eggs based on how much sun the animal received?
As you may have heard, it's no secret that there's a major epidemic going on in "westernized" countries in this day and age… and that is Vitamin D deficiency in us humans… but nobody is talking about vitamin D deficiency in our animals that make up our food supply, hence further exacerbating the problem.
Part of the reason for this mass scale vitamin D deficiency is that there's a major propaganda campaign going on where companies and the media constantly tell you that you should never go out in the sun between 10am to 3pm as those "deadly" sun rays will automatically give you cancer (by the way, this is the ONLY time that UV-B rays are strong enough to trigger vitamin D production in your body).
They also tell you that you should slather on chemical-based carcinogenic sunscreens (which absorb through your skin and into your blood stream) to protect yourself from the so-called "deadly" sun… this excessive use of chemical sunscreens also means that your body can't properly produce the vitally important Vitamin D from your sun exposure.
But I have to digress on that topic so I don't stray too far from this discussion of animals health. If you want to read more, here's an article where I show why most people may actually be underexposed to the sun which is making them even more vitamin D deficient.
Now with that said, one of the other major reasons that the majority of the population in "westernized" countries are more and more vitamin D deficient is that our animals are being raised in indoor factory environments nowadays and are seeing MUCH less sunshine than the animals are meant to see.
You see, many animals and birds are just like us humans in that they depend on the sun to produce vitamin D through oils that react with sunlight (UV-B rays) shining on their skin, fur, or feathers.
So what do you think happens now that most of the animals in our food supply are raised in horrendous indoor environments and see much less sunshine than our animals from farms several decades ago did?
Well, that means that the meat, eggs, and dairy from those animals has significantly less vitamin D than it used to contain back in our grandparents day…in addition to all of the other nutritional deficiencies that we talked about earlier in this article.
Let's go back to the eggs example from above, but this time lets relate it to vitamin D content instead of omega-3′s and carotenoid deficiencies. In today's factory hen houses where the hens never see any sunshine, this means that they do not pass on much Vitamin D to the egg yolks, and you end up with Vitamin D deficient egg yolks.
However, remember those eggs that I told you about that came from hens that roamed around outside every day on 40 acres eating greens, bugs, seeds, and worms? Well, what we didn't talk about earlier is that those hens are also being exposed to daily sunshine and that helps the hens produce Vitamin D, and therefore pass that Vitamin D onto the egg yolks. In this case, you get egg yolks with MUCH higher vitamin D levels… this is what we were meant to get in nature, and grocery store eggs are a far cry from the eggs that our grandparents and great grandparents would have eaten 60-100 years ago.
When you combine the fact that most people are NOT getting adequate small doses of daily sunshine, are over-using chemical-based sunscreens that prevent your body from producing vitamin D, and are also getting less Vitamin D from the meat, dairy, and eggs in our food supply these days, you can see why Vitamin D deficiency is a major problem right now.
Remember that Vitamin D is NOT just any old "vitamin"… it's actually produced into a hormone in our body and is one of the most important substances in our bodies that regulates everything from hormone balance, to helping prevent cancer, to helping control blood sugar, to helping you lose fat and build muscle.
Remember that Vitamin D is also the MOST important factor involved in how strong your immune system is… why do you think people get sick more in the winter with colds and flu and not in the summer? Yep, it's almost 100% involved with Vitamin D levels in your body that decline in the winter from lack of sun exposure. Come on, did you really think there were more "germs" floating around in the winter…nope, it's all about Vitamin D levels and your immune system.
Side note: From late October through early March in the northern hemisphere, north of an imaginary line from approximately Atlanta to Los Angeles, the sun's rays are too weak, and UV-B rays cannot pass through the atmosphere due to the low sun angle during those months. This means that UV-B rays are inadequate during those months to trigger any Vitamin D production in your body. Your only solution is either a tropical vacation closer to the equator (which will only temporarily help improve vitamin D levels) or obtaining your vitamin D from your diet and carefully chosen supplements.
By the way, since you may already be a Prograde nutrition customer, the source of vitamin D in Prograde's VGF25 whole-foods based multi-vitamin is obtained from fish liver oil and is therefore a good quality source. But even with 400IU daily, although this is the recommended daily value, most scientists warn that this level will not sustain adequate vitamin D levels in your body, and therefore, you will still need regular sunlight and additional vitamin D from the right food sources to make sure you get enough D. Fatty fish, organ meats, egg yolks, and pork fat are reasonable sources of vitamin D, but cod liver oil or other fish liver oils are the highest in vitamin D.
I personally use this oil-based vitamin D3 supplement (most D3 supps use unhealthy soybean oil as a base, whereas this brand uses healthy olive oil as a base), and I recommend using this supplement daily at least during the winter each year. If you get a good amount of daily sunshine in the summer, it's not necessary to use a D3 supplement unless you do a D3 blood test and find that your levels are still low, even in the summer.
The only way to know if you're dangerously deficient in Vitamin D is to get a blood test. When I had my Vitamin D levels tested a while back, I ordered a self testing kit that you can do at home instead of going to a doctors office, and you mail it to the lab for analysis. It's much cheaper than a doctors visit. I haven't asked permission to mention the company's name that performs this Vitamin D testing service, so I will contact them and see if it's okay to do so. I'll update you on that soon.
I also plan to put together a whole series of articles that will shock you and show you a few important videos on this topic as well, so please be on the lookout for my articles in your email inbox. Please don't take this information lightly… vitamin D is one of the most important substances in your body, and almost any health issue you're having can possibly be traced back to low vitamin D levels, and that includes sicknesses or anything immune system related, hormone imbalance, etc
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