Eating for Health, Eating for Freedom

On this fourth of July holiday, our nation's Independence Day, I urge all of us to take a look at what truly makes us free. At the risk of oversimplifying a potentially bottomless philosophical pit, freedom means the ability to make choices for one's self without unwanted interference of oppressive external influences. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that in today's world there are certain omnipotent authorities that insidiously drive decisions that we should be making for ourselves. And nowhere is this more extreme than in our food and medical systems.

Societal norms and attitudes, coupled with a degree of complacency and fueled by the overarching command of "business as usual", contribute to the crafty and treacherous manipulation of what should be our freedom in the realms of food and medicine. More specifically, our actions are subtly steered by the collective and accepted views of food as nothing more than a convenient pleasure to be marketed, the industrial production of this food for profit instead of nutrition, and the western medical doctrine based in treating symptoms with pills and surgeries (and making a lot of money doing it). I'm not at all saying that we are helpless victims of a flawed system. Rather, I am trying to point out the hidden motivators of our mindsets and behaviors. For if we are to be truly free (in the basic sense, disregarding for the moment any consideration of what, say, a Buddhist would describe as true freedom), we must be willing to acknowledge the things that control us without our consent or wellbeing in mind. Of course, being ignorant of and doing nothing to combat the forces that act upon us against our best interests is an implicit concession to be controlled. It is subtle tyranny resting atop complacency. So what I would like to do is talk about what these controlling forces are and how our relationship with them compromises our freedom (I suppose I should qualify that by saying in my opinion, but I don't really believe there is room for debate here, although I'd love to hear any and all well-versed counterarguments).

When our society talks about food, the conversation is typically focused on pleasure, convenience or calories. We eat because it tastes good (Big and Tasty, anyone?), because we have to to survive (but want to find the fastest and cheapest way to do it that doesn't interfere with our busy schedules), or because we want to look like a supermodel (and so we happily subscribe to the fad diets that are relentlessly marketed to us). I have not performed the research required to know exactly how these kinds of relationships with food have evolved in our society, but that can be a project for another time. The point here is that food has become an incredible marketing tool, wherein we are all promised life-changing, pleasure-delivering, body-sculpting results if we would just eat that hamburger or buy those instant breakfast shakes or try the South Beach diet. Food is now inextricably linked with self-image (hey, maybe we are delving into more Buddhist philosophy than meets the eye). It is sold to us, and we buy it. But the problem is that it stops there, with appearances. Food promises so much, but never what it actually has the power to deliver: health. Of course, as I said earlier, we are willing participants in this game, or else we are blissfully ignorant. But unfortunately there are desperate and dire consequences emerging alongside this modern food mindset, and it is no longer acceptable that we play the ignorant card.

Our culture is increasingly burdened by an overwhelming conglomeration of stifling diseases and general sicknesses, like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, hypertension, obesity, depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue, just to name a few. We are unwell and effectively lifeless. Yet modern medicine is capable of extraordinary things. What's the deal? With the tastiest food and the best medicine money can buy, shouldn't we all be ultra-healthy super mega-humans?

There are several reasons, as I see it, why that is not the case.

First, the medical community is an extremely lucrative industry that thrives, like flies on poop, off of a sick society. Think about it - western medical methods are focused on treating symptoms. Pharmaceuticals, surgeries, endless doctor's appointments. This is treatment; it is an after-the-fact approach to "health". Moreover, it is a clever way to ensure that all patients are reliant upon and tethered to their doctors who offer symptom relief, since the symptoms will persist as long as the root causes are ignored. Call me crazy. Call me a conspiracist, whatever. To me it is as plain as day. There is no money in true health, no place for genuine wellness in our current system (check out the documentaries Food Matters and Forks over Knives for a more in-deptch examination of this topic). It is illegal to treat cancer in a licensed medical facility with a nutrition-based program in the United States. The only permissible forms of cancer treatment are various types of chemotherapy, radiation and targeted therapies via drugs. Hmm, doesn't that just make no sense at all? Well of course it does actually. Medicine as we know it is controlled by the medical industry, it is BIG BUSINESS. It is specialized and controlled. We are all told we need it for health and can only find it in hospitals and pharmacies. This kind of health cannot be personally administered. Right here, our freedom is compromised. We are dependent upon a system that profits from our sickness and dependence. And, given our current obsession with protecting and promoting capitalism and free enterprise at all costs, there is no reason why this kind of medical system should not be as it is. Change and freedom will come once we the people refuse to be victimized by an industry that professes health but perpetuates sickness. We need to dig down to uncover the core problems underlying the widespread illnesses of our time, and not take anyone else's word for it except our own through our own experiences.

Which brings me to the next reason why we are so collectively unhealthy. Our modern diet does not deliver the proper balance of nutrients we need to be healthy. We are malnourished. Simple as that. But, no, it's actually worse than simply malnutrition, for the food that we consume today poisons our bodies. Due to the industrial model of food production, there are now countless chemicals mingled with so much of what we eat. Pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides. We genetically modify our crops without understanding how it will affect our bodies. And what might be worse is how this process renders the plants we grow essentially lifeless and helpless; completely detached from their environments, unable to partake in the living systems that would naturally shape their structures. This makes them weak, vulnerable and increasingly insubstantial. Furthermore, our culture is imbedded with the deeply-entrenched idea that we need lots and lots of animal products in our diet. We need meat for protein. We need milk for calcium. We need animal fats to digest certain vitamins. Yet we inundate our factory livestock and dairy cows with growth hormones and antibiotics, which we ultimately consume, disrupting our endocrine and immune systems in ways both known and unknown. Our treatment of the animals we eat for what we think is a healthy diet is completely removed from any understanding of what a healthy animal requires. The goal is to produce as much as possible for the least amount of money. The documentary Food, Inc. shows just how filthy the food business, specifically the meat industry, truly is. For example, we pump our cattle with grain instead of feeding them their natural diet of grass. This change in diet creates an acidic environment in their stomachs that permit the colonization and spread of various forms of e. coli that pose a significant threat to human health. Not only that, but the waste runoff from giant factory feedlots pollutes the water and contaminates other crops, which recently happened with spinach. There are far too many similar stories to this one within our food systems, where health is threatened, not enhanced, by the food we eat and how we produce it.

Overall, we have a food system that seeks not to actually feed people, but rather to make money. Again, mighty capitalism as we know it. And due to the remarkable amount of secrecy involved in the food-growing process, at least partly due to the lack of regulations placed on the food industry (since they call the legislative shots, after all), we the consumers are kept in the dark about the reality of what we eat until there is a revealing documentary, book or article that gains public attention (forget about the mainstream media or cable news - we aren't likely to hear any food truths from them). Lack of transparency and an obstruction of the flow of information imprisons us, but only as long as we choose not to pull back the curtain and face the reality of it.

To escape from this poisonous cycle of systematic sickness we must become aware of it and how it works, discarding any and all illusions about how things really are. This means demanding more information about our food, demanding more from our health system than simply prescribing drugs and, most importantly, demanding from ourselves more attentiveness to and a deeper connection with our own bodies. We must read ourselves and determine what contributes to true wellbeing. This will likely bring all of us to the same conclusion- our food makes us well. We must eat for health, above all else. We must prevent sickness, whenever possible, instead of treat it. That is not to say that medicine cannot be used selectively to achieve incredible affects. It surely can. But what we need to do is exercise the freedom to promote our own health each day, every time we make a choice about what to eat and what not to eat. Let's break away of the cultural assumptions, dogmas and trends that currently bind us to unhealthy ways of being. Let's strive for true freedom. 

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food".

 -Hippocrates

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison"    

-Ann Wigmore

"Those who have no time for healthy eating will sooner or later have to find time for illness" 

-Edward Stanley

PAY THE FARMER OR PAY THE DOCTOR