I have loved restaurants my entire life. I love trying new ones on trips and enjoying the subtle differences of each place. We have some absolutely incredible tasting restaurants in Northwest Arkansas but most are also contaminating their food with heavy metals, parabens, pesticides and inflammatory oils. (Probably without even knowing it!) We eat nourishing food at home, but every time we travel we just hope we find one place that's mostly safe for our family to eat. In the past I was a huge fan of most restaurants in Northwest Arkansas, but now I've had to stop eating at almost all of them. It's easy to tell which places don't buy organic, because the pesticides give me canker sores in my mouth. The seed oils, namely soybean oil, make my son's skin inflamed. Once you've started eating healthy your body tells you when something isn't good. The more people eat at these places, the more "allergies" and problems we start seeing and so more and more people are not going to be able to eat at the places they love if restaurants don't make some changes.

I want to help bring awareness of some problems most of the restaurants cause and offer some nourishing fixes for them.

Most people are not aware of what's in their food. We consume things just simply because they've been ok to eat for a long time, not realizing that they've been hurting us for a long time too.

There are five major problems with 98% of the restaurants in Northwest Arkansas. These are problems that need to be fixed. If you are the owner of a local restaurant, this is call to you to change whichever of these you can, as quickly as you are able. Some changes will take a while - I get it - and some can be done quickly. As you read this think about what changes you can make this week or this month etc...

Everything Needs To Be Organic

You may not realize that organic doesn't just mean "healthier", it means there is no glyphosate on the bread, produce, meat or milk you are consuming. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Round Up and is banned in Europe completely. However in the U.S. we spray it all over the major crops. It turns out it only kills a grand total of 1% of the actual bugs it's supposed to kill. This is completely ridiculous and just like Europe has found, there are many more effective ways to keep bugs off food while it's growing. Bayer has been sued over and over for this and they've even tried passing legislation that keeps people from being able to sue them. To give you an idea there is a very high amount of glyphosate in Cheerios of all things. Disgusting.

This will also address the gluten-free epidemic we're in. It's not that people can't eat gluten so much as it's that their bodies are responding to the glyphosate. Our wheat and grains in America have been genetically modified and sprayed with poisons over the years to the point it's now causing this problem. This is why an individual with celiac can go to Europe and eat bread without a care in the world! If restaurants stopped serving pesticide-soaked ingredients with their food we could keep this gluten-free issue from continuing to rise.

To put this in perspective. I can go get even just a salad at almost any restaurant in Northwest Arkansas and still be eating pesticides, because most don't use organic ingredients. So not even a salad is healthy anymore. That's insane. Think about that and then think about how many other foods you're trying to nourish people with that have this junk snuck into it.

We have to start buying organic produce at our restaurants. If you have to start small, that's great and will make a huge difference in the long run. Just please specify what is organic and what isn't on your menus please.

Learn more from our glyphosate article.

Ditch All Use Seed Oils

All sickness boils down to inflammation and seeds like vegetable, canola, safflower, sunflower, soy, cottonseed, and grapeseed oil. This includes any Crisco or Pam "butter spray" all of which is a synthetic version of what we all should be using like: beef tallow, grass-fed butter, avocado oil or peanut oil.

This is where even the healthiest restaurants go wrong and it's not a little no-no. Seed oils are in everything. I can only find two restaurants that do not cook in any seed oils and that is Pleasant Counter in Springdale, Snack Lab and Natural Muse. Even the fanciest places in our area do. This blows my mind.

Seed oils are very inflammatory, because they've been heated and processed so much to get that little bit of oil out. It doesn't make any sense that they're cheaper either. (Something is up with that.) So anyone who walks in your restaurant with heart disease or cancer or just doesn't want to get sick this year, could have a nourishing version of the same meal you've always served if you just started cooking with beef tallow, grass-fed butter, avocado oil, etc. These better cooking oils make the food less inflammatory. For example, the stigma of fried chicken being bad for your heart isn't even true! It's really good for you if that chicken is pastured raised, and you fry it in beef tallow or avocado oil! The oil or "the greasy food" is what was bad for people. That's what causes people to leave your restaurant bloated and tired instead of full of energy. It's amazing the lies we've been taught about food when in reality it's just the ingredients we've been eating unknowingly. Say you sell cookies. You can pack protein in them with the Just Ingredient protein powder. Who knew you could get 5 sources of protein and collagen in a cookie?! See what I'm saying? All these possibilities open up when you use good ingredients.

The Seed Oil Scout app is a wonderful tool that people are using to find good restaurants that don't use seed oils.

Learn more from my post Ditch Foods with Seed Oils.

Natural Healthier Sugars

High fructose corn syrup is just evil. The fact that you can cram like 5 tablespoons of processed sugar into 1 and put it in everything we love is an attack on our health. Plus it's bleached!? However this is an easy fix too! Buy you some organic coconut sugar instead or even better sweeten with honey or Maple syrup or Monk Fruit. these sweeteners work as perfect replacements in recipes and they don't spike your blood sugar. So no sugar high! They also won't have taste enhancers in them to trick your customer's into thinking it's sweeter than it is. Diabetics will love you. Plus you can control how much you put in it to get that taste just right. Sweet, but not too sweet.

Pasture Raised Meats

Restaurants are catching on to this, but this again boils down to glyphosate. You don't want weed killer in the chicken or cow you're about to eat. Simple as that, but they are also packed with more nutrients when they've been pasture-raised eating natural foods instead of genetically modified and sprayed grains.

Destroy Teflon Cookware

Teflon, they say, was used on Tanks in the World Wars and then they thought they could coat our pans with them. (Which seems like a natural next step??) When these pans are heated, they spew heavy metals and PFAs that have been proven to further infertility, by jacking up our hormones. Use stainless steel, ceramic and cast iron to cook evenly and help keep your customer's hormones in check.

Learn more from my post Chemical-Free Cookware.

Never Heat Plastic or Aluminum

This is for the same reasons as just mentioned. Aluminum is such a "duh" once you realize it, but that aluminum gets right in the food and there's plenty of studies and people to tell you about it. Let's

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In Summary

Start looking all of these up and you'll see a plethora of information on each of these topics. It's amazing how we don't see any of it until we start looking.

So I tell you this, because I'm sick of telling people "yeah we don't eat there anymore" and none of this is terribly hard to fix if I'm not mistaken. Don't you want to serve food that nourishes the body? Food that helps people stay healthy instead of bringing their next sick episode a little closer? Of course you do!

If I saw a restaurant post that they are slowing making these changes and have just started selling organic produce or they ditched seed oils. That would be enough to get me in your door. We can cook nourishing food at home so I don't expect food to be always perfect. We're just looking for the best options and the things I've addressed in this article are a huge deal to society and that means these simple changes can start making a huge impact on the health of people all over Northwest Arkansas. Give it some thought and let me know if you don't use seed oils or if you plan on switching something over this year. I will shout it from the rooftops, because that should be celebrated.

Chefs are like doctors, except doctors aren't taught much nutrition these days. Think about how much of an impact you can make on the community's overall health just by doing a few of these things. These are things doctors can't even help with. Some people don't even want to themselves, but they'll eat at your restaurant. If you serve nourishing food you help both of them. Think about it. It's a huge deal and it doesn't take much to swing things the other direction.