Western Weight on the World

Today's Washington Post included an interactive graphic on the Body Mass Index across the world from 1980 to 2008. The data came from a study of cardiac risk factors and shows the growing prevelance of obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure across much of the world. Go to the article so you can truly understand the impact.

My commentary? We continue to export our Western ways of living (sedentary life consuming fast and processed foods), followed by our Western health issues (obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes) followed by our Western "solutions" (surgeries and pharmaceuticals). The only ones benefiting from the "Western-ways" epidemic are the shareholders of the companies that create the problem and then fix the problem.

Everyone else, and the environment, suffers. My advice can best be summed up with:

Shame on us.

Hunger, Poverty and the Environment

I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Annual State of the World Symposium today to hear the discussion about "Innovations that Nourish the Planet." This fabulous book profiles several innovative food and agriculture projects happening in sub-Saharan Africa and includes ideas on how to spread these to other areas of the world. If you want some inspiration and hope, get this book.

David Beckman of Bread for the World spoke about how poverty, hunger and the environment are related. Hungry people without the resources to acquire food will exploit the environment to feed themselves and their families. And, I don't blame them.

I continue to be struck by the irony of, and curious about the ability to solve, the hunger and obesity problem. I would further Mr. Beckman's idea with the contention that poverty, obesity and the environment are also related. The poor have less access to whole, natural, organic foods which are, generally speaking, more expensive. The poor also spend a larger percentage of their time working so they have less time to prepare meals at home and therefore consume a larger portion of processed and fast foods. And, food stuffs with a larger negative impact on our environment (heavily treated crops and processed foods replete with chemical additives) comprise the majority of the food the overweight and obese consume.

The simplest ideas are always, always best. The Innovations that Nourish the Planet contains many simple ideas working in Africa that I think could also serve both the hungry and overweight in the US. We have a great deal to learn from each other. And, we have the opportunity to thrive if we embrace our global food village.

Who Knows?

What products are safe? Is Bisphenol A (BPA) bad for us as water bottles and canned food linings? Should we worry about the chemicals leeching into our skin from our shampoo and soaps? Is Genetically Modified Food a danger to our long-term health? Should we allow 2-methylnaphthalene to be used in our cereal box packaging? 


The bottom line? Who knows. Which is the very reason we are at risk. The FDA considers and  approves (in the vast majority of cases) chemically-created additives and genetically-modified organisms to be used in our food, health products and the packaging that gets those products to us. The problem with the entire system is that it doesn't take into account the entire system. Any one of these chemically-derived additives could be perfectly safe on its own in a laboratory. And, it could even be perfectly safe in a controlled environment where the other things it interacts with are also controlled. 


In the real world? Who knows. There are so many variables we cannot possibly predict the affects. The recent revelations on Flouride in our drinking water is only one example. There are, I fear, thousands of other examples.

One very effective way to reduce the number of additives you are consuming is to eat the vast majority of your meals at home, using whole, natural foods. If you buy whole food with minimal to no processing, you have a much better chance of avoiding the chemicals and additives that could be causing signficiant damage to your health. Eating true may require a bit more effort, particularly when you first start. Make the effort. It is an investment worth making.

Eat as Nature Created

Humans are incredibly egotistical creatures. Well, most of us anyway. We continue to think we can out-smart and out-process what nature creates. And, the more we do so the more we suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancers and so on.


Who remembers the commercial from the 1970s about Chiffon margarine? The raccoon feeds margarine to Mother Nature who is surprised it isn't butter. Mother Nature responds with "It isn't nice to fool Mother Nature" and then creates harmless lightening (in today's television world the lightening would have maimed, if not killed, the raccoon... Ahhhh, the 70s how we miss you so). 


If we only knew then what we know now. The margarine was bad for us. Trans fats are evil. How many more "discoveries" do we need to compile before we finally admit the error of our processed-food ways? 


The LA Times published an article about a study that says the trans-palmitoleic acid founds in full-fat dairy products can protect against diabetes. This is my favorite line from the 
article...

 "The findings 'suggest that efforts to promote exclusive consumption of low-fat and nonfat dairy products ... may be premature.'"

Is this to say our "experts" were wrong again? I'm aghast. The chemists must know how to make better food than the Earth! And, when oh when, will these findings simply say, "Opps. We were really wrong on that one. Sorry, folks!"

I'm curious about the processed nature of the milk products the participants of the study were consuming. Perhaps it was raw-milk which would be an even better sign for our future health. I'm not a scientist or a medical Doctor, I'm the grand-daughter of a dairy farmer raised on whole, non-processed milk. I can still picture Grandpa walking from the milking barn to the house with a bottle of fresh milk for our breakfast. You can't get much closer to nature than 15 minutes from the cow who had spent the previous day roaming the pastures eating grass at her leisure. 


In fairness, I must admit... I trust Grandpa and the cows more than I trust a chemist. 

Chemicals Only

There is a great deal of activity around controlling the foods we eat. Much of it is not good for us. There are many powerful groups lobbying to prevent the requirement to label Genetically Modified Foods as such. And, there is a concerted effort on the part of the Government to outlaw raw milk, including the recent raid of a co-op in California selling raw milk. So let me get this straight... We should not be eating something natural in the form it exists in nature and we should be unaware we are eating something that was made in a Petri dish.

One could put these things together and begin to think of a new labeling protocol. We could start a campaign and require the packaging of any "food" item that contains something modified, altered, fake, chemical, homogenized or not-from-nature to proudly display this mark ➜

If you are perusing the inner aisles of your grocery store, seeking something in a box to feed to your family and saw the "No Apple" mark you would know you are about to buy something cheap and fake. Just think of how much time it would save the average shopper! In fact, in the land of fake food made of chemicals and genetically modified atoms, I'm pretty sure everything is going to taste the same anyway so it won't much matter what people are buying.

So there you go. Let's start the "No Apple" campaign and really start a revolution!

Food Efficiency

Many people will tout the benefits of joining the vegetarian masses. If you ask veggies why they choose to be so some will say health, some to save animals and the latest fad reason is the environment. The environment, you ask? Is there any actual environmental impact from vegetarianism?

This blog by GOOD includes a great chart that shows "the energy cost required to produce different kinds of food and then the efficiency of those foods based on the calories they provide."

To use the much maligned corn as an example...
Energy to produce 1 lb of corn: .43 kWh
Calories per pound of corn: 390
Energy efficiency of corn: 102%

And then beef:
Energy to produce 1 lb of beef: 31.5 kWh
Calories per pound of beef: 1176
Energy efficiency of beef: 4.3%

So we expend much more energy to create 1 pound of beef vs. 1 pound of corn that results in nearly 4 times more calories (which most Americans do not need). The difference in energy efficiency is nearly unbelievable. Granted the blog goes on to say the production of food only accounts for 10% of the first-world energy consumption so there are many other things we can do to reduce our environmental impact.

Food for thought... literally!