Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!
The longer I live, the more I realize how true and powerful many of our common sayings, passed down to us through the centuries, are. Most often they succinctly summarize the accumulated wisdom and experience of generations and millennia.
It's too bad that “We grow too soon old and too late schmart!” Otherwise we would have paid a lot more attention to these century-old sayings and benefited from them, rather than going through the school of hard knocks and paying the tuition fees that come with it. Perhaps it was this realization that caused our former U.S. Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, to remark: “We learn from history that we DON'T learn from history.”
“Put your money where your mouth is” expresses a similar thought as a slogan frequently attributed to skeptical Missouri folks by collectively referring to the entire state as the “Show me!” state. Though not an official slogan of the state, it is used on Missouri license plates. “Put your money where your mouth is!” means something like, “If you really believe what you are telling me with your mouth, back it up with your wallet.”
I would like to suggest that more of us follow this age-old axiom with another aspect of life: food and wellbeing.
Warm season - good time to rebuild health
Spring, summer and fall are marvelous times in which to build one's health in a multitude of ways:
Getting out of doors and deeply breathing in an abundance of fresh and clean air. The most polluted and dangerous air for our health and wellbeing is indoor air, not outdoor, unless we live in one of those supper air-polluted cities from which sane people might want to flee.
Absorbing increasingly greater amounts of healing sunlight onto our “unslathered” bare skin. YES, sunlight is an absolutely necessary component of human health to such a degree that a century ago there were hundreds of sanitariums built around the world to expose sick people to sunlight… one of the most effective preventions and cures for TB.
Now burning one's self, regardless of method use, is never a good idea … though I could think of a possible exception even here. (“Never say never!) Over 50 years ago I had a friend in southern Brazil who prevented his own imminent death from a poisonous snake bite by immediately burning out the bite site of his leg with a red hot coal. (Anti-venom shots were not available , he had no knife to cut it out and no other human around to suck the poison out orally - all apparently effective death-preventive methods used for snake bites in those days.) When one has been indoors for too long, care needs to be exercised when exposing the skin to sunlight.
For a marvelous and comprehensive article on the critical need of sunlight for human health, find yourself a copy of the September 2006 Reader's Digest and digest “The Miracle Vitamin” article on pages 163-169. I'll guarantee you one thing: You'll never slather on commercially hyped sun-blocking (read: vitamin D blocking, health-blocking, cancer-promoting) gook on your skin again. At least you won't do it without getting a jolt about what the implications of such actions might be to you and your children.
There's even a word in the Psalms of the Hebrew and Christian holy scriptures that should have alerted us brainwashed, commercial-believer Westerners: “The sun shall NOT smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” (Psalm 121:6). Whatever one's right or skewed interpretation may be, it is certainly clear that the sun was created to be a blessing, not a curse, not withstanding Big Pharma and sun scare mongers.
Becoming more physically active. Mild weather and sunlight invite and beckon us outdoors to stretch and move, take a walk, jog, play ball and garden. Our bodies were designed, engineered and created for movement. The lack of all movement, external and internal, is a certain sign of death. The less we move about, the closer we take ourselves to the point of total inactivity - death.
I picture life and movement on a sliding scale: The more active (to a degree), the more alive and vibrant; the less active, the less alive and vibrant. Let me illustrate. An idle engine has far less “life” and power than a revved up one. And there is only a small number of RPMs between an idle one and one that is shut off - dead. A dead engine can be brought back to life with an electric jolt of energy from outside itself, but not so a human “engine” - at least not when it has been totally inactive beyond a few minutes.
Clean air, adequate sunlight, and physical activity promotes two other aspects of health: great, deep and restful sleep, and an appropriate hunger for nourishing food. It is this FOOD aspect I want to address and thus encourage us to put our money where our mouth is.
Consuming an abundance of fresh, locally grown, natural food. Though the growing season in the upper half of the US is somewhat limited because of climate, this is all the more reason to concentrate on buying and consuming fresh and local. More and more small scale family farms engage in some form of direct-to-consumer marketing, whether through farm stands, CSAs, farmer's markets, PYO, or supplying local retailers and institutions.
Because of our misguided national, political fixation on “cheap food,” consumers often don't realize that genuine health-sustaining foods must carry a considerable higher price tag than subsidized, industrial ag, processed look-alikes do.
Why not take 25, 50 or 75% of your current “healthcare” investments and put them into true prevention? Even from a strictly economic perspective, this may well be the best investment you can ever make. Besides, there is little benefit and joy in having a huge estate to pass on to the next generation when you have lost your health by using the false economy of cheap food to try to build solid health. Even Bill and Melinda Gates, with all their wealth, cannot buy health. It must be earned by the daily choices each one of us makes. And the basis of it all is food, real food.
Lifelong health depends on the choices WE make every day
Only about 10% of out total lifelong health is dependent on outside intervention by some aspect of professional health care workers, institutions or technology. About 90% of lifelong health is dependent on us and the daily choices we make (or were made for us during pregnancy and early childhood.) Yet we spend 18% of our GDP on this 10%.
This point is so important, I am going to repeat it. It may well be worth it to memorize this paragraph. It could not only save you thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, it could literally save your life.
Only about 10% of out total lifelong health is dependent on outside intervention by some aspect of professional health care workers, institutions or technology. About 90% of lifelong health is dependent on us and the daily choices we make (or were made for us during pregnancy and early childhood.) Yet we spend 18% of our GDP on this 10%.
It has been known for about a decade that the US healthcare system is one of the leading causes of death in this country as revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine , while the people being killed by this “health” care system are themselves paying for their own demise. And how much are Americans currently paying for this deadly “health” care system?
The last federal statistics available indicate that in the year 2006, the average American spent $7006 on healthcare. That amounts to over $19 per day for each of over 300,000,000 Americans. And what benefits do we get for all that? We are one the leading, sickest, major economic powerhouse nations in the world: More obesity, more diabetes, more cardiovascular episodes, more cancer, more… more… Ånd there is no end in sight.
Why? Because genuine health (wellness, wellbeing) does NOT depend in the first place on health insurance, total coverage, nearness to the highest rated hospitals in the country, access to the latest and most expensive medical technology, highest priced “miracle” drugs, latest surgical techniques. No, NO, and a thousand times more NO!
Clear and simply, our bodies know more about what belongs to their development, growth, function, reproduction, health and wellbeing than ALL medical and health scientists of all times. In fact, the best they can do is try to discover what our bodies already know and then replicate it, perhaps patent it, and charge an arm and a leg for convincing us that we should run to them rather than practicing health ourselves.
And don't let any fool convince you that our poor health is genetic or that we have the best food and healthcare system in the world. All falsehoods have some degree of truth in them. That is precisely why they are so appealing and deceptive. Like the bait on a fishhook, the little truth in brainwashing falsehoods is appealing to us, but it only hides the reality of the deadly hook inside.
For example, there is some truth in the statement that we have the best health care system in the world. If we apply this to a very narrow area of practice, it is true. We certainly have some of the world's top trauma and surgical centers. If I was half crushed or torn apart in an accident (as I once was), I would want to be treated in a top American or European trauma center, not by an Amazonian jungle herbalist. However, in trauma centers we are not treating lifestyle health degeneration, but accidents. And lifestyle-related health degeneration is probably around 85-90% of all our heath issues. Lifestyle degenerations can only be cured by health-sustaining lifestyle choices. In all degeneration (disease), the fundamental causes must be uncovered and addressed. Treating superficial symptoms is not a solution.
Food and Health Care Expenditures
Less than 60 years ago, Americans spent only 4.5% of their income on healthcare, but 19% on food, and much of that was still real food. By real food, I mean it was largely grown on live soil where reasonably good soil stewardship was still practiced (green manure crops used, animal manure returned to the soil, diversified farming, rotation of crops, few toxic substances used, etc.), much of the food was home or locally grown, and the volume of refined and highly processed foods were a very small percentage of the American diet. Americans did not yet live on junk (trash) foods - industrial chemical concoctions sold for human consumption. Millions of Americans today barely know what real food is, imitations being so pervasive. Junk food produces junk health. It can be no different. Garbage in, garbage out. GIGO!
In America we have a cheap food policy. If we had the same policy for housing, highway constructions, bridge building, automobile and aircraft manufacturing, there would be an outcry of rage against the ill effects of such a policy. Why do we do so with the most important aspect of our life - the food the builds and sustains health?
We have achieved the objective of “cheap” food from several perspectives:
1. Cheap food is cheap precisely because it truly is a cheap product, i.e., worth little. (When you buy the cheapest car on the market, what do you expect? Logic would dictate that you can't get a Mercedes for a Geo price.)
2. Cheap food is only cheap because the production of its ingredients is heavily tax-payer subsidized as legislated by our cabbage-head representatives in Washington.
3. Cheap food is cheap because the huge environmental costs created by industrial agriculture and food processing are not included in the prices paid at the retail market.
4. Finally, and most importantly, cheap food is cheap because the astronomic and skyrocketing health degeneration costs of consuming it are also not included in it. The ratio of food costs vs. healthcare expenditures have changed by more than a factor of 6, i.e., Americans now pay over 600% more for health care costs in relationship to food than they did in 1950.
Put your money on what goes into your mouth
I am suggesting that if we'd put our money where our mouth is, i.e., if we'd invest in high quality, nutrient dense, high Brix food to build and maintain our health, our healthcare needs and costs would drop dramatically.
Allow me to approach this subject from a different perspective. Every molecule of every cell of every tissue of every organ of every system in our entire body is built from the raw materials (food or junk) we choose to bring through the loading dock and entrance door of our body - your mouth. The whole body cannot be or function or feel any better than the sum today or all the raw materials we choose to give it.
Somehow logic and reality has escaped our thinking on the relationship between soil, farming, food and health long ago. But the laws of nature - including how our bodies are built, maintained, repaired and energized - do not change because we are ignorant of them or choose to ignore them. The law of gravity is not cancelled out because we'd like to fly like a bird. We'll still plummet to the earth if we'd attempt to imitate our bird friends. So surely we'll have junky bodies, brains, minds and emotions when we try to build, maintain and power these with cheap junk. This is why Howard Lyman repeatedly asserts that more Americans are killed by the fork than all other causes combined. The problem, or course, it not the fork, but what we choose to put on it and then into our bodies.
Spring, summer and fall are excellent times to foreswear junk foods and start feasting on the wide variety of today's fresh produce and other foods increasingly produced by local family farmers.
“Health comes from the farm, not the pharmacy.” So let's put our money on the nourishing foods we choose to put into our bodies. As new healthier cells replace the old weaker and dysfunctional ones, we will gradually feel and function better, while enjoying superior wellbeing.
Paul M. Otten
Manager, NaturaFarms.com
Editor, BerryNews.com
pmo@chof.net