{"id":1002,"date":"2022-05-31T23:25:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T06:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workoutstructure.com\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2023-01-06T00:00:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T00:00:12","slug":"americas-food-system-the-problems-with-our-plate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/2022\/05\/31\/americas-food-system-the-problems-with-our-plate\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Food System: The Problems With Our Plate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PART 1<\/strong><\/em>
\nWHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FOOD SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES?<\/h3>\n

Once upon a time, our country was largely supported by small, local agricultural farms that would grow fresh produce, wheat, and other healthy commodities to feed neighbors.\u00a0 Those days have vanished.\u00a0 Our government has failed the farmers, ensuring that it is hardly profitable to grow real, nutritious foods.\u00a0 Meanwhile, it instead subsidizes farmers to grow a surplus of unhealthy \u201cfoods\u201d on unfertile lands \u2013 and then gives additional support to giant companies like Monsanto that aim to control crop fields with dangerous GMO seeds (genetically modified organisms).\u00a0 In fact, only 2% of American farmland is used to grow fruits and vegetables.\u00a0 And just 1% of US-grown corn is sold and eaten whole \u2013 most is used to feed livestock, converted to biofuels, processed as cornstarch, high-fructose corn syrup, or unhealthy cooking oils.\u00a0 Much of the healthy produce that is grown gets contaminated with toxic, cancer-causing pesticides or herbicides.\u00a0 Meanwhile, 70% of Americans are overweight, 40% are obese, and half of our adults are at least pre-diabetic (1 in 4 teens).\u00a0 By 2030, approximately 85 million Americans will suffer from 3 or more chronic diseases \u2013 which will incur a projected $95 trillion cost burden on the US government in the next 25 years.\u00a0 All virus fears aside, 11 million people die every year from a bad diet\u2026but does anyone seem to care?<\/p>\n

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The US government has established far-reaching welfare programs to ensure that none of its citizens go hungry, thus solving the calorie problem.\u00a0 But what about the empty<\/em> calorie problem?\u00a0 SNAP (food stamp) users qualify for an average of $120\/month in food benefits, but there are no nutritional qualifiers for what foods they can buy.\u00a0 Indeed, 75% of food-stamp purchases are ultra-processed junk foods \u2013 including a whopping $7 billion on sugary beverages! \u00a0(Coca-Cola alone made $30 billion total in 2018 on its sugar-water sales). \u00a0Laws requiring nutrition labels to list ingredients first by amount can be side-stepped, with sugary junk food companies listing many different chemical variations of sugars to deceive shoppers.\u00a0 Since residents in low-income areas are most likely to be surrounded by unhealthy (and cheaply-priced) empty calorie foods, this creates a vicious cycle of metabolic disease (more on this topic in Part 2 of this blog).\u00a0 To make matters worse, our health insurance system will pay for the expensive associated hospital stays\u2026but no money is ever awarded for healthy food consumption that could save billions in health care costs.\u00a0 And if all that doesn\u2019t scare you: even our national security is compromised when more and more young people are not physically fit for military service…and our schools are partly to blame.<\/p>\n

HOW COULD WE REMEDY\u00a0 SOME OF THESE PROBLEMS?<\/h3>\n

Many of these problems start with our jaded Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA must set the example by first promoting transparency in nutrition labeling and better regulating products that are GRAS (generally recognized as safe \u2013 yes, they actually use that term at the expense of our health); all while decreasing<\/em> the amount of harmful antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock feed.\u00a0 We need to introduce salad bars in schools; and establish local farm-to-school food programs \u2013 making sure that pizza is no longer classified as a vegetable just because big food corps pressured lawmakers.\u00a0 We can\u2019t support govt subsides for \u201ccrops\u201d like HFCS which\u00a0 hurt people\u2019s health.\u00a0 Instead, we could levy a 25% tax on processed foods – or their distributors \u2013 and use that money to pay for subsidies; or to incentive SNAP users to purchase healthy produce, nuts, and whole grains\u2026all of which would also benefit farmers.\u00a0 And what about Food Savings Accounts?\u00a0 Similar to a HSA, money could be stored tax-free and used to purchase healthy groceries.\u00a0 Research providing nutritious meals to those chronically ill has been found to cut their medical bills in half \u2013 thereby realizing food as a source of medicine all its own.<\/p>\n

These are big problems, with some big aspirations to resolve them. But we must each do our part to improve our own diets, and then educate those around us\u2026until one day enough people have had enough<\/em> of our broken food system and its disastrous effects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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-CHRIS BORGARD<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

CHRIS’\u00a0 TOP FOOD SYSTEM DOCUMENTARIES:<\/h4>\n
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  1. Fed Up<\/li>\n
  2. Food, Inc.,<\/li>\n
  3. King Corn<\/li>\n
  4. Supersize Me<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    PART 1 WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FOOD SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES? Once upon a time, our country was largely supported by small, local agricultural farms that would grow fresh produce, wheat, and other healthy commodities to feed neighbors.\u00a0 Those days have vanished.\u00a0 Our government has failed the farmers, ensuring that it is hardly … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “America\u2019s Food System: The Problems With Our Plate”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.workoutstructure.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}