You are what you eat! By Eliane Carotta

Nowadays, technology takes care even in our plates! Our food bears little resemblance to its natural substance. I think that in some years we are going to plant some pills into the ground and harvest the whole dinner in some hours.
Is this the best way to be healthy?
Some of the Workshops or Lectures I go about nutrition, they always come with questions like: Why not to eat meat? Eat everything could be harmful?

They are in some ways easy questions to answer, but not so easy to understand, when we are used to buy a specific brand of food from our favorite supermarket or butcher shop.

The question “eat or not eat meat”, is always answered based at the greatest risk for heart disease or the animal suffer fact. I think that’s why the number of vegetarians increases in the world. Be a vegetarian is a synonyms of have a positive attitude.

In Brazil, almost 30% of the population based in some researches, has been eating less meat. That’s the second place in the world, behind Canada, and before England.

Another point is the toxins and preservatives.
Dioxin, one of the deadliest toxins, is concentrated in meat at levels 22 times what are safe, according to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). More than 95% of all dioxin exposure comes in meat, dairy, and eggs. None comes in vegan foods (the other 5% is environmental). 
Factory farming has made meat eating more dangerous. Because the animals are given tranquilizers, hormones and antibiotics, the latter often up to 30 times higher than humans consume in a lifetime. Preservatives in meat are dangerous to human health too.

Now there’s another question: What should we eat?
Anthropologists call this the omnivore's dilemma. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. He follows our three food chains—industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by hunting, gathering, or gardening—from its source to our tables.

He said that eat a little bit of everything was one of the fact that helped us to evolve through a process of evolution, but we could be poisoned by this food, once most of us are at a great distance from our food, what gives us few options to eat really healthy. In addition, our food choices have enormous consequences for the health of the environment as well.

Just a few facts and figures from The Omnivore's Dilemma:


- The obesity epidemic is shortening the lifespan of today’s generation of children—the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than their parents’.

-  the first time in history, according to a 2000 UN report, more people in the world suffer from over nutrition (1 billion) than from under nutrition (800 million).
- 45 of the items on McDonald’s menu are derived from corn. At least 13 of the 38 ingredients in a chicken McNugget are derived from corn.
- 1 in every 3 American children eats fast food every day; 1/5 of American meals are eaten in the car.
- 1/5 of all the petroleum used in the United States is consumed by the food industry—more than we burn with our cars or in any other industry.
- The industrial fertilizers and pesticide industries grew out of the conversion of the World War II munitions industry to civilian uses—nerve gases became pesticides, and ammonium nitrate explosives became nitrogen fertilizers.

Be careful of your dinner!

+ info: www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php