How do the poor stand a chance to be healthy?

As I continue to study nutrition, my concerns deepen at how the message of optimal health can be translated into poor and disadvantaged communities that don’t have adequate resources to eat healthier. Based on my studies, it is becoming apparent that the poor are destined to chronic health conditions by sheer association to the things that literally kill!Eating processed foods is the #1 reason why our health is compromised because our bodies cannot adequately process the synthetic ingredients and by-products of artificial food. The colon is linked to ninety percent of chronic disease onset, with death being the ultimate. Colon-cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among men and women. How does a family of 6 with an income less than $25,000 eat? More importantly, WHAT do they eat?

I’ll tell you what they eat: incredible amounts of processed meats, processed flours and sugars, pesticide laden fruits and vegetables (when they can afford them), and so on.  What is this country saying to them?  They are disposable for the sake of profit! In contrast, they lack insurance coverage to help them as they grow sick(er) from the poor diet they have.  The inability to pay for insurance, because they are disposable, for the sake of profit, spirals the Nation’s Medicare and Medicaid systems out of control to the extent that no health care provider can afford to service them…..for the sake of profit. Do you not think it is time for great minds to link together for the sake of saving ourselves? “Ourselves” would be any of you that feel excluded from the general population of good and wholesome individuals when it comes to anything!   What truly is the status of our health?  What kinds of things are we ‘blessing’ our bodies with?We are very quick to criticize and say that people choose their own battles.  I would beg to differ on instances such as this one.  We don’t have control over what the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is pushing on our plates and endorsing as “safe”, and “recommended.”  I have now come to realize why it was important to continue to understand science, biology, and chemistry.  As young people, we didn’t understand how important knowing our bodies and how they work was integral in continuing the study, and the development of those principles.  We shrugged off subjects that may have appeared to be useless for anything more than to appease the school systems that were requiring them.

The truth of the matter is that the study of the human anatomy is absolutely essential in the proper use and application of an intricately complex machine.  You wouldn’t purchase, or lets say for the sake of political correctness, you shouldn’t purchase a complex item without first reading the instructions on how to operate it.  It is surely guaranteed that at some point, if you decide to open the package and just start using it, somewhere along the line you’re going to need to find that instruction book because it stopped working properly.

Next, I would like to take a poll on how many people still have access to their middle or high school biology, chemistry and science books that would enable them to review the important subjects of our anatomy, our environment, and interaction within our atmosphere. (That argument is for the sake of illustrating that most school systems didn’t get it either - because we didn’t get to keep the books!) And please, without my being condescending (which is truly not my point at all really, this is just for illustration), we have to consider those whose literacy levels were not accommodating to even breaching the subject.  They have unfortunately become our nation’s poor and disenfranchised.  They are human capital, just not valued the same, and most certainly not able to do more than entry level positions for the remainder of their lives.  But yet, they aren’t worthy of being able to afford to live a healthy life….for the sake of profit.

There is SO MUCH to talk about, change, develop, and remember.  Help us help you.  Organizations like ours want to bring you a message, but we need your help too!  You have to show up at events.  You have write back on these posts….you have to READ these posts!  We have a voice like yours, and you have one like ours - and we need to connect, and bring forth change for ‘ourselves’. One small step at a time.

-ejf