From the LATimes 8/14/09
“The price of sugar on world markets has soared this year, prompting a coalition of the nation's largest food manufacturers to warn of a pending shortage and to ask the Agriculture Department to ease quotas on imports.”
Most of us know by now that health care in the US is a for-profit business, and for-obscene-profit at that. There are many industries that are invested in keeping us sick, and during the last few month many of them have been discussed repeatedly in the media and blogs, namely pharma, insurance, hospitals and doctors.
Not much has been said about the food industry in connection with the health care debate, although books like “In defense of food“ and movies like “Food Inc” have helped uncover and broadcast the inner workings and perils of America's industrialized food system.
Despite the claim that growing and producing food at such scale has made it more readily available to the masses at more affordable prices, 36 million people in the US alone do not have secure access to food. In the process Big-Agro-Business pollutes our fields and waterways, inhumanely treats billions of animals, and nearly ends the family farm, while contributing to the serious rate of sick, depressed and overweight people in America.
The FOOD INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is a major partner in crime to the HEALTH INDUSTRY by manufacturing, advertising and selling foods full of flavor but devoid of nourishment, made of genetically engineered crops treated with pesticides and factory farmed animals, and loaded with salt, hydrogenated oils, colorants, flavoring and SUGAR.
According to Dr. Nancy Appleton in her book “Lick the sugar habit”,
“Sugar appears to be inoffensive but it is one of the substances that most attacks our immune system. Sugar creates allergy, and our immune system deals with that allergy instead of blocking or destroying toxins, viruses and bacteria…every time we eat sugar, even as little as a teaspoon, the minerals in our system get imbalanced. Your body will break down over time if minerals and other nutrients are not in balance (this is homeostasis a word coined by Walter B. Cannon). The digestive and immune systems are usually the first to feel the effects of this imbalance rendering your body unable to process food or fight off foreign invaders. More allergies and disease follow.”
WE CAN TAKE ACTION by listening to our bodies, getting an education on what’s good for each one of us. A healthy lifestyle, like consuming Fresh-Local-Organic-Seasonal foods, leads to preventing future illnesses, which leads to less visits to the doctor, less use of meds, less stays in hospitals... ending the business as usual for the INDUSTRIAL HEALTH COMPLEX and redirecting the insane profit dollars to extend MEANINGFUL HEALTH COVERAGE FOR THE WHOLE NATION including education and prevention.
Some useful links
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