Truth from the Trenches by Melissa Hart 

 

I enjoyed some fresh pineapple yesterday. Forty years ago the only pineapple we enjoyed was from a can. If I walked into a store today, we would see beautiful red strawberries. Forty years ago strawberries came into season in June and if you didn’t pick and freeze them, you missed out until next year.

There’s a tank full of fresh lobster at the local store that I can take home and cook. Forty years ago the only fresh lobster you could find was at the oceanfront. We’ve made huge progress in food production, increasing efficiency, conservation, availability of fresh products and environmental improvements. And yet farmers growing our food are more under the gun than ever.

Okay – so the big question I have is, if the technology that we are developing to produce an abundant food supply is to blame for a disease-ridden society, why would we keep developing the technology? If our improvements are killing our customers, why would we need more food to feed a dead society?

I’ve been eating healthy foods and junk foods for several decades and I’m still alive and healthy. I went from nursing my second-oldest son to feeding him raw milk and he’s still alive today.

As a baby, my youngest son sucked his fingers so much that he ended up losing weight when he was two months old because I wasn’t going to wake a contented baby to feed him with three other children under my feet. Guess what? He’s 17 now, and 6 feet tall.

When I would take my 2-year-old and newborn to the grocery store, I would buy sugary doughnut holes to keep my 2-year-old quiet so I could buy groceries without a defiant toddler. Today he’s serving in our Air Force and more physically fit than 95 percent of the population.

(Okay, I’m done with the motherhood confessions.) My sister, on the other hand, is the poster child for good nutrition and healthy living. She would never eat caramel corn for breakfast or allow her children to consume Mountain Dew by the two-liter on New Year’s Day during a Rose Bowl tailgate party.

She monitors her family’s diet closely. She has investigated what she believes to be the healthiest diet and home environment for her family: no GMOs, no sugar, lots of green-looking smoothies and enough vitamins to choke a horse. They live out west in the foothills of the Rockies, away from any densely populated, polluted areas. They raise organic products to sell and to consume for themselves. Her husband has a debilitating illness and she seems to constantly battle being on the verge of the common cold.

So, if I eat Pop Tarts for breakfast and chicken nuggets for lunch and a BLT for dinner and I am healthy, and her family eats organic everything and  her husband is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, do I automatically credit my poor nutritional choices for my good health and her organic diet for their disease? No.

Things aren’t as black and white as we want them to be. There are factors involved in our health other than what we can see on paper or the “Dr. Oz” show or on WebMD. Maybe we need to look at the fact that we live in an imperfect world where good people are plagued with bad circumstances. Let’s not be so quick to throw the blame at the 1 percent of the people producing the commodities that go into the foods we enjoy. Everything should be done in moderation – including the blame game.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World.