Before we begin, a personal email from a friend (would be great if readers could leave comments on the blog for all to see), says that I am beginning to sound a lot like a conspiracy theorist. Interesting. Remember that old humor maxim, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you” – likewise, just because something is conveniently labelled a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean there isn’t a conspiracy! Big money doesn’t like its agendas revealed and have set up anything that doesn’t fit their agenda’s as nutcase conspiracies! Note: they use the same techniques (and Ad agencies) that the tobacco cartels used to tell us how safe cigarette were!! The truth will come out. Let’s carry on with Food….
As I alluded to in the previous health-sickness posts, functional medicine looks at the whole-body system and not simply individual diseases. As such, prevention is key to optimal health. Nearly all diseases (infections are usually sudden) begin years before physical symptoms manifest themselves. There are of course many genetic predispositions for disease that are epigenetic in nature. (Oxford Dictionary – changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself.) The many environmental insults we give a body are often the triggers for epigenes being ‘turned on’ as well as these insults being the cause of disease in themselves (e.g. toxins, mutagens, carcinogens, etc…). And, I will be heretical here – our modern FOOD is being shown to trigger many diseases!
Once rare, food allergies are on the increase. The big 7 problem foods are Peanuts, Seafood, Tree nuts (Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, and walnuts are included), Eggs, Dairy (cow), Soy, and Wheat (proteins not gluten). Now this is a chicken or the egg kind of problem. Is it some change in the foods that cause the allergies or is it a normal reaction that the immune system and/or microbiome can no longer manage? Or a combination of both coupled with some agricultural toxins thrown in for good measure? Reductionist research looks for the one cause, while the problem may involve a multifactorial cascade system of some kind. This is where functional (holistic)) medicine research may eventually help, but as usual, where is money generated and what does big money not want to do?
It is no mystery to anyone interested in sustainability that the biggest problem with world hunger is greed and food distribution, not the amount of food. Even with conventional farming we can still produce enough food for everyone on the planet. However, what constitutes conventional farming these days is a far cry from farming of even a century ago. In the early 1970s, Earl Butz, the U.S. secretary of Agriculture, told farmers to “Get big, or get out.” The era of corporate agriculture was about to take over and the days of the small farmer were numbered. Before WWII, farming and associate jobs accounted for about 70% of the workforce in the USA. It is similar for most other western countries. In 2017, it was about 2% of the workforce (Europe is 1-2% as a comparison, with Less Developed Countries (LDCs) ranging from 40-90%). The big change before the 1970s was increased technology that permitted fewer people to farm – the rest ended up migrating to the cities, which is something we see today in the LDCs. What has fascinated me for more than two decades is the use of Genetic engineering.
The production of Genetically Engineered Organisms (GEOs) occurred in the 1970s – note I use GEO not GMO here, although the terms get used synonymously. I have seen many biology colleagues irked by this, but by no stretch of the imagination can crop and animal husbandry based on mendelian genetics be compared to the gene technologies used in GEOs – yes, humans modified genes through artificial selection of traits for millennia, but did not do transgenics with genes from different species. I’ve never had one biology colleague explain to me how the two are supposedly similar – they forget their basic Biology 101 and simply quote industrial mantras. To be fair, in the 1970s a gene for human insulin was introduced into a bacterium and a cheap plentiful source of Insulin was created that benefitted millions of Type I diabetics. Yes, there are benefits, but since then the technology has grown by leaps and bounds – notably with full acceptance (although we were never asked) by industry and with little real regulation. We now produce GEOs for much of our agricultural food systems, but the regulatory systems meant to protect us from unexpected consequences have been systematically dismantled. If you should find any problems, just like Seratini did in France, then corporations like Monsanto will find ways to destroy you. The problem is not that GMOs (as they prefer to call them) are automatically good or bad, but each case ought to be extensively blind tested by a third party with no vested interest in the outcome. The US-FDA charged with protecting us in the USA no longer does independent testing. Instead these corporations are asked to do their own research and report the full findings to the FDA – a sort of gentle-persons agreement of good faith – and we trust transnational corporations won’t try to put profits first. And that is supposed to make us feel better and secure about how transnational corporations manage our food and drugs?? Thirty eight (38) countries worldwide have officially banned the cultivation of GM crops and only 28 actually grow GM crops (most of which are farms under 500 thousand hectares). The Biotech industry and the government claim that GM crops have been accepted by the majority of countries worldwide. This is interesting for many countries have recently started to put in place regulations to protect their population and environment from the environmental and health damage now being shown caused by many GM crops. I am not automatically against GMOs, BUT I do think the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE (test to show harmlessness before unleashing it on the world) has a lot going for it. Especially when the worse-case-scenario consequences are global catastrophe of the food system. Even non-GMO Heirloom crop species are also being eliminated at alarming rates in favor of a few choice varieties that look good on the supermarket shelves. Have you noticed that the local green-grocer is almost a thing of the past. Farmers markets are making in-roads here, but the supermarket cartels work to keep that from happening on a large scale.
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