Over the last year or so, Kathy & I have come to understand the impact of food choice on nutrition and overall health. One of the arguments I hear a lot as to why people make poor choices regarding food is that not everyone has access to quality food. My opinion is that people don’t know how to make good choices regarding food, because they don’t know what good food is, let alone what it tastes like. Why? Because the marketing messages we receive aren’t pushing healthy foods. They’re too often promoting foods which are actually bad for us but are sold to an unsuspecting public as being good for us. As I like to say, there is little profit in selling (for example) broccoli.
One of the food blogs I follow is Marion Nestle’s “Food Politics.” A recent post titled “Feed The Truth: Draining The Swamp” outlines a study and paper by an organization called Feed The Truth titled “Draining The Big Food Swamp.” This paper outlines the influence that “Big Food” has on national politics, which in turn affects the information people receive to make decisions about food. I highly recommend reading Nestle’s post and then following the link to at least the Executive Summary of the report.
This is important stuff. And this report only covers part of the problem, as it does not address the influence of pharmaceutical companies on the health care profession. Drug companies don’t make money off of healthy people any more than food companies make money selling healthy foods. We could solve a lot of the country’s health problems with a focus on quality food as an alternative to drugs and miracle cures.
