FOOD KEEPS US ALIVE, FOOD CAN MAKE US SICK

Submitted by skalitenko on Thu, 07/08/2010 - 16:32

Did you know that 5,000 people a year die from tainted food? From everything from salmonella to e-coli, U.S. food is in danger because it goes unchecked at so many points. And foods that shouldn’t be causing us illnesses are being contaminated, leaving us a very small safety window. Read more hear: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm and http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs237/en/ While the FDA runs around trying to catch up with what is contaminated, and a food safety bill sits stalled in the senate since July, we are left with dangerous foods. It is almost impossible to keep track of food recalls today.

When we worried about mad-cow disease, the whole world seemed to stop and take notice, the tomato scare, a little bit less, the peanut-butter thing, ehhh, what could it really do? It’s how we as a society react to real threats. Unfortunately, media decides how we truly feel about something. Sure, if you look deeply into any subject you will know so much more, but most of us get our information from the evening news, or maybe a newspaper, possibly on our computers during lunch-hour, and if our reporters aren’t covering it, you aren’t hearing it.

Here’s a true story: several years ago, there was a summer when all you heard about was shark attacks. Do you remember? Everyday, there was a shark being spotted here, a person being attacked here. We were suddenly at risk of sharks. Then, all of the sudden, they disappeared. Truth was, that the year before, there were actually way more shark attacks than the year it was covered in the news, but you never would have known it.

Here’s why. It was simply a boring summer. There were no elections, race riots, no stars being arrested. Media still has to fill an hour of TV time. They still need to get you to read their paper instead of someone else’s. And the way to do it is fear. Oh my gosh, I might be attacked by a shark. I should buy that paper and read how I can protect myself.

But, with food safety, it’s actually the opposite.

Here, these are things we need to know, but media knows that they can only keep a person’s interest for so long. Everyone knows that blood sells, and there are way more exciting things to read about than people who got diahrrea from contaminated food. But it’s still so important, as little by little, we contaminate our bodies with unclean food. You can keep up on food safety at www.foodsafety.gov, which lists all the most recent recalls and safety information. But that is not enough. You need to take control of the foods you eat.

Recently, there was an outbreak of salmonella in pistachios (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31nuts.html). That is just weird! There should be no way in nature that it would happen. There was a case a while back where several people suddenly fell ill with stomach infections. They all had gone out to eat and had a Caesar Salad (http://www.carec.net/pdf/mobidityreview/8.%20Food-borne.pdf). But what in a Caesar salad would cause them to get so ill? Turns out, the lettuce was contaminated from not being properly washed. Read more here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/foodspot.htm We think of diseases from things like dirty hands, meat and milk. But lettuce? How? Everybody knows that food born diseases are caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses or their toxins. But where do they com from? They do not come from air!

Most of the time they come from feces: human of animal. Cows! Cows are just one example of animals being raised in confinement, being fed hormones to make them produce more milk, and leaving the animal succeptable to many more illnesses. When they move their bowels, it goes into the soil, the soil is used as fertilizer for our lettuce, which is, in turn, not properly washed. The most practical advice here is to wash, wash and wash. Wash your hands. Wash your salad. Don’t trust labels that say something is pre-washed. Just think of who is out there washing your lettuce the way it should be washed.

Also try to know the source of your food. If you can, you should grow your own, or buy organic where possible. Make sure that you have acid in your stomach. What happens is that most of the people don’t have enough acid to fight off these infections. This is where you need to be under the care of a holistic doctor to help monitor you.

Now what about you?