Our lives are ruled by food. We have to eat or we will die and there are bold facts supporting the idea that our food among other things is contributing to our declining health. It is a silent predator and Middle American housewives don’t have their TVs tuned to Americas Most Wanted food. The truth is that there is little to no education concerning what is going on inside the boxes, cans and pouches of most super market items. They are brightly colored, sleek and shiny and all designed to attract the eye and make us want whatever they are selling. Compared to rows of limp wilted corporate agribusiness fruits and vegetables in the super market, Fruity Pebbles may look like a “healthy” alternative.
Big corporations have facilitated much of this ignorance. Companies that want to make sure you keep buying their product no matter what with ad campaigns that promote the latest “lower fat and fewer calories” product. If a person eats twice as much of the low cal item they are right back to where they started. No one in the corporate food industry has really been looking out for the health of the average consumer; the focus is always on the next quarterly income statement.
If your mother never taught that drinking excessive soda makes your teeth rot and that eating fast food for the majority of your diet will cause obesity and other heart problems how would you know? Unfortunately most Americans are not educated to the dangers lurking in their shopping carts. The products are there for the taking; not properly labeled or regulated. Modern food nutrition labels on the back of food might as well be blank because most folks don’t even know how to read them much less decipher what sodium nitrite means.
If there are warning labels on cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs; why are there no comparative warning labels on foods that are leading causal agents of diabetes, heart disease and obesity? Because knowledge influences buying power and that is the last thing that marketing experts want us to have. Imagine if there were regulations specifying that food packaging had to show the dangers associated with that product. This would upset the meticulous marketing plan of each and every producer of prepared foods. Honesty in advertising has never been a virtue. Perhaps for a time we would be a country scared to buy anything in a package or bottle but the outcome of a different labeling system would eventually be a smarter, more educated purchasing public.
Some people might argue that we live in a free country and everyone has the right to choose their next meal regardless of the consequences. However, I have my doubts that most people would knowingly expose themselves to killers once they’ve been identified. Type-2 diabetes is one of the leading killers that is directly related to our sedate lifestyle punctuated by prepared/packaged food. There needs to be a change in the food labeling and preparation regulations as well as a change in lifestyle of the average American. Already we see many young people with sub standard health due to lack of exercise and poor diet. As these consumers age, they will have a massive impact on our health care system. It’s difficult to quantify the effects but it’s safe to say it will be catastrophically expensive. In addition to the 7.8% of Americans with diabetes, we now know that at least another 57 million Americans have “pre-diabetes”, a condition that can be prevented and controlled by the way we live and the food we eat.
Our country’s school systems have been feeding generations of children food that comes from the same producers as prison food. “Food” that will fill plastic trays, laden with high fructose corn syrup, empty calories and high in saturated fats and salt. No wonder that as young people develop into adulthood they continue to have a taste for things like soda and fast food, that’s what they ate in school and nobody told them it was unhealthy. In the minority are people who live with allergies directly related to the foods they eat and that are present in the products around them on a continual daily basis. The population of children affected by the concentration of genetically modified corn, soy and wheat in their diets has grown. Children that have started to develop such powerful allergies that they cannot live normal lives. The fact is that when you begin to break down each and every box of cereal and every bottle of soda there are lists of ingredients that are all coming from one product. Corn. Corn seems to be in everything. It’s like an invasive parasite on the supermarket shelves of America. While scientifically fascinating what we can produce from this common grain, it is terrifying to think of what we are consuming. Through heavy processing corn is turned into glue, packaging, thickeners, preservatives, sweeteners, fillers, coloring and last but not least corn flour or meal.
The excess of corn in our country did not happen overnight. It was a calculated change brought on in the early 1970s by then Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz under President Richard Nixon. When Butz became Nixon’s right hand man, his mantra to American farmers was "Get big or get out!” Using new regulations he told farmers to stop sustainable growing practices and switch to his commodity crop of choice: corn. The role of corn in our country has continued to evolve becoming one of the largest monocrop on the planet and one of the largest sources of food byproducts used in almost everything on the grocery store shelves.
In addition to the commodity crop producers we now have another problem. The chemical companies that bio-engineer seeds that can withstand pests, produce sterile seeds at the end of the season. They also produce herbicides and pesticides that are used to grow millions of acres of corn. With this comes the monopoly that corn holds on small towns and big plots of land across the country. Farmers that are hand in glove with the big government subsidies are unable to use sustainable farming practices or use any other type of seed but the one they are sold at the beginning of the growing season. Unfortunately these farmers become hypnotized by the idea of big handouts and the ease of growing just one crop. They are really just pawns of lawmakers, lobbyists and corporate agribusiness. None of these entities are thinking about the long term, environmental effects that monocroping will have on the earth and their communities.
With big corn comes big beef, another monocrop responsible for more greenhouse gases than the internal combustion engine. While raising cows is not inherently bad, the system that has come to produce the country’s beef has metastasized like a cancer. Feedlot after feedlot of sad, unhealthy cows all fed a cocktail of corn, antibiotics and hormones. Your average steak is filled with these pointless additives. This unhealthy life cycle is not only inhumane for the cow, it means we are consuming the byproducts of corn and other chemical compounds. We are also at the risk of contracting food born illnesses from the mishandling of meat. “If cows who are raised on a feed lot spent the last seven days eating grass the possibility of that animal spreading E. Coli after slaughter would be greatly reduced,” states Michael Pollen in The Omnivores Dilemma. Cows are plains dwelling ruminants that have evolved over time to digest grass, which is their naturally occurring food source. Corn is much more difficult to digest and in a cow’s system creates acidity. A fermentation process begins and gas builds up in the cow’s stomach creating an environment that is susceptible to inflammation and infection.
All of that being said, it doesn’t mean you have to go cold turkey on corn and beef. But it does demand a re-thinking of the way we eat starting with the amount of processed foods and meat we consume. As it stands now, Americans spend about 90% of their food budget on processed food. Processed foods that are the showpieces for companies that produce corn byproducts and fill these processed food with useless, obesity producing calories. If we were to remove corn and all its byproducts from supermarket shelves, it would be astonishing. Products like ketchup, salt, most vitamins, cereal boxes, powdered sugar, most breads, cookies and crackers, fruit juice, crayons, envelopes, ethanol fuel, processed meat, ice cream, cosmetics, pet food, glue and beer would be gone. “I take this one product out of my diet, what do I eat?” This could be panic inducing but it doesn’t have to be. Life takes on a different pace if you choose to buy unprocessed foods that are local and seasonal. Taking charge of your diet and the ingredients in it requires eating less meat and buying sustainable meat from local sources.
But this is not something that many people have been exposed to or have the time to do. Change needs to happen at a basic level in this country. School children should be fed unprocessed food and they should be taught about the food that they’re eating. Knowledge is power and starting at that age helps to ensure that as adults they will be able to make informed decisions about their bodies and their lives.
It’s true that large agribusiness has taken over most of America’s food production but there are changes happening across the country. People are talking and writing about the terrifying effects of international agribusiness and monocrops on global farming trends. Communities in Oakland, Detroit and Queens have started successful urban gardens that provide local seasonal alternatives for the urban dweller who wants to eat well. Chefs famous and non-famous alike are getting involved with the politics of changing the way school children are fed. More and more politicians have taken notice that their constituents are demanding action on a governmental level to protect their rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” from corporations who prefer to place profits ahead of public safety and health. And yet that isn’t enough. We all have to take some responsibility to be more aware of the food we buy and eat. There is power in the choices we make every day.
