I Never Imagined…

I have been reading a really great book called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I’m a little over halfway through and I am loving it. In the beginning of the book Barbara and her family have moved from Tuscon, AZ to a farm in the southern Appalachians. (Yeah, I had to Google it.) When they made the move they decided they would only eat food grown on their own farm or in their rural neighborhood for one year.

Why local? This is something I will explore more in future posts, but here is one argument that is hard to ignore:

“A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they’re more expensive than ‘conventional’ (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don’t realize how much we’re already paying for the conventional foods, before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale, chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we’re being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of production.” – Steven Hopp

Steven goes on to add up the cost that every American household pays per year through the various taxes and costs associated with conventional food. This includes $22 billion for agricultural fuel costs, $17 billion for agricultural chemical clean-up costs, and $10 billion to treat food-related illnesses (the recent salmonella outbreak in eggs comes to mind). This, and more, works out to $725 per household, per year.

So we pay the sticker price for the cheaper produce AND we pay $725 per year on top of that? Why not just buy the local produce instead?

Yes, I do understand the mathematics here. I realize that by buying local produce I am not getting my $725 refunded to me. But by buying local I am not supporting the environmental and health damages associated with conventional food. And that’s definitely okay with me!

In lieu of a personal post today I am sharing a video that is extremely confronting and disturbing, but also very important for everybody to watch.

If you think this doesn’t affect you, think again. Factory farming accounts for approximately 98% of all animals raised and slaughtered on farms in the US- animals just like those shown in this video. Is your meat, dairy and poultry part of the 2% that is not factory farmed? Learn more here.

When I was in high school, every student had to do a science experiment and write up the results in a big report. The experiment was supposed to take place over several weeks (months, even, if I remember correctly) but year after year I always put it off for as long as possible before finally throwing the report together at the last minute. My report was always part fact and part fiction. I hope none of my former teachers are reading this!

Anyway, one of the main reasons that I always left it until the last minute was that I just couldn’t pick a hypothesis that I could get excited about. Now that I am older and have seen more of the world I can think at least a handful of experiments that I could get excited about. Hey, my vegan diet started off as an experiment!

One experiment that I find quite interesting is the oft-performed McDonald’s decay experiment, like Morgan ‘Super Size Me‘ Spurlock’s test with burgers and fries in jars- see the video here. However, I could never actually bring myself to a) buy anything from McDonald’s anymore and b) let food sit and rot- or not, as the case may be- in my apartment for weeks on end!

News broke this week that the city of San Francisco may soon ban restaurants from selling meals with toys (like Happy Meals) unless the meal meets certain nutritional requirements, including being low in fat, sugar and sodium, and containing less than 600 calories. 600 CALORIES?! I did some research and found that the Happy Meals I grew up with contain 640 calories. That’s almost half of the recommended daily caloric intake for a girl aged 4-8. Do you know any 4-8 year old girls that have never eaten a Happy Meal?

Unfortunately, in lower socio-economic groups the Happy Meal is not even the go-to meal; the Dollar Menu often wins out. This takes the situation from bad to worse. A single McChicken burger contains 360 calories. That’s more than half the calories in an entire cheeseburger Happy Meal, without the drink and the fries. Want to add a small packet of fries? Sure: tack on an extra 230 calories. A small Coca Cola beverage? 150 calories. The grand total: 740 calories for $3. That’s more than half of the recommended daily caloric intake for a girl aged 4-8. Don’t even try to kid yourself into thinking that this diet is not a reality for children of low-income families across America.

Childhood obesity has almost tripled in the past 30 years (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics). In 30 of the 50 US states, over 30% of all children are overweight or obese.

Why does this matter? For one thing, poor nutrition increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, which is the seventh leading cause of death in the US. 20 million American adults and nearly 200,000 people under the age of 20 have diabetes. Another 57 million people in the US have pre-diabetes.

People who are overweight are also more likely to suffer from factors that lead to heart disease and stroke, as well as an increased risk of dementia, depression, kidney disease, arthritis, and several types of cancer.

So, if the city of San Francisco makes this one seemingly small, but very important change to prevent restaurants from marketing unhealthy food to children through the offer of toys, they can help improve the quality of life for these children and continue to spin the wheels on other junk food interventions nationwide.

I strongly believe that prevention is preferable to treatment, so if we can make just one small change today to avoid developing any number of chronic health conditions in the future, let’s go for it. Check out this report or watch Food, Inc. for more information.