Staff Writer

Daryl Conant of Kennebunk’s Fitness Nut House has a new book, “Diet Earth.” He sat down to discuss healthy eating habits and share his opinions about the giant bright red tomatoes at the grocery store.

Why the title “Diet Earth”?

It kind of relates back down to the organic food supply of the earth. What I have found over the years and what kind of prompted me to write the book is, no matter where you go now it seems like the food you are getting is not real. It’s been so processed there’s little remnant of actual food that we’re supposed to be taking in. But what happens is it’s been so processed that it’s not really natural anymore. “Diet Earth” is a book about bringing it all back to the beginning, the simple form of nutrition.

And what is that?

Well, it’s talking about why we need to grow food and to eat it from the natural source – for example, vegetables. When you pick them off the stalk they begin to die as soon as they are picked. Then it goes to a wholesaler, the wholesaler buys it and then it goes to a grocery store. By the time it gets to the grocery store, a lot of the value has died right out.

 I used to work on a farm and from the moment we picked until the time you would buy it, it’d be about a week. Then by the time you bring it home, you unpackage it, you think well, you’re not going to have broccoli that night. You might have it tomorrow night or three nights later, so now you’re looking at almost 10 days and the nutrients have been depleted. That’s just the natural supply of food. Now if you take the food and you process it and you mix it all up and you put chemicals in and preservatives in, the additives and everything, now you’re getting a food source that really isn’t natural.

What happens when people eat food that isn’t natural?

It’s hard … to digest. That’s why we’re getting all the obesity, all the cancers, all the digestive disorders and all these things that are stemming from the fact we’re not eating real organic, natural food.

 “Diet Earth” is kind of playing on the words “Planet Earth,” because everyone’s into the diet. It’s like everybody now is on a diet of some sort, “I’m on the Atkins Diet,” “I’m on the South Beach Diet,” “I’m on this diet,” “I’m on this diet.” It’s kind like I’m saying the whole earth is on a big diet and it’s kind of crazy. What we need to do is kind of bring it back down to the basics of what nutrition really is and how the body works and so what “Diet Earth” is all about is how we eat, when we eat, why we need to eat and how to eat.

You’re not talking about just the fast food companies.

When you go into a grocery store it’s like “wow” the oranges are really bright orange and all the bright colors in the produce. The produce doesn’t look like that when they come off the trees. What they do is when (the produce) comes off the trees (the farmers) bleach them out and they put chemicals into it too. It really sparks it up, so you buy it, because it looks more appetizing, but what you’re really getting is a product that has a lot of pesticides on it, a lot of chemicals on it.

So you’re saying even the people who are trying to eat fruits and vegetables are still ingesting these pesticides?

It’s a shame because what’s happening is everyone is trying to do the right thing. But if I go in to the store and it says organic food, in order for them to sell it organically, it’s a law that it has to meet certain regulations on the pesticides they use, the chemicals they use and the additives they use to be organic. If they exceed pesticide count, it’s no longer organic. That’s why you can buy the green beans for 50 cents and the organic green beans are going to be a dollar. So people are thinking, “I don’t want to spend for the organic, a green bean’s a green bean,” but that’s not the case. The other green beans have more chemicals in them.

Why should people eat more organically?

If you think about it, that’s really how we should be eating. The population is based on that we can’t find real food anymore, so we’re all living off of food that’s been tampered with, tainted with pesticides and other junk. So when you try to tell people they have to eat organically, it’s expensive and they can’t afford it, so now our health is at risk. It’s like a vicious cycle. What’s happening is the natural food supply is dwindling smaller and smaller and we’re losing it, whereas about 50 to 70 years ago everything was organic. Everybody had a farm. You didn’t have pesticides. Everybody was growing their own stuff, everything was abundant. Then the population exploded, the market got too full and they couldn’t keep up with it.

This idea of “our food is making us sick” has been around for a while, what prompted you to write your version?

Probably about 22 years ago when I was in college, I was doing all the nutrition classes and the FDA guidelines and that food pyramid stuff. I just didn’t buy into it. I was thinking to myself “there’s something that really isn’t right about that setup.” The food pyramid promotes all processed food. There’s a little bit of protein at the top, like 2 to 3 servings of animal proteins. Then it goes down, it says 7 to 12 servings of carbohydrates, those are all your grains, your cereals, all the stuff that can stay on the shelves for months.

 If you have a box of cereal that has an expiration date of 2012, I mean there is something totally wrong with that. The preservatives you take in, and you put those preservatives into your system, I mean what is happening to our bodies? I would look into that in college. I was reading all the labels and looking at the stuff and realizing there was stuff in there I couldn’t even pronounce. So then I did a little research study.

What did you find during the research study?

Well, I bought some bread and I looked at it – it had about 50 ingredients in it. I thought there was just like flour, water and butter or whatever, it is bread. So I started to look at it and I went through and did a list of all the chemicals in bread. I started going through the list and looking up the chemicals and I read “not for human consumption” for some chemicals and thought, “this is poison.” Side effects were cancer, hyperactive disorder, all these things. I was like “holy cow.”

Are these chemicals sort of like the Twinkie test, where it’s been said if there was ever a biochemical disaster the only thing left would be the Twinkies?

I believe it, they’re all chemicals. Again, anything that can stay on a shelf for more than 10 weeks, it’s all loaded with preservatives. That’s why organic food doesn’t last. The problem is there are so many people in our country now. The government had to come out with some idea how can we feed the people. If we were doing everything organically there wouldn’t be enough. For example, milk only lasts seven days. The farmers couldn’t keep up with it.

Millions and millions of people want milk every morning so they had to come up with some process to homogenize it and pasteurize it and now we have products that last two months. You can make a bunch of it and it can last a lot longer to keep everything going. It has to be like that now unfortunately, unless we go back to that farming cycle again.

Pesticides weren’t put on vegetables to cause all these diseases; originally they were used to keep bugs off farm products, right?

Yes, but really the regulatory system is not in place anymore. It is a little bit, but it’s not their main concern. Again if you’re a government you’re thinking, “How are we going to feed the masses? Otherwise were going to be a third world country.” That’s usually how it happens. If you say a little bit of chemicals is not going to hurt you but people can’t afford real food anymore they can only afford Twinkies, they can only afford the processed hydrogenated fats. Now they’re the ones getting sick. It’s going to escalate the heath care system and it ruins it all for everybody.

Does your book go through some of the ways to get around spending all the money on organics but still eating healthier?

What I do with the book is I really kind of delve into the chemicals so people can identify them with the label. I’m trying to get people to get away from reading just the calories and the fat grams.

Why should people read the label?

I’m trying to make people more aware, more accountable and to take inventory of what’s going in to their system. Not everyone is going to eat perfectly but to be aware of if I’m going to drink this soda, I’m going to read the back of it and if it has aspartame…maybe find something that doesn’t have it. I have a list in the book of all the different chemicals but there are so many I couldn’t put them all in. I put all the big ones in there. You can decide if you really want to eat that ice cream that has all that stuff in it. I give alternatives – if you’re going to have ice cream, you want to have ice cream that has five ingredients in it, like Häagen-Dazs ice cream, it has five ingredients in it.

Do you have any books planned for the future?

I’m actually writing another book, it’s called “Buff Daddy.” I’m writing it because it’s for the family man. Just because we have kids doesn’t mean we have to give up the way we look. A lot of the programs and the magazines are really geared for 20-year-olds, single 20-year-old guys trying to get hooked up on Friday night.

 There’s really nothing out there that’s devoted to a guy who says “I have 30 minutes to devote to my health. I still want to look healthy, I don’t want to have the beer gut and have that middle-aged look, what can I do?”

 That’s really what “Buff Daddy” is about. I’m living proof of it, I’m going through it now. I got a 10-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 7-month-old, so life is like crazy, plus I work 80 hours a week. So you’re thinking “OK, I don’t want to give up bodybuilding, but I have to compromise.” Then I figured a way I can still train as hard as I want; I actually look better now then I did when I was 18 – it’s a system I put in [the book]. That should be out by spring of 2011.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.