Questions You Need to Ask Your Food

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Food is now a worldwide, connected, and hugely profitable business to get in. For the consumer, however, that isn’t always good news. Corporations are not unknown to make choices that aren’t always the best for the people supporting them by buying their goods. With our food, that becomes less of an annoyance and more a danger. For that reason, you should be ready and willing to ask some more questions of what you eat.

Where do you come from?

Finding out this answer can be an important farm of informing you on the rest of them. Different farms and countries engage in different practices. By learning where your produce comes from, you can figure out whether it’s part of the GMO trend, what practices the farmers used and how far it has traveled. That last point plays a big role in letting you know whether any additional preservatives have been needed to bring it this far.

What’s been done with you?

Many of the preservatives used today haven’t been explicitly proven to cause harm to produce or the people eating them. However, many agree that the research done on them is still lacking and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to play it safe. There are sources where you can get more information on some of the factory-like practices of farming and what it means for your food, however. For instance, backtofarm.com is a great resource when you need verified, unbiased, and honest facts about your food and what you are consuming. For one, it highlights how, though milk that isn’t organic might not necessarily be harmful, it is definitely less nutritious than its organic variety. For those of us who want the full nutritional impact of our food, that’s important.

What’s the cost of you?

We’ve taken up a lot of the world with expanding farmland and, though it’s necessary, it’s also very costly to the environment. For that reason, it’s important to many to seek out ways of eating more sustainably. For instance, learning the seasons of the food you eat can help you stick to a diet that’s more in-season, thus reducing the amount of food that has to travel further to be fresh and reducing your own impact on the carbon footprint of the food industry.

Are you ethical?

When it comes to eating meat, the question of ethics is a difficult one. Some think that there are no ethical ways to farm animals, but you have to draw your own line. If you’re concerned, then you might want to stick with farmers that are approved by independent parties like certifiedhumane.org. Most of us can agree that we don’t want needless suffering to be a part of our diet, even if we do think that meat is not only convenient but important to the human body.

We all deserve a healthy, fulfilling diet. Until you get the full picture of what you’re eating, however, that just might not be possible. Hopefully, the tips above give you an idea of where you can start finding the answers you need to rest easy with your food.