This I Believe, You Are What You Eat

If you knew that the food you were eating was as toxic to your body as cigarettes would you change your eating habits? What if “they” told you all food was fine in moderation, but you had family members dying of chronic illnesses that could easily be prevented by simply changing eating habits?

As we are armed with more and more information about nutrition and the state of the food industry in America it is becoming clear that things are not as they once were. The food we are told to eat, by our government, our doctors, our parents and family members, and the advertising companies targeting us through television and social media is killing us. The information they tell us is scientific fact, facts they supposedly use to back up their nutrition advise and guidelines, is false. For example, we have heard it said time and time again that a diet low in sodium reduces one’s risk for developing chronic heart disease and according to an article from the New York Times, there is very little scientific evidence to support this claim. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/upshot/salt-diet-heart-failure-little-evidence.html)

 It is an undeniable, irrefutable fact that over 70% of American’s are obese or overweight to a concerning degree and at risk for developing life threatening chronic disease. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/053.pdf)

Chronic diseases include Type 2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, Dementia and Alzheimer’s (new studies are linking dementia and Alzheimer’s disease to chronically elevated blood glucose). These diseases kill people every day at an astounding rate. They are also quickly overwhelming the health care system and have a crippling effect on the American economy.

“There is an undeniable link between rising rates of obesity and rising medical spending. In a previous paper, Eric Finkelstein and colleagues ¹ demonstrated the extent to which excess weight increased annual medical spending for public and private payers alike. That study showed that the costs of overweight and obesity could have been as high as $78.5 billion in 1998 and that roughly half of this total was financed by Medicare and Medicaid. This analysis updates those previous findings. Our overall estimates show that the annual medical burden of obesity has risen to almost 10 percent of all medical spending and could amount to $147 billion per year in 2008. Other studies have also quantified the extent to which obesity influences aggregate health spending. For example, Kenneth Thorpe and colleagues ² found that obesity was responsible for 27 percent of the rise in inflation-adjusted health spending between 1987 and 2001.”(Cohen, Dietz, Finkelstein, Trogdon)

These diseases are also affecting our children. Diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, a preventable chronic illness that has begun to affect our youth at an astounding rate. These children are dying NOW. Dying every day from diseases that are preventable and unnecessary. My own niece was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 2. Two years old and her life was almost cut short. I have watched even more of my family members suffering from diseases whose causes are rooted in the very things they have eaten their entire lives thinking that they were feeding themselves and their children nourishing food.

So, what do we do about this? I know that I am not the only one who has seen and felt the effects of these diseases. How many of us have watched family members suffer, or have suffered ourselves? 

Do we continue to eat food that is killing us? To adhere to the guidelines established by our government, founded on faulty science, and propagated by the food industry that works harder and harder every day to tempt us into eating products that are essentially poisonous? If we decide to change our eating habits, where do we even start? 

There is so much misinformation being propagated that it can be very overwhelming to try and decipher the good from the bad in order to create sustainable habits that will have a lasting impact on your health. The good news is that there are resources available that can help us decipher how and what to eat for our health. We must start by educating ourselves. This can be done by listening to reputable podcasts, reading scientifically sound literature, and seeking the help of people who have studied nutrition to a high degree and have developed strategies based on eating whole and non-processed foods. And then? Then we have a responsibility to share this information with our friends and family. It’s totally up to you how you go about doing this, but the battle against poor nutrition and chronic disease is one we really cannot afford to lose.

Check out these resources for more information:

·        In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Can be found in book form on Amazon or watch the documentary on Netflix

·        CrossFit.com: under their media section they have articles and links to articles that can help you get an understanding of the nuanced situation that is the American food and health industries.

·        The Case Against Sugar and Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes

·        Chasing Excellence, a podcast available on iTunes by Ben Bergeron