Adequate supplies of health-enhancing minerals are essential to keep your internal environment in tip-top shape. You get a variety of minerals and other nutrients when you eat a variety of foods. The question is: Why are vegetable and fruit minerals better than meat, poultry, fish, and cheese minerals?

The answer is: Plants get minerals straight from the ground. These minerals are then processed by the plants – they’re like little “nutrient factories.” The molecules of the minerals, as they come from the ground, are held together too tightly for our bodies to break apart and use. Our bodies can’t use most minerals as they come from the soil, but plants can. You might call fruits and vegetables the “first responders.” Plants “eat” the minerals in the soil. So then, when we eat the plants, the minerals are ready for our bodies to use.

The minerals we get from meat, poultry and other flesh foods are at least one step further removed from their origin. The animals, or fish, or other “move-abouts,” get minerals from plants they eat. But that doesn’t mean the minerals are suitable for our bodies. By the time you eat the meat, the health-enhancing plant minerals – sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and iron – have already been processed through another body, and that body got most of the benefit.

Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, work with the raw materials of minerals from the ground, and we reap the benefit of their labor.

This is an excerpt from Dr. Morter’s book, An Apple A Day – Is It Enough Today?