The US food industry has transformed itself over the past 100 years. There have been many substantial improvements, but many times these are at the expense of consumer health and safety.
There was a similar study of Japanese men that when they immigrated to the US, their reports of heart disease rose significantly, enough to match Americans. It pointed to diet as the cause of the rise of disease.
My opinion is there are several factors and causes of disease in the US:
1. Processed foods – just don’t buy anything that comes in a box or plastic wrap (we are still guilty of this one to some degree)
2. Milk – I’ve been trying for years to get my family off milk, and in September 2012, we finally did it.
3. Soy – there are so many negatives, that it outweighs the positives.
4. Ag Industry – they have so much money they can buy whatever votes they need to propagate their agenda.
5. Pesticides / antibiotics / growth hormones – These are bad for us and they reside in every corner of our food system
6. Profit at the expense of consumer safety – The farmers are pushed to increase yields. They don’t do crop rotations any more. They have too confined spaces for their animals, etc.
7. Sugar – really bad for us. We have decreased our sugar intake to almost zero. Only some natural sugars left in our diet, mainly honey.
8. GMO foods – our government won’t require the label requirements for GMO. We don’t know. I remember this in 1996 when it first came out. Now everything has GMO in it. Cows eat GMO soy byproduct, which means it is in our beef, unless we buy organic (which I do). Same for chicken and pork.
9. Diet Pop – the artificial sweeteners are very bad for us, yet people consume several cans per day.
10. HFCS – we avoid high-fructose corn sweetener like the plague.
I’m sure there are more reasons that I have forgotten in the moment, but we are trying to change this all now. Over the last year, we’ve made significant steps to improve our food. We’ve cut down on many of the items.
What it means is that we have to prepare more foods at home, the old fashioned way, cooking. We are also buying significant amounts of organic foods. They are not necessarily pesticide free, but they when they do have pesticides, at least they are organic pesticides instead of chemical pesticides. They also are reported to contain no GMOs.
With these steps, I’m sure that we’ve increased the quality of the food that we are eating, and we’re consuming less chemicals.
