Man vs. Food, reconsidered . . .

More on food today.  The title above doesn't actually describe the content of this post very accurately.  However, I was thinking about all of the popular culture regarding food, the modern (I think) phenomenon of the eating disorder and emotional eating, the obsession with the calorie - it's like food is our enemy.  But only in terms of whether it will make us less attractive. 

(Now, this is not to deny that eating disorders are very, very serious medical matters for the people who have them.  They aren't just about food, they're much more than that.  However, with headlines such as "Dying to be Thin," it would be a wonder if the general public didn't think they were all about vanity.)

Man vs. food.

Food, as we know it today, as it exists neatly and attractively packaged on your grocer's shelves, may very well be the enemy on a certain level.  The raw food guy in that "Food Matters" film hit the nail on the head when he marveled at the fact that we're willing to spend all of our money on so many things, yet want groceries to be artificially cheap. 
Of all the things we do on a daily basis, none affects our health as much as our food choices. 
Okay, unless you're downstream from a tannery or living on top of a TCE-polluted groundwater plume or just in a high-traffic, high-smog area.  But with three meals a day, that's a lot of opportunity that most of us aren't even thinking of.

(What's "Food Matters," you ask?  It's another documentary.  I watched it earlier this week . . .   I was thinking it would be another version of "Food, Inc.," but no, it's definitely a different film.  I thought about twenty minutes in that it was going to be anti-farm, but it ends up being more of a pro-vitamin, anti-drug thing.  Sort of a "vitamins are what you need, not a 'pill for evey ill.'"  No Michael Pollan, though, so it wasn't as compelling to me as "Food, Inc." was.  An interesting idea they present is that there's a double-standard with regard to promoting nutritional remedies and pharmaceutical ones, and that it's primarily coming from the FDA.  At one point the nutrition folks are talking about how medical doctors don't talk nutrition with cancer patients.  I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that's true for my experience.  The only time anyone ever suggested a supplement for Rori was before she was diagnosed, when they thought that starvation was the problem.  Incidentally, for any of you who signed on for a free month of Netflix, this one is also available instantly.  It's worth a watch.)

Now, if all I wanted to write about was better food, I would just share websites on FaceBook.  But I want to relate those issues to our deepest concerns, which are always for our children.  Always.  What does this have to do with sick kids? 

Two things:  the deficiency / toxicity theory, and the science of epigenetics. 

I hate to keep giving you links because these posts of mine get very long.  However, I looked up the Time Magazine article on epigenetics that I referred to before.  Or at least I think I referred to it before . . . anyhoo, read it if you want a more thorough treatment of the topic.  Or . . . in a nutshell, it's the study of how non-genetic material affects genetics.  Or how a non-genetic material affects the expression of genes.  What you do during your life can affect babies you're not even carrying yet.  And what you do while your baby is in the womb has longer lasting effects than once assumed.  Those effects may not even be expressed in this baby, but possibly in its babies later on.  So the notion that "you are what you eat" may be expanded, under the theory of epigenetics, to mean "you and your progeny are what you eat." 

Here's the link for the article: 
Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny

A cautionary note:  let's not use this plethora of information as an excuse to give up, to think that one way or another we're doomed.  Let's process this information together and pick and choose among it how we can make changes that will affect our future generations.  Not all changes will appeal to all people and remember, this is not an all-or-nothing proposition - we must believe that every change, no matter how small, has meaning for our health and the prevention of future disease.  So don't be discouraged.  Be mindful. 
Own your choices.  It's very empowering, and that's always a good thing when you've been blindsided by your child's sickness.

(Do any of you ever recall saying "Oh, we don't care what it is, as long as it's healthy" and never really thinking in a million years that it wouldn't be?  I do.)

According to the epigenetics theory, all of the pop I drank while I was carrying my son would increase his chances of being diabetic someday.  That's a very loose translation, but you get the point.

I sometimes wonder about all of my stress, all that adrenaline and cortisol and epinephrine in my body while Rori was in it, and wonder if her subsequent diagnosis with a cancer originating in her parasympathetic nervous system might be explained, in part, by epigenetics.  Or maybe all of that "fight or flight" hormone coursing through me, and through her as well, caused some kind of breakdown.  Such are the thoughts that creep into my mind when I'm not busying it with other stuff.  (Sounds like I obsess.  I don't.  I just wonder.)

And I wonder how long it will take the negative effects of GMOs to "crop" up in humans, if the lab animals so readily succumbed.  (Depending on whose data analysis you buy into, of course.) 

So I want to talk more about GMOs. 

There is much going on, things are happening so fast; what I hope to relay today is how precarious our ecological future is, how precarious our ability to feed ourselves is, how precarious our children's health is - if we don't find a way to buck the GMO trend.

Some literal but misguided genius unleashed these GMOs without first covering all of the plausible eventualities. Before we even knew what was happening, a majority of the farms went GMO, not that there was much choice.  Remember when the BP oil spill occurred, and before it fell out of the headlines the oil companies were already setting their sites on drilling under glaciers? They didn't have a plan for how to deal with a leak under those glaciers, should one occur. In the news we were again and again confronted with the question of why BP was allowed to start deep-water drilling without a viable plan for such a disaster as this, and before BP could even give us a credible answer we were talking about drilling under glaciers. Because it's always about the supply. You would THINK that people would be saying "now hold on a minute here, we need to figure out first what you're going to do if there's a spill before we let you break any ground." No one was saying that, really.

Nope. Drill baby drill, as the saying goes! Pocket the cash and worry about the consequences later. They'll be someone else's problem, anyway. (Ours.) (Our children's. Sorry, kids.)

If you're thinking the farmers are the ones pocketing all of that cash, you would be mistaken.  The patent-holders are holding the purse.

With GMOs, we're moving onto the next thing so fast that we've not yet made the debate public regarding whether GMOs should be created in the first place. It's the future of food and not one of us was invited to the debate.

So we need to crash the party.

Just as the economically disadvantaged are too busy scrambling to make ends meet to spend their time protesting unfair policies, the parents of sick kids are too busy taking care of these kids to enter debates like this one whole-heartedly. Everyone else has the luxury of indifference. But we don't, do we?  We know about all of the things that inexplicably go wrong.  We know that these things matter - we've seen the consequences.

GMOs are here to stay unless we get busy. The Supreme Court says they can patent them. The USDA and FDA says not only can we eat them, but we also don't need to be told that we're eating them. I'd personally like to avoid them. As people become more aware of the significance of our food's production methods, they will care very much about what they're eating. The industry saw this coming; that's why they fought so hard against labeling in the first place.

GMOs may well be a disaster in the making. Anyone who doesn't think this is a possibility simply hasn't learned enough on the topic yet.

So take a few minutes to read about Aggie.

Aggie – A GMO Primer

Get it?

It's supposed to be simplified but it's a little complex anyway.   And long.  But it's a complicated process.

It is up to us to do a couple of things.

First: don't demonize the farmer.

The farmer is our friend.  He feeds us.  He feeds us what we'll buy from him.  When a product sells, when there is demand for a product, that's what you sell. If no one is buying your product - or when you face lawsuits for growing crops that have been pollenated as a result of proximity and wind direction, things you can't possibly control - it's not an easy choice.  So don't hold it against the little guy who's just trying to feed his family, too.

Demand the other product.  The non-GMO product.  Demand it with your dollar vote.  How?  Look at http://www.nongmoproject.org/consumers/understanding-our-seal/ to learn how to identify non-GMO products.  Their seal is pictured at this link.  Healthy Child, Healthy World (see left) also has some useful information on buying non-GMO produce.   When people buy, producers listen.  It's simple.  Remember that food is not nearly so cheap to produce as our grocery shopping experience might have led us to believe.  Prices are artificially low, for different reasons that are honestly beyond my ability to relate in a nutshell. 

It might interest some of you to know that FarmAid is still around (remember FarmAid? John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Dave Matthews, and a host of others will play this year's concert on October 2nd in Milwaukee.)  FarmAid, the organization dedicated to saving the American family farm, has taken a strong stand against GMOs.  Check out their website for more points-of-view on this important topic.  You'll find it at  http://www.farmaid.org/. 

Second: press your legislature for a different approach.  Let's ask them to revisit the labeling issue.  We're not asking them to say GMOs are scary; we're asking them to honor our right to know what we're spending our money on.  Because we don't know yet if we should be scared.  Demand labeling.  It's that simple.  Visit http://www.congress.org/ to find your representatives and, as always, visit my list of pertinent links at left to find what other actions you can take.

Because you know what?  This is a governmental issue, more than anything else.  Labeling is regulatory.  Patenting is regulatory.  Government is the place to go.

In the meantime, shop wisely, and eat well.  You may not have all of the information laid out there for you, but with a little effort, you can make some fairly wise choices.  It's a learning process, one that will serve you well.  Making the effort is a way of putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.  Talk the talk - to your friends and family and to your governmental representatives - but also walk the walk.  Preferably at your local farmer's market.  Buy non-GMO, non-convenience, minimally-processed foods.  USDACertified Organic food is non-GMO. 

Food is really not the enemy.  Ignorance and complacency are.