HOPE, FAITH & LOVE

- Robyn O'Brien, Author & Health-Food Advocate

Remember that Shel Silverstein poem?

Listen to the "mustn'ts", child, listen to the "don'ts".
Listen to the "shouldn'ts", the "impossibles", the "wont's"....

Today's headlines often make life feel as if the world has been thrown into a cuisinart!  Especially when it comes to the health of our children.  The landscape of children’s health has changed.  No longer are our children guaranteed a healthy childhood  - not in the face of the current rates of autism, food allergies, diabetes, childhood cancers and obesity. 

According to Bloomberg, US companies spent $400 billion on health care costs in 2007, a fivefold increase over two decades.  That jaw dropping statistic represents the equivalent of almost one third of the federal budget for 2010. Do we even have that much money in our wallet?

We lead the world in healthcare spending, and we lead the world in infant mortality. We consume more pharmaceutical drugs  than any other country, and we consume more chemicals in our food supply than the cows in France. Yet in these head spinning statistics, something remarkable is happening. We are suddenly realizing that there is more that unites us than divides us.  And that is our health.

Today, 1 in 2 minority children born in the year 2000 are expected to be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood, with diabetes costing us $336 billion a year (or more than $1 billion per American). Obesity is snuffing out the health benefits we saw as we quit smoking.   And it's now been revealed that all of the 'technofood' that we introduced into our food supply 15 years ago on a wing and a prayer and some lofty promises, have added an additional 383 million pounds of pesticide use since their introduction - or over 1 million pounds of pesticides per American.

As science increasingly shows the impact that these chemicals and environmental insults are having on our health, it is inspiring us into a new relationship with food.  One in which we place a value on that which we consume as it serves to nourish us and not just satiate us. 

And as we begin to learn how countries like Norway prohibit the use of certain chemicals and synthetic additives in children's foods because they have not yet been proven safe and that Kraft formulates their Lunchable products differently for families overseas - with reduced sodium content, reduced fat content and free of certain chemicals that have been linked to hyperactivity in kids – we learn that together, we can affect remarkable change in the United States’ food system. 

When Kraft reformulated their products for eaters overseas, they didn't wait for foreign governments to mandate these changes, they implemented them voluntarily ahead of legislation in order to meet consumer demand.  Coca Cola wasn’t adhering to a legal regulation when they voluntarily agreed to remove aspartame (also known as Nutrasweet and Equal) from their products overseas, they did so to meet consumer demand who were concerned about the use of this synthetic chemical. 

As we educate each other, Kraft and Coca Cola will do the same for American consumers if we let them hear from us, too, because at the end of the day, we are all eaters, and we are all at this table together. 

Given the rates of allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, there is more that unites us than divides us.  And together, we can inspire the changes that we want to see in the health of our families.  Each and every one of us has a unique talent to lend to the solution, so we can begin by doing just one thing, not making “the perfect” the enemy of “the good”, and by taking baby steps together.  And before we know it, we will be up and running. 

So, perhaps once again, we should reflect on that verse from Where the Sidewalk Ends:

Listen to the "mustn'ts", child, listen to the "don'ts".
Listen to the "shouldn'ts", the "impossibles", the "wont's"...
Listen to the "never-haves", then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child, anything can be.

Hope is the knowledge that change is possible; faith is believing in our collective abilities to affect remarkable change together. And love brings it all together. 
 
Robyn O'Brien BIO:
 
Robyn O’Brien, named by SHAPE Magazine as one of 2009’s Women To Shape the World, along with Michelle Obama, has been called “food’s Erin Brockovich”. She has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CNN, as well as People, Living Without and in other media, highlighting the role that chemicals in our food supply are having on our health. Her first book, published by Random House (May 2009) The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It exposes the role that failed federal policy and financial incentives have played in the toxicity of the US food supply.  Robyn was born and raised in Texas, earned a Fulbright Fellowship, an MBA and served as an equity analyst prior to moving to Boulder, Colorado with her husband and four children. She is the founder of AllergyKids Foundation, an organization designed to protect the 1 in 3 American children with autism, allergies, ADHD and asthma from the chemicals now found in the US food supply.  Additional resources, articles and information are available at www.robynobrien.com and www.allergykids.com