Hungry for Change...get involved

Since rewatching the Oprah episode the other day I revisited the Food Inc website. They list 10 simple things you can do to change our food system. I am happy to say I am doing just about all of them, I need to work on 2 of the listed 10 items. Doing these things will get us healthier and help towards our medical costs. Forty years ago we spent 18% of our income on food and 5% on healthcare. Since the start of industrialized farms and food those statistics have reversed!!! We now spend 9% on food and 17% on healthcare! That is scary! We get less nutrients from the genetically modified food and we eat more of it...leading to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and obesity. If you eat a great variety of real food you will get all the nutrients you need. I honestly think these things are something we all can do very easily.
Here's the list:

1. Stop drinking sodas and other sweetened beverages. You can lose 25 lbs in a year by replacing one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water).

2. Eat at home instead of eating out. Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food prepared outside the home.

3. Support the passage of laws requiring chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus and menu boards. Half of the leading chain restaurants provide no nutritional information to their customers.

4. Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks. Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years.

5. Meatless Mondays—Go without meat one day a week. An estimated 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals.

6. Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides. According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S.

7. Protect family farms; visit your local farmer's market. Farmer's markets allow farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer.

8. Make a point to know where your food comes from—READ LABELS. The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate.

9. Tell Congress that food safety is important to you. Each year, contaminated food causes millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths in the U.S.

10. Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, ensuring fair wages and other protections. Poverty among farm workers is more than twice that of all wage and salary employees.

Now here's today's rule from FOOD RULES:

RULE 21: It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. (Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles)

Ha! I like that rule. That concludes part one of the book...tomorrow we start on part two of the book.

Have a wonderful weekend! ciao