I read Food Fix because I am interested in nutrition. I think that I purchased it on
Amazon.
I wasn't aware of how little land is used to grow healthy food. I try to eat organic, but I do eat food that isn't organic when organic isn't available.
I learned from this book that 60% of Americans have one chronic disease and 40% have more than one. When I originally read this book, I wrote in my notes that I had no chronic diseases, but I have since realized that I have hypoglycemia.
Farm work is a dangerous activity, author Hyman reveals. Farm workers die at seven times the rate of workers in other occupations. Many die from pesticide poisoning. This is a world wide problem due to our food system. It's linked to the issue of high health costs. The agencies that are supposed to be regulating pesticides aren't doing their jobs. Hyman uses a Hebrew phrase for what we should be doing. It's tikkun olam. This means repair the world. He points out that grass fed meat and regeneratively grown fruits and vegetables should be cheaper than industrial (non-organic) food. Clean ups of chemical dumps by the food industry are included in our grocery costs. We are losing our topsoil, and it's projected that it will be gone in sixty years. I'll definitely be gone myself well before. I looked up the U.S. state with the lowest obesity rate. It's Colorado, but that lowest rate is 25%. This means that a quarter of the population of Colorado is obese. I suppose this is considered relatively good.
By 2050 it's projected that there will be 200 million to 1 billion climate refugees. As I expected, a major cause of the current wave of refugees who are arriving in the United States is climate change. I found an article on the subject here. This means that the U.S. could decrease the tide of refugees by assisting with programs that could help to slow down climate change in their home countries.
I am happy to say that Uruguay and Peru have put warning labels on junk food. In the Philippines they have doubled the tax on sodas made with high fructose corn syrup. San Francisco taxes soda in order to provide nutritious meals in public schools with locally grown fruit and vegetables. At the University of California in San Francisco there has been a 25% reduction in drinking soda which has improved weight and cholesterol. Plus there has also been a lower rate of pre-diabetes. More than six U.S. cities and counties have soda taxes. Berkeley was the first American city to institute a soda tax. Oakland also has a soda tax. They are the result of referendums. On the other hand, the poor who receive SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are targeted with junk food marketing. Promoting healthy food for SNAP recipients would lower health care costs. Congressman David Swift blames obesity on lack of exercise, but Hyman wants us to believe that diet is the real cause of obesity. I happen to think that both poor diet and lack of exercise are serious issues for Americans.
In 2015 a study revealed that dietary fat didn't cause weight gain or heart disease. I'm suspicious of that result. I might believe that dietary fat causes less weight gain than sugar, but none at all? I suppose I should read Hyman's book on the subject, Eat Fat, Get Thin . I ordered a copy on Amazon.
Hyman complains about marketing junk food in schools. This didn't happen in any school that I attended. I noticed that most students did eat junk food. When I was younger, Mom packed healthy lunches for me to take to school, but I would add an unhealthy sugar packed dessert. I have always liked sugary desserts. I think TV commercials probably influenced me. Of course, they wouldn't be in the refrigerator if my mother had refused to buy them when I put them in the cart.
I also ate fruit and vegetables, and the low fat protein that my mother tended to buy. My mother probably thought the sugar was a low percentage of what I ate, and therefore not particularly worrisome. I never got fat like some of my friends. My doctor currently tells me that my weight is normal. I still eat the way I did as a child with dessert as a sugary indulgence twice a day. I admit that I always look forward to dessert. And I love going out for pizza, usually for lunch, once or twice a week. Sometimes I'll have ice cream for dessert after the pizza. Now that's probably my equivalent of a diet disaster.
This book doesn't just deal with diet. It deals very centrally with the food industry which involves giant corporations who donate to members of Congress. Over 600 companies spent $500 million to influence the 2014 Farm Bill. The members of Senate and House Committees dealing with food receive money from one of the largest food oriented corporations, Monsanto.
I was shocked to learn that each of the fifty U.S. states has an obesity rate of at least 20%!
I also found it very disquieting to discover from Food Fix that after the American Civil War, the restaurant industry lobbied to hire freed slaves and have them work for tips alone! These freed slaves would have been very close to being slaves financially.
There is a great deal of focus on the consumption of soda, which I never drink because I don't like it. I prefer to drink water, organic milk and organic juices. The taxpayers pay for 31 billion servings of soda for the poor through SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) which is what food stamps are now called. Junk food advertising targets SNAP recipients. It's advertised the same week that they get these benefits. Providing healthy food to SNAP recipients would reduce chronic conditions and lower the costs of health care. Sugary drinks should be eliminated as something that can be purchased through SNAP.
Hyman discusses ending processed food on military bases. I think processed food addicts would go off base to get their unhealthy meals. The most obvious junk food was banned from school vending machines, but there is unregulated processed food marketing. Hyman points out that processed food kills more people than cigarettes. Children are being marketed to on the internet. This includes processed food ads. Junk food has also been integrated into games. My mother told me to ignore all advertising as a child, and I trained myself to ignore all ads wherever they were. I still ignore them.
There are places where soda is taxed. This is a highly contentious issue with some being very anti-soda and others being very pro-soda. There was a law in Columbia against even mentioning soda taxes. On the other hand, the government of Columbia wanted to ban the marketing of soda. San Francisco uses their soda tax for the production of nutritious school meals with locally grown fruits and vegetables. At the University of California in San Francisco there has been a 25% reduction of soda consumption which has led to an improvement in weight, cholesterol and less development of diabetes. Hyman says that you have to walk four miles to burn off one 20 oz. bottle of soda. He recommends that tax rates on soda with more sugar should be higher, and should be lower on soda with less sugar. This would encourage soda companies to make products containing less sugar. The Philippines had an excellent idea. In 2017 they doubled the tax for soda with high fructose corn syrup. The bad news comes from Mexico. It's the country that consumes the most soda in the world. It's also a nation with one of the highest rates of obesity. On the other hand, Berkeley, California was the first American city to tax soda. It was the result of a referendum. Why am I not surprised? Hyman thinks we should have soda free zones.
I am happy to inform you that Uruguay and Peru have put warning labels on junk food.
Hyman wants to convince the authorities to feed prisoners a healthy diet because violence in prison could be reduced. It seems to me that healthy food would be more expensive. Could we afford healthy food for prisoners ? Has it been proven that there would be less violence in prisons. or it a theory? Would this be an expensive experiment that doesn't reduce violence, or maybe not by very much?
There is another category of persons that has become overweight due to their diet. That's our military. Fat soldiers who can't fight well, is a more serious problem than overweight prisoners.
It boggled my mind that many who work on assembly lines in the fast food industry have to wear diapers because they don't get bathroom breaks. Yikes!
Chemical dumps that the food industry must clean up are included in the price of food. Dumping chemicals isn't legitimately part of the costs of food. So why should we pay for it when we buy food? We should find out how much more we're paying for food than we really need to pay, and start picketing food companies with signs about having to pay for dumping chemicals or any other unnecessary noxious cost.
I looked up causes of soil depletion and found that one cause is overgrazing. Why can't we periodically stop grazing the cattle on one piece of land? We move the cattle to graze elsewhere which will also be left alone after a while. Then the original piece of land will have recovered and can be used for grazing again. I seem to recall that medieval people had an agricultural rotation system of some kind. Maybe they understood the land better than we do.
So Hyman later moves on to sea food. He advises us to eat sustainably raised, low mercury and high omega 3 sea food. Sardines and wild caught salmon are given as good examples. He also recommends avoiding dairy products from cows. This reduces type 2 diabetes, heart disease and strokes. Similar products from goats and sheep that feed on organic grass are better for your health, but those are probably difficult to obtain. I eat sardines and wild caught salmon already.
Hyman is concerned about having to decipher ingredient labels. For me, only one aspect of food labels is important. That's the word "organic". If that word isn't there, I don't buy it. Organic means that the food item contains natural ingredients and that they are organic. There are no chemicals in organic food to figure out, and no food dyes which Hyman covers somewhat later in the book.
I had to sit up and take notice of this quote from Hyman:
"Fast food kills more people than drive by shootings."
This is self-evident when you think about it. Drive by shootings are in the headlines, but fast food is daily life. It doesn't make the headlines. The people fast food kills are dying of dietary causes. People eat it without thinking about it and neither do newspaper reporters. A book like Food Fix dealing with nutritional issues is one of the few places you'll see fast food deaths discussed.
Hyman's website is at Mark Hyman M.D. He is also the host of a podcast at Content Library – Podcast – Mark Hyman, MD.
I want my readers to know that I would grade this book A++ if I could, but I can only give it the five star maximum on Goodreads. This is so thorough, and there were so many revelations of significant information. I was bowled over by this book.
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