Vegetables are Local, from the Farmer's Market, No Pesticides, No-GMO's and here is why this is important to you. Why you should care for yourself, family, friends and our future. This is personal. This is personal to you.
You do not have to be an environmentalist or a activist, or health nut, to take notice to what food you are eating right now. What are you eating right now, while you are reading this. Stop and look at it. If your are not eating anything at this moment, when you do eat, next time, notice what it is that you grabbed, or ordered, and/or made for yourself. If it is from a box, packaged food, meat, fish, chicken, fruit or vegetables, rattle off the first four ingredients to yourself. If your food is not from a box, what country, is it coming from? Is it local? Is it organic? Do you just not know or care that much?
Now, you might be already thinking to yourself, this post is not for you and if that is true, stop reading this. However, if you are interested in the state of your own health you may still be with me. Because the fact is, we cannot continue to think the isles in the grocery store are generally okay. The food we purchase "is what it is" and it is "too expensive" too buy healthier options. Or our office jobs and long hours prevent us from making better choices.
A constant theme I have been hearing a lot of as of late, is this crippling thought, "It is what it is." This is the ultimate "lame duck" health solution. This saying has been percolating more now than ever when it comes to choices we make about our health. These choices include the food that we eat to simply getting on a bike and riding it. We, as a culture, make excuses to avoid healthy living. The biggest cop out is to believe "it is what is." This saying reinforces an unhealthy approach to living life to its fullest. Blah, blah you might be mumbling to yourself right now. Maybe you prefer paying unesssary doctor bills. Those bills that control you. The doctor bills that are the result of eating your way into oblivion and now you suffer from adult diabetes or high cholesterol or risk of heart disease. Your health insurance providers - with or without insurance - love you for it and health professionals do to. Maybe you just decided to stop taking care of yourself because your computer controls your life and so does eating food on the fly.
How can we care so little about our own bodies when we are given one body for life. We misuse our bodies, abuse ourselves and go for broke. It is a vicious cycle and I am taking a lot of notice. So much so that I hope you do to.
Not only is the obesity rate growing faster then ever, so is the growing rate of poor quality food entering into our food system in the US and around the world. I observe and see kids under 12 years old, alarmingly large and this is not a"normal-chubby-weight" issue. More and more children are suffering at the hands of adult decisions that seem harder and harder to change. Problems we just seem to comfortably say are because "it is what it is" and yet we have been saying the same thing for over a decade now. I have read what I have written here hundreds of times over the years and it is still here and the problem is about to go threw the roof.
So why should we care about where are food comes from? This may not seem obvious to those whom are unaware of what they eat because of lack of resources yet there are so many people that know better and still support the processed food industry, at such shockingly high rates, it is making me angrier as I put my fingers to this keyboard. People who just prefer to take prescription drugs to numb their pain and/or undergo procedures to get the fat sucked out of them because they can afford to. Even those that have a tighter spending plan still spend more money on most anything other than their own health. We all spend money unnecessarily, even homeless people on the streets to disenfranchised families. We are all guilty of spending money unhealthfully.
It is clear and proof is in the pudding. Look at any statistics on health issues in this country and everything I have said here is true. We continue to open up retail outlets that exploit sugar in death defying amounts. Donut shops are everywhere and Sugar Co. is everywhere. This is 2016 and we know better!
Why should we care more than ever right now on on this day? We have elected a person to be our President that will take our country backwards by more than three decades. He himself prides himself on junk food and fast food. He is a man whom is 6'4" in height and eats food that will give him a heart attack. For a tall man, he requires a lot of junk food and he is proud of it. This is going to be our President. He has hired a man named Scott Pruitt, a former Attorney General of Oklahoma, to be the head of our EPA. Scott Pruitt has long been held as someone whom does not believe in clean water, clean food and clean energy. He believes that Climate Change does not exist and would rather support companies that are big polluters. This pollution emitted into the air over the next four years will be so severe. How severe? Well, Big US Agricultural companies will be able to spray, via aircraft, massive amounts of herbicides and pesticides in unprecedented levels over all the food that we eat and emit those chemicals into our airstream on a level we have not seen before. This massive problem, will result in radiation of our food, on a unprecedented scale. As mentioned to everything we eat and the water that we drink. This means that food, water and air protection regulations will rest on no ground with Scott Pruitt running the EPA. His main concern is to support large Agricultural companies and that means producers of Corn, Wheat and Soy. The over consumption of these three food items alone and the hidden-altered-derivative forms of these three processed foods, are in everything we eat. Everything. I mean what we ingest daily and the animals that we eat ingest daily. We are all eating the same over processed and chemically riden food. These three items are the absolute cause of food born illness and the root cause of many other illnesses. You are what you eat. Think hard about how you feel right now and be honest with what you ate and drank so far today. It all goes back to that opening in our mouth and the dire issue we face with the new administration come January 2017.
And so why is this so important again? Why is Scott Pruitt appointed head of the EPA the absolute most unethical choice to lead? Well, he has control over what we eat, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and now that it is up to him, we will see so many negative changes to our food systems, water systems and environment (National Parks, Open Land, Eminent Domain). All of our rights will be limited in ways that will rock our world to no end.
So, I am reaching out to you and if you agree, please stand up and say no to Scott Pruitt. Please sign this petition and name your State Senator as well. We can collectively impress upon each of our State Senator's to do the right thing. We can impress upon the fact that we need to move in a better direction that includes a leader whom cares about our health and the health of our environment. A leader whom supports scientists that have spent their life work studying our planet and the challenges that we all face now. Anyone that does not believe in Climate Change is not an acceptable leader to run our country. Climate Change is the over arching dilemma of our life-time and encompasses all of life itself. This is our right. Our human right for clean, food, clean water and clean air quality. Our efforts together for Climate Action, collectively, can help mitigate this crisis worldwide. Please do not turn your back on what horror is in front of us and please support your health, your families health, the health of our country and our planet.