Our Homes, Like Our Foods, Are Not Natural

Our Diets and Homes are Increasingly Processed

Mimicking nature is key to my work, and as the last post explained, key to disciplines like regenerative agriculture as well. Suffice it to say that the homes I am working on are as biodynamic or as regenerative as can be.

In other words, they use minimal chemicals; they put health first over energy efficiency; they are designed from a view point that a home is really a biological organism interacting with its occupants and its environment rather than a standalone structure that seals itself off from the outside elements using technology to artificially maintain the interior environment; and they use as many minimally-processed materials and finishes as possible—items like hemp & wool insulation and cork flooring and clay plasters and mineral based paints. The result is a home about as close as we can get to healthy, NATURAL, and unprocessed given Chicago codes.

I wish we could say the same about much of the foods we eat today. At The Fruitful Yield we often remind customers that optimal health depends on a steady supply of vitamins, minerals, and trace elements to optimally perform the thousands of chemical reactions that take place within our bodies every day. Hence the need to take a daily dose of vitamins and minerals, especially since (as my last post pointed out), our soils are becoming depleted of nutrients and processed out of many of our foods.

And don’t kid yourself, our diets are indeed increasingly “processed." Next time you walk down the aisle in your grocery store, pay attention. Items like “Beyond Burger” or “Quorn” or Miyokos “cheese,” are all man-made creations that simply don’t exist in nature. Every step of their processing means these ingredients get one step further removed from their original nutritional density. What ever happened to my boyhood dinner of fried chicken, baked potatoes, and green beans?

As consumers we pat ourselves on the back for eating a "healthier" plant-based, processed-food diet, but the items we are eating are far removed from nature. Same with our homes. We brag about the low VOC paints and energy-saving foam insulation we put in our homes, and think we are eating healthier and living more sustainably without fully considering the biocides and other additives in the paint nor the toxic off-gassing inherent to the foam.

The reality is that our foods are becoming as "processed" as our homes and there is no denying that we live in an age of both "processed foods" and "processed homes". I don't think either is necessarily a good thing. Instead I believe we should strive for Natural.

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And don’t get me started on the further reduction of nutrients that comes with how we choose to cook or prepare our already processed foods.

More on that in a future post.