Category: Health

How Do We Make Our Food System Healthy And Sustainable?

America’s food system is centered neither on health nor sustainability. It is not organized around providing people with healthy food grown in living soil or produced on well-managed pasture.

Much of what fills grocery store shelves today would be unrecognizable to our great-great-grandparents. Thousands of available products are less whole foods than engineered food-like substances, containing preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial flavorings, coloring agents, stabilizers, and even so-called “food glues” used to bind processed meats together. On average, food travels roughly 1,500 miles from farm to consumer.

At the same time, an enormous portion of our food is never eaten at all. The USDA and EPA estimate that 30–40% of America’s food supply is wasted, with approximately $161 billion worth of food ending up in landfills each year. This waste is especially tragic given that millions of people in the United States and around the world continue to experience hunger or chronic undernourishment.

Meanwhile, some estimates suggest that 55% of harvested U.S. cropland is devoted to growing animal feed crops such as corn, soy, and alfalfa, a very inefficient use of land to feed humans in need of healthy food.

Too often, the true costs of our food system are externalized onto the soil, water, air, farm workers, rural communities, public health systems, and future generations. Within a genuinely holistic system, those costs cannot simply be pushed out of sight or absorbed by others.

This raises difficult but necessary questions.

Should truly nourishing food be priced in ways that fully reflects its real costs, even if that makes it more expensive? If so, should subsidies be redirected away from large industrial producers and toward low-income households to ensure access to healthy food?

Or should cheap, highly subsidized food-like products continue to dominate grocery store shelves while their real costs remain hidden in our environmental, economic, and public health systems? What other options are there?

How can we change our current food system so that it is both more healthy, and also sustainable in the long term?

Related questions: How do you stay healthy? What is keeping us from sustaining the planet? Do you garden? What is the greatest problem facing humanity?

Vegetables: Organic Or Not?

Do you buy organic vegetables, to avoid harmful pesticides? or does the higher price turn you off?

Share why if you wish.

Vegetables: Organic Or Not?
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How Do You Deal With Suffering?

Regardless of your lot in life, you will have to deal with suffering at some point, either your own or someone else’s. How will you handle it?

There are many different ways to go through difficult times. “Suffering” can be defined in many different ways.

One common type is to go through an emotional grieving process at the loss of a family member or other loved one. Because everyone dies eventually, we will all need to handle grief and the wave of emotions that can come with it several times over throughout the course of an average lifespan.

Similarly, the longer you live, the more likely you will have some sort of health problem. These can run the gamut from minor but intense to long-term, chronic issues.

There is yet another wrinkle thrown in when you have to deal not with your own, but the suffering of someone close to you. Even if you don’t experience the pain directly, either physical or emotional, watching a loved one go through it and being unable to do anything to ease that pain can be very difficult.

So how do you deal with it? Chances are, you have had the experience a number of times already, and will have many more in the future. So how did you handle it in the past, and how will you approach future events? Do you keep things bottled up, or share with others? Are you more likely to experience anger, grim resignation, or black humor? How do you deal with suffering?

Related questions: What is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced? What is the right amount of emotion? How do you deal with loss? What can you learn from loss? What are our responsibilities to others?

Should Health Care Be Tied To A Person’s Employment?

For many people, at least in America, health care is largely subsidized by their employer. Does that system make sense?

Health care is one of the more controversial topics in American politics. Millions of Americans get their health insurance, to pay for the ever-increasing cost of health care, from a plan offered by their employer.

It is easy to see how this situation evolved. In addition to salary, an employer may offer additional benefits as an incentive to take a job. These might include, among other things, generous vacation time, stock options, and yes, cheaper health insurance.

Indeed, that can be an attractive benefit, as health insurance is very expensive. This is due to the fact that health care is expensive. However, large companies that represent hundreds or even thousands of employees, can negotiate lower prices that would be unavailable to individuals.

One downside to this scenario, though, is that having health care offered through an employer means employees are put at a severe disadvantage. A worker might be unhappy with a particular job, but feels they are unable to leave because they can’t afford to lose the health insurance for them and possibly their family.

Additionally, an employer’s choice of plan could impact what medical procedures an employee is allowed to get, or even which doctor they are allowed to have.

So, which is it? Is subsidized health insurance a nice perk that comes with signing on with a big company? Or is it a tool that gives an employer unfair leverage over their employees? Should health care be tied to a person’s employment?

Related questions: Is health care a human right? Health care: private or public? What does it mean to be healthy? Is your sense of self tied to your job?

Have You Ridden In An Ambulance?

Over the course of your life, have you ever had cause to ride in an ambulance? If so, how was the experience?

Share why if you wish.