Dec 15, 2010
As a father, a husband and a citizen of the world, I am compelled to do everything within my power to leave the world a better place than I found it. In my life I have witnessed many remarkable changes, the collapse of one of the world’s great superpowers, the invention of new modes of communication that make instantaneous communication possible worldwide and many more marvelous events and inventions, yet one of the most dramatic shifts I’ve seen over the last nearly four decades is found in the food we eat.
In my early childhood fast food was a rare treat, sugar and other sweeteners weren’t found in nearly everything and home-cooked meals were the rule rather than the exception. As I approached my 20s, however, the tide had clearly turned. The generations following in the footsteps of my fellow Gen-Xers found themselves nourished in a dramatically different landscape I once heard as described as “the land of over-consumptive malnutrition.”
In just one generation the world has turned on its head. America topped the health charts just forty years ago and each year since Americans have grown more and more unhealthy relative to their industrialized peers. The sad thing is that the majority of chronic diseases that in turn require the overwhelming majority of medical expenditures to address are preventable. The WHO says so, the CDC says so, the FDA says so and if you don’t care about them, logic says so.
When it comes to diet, the old saying “garbage in, garbage out” applies. We cannot expect to have healthy people if we don’t have healthy diet. The human body is a remarkable instrument, yet it, like all other things natural and man-made, has its adaptive and functional limits. Push things too far and the body starts to break down. Overtax its processing and purification systems and it becomes toxic.
Jamie Oliver, chef and passionate motivator, came to America seven years ago to start a food revolution. He moved to Huntington, West Virginia from the United Kingdom to raise awareness about the dangers of the modern diet. Take a few minutes to enjoy Oliver’s TED Prize acceptance speech, filmed in February 2010:
This is obviously a touchy area as people tend to be emotionally tied to their food choices. What they eat, how often they eat, how much they eat at each sitting (or standing or driving or lying down for that matter) is often conditioned by their mental and emotional state. Add to that the fact that most people feel too busy nowadays to be able to spend any more time than they already are thinking about food, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I applaud Jamie Oliver’s courageous approach to this systemic issue and am thrilled to have the opportunity to magnify his efforts in my living. If ever there was an area of human function that could benefit from a “back to the basics” campaign, it is this. Our health, the health of our children and the health of our nation depends on it.
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