Supposing Children Were Taught the Realities of Nutrition and Health?
Saturday, September 8, 2007 at 10:01PM I’m a big fan of AlvinToffler, who writes books that predict the future. Though best known for Future Shock, I found his 1990 book, PowerShift, to be eye opening in describing how the shift to a knowledge-based economy would lead to unimaginable social and technological change the world over. His latest book, published last year with his wife, Heidi, is Revolutionary Wealth, and one of the things I find intriguing is their assessment of health care.
While they don’t discuss trends like growing interest in real foods or sustainable agriculture, they express similar frustrations as others on this site have about seemingly unsustainable trends in health care. “Medical specialization…has reached the point at which communication among specialties is perilously poor. Bureaucracies are on the edge of unmanageability. Hospitals go broke…Today’s main killers…are heart disease, lung cancer and other illnesses that are clearly affected by individual behavior…”
They predict “radical reconceptualization of the entire problem of health in the twenty-first century.”
That radical reconceptualization includes “a more take-charge attitude on the part of” the patient, based on greater access to both information and self-diagnostic technology. But it also includes something I haven’t heard much about before: educating young people about the realities of disease and health care. “In a densely cross-connected knowledge-based economy, why continue to think of the health crisis and the educational crisis as separate, rather than as interlinked?” they ask.
I couldn’t help but think about how useful it would be for young people to learn in school the lessons offered by Mary McGonigle-Martin, Don Neeper, Steve Bemis, and Ron Klein in their comments on my Wednesday post concerning the soil. Perhaps we’re seeing the beginnings of such a move in that direction with the new attention schools are giving to reining in obesity among children.
As nice a thought as that might be, I expect the divide I spoke about in that same posting to rear its ugly head as schools increasingly seek to move into substantive education about nutrition and health. After all, exactly what will they teach about the connections—between soil, pasture, veggies, animals, and people?
Reader Comments (7)
In this society, where the 99-cent cheeseburger combo meal is still a viable option, it can be a daunting task to teach anything else.
My husband is a 5th grade teacher and between us we've decided that "No Child Left Behind" should be more about nutrition and health instruction than standardized testing....... Feed them better and better test scores will follow.
We have a very strict, healthy diet for our son and it is terribly difficult to live so opposite our fast food generation. I’m curious as to how everyone handles this issue socially. Our son is not allowed to have soda, typical cookies, candy, cake, etc. If he goes to a friend’s house, we send food for him to eat.
We also use supplements in the winter to boost his immune system instead of giving him a flu shot.
Your last sentence asking the question as to what would actually be taught concerns me as well.
Using public education to manipulate children and therefore society down a path that is perceived to be correct lends to narrow minded ideologies that fail to respect diversity of thought. A healthy lifestyle comes with respect for life and the ecosystem that God created.
Although parents and teachers try their best to be a good example to children, there is no guarantee that these children will take their advice.
In essence we are dealing with vices which are innate in all of us, virtues we have to work at. Good eating habits are a virtue and education will be of no value without self discipline.
Ron Kline’s statement and research concurs with what I first came to realize shortly after I adopted organic farming principles. An animal’s susceptibility to parasites is directly related to its environment and the strength of its immune system.
Intensive agricultural practices have little respect for microbial activity within the soil and therefore its overall health. . What many farmers are probably not aware of is the fact that the bacterial inoculants used to this date and for the last ten or so years use microbes that are genetically modified according to microbiologist Professor Joe Cummins of the University of Western Ontario. The bacteria in these inoculants which occur naturally in soil are necessary for fixing nitrogen from air into plant roots and into the soil. My decision to stop mixing inoculants with the seed in the 1980’s resulted in no visible change in yield.
Professor Cummins states in an ISIS (Institute of Science in Society) article that the above bacterium, “has the antibiotic resistant marker genes for streptomycin and spectinomycin”, and that the commercial release of this GM bacterium, “has resulted in the establishment of GM microbes in the soil of millions of acres of cropland, where it can spread antibiotic resistant genes for antibiotics that are extensively used in medicine and agriculture.” In reference to several studies he states “there is little doubt that the antibiotic resistant markers for streptomycin and spectinomycin will be transferred to soil bacteria and to a range of animal pathogens.” He also states that these organisms have, “persisted in the soil for six years even in the absence of legume hosts.”
In the same article he concludes, “GM microbes have begun to be ubiquitous invaders of the North America ecosystem. This massive invasion took place with little or no public awareness and input, and with very little monitoring of the impact of the invasion. The environmental risk assessments of the commercial microbes were rudimentary and frequently erroneous. We may have a bio-weapons equivalent of a time bomb on our hands.”
Ken Conrad
The very real and growing threat to our health comes from factory farming methods.The farmers that risk everything to provide people with an alternative to factory farmed food are not only being attacked by government agencies and misinformed citizens but also by new invasive species of bacteria and virus that come on the wind and through the water from neighboring factory farms. These are very real "bombs" or bio-weapons that we are suffering under every day.
The only hope for the livestock or for us is to support the immune system with excellent nutrition and hope that our living immune system can adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances.
Ken, what you are talking about is of high importance and quite scary. Thank you for sharing it.
I have been reading the discussion. Lots of people are holding up the pro fresh milk end and Melissa is doing a good job representing the government-industry side.