Ovarian Cancer Journal

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" is the title of a book by Michael Pollan, a prolific writer, author, contributing editor to The New York Times, and a Knight Professor at UC Berkley. He has been investigating the world of organic and conventional industrial food processing for some time. The book is not for the faint-of-heart, running at 320 pages of food science and philosophy. I'm cheating a little, doing the audio version which comprises 14 CDs.

The introductory section drew the ire of my 21-year old son, Brad, when he heard the author claim that, overnight, the entire US switched from "fat phobia" to "carbohydrate phobia." Brad thought this was a ridiculous exaggeration. The point the author was making is this: people who are secure in their understanding of basic nutrition are not so easily swayed by dietary fads...for the most part, we are a nation of, at best, confused, and at worst, oblivious eaters.

Listening to this author's well-researched information strengthens my resolve to eat "agriculturally and locally". The industrialization of our food supply from conventional sources removes us far, far away from our life source, the sun. In the not-too-distant past, our nation's food came from a variety of locally grown plants and animals that also ate local green life. These are all powerful storage vessels for energy from the sun in the form of valuable nutrients.

Corn has taken over as the basis for an incredible amount of our food supply, as the major portion of the nutrition for livestock and the basis of a huge variety of food additives, masquerading under unrecognizable names. There are a number of reasons for this, including government subsidies for corn that have no connection to the market reality of a massive corn surplus. The ubiquity and versatility of corn has helped create a proliferation of highly processed foods on the grocery shelves. As a result, we are now a primarily corn-fed society, with corn making up a larger portion of the average US citizen's diet than that of the average citizen of Mexico!

Organically grown food and range-fed livestock have been shown to have a higher nutritional value than food from large industrial producers. In addition, organic practices cause less depletion of the soil and often are more sustainable. Pesticide exposure from eating conventionally grown plants, and antibiotics and hormones used to prevent disease and fatten livestock are additional compelling reasons, among many others elucidated by the author, to eat agriculturally and locally.

What does this have to do with cancer? Pesticides, overconsumption of animals raised with antibiotics and hormones, low intake of specific nutrients, lack of a healthy variety in the diet - these are all considered to be contributing factors to the development of cancer and many other diseases increasingly common in our population.

Although they can't provide all food needs, organic food co-ops offer a way to eat close to nature and help preserve small farms.

Resources I have found in the Greenville, SC area: http://www.greenvilleorganicfoods.com, http://www.happycowcreamery.com and http://www.splitcreek.com.

Other websites of interest: http://www.slowfoodusa.org, http://oldwayspt.org/index.php, http://www.ofrf.org, http://www.greenpeople.org/healthfood.htm.
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