In North America, scientists are saying we have much better quality of water than in many other regions of the world. I hope we can maintain and improve upon water quality because none of us anywhere can live without clean water.
By contrast, the FOOD in my region of the world is disgusting, for the most part! Not because we're an impoverished nation/region having food shortages but because we're having definite NUTRITION shortages from all our processed food!
Our health, overall in this area of the world is ridiculously poor and makes no good sense at all since we're considered a wealthy region of the world. Most of our sicknesses are entirely avoidable, save for our unhealthy lifestyles over here and our (largely) uninformed food choices - scratch that last bit... I can attest to being quite INFORMED about healthy foods but as a low-income resident of my city, I can better afford the foods that are full of preservatives, chemicals, fake ingredients, fillers and that are unhealthy for human consumption... you know the foods - the ones in marketable, attractive containers with colourful labels and misleading print on the lables?
A lot of Americans and Canadians WANT TO eat better, healthier - but in the current recession (oh, this will come up in a blog post soon, I'm sure - the social construction of a RECESSION... almost ready to get started here), many truly cannot afford to purchase enough produce versus packaged and cheap foods - in order to maintain a nutritional, healthy diet.
Now, just so I don't name a sole cause of lack of nutrition (big problems rarely have one sole cause/source of origin), I'm going to say LIFESTYLE also brings us to make unsound nutritional choices in my area. Sometimes people who can actually afford good, nutritional food lack the time to prepare foods, because they are working too hard (this is going to bring out the haters, but I'm "going for it" anyway). I believe that North Americans (and others around the world) are quite constantly engaged in activities - primary work activities, too - that keep people in varying states of unnecessary stress, keep people to keyed up to focus on proper lifestyle choices, etc. I'm not tryin' to whine here - but I look around and I am one of the least stressed people I know. I have disabilities - and spend less time in the workplace than most of my friends. Most of the people I see when I look around are FREAKED RIGHT OUT half the time, tryin' to make ends meet. It's always, "I've got to get to work, work more hours, make more money, see kids less, make more money, pay higher rent/mortgage bills, see my spouse less - 'cos I have to work more hours this month - or work more if I want to have a holiday this year to spend with my family and friends."
M. Pollan asks, "Why does a Twinkie cost less than a bunch of carrots?"
Mark Winne lecture "Closing The Food Gap" below. This is a lecture from 2009 at Marlborough College and is about an hour long. Topics include, how we get our food, general health, food security, hunger and food insecurity, more...
Have you got any ideas to share about growing food, food security, etc?
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