Where are the Innovators?

In response to the Editorial on page 37 of the October 10-16, 2011 large print weekly of the NYTimes, titled "Where to Find the Innovators?"(They are always changing the name!) I wrote this response - but was too late to send it.

What do you mean 'Where are the innovators?' There are plenty of innovators but they are being systematically squashed!

There are innovative eco-farmers who are producing super nutritious, tasty and highly productive farm products, using innovative, sophisticated, ecologically friendly, sustainable techniques, but they have been ignored or belittled by conventional agricultural experts.

There are small eco-farmers and their customers who are producing wonderfully nutritious and innovative value added products, but they are crushed by burdensome, irrational, often arbitrarily applied regulations which have little to do with real food safety, but are true job killers. Read famed, truly innovative eco-farmer Joel Salatin's book, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal, to see what innovation killers those regulations can be. (Summary article)

There are unconventional health professionals who are not only curing cancer, but also guiding their patients into how to prevent it and a host of other chronic diseases in the first place, yet they are regularly disparaged as quacks and frauds by establishment medicine and often threatened with loss of their license to practice.

The public has been led to believe that the latest drug is truly innovative, when in fact the really innovative, effective, and relatively low cost non-drug approaches being used by knowledgeable nutritionists face all kinds of regulatory barriers, while the practitioners are attacked by the dietetic police for not having the "proper credentials," or not following proper protocols.

Wall Street's insistence on short term profits is behind much of this - so hurrah for 'Occupy Wall Street'! An end to the collusion between big corporations and government!

Your everlovin' reformed and retired dietitian,
Kris

A headline in today's paper reads "Study finds 1 in 5 U.S. 4 year olds are obese" I had to comment!

The finding that 1 in 5 U.S. 4 year olds are obese is not surprising considering the heavy dose of sugar, white flour, and refined vegetable oils provided by many of the foods in our grocery stores. It’s a mistake to blame fat for our obesity epidemic when the carbs in sugar and flour are more readily converted to fat in the body. It’s a crime that our schools have been convinced to remove whole milk from the schools to cut calories. People should be aware that skim milk is good for fattening pigs, while they will lose weight if fed coconut oil (and pig metabolism is remarkably similar to human metabolism in that respect)! I’m waiting for the day when our media and our politicians will have the courage to place the blame where it belongs – on our agriculture and food industries and their addiction to corn, soy, and wheat, and all the refined and processed foods made from them. In the name of sustainability let’s put the animals back out on pasture where they belong and do what it takes to encourage our small local farmers to produce real food and our families to prepare and eat it.