So what do phytonutrients do in our cells, our mitochondria (the energy generators in our cells), to our DNA, in our organs - in all our parts?

Some PNs activate our own, innate survival compounds, our enzymes, systems and biochemical pathways which are mainly in our liver, kidneys and lymphatics.

Others deliver their benefits as we digest them, turning them into other chemical entities which can then contribute to our health, immunity and nutrition.

They might quench free radicals from what we eat or which form during digestion.

They might turn on programmed cell death (a process called apoptosis) in rogue cells which would otherwise keep growing and perhaps kill us in time.

Others might 'tune' our DNA and keep it functioning so we keep making healthy proteins and healthy cells (including stem cells) and in this way, extend our youthfulness and slow the effects of ageing.

PNs also protect and support our organs and their function which is like maintenance for your car or boat. Would you trust a long distance outing in a poorly maintained vehicle or aircraft?

We can't expect ideal health without the contribution from a wide range of PNs and the bad news is that modern foods are typically devoid of most phytonutrients even if we eat mostly whole foods and we cook for ourselves from fresh ingredients.

This means that juices, extracts or other fragments of foods or novel foods that are promoted as almost medical in nature (ie this drug is for these symptoms) are not even worth eating. Most also come with a load of anti-nutrients eg bad sugars.

This list includes probiotics, fermented modern produce and all our fruits and vegetables that have been bred for sweetness, robustness, low fibre and their ability to withstand being picked unripe, stored for up to a year and gas-ripened for sale throughout that year as 'fresh' foods.

What?  Probiotics?  But they are good for us, aren't they?

The problem with 'scientific' blends of micro-organisms that are typically promoted as beneficial for our gut microbiome is that we don't know enough or what comes in a probiotic supplement is too little to really make a difference.

We have around 86 trillion microbial cells in the ecosystem in our gut and a 'dose' of probiotics might contain a few million, even a 100 million cells of a half a dozen species of microbes. The equates to less than 0.001% additional diversity but these species are coming into an environment to which they may not even be adapted as the existing microflora create the conditions they most prefer.

It's a great concept but taking probiotics is now known to be useless except for infants with particular gastric diseases or adults who have been on long term antibiotics and have no to low gut flora.

But what about the Wonder Foods from the Amazon, the Himalayas or Okinawa?

More bad news. You can forget about benefits from consuming bucket-loads of some seaweed, cactus or algal juice, some single fruit from the Amazon, Arizona, Afghanistan or other exotic location or from adding whale food like krill or some Asian mushroom or any other trendy, novel, heavily-promoted answer to our currently impoverished diet.

There may be a tiny benefit from a single food but it is never cost-effective and if it is highly processed, bottled as a liquid or a food fragment, then forget it altogether.

So WHAT DO WE EAT to get healthy, live longer, look younger and age more slowly?

 The richest sources of PNs are from those foods with which we evolved -  wild and near wild, whole foods. Here in Australia, there is an ancient culture of some 65,000 years (the longest living culture on the planet) which can provide important clues.

Australian Aborigines ate up to 10 times the number of different, seasonal foods each year than we do today and being wild foods, are ideal for our own nutrition. 

In contrast,  our supermarket grocery aisles are fruits and vegetables from all over the world and which are available all year round. We haven't made plants set fruit continuously (yet) but cold store produce and release it to the stores each month. Some produce is imported adding food miles to the detrimental effects of wax coatings, extended cold storage and artificial ripening.

You might also be aware that a wide range of vegetables all come from the same, tiny, wild plant originally only found on the rocky slopes around the Mediterranean Sea.

A plant called Brassica oleracea has been genetically changed by agricultural scientists to give us broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, collard greens, kohlrabi, 3 types of cabbage and some more recent novel foods including kalette, broccoflower, broccoli rabe or rapini.

The same has been done to Capsicum annum which now gives us 3 coloured capsicums (bell peppers), paprika, cayenne pepper and 36 different chillies.

Then there are the huge, watery orbs of fruits that are rich sources of bad sugars and little else. Compare apples, oranges, melons, stone fruits, berries and the rest to their wild ancestral forms and modern produce is low in fibre, low in organic acids, low in bioavailable minerals and low in PNs with some entire groups absent from modern forms yet high in their wild type relatives.

Most of the produce today is barely worth eating even if it is produced using organic or biodynamic methods because of the selections grown.

What are we doing to our food?

Looking to the quality of wild foods is another eye-opener and comparing modern foods with wild ones is like chalk and cheese.

Wild foods might even be well described as the antidote to moderns foods.

Whole classes of PNs have been lost from many cultivated foods. Google the term  'diseases of nutrition' and you'll find a long list of conditions that didn't even exist before we turned to agriculture for our much-reduced, in-bred food supplies.

Science Provides Even More Evidence

Indigenous Australians, Americans and Africans did not suffer from metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and gout), ischemic heart disease or the big killer today - cancer. We know this from 3 different studies conducted in 1908, 1971 and 2016 by paleopathologists.

If you want to know more about better health, check out the range of articles on our website and subscribe to our notifications of new ones.

In the meantime, start on the antidote to modern foods by clicking the button below.