WELLNESS WEDNESDAY: The Elephant in the Room

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS:  The Elephant in the Room

"What we know is that people who eat the way we do in the West today suffer substantially higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity than people eating any number of different traditional diets."  --- Michael Pollan from In Defense of Food 2008

Michael Pollan writes in several of his books, including Food Rules, about �the elephant in the room� � the pattern of eating a Western diet and a deepening confusion about nutrition.  I have been thinking about his statements and I disagree with Mr. Pollan. Maybe it is because of where I grew up (Sacramento, California) and how I grew up (access to lots of fresh fruits and vegetables as a child and my mother enjoyed cooking).   Dinners were a family event.  My two brothers and I were expected to be at the dinner table when dinner was ready.  We were not allowed to eat in our bedrooms in front of TVs.  We had fruit for snacks after school.  Our house on Bausell Street was built in a walnut orchard in Sacramento.  We earned money picking up bags of walnuts, then shelling them.  No wonder I love walnuts so much!

I am not confused about nutrition.  For more than half my life, I have studied nutrition in relation to my health, my extended family�s health, and the absence or presence of disease.  I have been mindful of what I eat (most of the time!) and where my food is coming from.  This lifelong interest in the relationship between food, health, and disease is largely the reason why I went to University of Alabama at Birmingham to study public health in graduate school. 

It is clear that food and agriculture are Big Business in the U.S.  The more you process food, the more money you make.  The more processed food you eat, the sicker people will be.  The sicker people become, the more drugs will be prescribed by doctors because doctors don�t learn about nutrition in medical school.  They are taught to give pills, not kale and kiwi.  The more drugs doctors prescribe, the more visits you have to make to see if the drugs are working.  The more visits you have to make to the doctor, the richer the doctor gets.  And you are still sick.  

It is clear that eating foods filled with sugar, salt, and fat cause us to want to eat more foods with sugar, salt, and fat.  There is a scarcity of health literacy in this country.  You are what you eat.  When people learn to question the quality of the foods they eat and ask what the ingredients are they need to be healthy, then we will shift the burden from treating disease to preventing disease.  When people start asking about the quality of the water they drink and the chemicals used to grow the foods they eat, then we will begin to shift cancer morbidity and mortality. 

Become clear about what you are eating, who grew it, where it was grown and with what chemicals, if any.  How many days was it between when the food was harvested and when it was on your dinner table?  How far did someone have to drive your food to get it to your local store so you could buy it?  Become clear about these questions.  Learn the answers.  No elephants allowed.  

Nancy Heinrich

Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Paradise greetings,

One year ago, I had no idea that I was going to start a non-profit organization to build gardens for kids served by Boys and Girls Clubs of Indian River County. One year ago, I had an 8-5 job and was working in disease management for a physicians' practice, tracking data, teaching patients, and giving talks on diabetes and obesity.

Earlier this year I made the decision to start Growing Healthy Kids because of the overweight kids I see at every school and every community event. I see the awful food choices kids are given in school. Teachers and school social workers have started asking me for help with kids who are depressed and withdrawn because they are ashamed of their excess weight. I talk with frustrated parents who say they can't afford to eat healthy and I say to them, yes you can, I will teach you.

Growing Healthy Kids is about "fun with a purpose". We are starting to plant gardens around the county, including our first kayak garden with our partner, Kayaks Etc. Every week we are teaching lessons at the garden. Every week kids are actively learning how to make a healthy snack using ingredients that we are growing together in the gardens.

Every week the lessons I am learning make me grateful for my life, for my wonderful mother who made sure we had healthy, fresh foods to eat, and for my health. So many of the kids I am now gardening with here in Indian River County, Florida have grown up on fast foods and highly processed foods. My anecdotal observation is that these kids seem to explode with happiness when they taste a salsa made from freshly picked, chemical-free tomatoes. They're like starving dogs who've had to beg for table scraps for years and just got tossed a fresh wild salmon.

The foods many kids eat are full of refined sugars with no nutritional value but lots of calories, refined grains stripped of all the dietary fiber and vitamins that nature gave us, and saturated and trans fats that are driving the obesity epidemic and creating younger candidates for heart attacks and Big Pharma. Two in 3 American adults are overweight or obese and already one in 3 kids is overweight or obese. This must change.

Our kids' environment must change. We must change the food choices kids have and did I tell you that we're going to have fun doing it? We're going to plant a lot of gardens!

This is why I have created Growing Healthy Kids. Because NO MATTER WHAT, kids need real foods, not highly processed foods. Because NO MATTER WHAT, kids need some physical activity every day away from computers and texting. I have partnered with Kristen and Mike Beck at Kayaks Etc. so we can erase kids' nature deficit while they learn how to paddle a kayak and stretch some muscles they don't use playing handheld games.

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of children, one garden and one child at a time.

To your perfect health,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids