During a recent conversation with a less green friend, I was asked if it was really possible to feed the world without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Was it worth a slight compromise to ensure nobody went hungry? What was so bad about chemicals anyway?
One in three people will get cancer during our lifetimes, a figure expected to rise to one in two by 2020. During our lives, we are unwittingly exposed to thousands of chemicals associated with cancer and other illnesses. Many of these are man-made, including synthetic chemicals found in everyday consumer products, the home, the workplace and in environmental pollutants. We believe that if we are to bring down cancer rates then we must reduce human exposure to harmful chemicals and radiation.
A recent issue of Time Magazine highlighted the thousands of unregulated chemicals we encounter on a daily basis. (Toxic Environment from May 9, 2011). In fact, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) from 1976 only regulates five chemicals in the past three decades.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS, POLICY, AND INTENT.
(a) FINDINGS.—The Congress finds that—
(1) human beings and the environment are being exposed
each year to a large number of chemical substances and mixtures.
(2) among the many chemical substances and mixtures
which are constantly being developed and produced, there are
some whose manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment; and
(3) the effective regulation of interstate commerce in such
chemical substances and mixtures also necessitates the regulation of intrastate commerce in such chemical substances and
mixtures.
World Health Organization studies of toxic risks, including the Agricultural Health Study which concludes a link between pesticide use and several cancers, including pancreatic, lung, colon and leukemia. We don't need to feed the world poison to feed the world efficiently. Some simple measures you can take today:
Here is a short video from the Sierra Club called the True Cost of Food . It is eye opening and a true reminder that the simple cheap choice may not be as easy or as economical as it seems.
(On June 10th, yours truly will be walking for 24 hours straight to raise money for the American Cancer Society during our local Relay for Life). If you've never participated in a Relay, it's a moving opportunity to find hope, raise money and awareness. We're not powerless and there is Hope. If you'd like to help sponsor my walk, follow the link above. Thank you!
My sophomore child recently was assigned a persuasive paper for her English class. Over the years, we have tried to share the importance of healthy and natural eating. When the Mini-Greens were in elementary school, we watched Supersize Me and decided that fast food was not the best choice for our family. A few years ago, we went to see Food, Inc., and it changed the way we shop for groceries. They frequently come with me to markets and also help choose items for our garden. We've tried to make healthy eating a family affair. Occasionally, her friends have teased her for her mom's "crunchy hippie stuff", but I also know that nobody goes hungry when they visit. We make our own soda or fresh squeezed lemonade, we grill burgers from grass-fed beef, and always serve a tray of vegetables. Imagine my pride when her topic for her persuasive paper was:
The Benefits of Eating Organic
since this is my blog, I'm going to hang her paper on the wall for you... I'm proud..
Ponder the humble fast-food
hamburger; piled high in a smorgasboard of crisp lettuce, sizzling beef, and
tangy ketchup, it is considered to be an all-American staple. However, many
customers do not realize that with every bite, they are risking their lives.
The food industry has become a mysterious place where fact and fiction blend to
become indistinguishable. With so much uncertainty, most consumers do not even
know what is in their foods anymore. Even the few consumers who do know what is
in their food often do not realize how it impacts their health. From heart
attacks to liver failure, diet-related diseases have been on a rise; they
almost directly correlate with the increase of artificial sweeteners,
factory-farming, and the use of pesticides. To prevent many of the health
concerns plaguing society today, people should eat only organic, all-natural
foods.
One of the biggest industries
involved in the food business today is that of artificial sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners are chemical compounds that are less expensive to produce
than sugar, but taste identically or very similar to the simple sucrose
molecule. Some examples include saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame, cyclamate,
sucralose, and high-fructose corn syrup (Spurlock 97-98).
These sweeteners not
only cost less to produce, but the artificial sweetener industry can also use
less of them in foods, due to the highly concentrated sweetness of these
sweeteners. Gram for gram, these sugar substitutes
can be up to 600 times as sweet as table sugar (98). While this is an effective
way for the food industry to cut costs without cutting taste, they often cut
quality with it. The body does not digest these sweeteners the same way it
digests plain sucrose.
It all traces back to the molecules that make up these
sweet compounds of both table sugar and artificial sweeteners. In every
molecule of any sweetener, there are two simple sugars, fructose and glucose.
In regular sugar, each molecule consists of 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
However, in high-fructose, there is a slight imbalance of the two, with about
55% fructose (Parker n. pag.). Though this may not seem like a lot, the human
body does not metabolize these two simple sugars the same way. Glucose is
processed to produce energy, while any extra is stored as carbohydrates. On the
other hand, fructose is immediately metabolized into extra fat molecules (Spurlock
97).
With extra fat cells often come obesity concerns. These can include “high
blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer, and diabetes” (Parker n.
pag.). However, even without taking the risks of obesity into consideration,
artificial sweeteners can cause cancer, headaches, dizziness, mood swings, brain
tumors, birth defects, shrinkage of the thymus gland, and enlargement of the
liver and kidneys (Spurlock 99).
The meat industry is an even bigger
problem. Due to a high demand for animal products such as milk, eggs, and bacon,
the meat industry had to find a more efficient way to provide the general
public with protein. Thus, factory-farming was produced. Raised in a
traditional farming setting, one is likely to see 10-30 cows standing in a
sprawling pasture, chewing on clumps of grass.
However, this new form of farming
has “as many as 200,000 cows at a time stand around in a swamp of their own
feces, getting pumped
full of grains” (Spurlock 101-102). Because these cattle are forced to live in
such close quarters, the risk of spreading disease throughout the entire herd increases
dramatically. E. coli, mad-cow disease, and salmonella are just a few of the
most recent health scares.
As a result of food-borne illnesses, all supermarket-bound
livestock must be given large amounts of antibiotics, which lead to
antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria (105-106). Though a farm may produce
200,000 cows, those cows are worthless unless there is a way to process them
into neat, pretty packages of ground beef on the local supermarket shelf. However,
ground beef that looks appealing on the shelf for a mere ten days has less time
to sell. Packaging companies use a harmless dose of carbon monoxide to keep
meat looking fresh for up to twenty days- twice as long as it should, well
after the beef is spoiled (Schmit B5).
The
beef production line does its best to keep the supermarket packagers fresh for
as long as possible. As soon as the cattle are mature, they are shipped to the
factory part of the factory-farm and ground up into huge quantities of
hamburger. Robert Tauxe, chief of the food-borne and diarrheal diseases branch
of the CDC, states, “I suspect there are hundreds or even thousands of animals
that have contributed to a single hamburger” (Spurlock 103).
If one cow is
infected with E. coli, mad-cow disease, or salmonella, it has the ability to
affect thousands of hamburgers. To reduce the chance of recalls and bacteria-riddled
meat, the meat industry exposes the ground beef to three million rad doses of
radiation to kill these microorganisms. Eating irradiated meat has the unfortunate
side effects of “chromosome damage, immunetoxicity,… kidney disease, cardiac
thrombus, and fibroplasias” (Meeker 63; 65; 66). Even without eating irradiated meat,
manufactured meat is still harmful to one’s health. “Every 1.7 ounces of
processed meat consumed increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21%” (Hellmich
A1).
Pesticides
literally go to the roots of food production. Pesticides are chemical compounds
used to make a plant grow larger and more colorful. John Robbins poses a very
simple, yet disturbing, question to society when he asks: “Isn’t there
something bizarre about growing our food with poisons? Chemicals that have been
designed and produced specifically to kill life?” (Spurlock 109). Even more disturbing is that pesticides do
kill life, and not just those of pests. Pesticides can impact:
the
liver, kidneys, lungs, skin, eyes, and brain. Long-term chronic effects on
humans include a whole series of cancers, liver and kidney failure, sterility,
neurological disorders and birth defects….New evidence indicates that the
proper functioning of the … endocrine or hormone system, can be severely
altered due to low level cumulative pesticide exposure. (Bekkers 43)
All
these can lead to the ultimate result of death. Pesticides
are found everywhere, but they are most concentrated at the produce section of
the grocery store. To get the most out of a pesticide, farmers apply it to a
young crop. For this reason, pesticides are absorbed into the roots of the
crop, and then into the crop itself. “[W]e are actually consuming the
environment in which those foods were produced” (Motavalli 27). One can wash
off the outside of a plant, but once the pesticide is ingrained within the
cells of the produce, it will never fully go away. The only
way to guarantee that no pesticides are in foods consumed everyday is to buy
and consume only organic foods, which are not grown with pesticides.
There
are many better food choices than artificial sweeteners, factory-farmed beef,
and pesticide-laden plants. Instead of buying another fast-food hamburger, try
an organic doppelganger. Artificial sweeteners and processed ketchup can easily
be substituted with table sugar and all-natural condiments. Factory-farmed hamburger
can be switched with beef raised in a traditional farm. Pesticide-laden lettuce
can be exchanged for a green thumb. All processed foods have an alternative,
but good health cannot be replaced.
It feels like the pesticide free apple didn't fall far from the tree. Nice work, sweetie!
We've been springing into spring, enjoying the April showers that are bringing May flowers. In honor of our friend Raffi, the rain, and May Day, we bring you this happy song.
We also wondered how many of our readers use a rainbarrel to collect water?
