The Unhealthy Truth

Working at Random House this summer has yielded some great perks, including bound galleys of great books available in stacks in the cafeteria. I’ve just finished reading The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It by Robyn O’Brien, and it has been a huge eye-opener for me. A few months back while consulting a nutritionist for another project, her flat-out advice to me when hearing of my eating habits was to STOP DRINKING DIET SODA. I’ve since eliminated my daily and desperate can of Diet Coke, but this book brings to light numerous issues with food in America that we should be aware of as the country suffers an epidemic of the 4 A’s: Allergies, Asthma, ADHD and Autism.

O’Brien, a mother and a researcher, has taken the responsibility of shouting out what seems to be hush-hush in American food politics. While many experts claim not to understand the primary causes behind these epidemics, she believes through her research findings that there are four major factors contributing to the detrimental health of our families:

1. The shift from a natural to an industrialized environment
2. Excessive exposure to antibiotics, both as prescribed to our children and as consumed through antibiotic-laden meat, milk, and poultry
3. The rise in pollutants and environmental toxins, and
4. Our tendency to eat more processed foods loaded with chemical additives and preservatives and to eat far fewer natural whole foods.

She goes on to describe how genetically-modified (GM) foods are produced, and reveals some of the potential health effects associated with this altering. GM foods bring into question the long-term consequences of creating new organisms that may potentially be creating new diseases. In the US, great effort must take place to label foods organic, while in Europe, organic food is just food, and modified ingredients must be labeled. Doesn’t this seem like a better way?

We sometimes blindly trust our government’s FDA with protecting our sources of nutrition, but with the “revolving door” of personnel at the large biotech companies swinging in and out of our government positions, we must consider how the interests of big business may in fact be more valuable than the health of our population. The system is broken, and until it is fixed, a heightened level of vigilance on every individual’s part is essential in keeping food companies honest and our health in check.

Nobody’s perfect, and change is tough, especially with kids who love what they know—mac and cheese in the blue box, chicken nuggets, juice boxes. I don’t know too many kids that have been raised differently. O’Brien offers some ways to get started with making necessary changes at home, and offers some tips for getting started slowly. She follows the 80-20 rule, 80 percent of what she gives her kids is healthy, “free of additives, preservatives, artificial color, aspartame, MSG–then for the other 20 percent, we, and they, get a free pass.” It’s a good start. I really like her “substitutions” charts. “Instead of this, choose this.” The offering of alternatives to the pantry staples of households nationwide is an inspiring way to begin the change. I wonder if this type of direct addressing could be the key to helping to get this knowledge out there for my interaction thesis, promoting awareness with less preaching and more solutions.