Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] why we grow food

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] why we grow food
  • Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:42:08 -0600


Here's why we grow food. I said it before, "as long as we value food growing
and cooking so much less than we value doctors and hospitals, we'll keep
paying more and more to doctors and hospitals".

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

excerpt from:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/how-bad-is-mcdonalds-food_b_754814.html

Now a group of physicians and other health professionals have produced a
short (39 second) ad that may be one of the more controversial in advertising
history. The Washington, DC-based group Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine (PCRM)'s new "Consequences" ad takes dead aim at McDonald's high-fat
menu. The provocative ad has become a story unto itself, because it has in
only a few days generated nearly one million views on YouTube, and has been
covered by newspapers and broadcast media around the world, including the
Wall Street Journal, U.K.'s The Guardian, CNN, the New York Times and
hundreds of other media outlets....

... The standard American diet -- in which 62 percent of calories come from
processed foods, 25 percent from animal products and only 5 percent from
fruits and vegetables -- is nothing less than a health travesty. Our
fast-food culture has produced a population with widespread chronic illness
and is a primary reason that health care costs are taking a devastating toll
on just about everyone.

The annual health insurance premiums paid by the average American family now
exceed the gross yearly income of a full-time minimum wage worker. Every 30
seconds, someone in the U.S. files for bankruptcy due to the costs of
treating a health problem. Starbucks spends more on the health insurance of
its workers than it does on coffee.

Medical care costs in the U.S. have not always been this excessive. This
year, we will spend more than $2.5 trillion on medical care. But in 1950,
five years before Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant,
Americans only spent $8.4 billion ($70 billion in today's dollars). Even
after adjusting for inflation, we now spend as much on health care every 10
days as we did in the entire year of 1950.

Has this enormous increase in spending made us healthier? Earlier this year,
when the World Health Organization assessed the overall health outcomes of
different nations, it placed 36 other nations ahead of the United States.

Today, we have an epidemic of largely preventable diseases. To these
illnesses, Americans are losing not only their health but also their life
savings. Meanwhile, the evidence keeps growing that the path to improved
health lies in eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes, and
eating far less processed foods, sugars and animal products.

It's striking to me that in all the heated debates we have had about health
care reform, one basic fact has rarely been discussed, and that is the one
thing that could dramatically bring down the costs of health care while
improving the health of our people. Studies have shown that 50 to 70 percent
of the nation's health care costs are preventable, and the single most
effective step most people can take to improve their health is to eat a
healthier diet. If Americans were to stop overeating, to stop eating
unhealthy foods and to instead eat more foods with higher nutrient densities
and cancer protective properties, we could have a more affordable,
sustainable and effective health care system.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page