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Let Food be your Medicine
“Let Food Be Your Medicine” - Hippocrates
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What is Brix
Grow your own Food
Real Medicine Real Health
A diet deficient in iodine can lead to an undersupply of the body’s production of
thyroxin. If this occurs it can lead to a sub-clinical concondition called
hypothyroidism. This condition is very common in the iodine deficient soils of the
upper Midwest. Medical science typically “fixes” this with a prescription to
synthetically produced thyroxin. This many times becomes a prescription for life. The
root cause is completely ignored. Alternative health providers attempt to treat this
using neutriceuticals, supplements, homeopathics, and glandulars. This approach
incorporates minerals designed to support the body’s production of thyroxin. This is
certainly a more holistic approach yet still falls short and it expensive. It is still a
band-aid on the cause.
Farmers grow crops in soils that aren’t what they should be nor even what they used
to be. In many soils we see a faltering microbial balance, poor carbon cycling, and
deficiencies in plant-available calcium, phosphorous, and trace minerals. As a result
of such poor soils our food quality is equally poor. Poor quality food cannot sustain a
high degree of health even though the choice of food types may be excellent.
In summary modern agriculture is producing a tremendous amount of low-quality
produce. Good quality produce in typical supermarkets is hard to find and excellent
quality is a rare find indeed. As a result of this we find a large portion of our
population struggling with chronic health problems.
You can identify nutrient foods by analyzing the food you purchase. This is done
with an inexpensive device (approx. $100-$200) called a brix refractometer.
What is Brix
Brix is a term is a term that refers to the refractive index of crop juices. A brix
reading is made by analyzing plant sap in a refractometer. A refractometer measures
the amount of bend or refraction in the rays of light as they pass through the plant
sap. It is primarily a measure of the carbohydrate level in plant juices but is a measure
of dissolved solids. A brix reading is made by squeezing out some sap from a plant,
putting 2 drops of the juice on the prism, close the prism cover, point to a light source,
focus the eye piece, and read the measurement. The brix reading is indicated where
the light and dark fields intersect. This device is easily used by anyone.
The Brix reading is made on the part of the plant you eat if it is ripe. If the plant is not
ripe you can take the most recent mature leaves that have had full sunlight for at least
2 hours. Ideally measurements should be taken at the same time of day as you
compare throughout the growing season.
Click here to download the Brix Chart as a PDF.
What causes light to refract as it passes through plant sap?
1. The amount of carbohydrates in the juice.
2. The amount of dissolved minerals in the plant sap.
3. The amount of covalent bonding.
High Brix foods have greater carbohydrate levels. Carbohydrates provide the fuel the
body needs for basic metabolic function.
High Brix foods have greater mineral density. Calcium is one of the most important
nutrients that increases Brix readings. Calcium deficiency is realated to many
degenerative diseases. There are also higher levels of trace minerals such as iron,
copper, and manganese. Trace mineral work with vitamins (co-enzymes) to activate
enzyme reactions.
Minerals in foods are bound to amino acids (chelated). When bound to amino acid
isomers with a right-hand spin (L-amino acids) they are biologically active. Natural
foods have L-amino acids. Synthetic (man-made) amino acids have left hand spin (DAmino acids) and is not biologically active. The dextro-rotatory (D-form) is rarely
found naturally in nature. When people supplement their diets with chelated minerals,
they need to check that the amino acid is in the L-form. With natural foods there is no
reason to be concerned about biologically inactive nutrients.
High Brix foods taste better. The average consumer does not remember how food
used to taste when the nutrient levels were higher. Even Organic certification does
not guarantee a proper balance of nutrients in the soil our crops are grown in. If you
ask any old-timer if they like the taste of fruits and vegetables now compared to when
they were young, they will most likely tell you foods tasted better when they were
young. Taste is built upon the upon the carbohydrate and mineral levels in the
produce. When they decline so does the taste. What about aroma? That seems lost as
well. Today's average 2-3 brix hydroponic greenhouse tomato looks like a tomato but
it has virtually no aroma and is nearly tasteless. It is a poor caricature of what a
tomato should be. As a culture Americans are so used to eating low quality produce
we don’t even know what really good produce tastes like.
High Brix plants have better insect and disease resistance. Plants in poor health emit
an electo-magnetic frequency that insects tune in to. This in effect calls them in for a
feast. Plants in good health emit a different frequency that insects do not tune in to.
Nature has been designed to use insects to get rid of poor quality plants that are unfit
for human consumption. In the same way a poorly balanced soil will produce plants
susceptible to disease. Properly balanced soil will produce plants resistant to disease.
Animals instinctively prefer high Brix foods. Animals have a greater sense of survival
instinct than does mankind. Wild animals instinctively prefer the healthier foods of
highest mineral density. Industrialized production agriculture has found that it takes
twice as many acres of genetically modified cornstalks to get the same amount of
weight gain on cattle as compared to conventional non-GMO corn varieties. Wild
deer will not graze on genetically modified corn stalks unless close to starving.
Try this easy experiment to prove this point. Buy whole field corn sold in the birdseed
section of your local supermarket and some popcorn. Whole field corn will weigh
somewhere around 55 lbs. per bushel while the popcorn will be around 66-68 lbs. per
bushel. Offer both corn samples to some chickens that are not overly hungry and see
which corn they eat first. You will see they first go after the popcorn with great
enthusiasm and then the field corn with less enthusiasm. Why? Popcorn has greater
mineral density as indicated by test weight. Cattle have the same instinct. They will
always prefer the forage with the higher sugar content. This has been proven many
times by seeing which hay cattle eat first when offered a choice.
Brix has become the gold standard to measure plant quality. Measuring the brix level
on plants is quick, simple, and fairly inexpensive. Growers don't want to identify the
Brix levels of their crops if they have low Brix readings. Agriculture uses chemical
warfare in a desperate act to protect their unhealthy crops. Herbicides, insecticides,
and fungicides disrupt the delicate microbial balance in the soil and contribute to the
continued production of low-brix foods.
More people are demanding and finding higher-quality foods in high quality whole
food markets. Many farmers are getting off the pesticide/GMO/low-brix merry-goround and beginning to produce food that can have a tremendous impact on improving
our health and wellness.
If farmers won't produce or you can't find high brix foods, you can grow your own
nutrition and thereby improve your health.