Your Food Is Making You Sick
Monday, November 28, 2016 IST
I was listening to a call-in show on the radio this week and a listener from Colorado bragged about buying flour that was free of growth hormone and GMO’s. At first, I laughed, and then I worried.
Scientific ignorance is killing us. It allows climate change denialists to stop us from saving our home. It allows quacks and drug companies to sell fake cures. And it blinds us to the real problems in food safety.
So how can we know what the real dangers in food are? Is it better to buy organic or GMO-free or locally-sourced foods? The answer is actually pretty simple, much simpler than all the organic marketing and the GMO fights.
First is economics. In 2015, nearly 13% of U.S. households experienced food insecurity (the current term for “hunger”). Much more are forced to rely on poor quality foods that lead to obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Many poor Americans live in “food deserts.” They may want to purchase healthy foods, but there aren’t any grocery stores near enough, and they are forced to buy fast foods or unhealthy pre-packaged foods. So, being able to choose healthy foods is itself a privilege.
The 87% of us that aren’t going hungry are subjected to a flood of bad information about what is and what isn’t healthy. Stores stock foods that are “GMO-free”, “hormone-free”, “gluten-free”, but the only thing most of these foods share is a hefty price tag.
A good starting point here is author Michael Pollan’s one line eating plan: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” By “food”, he means things that look like they came from the ground or a ranch, or anyplace other than a factory. This makes things pretty simple.
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