The Food Industry - if we trimmed the fat, nothing's left

[deadscape]

Kamikaze Cuisine

We are eradicating ourselves with violent crime, intolerable cruelty, and blind rampages. While we are being bombarded with stories of physical cruelty and disaster, the real killers are disease and illness. Statistics in a health story fail to capture most human-driven stories, which take too long to tell and promote gloom over fear and shock. We must understand how we are killing our inner selves, most likely by the blade of the corporations that sponsor our shows.

The price of convenience reveals that we are risking our health, our children and our future. If the health authorities insist on protecting our children’s health from nicotine and alcohol, surely there are concerns about the risks involved with the food they eat. Our responsibility is ensuring that a better life is left behind for our children to enjoy. It was ours to enjoy, so why shouldn’t it be theirs? As it stands, we may outlive them. We can continue this cultural hara-kiri or we can move towards a healthier, more ingredient-aware society.

This cannot be a government-run program and must start with us, the citizens. The only way for our local producers to continue running is by getting our dollars to them. If our bodies are fed the proper fuel, we will have more energy and better health, as well as fitter minds. If we feed ourselves garbage, we get garbage. If we eat well, we live well.

A deadly cocktail brews inside us. Our bodies have accumulated chemicals that we attained from our food, air and water. We are reaching toxic levels. Our current 7-11 diet consists of sugar, salt, preservatives and additives, satisfying us with cheap products to consume between meals. These biological concoctions filter through our body, creating a multitude of unexpected chemical reactions within us. These toxins are being marketed and fed to our kids.

We are all consuming various chemicals, prescription medication residue and pesticide run-off that gets past the reprocessing of our fluoridated drinking water. Our food incorporates toxins from industrial fertilizers additional environmental pollutants. Stain-repellents, plastics and Teflon particles leach from our food wrappers and cooking utensils… all toxic. In fact, the packaging and means that protect our food from spoiling is sabotaging our health.

Unsettling studies have shown that, once we die, our bodies are preserved longer than they were fifty years ago. Our liver cannot process these chemical byproducts like natural products do. The preservatives, artificial colours and flavours and other food additives get stored somewhere in the body rather than excreted. This is not natural. A list of diseases is lining up to occupy our body as we move closer to our tolerable toxic levels, or “chemical body burden”. These chemicals behave like a computer virus, initially unnoticeable but eventually lead to crashing the system.

Our mutated diets have deteriorated our physical well being. When a child’s still-developing system is bombarded with unnatural chemicals, they become prone to develop ADHD, overactive hormones (where some have reached puberty by age eight), or childhood diabetes and cancer. If something doesn’t change, we are priming our bodies for neurological diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or ALS, while diabetes and cancer never leave the race. The disease statistics are climbing; our livers are crashing.

Government inattention to warnings and statistics, corporate bloodsucking, and the endless conjuring of new and novel chemicals depict a focus on the economic factors over the consumer’s safety and wellbeing. Our government watchdogs are not protecting us properly and we need to develop a way to protect ourselves. One option is to create citizen’s groups, which would have more credibility than government-appointed higher-ups who fail to consider the long-term benefits.

We are subsidizing these corporate bodies to cut corners, saving money to make the legally bound profit for their investors. Health care and education should be higher on the subsidy priority than the corporate-welfare recipients. It is time, as consumers in the supply-and-demand chain, to make our demands; detoxify what we are eating!

The example that we set for our children is the basis for the example that they will set for theirs. What kind of example can we lead in our homes? We can begin by asking what the children think, and include them in deciding how to create a healthy lifestyle. Rather than being a nutrient-deficient society, we must re-evaluate our time. We are sacrificing our health in place of our tighter schedules. To gather around the table and enjoy a meal with others, once as common as a coffee break, is now more an occasion than a habit. This appreciation, of our food and community, is an example that benefits your health, family and wellbeing.

Pushing for tougher government regulations and standards will not impact how we choose to live. No law can help us live longer. The only affirmative action that we can take in this capitalist society is choosing to spend our money wisely. What would happen if we stopped giving in to their marketing tactics and started buying into a healthy lifestyle? The law of supply-and-demand says that as demand for something more expensive increases, the supply will meet the demand and the prices will get lower. This goes the opposite way for dropping the demand of the currently cheaper priced goods. Our vote for society’s direction is made through supporting each product at the checkout lane. As an unexpected bonus with riper and cleaner produce, a higher nutrient content means less food is craved by the body; grocery budgets can drop.

The example can start at home by encouraging better eating habits and reconsidering the unpronounceable ingredients on the label when we buy our food. The price of convenience may shorten the wait between meals, but it’s expanding the wait lists for health care and the waistlines of the population. We must stop taking what the industries supply, and start demanding products that promote health and longevity instead of siphoning it. If we take the proper actions now, we can feed life back into our society while we practice respect for our inner body above the outer. With our health, the solution is simple and available, but the choice must be made by each of the six billion organisms running this place. Of course, it has to start with our own.

[UnknownResident]

Count me in! The food industry only cares about making their product the cheapest way possible and selling it for as much as possible at your (and our kids) health's expense!

Viva la revolution!!

[caffeine]

I agree for the most part.

Though we are living longer than we ever have before, there is no question that our diet has created serious health issues that we now deal with as we live longer.

I wonder what life expectancy would be if we actually ate what our bodies were designed to eat?

It was not that long ago from an evolutionary standpoint that humans only ate fresh, un-processed protein and fresh, unprocessed, complex carbohydrates. Now we fill our bodies with salted, preserved, hormone-filled proteins and processed, trans-fat laden simple carbohydrates on a daily basis. Our metabolism and calorie requirements are still set to a "hunter gatherer" type diet, and our bodies have not had time to adapt to our rapid "progress."

I'm guilty too. Damn.

[UnknownResident]

Well I wouldn't say we're LIVING longer, I would say we're SURVIVING longer. To me living is vitality.
And are we really living longer or is technology simply keeping us from dying? Cause I know young people who can't walk up a flight of stairs, I don't call that living.

And if we take out deaths from wars, famine, and curable or preventable diseases, we're not living longer.

Everyone now takes these pills and say that's keeping them from dying, but they don't look at what got them there in the first place. We have to look at our diet, and the fact of the matter is, it stinks.

[caffeine]

Any way you slice it, we are living longer.

[deadscape]

We live longer because we understand germs. However, rather than prolonging our lives our food is hurting us more. Enter the pharmaceutical miracle to pickle our bodies a little longer. When that fails, there's machines and tubes. Now that's the life, eh?

[caffeine]

Machins and tubes - you're talking end of life stuff there, or keeping people alive artificially.

Lot's of things have imcreased life span, and increased quality of life without the tubes.

Food - a double edged sword. Bad diet yes, causing problems over time. Industrialization of food however has enabled us to be able to get our caloric intake without having to hunt, fight and do otherwise dangerous things to get our meals. ("Hun, I'm going out to get us some dinner . . " "Be careful, don't die out there. . ."). So it has both helped us AND hurt us in this regard.

Others outside of the pharmaceutical realm:
-Clean drinking water in developed nations
-Sewage management / treatment

Then, yes - the pharmaceuticals:
-Vaccines
-Antibiotics
-Blood Pressure Medications
-Other cardio vascular medications
-Diabetes meds (note - Type 1 diabetes: Insulin - not related to food / obesity etc., but also Type 2 which is more related to lifestyle).

[UnknownResident]

I'll put this bluntly, I would rather live 50 years of being able to walk, run, jump, feel GOOD. Then 100 years of misery, constantly pills or getting shots, fat, eating processed foods, feeling like junk everyday.

You know what I mean? And you say our industrialization is saving us? Pah! We're hunter gatherers by nature, who says buying a microwave meal and eating that instead of killing a deer is better for us? First of all the fact that you get some exercise by killing the deer, second it's a real deer that's eating what a real deer should eat, third our food now has no nutritional value, it actually hurts us. You know we didn't have stuff like heart disease(number one cause of death), cancer(number two cause of death) , diabetes (number six cause of death) or obesity 2,000 years ago. What do you think is doing that? It's our food.

Sure there is stuff now that does help us, medicines that do us well. I'll give you that, and I'll also say the fact that we can drink clean water does help us. But the fact that we can now DRIVE to the store to buy CRAP food, is not better for us.

Anyway you slice, we are not living healthy lives now. If we combine our old food, with new age medicines(that are necessary for survival) think of the longevity and vitality we could have.

And I'll leave you with this quote. "Humans are not meant for the sedentary lifestyle, we're meant to hunt sabre tooth tigers and walk 40 miles a day." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

[grammafreddy]

"Humans are not meant for the sedentary lifestyle, we're meant to hunt sabre tooth tigers and walk 40 miles a day." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

So, a few steroids is better? An odd person to quote, given the "purity" of the rest of your posts in this thread.

Plus - he's packing on a few pounds now, too ..........

[deadscape]

Machins and tubes - you're talking end of life stuff there, or keeping people alive artificially.

My bad. I thought death was still apart of life and the whole reason that we eat: to keep from meeting it.