Our country is stretched to the limit due to the cost of health care.
Even with the new health care bill, there will be on going conflict over
what we should do to provide people with affordable health care. But
the reason that the problem seems irresolvable is a very complex one.
Let's take Carrie as an example. Carrie was brought up by parents who
knew nothing about good nutrition. Both of her parents worked and had
little time to cook, so they often relied on cheap meals such as
McDonalds. Carrie's mother, frazzled from work and trying the best she
could to take care of Carrie and her two brothers, often gave them candy
and cookies to get them off her back, and breakfast was sugared dry
cereal with milk.
As an adult, Carrie is addicted to packaged and processed food,
especially foods that contain HFCS - High Fructose Corn Syrup - which is
in many foods and is partly responsible for the obesity problem in our
country, as well as for many others serious illnesses. The few fruits
and vegetables she eats are canned or frozen and filled with pesticides
and preservatives. The meat she eats from the factory farms is filled
with antibiotics.
Carrie is overweight and suffering from type 2 diabetes, and was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
Carrie has never been taught that she is responsible for her health.
She has never been taught that she is mostly what she eats. She does not
know that the food she is eating not only has little nutritional value,
but is harming her. And it is not likely that this important
information will be readily available to her because the large
corporations who produce the food she eats does not want her to know
that it is killing her.
They don't want her to know that the animal protein she eats is so far
from natural as to be harmful to her. They don't want her to know that
the enriched packaged foods are robbing her body of necessary nutrients.
In addition to the food industry that doesn't want her to know what is
really happening, the drug companies want her to think that all she has
to do is take a pill to make things better. They also do not want her
to know what is really happening. They don't want her to know that she
is responsible for her health. And unfortunately, many physicians also
don't want their patients to take responsibility for their own health.
Not to mention the insurance companies.
The bottom line of the health care crisis is greed. How can our
government insist that people eat well, get exercise, and learn how to
deal with their stress in responsible, non-addictive ways without
harmful drugs when the very people who put them in power are the ones
who would lose money if people take responsibility for their health?
Will these huge food and drug corporations, and insurance companies
voluntarily give up their huge profits to support health and personal
responsibility? Not until caring about each other is more important than
money and power.
So, Carrie enters the health system. It cost a lot to deal with her
diabetes and cancer, both of which are degenerative diseases that can
often be prevented and even cured with foods that heal.
What are the foods that heal? The highest density nutrition is
contained in fresh, local organic vegetables and fruits. Without these
as the center of a person's daily food intake, they are likely not to
have optimum health. After that, each person needs to discover what
foods create optimum health for them. Some people need more whole
grains, while others need more grass-finished organic meat. Many people
do not do well on pasteurized milk as the pasteurization process creates
allergies and is often responsible for asthma and other allergic
conditions.
If personal responsibility for health were taught in schools,
everything would change regarding health care. I wonder if I will see
this in my lifetime?
food-9
