By
Gabriel J Thelen
There is a food crisis in many of our schools and society at large.
I believe two fundamental questions must be answered in any effort to
address this issue and affect long-lasting, sustainable solutions; what
socio/political-economic forces have brought us to this point and what
sustains these forces on a macro as well as micro level? The issue of
skewed priorities placing an inadequate or nonexistent focus on
nutritional basics has been fuelled by a range of far-reaching changes,
especially over the last few decades.
Looking back over the
decades one can seen an unhealthy shift in general western eating
culture. Many underlying social, economic and political forces have come
together to affect a confluence of changes which have significantly
driven up obesity, behavioural disorders and a range of other issues
such as age-related diseases triggered by cumulative nutritional
deficiencies and increased oxidative stresses - with nutritional
understanding sinking to unacceptable levels. Thankfully there is
growing awareness that it is the underlying attitudes, educational
methodologies and political/economic biases that must be addressed if we
are to see long lasting and self-perpetuating general health awareness
and allow more people to look after themselves and go through life with
at least basic nutritional understanding and positive health-awareness.
As
cities became more urbanised after the war and car-ownership exploded,
more and more took up residence in what you could call 'urban islands;'
people began to rely on their cars for transport to ever greater
degrees, and the distances at which dwellings were being built from
essentials such as shops and town/community centres generally became
larger. At the same time new technologies allowed the rise of the food
industry in its creation of mass-produced, highly processed, low-quality
fat and sugar based food of extremely low nutritional quality. This has
previously not been possible. Looking into the past, the acquisition of
food was fairly generally connected to some degree of physical
exertion, and even then, the sugar and fat contents for one thing, of
the foods consumed, were present in a more natural manner; fruits and
vegetables serve as substantive sources of sugar in the form of
fructose, and whole grain, high quality, hand-made bread for example,
provide a balance of carbohydrates, effecting the slow-and-steady
absorption of energy. Foods that combine fats (such as trans-fats) and
high concentrations of sugars in the worst possible way were practically
unthinkable, literally.
At the same time, many primary and
secondary schools do not practice anything resembling good nutritional
education - this general lack of learning is often not compensated for
at home and subsequently reinforced through the peer group. An
understanding of what a balanced diet is and why we need one is
certainly not innate wisdom; if signals at school are not balanced
and/or reinforced by parents who set a good nutritional example,
children will develop those eating habits with which they are surrounded
and may be surprised when their health deteriorates. This state of
affairs has been compounded by the rise of electronic distractions which
are not challenged by unappealing urban environments and due to which
many children are now far more sedentary than would have been possible
in times gone by. This is also a developmental hazard, as physical
activity is vital for healthy bone-development in children.
Junk
food advertisements on television are a further major problem which
induce some children to crave certain products, especially, as many have
found, when insidiously connected with recognisable childhood figures.
Parents cannot always control what their children eat and this kind of
advertisement undermines parental authority. It should not be tolerated
in such blatantly immoral forms. Even in the family environment, parents
have varying grades off ability to be firm with their children and some
will give in to nagging; this has been dubbed the 'nag effect.' Such
pressure on parents should be minimised.
This convergence of
factors; lack of nutritional awareness in schools compounded by a lack
of this knowledge in more teachers than can be seen as acceptable,
lessoned physical exertion, the rise of cheap, 'fast' food, and
certainly a general culture that does not give meal-time informed
attention and respect - are some of the main drivers behind the high
obesity rates and behavioural disorders which we see across much of the
western world. The food-like substances churned out by the industrial
'food' criminals and subsidised by their insiders working through
government (e.g. the F.D.A in the U.S) have been shown over and over
again to form the root of a plethora of problems; through their
encouragement of an extremely low-nutrition diet, packed with grotesque
amounts of sugar and saturated/trans-fats, packaged up with all manner
of artificial preservatives, colours and taste enhancers, passing as
food, generates addiction through skewing of qualitative taste signals,
subsequent obesity, disruption of healthy biological processes (insulin
overflow and hyperactivity through high-intensity dumping of glucose
into the system by virtue of chemical-soup soft-drinks for example) and
hormonal imbalances leading to diabetes. This comes together with
chronic nutritional deficiencies, fuelling problems such as autism,
ADHD,...(insert acronym).
All the labelling mainly serves the
pharmaceutical companies who, through government control of the medical
sphere resulting in competition restricting, anti-market practices, and
intrenched by mandatory medical associations (special-interest tyrannies
of control-freaks), reinforce such problems through a myriad of
'targeted' drugs which superficially claim to treat symptoms, ignoring
the treatment of causes which is required in order to solve the problem.
Furthermore, government policy, and this seems particularly pronounced
in the U.S, more often than not subsidising and allowing loopholes (e.g.
ingredient concealment, immoral advertising monopoly, phoney safety
'investigations' etc...) for the food-imitation 'industry,' facilitating
an inordinate degree of influence and control by the junk lobby,
allowing anti-ecological corporatism to run-amok, does little to assuage
the problems with which we are faced. Indeed, a focus on preventative
nutrition and cause-orientated, 'functional medicine,' as it is
increasingly being called, within the auspices of a greater
socio-political movement, is indispensable if we are going to stem and
turn the tide of these problems moving into the 21st century.
Things
are on the move and it seems schools are increasingly weaving basic
nutritional awareness into their curriculum. In Australia there has
certainly been promising progress, with many schools implementing snack
policies which encourage fruits and vegetables and even some policy
banning certain soft drinks and junk vending machines from school
premises. It is to be hoped that these changes are set against the
proper educational background. Much of this improvement is a reflection
of societal shifts; the global food movement, focusing on sustainable
agriculture and natural forms of cultivation has many different specific
offshoots - the rise of understanding and subsequent demand for the
benefits of organic food has been very pronounced, and this has come
with a realisation of the need to support local produce and work towards
sustainable agricultural practices. At the same time there is a growing
focus on alternative medicine and the intrinsic merits of preventative
living, allowing more informed and balanced medical choices, as the
failures and immoral and unsustainable consequences of the special
interest biased mainstream health system become ever more patent.
All
this is leading to an explosion of farmers markets, which are able to
offer quality and prices which are not reflective of the imbalances and
artificiality of international corporatism (unfair corporate monopoly
through domestic and international, government facilitated trade biases,
allowing for the absurd situation of limp, pesticide infested,
nutritionally leeched fibres passing as fruit and veggies taking
precedence over local produce in a community). There are programs
underway which have linked this local produce with schools, bringing
astounding benefits to the community. I think there is a growing
understanding that the more self-contained a regional economy can be,
the better it is for all. We do still have a long way to go before
government policy adequately reflects these changes, yet I believe the
pressure will grow; as the global economy becomes more and more unstable
people will increasingly move towards the safety of greater community
sustainability, with aggressive and destructive forms of industrial
corporatism no longer harbouring the same degree of sway in this changed
world.
Schools will continue to cater to community expectations,
as they become an increasingly fertile environment for the development
of healthy eating habits, within a greater focus on substantive
lifestyle practices. Many teaching courses now incorporate mandatory
nutritional components, which is another promising sign. Society must
find its feat in our modern world and develop sustainable structures
which incorporate the benefits of a modern lifestyle into a necessary
awareness of what we require to stay healthy. People are learning and
the more we can all contribute to spreading knowledge of what
sustainable living and good nutritional awareness means, the more
healthy society can become. We are part of local and global ecologies
which can only survive in their rich fertility if we adapt our modern
lifestyle to become synergistic with one's natural environment. The
illusion-induced focus on monoculture and productivity which has
developed in the agricultural field disrupts our ecology, leaves us
poorer, attacks our health, and robs future generations of the resources
they require. A more local, quality driven focus, naturally taking
advantage of the ecological and economic fundamentals of our environment
is the key to prosperous, more sustainable societies.You also can get more information
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