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Sustainable Food: If This Doesn’t Convince You, Nothing Will
September 11th, 2009 5 CommentsSo what’s it going to take to get your community hooked on sustainable food? If you are reading this, you probably already know about many of the problems with our food system and you’re probably making some efforts to change your buying and eating habits. But what about your parents? Your neighbors? The people shopping the inside isles at conventional grocery stores in your town? What is it going to take for us to reach out to that next layer of eaters and entice them with sustainable food?
Climate change’s connection to our food system is a big deal (you can read about it here), but it isn’t something that we can see on a daily basis. It’s there, but personally, it doesn’t pop up on my “urgent” radar every day. For some, climate change might be their connection to sustainable food. For others it might be animal welfare, worker’s issues, or water pollution. You never know what will be the enticing issue that leads a person to investigate the problems in our food system. But I do know that there is one thing that none of us can get away from… personal health.
The connection between personal health and sustainable food is undeniable. And my personal health is
something that I can’t get away from – I wake up everyday feeling good or feeling bad. Not to mention, I also have to deal with the health of my family and friends – every day. Most people aren’t quiet about their aches and pains either. So for some who haven’t found their way to sustainable food, personal health might be that hook we are looking for!If I tell you that sustainable food can greatly increase your health, does that get your attention? Do you think that your parents, neighbors, and people shopping at the conventional grocery stores might be more curious about sustainable food if they thought it could help them avoid diseases? Is the fact that sustainable food can greatly influence health enough reason to pay attention? I’d like to think that it is!
Just as the industrial agricultural system is a major influence in climate change, it is also a major influencer in the bad health of our country. We need to address the whole food system, but while that is happening (that is happening, right?), I appeal to you to take your food more seriously based on the simple fact that it will increase your health.
Over the next few weeks, I will go into the many connections between personal health and sustainable food that are worth paying attention to. We are all concerned about our health and the health of our families, and learning how to maintain and increase your health also happens to be a great introduction to sustainable food. Here are some issues I will explore in this series:
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Genetically Modified Food
- Pesticides/Herbicides
- Meat Consumption
- Local Food/Gardening
- Processed Foods
- Antibiotics
- Indulgence/Moderation
- Food as Medicine
- Obesity/Disease
I’m out of the office in sunny California next week, but check back the week of the 21st for more!
This new series “Sustainable Food: If This Doesn’t Convince You, Nothing Will” is by Dawn Brighid, marketing manager for Sustainable Table, a program of GRACE.
Tags: climate change Dawn brighid health nutrition sustainable food
5 Responses to “Sustainable Food: If This Doesn’t Convince You, Nothing Will”
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birchnose25 September 11th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Excited to read this series. It would be really useful (at least to me) to hear more on what a good response would be to this: If I eat conventionally-grown whole grains, lean proteins, and fresh fruits and vegetables but it’s all conventionally grown, how would that be any less healthy than eating the same products that are “sustainable”?
In other words, isn’t personal health more about eating whole grains/lean protein/fresh fruits and veggies and exercising than it is about eating organic/local/etc.? Is there another way to explain this to someone beyond explaining that personal health can’t be separated from ecological health (since it’s pretty hard to make a claim that organic food has more nutrients)?
Seems to me like there has to be a compelling way to make the case that healthy eating has to include sustainable food, but I haven’t read one yet beyond the explanation I mentioned above.
Thanks!
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That is a good question! I think about that too, when I see markets with beautiful looking conventional food, why would anyone think something was wrong with it? And I do think that eating healthy and conventional is better than eating processed take out food – but I do think that anyone who is taking the time to eat really healthy will eventually see why sustainable and local would make their diet even better. I hope the series will address this for you… pesticides/herbicides/hormones/antibiotics in your food should be pretty convincing!
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birchnose25 September 12th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
When do antibiotics themselves show up in our food? Or do you mean antibiotic resistant bacteria? I get that there can be pesticide and herbicide residues on produce, but I didn’t think the hormones and antibiotics used in meat production actually made it to the table.
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All I know is that the much smaller apple that is local,not genitically altered, and organic is much more flavorful that the big, shiny, giant red one at the grocery. I will continue to support local growers.
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Hi Guys,
What i know is that all the anitbiotics and chemicals used on the animals or plants before you eat them, end up in your system. They are very small residues but they build up each time you eat. There is also heavy metals (mercury) and other stuff we get from eating fish swimming in poluted waters etc and there are studies conducted which show the average residues of chemicals and metals in human system is over the health limit. These studies are comparative to the areas people live in. Antibiotics, on the other hand, make your body used to them so that if you get sick you need really strong antibiotics to fight the desease cause you and your deseases are already used to having daily dosages of antibiotics through food. In general uprosecced (whole) conventional food some times keeps more chemicals and pesticides than prosecced food, cause a lot of it remains on the outer layers of grains etc. There is other damage too but a doctor would explain it better than me so ask one or read up on it. There is lot’s of information on this around
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