We are what we eat

I was going to start this week's blog post with a great phrase I heard from a guest speaker on CBC's The Current: "We are all equal before the law, but not under the skull."

It was, I thought, a rather fitting way to voice another complaint about the rapid, downward spiral of intelligent options in Canadian politics. In particular, the news that Olympic snowboard gold medalist, Ross Rebagliati, would be seeking the Liberal nomination in the B.C. riding of Okanagan-Coquihalla. Maybe the Liberals are thinking that, if Stockwell Day can get elected, Rebagliati has a fighting chance? Maybe party officials are keen on having Rebagliati snowboard up to a lectern to give a press briefing in a tight, multi-coloured body suit to make a mockery of a similar stunt pulled by Stockwell Day in a jet ski some years back? I must be over-thinking it. I'm sure the Liberals are focussed on the match-up of some of the greatest debating wits ever -- nothing like refuting an opponent's point starting with: "Dude, I disagree."

At any rate, this was just a taste of my thinking until I saw Food Inc. this weekend. And Food Inc. came on the heels of a radio documentary I heard earlier in the week, again on CBC's The Current, called The Philosophy of Pig. If the old adage is true, that we are what we eat, we are in very big trouble, folks.

The way in which food is produced has changed more in the last 50 years, than it has in the last 10,000. Food Inc. takes viewers on a candid tour of industrialized food production, starting with the coop of a Perdue chicken supplier, explaining how a chicken is now fully mature 45 days from hatching, as opposed to 60 or 75 days, and is engineered to yield larger-than-normal breasts (white meat) thanks to genetic engineering, growth hormones and antibiotics. The bodies of the chicken develop so quickly, their internal organs can't keep up -- the chickens take a few steps, and have to sit down again.

A quick walk around a stock yard, which has cows standing ankle deep in their own feces, serves as the spring board for a discussion about how the rash of deadly e-coli outbreaks in the North American food supply over the last 15 years, has come about.

It's pretty scary stuff, particularly when you consider the relentless pace of modern life -- people don't have the time to think about food safety. Naturally, it's presumed that enforcement of governmental standards protects us. But the food lobby and the power of massive multinational corporations has politicians eating out of their hands -- pun fully intended -- which essentially means the connection between regulation by government and food safety standards are tenuous at best.

Food, Inc. is a US-based documentary. But it would be dangerous to assume that its concepts are not applicable in Canada. In the context of free trade and a globalized world, and our growing addiction to cheap, fast, sugar-and-salt-laden food, Canadians are just as removed from understanding their food supply and implications of their changing diet.

The explosion of obesity and type-II diabetes in the United States is a public health epidemic. All across America, the poor are locked into a spiral of death -- without health insurance, cheap food saves them the money they need to buy the drugs they need to stay alive. But the food is killing them, and without the drugs, certain death is guaranteed -- pure genius if you subscribe to a system that sees individuals as profit centres.

From a Canadian perspective, it is imperative that we learn from this, as food is intimately and critically tied to our public health, too. But there are also more serious implications. Because of our nationalized health care system, the same explosion of obesity and diabetes costs ALL of us money and strains the ability of our system to cope. So just as we are obliged to help people treat their disease, Canadians are mutually accountable for making wise dietary choices. Without such a responsibility, it might just be easier to stop funding health care and send money to fast food corporations, because that's essentially what's happening.

A last point. Industrialized food has fundamentally shrunk the diversity in our food chain. One breed of chicken, engineered to grow fast, is being used to produce all fast food chicken. One breed of cattle is used to ensure consistent hamburger taste from Victoria to Charlottetown. One type of hog is used in breakfast sausages, again to give consistent texture and taste. The Food and Agriculture organization estimates that 45 per cent of farm breeds are extinct, or on the verge of extinction. Some of these animals have been with us -- humans -- for 1000 or more years.

There is a cornucopia of taste and choice in our food chain we no longer have, and the radio documentary, The Philosophy of Pig, gives listeners a decidedly Canadian perspective on the fight by one Ottawa, Ontario woman to preserve diversity. She lost her job as an environmental policy advisor, started a farm, and re-invented herself as a pig farmer dedicated to saving a dying breed.

There are others all over Canada working to keep local, healthy food on our tables. Let's support them, our economy, and our health, all the while enjoying the delicious tastes of diversity. It is the intelligent choice.