Vote to Change the System, Part 2: CHICKEN

This post is Part Two of a series of posts that summarize what is going on in our industrial food system as inspired by the movie Food, Inc.

"Everything we've done in modern industrial agriculture is to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper. Nobody's thinking about E-coli, type II diabetes, and the ecological health of the whole system." ~Joel Salatin

Do you like chicken? Do you know where the chicken you eat comes from? How it is raised? What it is fed? If not, you might want to start paying more attention.

Now, this is a good looking chicken!

Similar to the beef industry, only a handful of companies control the chicken industry. Two big names may sound familiar: Tyson and Purdue. After the near death of the tobacco industry in the south, the chicken growers moved in. Farmers who previously grew tobacco started to sign contracts with mega chicken production companies thinking they would be able to make a good living, and the chicken equivalent of beef production began. These farmers are not farmers anymore, they are "growers", and no longer are they in charge of their own businesses. They sign on with the big guns and have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into chicken houses without any windows or light, into which they cram thousands of chickens. These chickens are fed low quality grain feed that is laced with antibiotics to "protect" them from the immenent infections they will contract in such filthy and cramped living conditions. They are raised and slaughtered in half the time (48 days) they were in the 1950's and they are twice as big. Their breasts are genetically modified to be bigger because that's what people *think* they want to eat. The chickens are so oversized and their muscle and fat mass grow so fast that their bones and internal organs cannot keep up; they fall down after trying to take a few steps, they can't breath, and many cannot fight off infection, even with the antibiotic flavoring in their food. Every day the growers have to go into the chicken houses and pick up the dead ones. The sick ones who aren't quite dead come slaughter time end up in the poultry section of your supermarket, and eventually on your dinner plate. The goal of companies like Tyson is to produce a large amount of food, on a small amount of land, for affordable prices. I suppose "affordable" depends on the context. If one can "afford" to make oneself sick by eating cheap food, then yes, it is quite affordable.

One grower, Carole Morison, shared her story in Food, Inc. She was contracted under Purdue and decided that she had to speak out because what these companies are doing is not right. The companies force the growers to make expensive upgrades for which they have to take out more and more loans, putting them farther and farther into debt and keeping the growers right where the companies want them, under their thumbs. Carole had the "old-fashioned" chicken houses that had windows; her contract was terminated when she refused to convert to the dark tunnel-ventilated houses. On top of the mountain of debt she accrued, she also developed a resistance to all antibiotics from inhaling them for so many years. A typical grower is $500,000 in debt and makes only $18,000 a year. How is this a good living?

Many of these companies, including the leading pork producer with the largest slaughterhouse IN THE WORLD: Smithfield, treat their workers as badly as they do the animals. Smithfield has to recruit people from the outlying areas because they've already burned through the people who live in town. They target very low-income areas and also hire immigrant workers whom they can take advantage of. They hire people who can't afford to leave and they recruit workers from Mexico who lost their jobs and businesses because of the corn industry in the U.S. The government turned a blind eye to this practice because it was cheap labor, but suddenly with the current anti-immigrant movement, they are cracking down- but not on the companies of course- on the workers. Eduardo Pena, a Union Organizer for the Smithfield employees says, "These people have been here for ten, fifteen years processing your bacon, your holiday ham, and now they are being picked up like they're criminals- and these companies are making billions of dollars". Our food system is not about food anymore, it's about money.

Okay, so with all of this negative information about the industrial food chain, I'll end this post with a video of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. He embodies what REAL farming is. He raises his plants and animals with respect and integrity. His entire farm is essentially self-sustaining, nature does what it is meant to do; cows eat and fertilize the grass, chickens run around and eat the bugs and worms, pigs get to plow through the mud under the oak trees. He realizes the connection between the health of the food we eat, our own health, and the health of the world. It's about respecting the natural cycle of where your food comes from instead of controlling it. "If we put glass walls on all the mega-processing facilities, we would have a different food system in this country," he says from his open air chicken processing station in his yard. I would love to have the opportunity to check out his farm in Virginia.



If you are in Oregon, I know of one farm who learned how to farm directly from Salatin, it's called Abundant Life Farm and they are located in Peacful Valley. I'm going to look into buying from them. Search farms in your area to find a good place to get your food!

Vote to Change the System, Part 1: BEEF

Last weekend we watched one of the best movies ever. It was horrifying, empowering, and inspiring all at the same time. Food, Inc. Now, I know that it came out a while ago, and it might even be shocking that I have just now gotten around to seeing it, but I read The Omnivore's Dilemma last year and knew that this movie would cover a lot of the same information. This was true, but I am so glad that I saw it and I think it is a movie that EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE. For too long we have been in the dark as to how our food is grown, processed, and produced. We blindly eat what the government so kindly subsidizes for us in order to make it cheap, without knowing what, exactly, is in it. I'm not just talking about fast food either. We all know that fast food is one of the big contributors to our obesity, diabetes, and heart disease epidemics, but unfortunately the fast food industry is even dictating the quality of the food in the grocery store.



The food that most Americans eat today does not come from farms anymore. The pictures on the packaging have us believe that the milk comes from a quaint little farm in rural Pennsylvania where the cows roam free across the abundance of grass and clover and are happily milked by their loving farmer.. when in all actuality it is quite the opposite. Our food is coming from factories. No longer do the companies who produce our food treat our food with respect, therefore disrespecting the workers and and ultimately us as the consumers. It's not just about food either, it's about what we are allowed to know and talk about. You see, there are these laws called Food Libel Laws (also known as Veggie Libel Laws) that, in 13 U.S. states, make it very easy for food producers to sue their critics for libel (defamation). Remember back in the 1990's when Oprah was sued by a beef producer in Texas, after she heard about the conditions, for saying that she was scared to eat another burger? Well, luckily she is Oprah and she had enough money to hire the right lawyers and win, but the average person isn't able to do that. They will sue the average person. In fact, in Colorado, it is a considered FELONY to speak out against the industrial food industry. And what's worse, now there is the "Cheeseburger" bill (instated in 2005) that make it very hard for US to sue THEM. While I agree that people should be held accountable for what they do to their own bodies by their own freedom of choice (in other words, you shouldn't be able to sue McDonald's for making you fat), I do not believe that a law should protect the corporations who produce the poisonous food from any responsibility whatsoever. The bottom line is that people need to have available the correct information about their food and be provided with better health education. These massive industrial food mongers are in no way helping this to happen.

I am hopeful that the more people see movies like Food, Inc. and read books like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma the more proactive we all will become with regards to what we are eating. Anyone in their right mind would make a change in their diet after hearing about and seeing where their food comes from. Take beef, for example: as the industry narrows down the amount of companies in charge of raising and processing the beef that is the most abundant in our food chain, the quality of the food along with the integrity of the companies quickly declines. In the 1970's the top five beef packing companies controlled about 25% of the market and there were thousands of slaughter houses all over the country, today the top four (Tyson, Cargill, Swift, and National Beef) control MORE THAN 80% of the market and there are only 13 slaughterhouses. In 1972 the Food and Drug Administration conducted 50,000 food safety inspections and in 2006 they conducted only 9,164. With this dramatic decrease in quality control and a subsequent decrease in quality, it's no wonder that we have had numerous outbreaks of E-coli 0157H7.

It all begins with how the cows are treated. The industry figured out the fastest and most profitable way to produce affordable meat for every American: cram as many cows into a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feed Operation) as you can (this equates to miles upon miles of the most unsanitary conditions you can imagine) and feed them food that they are not meant to eat (corn) so that they can fatten up at an unnatural rate. Cows are herbivores, they are meant to eat grass and clover, not corn with ground up chicken or cow parts mixed in. Someone once said to me, "Cows will eat anything you put in front of them, how is corn unnatural?" my response is this- apparently humans will eat just about anything you put in front of them too, that doesn't mean it's good for them, in fact it will kill them just as feeding corn to cows will kill the cows! The only reason corn doesn't kill the cows (most of the time) is because they are pumped full of antibiotics to stave off infection until they are slaughtered just before the antibiotics stop working. If we let the cows live a bit longer, they would die from being sick. While in the CAFOs, your delicious hamburger meat is standing knee-deep in manure, it's own and that of the thousands of other cows that share the confined space. Their hides get coated in feces and then sent to processing where thousands of different cows and their poo find their way into your cheeseburger. Yum, E-coli. One partial solution to the whole E-coli thing would be to take the cows off of their unhealthy diet and feed them grass for five days; they are amazing creatures with powerful digestive systems, they would shed 80% of the E-coli bacteria in their stomachs. Instead of doing this (and keeping the cows clean) the beef industry decided to create another entirely unnatural solution: they add a "hamburger meat filler" that has been cleansed with AMMONIA to the meat in order to kill the harmful bacteria. This filler is in 70% of the hamburger meat in the U.S.

Once again, this isn't just fast food beef, it's the majority of the beef in the supermarket as well. Even if it has a different name on the package, remember- there are only four companies who control over 80% of the market. You see, the fast food industry controls how MOST of our food is produced, since they are the top buyers of it. McDonald's is the #1 beef purchaser in the U.S. and they want all of their hamburgers to taste the same therefore, all beef is produced with the same [super low] standards. McDonald's is also the #1 purchaser of potatoes and one of the largest purchasers of tomatoes, lettuce, and apples. Yikes. With such high demand for cheap food FAST, quality is a thing of the past.

We must speak out against this.

Step one is to KNOW WHERE YOUR BEEF COMES FROM.

Coming up next in Part 2: CHICKEN

Protest the 40+ hour work week!

Life shouldn't be as hard as it is. Our American society places upon us these expectations that are virtually impossible to fulfill. We are programmed to think that we must work ourselves to the bone day in and day out for the majority of our lives, so that we can "retire" (if you're lucky) when we are 65 and then really live our lives... if you're not too sick and doped up on 27 different prescriptions with 82 different side effects, that is. This is just plain WRONG. In fact, we are so indoctrinated with this mindset that if someone doesn't work AT LEAST 40-50 hours a week, they are considered LAZY by most other people. The thing is, we are MAKING OURSELVES SICK, and overworking ourselves is the foundation of it. You see, when you work 55-65 hours a week (let alone 40-50), sleep quantity and quality undoubtedly suffer, as does your eating habits (because eating healthy, home-prepared food takes more time), and also your level of activity drops off. Your stress levels begin to skyrocket because of fatigue, malnourishment, and inactivity so you are therefore less able to handle anything upsetting or stressful. Instead of doing things that would be good for your mind and body (like read, meditate, learn something new, or exercise), you are so damn tired and bummed out that all you want to do is to go home, eat some easy to prepare food (or even worse, take out), watch a movie (or even worse, television), and go to sleep. Then, the next day you drag yourself out of bed too early and not adequately rested and do it all over again. By the time the weekend arrives, you are so sick of your reality that all you want to do is go blow a bunch of the money you have risked your health to earn on alcohol and crappy food. And so the cycle begins. Pretty soon you are so completely out of touch with yourself, sick, overweight, and unhappy because of the large scale hormonal imbalances caused by all of this stress. And it all started with working TOO MUCH.

Sound familiar? You are not alone. This is America after all, so the vast majority of the adult population is with you. These are the same people who make up the statistics of sickness and disease- you know: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc. Those statistics WILL represent YOU.. if you aren't careful. Some of you are probably such control freaks that you still workout despite your demanding work schedule, lack of sleep, and sub-par nutrition which includes plenty of grains (I'll go into to evils of grains on another post). Well, you people quite possibly might get sick and die sooner. You see, when you are literally running on empty and have hormones that are so out of whack that your body doesn't even know if it is daytime or nighttime, running 5 miles is the worst thing you could do for yourself. When we are exposed to stress and light (as in daylight- or artificial light when we should be sleeping), we produce the hormone cortisol. Most of us have elevated cortisol ALL THE TIME. Exercise is a stressor. So if you already have elevated cortisol from your busy, worker-bee lifestyle and then you hop on the treadmill for an hour, you are only raising that elevated cortisol higher. Too much cortisol equals DISEASE. Oh and it also makes you fat. Do you ever wonder why you exercise all the time yet you don't lose weight, and sometimes you even (gasp!) gain weight? You spend hours upon hours doing "cardio" and you still can't seem to shed that tummy. Well the answer to this dilemma is in your hormones. Your hormones are dictated by DIET, SLEEP, and STRESS. Period. So before you even think about working out, you have to get your sleeping and eating habits in serious check. Otherwise your workout could be detrimental to your health.

As a trainer I have been known to refuse to train clients when they come in after having not slept or eaten well because I know exactly what a workout will do to them and I don't want to be responsible for that. I have learned this after witnessing client after client completely BONK out in the middle of a workout, unable to finish- so now I just don't even go there. If I myself am sleep deprived, feel like my immunity is low, or am otherwise not functioning effectively, I SKIP THE WORKOUT. It has taken me YEARS to learn that this is okay to do- because just like our mentality to overwork ourselves for money, we also have this sick and twisted idea of exercise and how skipping it is just not an option unless you are deathly ill. Which brings me to another point- if you are sick, PLEASE don't be so selfish as to go out in public (work, the gym, or wherever) and INFECT everything and everyone you touch. Stay at home and do yourself and everybody else a favor and just heal yourself. Okay, that was a bit of a tangent... I will make my point now:

If you have any control over how many hours a week you work: WORK LESS. Spend more time with your family (especially if you have kids) and friends. What is the point of working so hard for your family if you are so sick and tired by the time you get to be with them that you aren't any fun to be around? Not to mention, working less (and the subsequent effects) will prolong your lifespan and improve the quality of said lifespan. Do things that make you HAPPY and make you THINK (like, don't just watch t.v. or waste time on Facebook). SLEEP MORE and EAT VEGETABLES. Drink LOTS of water- WATER, not water with some artificial fruit flavored sugar alcohol powder added to it because you, "just don't like water" (WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Water is life!!) DRINK REAL, PURE, UNADULTERATED WATER. Only when you have created good sleeping and eating habits should you even consider working out regularly.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting more information on how to achieve optimum wellness.
But for now, let's just start with working less.