Our Toxic World

A woman's risk of having breast cancer in her lifetime:

1960: 1 in 20

Today: 1 in 8

Women living in Industrialized countries have a higher risk of breast cancer than those in unindustrialized countries. (1)

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Please try to tell me that the way we live, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe aren't causing cancer along with a slough of other diseases. 

I'm not at all upset about where Ryan and I are in our lives. I'm the happiest I've ever been despite the fact that we're dealing with cancer.

Here's what I am pissed off about though.. The consumer lifestyle fed to us by large corporations and a complex globalized world doesn't care about people living healthy fulfilling lives, but only about what is going to make more money.

My degree is in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and throughout the course of the program I honestly just became increasingly depressed about the state of the world and what we can actually do to stop long term global climate issues. We can however do what we can to at least contribute as little as possible to the problem and escape the world of profit by any means.

If we were paying for the actual cost of what we eat, the products we consume, and the electricity that powers our homes, the common conveniences would be a lot more expensive. 

This blog post will be focused on food and I'll follow it up with more about air and water quality.

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The average American spends $150 per week on food (2) - $7,800 annually, or $624,000 in their lifetime assuming an 80 year lifespan.

Courtesy of Komen

We found out just over a month ago that Ryan has cancer and the actual cost of everything so far is quickly converging on $100,000. I have no doubt that by the end of this year we will be over the $600,000 mark. I would much rather pay marginally more for healthy food than pay the pharmaceutical companies for their poison.

An indirectly related but fun coincidence - the CEO of the Susan G. Komen foundation, which only used 15% of its donations for research last year, received a salary of $685,000, a 60% increase over the previous year.

Back on point though. What I'm getting at is that the cost of food is grossly underpriced. If you had to pay for all of the costs associated with the normal processed garbage that we eat every time you checked out at the supermarket, you would likely be paying at least double.

Yet, that's not the case. Large corporations such as Cargill, Monsanto, PepsiCo, etc., control the food market and keep prices for processed, mass produced, nutrient poor, pesticide and chemical laden crap artificially low. It makes the decision to buy organic, locally grown, healthy food an extremely difficult one.

Yet, it is such an important one! I consider myself to be pretty thrifty. I live a fairly simple life. The one thing I don't mind spending money on more than anything else though is food. Putting good food into your body is the one environmental health factors you can actually control. You have no immediate control over the air you breathe or the water you drink.

Our Breakfast This Morning

Consider this example of why you might want to buy organic vegetables. Eli Lily, the pharmaceutical company that produces the cancer drug Tamoxifen, also produces widely used estrogen mimicking pesticides that were banned in Europe. It should be noted that their profits from Tamoxifen are through the roof, as they continue to help cause and treat cancer.

I could write hundreds of pages on the links between the everyday food in the standard american omnivore diet, but I'm going to cut it off here. I'll let Ryan speak to the links between  animal proteins and cancer if she feels so compelled to do so later, as she knows much more about the subject. 

I hope this inspires at least someone to look at their diet a little more closely and think about what it is that the recently gigantic food corporations are doing to us in the long term. I know that it's definitely made my decisions easier every time I go to the store.

~ William Veldt