In this enlightening episode of Crunchy Stewardship, cousins Chrissy Rombach and Katie Jones explore the vital topic of food quality and its impact on our health from a biblical perspective.
The discussion focuses on food cultivation, the dangers of pesticides, and the benefits of organic eating. They highlight the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 lists, explaining the hazards of pesticide-laden produce and offering practical tips for buying healthier food without breaking the bank.
The episode also dives into the concept of regenerative farming and God's design for farming outlined in the Bible, emphasizing the importance of allowing the soil to rest. Chrissy and Katie invite listeners to join their Facebook group for further discussion and community support in the journey toward better health.
Key Takeaway
Considering your current food consumption habits and the information shared in this episode, what is one small, manageable step you feel inspired to take this week to better steward the food you and your family eat?
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship
00:46 Introduction to Food Cultivation
04:54 The Dirty Dozen: Foods to Avoid
07:43 The Dangers of Pesticides
09:26 Glyphosate and Chronic Diseases
15:42 The Importance of Nutrient-Dense Soil
18:31 Regenerative Farming and Biblical Principles
25:58 Big Agriculture vs Natural Farming
30:40 Tips for Buying Quality Food on a Budget
38:19 Join Our Community
Mentioned in this episode:
- EWG's Dirty Dozen List: https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php
- EWG's Clean 15 List: https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/clean-fifteen.php
- Documentary "The Biggest Little Farm": https://amzn.to/42MxHvE
Connect with us:
- Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/crunchychristianmama
- FREE How to Afford Non-Toxic Living Workbook: https://crunchystewardship.com/how-to-afford-non-toxic-living
- Podcast Newsletter: https://crunchystewardship.com/crunchy-stewardship-podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chrissy (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship.
(00:03):
My name is Chrissy Rombach.
Katie (00:05):
And my name is Katie Jones.
And we are two cousins who aresuper passionate about learning
and sharing the knowledge thatwe have to equip others like you
to steward their spiritual,mental, emotional, financial,
and physical health in order tohonor God in every aspect of
(00:26):
their lives.
Chrissy (00:27):
In our podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it
means to steward our lives asGod originally intended for us.
With the resources that God hasgiven us, we will look at topics
like food, medicine, finances,mental health, and lots more
through a natural lens with abiblical foundation.
In this episode we're gonna givea broad overview of just some
(00:50):
topics on food.
We're gonna go a little bitdeeper into the topic of food,
specifically in foodcultivation.
We decided to.
Focus on food cultivation todayjust because, you know,
Hippocrates said about 2000years ago that all disease
begins in the gut.
And so what better way to beginhealing the disease than by
(01:14):
changing the gut?
And we put food into our gutevery single day.
So, I think it's reallyimportant to focus on how we can
change the foods that we putinto our gut to then impact our
health for the better.
So today we're talking aboutfood cultivation, which is
(01:37):
pretty much how is food massproduced here in the United
States and how can we as aconsumer ensure that the food we
get is actually good for us anddoesn't have extra toxins and
chemicals added to it.
That is unfortunately so commonin the food industry here in
(02:01):
America.
Um, Katie, do you have anythingelse to add onto that, that you
think is important about thisbefore we get started?
Katie (02:08):
Yeah, I think this topic is fascinating, and it's
something that I've beenlearning a lot about recently,
because I always consideredmyself a pretty healthy eater
and compared to a lot ofAmerica, I, you know, if you
looked at our dinner plates youwould definitely see that my
husband and I, we focus oneating pretty healthy.
(02:31):
But what I have learned andwhat, you know, you and I will
discuss today is that justeating kind of like fruits and
veggies and even just, eatingmeats and things like that isn't
always the healthiest option.
And maybe hearing that for thefirst time.
If, if you're on the other endof this podcast, you're like,
wait a minute, what are yougonna say?
(02:52):
This is crazy.
Because, yeah, like growing upmy family focused a lot on
eating like a quote unquotebalanced meal, right?
We had lots of, vegetables inour meals.
We had, you know, Turkeysandwiches and we had lots of
fruits like berries and nuts andthings.
And generally speaking, theseare healthy things.
(03:15):
But again, like as we're goingto dive deeper into, it's like
there is actually a range, likea scale of these items and their
impact on us in regards to.
Yeah, whether they're actuallyhealthy or not.
Granted, yes, eating thesethings is better than eating
(03:35):
boxed mac and cheese every nightor something like that, or ramen
noodles.
Absolutely.
But again, what I didn't knowwas that like some of these
foods actually weren't ashealthy as I actually expected
them to be for me.
It's been
Chrissy (03:50):
crazy.
Or rather, the food in and ofthemselves is healthy for you,
but the way that the foods areprepared for us here in America
is not healthy for us.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The way
Katie (04:03):
that they're like grown and produced, um, and, and the
way they get to us makes themvery nutrient deficient.
Chrissy (04:12):
Exactly.
Katie (04:13):
And poisonous.
Chrissy (04:15):
So we wanted to focus on what are those things that,
are toxic for us thatunfortunately are in the quote
unquote healthy foods.
And so, amazingly enough, thereis plenty of resources out there
on this topic as our governmentactually starts to look more
into regenerative farming andwhat that looks like.
(04:36):
And the American population isstarting to.
Kind of push back on big ag andbig food and demanding better
quality food, which is reallyimportant for us.
There is more resources outthere because of this.
So, one resource that I reallywanna focus on, first off, is
the EWG's Dirty Dozen list.
(04:58):
So this list they havedeveloped, they have looked at a
broad spectrum of fruits andvegetables and developed a list
of 12 fruits and vegetables thatare considered the quote unquote
dirtiest of the bunch.
These ones are most likely tohave the most amount of
pesticides on them.
(05:18):
And are the most important tobuy organic.
So some of the things that theymention in their list of the
Dirty Dozen is that they found atotal of 209 pesticides in these
12 fruits and vegetables.
And more than 50 of thesepesticides were detected on
(05:39):
every single crop on this list,except for the cherries, which
is.
So heartbreaking for me to hearthat over 50 pesticides are used
on my favorite fruits andvegetables that I, ugh, it just
hurts my heart.
So the 12 that are on this list,in order from worst to not as
(06:04):
bad.
Number one is strawberries,which I genuinely think hurts my
heart the most.
Katie (06:10):
That's so sad.
Chrissy (06:11):
I know, but it makes sense.
You know, they have a very roughsurface to them that the
pesticides can get in and kindof get stuck.
And even if you try to wash itoff, like it's already gotten
into the fruit, you know?
So strawberries number two isspinach.
Number three is kale, whichthose are leafy greens that
again, have that rough surfaceand is very easy for stuff to
(06:35):
stick to.
Number four is grapes.
Number five, peaches.
Number six, pears.
Number seven, nectarines.
Number eight, apples numbernine, bell peppers and hot
peppers.
Hmm.
Number 10 was cherries.
Number 11 is blueberries.
(06:56):
And number 12 was green beans.
So essentially I've kind ofrealized this.
Katie (07:01):
Yeah.
Chrissy (07:02):
Seems like a list of a lot of summertime fruits and
vegetables, you know, that are
Katie (07:07):
Yeah.
A lot of things that have likereally soft skins and it makes
sense that like they would bepenetrated by a lot of these
things.
Mm-hmm.
Chrissy, I wanna ask you aquestion about these.
So you're, kind of explaininglike, okay, these are some of
the foods that we need to beslightly afraid of are
potentially poisoning us.
And so can we back up and willyou explain what, so EWG is like
(07:32):
they've done testing to findthese pesticides.
Why should we be afraid of thesepesticides?
Like why does it matter?
Like why, you know, okay, we'vebeen eating them for years.
I'm not dying instantly when Ieat a strawberry.
But why does it matter that weavoid these as non-organic
foods?
Chrissy (07:52):
Yeah, so pesticides have a lot more health impacts
than we really truly know about,as the general American
population, just because theydon't want us to know about it.
And so they make the researchreally, really hard to find.
It is out there, but you have toclick a lot in order to get
(08:13):
where you wanna go.
And these pesticides haveactually proven to be
neurotoxins and neurotoxinsaffect the brain processing,
they affect thought processingand these pesticides have also
been proven to be endocrinedisruptors and can be somewhat
responsible for infertilityrates that we are seeing in the
(08:36):
United States.
You know, infertility rates arethrough the roof right now, and,
I genuinely think that part ofit is because of the pesticides
that we have been putting on ourfood are disrupting our hormones
and creating an infertileenvironment for the reproduction
of life.
Which if you think about it, itmakes sense.
(08:59):
Pesticides are designed to killliving things.
Katie (09:03):
Yeah, to kill life.
Chrissy (09:04):
Exactly.
And so if we put it in our body,and then try to create a new
living thing, the pesticidesreally do get in the way.
And one of the most commonpesticides that is used is
called glyphosate.
Katie, I know you've done a lotof research on glyphosate and
(09:26):
its impacts on the human body.
You wanna just go through like,what are some of the general
overviews of glyphosate and thedangers in using it?
Katie (09:36):
So glyphosate is, I learned, the main chemical in
Roundup, which many of us evenuse around our own gardens.
Like, so if you're usingRoundup, you are spraying
glyphosate onto your your ownhome garden.
And so glyphosate has beenlinked to a lot of different
(09:58):
chronic diseases.
There are studies now that showthat pesticides, such as
glyphosate might be leading tothings like brain cancer.
Even seeing, the reduction infertility, like you mentioned,
other cancers, gut imbalances,autoimmune diseases are a big
one that often get linked toglyphosate poisoning.
(10:21):
And then one of the ones thatI've been learning a lot more
about recently as a foster momto a little girl who has really
intense autism is thatglyphosate and, like all these
processed foods even and, fooddyes, everything that you'd find
in a processed food.
(10:41):
So whether it's a pesticide orsome sort of additive to our
food is that they canpotentially lead towards the
exacerbation of certain symptomsof autism or even like ADHD.
So when you see kids who arelike intensely acting out,
whether it is, like the symptomsof autism or ADHD, it oftentimes
(11:06):
is linked to like an increase ofglyphosate in their system.
And so there's a lot of theseissues that we're seeing,
chronic issues that we're seeingin our kids, in adults everybody
across the board, I mean, youthink about.
Like how sick we are as aculture.
I literally, Chrissy listened tothis statistic the other day.
It's, it was so sad.
(11:27):
It was, a podcast episode abouthealth insurance, but they
shared this statistic that wasjust so mind blowing to me that
on average, in a given year, weas Americans are dying at
greater rates today from chronicdiseases than on average we are
(11:47):
dying from the past AmericanWars that we've been involved
in.
So the given year on average.
We lose like 1.4 million peopleto wars like from centuries past
and now today, on average, welose around 1.7 million people
to chronic diseases.
And you're like, well this is,
Chrissy (12:08):
How horrible is that?
Katie (12:08):
Huge! This is a giant epidemic that we're facing.
And it's a tragedy when we losepeople.
Like lives to wars and thingsthat we're involved in.
But why aren't we talking moreabout these chronic diseases
that are killing us I meanheart, any kind of heart
diseases.
Those are some of the top ones.
But then autoimmune diseasesimpact lives like so
(12:32):
dramatically that, it's almostseen as like normal to have like
an autoimmune disease.
I was part of a conversationwhere everybody was talking
about their autoimmune issues,and I'm like sitting here like,
oh my gosh, I'm the only onehere that doesn't have an
autoimmune disease.
But they're talking about it asif it's like it's just a normal
day.
Chrissy (12:53):
Which if you think about it.
The human body.
So we have cells in our bodythat are designed to kill off
dying or sick cells.
They're called phages.
Phage means to eat, and, thespecific ones are autophages, so
eat self means the cells thateat parts of the self that are
(13:14):
sick or dying or dead.
But, with these pesticides andadditives that have been added
to our food, they are workingand reprogramming the autophages
to then attack good, healthycells.
And that's actually where a lotof thyroid issues come in.
(13:37):
Because many autoimmune diseasesare also related to the thyroid
and thyroid cells look verysimilar to some of those dying
or sick or cancerous cells thatthe autophages would attack.
And so the autophages then startattacking the thyroid.
(13:58):
Which handles a lot ofmetabolism and food processing
in the body and energy levels.
The thyroid is responsible for avast majority of the hormones
that are released into our body,and that's where those
autoimmune issues come up isfrom the thyroid not working
properly because of the bodyattacking itself.
Katie (14:22):
It's so crazy.
And I even think of just likehow sick we are.
Like not even on like a chroniclevel, but like you think about
how often we see people justcoming down with the common cold
or the flu and all this stuff,and you just ask why.
And I know like people are like,oh yeah, like kids, like they
have lots of germs and blah,blah, blah.
(14:44):
They're gonna get sick.
Yeah.
Okay.
We know that.
But even as adults, like ourimmune systems in general are so
weak because we just don't havethe nutrients in order to fight
off these sicknesses as easilyas we should be able to.
I mean, we shouldn't bechronically sick with the flu
(15:05):
or, a cold or a cough oranything like that.
Mm-hmm.
But the issue with using a lotof these chemicals like
glyphosate, so I know like wekind of talked about, just like
the impact of these chronicdiseases, but just like our
day-to-day.
Like we aren't getting thenutrients that we need to
because the soil is so depletedof, good, healthy bacterias, and
(15:27):
nutrients, and minerals, andvitamins because we're spraying
the crops with this nasty stuff.
We're not giving the soil anykind of compost like we're doing
fertilizers that have morechemicals in them, which then in
turn kill off like all of the,the good bugs, we need worms and
(15:50):
all the other little creaturesthat are in there because they
help to bring value andnutrients to our soils.
And so, yeah, if you'rewondering like, why am I always
getting sick?
Well, it's probably because,that apple that you're eating.
Like it was sprayed withglyphosate.
I mean, some of the reasons whypeople think that we need these
(16:10):
chemicals is because it, ithelps our food last longer, and
so the apple that you're eatingor the cucumber that you just
cut up for lunch, it might havebeen picked from the field like
weeks ago, potentially evenmonths ago, but it's sprayed
with these chemicals that willmake it so that they don't
deteriorate as quickly, and thenby the time that it gets to you,
(16:33):
it's lost all of its nutrients.
'Cause the, the moment thatanything is cut from the vine or
that that plant that it'sgrowing from, it starts to
degrade and lose its nutrientvalue.
And so by the time that itactually gets to your plate, it
probably has no nutrients.
And I think we may have touchedon that in that, like from a
perspective of like wheat andlike wheat grains and why like
(16:56):
even, you know, like, like allthe bread that we have literally
has like no nutrient value andthen they like pump it with fake
nutrients.
You know, when you see fortifiedwith vitamins, you're literally
eating processed vitamins.
Like things that are made in alab, like these aren't naturally
occurring nutrients, that aregood for your body.
(17:18):
They're like synthesized stuffOur foster daughter who I
mentioned who has autism,unfortunately, it's a really big
problem that she really onlywants to eat Cheerios.
Like that is her main food.
And she's lived with us for twoyears and that's one of the only
things we can ever get her toeat consistently.
And I had a friend who's like,well, at least they're fortified
(17:40):
with vitamins.
And it was around that time thatI was learning about like why
the fortification of vitaminsjust wasn't good.
And I was like.
Oh my gosh, you're right.
She's eating all these syntheticvitamins that they're just like,
lab produced chemical, blah,blah, blah.
You know?
It's just, I was like, oh, it'sjust so sad because yeah,
there's, there's no nutrients inthem.
(18:00):
It's hard, so, yeah.
That's why we're sick.
Chrissy (18:03):
You mentioned that it's important to have soil that is
nutrient dense.
That we have been depleting oursoil, of the really, really
important nutrients that it has.
It actually, it made me thinkabout a passage in Leviticus,
you know,
Katie (18:19):
Ooh.
Chrissy (18:19):
Conveniently, God actually told us how to farm.
You know, like he laid it out.
Katie (18:26):
Please do share
Chrissy (18:26):
in the laws of Leviticus.
So Leviticus, 25 verse 3-4.
It says, for six years, sow yourfields and for six years prune
your vineyards and gather theircrops, but in the seventh year,
the land is to have a year ofSabbath, rest a Sabbath to the
Lord.
Do not sow your fields or pruneyour vineyards.
(18:47):
And that is very clear.
It is a command to theIsraelites.
Do not sow or reap in thatseventh year of Sabbath rest.
You know, God created six daysof work and one day of Sabbath.
That Sabbath is designed as arefresher, a replenishment of
(19:07):
energy.
It is put there that his peoplecan sit and be refreshed in the
presence of the Lord.
You know, humans are, we asChristians are commanded to
observe the Sabbath in order tobe refreshed, to prepare us for
(19:27):
the week.
And having a Sabbath for ourcrops is just as important, you
know?
To let the soil rest so that itcan replenished and rejuvenated
to then give you better crops inthe years to come.
And I think we have totallyfailed as a society in following
(19:52):
that, I never once have I seen afield resting for a whole year
in order to allow the soil toregenerate its nutrients.
Katie (20:04):
Yeah.
I wonder if farmers if they dothat.
I, I'd be curious to know, I,I'd be willing to bet if are
small farmers or something, Idon't know.
Chrissy (20:12):
I would be willing to bet that some farmers do.
Those farmers who really takeinto account God's word and in
another place in the scriptures,I can't remember exactly where
it is, but God promises to blessthe Israelites with enough food
to sustain them for that yearthat they are not sowing and
reaping, you know.
(20:33):
Just as when the Israelites arewandering in the wilderness for
40 years, God provided the mannafor them every single day.
He provided all that they neededand they were not to take more
than what they needed.
And in the same sense, like Godwill provide for us if we treat
(20:54):
our food the way God hascommanded us to treat our food
by taking a rest for a year fromgrowing crops.
Every seven years, God willprovide for us the food that we
need for that seventh yearduring the sixth year, he has
promised that, and God does notbreak his promises.
(21:16):
You know, that is one thing thatI am so thankful for, that God
does not break his promises.
Amen.
And we can be confident that hehas told us this and he will go
through with what he said.
Katie (21:30):
It's so fascinating.
I, I always find that there's somany like unique similarities
between us as human beings andour food and crops and
everything.
And I don't know why and I justfeel like sharing this, but you
know.
Thinking about Sabbath ourculture is so saturated with
this idea of like hustle, likethis hustle culture, right?
(21:53):
Mm-hmm.
Of like, we need to work, weneed to keep going and going and
doing and doing in order to getmoney to, in order to, to get
this lifestyle that we'rewanting to get.
But then it ends up leading toburnout and stress.
And then again, like all thesethings end up leading to chronic
illness because when our bodiesare so stressed, we like our
(22:15):
body's like literally in thisfight or flight mode and can't
relax in order to replenishitself, and it's just so
beautiful.
You just think back to like theGarden of Eden and how like we
too are similar to this idea ofa garden.
Like we, like our bodies need tobe tended to and watered and
filled with the Holy Spirit inorder to do what we were made to
(22:39):
do.
Like, uh, right.
It's, it's so beautiful how Godreally did create us to be
sustained in this balanced way.
I know you and I were kind oftalking before this podcast
recording of like the, the ideaof like regenerative farming and
how wonderful and like symbioticit really is.
(23:02):
Um, my mom and I watched thisbeautiful documentary called the
biggest little farm.
it's all about regenerativefarming and how, honestly, like
the way that I saw it, and Idon't think that these people
were Christians, but it's justso cool how you can just see God
kind of working in, in all theselike unique ways, but I think
(23:23):
just seeing that he really didcreate everything to work
perfectly together, but we ashumans, like sin just entered
the world and we just kind ofmessed it up.
And we think that we need to fixsomething that God designed as
perfectly to work together andso we think we need to bring in
glyphosate and fix the farmingand agriculture ways that we
(23:47):
produce food.
When really like, I think one ofthe coolest examples was.
That they, in this documentary,they had these fruit trees and
they were being overtaken bysnails.
And they're like, well, how doyou get rid of the snails
without bringing in any kind ofpesticide?
We don't wanna, take, chemicalsto them to kill them.
(24:09):
And they found out that ducksreally like to eat snails.
And so they.
Brought their massive hoard ofducks to this orchard.
And the ducks just like had afield day like eating all the
snails off the trees and they'relike, oh my gosh, this is great.
So now the ducks are fed, thetrees aren't getting eaten by
these snails.
(24:29):
And then.
The ducks are pooping on the, onthe roots of these trees.
And so they're gettingfertilized by the poop.
And it's just so funny, likeit's just like one of those
silly little things that whenyou actually take a step back
and like observe to see, okay,how does this actually work?
Like how did God design it towork together?
And can we just trust him tokind of work these things out
(24:52):
without needing to come in andfix something that wasn't
broken.
Chrissy (24:56):
So who knew it could be such a simple,
Katie (24:59):
a simple solution.
Yeah.
They didn't have to like,
Chrissy (25:01):
very simple,
Katie (25:02):
do anything new.
Chrissy (25:04):
Yeah.
So if it's so simple and kind ofstraightforward, why can't all
farms be like this?
And focus on using natural waysto get rid of pests as opposed
to focusing on using pesticides.
Like why can't it just be usedacross the board?
Katie (25:24):
I think that's when we can start talking about this
idea of like big agriculture,which a lot of people just use
the phrase like big ag, A-G, totalk about this phenomenon that
kind of goes on with ourindustrialization of the
agriculture system.
I think America kind of came inand they're like, you know, we
need to figure out how to feedthe world.
(25:46):
And it's so they had this likereally great idea of like, we
need to figure out how to feedeveryone on a large scale.
And so they came in andbasically said like, oh, all
these small farms aren't doingit as well as we think we could.
And so they come in and theywant to industrialize this whole
system and this, this, now thissystem that we live under kind
(26:09):
of dominates the way that weproduce food.
I mean specifically here inAmerica, but in, in a lot of
developing nations.
And so.
They have this mass productionof how we make food, and so they
create a system of bringing instuff like glyphosate and only
(26:29):
making like, like having onlyone crop be their main crop in
this area for the soil, which isactually really bad for the soil
to have the same crop mm-hmm.
Year after year in, in that oneplace.
Because like corn wantsdifferent types of nutrients and
vitamins from the soil thansomething like zucchini would,
um, or any other,
Chrissy (26:50):
I think that that kind of goes back to the command in
Leviticus of rotating.
Katie (26:57):
Yes.
Chrissy (26:57):
Year after year.
You know, if the same crop,that's a good point, is stealing
the same nutrients from the soilyear after year, then the soil's
gonna be completely depletedfrom that.
Whereas if you rotate differentcrops throughout the years or
throughout the seasons,different crops are gonna pull
different nutrients from thesoil and also put back different
nutrients into the soil.
(27:18):
You know, when they pick thecrops, they do leave behind
pieces, like it's not just soilthat's left behind.
You'll have the stems, someroots, yeah, some leaves that
are left over and thosedisintegrate and they decompose
and feed the soil again.
You know?
Katie (27:36):
So I think like big ag, like they kind of came in and
decided we know a more efficientway of doing this, so that we
can lower our production costsand we want to be able to do
this like on a really largescale.
And so they, they came inhonestly, with the main goal of
making profits.
(27:57):
Like they, they say that itreally is about like feeding the
world and everybody but, what itreally boils down to is like,
how can they make the mostmoney, as quickly as possible.
And so there's a lot ofconcerns.
Like we've kind of talked about,like there's a lot of
environmental concerns for thesoil.
It honestly, it leads to a lotof water pollution too.
(28:18):
Like when you think about allthe chemicals getting into our
water, which we talked a littlebit about, water before.
And then, honestly, it's reallyinteresting because it gets into
really big things like, thepeople point fingers at like,
like the greenhouse gasemissions.
But a lot of it actually islinked to the way that our
agriculture system worksspecifically.
(28:39):
And, and it's really interestingthat we point fingers back and
forth at who the big culprit is,but when you look at all the
benefits of something likeregenerative farming, it starts
to eliminate a lot of these bigworld issues like greenhouse
gases or water pollution andsoil degradation and stuff like
(29:01):
that.
But ultimately, I think what itcomes down to is a lot of, we
don't realize what the bigagriculture systems are doing to
our public health.
Mm-hmm.
We think we're eating healthywhen we're just eating fruits
and vegetables, but.
Yes.
Again, on the scale of what youcould be putting into your body,
(29:24):
it's definitely better than alot of the packaged processed
foods, so it's a step abovethat.
But what's even better for yourbody if you want to get the full
nutrients and vitamins andminerals that you really need in
order to thrive and to live along, prosperous life and to
really take care of your bodythe way that God wants us to,
(29:47):
like to value it and what we'reputting into it, we need to
examine all of the benefits ofeating something like organic
food.
We need to get back to just theway that God really designed it,
right?
Chrissy (30:03):
So.
Katie, throughout this podcast,we've talked a lot about the
dangers of the food that we havein our grocery stores the
dangers of pesticide use, thespecific foods that are
generally not recommended to buyunorganic because of the risk of
pesticides.
So what are we supposed to doabout it?
(30:24):
What is your biggest tip inrelation to food quality and
buying good food that you havefor us that is not going to
break the bank?
Katie (30:36):
Yeah.
I was actually talking aboutthis with some girls in my Bible
study the other day because.
I was trying to tell'em like,yeah, organic food is really the
best way to go, and so we needto be shopping for organic food.
And they're like, well, that'sso expensive.
It's so hard to switch.
And, and I've actually foundthat if you start focusing on
(30:58):
buying whole organic foods like,think ingredients, you know?
Okay.
Just your fruits and veggiesrather than buying like the
organic processed foods.
'cause if you go and you do buylike organic pasta sauces or
organic cereals or all the boxedpre-made stuff for you already.
(31:20):
Those are definitely going to bebank breaking, like they're
going to wreck your budget.
They're so expensive when youbuy the pre-made stuff.
And so as challenging as itmight be if you are someone who
is used to just buying like thepre-made stuff, it really will
be, pretty equal in your grocerybudget to switch from the
(31:44):
pre-made stuff to buying theingredients to make the stuff.
It does require, obviously thencooking.
So it might not always be thebest solution for people, but we
have found that now that we areswitching away from like all the
pre-made snacks, like we, we'venow don't really buy as many
snack foods in general, whichtend to be the more expensive
(32:06):
items at the grocery store.
So we actually like make our ownsnacks or just in general,
instead of.
Making a snack.
We just like chop up a bunch oforganic fruits and veggies.
And that's like the main thingthat we buy at the grocery store
now is just whole foods versusthe pre-packaged stuff.
(32:26):
So that's like my tip.
It does require a little bitmore planning and thinking.
But Chrissy, what about you?
Do you have any other tips maybeeven if people don't necessarily
have the time?
Because I know like you're busy.
You work a lot too.
And don't.
Have the ability to always do alot of the planning and cooking
and stuff for yourselves.
Yeah.
What are you kind of doing orwhat is your tip?
Chrissy (32:46):
Yeah, so I work 12 hour shifts.
I'm gonna be completely honest.
After a 12 hour shift, cooking ameal, then eating said meal, and
still getting eight to 10 hoursof sleep before going to my next
12 hour shift is just not areality.
Katie (33:00):
Totally.
Chrissy (33:01):
There is not enough hours in the day if you do the
math.
One thing that I have learnedis, you have to choose what is
best for your family.
Each person's situation is goingto be different.
And one thing that I've learnedjust to help with the timing
situation of it is I will buyorganic of specifically the
(33:24):
things on EWG's dirty dozenlist.
You know, those fruits, thepeaches, and the berries and the
leafy greens, you know.
But EWG has also published alist called the Clean 15 which
is really great and reallybeneficial if you do need to buy
food that is not organic inorder to not break the bank or
(33:47):
if you wanna see a a little bitmore of a processed form of the
food.
But like we said, the processedorganic foods are super, super
expensive.
So if you're gonna buy aprocessed food that's not
organic, maybe focus on theprocessed food that has Clean 15
(34:09):
ingredients in it or is morefocused on that angle.
And so the list of foods in theClean 15 list are avocados,
sweet corn, onions, pineapple,papaya, frozen peas, which again
is one of those a little bitmore processed foods, but is
(34:30):
less likely to have thosepesticides on them.
Asparagus, honey dew melon,kiwi, cabbage, mushrooms, mango,
watermelon, and carrots.
Hmm.
And so if you're gonna buyingredients that you need, but
organic really is breaking thebank, these clean 15 are some
(34:54):
that you can be a little bitmore confident that you're not
going to be consuming as manypesticides when you are
consuming them.
And, you know, I, I understandthe time aspect of cooking,
unfortunately, in the Americanlifestyle, it's very difficult
(35:14):
to create time for rest andcreate time to cook and prepare
food.
Sometimes I would even arguethat that is a luxury it's
becoming more of a luxury of ahigher class, rather than
something that lower middleclass people can appreciate,
which is incredibly unfortunateand breaks my heart.
Yeah.
But with that being said, youknow, if processed foods need to
(35:39):
be bought for the sake of time,focus on looking at the
ingredients that you canunderstand.
There are processed foods thatare not organic that can still
be good for you you just have tolook at the ingredients.
I've mentioned it before.
My Ragu Simply Eight pasta saucehas eight ingredients, and it is
(36:02):
all food ingredients.
It's like tomatoes, onions,spices, peppers, that that's
what's in it.
And I think focusing on foodslike that, you know, some pasta.
Look for pasta where the onlyingredient is Durham wheat, you
know, or wheat flour rather thanpastas with flour and niacin and
(36:27):
folate and this and that, andall of the added vitamins and
minerals, you don't need those.
Those are those syntheticvitamins and minerals that are
not going to be used very wellby the body.
So focus on looking foringredients that you understand
that, you know.
So those are just my littletidbits that I have as a
recommendation.
(36:48):
Katie, do you have anything elsethat you think would be
important to talk about in thisepisode before we sign out?
Katie (36:56):
Yeah, I.
Just wanna reiterate as we havein some of the other
conversations we've had thatit's, it can be really
overwhelming and I think it'salso a little bit jarring when
you like, feel like you've beendoing the right thing for a
while and then you now kind ofrun into these realities of our
food systems and it really feelslike we've been duped.
(37:20):
It can be really frustrating.
I mean, I literally sent a videoto Wes the other day to show him
like how our chicken is evenprocessed and stuff.
And he's like, well, now you'vetold me that I can't eat this
kind of stuff.
And what are we, like,basically, what are we supposed
to eat?
Like we are, we're just gonnasupposed starve ourselves.
And, it really does feelextremely frustrating and I
(37:44):
think if you have theopportunity to buy from a local
farmer, sometimes it can be moreexpensive to do that, but also
at the same time it might notbe, you might be surprised that
you can find really well pricedproducts from your local
farmers.
So I would just encourage you,I'll drop a link in our Facebook
group to how you can find localfarmers near you who can sell
(38:10):
you, meats, like really goodgrass fed meats.
And even, the types of fruitsand veggies that you are hoping
to buy, you know, the organicstuff.
And so anyway, I'll drop a linkto that and how you can find
local farmers in our Facebookgroup.
It's called Crunchy ChristianMamas on Budget and we'd love
(38:32):
for you to continue thisconversation.
Let's band together to, youknow, fight this good fight.
We want to take care of ourfamilies, we wanna take care of
our bodies, take care of ourhealth and do it all for the
glory of God.
And so that's kind of what we'redoing over there in our Facebook
group.
And we'd love to get to know youand just see how we can better
(38:52):
encourage you, equip you as wellas like, let's, like we need
equipping and encouraging too,right?
Help us.
And so let's all do thistogether.
So join us over there.
We'll have a link to ourFacebook group in the
description for this episode.
Chrissy (39:06):
Also be sure you go and leave us a five star review.
This helps other people find ourshow in the future.
And if you're not already signedup for our weekly newsletter,
you can take a moment to do thatby clicking the link in the show
notes.
We pray over each and every oneof you guys and hope that these
episodes can be fruitful andhelpful in your journey to
(39:26):
becoming a better steward ofyour body, mind, soul, spirit,
and finances.
And your families.
We are praying that this episodewas helpful for you and we'll
see you next time.
Hello and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship.
(00:03):
My name is Chrissy Rombach.
Katie (00:05):
And my name is Katie Jones.
And we are two cousins who aresuper passionate about learning
and sharing the knowledge thatwe have to equip others like you
to steward their spiritual,mental, emotional, financial,
and physical health in order tohonor God in every aspect of
(00:26):
their lives.
Chrissy (00:27):
In our podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it
means to steward our lives asGod originally intended for us.
With the resources that God hasgiven us, we will look at topics
like food, medicine, finances,mental health, and lots more
through a natural lens with abiblical foundation.
In this episode we're gonna givea broad overview of just some
(00:50):
topics on food.
We're gonna go a little bitdeeper into the topic of food,
specifically in foodcultivation.
We decided to.
Focus on food cultivation todayjust because, you know,
Hippocrates said about 2000years ago that all disease
begins in the gut.
And so what better way to beginhealing the disease than by
(01:14):
changing the gut?
And we put food into our gutevery single day.
So, I think it's reallyimportant to focus on how we can
change the foods that we putinto our gut to then impact our
health for the better.
So today we're talking aboutfood cultivation, which is
(01:37):
pretty much how is food massproduced here in the United
States and how can we as aconsumer ensure that the food we
get is actually good for us anddoesn't have extra toxins and
chemicals added to it.
That is unfortunately so commonin the food industry here in
(02:01):
America.
Um, Katie, do you have anythingelse to add onto that, that you
think is important about thisbefore we get started?
Katie (02:08):
Yeah, I think this topic is fascinating, and it's
something that I've beenlearning a lot about recently,
because I always consideredmyself a pretty healthy eater
and compared to a lot ofAmerica, I, you know, if you
looked at our dinner plates youwould definitely see that my
husband and I, we focus oneating pretty healthy.
(02:31):
But what I have learned andwhat, you know, you and I will
discuss today is that justeating kind of like fruits and
veggies and even just, eatingmeats and things like that isn't
always the healthiest option.
And maybe hearing that for thefirst time.
If, if you're on the other endof this podcast, you're like,
wait a minute, what are yougonna say?
(02:52):
This is crazy.
Because, yeah, like growing upmy family focused a lot on
eating like a quote unquotebalanced meal, right?
We had lots of, vegetables inour meals.
We had, you know, Turkeysandwiches and we had lots of
fruits like berries and nuts andthings.
And generally speaking, theseare healthy things.
(03:15):
But again, like as we're goingto dive deeper into, it's like
there is actually a range, likea scale of these items and their
impact on us in regards to.
Yeah, whether they're actuallyhealthy or not.
Granted, yes, eating thesethings is better than eating
(03:35):
boxed mac and cheese every nightor something like that, or ramen
noodles.
Absolutely.
But again, what I didn't knowwas that like some of these
foods actually weren't ashealthy as I actually expected
them to be for me.
It's been
Chrissy (03:50):
crazy.
Or rather, the food in and ofthemselves is healthy for you,
but the way that the foods areprepared for us here in America
is not healthy for us.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The way
Katie (04:03):
that they're like grown and produced, um, and, and the
way they get to us makes themvery nutrient deficient.
Chrissy (04:12):
Exactly.
Katie (04:13):
And poisonous.
Chrissy (04:15):
So we wanted to focus on what are those things that,
are toxic for us thatunfortunately are in the quote
unquote healthy foods.
And so, amazingly enough, thereis plenty of resources out there
on this topic as our governmentactually starts to look more
into regenerative farming andwhat that looks like.
(04:36):
And the American population isstarting to.
Kind of push back on big ag andbig food and demanding better
quality food, which is reallyimportant for us.
There is more resources outthere because of this.
So, one resource that I reallywanna focus on, first off, is
the EWG's Dirty Dozen list.
(04:58):
So this list they havedeveloped, they have looked at a
broad spectrum of fruits andvegetables and developed a list
of 12 fruits and vegetables thatare considered the quote unquote
dirtiest of the bunch.
These ones are most likely tohave the most amount of
pesticides on them.
(05:18):
And are the most important tobuy organic.
So some of the things that theymention in their list of the
Dirty Dozen is that they found atotal of 209 pesticides in these
12 fruits and vegetables.
And more than 50 of thesepesticides were detected on
(05:39):
every single crop on this list,except for the cherries, which
is.
So heartbreaking for me to hearthat over 50 pesticides are used
on my favorite fruits andvegetables that I, ugh, it just
hurts my heart.
So the 12 that are on this list,in order from worst to not as
(06:04):
bad.
Number one is strawberries,which I genuinely think hurts my
heart the most.
Katie (06:10):
That's so sad.
Chrissy (06:11):
I know, but it makes sense.
You know, they have a very roughsurface to them that the
pesticides can get in and kindof get stuck.
And even if you try to wash itoff, like it's already gotten
into the fruit, you know?
So strawberries number two isspinach.
Number three is kale, whichthose are leafy greens that
again, have that rough surfaceand is very easy for stuff to
(06:35):
stick to.
Number four is grapes.
Number five, peaches.
Number six, pears.
Number seven, nectarines.
Number eight, apples numbernine, bell peppers and hot
peppers.
Hmm.
Number 10 was cherries.
Number 11 is blueberries.
(06:56):
And number 12 was green beans.
So essentially I've kind ofrealized this.
Katie (07:01):
Yeah.
Chrissy (07:02):
Seems like a list of a lot of summertime fruits and
vegetables, you know, that are
Katie (07:07):
Yeah.
A lot of things that have likereally soft skins and it makes
sense that like they would bepenetrated by a lot of these
things.
Mm-hmm.
Chrissy, I wanna ask you aquestion about these.
So you're, kind of explaininglike, okay, these are some of
the foods that we need to beslightly afraid of are
potentially poisoning us.
And so can we back up and willyou explain what, so EWG is like
(07:32):
they've done testing to findthese pesticides.
Why should we be afraid of thesepesticides?
Like why does it matter?
Like why, you know, okay, we'vebeen eating them for years.
I'm not dying instantly when Ieat a strawberry.
But why does it matter that weavoid these as non-organic
foods?
Chrissy (07:52):
Yeah, so pesticides have a lot more health impacts
than we really truly know about,as the general American
population, just because theydon't want us to know about it.
And so they make the researchreally, really hard to find.
It is out there, but you have toclick a lot in order to get
(08:13):
where you wanna go.
And these pesticides haveactually proven to be
neurotoxins and neurotoxinsaffect the brain processing,
they affect thought processingand these pesticides have also
been proven to be endocrinedisruptors and can be somewhat
responsible for infertilityrates that we are seeing in the
(08:36):
United States.
You know, infertility rates arethrough the roof right now, and,
I genuinely think that part ofit is because of the pesticides
that we have been putting on ourfood are disrupting our hormones
and creating an infertileenvironment for the reproduction
of life.
Which if you think about it, itmakes sense.
(08:59):
Pesticides are designed to killliving things.
Katie (09:03):
Yeah, to kill life.
Chrissy (09:04):
Exactly.
And so if we put it in our body,and then try to create a new
living thing, the pesticidesreally do get in the way.
And one of the most commonpesticides that is used is
called glyphosate.
Katie, I know you've done a lotof research on glyphosate and
(09:26):
its impacts on the human body.
You wanna just go through like,what are some of the general
overviews of glyphosate and thedangers in using it?
Katie (09:36):
So glyphosate is, I learned, the main chemical in
Roundup, which many of us evenuse around our own gardens.
Like, so if you're usingRoundup, you are spraying
glyphosate onto your your ownhome garden.
And so glyphosate has beenlinked to a lot of different
(09:58):
chronic diseases.
There are studies now that showthat pesticides, such as
glyphosate might be leading tothings like brain cancer.
Even seeing, the reduction infertility, like you mentioned,
other cancers, gut imbalances,autoimmune diseases are a big
one that often get linked toglyphosate poisoning.
(10:21):
And then one of the ones thatI've been learning a lot more
about recently as a foster momto a little girl who has really
intense autism is thatglyphosate and, like all these
processed foods even and, fooddyes, everything that you'd find
in a processed food.
(10:41):
So whether it's a pesticide orsome sort of additive to our
food is that they canpotentially lead towards the
exacerbation of certain symptomsof autism or even like ADHD.
So when you see kids who arelike intensely acting out,
whether it is, like the symptomsof autism or ADHD, it oftentimes
(11:06):
is linked to like an increase ofglyphosate in their system.
And so there's a lot of theseissues that we're seeing,
chronic issues that we're seeingin our kids, in adults everybody
across the board, I mean, youthink about.
Like how sick we are as aculture.
I literally, Chrissy listened tothis statistic the other day.
It's, it was so sad.
(11:27):
It was, a podcast episode abouthealth insurance, but they
shared this statistic that wasjust so mind blowing to me that
on average, in a given year, weas Americans are dying at
greater rates today from chronicdiseases than on average we are
(11:47):
dying from the past AmericanWars that we've been involved
in.
So the given year on average.
We lose like 1.4 million peopleto wars like from centuries past
and now today, on average, welose around 1.7 million people
to chronic diseases.
And you're like, well this is,
Chrissy (12:08):
How horrible is that?
Katie (12:08):
Huge! This is a giant epidemic that we're facing.
And it's a tragedy when we losepeople.
Like lives to wars and thingsthat we're involved in.
But why aren't we talking moreabout these chronic diseases
that are killing us I meanheart, any kind of heart
diseases.
Those are some of the top ones.
But then autoimmune diseasesimpact lives like so
(12:32):
dramatically that, it's almostseen as like normal to have like
an autoimmune disease.
I was part of a conversationwhere everybody was talking
about their autoimmune issues,and I'm like sitting here like,
oh my gosh, I'm the only onehere that doesn't have an
autoimmune disease.
But they're talking about it asif it's like it's just a normal
day.
Chrissy (12:53):
Which if you think about it.
The human body.
So we have cells in our bodythat are designed to kill off
dying or sick cells.
They're called phages.
Phage means to eat, and, thespecific ones are autophages, so
eat self means the cells thateat parts of the self that are
(13:14):
sick or dying or dead.
But, with these pesticides andadditives that have been added
to our food, they are workingand reprogramming the autophages
to then attack good, healthycells.
And that's actually where a lotof thyroid issues come in.
(13:37):
Because many autoimmune diseasesare also related to the thyroid
and thyroid cells look verysimilar to some of those dying
or sick or cancerous cells thatthe autophages would attack.
And so the autophages then startattacking the thyroid.
(13:58):
Which handles a lot ofmetabolism and food processing
in the body and energy levels.
The thyroid is responsible for avast majority of the hormones
that are released into our body,and that's where those
autoimmune issues come up isfrom the thyroid not working
properly because of the bodyattacking itself.
Katie (14:22):
It's so crazy.
And I even think of just likehow sick we are.
Like not even on like a chroniclevel, but like you think about
how often we see people justcoming down with the common cold
or the flu and all this stuff,and you just ask why.
And I know like people are like,oh yeah, like kids, like they
have lots of germs and blah,blah, blah.
(14:44):
They're gonna get sick.
Yeah.
Okay.
We know that.
But even as adults, like ourimmune systems in general are so
weak because we just don't havethe nutrients in order to fight
off these sicknesses as easilyas we should be able to.
I mean, we shouldn't bechronically sick with the flu
(15:05):
or, a cold or a cough oranything like that.
Mm-hmm.
But the issue with using a lotof these chemicals like
glyphosate, so I know like wekind of talked about, just like
the impact of these chronicdiseases, but just like our
day-to-day.
Like we aren't getting thenutrients that we need to
because the soil is so depletedof, good, healthy bacterias, and
(15:27):
nutrients, and minerals, andvitamins because we're spraying
the crops with this nasty stuff.
We're not giving the soil anykind of compost like we're doing
fertilizers that have morechemicals in them, which then in
turn kill off like all of the,the good bugs, we need worms and
(15:50):
all the other little creaturesthat are in there because they
help to bring value andnutrients to our soils.
And so, yeah, if you'rewondering like, why am I always
getting sick?
Well, it's probably because,that apple that you're eating.
Like it was sprayed withglyphosate.
I mean, some of the reasons whypeople think that we need these
(16:10):
chemicals is because it, ithelps our food last longer, and
so the apple that you're eatingor the cucumber that you just
cut up for lunch, it might havebeen picked from the field like
weeks ago, potentially evenmonths ago, but it's sprayed
with these chemicals that willmake it so that they don't
deteriorate as quickly, and thenby the time that it gets to you,
(16:33):
it's lost all of its nutrients.
'Cause the, the moment thatanything is cut from the vine or
that that plant that it'sgrowing from, it starts to
degrade and lose its nutrientvalue.
And so by the time that itactually gets to your plate, it
probably has no nutrients.
And I think we may have touchedon that in that, like from a
perspective of like wheat andlike wheat grains and why like
(16:56):
even, you know, like, like allthe bread that we have literally
has like no nutrient value andthen they like pump it with fake
nutrients.
You know, when you see fortifiedwith vitamins, you're literally
eating processed vitamins.
Like things that are made in alab, like these aren't naturally
occurring nutrients, that aregood for your body.
(17:18):
They're like synthesized stuffOur foster daughter who I
mentioned who has autism,unfortunately, it's a really big
problem that she really onlywants to eat Cheerios.
Like that is her main food.
And she's lived with us for twoyears and that's one of the only
things we can ever get her toeat consistently.
And I had a friend who's like,well, at least they're fortified
(17:40):
with vitamins.
And it was around that time thatI was learning about like why
the fortification of vitaminsjust wasn't good.
And I was like.
Oh my gosh, you're right.
She's eating all these syntheticvitamins that they're just like,
lab produced chemical, blah,blah, blah.
You know?
It's just, I was like, oh, it'sjust so sad because yeah,
there's, there's no nutrients inthem.
(18:00):
It's hard, so, yeah.
That's why we're sick.
Chrissy (18:03):
You mentioned that it's important to have soil that is
nutrient dense.
That we have been depleting oursoil, of the really, really
important nutrients that it has.
It actually, it made me thinkabout a passage in Leviticus,
you know,
Katie (18:19):
Ooh.
Chrissy (18:19):
Conveniently, God actually told us how to farm.
You know, like he laid it out.
Katie (18:26):
Please do share
Chrissy (18:26):
in the laws of Leviticus.
So Leviticus, 25 verse 3-4.
It says, for six years, sow yourfields and for six years prune
your vineyards and gather theircrops, but in the seventh year,
the land is to have a year ofSabbath, rest a Sabbath to the
Lord.
Do not sow your fields or pruneyour vineyards.
(18:47):
And that is very clear.
It is a command to theIsraelites.
Do not sow or reap in thatseventh year of Sabbath rest.
You know, God created six daysof work and one day of Sabbath.
That Sabbath is designed as arefresher, a replenishment of
(19:07):
energy.
It is put there that his peoplecan sit and be refreshed in the
presence of the Lord.
You know, humans are, we asChristians are commanded to
observe the Sabbath in order tobe refreshed, to prepare us for
(19:27):
the week.
And having a Sabbath for ourcrops is just as important, you
know?
To let the soil rest so that itcan replenished and rejuvenated
to then give you better crops inthe years to come.
And I think we have totallyfailed as a society in following
(19:52):
that, I never once have I seen afield resting for a whole year
in order to allow the soil toregenerate its nutrients.
Katie (20:04):
Yeah.
I wonder if farmers if they dothat.
I, I'd be curious to know, I,I'd be willing to bet if are
small farmers or something, Idon't know.
Chrissy (20:12):
I would be willing to bet that some farmers do.
Those farmers who really takeinto account God's word and in
another place in the scriptures,I can't remember exactly where
it is, but God promises to blessthe Israelites with enough food
to sustain them for that yearthat they are not sowing and
reaping, you know.
(20:33):
Just as when the Israelites arewandering in the wilderness for
40 years, God provided the mannafor them every single day.
He provided all that they neededand they were not to take more
than what they needed.
And in the same sense, like Godwill provide for us if we treat
(20:54):
our food the way God hascommanded us to treat our food
by taking a rest for a year fromgrowing crops.
Every seven years, God willprovide for us the food that we
need for that seventh yearduring the sixth year, he has
promised that, and God does notbreak his promises.
(21:16):
You know, that is one thing thatI am so thankful for, that God
does not break his promises.
Amen.
And we can be confident that hehas told us this and he will go
through with what he said.
Katie (21:30):
It's so fascinating.
I, I always find that there's somany like unique similarities
between us as human beings andour food and crops and
everything.
And I don't know why and I justfeel like sharing this, but you
know.
Thinking about Sabbath ourculture is so saturated with
this idea of like hustle, likethis hustle culture, right?
(21:53):
Mm-hmm.
Of like, we need to work, weneed to keep going and going and
doing and doing in order to getmoney to, in order to, to get
this lifestyle that we'rewanting to get.
But then it ends up leading toburnout and stress.
And then again, like all thesethings end up leading to chronic
illness because when our bodiesare so stressed, we like our
(22:15):
body's like literally in thisfight or flight mode and can't
relax in order to replenishitself, and it's just so
beautiful.
You just think back to like theGarden of Eden and how like we
too are similar to this idea ofa garden.
Like we, like our bodies need tobe tended to and watered and
filled with the Holy Spirit inorder to do what we were made to
(22:39):
do.
Like, uh, right.
It's, it's so beautiful how Godreally did create us to be
sustained in this balanced way.
I know you and I were kind oftalking before this podcast
recording of like the, the ideaof like regenerative farming and
how wonderful and like symbioticit really is.
(23:02):
Um, my mom and I watched thisbeautiful documentary called the
biggest little farm.
it's all about regenerativefarming and how, honestly, like
the way that I saw it, and Idon't think that these people
were Christians, but it's justso cool how you can just see God
kind of working in, in all theselike unique ways, but I think
(23:23):
just seeing that he really didcreate everything to work
perfectly together, but we ashumans, like sin just entered
the world and we just kind ofmessed it up.
And we think that we need to fixsomething that God designed as
perfectly to work together andso we think we need to bring in
glyphosate and fix the farmingand agriculture ways that we
(23:47):
produce food.
When really like, I think one ofthe coolest examples was.
That they, in this documentary,they had these fruit trees and
they were being overtaken bysnails.
And they're like, well, how doyou get rid of the snails
without bringing in any kind ofpesticide?
We don't wanna, take, chemicalsto them to kill them.
(24:09):
And they found out that ducksreally like to eat snails.
And so they.
Brought their massive hoard ofducks to this orchard.
And the ducks just like had afield day like eating all the
snails off the trees and they'relike, oh my gosh, this is great.
So now the ducks are fed, thetrees aren't getting eaten by
these snails.
(24:29):
And then.
The ducks are pooping on the, onthe roots of these trees.
And so they're gettingfertilized by the poop.
And it's just so funny, likeit's just like one of those
silly little things that whenyou actually take a step back
and like observe to see, okay,how does this actually work?
Like how did God design it towork together?
And can we just trust him tokind of work these things out
(24:52):
without needing to come in andfix something that wasn't
broken.
Chrissy (24:56):
So who knew it could be such a simple,
Katie (24:59):
a simple solution.
Yeah.
They didn't have to like,
Chrissy (25:01):
very simple,
Katie (25:02):
do anything new.
Chrissy (25:04):
Yeah.
So if it's so simple and kind ofstraightforward, why can't all
farms be like this?
And focus on using natural waysto get rid of pests as opposed
to focusing on using pesticides.
Like why can't it just be usedacross the board?
Katie (25:24):
I think that's when we can start talking about this
idea of like big agriculture,which a lot of people just use
the phrase like big ag, A-G, totalk about this phenomenon that
kind of goes on with ourindustrialization of the
agriculture system.
I think America kind of came inand they're like, you know, we
need to figure out how to feedthe world.
(25:46):
And it's so they had this likereally great idea of like, we
need to figure out how to feedeveryone on a large scale.
And so they came in andbasically said like, oh, all
these small farms aren't doingit as well as we think we could.
And so they come in and theywant to industrialize this whole
system and this, this, now thissystem that we live under kind
(26:09):
of dominates the way that weproduce food.
I mean specifically here inAmerica, but in, in a lot of
developing nations.
And so.
They have this mass productionof how we make food, and so they
create a system of bringing instuff like glyphosate and only
(26:29):
making like, like having onlyone crop be their main crop in
this area for the soil, which isactually really bad for the soil
to have the same crop mm-hmm.
Year after year in, in that oneplace.
Because like corn wantsdifferent types of nutrients and
vitamins from the soil thansomething like zucchini would,
um, or any other,
Chrissy (26:50):
I think that that kind of goes back to the command in
Leviticus of rotating.
Katie (26:57):
Yes.
Chrissy (26:57):
Year after year.
You know, if the same crop,that's a good point, is stealing
the same nutrients from the soilyear after year, then the soil's
gonna be completely depletedfrom that.
Whereas if you rotate differentcrops throughout the years or
throughout the seasons,different crops are gonna pull
different nutrients from thesoil and also put back different
nutrients into the soil.
(27:18):
You know, when they pick thecrops, they do leave behind
pieces, like it's not just soilthat's left behind.
You'll have the stems, someroots, yeah, some leaves that
are left over and thosedisintegrate and they decompose
and feed the soil again.
You know?
Katie (27:36):
So I think like big ag, like they kind of came in and
decided we know a more efficientway of doing this, so that we
can lower our production costsand we want to be able to do
this like on a really largescale.
And so they, they came inhonestly, with the main goal of
making profits.
(27:57):
Like they, they say that itreally is about like feeding the
world and everybody but, what itreally boils down to is like,
how can they make the mostmoney, as quickly as possible.
And so there's a lot ofconcerns.
Like we've kind of talked about,like there's a lot of
environmental concerns for thesoil.
It honestly, it leads to a lotof water pollution too.
(28:18):
Like when you think about allthe chemicals getting into our
water, which we talked a littlebit about, water before.
And then, honestly, it's reallyinteresting because it gets into
really big things like, thepeople point fingers at like,
like the greenhouse gasemissions.
But a lot of it actually islinked to the way that our
agriculture system worksspecifically.
(28:39):
And, and it's really interestingthat we point fingers back and
forth at who the big culprit is,but when you look at all the
benefits of something likeregenerative farming, it starts
to eliminate a lot of these bigworld issues like greenhouse
gases or water pollution andsoil degradation and stuff like
(29:01):
that.
But ultimately, I think what itcomes down to is a lot of, we
don't realize what the bigagriculture systems are doing to
our public health.
Mm-hmm.
We think we're eating healthywhen we're just eating fruits
and vegetables, but.
Yes.
Again, on the scale of what youcould be putting into your body,
(29:24):
it's definitely better than alot of the packaged processed
foods, so it's a step abovethat.
But what's even better for yourbody if you want to get the full
nutrients and vitamins andminerals that you really need in
order to thrive and to live along, prosperous life and to
really take care of your bodythe way that God wants us to,
(29:47):
like to value it and what we'reputting into it, we need to
examine all of the benefits ofeating something like organic
food.
We need to get back to just theway that God really designed it,
right?
Chrissy (30:03):
So.
Katie, throughout this podcast,we've talked a lot about the
dangers of the food that we havein our grocery stores the
dangers of pesticide use, thespecific foods that are
generally not recommended to buyunorganic because of the risk of
pesticides.
So what are we supposed to doabout it?
(30:24):
What is your biggest tip inrelation to food quality and
buying good food that you havefor us that is not going to
break the bank?
Katie (30:36):
Yeah.
I was actually talking aboutthis with some girls in my Bible
study the other day because.
I was trying to tell'em like,yeah, organic food is really the
best way to go, and so we needto be shopping for organic food.
And they're like, well, that'sso expensive.
It's so hard to switch.
And, and I've actually foundthat if you start focusing on
(30:58):
buying whole organic foods like,think ingredients, you know?
Okay.
Just your fruits and veggiesrather than buying like the
organic processed foods.
'cause if you go and you do buylike organic pasta sauces or
organic cereals or all the boxedpre-made stuff for you already.
(31:20):
Those are definitely going to bebank breaking, like they're
going to wreck your budget.
They're so expensive when youbuy the pre-made stuff.
And so as challenging as itmight be if you are someone who
is used to just buying like thepre-made stuff, it really will
be, pretty equal in your grocerybudget to switch from the
(31:44):
pre-made stuff to buying theingredients to make the stuff.
It does require, obviously thencooking.
So it might not always be thebest solution for people, but we
have found that now that we areswitching away from like all the
pre-made snacks, like we, we'venow don't really buy as many
snack foods in general, whichtend to be the more expensive
(32:06):
items at the grocery store.
So we actually like make our ownsnacks or just in general,
instead of.
Making a snack.
We just like chop up a bunch oforganic fruits and veggies.
And that's like the main thingthat we buy at the grocery store
now is just whole foods versusthe pre-packaged stuff.
(32:26):
So that's like my tip.
It does require a little bitmore planning and thinking.
But Chrissy, what about you?
Do you have any other tips maybeeven if people don't necessarily
have the time?
Because I know like you're busy.
You work a lot too.
And don't.
Have the ability to always do alot of the planning and cooking
and stuff for yourselves.
Yeah.
What are you kind of doing orwhat is your tip?
Chrissy (32:46):
Yeah, so I work 12 hour shifts.
I'm gonna be completely honest.
After a 12 hour shift, cooking ameal, then eating said meal, and
still getting eight to 10 hoursof sleep before going to my next
12 hour shift is just not areality.
Katie (33:00):
Totally.
Chrissy (33:01):
There is not enough hours in the day if you do the
math.
One thing that I have learnedis, you have to choose what is
best for your family.
Each person's situation is goingto be different.
And one thing that I've learnedjust to help with the timing
situation of it is I will buyorganic of specifically the
(33:24):
things on EWG's dirty dozenlist.
You know, those fruits, thepeaches, and the berries and the
leafy greens, you know.
But EWG has also published alist called the Clean 15 which
is really great and reallybeneficial if you do need to buy
food that is not organic inorder to not break the bank or
(33:47):
if you wanna see a a little bitmore of a processed form of the
food.
But like we said, the processedorganic foods are super, super
expensive.
So if you're gonna buy aprocessed food that's not
organic, maybe focus on theprocessed food that has Clean 15
(34:09):
ingredients in it or is morefocused on that angle.
And so the list of foods in theClean 15 list are avocados,
sweet corn, onions, pineapple,papaya, frozen peas, which again
is one of those a little bitmore processed foods, but is
(34:30):
less likely to have thosepesticides on them.
Asparagus, honey dew melon,kiwi, cabbage, mushrooms, mango,
watermelon, and carrots.
Hmm.
And so if you're gonna buyingredients that you need, but
organic really is breaking thebank, these clean 15 are some
(34:54):
that you can be a little bitmore confident that you're not
going to be consuming as manypesticides when you are
consuming them.
And, you know, I, I understandthe time aspect of cooking,
unfortunately, in the Americanlifestyle, it's very difficult
(35:14):
to create time for rest andcreate time to cook and prepare
food.
Sometimes I would even arguethat that is a luxury it's
becoming more of a luxury of ahigher class, rather than
something that lower middleclass people can appreciate,
which is incredibly unfortunateand breaks my heart.
Yeah.
But with that being said, youknow, if processed foods need to
(35:39):
be bought for the sake of time,focus on looking at the
ingredients that you canunderstand.
There are processed foods thatare not organic that can still
be good for you you just have tolook at the ingredients.
I've mentioned it before.
My Ragu Simply Eight pasta saucehas eight ingredients, and it is
(36:02):
all food ingredients.
It's like tomatoes, onions,spices, peppers, that that's
what's in it.
And I think focusing on foodslike that, you know, some pasta.
Look for pasta where the onlyingredient is Durham wheat, you
know, or wheat flour rather thanpastas with flour and niacin and
(36:27):
folate and this and that, andall of the added vitamins and
minerals, you don't need those.
Those are those syntheticvitamins and minerals that are
not going to be used very wellby the body.
So focus on looking foringredients that you understand
that, you know.
So those are just my littletidbits that I have as a
recommendation.
(36:48):
Katie, do you have anything elsethat you think would be
important to talk about in thisepisode before we sign out?
Katie (36:56):
Yeah, I.
Just wanna reiterate as we havein some of the other
conversations we've had thatit's, it can be really
overwhelming and I think it'salso a little bit jarring when
you like, feel like you've beendoing the right thing for a
while and then you now kind ofrun into these realities of our
food systems and it really feelslike we've been duped.
(37:20):
It can be really frustrating.
I mean, I literally sent a videoto Wes the other day to show him
like how our chicken is evenprocessed and stuff.
And he's like, well, now you'vetold me that I can't eat this
kind of stuff.
And what are we, like,basically, what are we supposed
to eat?
Like we are, we're just gonnasupposed starve ourselves.
And, it really does feelextremely frustrating and I
(37:44):
think if you have theopportunity to buy from a local
farmer, sometimes it can be moreexpensive to do that, but also
at the same time it might notbe, you might be surprised that
you can find really well pricedproducts from your local
farmers.
So I would just encourage you,I'll drop a link in our Facebook
group to how you can find localfarmers near you who can sell
(38:10):
you, meats, like really goodgrass fed meats.
And even, the types of fruitsand veggies that you are hoping
to buy, you know, the organicstuff.
And so anyway, I'll drop a linkto that and how you can find
local farmers in our Facebookgroup.
It's called Crunchy ChristianMamas on Budget and we'd love
(38:32):
for you to continue thisconversation.
Let's band together to, youknow, fight this good fight.
We want to take care of ourfamilies, we wanna take care of
our bodies, take care of ourhealth and do it all for the
glory of God.
And so that's kind of what we'redoing over there in our Facebook
group.
And we'd love to get to know youand just see how we can better
(38:52):
encourage you, equip you as wellas like, let's, like we need
equipping and encouraging too,right?
Help us.
And so let's all do thistogether.
So join us over there.
We'll have a link to ourFacebook group in the
description for this episode.
Chrissy (39:06):
Also be sure you go and leave us a five star review.
This helps other people find ourshow in the future.
And if you're not already signedup for our weekly newsletter,
you can take a moment to do thatby clicking the link in the show
notes.
We pray over each and every oneof you guys and hope that these
episodes can be fruitful andhelpful in your journey to
(39:26):
becoming a better steward ofyour body, mind, soul, spirit,
and finances.
And your families.
We are praying that this episodewas helpful for you and we'll
see you next time.
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