There is a story about a village near a river. One day, a villager saw a baby floating down the river. He ran to save the baby, only to find another floating down the river. The villagers came to help, when another and yet another baby came. Soon, all the villagers were occupied with saving the babies that were floating down river toward their village. Nobody thought to look upstream to find out where the babies where coming from, or why.
Nobody doubts that healthcare in America needs reform. Medical practice inefficiencies, rising insurance costs, over priced drugs, and a lack of access to quality care for all, are the babies floating toward us. Politics exponentially adds to the problem. Meanwhile, Americans enslaved, if not crushed, by healthcare costs often fail to see the snake in this box of pain, which is a broken food industry.
While everyone wants the system fixed, nobody wants to pay for it. Everyone wants better healthcare; unfortunately, few care enough about how such a broken system affects their neighbors. Politicians fear loss of campaign funding, from corporations potentially affected by healthcare reform legislation, while they attempt to make their constituents believe that they are working for the people’s best interests.
A look upstream would reveal unique funding sources for healthcare reform as well as a remodeling of the broken food industry. Taxing processed foods, laced with corn syrup, salt, and unhealthy fats, could yield new revenue as it forces a change to healthier ingredients in the nation's diet. Concurrently, outdated farm subsudies could be shifted to encourage local production of organic fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products and to also support healthy school lunches.
By taxing corporate farm operations, those using genetically modified seed that rely on excessive use of pesticides and herbicides, healthcare reform would be funded and healthy farming practices encouraged. This could remedy the agricultural disaster perpetrated on America’s farmers when post WWII chemical producers, seeking new markets for the war’s chemical surpluses, fathered post war farming techniques that are destroying the land and life throughout America’s heartlands today.
By taxing feedlot operations, which use inhumane and unhealthy production methods for beef, pork and poultry, additional new revenue could be generated. Such meats, grown with excessive chemicals and drugs, create health issues, which drive the need for more healthcare services. This would be yet another win-win situation.
Such a remodeling of the food industry would cause America’s fast food giants, one of the unhealthiest sectors of the food industry, to raise prices. Thus, choosing unhealthy foods, and creating a drain on the American healthcare system, would be a more obvious and conscious decision. It would also help curb America's addiction to sugar, salt and fat that has caused American's to be the fattest people in the world.
These actions could strike at the heart of our health and healthcare issues if Washington could just stop drowning in politics and look upstream.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Finding SOLE food
Finding and eating SOLE Food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethnic food) requires thoughtful planning, searching and gathering. The same hunting and gathering requirements involved in staying alive since the beginning of time.
Those who hunt the local grocery store to supplement purchases from local farmers, and private gardens, must rely on labels to understand the contents of the packages they put into their shopping carts. Trusting information found on those labels, however, is becoming increasing difficult. The first concepts that the hunter and finder of foods accepts are that nourishment is required for life, that we are responsible for finding food and feeding ourselves, and that we must learn what is nurishing and what is dangerous.
There was a time when the U.S. government intended to become the public guardian of our health and well-being by watching over the food industry. That changed when the food industry became larger than the government. When that happened, legislation, rules and governmental processes became vulnerable to industry influence as they sought to protect their increasing profit margins. The public’s safety became an after thought and the food industry grew fat and unhealthy. Today, the laws and regulations, meant to guard the safety of our nutrition, food, farming practices, and delivery methods, are suffering the typical system failures caused by over indulgence. Just as we have witnessed the failure of our financial institutions, the repeated food recalls and contamination warnings are symptoms of a similar institutional collapse occurring in the food industry.
Unable to see past their bloated profits, some food producers have lost their commitment to delivering healthy food. This is not just due to a skewed sense of value and business ethic. In part, some businesses are responding to a public that has lost touch with the value of adequate portions of quality food and seeks, instead, cheap food in excessive amounts. Not to discount that the food industry has learned to manipulate human cravings with salt, sugar and pervasive advertising, people still feed themselves. Thus, the combination of industry manipulation and personal choices has resulted in a society that is becoming fatter and less healthy. It has also fostered the rise of big box stores, which force unreasonable competition, resulting in a degradation of product quality. Any economic shift magnifies these problems, as it does many other interrelated process within any society.
So what can be done to find quality food? Commit to adjusting the standards of intake and quality. Scour the internet for trusted sites of information. Exercise the power of purchasing by sending a clear message that people want non-GM (genetically modified), wholesome food, organic, and locally grown, as much as is possible. Involve the grocery managers and staff. Purchase from local farmers and farmer's markets when possible. Become better educated consumers. For example, Wal-Mart offers organic milk at an unusually low price. However, an article at Organic Consumer's Organization , and the list of organic milk producers at The Cornucopia Institute exposes the fact that the cheap organic labeled milk, at this big box store, is not so organic and, subsequently, not so cheap either.
The axiomatic view here is that since the beginning of time, as successful hunters and gatherers, we educated ourselves, and learned best practices for the finding of nourishment to assure our survival. Nothing and everything has changed. What has changed is that we can no longer look at food and determine that it is, or is not, edible. Today, some foods are advertised as being edible, smell edible and taste edible, however, they may not contribute to our health. In some case, over time, they may even cause illnesses such as, diabetes, heart disease or cancer. Luckily, our technology has advanced with us and we can still search for the needed information to make appropriate choices and assure the survival of our species. As always, it is our choice.
Those who hunt the local grocery store to supplement purchases from local farmers, and private gardens, must rely on labels to understand the contents of the packages they put into their shopping carts. Trusting information found on those labels, however, is becoming increasing difficult. The first concepts that the hunter and finder of foods accepts are that nourishment is required for life, that we are responsible for finding food and feeding ourselves, and that we must learn what is nurishing and what is dangerous.
There was a time when the U.S. government intended to become the public guardian of our health and well-being by watching over the food industry. That changed when the food industry became larger than the government. When that happened, legislation, rules and governmental processes became vulnerable to industry influence as they sought to protect their increasing profit margins. The public’s safety became an after thought and the food industry grew fat and unhealthy. Today, the laws and regulations, meant to guard the safety of our nutrition, food, farming practices, and delivery methods, are suffering the typical system failures caused by over indulgence. Just as we have witnessed the failure of our financial institutions, the repeated food recalls and contamination warnings are symptoms of a similar institutional collapse occurring in the food industry.
Unable to see past their bloated profits, some food producers have lost their commitment to delivering healthy food. This is not just due to a skewed sense of value and business ethic. In part, some businesses are responding to a public that has lost touch with the value of adequate portions of quality food and seeks, instead, cheap food in excessive amounts. Not to discount that the food industry has learned to manipulate human cravings with salt, sugar and pervasive advertising, people still feed themselves. Thus, the combination of industry manipulation and personal choices has resulted in a society that is becoming fatter and less healthy. It has also fostered the rise of big box stores, which force unreasonable competition, resulting in a degradation of product quality. Any economic shift magnifies these problems, as it does many other interrelated process within any society.
So what can be done to find quality food? Commit to adjusting the standards of intake and quality. Scour the internet for trusted sites of information. Exercise the power of purchasing by sending a clear message that people want non-GM (genetically modified), wholesome food, organic, and locally grown, as much as is possible. Involve the grocery managers and staff. Purchase from local farmers and farmer's markets when possible. Become better educated consumers. For example, Wal-Mart offers organic milk at an unusually low price. However, an article at Organic Consumer's Organization , and the list of organic milk producers at The Cornucopia Institute exposes the fact that the cheap organic labeled milk, at this big box store, is not so organic and, subsequently, not so cheap either.
The axiomatic view here is that since the beginning of time, as successful hunters and gatherers, we educated ourselves, and learned best practices for the finding of nourishment to assure our survival. Nothing and everything has changed. What has changed is that we can no longer look at food and determine that it is, or is not, edible. Today, some foods are advertised as being edible, smell edible and taste edible, however, they may not contribute to our health. In some case, over time, they may even cause illnesses such as, diabetes, heart disease or cancer. Luckily, our technology has advanced with us and we can still search for the needed information to make appropriate choices and assure the survival of our species. As always, it is our choice.
Friday, June 5, 2009
“Be the change you want to see in the world,” Gandhi
Reality is dawning regarding environmental and health issues in America and the protections provided by our governmental agencies. Government protection is like fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun. Not quiet as effective as needed.
As broken as our economy is, many government protection agencies, which we have believed are protecting us from harm, are also broken. We were awakened by the recent economic crash and the disaster of New Orleans. Another alarm sounding is the constant barrage of contamination warnings and recalls of food in America.
The axiomatic view here, is that governmental mechanisms, set up to protect citizens from financial collapse, disaster recovery, safe food distribution, safe chemistry in the things we ingest and use, and food processing methods, are failing. Well intended, at their inception, years of successful special interests’ lobbying and corporate infiltration of key agency leadership positions, have defused the objectivity and strength of our government oversight. Like hoping the squirt gun will be effective, we had better find additional answers.
The environmental rules are simple. As stated in Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, “… don’t poison the water, soil, or air and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat….” Each rule broken, affects every aspect of life all over the world. From health and economic issues to international relationships, lest we forget that wars are often fought for land and resources.
While damage has been done to the environment, it is not too late. At some point, however, the planet could be damaged beyond its ability to recover enough to sustain our species. Action, sharing of the message and knowledge, each to the best of our ability is needed. Holding corporations responsible for their methodologies by using our purchasing powers sends an important message. Helping our youth understand the importance of our environment, by our actions, is most important. They will grow to create the new environmental and business methodology, necessary to heal earth and for its inhabitants to prosper.
While we can hope that the current administration can reinvigorate the effectiveness of government oversight, we must take responsibility for making conscientious decisions, acting to protect the environment, promoting healthy eating practices, and for everyone. If we become the change that we want to see happen in the world, change will happen.
Follow the Resource Links and begin the journey.
As broken as our economy is, many government protection agencies, which we have believed are protecting us from harm, are also broken. We were awakened by the recent economic crash and the disaster of New Orleans. Another alarm sounding is the constant barrage of contamination warnings and recalls of food in America.
The axiomatic view here, is that governmental mechanisms, set up to protect citizens from financial collapse, disaster recovery, safe food distribution, safe chemistry in the things we ingest and use, and food processing methods, are failing. Well intended, at their inception, years of successful special interests’ lobbying and corporate infiltration of key agency leadership positions, have defused the objectivity and strength of our government oversight. Like hoping the squirt gun will be effective, we had better find additional answers.
The environmental rules are simple. As stated in Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, “… don’t poison the water, soil, or air and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat….” Each rule broken, affects every aspect of life all over the world. From health and economic issues to international relationships, lest we forget that wars are often fought for land and resources.
While damage has been done to the environment, it is not too late. At some point, however, the planet could be damaged beyond its ability to recover enough to sustain our species. Action, sharing of the message and knowledge, each to the best of our ability is needed. Holding corporations responsible for their methodologies by using our purchasing powers sends an important message. Helping our youth understand the importance of our environment, by our actions, is most important. They will grow to create the new environmental and business methodology, necessary to heal earth and for its inhabitants to prosper.
While we can hope that the current administration can reinvigorate the effectiveness of government oversight, we must take responsibility for making conscientious decisions, acting to protect the environment, promoting healthy eating practices, and for everyone. If we become the change that we want to see happen in the world, change will happen.
Follow the Resource Links and begin the journey.
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