Food Revolution?!

We just watched the first two episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (yes, that’s what we’re doing on Friday night…and a few weeks ago we watched Food, Inc. … So, what’s wrong with that?!). This little Internet TV binge came after an hour of reading some of The China Study. Would you believe me if I said I cried in reaction to it, and about the scariness of the state of nutrition and health in the US?  Ok, I didn’t, but it really is that bad.

What I’m learning from the China Study is very deep and disturbing regarding the corrupt nature of big business on the perceptions and understandings of what is healthy. The worst part is that the corruption is not very transparent to the public because the Industries (think: beef, dairy, etc.) have traditionally infiltrated academia and government, and then meshed it into the media (i.e. fed to us).  We’ve been told for over a century that certain things are healthy for us, and they’re just plain not.

When we take this to the local level, we get places like Huntington, WV, pre-Jamie Oliver. When we take it nationwide, we get devastating levels of chronic disease, early death, and healthcare costs.

I want to go into this topic and distill some of the information to a usable level. It’s really going to challenge what we’ve been spoon fed (and fast fed!). So I will start to do that over the next few weeks, and I think the bottom line is that I’m not suggesting everyone should turn their habits upside down—that wouldn’t work anyway. I really don’t think anyone should do anything they don’t want to do in regards to health habits, and I’m not here to push ideas, just to put information out there that I think is good.

It’s exciting to me to think there is hope for improving the nation’s health, and I think Jamie Oliver is right on target with going to the kids first.