Environmental Impact & health

1. Presented by Jason Atkinson Environmental Impact & health

2. The Problem • There is a significant difference in the food that past generations consumed and what we call “food” today. 

3. The Problem • Decades of mass consumption of highly processed, chemically modified and genetically altered foods has resulted in widespread incidence of obesity and related health conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer.

4. The Solution • Healthy soil is the beginning of a healthy food chain. Soil that is teeming with beneficial minerals and microorganisms yields pristine and healthy plant life.

5. The Solution • These types of plants contain nutrition derived from the sun and the soil. 

6. The Solution • Following the food chain, if an animal eats these plants and you eat the meat from that animal, you are still consuming those valuable nutrients.

7. The Solution • In order to reverse the current trend, we must return to ethical, sustainable methods of food production and storage utilizing the following six strategies:

8. Sustainable Farming

9. Sustainable Farming • Since the end of World War II, agriculture has changed dramatically. Productivity has soared due to new technologies such as mechanization, increased chemical use, specialization and government policies that favor maximizing production.

10. Sustainable Farming • These changes allow fewer farmers with reduced labor demands to produce the majority of the food in the U.S.

11. Sustainable Farming • A growing movement has emerged during the past two decades to question the role of the agricultural establishment in promoting practices that contribute to these social problems. Today this movement for sustainable agriculture is garnering increasing support and acceptance.

12. Sustainable Farming • Not only does sustainable agriculture address many environmental and social concerns, but it offers innovative and economically viable opportunities for growers, laborers, consumers, policymakers and many others in the entire food system. http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/sarep/about/def

13. Organic Foods

14. Organic Foods • Organic farming is based on ecologically balanced agricultural principles involving soil fertility, crop rotation and natural pest control. It may sound like an elusive concept, but the basis for organic farming is actually very simple: allow nature to do what it does best.

15. Organic Foods • Many everyday products can be produced on organic farms, including vegetables, meat, dairy, and eggs. What makes these things organic is how close they stay to their natural state.

16. Organic Foods • When growing organic goods, farmers do not use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers on crops, and they reject the use of synthetic hormones, antibiotics or other medications in their livestock. Animals are provided with organic feed and allowed access to the outdoors. science.howstuffworks.com

17. Ethical Practices

18. Ethical Practices • Intensive dairy practices and modified feeds have enabled U.S. dairy cows to produce 2.5 times as much milk today as they did in the 1950s. These intensive practices place dairy cattle under enormous stress to produce an abnormally large amount of milk, 10-20 times the amount of milk they need to suckle their calves.

19. Ethical Practices • Up to 33% of dairy cows develop mastitis, a very painful udder infection that can become systemic, and is a common reason for antibiotic use.

20. Ethical Practices • The dairy farms of today are quite different than the picturesque sunshine-filled meadows of contented cows we imagined as children. Today, most dairy cattle are confined to a barren fenced lot with a packed dirt floor, where they must endure all types of weather, including rain and extreme temperatures 24 hours a day.

21. Ethical Practices • Factory farming systems (sometimes known as dry-lot) seldom provide shade, shelter or clean comfortable resting areas. Dairy cattle are often covered with their own filth because they cannot escape the dirty dry lot conditions.

22. Ethical Practices • To boost their milk production, the cattle are fed high intensity feeds and grains that often cause digestive upset. They are also injected with Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) to increase the already exorbitant amount of milk they produce by up to 25%. Of the 9 million dairy cattle in the U.S., 7-25% are injected with BGH. http://www.bornfreeusa.org/facts.php?more=1&p=373

23. Non GMO’s

24. Non GMO’s • GMOs, or “genetically modified organisms,” are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.

25. Non GMO’s • Virtually all commercial GMO’s are engineered to withstand direct application of pesticides and / or to produce an insecticide effect within the plant.

26. Non GMO’s • For consumers, it can be difficult to stay up-to-date on food ingredients that are at-risk of being genetically modified, because the list of at-risk agricultural ingredients is frequently changing.

27. Non GMO’s • High-Risk Crops currently in commercial production include: • Canola (approx. 90% of U.S. crop) • Corn (approx. 88% of U.S. crop ) • Soy (approx. 94% of U.S. crop )

28. Non GMO’s • Also considered high-risk are animal products such as milk, meat and eggs because of the risk of contamination in commercial feed.

29. Non GMO’s • Common Ingredients Derived from GMO Risk Crops include:Aspartame, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Ethanol, Flavorings (“natural” and “artificial”), High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Lactic Acid, Maltodextrins, Monosodium Glutamate, Sucrose, Xanthan Gum, and Yeast Products. http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/what-is-gmo/

30. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency

31. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • Living in your digestive system are trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that are essential to the most basic biological mechanisms required for human life such as digestion, energy production, and detoxification.

32. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • These beneficial bacteria help you digest your food, produce energy, and perform important biological tasks such as manufacturing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine needed for brain function.

33. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • Over the past few decades, our environment has changed to a profound degree with the introduction of such things as chlorinated water, processed and modified foods, refined sugar and regular antibiotic use. Our digestive system was not designed for these conditions.

34. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • These conditions can decimate the beneficial bacteria in your digestive system resulting in a condition known as “dysbiosis.”

35. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • When you are dysbiotic, this means that the “bad germs” (disease causing bacteria, for instance) begin to edge out the “good germs.”  When the bad germs edge out the good germs, basic biological functions (such as digestion) begin to break down, and symptoms (like diarrhea or constipation) begin to appear.  

36. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • Not all symptoms of dysbiosis are obvious.  Because dysbiosis can lead to any number of physiological problems throughout the body, it can be responsible for symptoms as varied as depression and asthmatic wheezing. http://www.epidemicanswers.org

37. Lowered Antibiotic Dependency • Beneficial bacteria can be replaced by consuming quality fermented dairy products such as Greek style yogurt, which is a rich source of probiotics. Fermentation (unlike refrigeration) is a natural process of food preservation that has been in use for thousands of years. We are just now discovering the enormous health benefits of fermented dairy foods.

38. Less Human Interference

39. Less Human Interference • Arguably one of the worst things done to food is excessive processing, which is used mainly to extend shelf life. Hydrogenation, pasteurization, homogenization, extrusion, the list goes on and on.

40. Less Human Interference • Hydrogenation is the modification of fat molecules by introducing hydrogen, thus rendering them solid at room temperature. These saturated or so called “trans” fats are widely used in cookies, crackers, chips and other highly processed snack foods.

41. Less Human Interference • Pasteurization is a procedure used to destroy the potentially harmful bacteria in milk. Unfortunately, this process also destroys many of the beneficial microorganisms as well.

42. Less Human Interference • Grinding grains in order to produce flour reduces the particle size which can elevate blood sugar and possibly contribute to chronic inflammatory conditions such as arthritis and even athlerosclerosis or hardening of the arteries.

43. Less Human Interference • Even cooking foods destroys the enzymes such as lipases, proteases, and amylases needed to digest them. Including raw vegetables along with cooked ones can help restore the enzyme balance.

44. Less Human Interference • In the final analysis it is up to us to return to simpler methods of food production that do not harm the delicate natural environment. Doing so will ensure a return to the good health enjoyed by previous generations.