I’m wonderfully optimistic about the year to come. I think I’m finally coming to an understanding of what it means to let go and let God. To kick off the new year, I have decided to start a series of posts on things we have a right to know about (in fact in many situations our life depends on it), but for whatever reason they are kept “secret” whether through planned secrecy or by tactful exclusion of information.
John and I spent the evening on the couch last night watching our new Netflix arrival – Food, Inc. . I’ve been waiting on this movie since it came out a while back. This film demystifies our current system of industrialized food and the problems that arise from our expectation of fast and cheap food.
It was a little over a year ago now when a prolonged illness of mine prompted me to switch our diet to a traditional foods diet as proposed by The Weston A. Price Foundation and authors like Sally Fallon and Nina Planck. Since then, I have noticed a tremendous change in my health and well being along with that of my husband and children. I have lost and maintained a 100 pound weight loss (though I was already losing weight before changing my eating, I contribute most of it to traditional foods). I have more energy. My gums no longer bleed when I brush or floss my teeth. But, the most noticeable for me is my relationship to food. I no longer fear food making me fat, because I know that what I am choosing to eat is real food and not something fabricated in a factory. I enjoy my food and I eat plenty of it. I’m eating things the diet industry tells us will make us obese and sick – butter, bacon, red meat, and whole fat dairy.
This approach to eating (I don’t call it a “diet” in the terms of how most of us view the word) has changed my life so completely that I can’t help but get excited about sharing it with others. However, all to often I have noticed people don’t want to hear the truth about where their food comes from, and I tend to get tuned out. Instead of accepting that there is a problem here and we are in need of huge change as a society, they continue to eat from the conventional store shelves food that more often than not is some kind of factory made variation of corn or soy bean products and they wonder why they are sick with things like diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, or obesity. Why is that?
The fact of the matter is that we have a right to know where our food comes from and under what conditions it is being processed for our consumption. Our food is life. What we put into our body directly affects how we are able to live our life. However, now that our food supply is being controlled by just a few multi- million (billion) dollar corporations that treat their farmers and factory workers like second class human beings, who don’t care at all about the health of the animals they process for meat, and treat our meat, produce, and dry goods with a variety of chemicals to give them unnatural shelf lives, we are being kept in the dark of food practices that if they were public knowledge would incite the citizens of this country to demand a change.
The truth is that 1 in 3 children in this country born after 2000 will develop diabetes. 1 in 3 children in this country are either considered overweight or obese. Low-income Americans (under $30,000) a year find it hard to afford a healthy diet. This comes along with the idea of fast food being cheap. You now can buy chips for a lesser price than a head of broccoli, and then there are dollar menus at fast food restaurants. The question of food availability also arises. Living in rural Appalachia, I find it extremely difficult to find food I feel is appropriate for my family, and I have to make too many compromises.
Our country is facing an epidemic that is inexcusable. We owe our children a better chance at a healthy life than this. We owe it to ourselves as well. While industrialization has brought about many good changes in our way of life, when its principles are applied to certain more personal areas of our lives, we find we are detrimentally affected by its lack of concern for the greater human good as opposed to the low cost production industry holds so dear. A few profit from the loss of many.
After viewing this film and others like it, I can’t help but encourage others to become informed as well. Know where your food comes from. Know that in one pack of ground beef there is meat from 50-100 cattle. Know that most chickens raised for commercial slaughter for companies like Tyson never see the light of day or feel grass under their feet. In fact, they are lucky to be able to bear their own body weight on their brittle legs. Know that the tomato you are buying that is so pretty and red was shipped to your location in many cases over thousands of miles, and picked while still green. It was ripened chemically. Know this, and decide to change it. There are farmers out there with answers to this problem. We can have normal, affordable, healthy food. We can live without the fear of food related disease. Arm yourself with knowledge. Then, cast your vote for the foods you want every time you choose your purchases at the grocery.
No comments:
Post a Comment