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Know Policy Around Your Food

Writer's picture: carey fraziercarey frazier

Food choices that improve health and the health of the planet.


How is it grown? Why does that matter? What is the role that the food

industry plays in our health? How does what we eat affect the planet? How

does our impact on the planet affect the quality of our nutrition?


And these are big questions. And the answers begin with one core truth of

our current food system. Whoever creates a nutrition policy drives

what ends up on your plate. So, consider this-- I've referenced Dr. Mark

Hyman's book, Food-- What the Heck Should I Eat? And I'm going to

reference it again. He says, "Government policies heavily influence our dietary guidelines and dictate which foods are grown, how they're grown and processed, and how

they're marketed. The outside influence that industrial food and agricultural

lobbyists have on our policies encourages a food system that engenders

disease." And I would add systemic racism because it's important to note

that food policy, people who are affected by it significantly negatively are often

in marginalized or low-income areas.


So, let's look at two cases about food lobbyists and the industrial

food system here in the United States. First, one of the most well-known

An academic organization that conducts nutrition research is the American Society of Nutrition.


And it has industry ties to big food brands like Coca-Cola, General Mills,

Kellogg's, Mars, Kraft, McDonalds, PepsiCo, Monsanto, the National

Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Dairy Council, and the Sugar

Association. The American refers companies to this sponsor

Society of Nutrition as a sustaining partner, which means that these companies

donate at least $10,000 a year.


And a second example of how economics plays a part in the food industry is

the American Heart Association receives much of its funding from food and

pharmaceutical companies like PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg's, Nestle, Mars,

Domino's Pizza, Kraft, Subway, and Quaker. The American Heart Association also receives hundreds of dollars every time its Heart Healthy checkmark is used on a cereal box, even if it's Fruit Loops, which is junk food that's high in sugar is not contribute to

heart health.


Dr. Hyman also says that our nation's and the world's health crises are not

driven by medical issues but by social, economic, and political problems

that conspire to drive disease. Because when you think about it, the economy

wins three times when we have this kind of system. We overeat, so we spend more money on food than we otherwise would. Then we diet like crazy. So, we spend kajillions of dollars in the diet industry. And then we need medical care for the diseases that these foods

cause. So, the economy wins three times. Economic and political forces

conspire to drive that system. So, some of the negative consequences of our food policy-- are a healthcare crisis that results from lifestyle and food-driven choices that

have created chronic diseases affecting almost half of all Americans, escalated

federal debt, at least in the US, partly due to the fiscal burden of chronic

disease on Medicare and Medicaid, an achievement gap due to childhood

obesity and food-related illnesses that drive poor school performance, resulting

in diminished global competitiveness, environmental degradation, and

climate change from petrochemical-based agriculture and concentrated

animal feeding operations, which is how most of our meat is raised in the US.


Here's a quote from a book called Sapiens by author Yuval Noah

Harari, a professor, is at the Hebrew University in Israel. And the

book Sapiens is outstanding. I highly recommend it. However, he has a quote in

his book: "Each year, the US population spends more on diets than the

amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the world."

"Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating too little,

leading to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy

diet products, increasing economic growth twice over." And it's three

times over, as I say, overeat. Buy diet products, and then spend an

enormous amount of money on health care trying to manage lifestyle diseases.

According to another author, Marion Nestle, in her book What to Eat, she says,

"The deep, dark secret of American agriculture is that there is far too much

food available-- 3,900 calories per day for every man, woman, and child in the

country, whereas the average adult needs only a bit more than half that

amount and children much less. No wonder obesity is killing us."

So, overabundance leaves food companies with three options, she says.


First, they can make fewer food products or smaller portions and raise

prices. That's a risky business strategy. Number two, they can entice you to

buy their products instead of their competitors, hence advertising.

Number three, they can get you to eat more of what they sell.

So, food companies have focused heavily on numbers two and three to entice you to buy their products instead of their competitors and eat more of what they sell.

If you think about it, this does make sense because when have you seen a $50

million marketing campaign starring Beyonce for broccoli? She doesn't do

broccoli commercials for $50 million a pop. But she did one for Pepsi for that

amount in 2012. So, the worse the food is for you, the bigger the advertising

budget.


You can tell how slick the ads are. That's how bad it is for you to entice you

to eat more of what they sell. Food companies intentionally combine fat,

sugar, and salt in a way that plays on the brain's biological hard

wiring for pleasure. They combine fat, sugar, and salt in a way that creates

addiction. In his book Salt Sugar Fat-- How the Food

Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss, an author, concluded that food companies intentionally use

disproportionate amounts of sugar, salt, and fat to attract customers and

make them dependent on their products. Moss discovered that food

companies extensively studied the ideal ratio of fat to salt to sugar to reach

the highest level of food optimization, known in the food industry as

the bliss point.


The food industry has experienced a boom in sales since developing this

model of convenient, low-cost, and tasty foods, Michael Moss says in his book.

He noted that the inclusion of salt, sugar, and fat, once only found in

stereotypical junk food, is now in every kind of processed food throughout the grocery store. And he's saying the companies are not evil. It's not an issue

with a single product or a company but their collective zeal to sell as much as

possible regardless of your health's consequences. And sadly, food companies don't stop there to compel you to eat more of what they sell. They partner with the government via powerful lobbyists to Create a food policy that promotes eating more sugar, dairy, and meat.

According to Dr. Mark Hyman in Food-- What the Heck Should I Eat, he says,

"Our current food policy allows unregulated food marketing that targets

children, the underserved, and minorities and pushes the sugar-sweetened

beverages and industrial foods responsible for our epidemic of childhood

obesity and racial disparities in health, predominantly in the African-American

and Latin American communities."He also says that if high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil are subsidized, only about 1% of farm subsidies support healthy food. However, high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil are subsidized. The price of soda has decreased by almost 40% since the 1970s, while the price of fruit and vegetables has

increased by nearly 40%.


In a food stamp program called SNAP that supports the consumption of

sugar-sweetened beverages, the most extensive line item in the SNAP budget is $7

billion a year for soda. It's the number one food bought with food stamps.

And truthfully, I love-- I'm a US citizen. I love my country, but this is criminal.

The US dietary guidelines reflect the food lobby's influence over science and

health. In 2016, Congress directed the National Academy of Scientists to

review how the US dietary guidelines were developed. And the National

Academy of Science released their report in 2017 and found significant

problems with the process, including food industry influence and conflicts of

interest of the scientists on the dietary guidelines advisory committee.

Even more, back to Mark Hyman's book Food-- What the Heck Should I Eat,

he says that our current food policy allows the use of antibiotics for the

prevention of disease in animal feed, which puts us at risk by creating drug-

resistant superbug. And the list of issues goes on.


So when we have the US dietary guidelines telling us to reduce sugar-

sweetened beverage consumption, but the government gives out farm

subsidies to support the production of corn, which is turned into high fructose

corn syrup, making it so cheap that it is everywhere in our food supply; this is

not right. We need a massive overhaul of our national food policy.

Plus, there's mounting evidence of the adverse environmental effects of the

food system, which has been seen to be eroding soils, polluted water supplies,

consuming massive amounts of energy, generating significant greenhouse

gases, destroying tropical rainforests as well as diminishing the quality of

nutrients in our food.


So, to get a clearer picture of significant food and their food production and the

impact on our environment, let's zoom in and look at the food that has the

most significant negative impact on our environment. And that's animal protein and

red meat in particular. And I'm not here to make an argument that you should never eat red meat. However, the statistics show that a dietary shift toward less meat and more plants could significantly help the environment.


Here's an interesting fact. Did you know that it takes 425 gallons of water

to produce one-quarter pound of meat? And did you know that manure

contributes to water quality degradation and livestock manure, which is a

sociable, pleasant word for what it is, I guess, more pleasant than other words,

produces pollution in the form of drug residues, heavy metals, pathogens,

fertilizers and pesticides, and that livestock production is responsible for

14.5% of greenhouse gases, according to the United Nations?

If the US did not eat meat or cheese for just one day of the week, it

would be the equivalent of not driving 91 billion miles or taking 7.6 million cars

off the road. So, livestock is the world's largest human-related land user,

taking up 30% of the Earth's entire land surface. The global demand for meat increases the pressure to clear forests and valuable land for raising livestock and growing food, contributing to land degradation, deforestation, and accelerated loss of rainforests and

many species. While we all feel very depressed. What's the bottom line here? The bottom line is that our food policies and systems are putting profit over our health and the health of our planet. And they're slowly killing us. And they're slowly killing the planet. But

if you're not a billion-dollar company with an army of lobbyists, what power

do you have as one person to change the system? And I want to suggest that you have significant power in the following two ways.


As an individual, every dollar you spend on food is an action of

political and economic power. And you do wield more power than you think.

You, the consumer, and where you spend your food dollars matter to the

food industry. And that is because food companies can only stay in business if

there is a demand for their product. Consumer demand has driven massive changes in what some big food companies are doing. So, let's take a look. So, back in June 2018,

McDonald's wanted all its Happy Meal options to have 600 calories or

less and less than 650 milligrams of sodium. They wanted that by June 2018.

Also, less than 10% of the meal’s calories came from saturated fat

and added sugar.


In 2015, Chipotle was the first major restaurant chain to remove GMOs,

genetically modified foods, from its menu. Taco Bell announced plans to cut

artificial colors and flavors and add trans fats from their menu where

possible. That happened in 2017, or the plans were announced in 2017. The chalupa

singing chain will use actual black pepper-what- in its seasoned beef

instead of black pepper flavor? Who would have thought?

Nestle USA announced that it is removing artificial flavors and FDA-certified

colorings from all its chocolate candy products by the end of 2015. Not sure if

that happened. We'd have to find out. But that meant that they were

going to reformulate about 75 recipes. By the end of 2016, Panera planned to remove at least 150 artificial preservatives, flavors, and colors-- 150-- including fat substitutes and propylene glycol from its soups, sandwiches, salad dressings, and bakery items.


Why? Why do we do it in the first place? But at least some big companies are

making changes. Because to big food companies, you and your food dollars

matter. So, if having fewer chemicals in your food matters, and you vote with

your dollars, then companies go, oh, well, we got to make a change.

The second powerful way you can effect change in the state of our

food policy and the health of our planet is as an influencer. And as a health

and life coach, whether or not you're ever on social media, you will be

influencing your family, clients, friends, communities, followers if you are on social, your subscribers. They're going to look to you for education, for information, for guidance, and inspiration. You influence them. And what that means for you when you do that is you

can expand your impact exponentially.

And what's the number one thing we can do to create that shift?

We can transition from a processed diet to a whole-food lifestyle. This doesn't mean eating processed food again. It just means that most of your food is either whole or has few ingredients.


Now, how do you transition to a new way of eating? Because for some,

moving from processed foods to whole foods is hard. People get set in their

habits, obviously based on food and lifestyle. So, even though you may know

the benefits, making the change can seem daunting.

And naturally, you go, what am I going to eat? There's processed stuff in

everything. Now you have a lot of strategies for identifying healthier versions

of food, something that's moving away from the Twinkie and toward Farmer

Jane's Organic Farm from our last lesson.

We want to give you more ways to help yourself. You can work with Coach Carey to start this transition in small steps and learn more.

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