For making healthy food unhealthy.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It’s responsible for regulating and supervising the safety of foods and a bunch of other things that humans shove in their mouths and plaster on their bodies. For the most part, the FDA is here to protect us from the “bad guys.” But once you give something a little power, it’ll always hunger for more.
If you took a “raw” almond pre-2007, planted it the ground, watered it, and gave it sunlight and love, you would eventually see a sprout rise. If you did that now, you would get more rise out of Nicole Kidman’s eyebrows. This is because ALL almonds grown in the U.S., by law, are NO longer sold raw. They must be pasteurized before they can be sold. In case you didn’t already know, this process kills the life force and the valuable nutrients your body needs.
Okay, I know we’ve already covered the orange juice pasteurization conspiracy—so maybe we should just blame Louis Pasteur already for inventing it in the 1860s. But he lived in a time when you couldn’t exactly seal in freshness with Ziploc bags and Tupperware before you stuck food in your electric fridge. So give Louis a break. It’s the FDA’s fault for promoting it.
“But it says ‘raw’ on the packaging!” Well, it’s not. It’s a lie. The FDA allows the almond companies to still use “raw” in their deceptive labeling—sort of a consolation prize, I guess. Don’t care? Well, you should, because the nutrition’s being taken out of your food and you don’t even know about it. Wake up, man! “But they did it for our health, right?” Not really. More to cover the food companies’ own asses after the salmonella-tainted-almond scares of 2001 and 2004. Just thirty-three people were hospitalized. If you think that’s bad, check out the tomato’s track record.
The raw deal is that, whether or not it’s pasteurized, food produced and stored in unsanitary conditions is what actually causes disease. Pasteurization just promotes unclean factories. Other foods that have mandatory pasteurization in the United States: milk, butter, cheese, cream, vinegar, sauerkraut, yogurt, and eggs. When you’re filling the shopping cart, look at which labels say “pasteurized” instead of only worrying about the ones that say “organic,” because that food trend is stealing thunder from other important issues. Remember, if you buy “organic,” it only means it was once covered in shit.