Being at this years Comfest (the Columbus Ohio Community Festival - America's largest annual free music event. sg), dubbed "Handmade and Homegrown since 1972", was a great experience. It was truly amazing to see how our community has grown.
The "Healing Zone" schedule was packed. Practitioners from a wide variety of healing disciplines shared their knowledge and insights.
Master Wu, exemplar of the ancient Chinese shamanic tradition, gave presentations on several subjects including "Tiger Qigong", "The Book of Changes" ("I Ching") and Chinese calligraphy.
For my part, I delivered a short program entitled "Our Corporate Food Suppliers: Are they Really Out to Kill Us, or Does it Just look That Way?"
Many thanks to all those who came out to listen to me rant. I hope you all were able to take something of value away with you.
If you missed it, here is a transcript. I will get the accompanying materials posted ASAP.
Thanks,
Dr. G
Introduction
Hello Columbus!
I am Dr. Sandy Golenberg. I am a chiropractor and I practiced here in Columbus for fourteen years but now reside on 40 wooded acres in Athens county, Ohio.
We’ve come here today to talk about health.
Our own health, the health of our community and the health of our mother Earth.
The corporations that currently feed us are, in reality, poisoning us, poisoning the Earth and starving the farmers who actually grow the foods that are Agra-business’ raw materials.
Those of you who have read the program already know that my topic is “Our Corporate Food Suppliers: Are they really out to kill us or does it just seem that way.”
Legally the difference between murder and manslaughter is intent. This distinction, however, means nothing to the victim. This sums up the way I feel about our industrialized food supply.
I support those who use legal, political and civil means to enforce corporate responsibility. I think it is more important, and more beneficial to the individual, for each one of us to vote with our food choices, our food dollars.
Companies tend to be sensitive to consumer trends. Of course, most often they respond with remarketing, repackaging and other such superficial changes to the products that the public objects to.
The Giant food corporations also use their economic and political clout to create laws that severely limit the consumers ability to protest, or even be aware of, their un-natural and unhealthy food production practices.
[see: FDA Documents Show They Ignored GMO Safety Warnings]
After all, corporations are legally responsible only to the interests of their shareholders. They owe no obligation to the well being of their customers, neighbors or planet.
Big Agra, Bad for the Consumer
For over 75 years now we have known about the health consequences of the “Western diet”.
Dr. Weston A. Price, a Cleveland dentist, documented this in his ground-breaking book Nutrition and
Physical Degeneration:
A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets
and Their Effects
. Published in 1939 it is still available and can be downloaded for free. (See “Food Safety References”.) His work was substantiated by the work of British doctor Denis Burkitt, Albert Schweitzer and others.
What they found was that consumers of the Western diet suffered staggeringly high rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, stroke, appendicitis, diverticulitis, ulcers, hemorrhoids and tooth decay when compared to various primitive cultures.
They saw a consistent and progressive pattern of disease wherever the Western diet displaced the native diet. First came obesity, followed by type 2 diabetes then high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart disease.
Dr. Price found that the various native diets he examined averaged 10 times the amount vitamins A and D as found in the Western diet.
He noted that the natives needed no dentists.
The current Columbus Yellow Pages has 63 pages of dentists!
History
During World War II the US developed a huge munitions industry. This industry produced prodigious amounts of nitrate-based explosives and also did extensive research into chemical weapons, nerve gases and such.
At the close of that war, a war in which eleven million American troops took part, this huge industry was converted to the production of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
Thus was born an agricultural system based on oil, chemicals and expensive machinery - a system that promoted monocultures of field corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat.
A system controlled in large part by a handful of companies. (Of the 25 wet mills in the US almost all are run by just two companies, Cargill and ADM.)
As industrialized agriculture became dominant, rates of heart disease, cancer and diabetes rose. Today nearly ¾’s of all US deaths are from heart disease, cancer, and our health care system itself. (See “Estimated US Mortality Rates”) Heart disease and cancer claim around 3500 US lives each day or close to 50% of all US fatalities.
The good news is that much of the biochemistry underlying these conditions can be reversed by reverting to diet similar that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. (See Paleo Diet Information under Web Sites on the “Food Safety References” sheet and “Guidelines for Reducing Inflammation with Diet and Supplementation”.)
We will talk more about that in a few minutes when I go over “Action Steps You Can Take”.
Our Dangerous Diet
While experts disagree as to which specific factors are most involved, three main factors are at work.
- Food Additives (See “Food Additive Safety, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest” http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm.)
- A Chicken McNugget has 38 ingredients!
- GMO’s (Genetically modified organisms)
(See handouts.)
- Diet High in Carb’s and grain fed meat and dairy. (See “You Are What You Eat” and “Toxic Foods”.)
- The average American consumes one ton of corn each year!
Big Agra, Bad for the Farmer
Our current, corporately controlled, system:
· Starves the farmer as it fattens the processors and distributors.
· Is capital intensive.
· Displaces local labor while enriching distant investors.
· Depletes the soil, which is the farmer’s most valuable asset.
Big Agra is Bad for the Earth
20% of our petroleum use goes for the production and transportation of our food.
A wet mill, the source of almost all of our processed foods and animal feeds, uses 10 calories of fossil fuel for every food calorie produced.
Each feedlot steer (aprox. 1200 pounds) requires 35 gallons of oil.
Our system fosters the loss of bio-diversity.
It spreads pollution on many levels:
· Biological
o Breeds novel pathogens
o Genetic pollution from GMO’s
o Breeds super weeds and super pests
· Atmospheric
o Greenhouse gasses
o GMO Pollen
- Water
- Pesticide and herbicide residues
- GMO’s triple herbicide use
- Hormone and anti-biotic residues
- Approximately 70% of antibiotics used in the US are given to farm animals
Action Steps You Can Take
(See “Recap” and “Local and Grass Fed vs. Organic”)
Our bodies function best on a diet of:
-Fruits
-Nuts
-Vegetation
-Creatures that ate the same
· Local and organic is best.
· Free range – grass fed meat, poultry, eggs and dairy.
· Vegetables, raw (live) and lightly cooked
· Nuts, un-roasted. (Pre-soaked is even better)
· Oils: Use
- Virgin Olive Oil
- Virgin Coconut Oil
- Butter, from grass fed cows/goats
Eliminate processed and refined foods.
If it is not local, range fed or organic, read the label!
Beware of seductive packaging, green labels and the words natural or healthful.
i.e. The Fare Trade label is internationally recognized and backed by an independent organization. The Rainforest Alliance, on the other hand, is an industry-backed organization whose standards are not only vague and lax but are also poorly enforced.
Avoid GMO foods. (See “July 24, 2003 shopping list…” and GMO crops currently on the Market…”.)
Author Michael Pollan gives these recommendations.
- Eat Food
- Food that your great grandmother would recognize.
- Mostly Plants
- Not too much
Thank you very much for your kind attention. Here’s wishing you a healthful life and a healthful planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment