Do you really know what's in your food?
As we march into a brand new year, the most widely made Resolution is to “watch what we eat,” but do you really know for sure what’s in your food?
- Your family has a dentist, right?
- Your family has a doctor…or three, right?
- Your business has an accountant and book keeper, right?
- You have a lawyer for your house sale, a lawyer for your will and a lawyer for your estate. Right.
- Do you have a local farmer or a fisherman for your food?
Do you have someone you can identify as providing you or your family with local, safe, disease free, healthy and nutritious food? What are you really eating? What is your three year old daughter really eating for dinner?
Without good, clean and healthy food, nothing else matters.
(If we ate good, clean, healthy food…we wouldn’t even need a dentist!)
Island Bounty Foods is pointing our health focus to best understand the source of our food. Where is our food grown? What has been put into our foods before we consume it? What chemicals are our children’s body’s consuming? Sadly, we do not know what we are eating.
To be sure, Island Bounty Foods is not the first group to point us toward better understanding the source of our food supply. Yet, their continuous information feed is very interesting and timely to us right now! This is a very serious concern for all of us to zero in on in 2009, and beyond.
Did you know that shrimp grown in China are not allowed into USA?
Why not? It’s called unclean food!! Unsafe food!! Dangerous food!! It is time to grow local, buy local, and buy clean and disease free food.
More companies such as Island Bounty Foods should step forward in 2009 and ring the disease free bell. Our children’s future health depends on it!! And on that positive and sustainable note, I bid you a happy and healthier New Year 2009.
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January 6, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Latisha Brown
I was watching an e2 Documentary on PBS and it was outstanding!!!! I wish I could find it on Youtube and share it with you. They went into great detail about having safer food, and a food system that gets delivered to the people in a cost efficient, “green” manner. Read some below:
“The complexities of our food system and its impact on the environment are at the forefront of a national debate. In this episode we will examine how the eating choices of humans affect not only the landscape of the natural world, but also the balance of species on earth and the global climate crisis.
According to some estimates, agriculture is a 15 – 25% contributor to climate change. Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, explains how the shift from solar-based agriculture before World War II to fossil fuel-based agriculture after World War II, affected the efficiency of both food production and fossil fuel usage.
In recent years, as more information about fossil fuel usage in agriculture has been publicized, some have started a movement to eat food that has a smaller environmental impact.
Today it takes twenty calories of fossil fuel energy to produce two calories of food energy, whereas 100 years ago, only one calorie of fossil fuel energy was required to produce the same amount of food energy.
The shift came after World War II with the discovery of synthetic fertilizer, which is usually made from natural gas but was originally converted from munitions and petroleum-based pesticides, which were first created from nerve gases. While in some ways this new fossil fuel-based agriculture system is incredibly efficient (one American farmer can feed 126 people for a year), it is incredibly inefficient in terms of the quantities of fossil fuels that are used in the production of that food.
Because most transportation worldwide is fossil fuel-based, the distance that food travels before it reaches your plate, an average of 1,500 miles, also contributes to its carbon footprint. With rising oil prices and dwindling non-renewable resources, our current system of food production cannot be sustained forever, which has led some to explore alternative sources of food. (Like Aquaculture!)
Judy Wicks, the owner of the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia, has been buying from local farmers for over 20 years. She explains her reasons for buying local, which range from serving higher quality, tastier food with a smaller carbon footprint to helping local farmers who have trouble competing with bigger factory farms.
Through her foundation, White Dog Community Enterprises, she has tried to cultivate the local economy through small business ownership. One of the foundation’s first endeavors, the Fair Food Project, encourages local restaurants to buy from local farmers. We hear from farmers about the challenges they face growing crops and raising cattle in the traditional way, but also the benefits that go along with their choice to reduce their use of fossil fuels in production.
While a major shift in our food production system from fossil fuel-based agriculture to solar-based agriculture, may require a shift in lifestyle and eating habits, there is not consensus about whether that change is a sacrifice or a benefit. Because the current system is unsustainable, the question now becomes, what is best for the health of the human race and the planet?”
If you ever get a chance to see it, it’s the PBS Series called “e2 – Food Miles” – you will never think about your food, or “how” you eat that same way again!
To find out more about the Fair Food Project, visit http://www.whitedogcafefoundation.com/fairfood.html
January 13, 2009 at 10:29 am
Elizabeth Levinson
I don’t think there is any real way of knowing anymore what we (Americans) are eating. One of our most basic Rights is our Freedom of Choice. When our food is not clearly labeled, or you have to go to some food producer’s website to see what’s really in the food-stuff, we are clearly being kept in the dark.
The NY Times reports that 65% of all the food on our grocery store shelves contains some kind of genetically altered ingredient. They don’t put that on the boxes or cans!
Our children are too precious to be involved in an unwitting experiment. It’s time to get back to basics.
After reading the above, I now know why the shrimp I used to buy at $10.00 a bag is now $25.00 a bag. It’s because it comes from overseas to the US and then is trucked half way around the country to get to the store freezer, which is absurd!
Why doesn’t the Government do something to level the playing field and make sure that our local farmers, food producers, and fishmongers get first crack at feeding America before other countries do?
“Going Green” means “Going Local”.