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The elephant in the dining room
Human nature is to protect oneself by avoiding uncomfortable truths; the head in the sand approach to life.
Our much-loved American diet of all purpose bleached white flour, refined sugar, food colorings, scrumptious synthetic chemicals, salt and animal fat is making us a sickly bunch, ergo worsening the healthcare calamity. The same diet we claim as our God-given birthright to eat, eat and eat more in spite of the deleterious, costly health outcome is deeply hard-wired into our minds. We habitually dismiss our Holy Temple as a gift of the generous Cosmos. None-the-less, our loving creator directed us to be stewards; to responsibly manage the temporary vessel; home for our wandering soul. Not to treat our temple like a topsy-turvy amusement ride at Kings’ Island.
Newsprint and TV news documentaries warn us from their highest podiums, but some aren’t listening. Despite the damning science accusing the unctuous, nutritionally bogus Western Diet as woefully contaminated, nutritionally bankrupt, dead food diet; everyone else on the planet still wants to live like ‘cool’ Americans. New statistics reveal it would take the resources of 5 planet earths to support a world-wide American lifestyle of conspicuous, unbridled consumption. A huge carbon footprint regardless if you feel earth’s warming is man-made or a part of our planet’s natural rhythm. There’s no need to pour gas on a conflagration.
Billions of Chinese desire to live like Americans, so they’ve mimicked our eating habits and sedentary lifestyle; hence, the New England Journal of Medicine reports one in ten Chinese have acquired diabetes and another 16 percent are on the verge. Prior to the introduction of American fast food into their culture, the Chinese had no issues with degenerative Western Diseases.
Okinawa was home to the largest and healthiest population of centenarians on earth. For centuries they suffered significantly fewer heart attacks and 80 percent fewer incidences of breast cancer and prostate cancer, had lower rates of diabetes and less than half of the ovarian/colon cancer cases Americans do. Their indigenous nutrient-dense diet and stress-proof lifestyle has been forever altered due to the invasion of fried chicken buckets, pizza and burger chain box stores of death. Subsequently, their culture has become fat, diabetic and suffers from soaring rates of heart disease. Smell what I’m cooking?
Despite the French Paradox, the French are getting heavier and shying away from their indigenous, wine-infused healthy, fresh diet. Obesity rates have risen sharply in urban areas where there’s a greater availability of industrially deadened American fast food and sedentary computer cubical jobs.
Distraught Mexican mothers are heartbroken because their kids, now exposed to the world-wide tentacles of American fast food, are becoming obese; refusing to eat mom’s freshly prepared, traditionally nutritious meals.
We tend not to acknowledge the obvious causes of our health care crisis. There’s no way around it. It’s our food choices, folks. American lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer, increased heart disease rates and shorter lifespan are generally caused by that alluring slice of pizza, a juicy cheeseburger and order of fries, or a deep-fried, breaded chicken drumstick. If you think about it and look around you’ll see a very big picture why this is happening. It’s somewhat sad to see good, wholesome citizens of the earth urged to abandon their indigenous diet which has kept them in good health for centuries.
Is eating food we know daggone well results in preventable death a transgression of theological principles? We know gluttony is one of Seven Deadly Sins, but someone wrote that out of the bible centuries ago. “Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our body,” seems a tall order even for our creator these days. We only have one magnificent body and this is the last chance we will be given to take care of it. Be a slave to your holy temple, not a junk food executive. Your body is your best buddy. Love it with pure, fresh local food and it will love you back.
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