Supplement Warfare/Nutrient Decline

Part of me suspects that most of the science since the Flexner Report has conditioned us to think of the human body as a haphazard mess of atoms and chemicals that through their inventions we can make things right. I don’t ascribe to this. The human body is a wonderful machine, just give it the right fuel/environment.

We have been conditioned to see and treat the beautiful race car in front of us like a Nissan Altima…

I’m largely a supplement skeptic because of this paradigm. I believe health and fitness are simple because our bodies are powerful.

• Nature

• Sunlight

• Nutrient Dense Foods

• & Exercise

Maybe things will change. But for now, get a look into the mind of someone who shies away from pills and powders made in a factory.

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1. Intro

2. Turn The Map Around

3. The Nutrient Nose-Dive Narrative

4. Nutrient Deficient People

5. Anomalies With This Narrative

6. Wrap Up

Intro

As I’ve explained in a previous post I believe the human body is an amazing piece of work. Part of this is due to me being a history nerd/fitness enthusiast who has been utilizing minimalist forms of fitness for over a decade. What’s added to this is some food science research and a death in the family that catapulted me into the world of alternative health and putting some of this stuff into practice. 

I’ve been going through a process over the past few years in updating my paradigm. Things I used to believe I no longer do because I came upon a wealth of information to show that my current paradigm had holes/anomalies in it. 

I remember back in 2009 while I was at the Naval Academy Preparatory School(NAPS) in Rhode Island the entire battalion took a trip to New York. We all had to wear our uniforms(extra rizz) for some Broadway show and afterward, we could walk around the city. 

As my crew and I were walking after the show a guy on his bicycle zoomed by us shouting, 

“9/11 was an inside job!!!” 

At the time I was thinking, 

“This guy is insane, my friends and I are going to become the best defenders of freedom this world has ever known. Get out of our way George Washington!!!!”

Now I’m like…

But some things haven’t changed. 

• My belief in God

• My love for Calisthenics and Overcoming Isometrics

• My love for being out in nature

• My skepticism about supplements

Turning The Map Around

Are you tired of me saying this phrase yet lol? This post is a continuation of another post of mine. In it, I gave an account of the “Training” we received to sell supplements to gym goers to improve their fitness progress.

I already know that people being nutrient deficient is a selling point for supplement companies but why people are nutrient deficient is something I’ll cover later in this post. 

But part of what feeds this nutrient-deficient narrative is the claim that the foods we eat are devoid of nutrients compared to foods in the past. 

As with all narratives not just one but multiple groups can benefit from this narrative by piggybacking their own narratives off of it. Who else can benefit from this narrative and use it to bring about their future society? 

Yeah, that figures. Of course, the culprit would be climate change. Who else?

My honest reaction…

Why is the answer to all of our problems to spray tiny nanoparticles on stuff? Isn’t there already plenty of nanoparticles on all our stuff due to the chemtra…I mean geo-engineering trails? If there is something destroying our health and the plants the stuff from all these planes would probably be a culprit along with other things I’ll cover near the end.

“Aluminum!!!!” - Dave Chappelle as Black Bush

The nutrient decline narrative can also provide a boost to the population control narrative. If we can’t sustain the growing population of people on this planet shouldn’t we control people's ability to reproduce?

Low quality Margret Sanger meme

But the nutrient decline narrative can give a boost to good things in the soil decline narrative like restorative grazing. The act of using cows and other animals and controlling their herding/eating/#2 patterns to rebuild the land. Like all good things, they can be highjacked for evil.

However, my main focus in this article is the nutrient decline of our food as there are studies(assuming they are of high quality) that the two are not always linked.¹ What studies, research, and data tables gave birth to this narrative? Like all research studies, it will be important to look at the methods section because that’s where the meat and potatoes are at to determine their quality.

Let’s go back, shall we?

The Nutrient Nose-Dive Narrative

Have you ever run into a situation where looking for citations you find out that many research papers are citing each other and the research that started it all is a bit harder to find and when you do there’s little to no method section or the entire thing is behind a paywall?

Or that some of the research papers that started it all are from a supplement company?

And in addition to this their old research can’t be looked at nor does it go anywhere…

As you’ve seen with the Donald Davis research above their method was simply looking at data tables from the USDA and comparing that to their current analysis. The important question asked is what made them think the USDA’s data was quality in the first place. In addition to this have the methods of determining the nutrients in our food changed overtime? Has it gotten better, or worse?

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Apparently, from an analysis I was looking at, there have been multiple methods throughout the past couple of decades².

• The 1928 titrimetric method for Al and Fe in plants

• The 1935 colorimetric method for P in fruits

• and the 1937 colorimetric method for Fe in plants

• the 1970 spectrophotometric molybdovanadate method for P in fruits

• The 1970 gravimetric quinolone molybdate method for P in fruits

• and The dry ashing/sodium molybdate modifications to the colorimetric measurement of P

“However, the application of modern chemical analytical instrumentation to determine the composition of mineral nutrients in plant-derived foods started with such methods as the 1975 atomic absorption spectrophotometric method AOAC 975.03 for Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, K and Zn in plants, a 1980 direct reading spectrographic method AOAC 980.03 for metals in plants, the 1984 ICP-ES method mentioned above, a 1999 variant on the atomic absorption method (AOAC 999.11) for Pb, Cd, Cu, Fe and Zn in foods, and in 2015 an ICP-MS method AOAC 2015.06 for minerals and trace elements in infant formula and adult/pediatric nutritional formula was published (AOAC International, 2016)”³

There are even more less approved methods but my head is already spinning.

Several things need to be accounted for to conduct a proper analysis of such things as nutrient decline.

• Data sources

• Crop varieties

• Geographic origin

• Ripeness

• Sample size

If the initial data you’re pulling from is incorrect then the entire framework is thrown off. There are many things that can be accomplished by giving people a bad framework…

“The general rule is that there is profit in confusion; the more confusion, the more profit. Therefore, the best approach is to create problems and then offer the solutions.” (P 47, Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars)

A longer observational period would be nice. Send some dudes back in time to collect samples and bring them back to the present.

But there are tradeoffs. Assuming that the food has been depleted over time there is more of it(at least in 1st world countries). In the past, you could only get certain foods at certain times. Now we can get an avocado, banana, apple, etc any time of the year.

Nutrient Deficient People

Since the establishment of things like daily values and the blood tests we take it has been stated that many people these days are nutrient deficient. Can this be solely due to the apparent decline in nutrients? What if there are other answers?

1. If the majority of the population in an industrial nation’s diet is more dependent on fast/processed “food” then that will create nutrition problems.

2. If their diet is geared toward whole foods but still neglects some of the heavy hitters in the organ meats section like liver, or heart then there will be nutrition problems.

3. If they can’t properly digest and extract the nutrients because something(like man-made EMF, aluminum, or both) is running interference, then there will be nutrition problems.

If these three are addressed will supplements become much of a necessity? Is the focus on supplements at best a band-aid and at worst a distraction?

Anomalies With This Narrative

Can’t they also be pulling the wool over our eyes to hide how dire the situation is?

Of course, they can. That’s why it’s important to look at whatever anomalies are encountered with this paradigm. Having a terrain paradigm I am aware that malnutrition is a one-way ticket to having disrupted terrain. But, I’m also a student of history and am aware that humanity couldn’t get here if we were so fragile.

A Roman Soldier could be carrying up to 60 pounds of gear and have to march at 3mph most of the time and can be stepping it out at 4mph covering 20 miles in a day. I can tell you that from experience 4mph with that same amount of weight is not a walk in the park. As with all things and with enough conditioning, it will become normal.

Food rations back then were not great and they often had to live off the land. Food rations all the way up to the Revolutionary War were still horrible. Interestingly enough I served with some older Marines who said during the 2003 Iraq invasion they were low on food for a couple of days and had to ration their small collection of MREs.

To put this in perspective I could eat two of these a day and still have room for more.

But the human body kept going. It kept fighting. It’s not ideal, but it can be done.

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Another example is dudes in prison. They’re not eating any five-course meal and yet many of the dudes coming out look impressive. There are many videos speculating on how some of them get so developed when they don’t have access to the amenities and gadgets we have on the outside. Some say its

• Due to being in a high stressed environment

• Genetics!!!!

• Using each other as weights

But if you take some time observing and being a noticer, there’s a particular way they are performing their exercises.

Occam’s Razor: When you keep a muscle under tension while it’s in the most stretched position and reach a high amount of fatigue, you will get muscle growth.

Pretty much they’re performing butloads of what are called, “Lengthened Partials.”

More on this later as I’m doing some of my own experimentation. But if you give your body the right stimulus, it will do the rest.

Wrap Up

If you’re taking supplements don’t let me stop you. But I believe the body is stronger/more capable than we give it credit for. Just give it the right inputs. In addition to this my time in the gym as well as seeing all these, “Freedom Fighters” and their supplement brands has left me kinda jaded.

Thank you for making it to the end and let me know your thoughts below.

Until next time…

1

Are Depleted Soils Causing a Reduction in the Mineral Content Of Food Crops?https://soilsfacstaff.cals.wisc.edu/facstaff/barak/poster_gallery/minneapolis2000a/

2

Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of reports of apparent historical declines

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157516302113

3

Ibid