Plants are remarkable. For one thing, they use the power of the sun to manufacture the food we need merely from inorganic compounds dissolved in water. They don't need food created by other living things. Plants can grow on nothing more that wet, weathered rock. If no other kind of life had come into being, plants would have made a certain type of soil entirely on their own. This soil would have been comprised of inorganic compounds from rock and organic compounds from many generations of plants. No other kind of life could do that.
As it stands today, soil contains materials created by plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, viruses, parasites, and (very sparsely) prions. The soil we have come to know is complex because so many life forms and chemicals have come into existence. Despite its current complexity, soil is primarily a result of the action of plants. This is because plants can thrive and multiply without requiring anything more than rock, water and sunlight.
Plants grow best in sterile soil. Plants drink up whatever is dissolved in their water (or swimming in it), whether those things help plants grow or not. Plants grown in soil containing raw manure or improperly prepared compost can give you diseases. Like so many things in nature, natural soil is dangerous. In the effort to speed their growth, we need to take care to make plants safe for human consumption.
The safest soil is soil made by plants and made sterile before each new planting.
The healthiest diet is one that consists of plants alone.
Many have discovered that properly grown plants are better for your health than any other kind of food. (See Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD
).
According to
Wikipedia, in 1971, only 1 percent of U.S. citizens described themselves
as vegetarians, but by the year 2000 a Zogby Poll sponsored by the Vegetarian Resource Group found that 2.5
percent of respondents reported not eating meat, poultry, or fish while 4.5 percent reported not eating meat.
This trend is accelerating because of the wealth of medical studies available to the public.
Why is this a business opportunity? It's because, for one thing, current consumers find that obtaining just vegetables in a restaurant is not always easy. For another, preparing a sufficiently wide variety of vegetables at home is not exactly a snap either. If the supply and convenience problems are solved, this trend will accelerate even more. Innovations in this area are very likely.
There are opportunities on the horizon in the food service businesses. The American diet is changing toward eating more vegetables and eating less of everything else. At the Vegetarian Times website, Bill Harper, vice president and publisher of Vegetarian Times says that “A vast number of people are seeking to reduce their meat intake, creating a rapidly growing market for all things vegetarian.” The site also states that a "Vegetarian Times Study shows 7.3 million Americans are vegetarians and an additional 22.8 million follow a vegetarian-inclined diet."
In an ideal world, we would avoid temporary shortages or price surges in food by growing our food indoors or underground away from the weather (this is a growing movement in itself). Indoor farming, as it is now called, would also eliminate the need for pesticides (which hurt us in the long run). As we continue to improve upon natural food, we will eventually consider ridding our food of the natural defenses that plants have against insects and spiders, especially after such pests are no longer there. These chemicals are found in the outer coverings of many plants. On that score, care must be taken not to throw away the good with the bad.
Along with genetic engineering, it is very likely that by subjecting plants to new or more harsh environments that adaptations useful to us will occur. If every separable compound is identified and evaluated, we would surely find some that we like and some that we don't like for health reasons. It's a big job. We are far from using plants in an intelligent process to avail ourselves of perfect or even nearly perfect or customized food and medicine. Perhaps soon, some enterprising company will at least provide a plant-based processed food or mixture that has a good balance of amino acids in a convenient form.
Don't you wish you were born later?
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