MyWellness Network

Reposted From “Nutrition In The Schools”
Originally Posted on Chef Ann Cooper’s Blog

Ten Reasons to Fix School Lunch and Save Our Children’s Future

Five Facts to Motivate Us

1. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has stated that of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will contract Diabetes in their Lifetime – most before they graduate high school.

2. The achievement gap, which is truly a social justice issue will never be shrunk unless we clearly understand that healthy food is linked to academic performance. Hungry or malnourished students cannot learn to the best of their abilities.

3. Studies have shown that a diet consisting of foods high in fats, sugars, food additives and artificial colors, and low in vitamins, minerals and other protective factors such as fiber and phytochemicals commonly found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains can negatively impact learning.

4. National Institutes of Health has stated that, of the six leading causes of death in the United States, four are linked to unhealthy diets. The gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor has widened by almost 50% in the last 20 years – much of that can be attributed to diet and exercise.

5. Exposure to pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals through our food supply is being increasingly linked to such conditions and ADD, ADHD, antibiotic resistance and early onset of puberty, as well as diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Five Facts to Give Us Hope

6. Because Harry S Truman was right when he said; “No nation is healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers.”

7. A study done by Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the CDC of a school in New York showed that 80% of the children and or parents changed the way they cooked, ate or shopped because of the school’s food program.

8. A recent study in Berkeley CA done by the UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health provided findings that children in the school districts program ate three times as many vegetables when eating school lunch as those students who brought their lunch from home.

9. A study done by Massachusetts General showed that children served a nutritious breakfast were better able to learn and had less behavioral problems.

10. Removing chocolate milk from schools could remove 4 – 6 pounds of sugar from children’s diet every year.

All facts attributable to Chef Ann Cooper and citations can be found on this http://www.chefann.com/

From Live Well Holistic Health Center

Autumn, with its crisp, cold weather, is ‘Vata’ season, according to Ayurvedic medicine. Ayurveda describes three ‘doshas’ or qualities ascribed to all things. The Vata dosha is often compared to the wind, being erratic and changeable, quick, cooling and drying.

Autumn is a time of high energy, unpredictable weather, and increased activity. To counter the unbalancing qualities of this season, try to follow the general guidelines below. You will likely catch fewer colds, have less dry skin and chapped lips, and feel better overall.

First and foremost, protect your neck from the cold and wind. According to traditional Chinese medicine, the neck is the most vulnerable to those elements and the number one way we catch colds. So never go out without a scarf.

Second, begin shifting away from cold, raw foods like salads and cold cereal and toward warm, unctuous (more oily), nurturing, cooked foods such as oatmeal, soups and casseroles.

Third, get a little extra rest by adding another half hour (and full hour by Winter) to your night’s sleep.

Lastly, a technique from Ayurveda to further protect yourself from the drying effect of the cold and wind is to take a little ghee, cooking oil, nose oil (we have some for sale at Live Well) or even butter on your pinky fingers and lubricate inside your nostrils and ears. Trust me, its great, and it really helps kids.

So stay warm, get your rest, keep lubricated, and hopefully you’ll enjoy a cold-free Autumn! If that’s not the case, we’re here to support you, so please don’t hesitate to call us.

Live Well Holistic Health Center
Dr. Martin Orimenko, DC, ND, FIACA
16 East Lancaster Avenue, Plaza 16 Building – Suite 104
Ardmore, PA 19003
610.896.1554

By Heather Rudalavage, Registered Dietician

One of the most challenging pieces of the the intuitive eating approach is that people don’t see how it can work. People don’t trust themselves. They believe they won’t be able to stop eating chocolate or cake or pizza. Maybe it’s because the diet message is so pervasive in our society, or maybe we are just narcissistic in nature, but it continues to astonish me how much my clients rely on external sources to know what, when and how much to eat. Odd because hunger is a physiological response similar to breathing or having to pee. When we visit the restroom, we don’t say, “did I pee too much?” When we take a breath, we don’t say, “it’s not time to breathe yet”. But clients ask me all the time, “how much should I eat?” Or, “I am hungry all the time.”

I just finished reading a wonderful book called, “The Only Diet There Is”, among emphasizing that loving yourself and forgiveness, is the best diet there is, she also addresses the impact of guilt and negativity on our weight. Science may have not been able to prove this exactly, yet, but it seems that our body’s react more strongly to how we feel about the food we eat than the actual content of the food. Astonishing! If we think the food we are eating is “fattening” than our body will treat it as thus.

So, I just can not emphasize enough, the answer lies within. If you drop the dieting mentality and the voices in your head that tell you that a particular food is bad, you will be able to tune in and when you tune in, your body will tell you what, when and where to eat. Sometimes your body may say, chocolate and sometimes it may say a tuna melt, but whatever your body says, listen, because it is the right choice for you at that moment.

Here is the link to a nice article about guilt and intuitive eating : article

Whole Foods Market Plymouth Meeting
500 W. Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
phone 610-832-0020
wholefoods.com/stores/plymouthmeeting

Thursday, March 18th
6 pm – 7 pm
FREE!
Please join us in welcoming Doctors of Naturopathy, Jackie and Angel Giordano, as they invite us on a journey on how to enhance your well being in preparation for spring! This class will cover the basics on how to support the healthy structure of your body through the use of nutritional supplements, diet, and lifestyle, as well as clearing the congestion in your personal space to enhance optimal living conditions. There will be a 15 minute personal tour of the Whole Body Department immediately following the class! Sign up required.

An Afternoon at the Spa
Saturday, March 20th
12 pm – 3 pm
FREE!
Come discover one of the best kept secrets at Whole Foods Market Plymouth Meeting – our Whole Body Department! You’ll have the chance to chat with vendors and sample their unique products while snacking on light fare right in the department. You can even enter to win a spa goodie bag, packed with all of our favorite Whole Body Department products! You don’t want to miss this educational, relaxing event.

Country Life – Vendor Lecture
Tuesday, March 23rd
6 pm – 7 pm
FREE!
Join us in our Community Room for an hour-long information session with a representative from Country Life. Learn all about their products, so your next trip to our Whole Body Department will be even better! Sign up required.

America has become the greatest “Pop” culture in the world… as in popping pills to make us feel better. Got a headache? Take an aspirin. Can’t sleep? Take a sleeping pill. Depressed? Take an anti-depressant, and so on. Men over 40 are urged to pop a “love pill” in order to be able to “perform” in bed. The mantras of the pharmaceutical industry are being chanted to us over and over again; each time we turn on the TV we are bombarded with commercials that tout the miraculous effects of such-and-such a drug, followed by a myriad of
possible side effects, including death! But the mantra goes on, chanting us into a dangerous illusion that everything will be alright if we just take that pill…

Wait a minute… Is there not something terribly wrong with this picture? Are our bodies so innately dysfunctional that we have no other choice than to hope the doctor will figure out which drugs or surgery are going to solve our problem? The answer to the last question is NO. I have nothing personal against doctors – in fact, I probably wouldn’t be here today without them. However, the system into which they have been trained – and entrained – more often than not, doesn’t respect the natural healing mechanism of our bodies, assuming instead that when a function goes wrong it must be “fixed” by drugs or surgery. Diet
and nutrition are wholly underestimated in the healing process, as are lifestyle and relationships. Medicine has become so compartmentalized and specialized that we tend to concentrate on the details of a particular ailment and lose the greater picture of what is actually happening for the patient. The myth that the medical industry has all the answers is so prevalent that the bodies that it is supposed to heal have little or no say in their own healing process.

Yes, I did say “bodies”, and not “people”. The point I am trying to make here is that we tend to forget that our bodies are not just machines that could use an oil change from time to time. They have their own “consciousness”, and often try to tell us things that we don’t necessarily want to hear. When our body experiences pain, it is telling us that something is wrong and needs to be attended to. Annoying as it can be, pain serves a vital function and must be respected for the message it conveys. Which is not to say that nothing should be done to alleviate the pain, once the message has been acknowledged.
This is a dilemma that modern medicine has created, since it is based on symptomology, which dictates that we treat symptoms instead of taking a look at the bigger picture and figuring out “the cause of the cause of the cause”, just as Hippocrates once stated. Instead of running around trying to put out the fire wherever it pops up, we need to find the reason behind it, whether it be purely physiological, mental, emotional, or even “energetic”. Some of us believe that disease has an energetic cause, meaning that it originates in the energetic field of the person. Looking at health in this way is called a “holistic” view. This term has been overused and abused, but it still has a meaning that no other word can convey: “whole”. And this is the way that we came into this world, as “whole” beings, not just a digestive tube or a nervous system, or a bunch of limbs, a trunk and a head. We are Whole beings, complete with our own unique energies that enable us to function as physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beings.

Looking at things from a greater perspective, one could make the analogy between how our cells work together to create harmony in our bodies (homeostasis) and how our human societies work. As long as our bodies, and our societies, have the necessary elements (healthy food, clean air and water, shelter and clothing, good relationships with self and with one another), both bodies and societies can live in harmony. In our bodies, our cells work hard to build new cells, create tissues, organs and systems, get rid of waste, etc. However, at this time in history, they are constantly being bombarded with new and strange chemicals that they don’t recognize and have no clue what to do with them. Communicating amongst each other, stressed and overworked, they find solutions to deal with these chemicals, such as creating specific, delineated areas to dump the toxic waste, that we call tumors. But when the toxic waste becomes so abundant that the cells can’t even perform their basic functions, the “toxic waste dumps” become overloaded and run into the rest of the body, which could be what we call metastasis. If enough toxic waste overruns the vital systems, the organism shuts down and dies. This is an oversimplified
representation, its purpose being to demonstrate movement and flow, not to prove a point.

In a similar way, human societies are dealing with an overload of unnatural stimuli (drugs, alcohol, toxic TV, artificially imposed work hours, etc.), which push a certain number of us into erratic, unhealthy behavior, such as addiction and violence. Wanting to stop the damage, the system puts those individuals who cannot cope with the system’s constraints into delineated areas (prisons, mental institutions, special schools) but doesn’t realize that its own obsessive behavior (imposition of rules dictated by a few to control the masses) is the cause of the diseased society in the first place. If the cells of the brain suddenly
decided to dictate to the kidneys what they are supposed to do, the body would disintegrate into chaos. It is actually the cells of the kidneys that inform the brain of the levels of sodium and potassium, as well as the blood volume; the brain cells in turn produce hormones to regulate those levels. But one cannot work without the other, and a brain cell has no more importance than a kidney cell to the life of the organism.

This brings me to the crux of this article, which has to do with vaccinations. Vaccinations are the ultimate example of how we, in this society, have been fooling our bodies, and thus fooling ourselves into believing that we are doing something good for our bodies, and thus for society, by getting vaccinated. According to Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com, there is no hard scientific evidence supporting the idea that vaccines can somehow trick our bodies into protecting us from disease. Most of the diseases that we receive vaccines for have disappeared, not because of the vaccines, but because of improved hygiene. Take a look at some vaccine history, gathered from reputable sources like “The Lancet” and “Journal of the American Medical Association”, appearing here thanks to Natural News:

In the 1970`s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)

In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )

‐ In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People`s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)

‐ In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696‐697, 1981)

‐The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.

‐ In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who
died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)

‐ In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)

‐ In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)

The yearly influenza vaccines are prepared using guesswork, not knowing at all which strains of the virus will be predominant. Many people receiving the flu shot do actually get the flu, and often experience flu symptoms more severely than those who are not vaccinated. There have been thousands, if not millions, of vaccination-related accidents, resulting in death or serious impairment of mental and/or physical capacities. These accidents are not always documented, as we saw in the statement released by the National Vaccine Information Center, and never publicized by the drug companies, whose financial interest comes before public welfare. Again, I have nothing against the individuals working for these companies, who are just trying to do a good job and make a
living in a system that caters to the rich and tricks the rest of us into believing we somehow have a chance to “make it rich”. However, the people at the heads of these pharmaceutical giants need to take responsibility for their actions, and instead of asking the Secretary of Health for blanket legal immunity in case of adverse reactions from the H1N1 vaccine, should be taking every precaution to make darned sure that no one will ever have an adverse reaction of any kind to their flu shots. Cut to 25 year-old Desiree Jennings, victim of a flu shot that
robbed her of her ability to walk forward, or to speak coherently. She can walk backwards and run forward, and incidentally when she runs forward her speech becomes normal. Even a one-in-a-million chance of this happening should never be tolerated!

There are many ways of helping our bodies improve their natural immunity, without having to inject toxic waste into them. Eliminating artificial molecules found in our diets and medicine is a good start – drinking clean water is essential, and of course breathing fresh, clean air. Even if we don’t necessarily have access to a totally natural, organic diet and clean water and air, we can still help our bodies to build their own immunities by making sure that we deal with our stress, by getting enough exercise and sunshine, and by learning to breathe in a slow and rhythmic way. Consciousness is the key to living a
healthy, happy life. Becoming conscious of our movements, our bodies, our thoughts and feelings, will help us to go within and listen to our bodies, listen to ourselves. For we have the answers to all of our questions, if only we allow ourselves to go to that place where they are found, in the center of our being where all exists, and all is one.

I realize that this may be difficult for many of us, but I must insist on the fact that most of the difficulty resides in the mind. Our minds are fabulous instruments, but only when they serve our greater purpose, and not the other way around. The analogy I evoked earlier applies here as well: one group of people in power does not serve the greater good very well. In our society, the intellect has been propelled into an all-important role, leaving intuition and emotional intelligence in the dust. By putting the intellect back in its place and giving our other mental and emotional functions their due respect, we increase our chances of becoming happy, healthy individuals, and thus helping to create a more just, healthy and happy society.

So popping pills is not the answer. Nor is getting a vaccination. The only real answer to questions about our health lies within ourselves, and within Nature, who has provided us for millions of years with all the remedies we could ever dream of. We walk upon the Earth, who has supported our lives and our societies for generations, and has never asked for a thing in return. Perhaps we owe her some respect, recognition for all that has been offered to us, instead of
pillaging and raping all that can be exploited from her. In native societies, rape does not exist. Women are treated with the respect that the Mother Earth deserves, and gets. We would do well to learn from these native societies, and treat our bodies, and ourselves, with the respect that we deserve.

Sarah Dickinson Murray,
Medical Intuitive and Natural Health Consultant
Wilmington, Delaware
October 28th, 2009

Paul Liberatore – Contra Costa Times

The annual Bioneers conference prides itself on presenting unsung “superstars” – “great people nobody has ever heard of,” founder Kenny Ausubel said during the weekend gathering at the Marin Civic Center.

But Andrew Weil, a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, is a superstar physician just about everyone has heard of from his books and appearances on “Larry King Live,” the “Today Show” and “Oprah.”

An avuncular figure with his neatly trimmed white beard, bald head and easy smile, Weil spoke about the contentious health care reform issue at the 20th Bioneers convocation on Saturday.

He was the headliner of the morning plenary session, strolling the stage in jeans and a gray T-shirt, speaking without notes to a large but not capacity crowd in the 2,000-seat Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

He wasted no time in framing the current debate as not about health care, but about health insurance, pointing out that our overly expensive health care system is 37th in the world in terms of quality, about the same as Serbia.

“There is something very wrong with this picture,” he said.

He noted that in his recent speeches on health care, President Barack Obama’s only reference to preventive medicine was to encourage people to get a colonoscopy. But there was no mention of health education or the lifestyle choices – diet and exercise – that are major factors in disease prevention and health promotion.

He blamed a corporate “disease management system” that is overly
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dependent on expensive technology – the overuse of high-tech scans that themselves may cause cancer, and the over-reliance on prescription drugs for treating each and every disease.

“Americans are taking prescription drugs at 10 times the rate as when I was growing up,” he said. And without naming brand names, he got a big hand when he took aim at the proliferation of ads for prescription drugs on television, saying, “If I were king, I would ban direct consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. If I were on a desert island and had to pick 12 drugs to have with me, I’d pick things like morphine and aspirin, not the stuff advertised on TV. This is a big problem we’ve got to solve.”

He advised his audience against relying on politicians to solve it.

“They only pay lip service to prevention,” he said. “They are too beholden to vested interests. The corrupting influence of money is overwhelming. The profits are outrageous.”

Instead, he placed the responsibility directly on the shoulders of the average person.

“It’s up to you to change the balance of political power,” he said. “Health is an individual responsibility. But we’ve got to make it easier, not harder, for people to make healthier choices.”

He brought up some novel approaches to help people do that. He cited the example of Alabama, which is looking at combating its high obesity rate with a fat tax that would cause people who don’t lose weight to forfeit some health benefits.

“That’s something to experiment with,” he said.

And he brought up a Swedish attempt to make exercise fun by turning a staircase into a piano keyboard, encouraging people to make music while taking the stairs rather than an escalator.

“I like that,” he grinned. “It’s a novel strategy that won’t give people the feeling of being coerced.”

The bottom line, Weil told the group, is that “you can’t afford to get sick.” And he offered some simple ways of staying healthy.

“It’s not that complicated,” he said. “When it comes to nutrition, stop eating refined, processed and manufactured foods. That’s it. Just stay out of the interior of supermarkets.”

He recommended more of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and in fish oil. He also suggested that Americans need vitamin D, which comes from the sun, saying that we suffer from a widespread deficiency of it in this country.

Within reason, “the sun is good for you,” he said.

Then there’s exercise. “You’ve got to move your body,” he said. “Figure out ways to move. You don’t have to run marathons or join a gym. Just try to walk. Walk a little more today than you did yesterday.”

And, lastly, “neutralize stress.” He said his favorite method was a simple breathing technique. “Try breathing deeper, slower, quieter and more regularly. Practice this. It’s very simple stuff.”

Despite the divisiveness of the health care debate, Weil said, “I’m optimistic about the future. If enough people demand change, maybe we can change things. But it’s only going to change if we get aroused enough and angry enough to make the change.”

By Arun Gupta
AlterNet, August 5, 2009
Straight to the Source

Every chef is said to have a secret junk food craving. For Thomas Keller, chef-owner of Per Se and The French Laundry, two of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country, it’s Krispy Kreme Donuts and In-N-Out cheeseburgers. For David Bouley, New York’s reigning chef in the ’90s, it’s “high-quality potato chips.”

“Father of American cuisine” James Beard “loved McDonald’s fries,” while Paul Bocuse, an originator of nouvelle cuisine, once declared McDonald’s “are the best French fries I have ever eaten.” Masaharu Morimoto is partial to “Philly cheese steaks,” and Jean-Georges Vongerichten confesses a weakness for Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich. Other accomplished but less-famous chefs admit to craving everything from Peanut M&Ms, Pringles and Combos to Kettle Chips and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Having attended culinary school and cooked professionally, I can wax rhapsodic about epicurean delights such as squab, Beluga caviar, black truffles, porcini mushrooms, Iberico Ham, langoustines, and acres of exceptional vegetables and fruits. But I also have an unabashed junk food craving: Nacho Cheese Doritos. Sure, there are plenty of other junk foods I enjoy, whether it’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream or Entenmann’s baked goods, but Doritos are the one thing I desire and seek out regularly. (Not that I ever have to look that hard; I’ve encountered them everywhere from rural villages in Guatemala to tiny towns in the Canadian Arctic.)

For years I wondered why I craved Doritos. I knew the Nacho Cheese powder, which coats your fingers in day-glo orange deliciousness, was one component, as were the fatty, salty chips that crackle and melt into a pleasing mass as you crunch them. I figured there was a dollop of nostalgia in the mix, but an ingredient was still missing in my understanding. Then I read a spate of articles about “umami,” designated the fifth taste, along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, means “deliciousness” in Japanese and is described as “a meaty, savory, satisfying taste.”

I knew some foods — parmesan cheese, seaweed, shellfish, tomatoes, mushrooms and meats — were high in umami-rich compounds such as glutamate, inosinate and guanylate. (Most people know umami from the much-maligned MSG, or mono sodium glutamate.) And I knew combining various sources of umami — such as the bonito-flake and kombu-seaweed broth known as dashi, the foundational stock of Japanese cuisine — magnified the effect and delivered a uniquely satisfying wallop of flavor.

What I didn’t know was that “Nacho-cheese-flavor Doritos, which contain five separate forms of glutamate, may be even richer in umami than the finest kombu dashi (kelp stock) in Japan,” according to a New York Times article from last year.

Mystery solved. Now I knew that whenever the Doritos bug bit me, I was jonesing for umami. I had to admit it: I am a junk food junkie and Frito-Lay is my pusher-man.

I am hardly alone. Frito-Lay is the snack-food peddler to the world, with over $43 billion in revenue in 2008. The 43-year-old cheesy chip is a “category killer,” dominating the tortilla chip market with a 32 percent share in 2006, and number two in the entire U.S. “sweet and savory snacks category,” just behind Lay’s potato chips.

$1.7 billion in annual sales in the U.S, is big business. Behind the enigma of Doritos’ dominance, and the lure of junk food to even the most refined palettes in the world, are the wonders of food science. That science, in the service of industrial capitalism, has hooked on us a food system that is destroying our health with obesity-related diseases. And that food system is based on a system of factory farming at one end, which churns out cheap, taxpayer-subsidized commodities like corn, vegetable oil and sweeteners, and the giant food processors at the other, like Frito-Lay, that take these commodities and concoct them into endless forms of addictive junk foods.

Steven Witherly begins his book, Why Humans Like Junk Food, by noting in studying the “psychobiology” of Doritos he consumed the “food intake and chemical senses literature — over five hundred research reports and four thousand abstracts — in order to discern the popularity of Doritos.” Witherly coined the term “Doritos Effect” to explain its popularity and in his book outlines 14 separate ways in which Doritos appeals to us.

There’s the “taste-active components,” sugar, salt and umami; ingredients like buttermilk solids, lactic acid, and citric acid that stimulate saliva, creating a “mouth-watering” sensation; the “high dynamic contrast” of powder-coated thin, hard chips that melt in the mouth; a complex flavor aroma; a high level of fat that activates “fat recognition receptors in the mouth increases levels of gut hormones linked to reduction in anxiety activates brains systems for reward, and enhances ingestion for more fat”; toasted, fried corn that triggers our evolutionary predilection for cooked foods; starches that break down quickly, boosting blood levels of insulin and glucose; and so on.

Witherly explains that some umami sources like MSG don’t have much taste by themselves, but when you add salt,”the hedonic flavors just explode!” And Doritos has plenty of both. The tiny 2-oz. bag of Doritos I’m holding, which in the past would be a warm-up to a Nacho Cheesier dinner, lists MSG near the top, before “buttermilk solids,” along with nearly one-sixth of my recommended daily intake of sodium.

One aspect of Doritos that whet my curiosity was, how much does Frito-Lay spend on goods like corn, oil and cheese? Not surprisingly, this data was nowhere to be found in the annual report of Pepsico, Frito-Lay’s parent company. But I gleaned a clue from a 1991 New York Times article. In it, a Wall Street analyst stated that Frito-Lay’s profit margin, around 19 percent in those days (which is close to its margin of late), approached that of Kellogg’s. The analyst, an expert on the food industry, said: “Kellogg buys corn for 4 cents a pound and sells it for $2 a box.” That’s a markup of nearly 5,000 percent over the base ingredient.

I’ll save you the math, but Frito-Lay may do even better than Kellogg’s. If it uses two ounces of cornmeal in my 99 cents bag of Doritos, it apparently costs the snack-food giant less than one measly penny. And here’s a critical point about the food industry. The more they can process basic food commodities, the more profits they can gobble up at the expense of farmers. In The End of Food, Paul Roberts writes that in the 1950s, farmers received about half the retail price for the finished food product. By 2000, “this farm share had fallen below 20 percent.”

This is the result of the global food system constructed by the U.S. and other Western powers under the World Trade Organization. Countries that once strived for food security by supporting their domestic farmers are now forced — in the name of free trade — to open their agricultural sectors to competition from heavily subsidized Western agribusinesses. By the mid-1990s, according to rural sociologist Philip McMichael, 80 percent of farm subsidies in Western countries went to “the largest 20 percent of (corporate) farms, rendering small farmers increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a deregulated (and increasingly privately managed) global market for agricultural products.”

The WTO-enforced system and government subsidies enables food giants — such as Pepsico, Kraft, Mars, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Burger King and Wal-Mart — to source their ingredients globally, giving them the power to force down prices, which drives more and more farmers off the land in the global North and South alike. Then the food companies turn around and manufacture high-profit products that seem like an unbelievable bargain to us. In fact, they make this a selling point, and not just with “Dollar Menus.”

Last year, in the wake of the economic meltdown, KFC launched the “10 Dollar Challenge,” inviting families to try to recreate a meal of seven pieces of fried chicken, four biscuits and a side for less than its asking price of 10 bucks. Of course this is a virtually impossible feat, apart from dumpster diving. But KFC isn’t hawking alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast at that price. Witherly, in Why Humans Like Junk Food, writes that “high energy density food is associated with high food pleasure.” The corporate food’s revenue model is based on designing products oozing with fat, salt, sugar, umami and chemical flavors to turn us into addicts.

While food companies can trot willing doctors, dieticians and nutritionists who claim that eating their brand of poison in moderation can be part of a balanced diet, the companies are like drug dealers who prey on junkies. As Morgan Spurlock explained about McDonald’s in Supersize Me, the targets are “heavy users,” who visit the Golden Arches at least once a week and “super heavy users,” who visit ten times a month or more. In fact, according to one study, super heavy users “make up approximately 75 percent of McDonald’s sales.”

Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees’ Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

Practitioners and businesses in the healthy nutrition and food business provide dietary education and guidance on the restoration and maintenance of health using dietary balance, and if necessary, nutritional supplementation. As an example, practitioners might recommend regular doses of vitamins to maintain health, as well as using high dosages of vitamins under certain circumstances. They will also concentrate on identifying food sensitivities and subtle nutritional deficiencies, and recommending individually tailored diets using whole, unprocessed foods.

More and more consumers also want to know where their food comes from. People are wanting to eat local and are patronizing food establishments that buy fresh and local. Buying local helps local businesses and cuts down on transportation emissions creating a win-win-win for businesses, consumers and the environment.

Community Supported Agriculture – Wholesale and Retail Food – Locally Grown and Naturally Raised Food – Distributing in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware

Intuitive Nutrition – Heather Rudalavage, Licensed Dietitian – Intuitive Eating, Nutritionist, Diet Consulting, Nutrition Counselor – Montgomery County, Delaware County, Bucks County, Chester County, Pennsylvania

Andrew Lipton, DO – Family Practice, Osteopathy, Chelation/IV Therapy, Nutrition and Dietary Supplements – Main Line of Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania

Door to Door Organics East Coast – Organic Food Delivery Service – Organic Meats, Organic Fruits, Organic Vegetables – Delivery to Homes, Offices and Co-ops – Serving PA NJ NY CT DE MD VA DC

Ame Salon and Spa
– Holistic Wellness, Nutrition and Day Spa – Wayne, Delaware County PA, Main Line PA, Southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware

Sarah Dickinson Murray – Pure Healing
Insight LLC – Naturopathic Practitioner, Master Practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Energy Worker, Reiki, Bach Flower Therapy, Crystal Therapy, Herbology, Ethnobotanist – Wilmington, Delaware

Organically Grown, Naturally Raised and Non-GMO Food – Eating fruits, vegetables and grains that are grown without pesticides, herbicides and that are non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) is a good idea. Also eating meats that are raised naturally and humanely is better for your overall nutritional needs.

Intuitive (Mindful) Eating
Intuitive eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body–where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It’s also a process of making peace with food—so that you no longer have constant “food worry” thoughts. It’s knowing that your health and your worth as a person does not change because you ate a so-called “bad” or “fattening” food.

Macrobiotic Education
Includes natural principles of diet and lifestyle, which includes focusing on locally grown and seasonal foods, as well as organically grown foods. Made popular in the 70′s from its founder Misio Kushi. Teachers teach principles of cooking, food combination as well as exercise and hygiene practices.

Herbal Medicine–Herbology
Herbal Medicine is the most ancient form of health care known to mankind,and herbs have been used in all cultures and are integral to the practiceof medicine throughout history. In general, herbal medicines work in muchthe same way conventional pharmaceutical drugs–via their chemical makeup.Herbs contain a large number of naturally occurring chemicals which havebiological activity. Extensive scientific documentation now existsconcerning their use for health conditions, including heart disease,cancer, HIV, PMS, insomnia, indigestion, and many others.

Nutritional Testing
Nutritional practitioners can determine individual biochemistry and nutritional status byutilizing many new preventive diagnostic procedures, such as nutrition assessment and risk analysis factor. These include physiological data, personal and family health history, dietary intake analysis, and scientifically biochemical screenings.
Nutritional Supplementation Education Employing vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other similar substances to create optimum nutritional content and balance in the body.

Raw Food Diets
Raw food is essentially food as nature intended. Eating unprocessed, natural foods is being rediscovered as life giving, rejuvenating, healing and energy boosting. A raw diet will lean on nuts, fruits, grains, vegetables, pure oils, and sprouted seeds. Often, raw foods are blended, grated, chopped, juiced, mixed and dehydrated in preparation. They do not see temperatures above 105° F generally. This preserves all of natures intended goodness including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and energy.

Eating raw is simply consuming foods that are not heated. It is eating food as nature intended: naturally grown, naturally harvested, unprocessed. Raw diets are catching on because the benefits are understood, although not touted on your local news. And big business doesn’t want us to know that the healthiest foods are essentially untouched, that is, not processed under heat or with chemicals, additives and preservatives.