Hungrytown, USA

According to recent sensational press reports:
" More than a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the US, according to a government report that shows a startling increase in the number of families struggling to put food on the table.
President Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as "unsettling" the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year.
The report said 6.7 million people were defined as having "very low food security" because they regularly lacked sufficient food to eat. Among them, 96% reported that the food they bought did not last until they had money to buy more. Nearly all said they could not afford to eat balanced meals".

What is unclear from these alarming reports is the question of whether these people are actually suffering from hunger or malnutrition?
Hunger is defined as: feeling the need to eat, appetite, or great desire for , a physiological need for food; the consequence of food deprivation
starve: be hungry; go without food.

On the contrary, malnutrition is defined as:
inadequate nutrition: a lack of healthy foods in the diet, or an excessive intake of unhealthy foods, leading to physical harm.

So, there seems to be a little confusion and sensationalism going on here. Gauging by the higher incidence of obesity in the impoverished minorities, it is evident that the problem is not of hunger but of malnutrition. Its not that there is a lack of quantity of food ( calories), but rather a problem with quality ( macro and micro nutrients).

Because it is possible, (even for the poorest of the poor on food stamps: getting under four dollars per day) to get 2000 calories a day at McDonald's eating exclusively off the Dollar menu. Or on a high fat, high sugar diet of highly processed food which can be cheaply obtained from the corner store. (Trying to buy fresh fruits and vegetables? Forget it.)

Of course, this calorie-dense nutrient poor food is great at preventing hunger, but it is leaving one fifth of America malnourished.

Here's my question for McDonald's and Burger King: How can give away so many calories for for a buck and still make a profit? Maybe you could teach us how to make healthy wholesome food affordable for all!

The China Syndrome

Getting dressed this morning, I got to thinking: everything that I'm wearing today is Chinese! My socks and underwear, my pants and even my shirt and tie! If apparel makes the man, then these clothes would surely make me a Chinese man!

As adolescents in India in the 1980s, my friends and I were enamoured when someone would show off new toy or gadget that was "imported" especially if it was Made in the USA. Little did we know that when we got to the USA, most of our possessions would be still be imported, but mostly from China, Hong-Kong or Taiwan.


I had a startling revelation today. My friend informed me that the much of our organic produce is actually being grown in China! She told me that the California Medley of frozen vegetables from Whole Foods is actually grown in China! Why don't they call it the China Medley then? I couldn't help wonder how the FDA is allowing this produce to be labelled as organic unless we have our inspectors on the ground there. If the adage: we become what we eat is true, I must be slowly be transforming into a Chinese on a cellular level too!

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the further our food has to travel, the worse it is for the our health and the health our of living planet, Gaia: mother earth. In California, where agricultural commodities are one of the top exports, it is ironic we import so much produce from other states as well as overseas.

When we globally transport produce like garlic, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, bell peppers, navel oranges, rice, tomatoes and wine, this has a horrible impact on global warming and particulate matter pollution. Not to mention that we can't be really sure what we are getting.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org, between 1968 and 1998, world food production increased by 84 percent and the population by 91 percent, but food trade increased 184 percent. Today, the typical American prepared meal contains, on
average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States!

So, the next time you go grocery shopping ( or shopping for apparel for that matter), take a moment to look at the COOL ( country of origin label) and think about the environmental and health impact of your purchase. And if you care about your cellular and ethnic identity, buy stuff Made in USA!

ORGANIC FOOD ATE MY WHOLE PAYCHECK

There is no conclusive proof that organic food is better than commercially produced food commonly available at the grocery store!

But, think about this: commercial agriculture processes geared towards mass production of food with genetic modification of seeds, synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are relatively recent in the history of our species. It makes intuitive sense that food produced in this way isn't truly "natural" and thus would confuse our internal biochemical processes. This mismatch might have something to do with the numerous diseases ( imbalances) of modern civilisation. Humans have been hunter-gatherers for 200, 000 years and farmers for only the last 10,000 years. Modern "scientific" farming has only been around for the last 100 years.

While one could argue that this is the only way we could have fed the planet's growing population with has increased almost 6 fold in the last century, the question is this: what is the health cost?

Eating healthy does not have to eat up your Whole Paycheck. According the Envirnomental Working Group ( www.foodnews.org), there are certain foods which are notoriously high in pesticide load. Surprisingly, this does not get better with washing and peeling either. The dirty dozen (which you should consider buying organic whenever possible are: Peaches, Apples, Strawberries, Sweet Bell Peppers, Celery, Nectarines, Cherries, Lettuce, Grapes ( imported), Pears, Spinach and Potatoes. The cleanest 12 ( lowest pesticides) you don't need to worry about too much are: Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn ( frozen), Sweet Peas ( frozen), Pineapple, Mango, Asparagus, Kiwi, Bananas, Cabbage, Broccoli and Eggplant.

What about animal foods like chicken, beef, eggs, fish and even farmed fish. The mass production of these animals in facilities that literally look like assembly lines is really scary. Antibiotics and hormones and regularly given to these animals in an effort to get them as plump and heavy as quickly as possible so they can be slaughtered and set up for consumption in the least amount of time and at the lowest possible cost. ( How else could they get them on the "Dollar Menu")? Significant amounts of these hormones and antibiotics are making their way up the food chain and into our bodies and wreaking havoc on our internal milleu. We see increasing levels of virulent infections in our hospitals due to drug resistence. We see hormonal imbalances in children and adults that were unheard of before. The recent movie Food Inc. does a nice job of bringing this to light.

Without necessarily thinking like an elitist, the next time you go to the grocery store, think about this: how are my choices going to affect my health, and the health of my family? What about the health of our planet: the soil and water which sustains us?What would happen if we all insisted on buying food that is in sync with our biochemistry? Could the food industry keep feeding us garbage with synthetic chemicals and hormones if we all took a stand?

Do you feed your dog Diesel fuel?

High fructose Corn syrup( Hfcs) has revolutionised with food processing industry by providing an unlimited supply of cheap sweetener. If you read the label, you will find Hfcs in just about every sweet food or beverage you can buy at the grocery store ( by the way, did you know you have 40,000 choices the moment you enter a medium sized supermarket?).

Here's the kicker, Hfcs bypasses ( effectively flies under the radar) of the normal satiety mechanism. In other words, your taste buds don't get saturated with 40 grams of sugars in Hfcs as they would with 40 grams of crystalline sugar. Futher, you could potentially keep eating an enormous amount of food sweetened with Hfcs without the brain's fullness sirens going off.

The reason for this is that your brain does not recognize Hfcs the way it does more conventional foods which have existed in nature for millenia.

SO, next time you get ready to put something in your mouth, think about whether or not your body would even know what to do with it ( is it something your great great grandmother would know of)? The greater the number of steps between the soil and your plate, the higher the likelihood that this food is going to wreak havoc on your insides.