I love TED videos, and this one is particularly inspiring, and an on-the-ground reality of how food can heal us, and if we are eating right, heals us everyday, protecting us, keeping us free of disease. Yet this ability that food has consistently appears, to me, to be undervalued in our society and in our food system.
"Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair"
Who can you blame? the individual? to a point. The food system? ummmm yes, Lobbyists? uh huh, Politicians? yes, Media? I think so, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Wendy's? sure but who within those companies?
As it is with our food system, finding who we should blame for our nations problem of a poor diet, chronic disease, and obesity is not easy. It is complex, there are many players and influences, there are many casualties, poisons, and costs. Thinking on this I began to wonder, why is it so common that in my culture, people don't know what to eat. They get overwhelmed with questions on how to prepare veggies in a way that they can imagine ingesting them. Is this because convenient foods have mastered combining fat, sugar, and salt in such a way that both makes us crave the flavor of convenience, as well as contributes to making us sick? that probably has something to do with it. In a society that values money over health, convenience over nutrition, and then spends that much more to achieve health once its gone wrong, how can we begin to change? We are not a preventative society, from what I know that approach, long-term thinking when it comes to health, is not in our nature. At least from a generalizing point of view.
So getting back to my point, its not easy to blame any one person when you really think about it and you measure up all of the players influencing our daily diet. Over time, due to many variables, I feel that American's do not have a cultural cuisine that promotes patterns of healthy eating, which we can reference on a daily basis. Today the culture of eating is that of convenience. This I think may be part of the problem.
What if everyday you knew what to cook, knowing without question it was healthy [or not caring, but you knew your ancestors in generations before lived long healthy lives eating the very diet you are], because your parents and grandparents passed this cultural cuisine down to you, along with your neighbors and friends too? We do not have this kind of community support or relationships to reference in our society, at least from what I am familiar with. Our dietary influences mostly comes from the television or the grocery store, and less from each other. If we actually paid attention, our bodies tell us what we should and should not eat too. If you eat a hotdog, and then need to take a zantac that is your body letting you know that your are eating something toxic.
I am unsure as to what the solution will be. But I do know one thing, that people living with widespread diet-related chronic disease is a newer phenomena, people whose diets are balanced and off the industrial food grid are healthier and have less prevalence of disease. I am not sure there is one. But its something to ponder. Maybe at some point you just adopt a fad diet like one of the better one's, in my opinion, the paleolithic diet, or Mediterranean diet. I wish we had a cultural cuisine that promotes long lives, is preventative with food as medicine, and is free of chronic disease, free of pills.
Maybe someday.
"Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair"
Who can you blame? the individual? to a point. The food system? ummmm yes, Lobbyists? uh huh, Politicians? yes, Media? I think so, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Wendy's? sure but who within those companies?
As it is with our food system, finding who we should blame for our nations problem of a poor diet, chronic disease, and obesity is not easy. It is complex, there are many players and influences, there are many casualties, poisons, and costs. Thinking on this I began to wonder, why is it so common that in my culture, people don't know what to eat. They get overwhelmed with questions on how to prepare veggies in a way that they can imagine ingesting them. Is this because convenient foods have mastered combining fat, sugar, and salt in such a way that both makes us crave the flavor of convenience, as well as contributes to making us sick? that probably has something to do with it. In a society that values money over health, convenience over nutrition, and then spends that much more to achieve health once its gone wrong, how can we begin to change? We are not a preventative society, from what I know that approach, long-term thinking when it comes to health, is not in our nature. At least from a generalizing point of view.
So getting back to my point, its not easy to blame any one person when you really think about it and you measure up all of the players influencing our daily diet. Over time, due to many variables, I feel that American's do not have a cultural cuisine that promotes patterns of healthy eating, which we can reference on a daily basis. Today the culture of eating is that of convenience. This I think may be part of the problem.
What if everyday you knew what to cook, knowing without question it was healthy [or not caring, but you knew your ancestors in generations before lived long healthy lives eating the very diet you are], because your parents and grandparents passed this cultural cuisine down to you, along with your neighbors and friends too? We do not have this kind of community support or relationships to reference in our society, at least from what I am familiar with. Our dietary influences mostly comes from the television or the grocery store, and less from each other. If we actually paid attention, our bodies tell us what we should and should not eat too. If you eat a hotdog, and then need to take a zantac that is your body letting you know that your are eating something toxic.
I am unsure as to what the solution will be. But I do know one thing, that people living with widespread diet-related chronic disease is a newer phenomena, people whose diets are balanced and off the industrial food grid are healthier and have less prevalence of disease. I am not sure there is one. But its something to ponder. Maybe at some point you just adopt a fad diet like one of the better one's, in my opinion, the paleolithic diet, or Mediterranean diet. I wish we had a cultural cuisine that promotes long lives, is preventative with food as medicine, and is free of chronic disease, free of pills.
Maybe someday.
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