What did your dinner eat for dinner and where did it live?

I often have to remind myself to focus on what my dinner ate for dinner or what my lunch had for lunch. This is of course another way of saying you are what you eat. But you are what you eat eats and here I'm not just talking about a cow or a chicken but also about a carrot and a stalk of wheat. And we are also all the products of our environment, so it is not surprising that our food is too. We are where our food comes from. So the two questions I try to ask myself before I put something in my mouth is: (1) what did it eat and (2) where did it come from? Most of the time, if you're eating the best you can eat (pastured meat, organic or fully pesticide-free produce, etc.) you don't have to worry about the second question. But short of that they both matter. Let's briefly look at this for an animal and a vegetable.

An easy example to start with is a cow. As we know, cows eat grass. Most of the cows we eat in America, however, eat corn. Often they also eat other cows and/or other animals. When you see that your cow at an all vegetarian diet you know what it ate for dinner: it ate corn and perhaps other grains. You also know what it did not eat: other cows (and probably grass). So at least your cow was a vegetarian. But it did not eat what it was designed to eat, so it will be less healthy and it will in turn be less healthy for you. We now know what it ate for dinner. But where did it come from? Did it live on a field or a feedlot (also known as a confined animal feeding operation or CAFO)? If it lived on a field it will be leaner and healthier on its own without the need for drugs and so forth. If it lived in a CAFO the meat will have antibiotics in it. How do you feel about taking unnecessary antibiotics? If you don't care then there is no issue.

The same is true of a dairy cow. If the cow ate grass the milk will be healthier as a cow's milk is the product of its diet no less than a mother's breast milk is the product of hers. If the cow did not eat an organic diet or was not eating grass, there's also a likelihood of it having been given growth hormones. Milk does a body good. Or does it?

Or take a vegetable. When it comes to a tomato, for example, if that tomato was grown in organic soil it ate the nutrients of soil as it was designed to do. If it isn't organic there is a good chance it was grown in soil with chemical-based fertilizers. This will feed the tomato like corn will feed a cow -- quicker, bigger but less healthy. So many studies have concluded that organic methods produce healthier produce that they are becoming difficult to ignore. Here's just one. And where did the tomato live? If it lived on a farm that did not use pesticides (or at least that only used plant-based pesticides) it had to develop its own defenses. This is kind of like the difference between growing up in the city and the suburbs. Were you being driven around in a Volvo when you were 14 or were you taking the subway by yourself? One toughens us up a bit more than the other. A tomato is no different. If it has to fend for itself it will develop defenses that have significant health benefits for anyone lucky enough to eat it.

I am confident that we will only continue to understand how dangerous it is to ignore these questions. What did your lunch eat for lunch? And where did it live? These are tough questions for most of us to answer even when we make our own food -- virtually impossible when we don't. But at least if we eat naturally we can avoid the third vital question: what has been done to it after it was killed? The moment the cow is slaughtered or the tomato is picked, there is a grave danger that it will be processed, preserved or otherwise messed with to make it loose its healthfulness, make it harder for your body to process, and make it the perfect vehicle to deliver unhealthy ingredients into your system. If we don't ask these we cannot possibly know what we are eating.