Lucid Nutrition

Fighting Globesity. A Big Issue

After listening to a presentation by Marion Nestle for my school, Integrative Nutrition, I have been in a head full of research surrounding children's health issues and nutrition. Anyway, because I am in a lil bit of a hurry to get to work tonight at Beets Cafe (yummy!) I am just going to share a few quick links that I feel are absolutely important that we all see and read.

• Here is Michelle Obama's latest article In Newsweek: How we can empower parents, schools, and the community to battle childhood obesity.
  

• Culture of Corpulence. American innovations in food, transportation, and technology are threatening to supersize us all.
  

• Strong Medicine. Doctors must do more to help patients battle the bulge.

• And finally a must see web documentary by HonkyTonk films called The Big Issue.
  

  Summary: In 2015, 2,3 billion human beings will be overweight and 937 million will be obese if nothing is done. The numbers are alarming, and their rise seems unstoppable.

  Throughout an investigation that unfolds from one side of the Atlantic to the other, The Big Issue invites the internet user to confront the multiple factors of the obesity epidemic, to question our modern lifestyles, and to inquire into the responsibility of the agri-business industry and the public powers.

  Ultimately, this unique journey will draw critical skills of the internet user by inviting him to take on the role of a journalist. It will encourage him or her to come to his or her own opinion about obesity, about the fatality of this illness as well as on the actions that must be taken in order to bring this international epidemic to a halt as quickly as possible. Watch it here. 

We will fix this and prevent this from continuing. How To. Later.

How to Save the World: One Man, One Cow, One World Trailer

In response to farmer suicides in India.

What does an environmentally friendly biodynamic food system capable of feeding everyone actually look like?

This film is a blueprint for a post-industrial future. It takes you into the heart of the world's most important renaissance.

The outcome of the battle for agricultural control in India may just dictate the future of the earth.

Our existence on this planet is precarious.

Modern industrial agriculture is destroying the earth:
Desertification, water scarcity, toxic cocktails of agricultural chemicals pervading our food chains, ocean ecosystem collapse, soil erosion and massive loss of soil fertility.

Our ecosystems ore overwhelmed. Humanity's increasing demands are exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity.

A simple recipe to save the world?

One old man and a bucket of cow-dung.

Why YOU should see this film

Modern agriculture causes topsoil to be eroded at 3 million tons per hour. (that’s 26 billion tons a year)

Human mass is replacing biomass and other species. The carrying capacity of the earth is almost spent.

To maintain our comfort zone lifestyles we will soon need five earths to sustain us in the style to which we have become accustomed.

The mantra of free trade has failed the world’s poor. There is a better way.

Human created climate change is destroying the Planet. Ecosystems collapse is not some sci-fi fantasy. It is real and it is happening. Right now.

Biodynamic agriculture may be the only answer we have left.

"When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands." Ralph Waldo Emerson

King Corn, A Conversation with the Filmmaker

"The following clips are from a conversation with filmmaker Curt Ellis brought to us by Cooking Up A Story. It is about his documentary "King Corn", the film that may open eyes across America. Surprisingly, corn is present in some form or another, in almost everything on the American plate. And, none more so, than through the food ingredient "high fructose corn syrup" (HFCS). Is it a good idea to have "HFCS" present in so many of our foods without prior public debate, or adequate science to measure its impact on the long-term health of adults, and especially our children? Should our standard meals be unnaturally skewed toward a corn based diet, in the first place? This interview, along with video clips from the documentary, may not provide the answers here, but it's a good beginning for further thought and reflection."

What do you think? Were you even aware that corn is in just about everything that is processed? That typically means all the food that comes out of a box or a bag or picked up from a drive thru. Everything from the Oreo's, to the spaghetti sauce, to most loaves of bread. You wouldn't pour sugar on spaghetti naturally, would you? So why have so many of our diets become so much sweeter than they used to be? How can we find solutions that make healthy food available to everyone and not just the wealthy?

If you're concerned about the amount of high-fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners in your diet, consider these tips:

• Limit processed foods.
• Avoid foods that contain added sugar.
• Choose fresh fruit rather than fruit juice or fruit-flavored drinks. Even 100 percent fruit juice has a high concentration of sugar.
• Go Raw.
• Go Vegan.
• Don't get your nourishment out of a box.
• Don't get your fix out of a bag.
• Don't expect healthy food from a drive-thru window.
• Do not drink soda.
• Don't allow sweetened beverages to replace milk, especially for children.

More Info:
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Not so Good for the Planet.
Double Danger of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

"We may have to learn again the mystery of the garden: how its external characteristics model the heart itself, and how the soul is a garden enclosed, our own perpetual paradise where we can be refreshed and restored." ~Thomas Moore

Michael Pollan Secretary of Agriculture

Press Release: Website Launched, Lobbyist and Publicist Appointed

PollanforSecretaryofAgriculture.org

WASHINGTON D.C.--President-elect Barack Obama’s selection for Secretary of Agriculture has a new twist, thanks to a burgeoning grass-roots petition campaign endorsing Washington outsider Michael Pollan for the post.

Pollan, author of runaway New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma, NYT journalist, and unofficial guru of the local, non-industrial food movement, framed his agenda most recently in his essay ‘Farmer In Chief’ published in the NYT Magazine, the Big Idea being:

“Most of the problems our food system faces today are because of its reliance on fossil fuels, and to the extent that our policies wring the oil out of the system and replace it with the energy of the sun, those policies will simultaneously improve the state of our health, our environment
and our security.”

Now boasting 8,000 signatures, the petition and a new website are the brainchild of lobbyist and media representative Blane Friest. Featured on WNYC, the nation’s largest public radio station and on Bill Moyers Journal, Pollan and the petition effort are gaining credible buzz among the nation’s media outlets. A Facebook Group now approaching 4000 members has also been formed independently by another Pollan devotee, Bryan Giglio.

Pollan’s reluctance to throw his hat in the ring has caused many in the blogosphere to question the validity of the campaign, but Friest remains resolute, “In the Moyers interview he begins by saying he knows his limitations and doesn’t consider himself a viable candidate for the position. He then spends the next 45 minutes eloquently proving precisely why he’s the right one for the job. It’s not necessary to have a politician or bureaucrat as Secretary, but someone who knows the players well enough to hire the right people to write policy while maintaining oversight of the direction of the agency. Pollan is that person.”

The petition reads in part:

“Mr. Pollan has a unique understanding of the history, development, and contemporary practices of U.S. Agriculture and its relationship to the health of the citizens of The United States. He is singularly qualified to identify inefficiencies and present improvements in production, nutrition, and our problematic reliance on petroleum and petro-chemical based fertilizers, for the benefit of food producers and consumers both.”

The complete petition and position statement are at ww.PollanforSecretaryofAgriculture.org.

If you think Michael Pollan would be great for this position and country, why not sign the petition? I don't think he would turn down the job if it was offered to him.

P.S. I still think Will Tuttle would do a better job.

Barack Obama on Food

Read the interview of Barack Obama by Ari LeVaux. Discussion includes why he voted for the Farm Bill, his thoughts on child obesity, the documentary film The Real Dirt on Farmer John (which Obama has yet to see), the farm-to-school program, switchgrass, and how he plans to direct the EPA when he is elected president. Plus, Obama's Family Chili Recipe. Yum.