The produce grown today has been stripped of flavours and nutrients due to methods used in modern agriculture, as well as to the ways in which our food is processed and preserved.
This has serious consequences. We now know that most vegetables contain only half the nutrients they gave us in the 1960s. This has been measured through numerous studies, and is beyond doubt. To obtain the same amount of nutrients from a vegetable that your grandparents ate then, you would need to eat twice as much as they did.
“This tastes so good, how do you do it?” Our guests are often surprised by how flavourful our food is. We have heard this many times, and we have a theory.
We are not trained chefs at Dammhagen. We use neither secret spice blends nor synthetic flavour enhancers. We are very sparing with salt, an ingredient often used to excess, which tends to overwhelm the palate and deceive your taste buds. And we definitely don’t resort to molecular gastronomy.
So, we face a puzzle: why do our guests react with such surprise and wonder at the rich flavours in the food we serve them?
The first step toward an explanation lies in our own biological design. We possess receptors for tastes and aromas that have evolved over millions of years, developed in response to the natural nutrients that were available to our ancestors.
The second step involves recognizing the total transformation our food has undergone over the last century or so. If we look back that far, we see that people primarily consumed natural, whole foods. There were vegetable markets, butchers, and fishmongers, and a large portion of the population in the Western world was either directly involved in agriculture or very closely connected to it. Naturally grown or processed food was readily available.
Then modern food chemistry came along, bringing with it synthetic preservation methods and increasingly unnatural processing of raw ingredients.
Let us go back 100 years. Back then, freezers and refrigerators were rare, and blocks of ice were used to cool food; most homes lacked electricity. I remember when a communal freezing facility was established in the rural area where my father was born. Each family had their own space, partitioned off with chicken wire, where they placed the meat and fish they wanted to freeze. This was in the 1960s.
Everyone in the community kept livestock, grew vegetables, and fished in the fjord. Before the freezing facility existed, people salted, cured and dried what they had raised or caught. (Often using questionable additives, unfortunately). They also preserved fruits and vegetables and stored root vegetables to last through the winter. Self-sufficiency was important, a skill acquired from childhood.
Here, then, the third step in understanding what happened to the richness of flavours we have lost. We stopped growing, preserving, and preparing our own food, as it requires a great deal of labor. We delegated that task to others and primarily to modern, industrial food giants. When you are a food giant, you cannot afford to be picky. You purchase raw ingredients by the boatload and process enormous quantities of food every single day. Furthermore, you must manage the risk of food spoilage; you are compelled to employ potent preservation methods to meet food safety requirements.
And if you are a modern food giant, you are also forced to focus on the bottom line. You have to turn a profit. This means scouring the globe for the cheapest raw ingredients—usually conventionally grown or raised—and treating them with food chemistry designed to replace natural flavours with artificial aromas and taste enhancers, to make us believe we are eating the genuine, natural product.
These artificial ingredients manage to fool our taste buds, but are a deception. It is akin to the difference between experiencing a powerful musical performance in a concert hall and listening to it through a pair of headphones. Our taste buds and sense of smell receive a bland simulation rather than the many nuances of the real thing. Yet, over millions of years, our taste buds and sense of smell have evolved for the real thing and not for a poor imitation.
Here at Dammhagen, we understand why agriculture relies on conventional methods. We even understand why food giants use synthetic food chemistry to mimic the genuine article.
Farmers are constantly contending with risks. Adverse weather, unpredictable markets, debt burdens, and climate change all contribute to making agriculture a high-risk endeavor. To protect themselves against these risks, farmers employ mineral fertilizers as well as pesticides and herbicides to combat pests and weeds. They use these methods to achieve predictability and eliminate risks; a farmer needs to be certain that, come harvest time, there will be sufficient income to ensure the continued operation of the farm.
Food industry giants, for their part, employ sophisticated techniques to guarantee that their products are safe to consume, a necessity given that these items are often transported far away and stored for extended periods. Furthermore, these products are engineered to convincingly mimic the natural ingredients they claim to contain.
We now arrive at the fourth step in understanding why our food no longer possesses the rich, full-bodied flavour that should have been a given.
The use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides destroys the microbial life within the soil. What appears to be a fertile field is, in reality, just support for the roots, to keep the plants from falling over. The plants derive their nutrition from factory-produced fertilizers rather than from the soil or natural organic matter. Spraying against weeds and pests ensure the destruction of the vital microbial life that should be present in the topsoil. Just as our own capacity to perceive the flavours of natural ingredients has evolved over millions of years, so too has the ability of plants to absorb nutrients from the soil, a process that has developed over an even longer span of time. In healthy soil, plants actually exchange nutrients with soil microorganisms through their roots. The plants “sell” carbohydrates to the microbial life, which pays for them with vital nutrients; nutrients that are essential for us. When soil biodiversity is wiped out by modern agricultural practices, plants stop “selling to and buying from” the soil they grow in. Quite simply, they cannot; there is scarcely “anyone” left in the soil to trade with, except the mineral fertilisers. This explains why today’s vegetables contain only half the nutrients they delivered a few decades ago.
Having already destroyed the vital microbial life in the soil, modern food production now takes another step toward eliminating the nutrients we need.
This is where food chemistry and specifically synthetic food chemistry, enters the story. For a food industry giant, the goal—much like that of a farmer—is to minimize risk while achieving a pleasing taste that entices consumers to choose their particular brand. But this "pleasant taste" is a sham; it is not the real thing.
Worse still, in their pursuit of this "pleasant taste», food giants use ingredients that inflict the same damage to the microbial life within our bodies as the farmer’s practices inflict to the microbial life in the soil. Our gut microbiota is killed off or seriously suppressed.
In recent years, we have become increasingly aware of the importance of gut health. Once rarely given a second thought, it’s a common topic of conversation. We now understand that many of the ailments affecting people in the modern world stem from constant stress placed on our inner microbial «soil», stress caused by our diet and eating habits.
The sharp rise in conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, dementia, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, obesity, and many other health issues is now wholly or partially linked to poor gut health. Just as plants can no longer find microbial life in the soil with which to exchange nutrients, humans have lost the vital partners we need in our guts, in our own internal, and preferably fertile "soil." For that is precisely how gut health functions: by nourishing (fertilizing!) the gut’s microbial life with natural food, we ensure that our microbiota can produce the nutrients and substances our bodies require. We mistakenly thought all that was needed was to get the food down to our stomachs, and have come to understand that this is not even half the story.
It is time for the final step. Thank you for reading this far. Many people believe that organic farming methods are applied solely to benefit the environment. In reality, they help you become healthier and allow your body to function in greater harmony with the food you eat. Since there is a high probability that an imbalance currently exists between you and the food you consume—if it comes from the modern food industry—you are, in effect, harming yourself through what you put into your body.
“This tastes wonderful; how do you prepare it?” As mentioned, we hear this often. Our answer is simple and direct:
Everything you have just eaten is certified organic and comes from plants and animals that are closer to the natural state in which our ancestors lived. The food is unaffected by pesticides, herbicides and synthetic additives, and rich with nutrients and natural flavours.
The vegetables were grown in healthy soil, and the animals were raised under natural conditions: outdoors and in harmony with their instincts. The seeds used for the vegetables are natural varieties, not manipulated hybrids. The animals belong to traditional heritage breeds and were allowed to grow slowly and develop naturally. At Dammhagen, we avoid all additives known to be harmful to our gut health. We are also convinced that the essential flavours and aromas you experience trigger a natural and richer response within your body, something the imitations the food industry relies upon are incapable of doing.
That is why you have just experienced something you perhaps haven’t tasted for a very long time. Not because we are extraordinary chefs, but because we consistently choose naturally grown and raised ingredients, that we prepare from scratch using methods that bring out their flavours. The food we served made your body rejoice with recognition of the real thing.
Organic or biodynamic. That is the explanation—that’s the difference—and that is why you are now smiling with contentment, feeling that our food truly tasted delicious.
