When Everything is Important, Nothing is Important
My Biggest Pet Peeve
My biggest pet peeve, especially as it relates to health in this country and around the world is that everyone is working on their own thing, which isn’t necessarily the right thing. My pet peeve was triggered the other day after I read an email for a new documentary called Plastic People. The movie chronicles the rising presence of microplastics in our environment, in our bodies, and its impact on our health as a result.
This is good work. Important work. I agree that our obsession with plastic is definitely playing a role in our deteriorating health. I try to limit the use of plastics in my life all of the time. I just don’t think it’s the most important work if we’re really trying to solve our health problems.
I don’t know how much time, money, human capital, and just overall resources were used in doing the research for this movie, analyzing the research, publishing it, and pulling a movie together, but all I can think about is that every resource used here, could’ve been used to tackle the real issue. Food.
The fact that most people don’t have access to the food they need to be healthy. Most people don’t have access to enough food at all. The fact that the majority of food is grown in lifeless soil. That most food is doused in chemicals like herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that kill life all around it. The fact that most animals are raised in inhumane and unsanitary conditions, and are fed the same toxic food we grow for ourselves. That most livestock are injected with hormones and given antibiotics when neither one is needed.
And, most importantly, the fact that all of that food described above is then processed in factories by large corporations who add more chemicals, sugar, and toxic ingredients to it. And that this same highly processed toxic food is convenient and cheap to buy.
The average American’s diet now consists of at least 70 percent processed food. At least 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. At least 50 million Americans are facing food insecurity. Millions more face nutrition insecurity, a term that is not even spoken about. That is the biggest issue we face.
The fact that all of that food is wrapped in plastic, served on plastic, eaten with plastic utensils, doesn’t help. But it is not, in my opinion, our biggest problem. In fact, I would argue, that if we could change our food system, that if we could change people’s behaviors around food, that it would do more to limit the amount of plastic in our environment than anything else we could do.
If more people shopped for and cooked whole foods only, instead of buying packaged foods and pre-made meals. If more people cooked instead of ordering take out or going to the drive in. If less people drank sugar filled coffees, juices, and smoothies. If all of those things were to happen, if we could change the food system and change peoples habits, we could greatly reduce the amount of plastic on this planet.
And that’s why this is my biggest pet peeve. Because when I see a documentary like this one, or I hear a charity asking for money for research to study cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers, or any other chronic disease, or a research study like this one I wrote about, I automatically think, “what would happen if instead of spreading ourselves and our resources thin across all of these ‘issues,’ we aggregated them around the main issue. Food and the food system.”
How much better off would we be?
I’m sure this perspective will garner push back from many. But I think if you truly understand the impact the way we grow food has on the planet, and the way the food we eat impacts our health, you too would realize that there is no greater issue we face than this one.