Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

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Click here to read The Environmental Science and Technology Abstract

Did you know that 70% of antibiotics produced in the US are given to animals? The factory farms they are crammed into (concentration camps for animals) are so unhealthy that operators give the cows and chickens doses of antibiotics to prevent or cure plagues caused by overcrowding.

One result: microbes have evolved to survive the antibiotics. That’s evolution for you!

Second result: medicines that once cured human diseases are no longer working, and people are dying.

Even the soil is now impregnated with antibiotic-resistant genes! A recent study found that present-day soil has 15 times as many tetracycline-resistant genes than did soil that had been preserved since 1940 – even though this occurred in the Netherlands, which has stricter (read saner) laws about unnecessary antibiotic use in agriculture than we do. Read the study abstract in the Environmental Science and Technology. So please support efforts by legislators and regulators to rein in the overuse of medicines! In effect, this means opposing confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) which are horribly cruel.




Finally! The US Department of Agriculture is putting more resources into increasing access to local, healthy foods at affordable prices to residents of low-income communities. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “The Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, will provide training, technical assistance, and funding to community organizations, entrepreneurs, and small businesses working to build local and regional food systems across the country. Promoting the production and distribution of food within a local foodshed opens new markets to small- and mid-sized farmers, fosters social connections between urban and rural residents, and can improve health in inner-city neighborhoods where fresh fruits and vegetables are often scarce.” I’m sure we can all applaud the creation of food equality.




Reevaluating and revamping school lunches so that they are not only nutritional but are earth-friendly as well has become a popular topic in today’s society. Our nation’s lawmakers have taken a huge step in providing children with basic nutritional needs. This week the Senate Agriculture Committee voted to pass the Heathy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which is a bill that will revamp school lunches to be healthier and sustainable for the environment. Hopefully this bill will pass the full Senate to become a law. But in the meantime, Berkeley schools have become the pilot for not only California schools, but the nation. The School Lunch Initiative provides “delicious, healthy, freshly prepared meals using seasonal ingredients from sustainable farms to all of Berkeley’s public school students.”  If you also look at the big picture this will benefit this generation because children will learn to take the basic essentials of eating healthy Earth-friendly foods and apply them in the future benefiting our environment! To read the full article feel free to click here.

Also applying to our children and school meals, recently ABC aired the TV show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution where the chef has made it his mission to help transform the way schools are currently feeding our children. Many schools have filled their lunchrooms with processed, unhealthy meals contributing to epidemic of obese children. Here’s Jamie’s main message on the issue:

I believe that every child in America has the right to fresh, nutritious school meals, and that every family deserves real, honest, wholesome food. Too many people are being affected by what they eat. It’s time for a national revolution. America needs to stand up for better food!” To learn more about Jamie Oliver’s stance and help out by signing a petition to improve school food, please check out his website.




In light of the grocery store excerpt previously posted, I came across this news story, The Great Grocery Smackdown by Corby Kummer (The Atlantic), which you can read the whole story for yourself to learn the outcome. Kummer orchestrates a blind  tasting between Walmart and Whole Foods’ organic products. Amazingly enough Walmart is starting support their local farms that years ago they helped destroy. “To get more locally grown produce into grocery stores and restaurants, the partnership [with Agile Agriculture and Walmart] is centralizing and streamlining distribution for farms with limited growing seasons, limited production, and limited transportation resources.” Walmart has recently committed itself to help rebuild economies and communities instead of destroying them. You know we need to start going for Earth-friendly food choices especially when companies like Walmart are realizing the detrimental effects it’s had on the environment.  This corporate giant may not be so bad after all…




A renowned and widely quoted United Nations report from 2006 identified meat production as causing 18% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Lately an air quality specialist at UC Davis claimed that in the US, it amounts to only 3% and that cutting back on meat is a distraction from the search for solutions to climate change.

To read the article from UCDavis click here… and to read Veggies are Wrong and Eating Less Meat will NOT Save the Planet click here.

But just days later, another report came out affirming the danger of meat to planet earth.

To read the article Major Report Explores Staggering Impact of Meat Production click this link.
I’m no climate scientist, but I can see many reasons meat is harming the earth. Producing the food to feed the animals uses a third of earth’s arable land – which could be used to feed people. Rainforests are being cut down at an alarming rate to grow soybeans to turn into animal food. Manure and liquid and methane waste from the animals pollutes air, water, and soil. The oceans are being emptied of fish that are also turned into animal feed.

What do you think?




Much of Americans’ obesity issues  are blamed on the junk food that Americans consume. Researchers, recently suggested taxing these food items to help fight obesity.  This could help prevent people for purchasing things such as pizza and soda in order to encourage eating more Earth-Friendly foods. To read the full article click here.