Supplement Your Life

As long ago as 1946, J.I Rodale was concerned with the state of nutrition in America. The United States was just coming out of one of the worst droughts in history, resulting in that terrible time during the Great Depression known as the Dust Bowl. Overfarming and lack of crop rotations combined with drought, destroyed thousands of acres of formerly profitable land, turning them into worthless wasteland.

As thousands fled the heartland of America for the still-fertile lands west of the Rockies, scientists began searching for a way to reclaim the land and restore it to profitability. Chemical fertilizers, they thought, were the wave of the future. All they had to do was reintroduce the proper combination of phosphates, nitrogen and potassium back into the soil, and all would be well.

Great idea. Unfortunately, the artificial fertilizers did nothing to restore the earthworm population. Earthworms are a vital part of the ecosystem, often overlooked or ignored entirely. Without earthworms and their casings, the land may produce for a while, but eventually it will die again.

Rodale tried to wake American farmers up to the need for traditional composting, and he did reach a few. However, the rise of single-crop farming across broad expanses of land in the mid-to-late twentieth century began to deplete the one thing we need most from our food: Nutrients.

The state of nutrition in America has gotten so bad that most nutritionists now agree we all need to supplement our diet with vitamins and minerals. The food we eat, even if we're eating the daily recommended amounts of healthful fruits and vegetables, just isn't as nutritious as what our grandparents and great-grandparents ate.

Growing vegetables and fruits is like anything else in this way: you get out of it what you put into it. If you put the plants into nutrient-depleted soil, you're going to get nutrient-deficient plants. They can only absorb what's there in the ground. If there's insufficient iron in the soil, the spinach won't have enough iron to give Popeye his strength.

Granted, not everyone has access to a place where they can grow their own garden using compost they've made from plant and animal byproducts. That's why we need to supplement our diet with vitamins and minerals. The latest wave of nutritional supplementation is in a liquid form.

Vemma has been listed as one of the top five superjuices in an article in Men's Journal. You only need 2 ounces per hundred pounds of bodyweight. Before it was released to market, the strictest double-blind placebo clinical trials were conducted to rate its effect on the body. You can read the clinical studies here.

So, if you are interested, please visit my Enthusiasm Pays Vemma site, or e-mail me marionlaird@gmail.com for more information.

To read more of J.I. Rodale's epic work on compost farming, look for Pay Dirt. It's been updated several times since 1946, and the tips for creating your own compost will help even the smallest garden grow healthier plants, meaning a healthier you!

Here's to your health!