According to a page on the University of Minnesota’s website, “The food we eat gives our bodies the "information" and materials they need to function properly. If we don't get the right information, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines.” Food is often take for granted, and we often forgot just how big a part of our lives it really is. It is one of the only things that remains consistent day after day. It is source of happiness, a go to after a long day, or even a medium used to get to know somebody. However, it seems that we have turned a blind eye to the decline of the quality of food over the past couple of decades. Imagine taking a granola bar for example, and looking at the ingredients for the same brand today as compared to a decade ago, it’s amazing to see just how much it has changed. Flour and natural sugar have been substituted for things we can’t pronounce, olive and vegetable oils have been switched out for cheaper alternatives, and while profit margins are made fatter, the true quality of the product declines year after year. But who cares right? What impact does that have on our body?  We have all heard the phrase before, “you are what you eat”, but how many of us actually believe it to be true? The answer is not very many. It is obvious that nutrition, especially in our country, is not taken seriously, and people do not understand the long-term effects that food has on the body. Quality of food greatly impacts long and short-term health for a number of reasons, but we can fix this growing issue through tighter food regulations, better education through doctor patient relationships, and making healthy eating more affordable for American families.

The first thing to talk about would be food regulations, and I wanted to start by sharing some of my personal experiences with food. As I wrote about in my first blog over the weekend, I have not always been the healthiest eater. I wasn’t by any means a bad eater, but I guess my idea of what healthy was, was just very far off. My parents always fed me well, organic produce, salads at dinner, not many sugar drink or snacks. But we would have gelato in the fridge, Gatorades before soccer, and of course I would go out occasionally with friends, so Chick-fil-A and Groucho’s here and there. But then my brother started dating this girl, who was very big into the power of food and how it greatly impacts the body. Her ideals were based around how your health was solely a product of what you put, you get out, what you put in. So naturally her ways of thinking turned my brother, and in turn found their way to me. I thought the concept was interesting and I gave it a try. I cut out sugar, only drank water, limited my gluten and dairy intake, and focused on things such as fresh juices, kombuchas, variety in diet (almonds, salmon, etc.), and protein from really pure sources, commonly known as grass fed. After a couple of weeks and months of this, I noticed an immediate impact on the way I think and the way I felt. I was energized, alert, sleeping well, exercising better, acne cleared up, long story short, I have been eating that way for about 4-5 years, and I have seen a noticeable difference in the way I feel, and in the fact that I have never gotten sick in that time span, no flus, no colds, nothing. 

The story told in the previous paragraph is all validated by a writer in this field who did a popular diet called Whole 30, in her article I Went On The Whole30 Diet And Gave Up Added Sugar, Dairy, And Grains (And I Only Cheated Once), Here’s What I Learned, she says, “I didn't eat the pizza. I ate the roasted vegetables. And guess what: It did make a difference. I felt the results. I've never had more energy—or fewer digestive issues.”  All of this really made me believe in the fact that we as a country are focusing on the wrong things, in a sense where it is not about quantity and type of food, but rather quality. You can have pizza, burgers, pasta, if it made from the right ingredients. This all lead me to do an internal audit of the foods that I was eating, and I found that often times “health” was a marketing strategy. Things such as cliff bars, and vitamin water are marketed to us as healthy alternatives, but what is inside them is actually horrible for our bodies, and this is because companies are more focused on margins, rather than quality of product. When you look at a product’s nutrition facts, often times you can’t pronounce half of the items, this is because over the past couple of decades, companies have substituted things such as real sugar and four, to things that have scientific labels. Also, when it comes to meat and dairy, the health of the animal determines the health of its meat, and according to Mark Bittman on his TED Talk, “What’s wrong with what we eat”, he says “half of the antibiotics in this country are not administered to people, but to animals.”  While these ingredients may not make us sick immediately, there lack of quality does affect our health long term, because you cannot duplicate a natural protein or atom grown out of a garden. Ultimately there has to be tighter regulations as to what companies can make their products out of. There needs to restrictions placed on where ingredients can come from, and new protocols and committees committed to monitoring farms and other businesses that manufacturer products. Companies should be banned from using GMO’s, and be forced to source their products from fresh and sustainable sources. Until that issue is fixed, and restrictions are but in place, greed and financial motivation will outweigh corporate social responsibility.

The second point, and an important step in fixing this issue and misconception about health, would be doctor patient relationships. There are not many relationships in our lives like the one we have with our doctor where we put this incredible amount of trust in. We believe what our doctors say, because we all know how complex the human body is, and similarly to taking a car to a mechanic, we often don’t know what the issue is, or how to fix it. But there is a flaw, at least in my eyes, when it comes to the conversations we have with our doctors, doctors are in the business of treating diseases, not preventing them, and ultimately that is where the problem resides. There seems to be this common misconception that disease is random, getting a cold just happens, and that there is no linkage to feeling “sick” and the one thing that we use to fuel our body. Diseases aren’t these unexplainable phenomena that are just brought onto people, and yes, there are obviously instances of disease that can be caused from genetics, or simply somebody sneezing in your direction, but what about everything else? Did you know, “that on any given day, 34% of children between the age of 2 and 19 consume fast food”? That is a quote from blog.partnersforyourhealth.com and their article Shocking Fast Food Statistics That You Should Know. Also, in the article Chronic Disease Overview written by the CDC, (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), it says that, “Seven of the top 10 causes of death in 2014 were chronic diseases. Two of these chronic diseases—heart disease and cancer—together accounted for nearly 46% of all deaths.” In the same article the CDC also states that, “In 2015, more than 37% of adolescents and 40% of adults said they ate fruit less than once a day, while 39% of adolescents and 22% of adults said they ate vegetables less than once a day.” The purpose of these stats is to show that there is obviously a correlation involved in regard to what we eat, and how healthy we are. The one variable that is consistent across everything is food, and a big step in fixing this issue in our country is going to be an educational overhaul. One of the reasons that doctors to not speak to nutrition is that it is not a big part of their curriculum, so therefore it doesn’t make it to the patients. There are many studies that confirm the impact of food and how it can cause developments of certain cancers and diseases.  There needs to be a reallocation of resources focusing on the sciences behind what we eat, that research needs to be added to what physicians and surgeons learn, so that we can learn about this from the people that teach us about health. From there, the issue will start to correct.

The third factor in fixing the food problems in our country would be making it more affordable for the average American family. On average, eating an organic based diet, and buying locally sourced products is more expensive than the alternatives. Shopping at a Whole Foods or Earth Fare is not a reality for a lot of families across the country. Also, regardless of data, consumers naturally think of eating healthier to be more expensive. According to the Washington Post in the article, Why is healthy food so expensive? Maybe because we expect it to be, it says, “The marketplace and the media appear to have taught most U.S. consumers to expect foods with special health properties to command a premium price.” However, it doesn’t have to be this way, and can be fixed through two ways. One, a lot of the problems resides in a point made earlier, whereas companies are focused on making products cheaper, not better, to improve and increase the amount of money they make. Therefore, because they are cheaper, and there is a lack of education, demand goes up for low quality products, and vice versa for high quality products. When price goes up, demand goes down, and when price goes down, demand goes up. The more people eating and buying healthy products, the cheaper it makes it for people across the country. For example, according to the Chicago Tribune in its article, Founded in a suburban basement four years ago, Chicago-based RXBar sells to Kellogg for $600 million, it says that, “The millennial-led Chicago company, which makes “clean-label” protein bars with whole-food ingredients, has taken off quickly through retail and online channels, with projected sales of $120 million this year.” RXBar is able to sell a clean protein bar, which has enough protein to be a whole meal, for $2-$3. They are able to sell for less because of how popular the bars have become. With this bar you are able to eat a healthy meal for $2-$3. The second solution would be providing options for insurance plans that give allowances to buy healthier food, or also cover things such as supplements, or western styles of medicines such as yoga and acupuncture that improve health. Eating healthy doesn’t have to break the bank, and people should not be prevented from affording what is good for them. Either of these options would allow people or give them the opportunity and choice to eat better.

To summarize, quality of food greatly impacts long and short-term health for a number of reasons, but we can fix this growing issue through tighter food regulations, better education through doctor patient relationships, and making healthy eating more affordable for American families. Lastly, to leave you with an analogy, imagine a home built on a strong foundation out of concretes and metals, and now imagine another home built on a poor foundation with cheap products, the home built well will last a long time, while the poorly built house will quickly deteriorate. This is ultimately what we are doing to our bodies when we eat a poor diet, we are setting ourselves up to get sick later in life. Buy into the fact that you truly are what you eat. In our lifetimes we have seen a technology revolution, and engineering revolution, and even a financial revolution, but the one coming up that will be most important will be the food revolution.
