Here are some highlights from the article in the url below, which makes the argument that reform of the food industry (and rejection of the current domination by agri-business) will take decades, rather than years:
“Nothing affects public health in the United States more than food. Gun violence kills tens of thousands of Americans a year. Heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes kill more than a million people a year — nearly half of all deaths — and diet is a root cause of many of those diseases.”
“… our system of hyper-industrial agriculture, the kind that uses 10 times as much energy as it produces.”
“We must figure out a way to un-invent this food system. It’s been a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy, tortured billions of animals… I could go on. … only by saving the earth can we save ourselves, and vice versa.”
“There is no consensus behind a program for achieving sustainable production of food that promotes rather than attacks health. We can’t ask for ‘better food for all’; we must be specific.”
“… when we begin treating sugar-sweetened beverages as we do tobacco, we will make a huge stride in improving our diet.”
This point in particular, I think, reveals how far we have to go as a society in generating a healthy food culture, even given our knowledge of the damage being done by the status quo:
“An association between tobacco and cancer was discovered more 200 years ago. The surgeon general’s report that identified smoking as a public health issue appeared in 1964. The food movement has not yet reached its 1964; there’s isn’t even a general acknowledgment of a problem in need of fixing.”
Happy Easter!
David
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/
Fixing Our Food Problem
By Mark Bittman
January 1, 2013
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
A19
