Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time

Dr. Hyman spent the last 40 years studying nutrition, grappling with the changes in dietary recommendations, and treating more than 10,000 patients with food as medicine. As a functional medicine physician, he was trained to focus on the root causes of disease and to think of our body as one interconnected ecosystem. He took a systems approach to understanding health and health care, and how it is connected to all of our other systems that define our health.

The ideas in this book are meant to inspire, educate, and motivate individuals, families, businesses, nonprofits, and governments to innovate and think differently about the food system. It is the beginning of reimagining a food system that provides real, whole, nutrient-dense food from nature across the globe in a sustainable way, addressing hunger, obesity, chronic disease, and mental illness. It is the beginning of how we can change our systems as a whole. He imagines a food system that saves trillions of wasted dollars every year that could be redirected to solving our most intractable problems of disease, poverty, violence, lack of quality education, and social injustice. He imagines a food system that restores ecosystems, builds healthy soil, protects our scarce water resources, reduces pollution, increases biodiversity, and reserves climate change. He imagines a food system that builds rather than destroys communities. He imagines a food system that is not extractive and destructive to everything that matters but is restorative and regenerative. He imagines a food system that is redemptive rather than rapacious. We need to think about these issues as one interconnected, intersecting set of challenges that we can and must address if we are to reverse the crises we face today and avert the disasters just over the horizon.

Our current food system is toxic and is the defining problem of our time, and, as yet, it has not been clearly recognized as a threat or addressed in a global, coherent, coordinated, strategic way. We need new ideas, strategies, policies, and business innovations to fix these problems and bring diverse groups together to solve them together. Imagine if the groups at odds with each other come together to fight a common problem. It is possible. Solutions exist. They are achievable, and we need the push up from the grassroots efforts and from the top down to shift public opinion, to create a movement that forces legislatures and policymakers to take notice and take action. Massive shifts in laws are possible when we vote with our voices, actions, and ballots. We can also vote with our dollars. Our collective actions and behaviours will move things in the right direction, and our children and their children might enjoy a sustainable future of good food, safe climate, and healthy systems. The work has begun across the globe illuminating a hopeful way forward. These nuggets of innovation and creativity restoring land and communities, and inspiring new policies are the seeds of a new future. It is the great work of our time. And it depends on all of us.

Our diet is the number one cause of death, disability, and suffering in the world. Our food has dramatically transformed over the last 100 years, and even more radically over the last 40 years, as we have eaten a diet of increasingly ultraprocessed foods made from a handful of crops (wheat, corn, soy). In his investigation on food and the food system, Dr. Hyman has exposed a story that shocked him and drove him to reveal the broken, corrupt food system that is slowly destroying our species and our planet. Chronic disease from poor diet is now the single largest threat to global health, economic development, and the environment. We have more than enough food to feed all the humans in the world and more (up to 10.5 billion) with our existing food supply. Yet 800 million people go to bed hungry, 2 billion are malnourished, and another 2.2 billion go to bed overweight. The consequences of which include stunting growth and intellectual development in children; compromising mood and behaviour; impairing cognitive abilities; increasing mental illness; increasing infections and chronic diseases; lowering immune systems; raising allergic, autoimmune, and inflammatory conditions; perpetuating cycles of poverty, violence, and social injustice; compromising national security; and making people easier to confuse and control through mainstream media. This is not an accident. This is by design.

To solve our most critical problems, as a collective, we must:
Provide free education
Provide free health care
Eradicate poverty
End food insecurity and hunger
Solve social injustice, income, and health disparities
End unemployment
Rebuild our infrastructure and transportation system
Shift to renewable energy
Draw down carbon emissions and reverse climate change
Transform our industrial agricultural system, which is destructive to humans, animals, and the environment, into a sustainable, regenerative system that reverses climate change, preserves our freshwater resources, increases biodiversity, protects pollinators, and produces health-promoting whole food.

Our most powerful tool to reverse the global pandemics of chronic disease and mental illness, heal the environment, reverse climate change, end poverty and social injustice, reform politics, and revive economies is food. Our industrial agricultural and food system (including food waste) is the single biggest cause of climate change, exceeding all use of fossil fuels. Current farming practices may cause us to run out of soil and fresh water in this century. We are destroying our rivers, lakes, and oceans by the runoff of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which is creating vast swaths of marine dead zones. We waste 40 percent of the food we produce, costing more than $2.6 trillion a year in global impact. The plastic packaging we use is destroying our planet, and contaminating our food and homes. The true costs are not paid for by the food system that generates the costs. The hidden costs of the food system are paid for by all of us indirectly through the loss of our social capital (human happiness, health, productivity, etc.), our natural capital (health of our soil, air, water, climate, oceans, biodiversity, etc.), our economic capital (our ability to address economic disparities and social, environmental, educational, and health care problems), threats to national security (soldiers too overweight to fight), and more. Shifting our thinking from seeing health care, disease, social injustice, poverty, environment, climate, education, economics, and national security as separate problems – in other words, connecting the dots, thinking of the interdependencies and the systems nature of this problem – is critical for solving it.

If Big Ag and Big Food had to pay for the harm caused by the food they produce, then your grass-fed steak would be much cheaper than processed food. It takes legislation to hold these corrupt companies accountable, instead they get government subsidization. All hidden harmful costs of food need to be quantified and measured. What gets measured gets managed. True Cost Accounting is a movement that is underway to truly account for these real costs of processed food and the damage they cause. Changes in food policy to account for these costs, and leveraging taxes and incentives can have a profound impact, and improve the overall health of humanity and the planet. We need to analyze all the impacts of our food system, good and bad, and their costs and savings to create a new economic model that reflects the true cost of food and build the business model for a sustainable, regenerative food system.

The complexity of the problem prevents people from connecting the dots and taking action. Most government policies promote the growing, production, marketing, sale, and consumption of the worst diet on the planet – billions in subsides for commodity crops turned into processed food and food for factory-farmed animals; billions in food stamp payments that attempt to reduce hunger but are mostly for processed food and soda, while healthy options are not affordable; unregulated food marketing of soda and junk food; confusing food labels; and industry-influenced dietary guidelines. It’s very policies also support agricultural practices that exploit people, pollute the environment, and worsen climate change.

Lobbyists’ influence over policymakers has put corporations, not citizens, at the center of every aspect of our food system, from what and how food is grown to what is manufactured, marketed, and sold. When money rules politics, it results in our current uncoordinated and conflicting food policies, which subsidize, protect and facilitate Big Food’s and Big Ag’s domination of our food system to the detriment of our population and environment. Big Food and Big Ag co-opt politicians, public health groups, grassroots advocacy groups, scientists, and schools, and corrupt science and public opinion with vast amounts of dollars and misinformation. The consolidation and monopolization of the food industry over the last 40 years from hundreds of different processed-food companies, seed companies, and chemical and fertilizer companies into just a few dozen companies make it the largest collective industry in the world, valued at $15 trillion, or about 17 percent of the entire world’s economy. It is controlled by a few dozen CEOs who determine what food is grown and how it is grown, processed, distributed, and sold. This affects every single human on the planet.

On a positive note, billions of dollars in investment are flooding into the food and agricultural sectors, creating new businesses, jobs, and national and global economic growth for innovations in farming, food manufacturing, retail, restaurants, health care, and wellness that improve the health of the people and the planet in a sustainable way. The countries that get this right will not only help humans and the earth, but leap ahead in the twenty-first century economy for jobs, economic growth, and desirable living. For many, it’s easier just to eat our junk food and stay oblivious. But we cannot afford to be unconscious anymore. The stakes are too high.

Each of us must find the right diet for our genes, metabolism, age, dietary preferences, beliefs, and so on. Moral, ethical, and religious considerations are important on a personal level. However, it must be whole food from nature, real food, recognizable from field to fork. It is important to pay attention to your energy, weight, digestion, and health considerations. Your diet should be aspirational and flexible, not perfect. It must keep things in moderation and involve conscious choices. It should contribute to better health for you, a better world for humans, including food workers and farmworkers, and a better world for animals and the environment, our climate, and our economy. Remarkably, food that is good for you is also good for the environment, our depleted soil, our scarce water resources, and the biodiversity of plants, animals, and pollinators, and it helps reverse climate change.

50 percent of our plates should be organically grown fruits and vegetables, and the remaining should be sustainable protein, nuts, seeds, legumes, and occasionally carbs that are not inflammatory. It's important to understand the eat-less-meat argument is only valid in the context of current factory-farmed-meat production systems, not regenerative grass-fed and grass-finished meat. Dietary cholesterol, like found in pasture-raised eggs, does not significantly raise your blood cholesterol levels. In fact, your blood cholesterol is actually worsened more by sugar than by fat, and some fats, like olive oil, avocados, and nuts, actually improve your cholesterol. We should eat sustainably raised or harvested low-mercury fish and high-omega-3 fish. Try mostly wild caught salmon, and to a lesser degree, tuna, swordfish, and halibut. Beans can be a great source of fiber, protein, and minerals. All grains can increase your blood sugar, however, we should stick with small portions of low-glycemic grains like black or wild rice, quinoa, teff, buckwheat, and amaranth. Beware of modern wheat – it is mostly consumed as refined flour, which is worse for your blood sugar and is more inflammatory than table sugar. Stay away from sugar and anything that causes a spike in blood sugar and therefore insulin; for example, flour, refined starches, and carbohydrates. “Don’t drink your sugar” may be the most important advice you ever get. This causes huge spikes in blood sugar and therefore insulin, which is the root of metabolic disease. Stay away from most refined vegetable, bean and seed oils, such as canola, sunflower, corn, grapeseed, and especially soybean, which are highly inflammatory. Choose the right dairy. Dairy today is not what it used to be. The way we raise cattle is bad for the cows, the environment, and humans. Dairy has been linked to cancer, osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, allergic reactions, digestive problems, and chronic inflammation. Find dairy from goat, sheep or heirloom cows that contain A2 casein, which doesn’t cause the same digestive or inflammatory problems as modern cow products. Always go organic and 100 percent grass-fed to reduce the health risks. Stay away from pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, food additives, chemicals, artificial sweeteners and colours, and GMO (genetically modified organisms) foods. Choose foods raised or grown in regenerative ways if possible. This way of eating allows for vast flexibility within many cultures and dietary preferences, and can be considered a universally healthy diet.

Obesity rates in children have tripled since the 1970s and now one in three children are obese in the Western world. One in four teenagers have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. If a child is overweight, their life expectancy may be reduced by 20 years. A major reason for childhood and teenager obesity is the food offered at home and in schools. The other reasons are stress and sedentary lifestyle. School meals are often loaded with sugar, salt, processed carbs, and industrial fats. Many schools in America don’t even pretend to offer healthy meals. They let fast food chains sell their toxic foods and put their logos in cafeterias and gymnasiums. Kids spend more time in school than any other place outside their homes, where they often eat breakfast, lunch, and snacks. School meals are critical to the battle against childhood obesity and should be held to the highest standards. Public health efforts have long tried to make school meals more nutritious, but have little power against the lobbying of the food industry and government complacency.

Governments allow unregulated food marketing to children in schools, directly leading children to consume more junk food. The implicit message is that teachers, school administrators, and parents endorse these toxic food products, otherwise, they would not be allowed in schools. Junk food companies engage in this type of predatory marketing because it is hugely profitable. They hire research firms and neuroscientists to manipulate children into wanting junk food and demanding it from their parents. The average kid now spends forty-four hours a week in front of screens and is subject to intense and manipulative stealth marketing, a strategy where a product is promoted to a target audience without them even realizing it is an advertisement. Stealth marketing is harder to track and includes embedded advertising in movies and television, toys, games, educational materials, and songs; character and celebrity endorsements; and word of mouth, text messages, the internet, and social media. A new subversive and powerful model for marketing junk food to children is “advergames” – free social media games and apps that integrate junk food into games for little children. This is perverse and exploitative. Much like tobacco companies, junk food companies target children because they know that the way to hook them for life is to reach them early, when they’re most impressionable. Junk food and the marketing behind it has been shown to lead to determinantal changes in the adolescent brain associated with dysfunctional eating, impulsive behaviours, and mental illness. It can thwart parents’ efforts to instill healthy eating habits in their kids. Teaching your kids to appreciate real food from nature is a challenging task when postured up against the corrupt and insanely rich food industry. Scientists have shown that even slight increases in the amount of time kids spend viewing junk food ads can increase their odds of becoming obese by 20 percent and teenagers are twice as likely to become obese if they see at least one junk food ad daily. Even in kids who are not obese, doctors are discovering horrifying metabolic conditions driven by their junk food habits, including fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes. This is a sick game and the food industry is fully aware of what they are doing.

Our children’s future is threatened by an achievement gap caused in large part by their inability to learn on a diet of processed foods and sugar. We don’t have to sit idly by letting Big Food prey on our children for profit and control. Let’s protect our children at home and in school with nutritious foods and education that builds the foundation for a healthy life and community. And let’s support organizations and leaders who want to do the same. Parents, school boards, administration, and school staff can help implement changes: introduce salad bars in schools, eliminate junk food from school menus, ban chocolate milk, support farm-to-school programs, plant food gardens in every school, bring back basic cooking skills to schools as part of their curriculums showing them how to prepare healthy meals using fresh food from nature, advocate for the end of junk food advertising to children, and recommend that parents limit and monitor their children’s screen time to avoid excessive dangerous marketing and exposure.

Telling people to eat less and exercise more only blames the victim. The food industry produces addictive, dangerous food that override willpower, driving our bodies to gain weight and get sick. Toxic foods like that create an astounding amount of secondary consequences for humans, the environment, and the economy. As consumers, we can choose to stop drinking and eating toxic food products, do a junk food cleanse, and engage local government and schools to promote a soda and junk food tax. If consumers demand less junk food, then eventually producers of junk food will comply. Don’t be fooled by fruit juice. It is loaded with sugar and, metabolically, it is just as harmful as soda to your body despite having some vitamins and antioxidants. Avoid buying it, and certainly don’t give it to your children. Cutting sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food from your diet is the single biggest thing you can do to improve your health.

Your daily choices matter, and we all must work together to improve our health and to make agriculture work for producers, consumers, animals, and the land that grows everything we eat. We can look for regenerative organic certified labels. We can join a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program for local organic produce. We can shop at farmer’s markets. We can start a home and community garden. We can educate ourselves about regenerative agriculture. We can change our banking and investment strategy to support regenerative and sustainable business solutions. We can avoid GMO foods as much as possible. We can consider joining or starting a food policy council, through which local people can educate one another and advocate for better food policies. We can petition anchor institutions like hospitals and schools to buy locally sourced, regenerative food. We can support farmworkers and the organizations that fight for their rights. Small steps like these add up to big changes if we all participate. We can all be a part of that with our choices, our voices, and our votes. Shifting our perspective from “blame the victim” to “change the system” is essential for addressing the social injustice that drives our chronic disease and mental health pandemics, obesity, poverty, food insecurity, and our toxic nutritional landscape, where making good choices is nearly impossible for many. Food is a social justice issue. Our industrial food system is an invisible form of oppression that disproportionately affects the poor, minorities, and children.

The history of sugar is closely linked to slavery, as the slave trade served the growth of sugar production. Legal slavery is over, although forms of slavery still occur on some farms, often with migrant workers. But today sugar, especially in its new and more deadly form, high-fructose corn syrup, is connected to a new kind of oppression – food oppression, which makes people sick, fat, disabled, and die early. It is a deliberate form of apartheid in which the poor and minorities live in areas that lack healthy food, and have an overabundance of fast food outlets and convenience stores. This is an institutionalized form of segregation and racism embedded in the actions of corporations, business, and our government policies that have successfully enacted a hidden genocide. Even when food is available to disadvantaged communities, fresh whole foods can be expensive, which leads to the purchase of cheap, unhealthy junk food. Living in poverty drives food insecurity, overconsumption of cheap processed foods, higher rates of obesity, mental illness, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Research shows that those who are the most food insecure, use the most health care and have the highest health care costs. Often the people living in these circumstances are not aware they are victims of food oppression, food apartheid, and internalized food racism. The work of transforming this system of oppression must come from multiple sectors – change in government policies at the local, state, and federal levels, regulation, litigation, health care reimbursement for food as medicine, nonprofits creating local programs to educate and empower people, and grassroots efforts of citizens working to change their communities and regain food sovereignty.

The United States gives $7 billion in food stamps spent on sugary beverages alone every year. That’s about 30 billion servings of toxic drinks given to the poor, about 40 million people, and paid for by taxpayers. 75 percent of the food stamp foods are used for ultraprocessed food directly shown to cause chronic disease and mental illness. Taxpayers are indirectly poisoning the poor and they do not have a choice. But the US government does. While the government cannot ensure the poor eat fruits and vegetables, they can help create an economy of choice for healthy options. The problem isn’t a lack of calories, it’s a lack of healthy calories. This is a nutrient deficiency problem as the ultraprocessed foods available to them have many calories but almost no real nutrition. Big Food aims its junk food advertising at the poor with laser focus, marketing the worst food for health that is the most profitable for them. The government allows this. The profit margins on junk food are much higher than that of produce, meat, and seafood. There are no nutritional or marketing regulations to protect the poor from this attack due to food industry lobbying and government neglect. It’s a bit worse than that though. There is an agenda behind all of this: to make people sick and sell them health care to keep them poor so that they are easily controlled. With modest reform by an honest government, we can address hunger, and reduce chronic disease and mental illness that disproportionately affects the poor. Government food programs for the poor should eliminate sugary beverages and junk food, ensure access to quality fruits, vegetables, and proteins, and align with public health and health care.

The lack of protective food (whole food from nature) is as important in determining risk of death as the overconsumption of processed foods. Just as the wrong foods can cause disease and death, the right foods can dramatically reduce disease and death. Mounting research shows that food is medicine and demonstrates how whole foods from nature, especially an increase in fruits and vegetables, can prevent or reverse chronic disease that dramatically reduces health care costs. Yet there is a silence when it comes to our global response to the most common kinds of preventable deaths and the savings in health care. The reason this problem is virtually ignored is that this pandemic of food insecurity and overnutrition with processed foods has come on fast and furiously over the last 40 years and blindsided society, and that the purpose of the health care system is to sell more health care, not cure disease.

The food we eat (or the food we don’t eat) is the single biggest cause of death worldwide, exceeding tobacco and every other known risk factor. Now more than 70 percent of deaths worldwide are from what we call “noncommunicable disease”, conditions like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. While referred to as noncommunicable disease, these diseases are highly contagious and driven by the structural environment – government policies, poverty, and a pervasive and increasingly toxic global food system and environment that create conditions ripe for poor diet and chronic disease, which is referred to as the social determinants of health. We often blame the victim for these diseases. No one blames someone for getting malaria or tuberculosis. But for chronic disease we put the blame on individuals, on personal responsibility. It turns out that it is our social environment – what Paul Farmer from Partners in Health has called “structural violence” – the social, economic, and political conditions that drive disease. If we live in a world where our food system mainly produces disease-causing foods, where our government supports the production and sale of these toxic foods, and where these foods are created to be addictive, then personal choice is an illusion. The science is clear: noncommunicable diseases are very communicable. You are more likely to be overweight if your friends and family are overweight. Depending on your neighbourhood, your life expectancy may be 20 – 30 years shorter than folks from another country, city, or state. Simply moving an overweight diabetic from a low socioeconomic neighbourhood to a slightly better one leads to weight loss and improvement in diabetes, without any other intervention. This is far more than personal choice and behaviour. The food we have available to eat (ultraprocessed food) and the food we don’t eat (fruits and vegetables and whole foods from nature) are determined by the food system itself – what we grow and produce, and how we market and distribute it, and what we don’t.

Big Food and Big Ag are focused on manipulating government, science, public health groups, professional societies, and public opinion through massive efforts, including fake science and sly partnerships. When Dr. Hyman was in medical school, he thought science was a beautiful, pristine field full of integrity and truth. As he paid closer attention, he discovered that nutrition studies are highly corrupted by the food industry. The food industry also buys loyalty from a wide range of prominent organizations that we believe to be credible and independent sources of nutrition advice. It generates outspoken support in their favour, and it can buy silence. It can trick and deceive consumers to buy more of their toxic products at the expense of their health and ignorance. They use science as a weapon, not as an inquiry into truth. Today Big Food and Big Ag are active participants in the disability, disease, and death of billions of people. Rather than changing or reinventing their products to be less harmful, they have launched an intentional and meticulously designed series of efforts to silence critics, manipulate science, distort the truth, and aggressively control media, politicians, public health, consumer advocacy groups, and consumers. For example, Coca Cola’s “Energy Balance” campaign that promoted eating less and exercising more, included soda as part of your balanced diet and weight loss program because “it is really all about calories”. This is nonsense and in direct defiance of independent science.

As consumers, we depend on unbiased studies to shed light on the foods we should eat and the ones we should avoid. And we depend on health and food organizations to share this truth with us. While some food companies invest in legitimate and informative research, most fund their own studies for self-serving purposes. Food companies use studies to make dubious health claims about their products so they can increase sales. The other reason is so they can manufacture doubt. When independent publicly oriented studies point to the danger of their products, food companies respond by paying for studies that say otherwise. Researchers have found that this level of corruption and bias is on par with studies funded by Big Pharma, which are notorious for portraying their risky drugs in a favourable way. In a review of 206 studies, researchers found that not a single food industry-funded study that was published showed a negative outcome for their dangerous food products.

For consumers, this means that we need to be hyperaware. When you see a company touting the health benefits of their products on food labels, in an advertisement, or on a website or television show, there’s a good chance that the claim came from a dubious study that was bought and paid for by industry. Or when you see studies casting doubt on the harmful effects of their products, don’t believe those either. Consumers should be aware that most of these claims are false and/or exaggerated, but this problem pales in comparison to the problem of Coke, Pepsi, and other large junk food companies publishing on public health matters like obesity and the diabetes pandemic to confuse the public. Big Food is in the business of selling junk food. It should not be in the business of doing public health research. There’s just no reason for it, and more important, food corporations cannot be trusted. However, academic jobs and ethical research positions at universities are becoming more and more competitive, which is driving many scientists to work for the food industry. It’s unrealistic to expect that not a single scientist, health professional, academic, or institution will ever accept any funding from the food industry to forward their dangerous agenda.

Some ethical food companies recognize the growing demand for nutritious foods and have profited by catering to the health conscious with healthy, organic, sustainable, and minimally processed foods. But if the food industry is going to be involved in funding studies, there are transparent principles they must follow to ensure that their research is untainted. Any engagement with the food industry requires firm oversight and strict rules, like making sure that researchers have full independence to report and publish their findings (not be bought or threatened), and that the food companies they partner with have commendable track records of environmental and social responsibility. The funding food companies must not be involved in any way in study design, data analysis, authoring of the manuscript, or even reviewing or commenting on the manuscript. Another way would be to create a firewall between industry and science by creating a fund that they can donate to that will fund research as needed in an unbiased way.

Putting an end to Big Food’s and Big Ag’s co-opting of scientists, academics, and health groups only solves half of the problem. The other problem is that nutrition science is in need of some major changes. Many of our dietary guidelines and health recommendations are based on what is known as nutritional epidemiology, which relies on easily manipulated observational studies that never prove cause and effect. With observational studies, scientists run repeated analyses on data sets to extract insignificant findings that might be otherwise meaningless and amplify them to distort the truth through sensationalized research papers that attract headlines of deception. It’s the very opposite of the scientific method, and both the food industry and policymakers use it to their advantage and to the disadvantage of the public being deceived. What we need are randomized controlled trials that prove cause and effect. Furthermore, media outlets should be investigating conflicts of interest and reporting transparently on the food industry. Unfortunately, our mainstream media is as corrupt as the food, drug, and oil industries, forwarding the same sick agenda for profit and control. The food industry strategy for controlling science, public health groups, professional health care societies, public opinion, media, schools, community organizations, the flow of information, political institutions, and policy is calculated and effective. It is well hidden, on purpose.

Some of Big Food’s tactics are easy to see, like widespread marketing of junks foods, however, the dirty politics of Big Food and Big Ag are behind closed doors, out of the public’s view. Government lobbying is their most effective strategy for expanding their agenda. Armies of high-powered lobbyists pushing multi-billion-dollar efforts to influence laws, politicians, and government programs and agencies. This is currently legalized corruption. The voices heard by legislators are those of industry, not citizens. Food industry lobbying occurs at every level of government. The lobbyists’ goal is to protect and expand the food industry’s profits at all costs. Much like Big Pharma, Big Oil, and other large and powerful industries, Big Food and Big Ag have what nearly all citizens do not: deep pockets and access to the highest levels of government. Lobbyists shower politicians with campaign contributions, and expensive gifts and events, who in return write legislation and implement policies that favour these donors at the expense of the public. There is a revolving door between politicians and big industry, corrupt individuals taking leadership positions in each for personal gain. It is a practice that industry insiders take advantage of to pull strings for corporations and special interests. Big Food and Big Ag companies that lobby government the most are Coke, Pepsi, Monsanto (Bayer), Nestlé, General Mills, McDonalds, Kellogg’s, and the candy and dairy industries. They lobby against protections from dangerous chemicals. They lobby for laws that shield them from obesity and chronic disease lawsuits. They lobby to bury information, including the addictive nature of processed food, the deliberate targeting of children, minorities, and the poor, and the strategic manipulation of science and scientists to influence policy and public opinion. They lobby against appropriate labeling, including GMO transparency.

The food industry uses corporate sponsorships and financial gifts to buy loyalty from a wide range of prominent organizations. They seek to link their toxic brands to health and wellness rather than illness and obesity. They seek to create partnerships with respected health and minority groups to win allies, silence potential critics, and influence public health policy decisions. They seek to garner public trust and goodwill to increase brand awareness and brand loyalty. They seek to manipulate the minds of growing minority populations and children to increase sales and profits. It is painful to see so many nonprofit groups and lawmakers neglect their principles and fall under the spell of food industry money. But what is most vexing is how Big Food has commandeered some of the most influential health and nutrition groups in the world. It is one thing to see a corrupt politician make policy changes that favour their corporate donor. Indeed, we expect this. It is another thing to see a vaunted public health organization do the bidding of Big Food. If we can’t count on our leading health and nutrition professionals to do what is right for public health, them whom can we rely on?

Public health groups are in many ways our last line of defense. We look to them for guidance and impartial educated advice. We expect them to do what is in the best interests of every child, family, and society. The following are some of the worst offenders in the United States based on recent evidence: American Diabetes Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Cariology, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Society for Nutrition, and the American Heart Association. Not only does the food industry infiltrate and influence existing groups like these; they also create “grassroots” organizations that are largely, or even entirely, funded by them to manipulate public opinion. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. For example, one of the most insidious ways that Big Food controls public opinion is through benevolently named front groups, like the Alliance for Safe and Affordable Food, that pretend to promote the interests of citizens and science, but really forwards their own agenda for profit and control. They outright fight GMO labeling, attack organic food, defend pesticides and antibiotics in animal production, and promote the false benefits of artificial sweeteners, trans fats, and GMO foods. Their aggressive tactics, blatant lies, half-truths, and corrupt agendas are an attempt to dupe the public. These front companies do the dirty work of the corrupt food companies so that they can maintain their image to the public. Don’t be deceived by their propaganda and lies.

I can’t believe I have to say this, but professional health and nutrition associations should never accept money from junk food companies to spread lies. This is completely unacceptable. These associations are not fit to give “objective” advice or recommendations. However, plenty of sustainable food companies have missions that align with professional health organizations who are less corrupt. Our professional health and nutrition associations should be looking to promote, commend, and partner with these sustainable food companies, not junk food companies. To objectively determine what food companies are ethical to work with, there needs to be a set of guidelines that will help sort out worthy food companies from junk food companies. One of the reasons major conflicts of interest are so rife in the public health world is that many universities and medical centers do not have rigorous conflict-of-interest policies, nor do they impress upon future doctors and health professionals the importance of navigating potential conflicts. Faculty members, staff, students, residents, trainees, and fellows should not accept any gifts or meals from industry. Faculty should be required to disclose to their institutions any industry relationships. Faculty should not accept industry funding for speaking engagements. Continuing medical education courses should not be supported by an industry. Faculty, students, and trainees should not attend promotional or educational events paid for by an industry. Pharmaceutical sales representatives should not be allowed access to any faculty, students, or trainees in academic medical centers or affiliated entities. Conflict-of-interest education should be required for all medical students, residents, clinical fellows, and teaching faculty. Be a healthy skeptic and remember to follow the money. Get your information from independent nonprofits, public advocacy groups, and academic institutions.

We need to quickly and radically change the way we grow food and eat food. But our systems and policies make it hard for farmers and consumers to do the right thing. Farmers growing healthy food, using sustainable, organic, or regenerative methods often impoverish themselves to grow food for the rich, while conventional corporate farmers supported by government get rich growing toxic food for the poor. This must change and is changing. It turns out that regenerative agriculture is more profitable when done at scale and produces higher yields and better-quality food, even when used to grow commodity crops (soy, corn, wheat), all while reversing climate change, conserving water, and increasing biodiversity. Regenerative farmers say they are in the redemption business – healing land, food, economy, and culture.

Regenerative agriculture is the solution. This simple concept is relatively new but is based on ancient principles to restore and enhance natural systems. It goes beyond organic by laying out the principles for building healthy soil, enhancing biodiversity, and reducing toxic outside inputs. Regenerative agriculture on farms, grasslands, and rangelands is the most powerful force for fixing much of what’s wrong with agriculture while producing more and better food. And the practice can be adapted across diverse and global environments. Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services. Regenerative agriculture aims to capture carbon in soil and above-ground biomass, reversing current global trends of atmospheric accumulation. It offers increased yields, more nutrient-dense foods, resilience to climate instability, and improved health and vitality for farming and ranching communities and consumers. The system draws from decades of scientific and applied research by the global communities of organic farming, agroecology, holistic management, and agroforestry. That means using no-till methods that don’t disturb the ground, cover crops to protect the soil, crop rotations that keep pests and weeds naturally under control, and the use of livestock in managed holistic grazing that plays a critical role in stimulating plant growth, root structures, and soil fertility by adding manure, saliva, and urine. According to a 2019 United Nations report, only $300 billion invested in regenerative agriculture would be enough to restore nearly half of the 2 billion hectares of degraded land in the world, build soil, and slow down climate change enough to give us more than 20 years to innovate climate-change solutions. That is the total global military spending in just 60 days, or less than one tenth the annual cost of obesity and diabetes in the United States. Elon Musk could single handedly make this investment today and still be worth a $100 billion.

We have lost a third of our topsoil – which took billions of years to create – in the last 150 years. The United Nations projects that in 60 years we may completely use up all of our topsoil, making it almost impossible to grow food. Soil erosion and loss of carbon in the soil lead to the massive problem of desertification – the decline of farmland and rangeland into deserts. There is a difference between dirt and soil. Dirt is lifeless and dead, and cannot hold water or carbon. Dirt contains very few microorganisms, fungi, or worms, all of which are needed to extract nutrients from the soil to feed the plants. So, dirt requires massive inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and water irrigation just to grow our food. This further ruins our soil, increases droughts and floods, and contaminants our food. This is our new normal in much of the world. Healthy soil, on the other hand, is alive, teeming with microbes. Soil can hold immense amounts of water, protecting against droughts and floods. Soil is the biggest carbon sink on the planet, thus can do more to reverse climate change than all the rain forests combined. Restoring all of our dirt on the planet to soil could completely draw down carbon in the environment to preindustrial levels. Healthy soil reduces or eliminates the need for pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Over the last hundred years, vitamin and mineral levels in our food have dropped dramatically, which has serious health consequences. Healthy soil extracts nutrients from the earth, making them available to plants, animals, and humans.

Farmworkers and food industry workers are underpaid and exploited. They face high risk of injury and harm from agricultural chemicals, particularly pesticide poisoning. Farmworkers die at 9.5 times the rate of other workers. Most aren’t protected by minimum wage or overtime pay requirements. Many farmworkers live below the poverty line and have no health care. The truth is that the food system disproportionately affects the poor, immigrants, and people of colour who actually work in the food system. The herbicides and pesticides that farmers use on their crops are neurotoxins, carcinogens, and hormone disruptors. The government agencies that should be regulating these chemicals for human safety are not doing their job. While these chemical inputs damage human health, they also disrupt natural ecosystems, deplete the diversity of life in the soil, threaten the loss of most of the plant and animal species we have consumed for millennia, and severely affect pollinators, like honeybees and butterflies, that we depend on for agricultural crops. But the loss of biodiversity, the result of industrial agriculture, is a much bigger problem that threatens global food security. Not only are we threatening insects essential for agricultural production but we are also losing varieties of plant foods and animals at an alarming rate. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 90 percent of plant varieties and half of livestock varieties have been lost to farmers and the world. Most of our food comes from just twelve plant varieties and five animal species, threatening our food security. Thirty percent of livestock breeds are facing extinction, and six breeds become extinct each month. Just three crops (wheat, corn, rice) account for 60 percent of our food. This occurred because of the centralization of seed production (farmers can’t even collect, store, or breed their own plants) by corporations such as Monsanto (now Bayer) as part of the “improvement” of agriculture promoted globally through the Green Revolution and the industrialization of agriculture. Most farmers no longer grow local, resilient, genetically diverse and nutrient-dense varieties. They use only genetically modified organisms (GMO) that require intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides – further destroying the organic matter and biodiversity of the soil that results in less nutrient-dense plants, and increased need for irrigation, chemicals, and fertilizer. In all ecosystems, complexity is health; simplicity makes system vulnerable.

GMO crops were sold to us with great promise: the technology was supposed to make crops immune to weeds and pests, leading to an abundance of foods that would solve the problem of world hunger. We were told that GMO crops would require fewer pesticides and herbicides and produce higher yields. But none of that is true. There is no benefit to crop yields. They’ve actually fuelled the spread of herbicide-resistant superweeds that requires farmers to increase use of herbicides, like Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world and a known carcinogen. These toxins leach into the ground, contaminate rivers and streams, and taint our food supply. GMO plants are the most pesticide and herbicide laden crops – and shockingly, an estimated three-quarters of the food in our supermarkets contain them. Over sixty-four countries have laws mandating GMO labeling to protect our choice from this toxic system.

Most people don’t take the time to read the ingredients list on their food, which are usually hidden on the back of packages and written in fine print with ingredients that they cannot pronounce and have never heard of. The “nutrition facts” panel is even more confusing. Most people don’t know what a “percent daily value is” or whether the serving sizes listed are realistic (they are not). This is a prime example of how regulatory bodies are failing the public. Labels are allowed to be deliberately misleading and confusing, which serves the interests of Big Food, rather than consumers. For example, investigations show that companies often use five different sugars in their products so they don’t have to show sugar as the dominant ingredient in the list. One of the responsibilities of food regulatory bodies is to ensure safety of the food supply, however, they are paid to allow toxic food additives in our food by Big Food companies. The most striking example of this is trans fats, a man-made additive that persisted in the food supply for 50 years after it was proven to be harmful and known to cause millions of heart attacks. The food industry manipulated the science and lobbied against regulations, but the public health communities banded together and worked hard to outlaw trans fats from the food supply, and mostly succeeded. In light of this, recommendations include: using the stoplight system on labels (green for good, yellow for neutral, red for bad), listing ingredients by their percentages on labels, restricting false health claims on packages, and strengthening regulation of chemical food additives and GMO crops.

National disjointed food policies and corrupt corporations are driving a disease-creating economy, and most people have no idea. Government food policies largely work in silos: food system, health care, education, national debt, and government spending. They rarely coordinate with one another to achieve a common goal, which makes their policies confused and conflicted, often directly contradicting each other. Right now, government food and agriculture policies undermine public health, create chronic disease and mental illness, harm the environment, and increase private profits. Big Food and Big Ag profit from disease and environmental malfeasance, and then stick the taxpayer with the bill. They lobby government to block policies that hurt their bottom line and improve health, and promote policies that make them money and create disease. Food corporations, like all insidious corporations, have a fiduciary duty to maximize their shareholders’ profits, and they pursue this mission zealously, regardless of whether the outcomes are harmful to society and the environment or not. The good news is that due to grassroots efforts, and the undeniability of the harm our food system causes to human health, our environment, and our climate, many conscious food and agriculture companies are now focusing on solutions, including healthy product development and regenerative agriculture.

Overall diet quality, high sugar loads, and rampant nutritional deficiencies (including omega-3 fats, magnesium, vitamin D, and B vitamins) all drive mental illness. The cost of mental illness related to the toxic food system with regards to economic burden is far greater than the costs of chronic disease. It may not lead to the same death rates as chronic disease, but mental illness related to toxic food contributes to more disability and lost hours of production. Studies show that adults with many types of mental health issues and children with ADHD have very low levels of antioxidants. Iron deficiency is common, leading to lower dopamine function and impaired concentration. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies including B vitamins, iodine, zinc, and vitamin E are linked to diminished cognitive abilities and poor concentration. Mental health issues are starting earlier and earlier. The negative cognitive and behavioural effects of sugar on children is well documented. We are literally destroying the intellectual capital of our youth, with broad consequences for our whole society: less productive citizens who are more likely to earn less, suffer more, get sick earlier in life, and be incarcerated. The good news is that interventional studies have shown that treatment of mental illness with diet works well (especially since most medications for mental illness don’t work that well, despite being the second largest category of drugs sold).

The food we eat modulates all our biology, including our brain function. Food affects our hormones, brain chemistry, nutrient status, and other chemical and biological functions. What we eat affects our thinking, mood, and behaviour. Food has been linked to changes in behaviour and violence. Research shows that junk food makes kids act violently – bullying and fighting – and suffer more psychiatric distress, including worry, depression, confusion, insomnia, anxiety, aggression, and feelings of worthlessness, as well as more incidences of suicide and homicide. While not all mental illness is caused by food, poor nutrition can worsen mental health conditions. Solving this problem is complex and requires addressing poverty, inequities, trauma, violence, and more. If you suffer from a mental health issue, get help from a functional medicine or integrative practitioner to address the dietary needs that will improve the health of your brain. A lot of research exists on nutritional psychiatry, but more is needed in order to provide additional evidence for practitioners on how to treat the root causes of mental illness, not just the symptoms. Medical education must be reformed so doctors can apply nutritional psychiatry and food-as-medicine with their patients.

Obesity, chronic disease, and mental illness are no longer just first-world problems. As sales of processed food are going down in North America and Europe, they are dramatically rising in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This is not an accident. It is by design. The globalization of processed industrial food has allowed Big Food and Big Ag to flood the world with their disease-causing products. All around the world, giant food companies are transforming the local diets, uprooting the healthy traditional foods that people have eaten for centuries and replacing them with ultraprocessed pseudo-foods. Food industry marketing in these emerging markets is clever, manipulative, and insidious. In the Western world, fast food is associated with low socioeconomic status. But in poorer countries, fast food companies market their brands as “aspirational” – a symbol of wealth and high status. The current food and agriculture monopoly sees change as a financial threat. But innovations and consumer and market pressures, especially the millennials’ demand for brand integrity, sustainability, and health promotion, are driving very rapid innovations in the food and agriculture sectors.

In the last 50 years, the United States has gone from spending 5 percent of their gross domestic product on health care to spending almost 20 percent, in direct correlation to the increase in toxic processed food causing chronic disease and mental illness. Most people are motivated to buy the most cost-effective food, and in most countries, those happen to be the foods that are the least healthy, the most dangerous. That’s why fiscal policies can help us alleviate the burden of the big killers: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. People are price sensitive and weary of purchasing toxic products taxed by the government due to health risks. The government has a social responsibility to protect its citizens. It is completely failing to do so despite the shocking amount of evidence at their doorstep. Taxing toxic products, like junk food, works. Combined with incentives for healthy food or innovations in market-based and tax-code incentives, it is a proven way to boost public health outcomes and reduce health care costs. Tobacco taxes were enormously successful. Tobacco was once the leading cause of preventable death. But today that distinction goes to poor diets. Just as tobacco taxes drove down smoking rates, resulting in remarkable public health improvements, taxes on soda and processed food can help drive down obesity, chronic disease, and mental illness. However, everywhere a soda and processed food tax has been proposed, Big Food has spent billions of dollars to lobby against it. The industry wouldn’t spend that kind of money if they didn’t think junk food taxes would take a big chunk out of their profits. Looking at global health through an economic lens, countries could derive tremendous returns by investing in health, making junk food taxes one of the best financial investments.

Every government should institute a junk food tax of some kind. Sugary drinks represent the largest source of added sugars in the modern diet, and they have a disproportionate impact on obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness. So, a sugary beverage tax is a good place to start. The revenue that such taxes bring should be mandated to be used to pay for important public services, like pre-kindergarten and after-school programs, and other community benefits, so it is not just used to cover budget shortfalls. Soda taxes are the low-hanging fruit for policymakers who understand that we have to do something about out-of-control health care costs and chronic disease outcomes. A tiered soda tax is recommended. This is where drinks with low amounts of added sugar are taxed the least, and those with high amounts of added sugar are taxed the most. Studies show that a tiered soda tax is best because it incentivizes companies to avoid the highest tax rates by reformulating their products so that they contain less added sugar. They prompt companies to make positive changes and work best for consumer choice.

One counter point for soda and junk food taxes is that they are regressive: the poor pay a higher share of their income on them. But the poor also suffer a larger share of the adverse health consequences. If those taxes on bad food are combined with incentives and price reductions on healthy foods, and the appropriate marketing to reinforce that, it will offset the regressive potential and benefit everyone. Furthermore, investment in social programs and support for education in poor communities would enhance the effects of this change for very little investment. For example, the money received from taxing soda can be directly invested into providing communities with community-based drinking water fountains so they do not have to pay jacked up prices on bottled water that is too acidic and environmentally destructive. The president of Coca Cola International told a group of investors in 2014: “There’s 600 million teenagers who have not had a Coke in the last week. So, the opportunity for that is huge.” With data showing that soda kills and that sugar is addictive, this thinking is immoral and unethical. Having Coca Cola and other junk food in hospitals is simply sick. So many of the people in there are dying from these toxic food products and yet we continue to supply it to them in our hospitals. We need to create soda and junk food free zones. For example, schools, medical institutions, offices, and community centers where these toxic food products are not available, but free clean drinking water and affordable healthy foods are.

We may not fully grasp the impact of our food choices and the food system on the people who actually grow, pick, transport, and serve our food – the farmers and farmworkers, meat-packers, truckers, restaurant workers, and retailers. Farmworkers rarely make a living wage and are subjected to harsh working and living conditions, including modern forms of slavery, sexual harassment, abuse, frequent injury, repetitive fast paced motions causing carpel tunnel, lack of health care, denial of bathroom breaks and forced to wear diapers, and exposure to toxic agricultural chemicals. Often through threats of violence and intimidation, workers are forced to work long hours against their will, perpetuating harsh, unfair, dangerous, and often illegal working conditions. In the restaurant industry, servers typically make minimum wage. Female workers often have to accept sexual harassment so they can feed their families on tips. Grassroots efforts have attempted to seek better compensation and fair employment conditions in the food industry, however, this is met with strong resistance. Restaurant and food retailers must value fair working conditions and pressure growers to adhere to basic tenets for workers’ rights: no forced labour, child labour, or violence; at least minimum wage for all employees; pay workers for all their work; no sexual harassment or abuse; freedom to report mistreatment or unsafe working conditions; access to shade, clean drinking water, and bathrooms while working; time to rest to prevent exhaustion and heat stroke; permission to leave the fields when there is lightening, pesticide spraying, or other dangerous conditions; and transportation to work in safe vehicles. These rights must be enforced through worker-to-worker education, audits, transparency, complaint resolution, and market-based enforcement. They must support fairtrade and organic products, and support advocacy groups ensuring safe and fair working conditions.

The majority of antibiotics aren’t prescribed by doctors for sick people, they are force fed to livestock on factory farms to reduce the spread of nasty infections caused by overcrowding in poor conditions in concentrated animal feeding operations. For the food industry, a positive side effect of force feeding animals with antibiotics, as well as hormones, is that it accelerates their growth, making them bigger and fatter with less food so they are more profitable. The spread of antibiotic-resistant diseases is a global threat. Two major factors contribute to this. One is the misuse of antibiotics in hospital settings and doctors’ offices, where the antibiotics are overprescribed, often for viral infections where they are useless. The other is the excessive use of antibiotics in food animal production. The antibiotics reduce the infection rate in farm animals in factory farms, but a small number of bacteria survive and then mutate into drug-resistant bacteria that we consume. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria also get into the environment where they spread to fruits, vegetables, or other produce that are irrigated with contaminated water or fertilizers, which we eventually consume. Farmworkers can be infected while handling animals and manure and then pass the superbugs on to other people. Manure and urine slurries containing antibiotics are often spread on fields, killing the microorganisms in the soil and contaminating the plants. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can even be spread throughout nearby communities by the wind. Despite the threat to public health and the environment, this is all ignored by food regulatory bodies. This is not surprising due to the revolving door between regulatory bodies and the food industry, as well as heavy lobbying. Many advocacy organizations and even the World Health Organization has called on the agricultural industry to stop giving antibiotics to healthy animals. They also suggest that factory farms stop using antibiotics that are especially valuable for human medicine, bring in qualified not corrupt veterinarians, promote and apply safe farming practices, improve biosecurity on farms, reduce the need for antibiotics altogether by adopting new technologies, and track the misuse of antibiotics.

There is one place that nearly everything that matters in the world today converges: our food and our food system – the complex web of how we grow food, how we produce, distribute, and promote it; what we eat, what we waste, and the policies that perpetuate unimaginable suffering and destruction across the globe that deplete our human, social, economic, and natural capital. Food is the nexus of most of our world’s health, economic, environmental, climate, social, and political crises. Climate refugees are displaced by natural disasters and extreme weather. The United Nations projections estimate that by 2050 there will be 200 million to 1 billion climate refugees. Vulnerable populations around the world are exposed to weather extremes, increased infectious disease, and threats to their food security. This is clearly not all about our food system, as other factors also drive climate change, but since our food system is the biggest contributor, if we fix it, it would be the single biggest solution.

Even worse, ultraprocessed foods (corn, soy, wheat) are turned into sugars, refined oils, and starch that are the building blocks of processed food, which is made into every size, colour, and shape of extruded food-like substance but is essentially the same garbage. Those who consume the most of those ultraprocessed food-like substances, the staple building blocks of industrial food, which are processed into white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and refined soybean oil, are the sickest. They have higher body weight, more dangerous belly fat, worse cholesterol and blood sugar, and die sooner. For the first time in human history, the life expectancy in the United States is on the decline for 3 years in a row. The current food system is eroding advances made in health care and sanitation over the last century. Children born today are expected to live shorter, sicker lives than their parents. The average child born today will live five few years less than their parents, and if they are poor or socially disadvantaged, they will live 10 to 20 fewer years than their parents. These trends have been increasing year after year. This is not okay. Some of this decline, however, may be due to the opioid epidemic, drug overdoses, suicide, and mental health disorders. There has been talk of declaring a national emergency in the United States to stem the deaths from opioid overdose. It’s time to do the same to address deaths related to poor diet.

Innovators and parents around the country are trying to create new ways to feed hungry kids in schools who are destined to repeat the vicious cycle of poverty and disease from which they were raised. Studies show that simply feeding children real food from nature, and providing them with a safe and supportive environment changes the trajectory of their lives. It’s the access to real food that is essential for brain development, cognitive function, and emotional health that makes the biggest difference. These kinds of programs need to be expanded and taken up as standard for all public and private school systems, and local and federal policy. Real food from nature must be a right for all children. The legacy of not doing this for all children is a lifetime struggle with obesity, disease, poverty, violence, impaired cognitive development, and learning and mood disorders.

Taking a step back, looking at the problem holistically, as one system out of balance, will help us reimagine the world we want, the world we can create by addressing the overall dysfunction in our food system. This affects every single one of us and is the defining problem of our time. The actions required for the solution require individual awareness, collective action, business innovation, grassroots efforts, political will, changes in legislation, and regulation of and limits to corporate actions that allow abuses that perpetuate the current system. Defining the problem is the start of hope, of understanding the roots of the challenges that face us as a society and as a global community. For many, the link between what we eat and its effect on the planet seems distant. But each of us should know the food web we live in. We can no longer be complacent in the anonymity of our food. Learning what we have done to create these problems and what we have to do to solve them is essential to our collective future.

The famous quote by Margaret Mead comes to mind: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

In my experience, during dental school, I learned almost nothing about nutrition as part of the curriculum. I had to study on my own. During my dental training, I was involved in a global health program to learn about the big picture, including structural problems and solutions. This book is an inspiration to me as it provides a healthy introduction to the interconnectedness of food, health, and systems. While living and working in rural Newfoundland after dental school, I struggled with access to fresh whole foods from nature, and eventually developed leaky gut syndrome. I relied on over-the-counter medications to manage my symptoms. Disgusted with this approach, I connected with Mary Beth at Inspire Health Coaching who guided me through a cleanse that addressed the food-related inflammation in my body. It involved me removing the inflammatory foods from my diet, and integrating anti-inflammatory supplements and intense probiotics to replace the bad bacteria with helpful bacteria. I drove a couple of hours in the snow to the nearest town with a proper grocery store to stock up on whatever fresh foods were available. After a few weeks, I noticed profound changes, stop taking medications, and have not looked back since. Truly, food is medicine. But it is also disease. We have a choice, and we should use it wisely.