My daughter asked what I thought was the most serious problem facing the world.

Tweet

My answer surprised me, as I had never asked myself this question I just never thought about. I have three daughter 2 who live with me and one who has been estranged for a good part of her life. We are just now getting to know each other and the question was asked in an effort to get to know more about her lineage and how they think. Below is how I answered my oldest daughter's question. Earlier this week Martha Stewart had a doctor say the most prevalent problem he sees in his practice is lack of nutrition or malnutrition in kids. Oprah had a doctor on her show say the same thing. But these doctors do not understand the biggest threat to our children today is a lack of nutrition in our food supply. So feeding them fruits and vegetables without nutrition will never solve a malnutrition problem. The biggest problem facing the next generation will be the lack of nutrition in the food supply. I proceeded to tell my estranged daughter I was born and raised on a farm and have been trained in the sciences at Canadore College where I was enrolled in the Environmental Biology program I also attended the Chemical Engineering program at Cambrian College and graduated in 1994 with transfer credits form the Environmental Biology Program. All of my college training and farming experience give me a perspective most people don't have. For example; when I was 11 or 12 years old my dad was showing me how to adjust the rates of fertilizer spreading equipment. On that day he set the equipment to spread 200 pounds of fertilizer per acer. This spurred a very important question as my Dad always said we have to put back onto the land what we take from it or it will not provide. So I asked him if we are putting 200 pounds of fertilizer and harvesting 18,000 pounds of grain then were does the other 17,800 pounds come from? My Dad attended the Agricultural program at Guelph University so he knew the answer but I don't think he ever thought about it, I mean really thought about it before as the question seemed to surprise him. But the answer is that the Carbon taken from CO2 in the atmosphere make up the bulk of the weight. The plants take in CO2 from the atmosphere and stripe the carbon from the CO2 to use as the building blocks or structure of the plant and then releases O2 back into the atmosphere for us to breathe. My Dad told me that the Carbon from the atmosphere would account for about 17,600 pounds but there is another 200 pounds of something called micro-nutrients which come directly from the soil, and it is these micro-nutrients which give our food its nutrition. So I asked when to we put these micro-nutrients back onto the soil? He said we don't. I then asked; how long can we take these nutrients out of the soil without putting them back? He said I don't know but not forever because ever year we take and do not put back the food we grow becomes less and less nutritions. So I asked where do the nutrients go? And my Dad said; Well if you live in Toronto the nutrients go into Lake Ontario and if you live in Windsor they are flushed into Lake St. Clair. So I asked; Why don't we put the nutrients back on the land, why do we put them into our waterways? It is because the nutrients are contaminated with heavy metals, dioxins, medications we take which go through us and into the waste stream. Industrial waste contains a myriad of contaminants and these contaminants would produce contaminated food which would kill us in a fairly short period of time if we were to eat food grown on contaminated land. So to sum up; we are mining the nutrients from our farmlands, contaminating these nutrients so they can not be re-used, and then we flush the contaminated nutrients into our waterways contaminating our waterways as well. Further, every year the food grown on our farmland is becoming less and less nutritions because we do not replace the micro-nutrients and those nutrients are finite in nature, they can be used up, depleted or spent. And as an intelligent person you know how important nutrition is on development and diseases prevention. My Dad died in a farm accident a couple of years later so I will never know what if anything he may have done to solve this problem and now it is up to me to educate people. There are solutions to this problem but first we have to pull our heads out of the sand and face the problem. When the doctors on the TV said the most prevalent problem seen in their practices was a lack of nutrition or malnutrition in kids, Ding Ding Ding Ding alarm bells should be ringing. And why are they not? Because the doctors place the problem on the people themselves. Doctors say people don't eat right, not enough variety in their diets, and this is how they dismiss the problem. Doctors feel more patient education is need to help them get the nutrition they need, but as I have explained we are all becoming malnourished do to the lack of nutrition in our industrial food supply and the lack of nutrition in our food supply is due to the fact we don't put the nutrients back on the soil to be used again and again in a sustainable fashion like nature intended. Take the obesity problem we can all see in North America. I know it sounds weird at first to blame a lack of nutrition as the cause of the obesity epidemic, but if you understand our bodies crave food to get nutrition and if you eat food without that nutrition your body will cave more food in an effort to try and get the nutrients that the body needs to be healthy. But eating our current food supply with its lack of nutrients leaves the body unable to get the nutrients it needs, but does cause us to take in huge amounts of calories while trying to get nutrition, ergo, obesity results. Understand what I am saying we have obese people who are at the same time malnourished do to the lack of nutrition in our food. I could explain many other important things about how a lack of nutrition can cause a lack of cognitive ability in the general population and in our children. My girls got a good multivitamin as soon as they could swallow them, because knowing what I know and not doing this would amount to child abuse in my opinion. However, we had our children's friends come for sleep overs and it was so sad to hear those kids ask us what are vitamins while we were giving them to our kids. We gave them vitamins while they were at our home but what about when they go home? My children are on the honor roll at school, our youngest has the highest marks in school and my oldest is in college with%90 average (not the highest but she tells me she has a life beyond school). I am so proud of them and my wife whose instincts are amazing and her instincts are matched with an equally amazing intellect, I can't tell you how much I love them. But I care about all the other children and people in general all over the world who are placed behind the eight ball due to the lack of nutrition in our food supply. And we can fix the problem! Democracy is failing because; if we the voters don't know what to do, then how can we vote for people who know what to do? That last question is very profound, please take note as it describes the the problem with our democratic system as succinctly as possible. People need to know this stuff as it is a matter of life and death for their children, our communities, and eventually our civilization because soon there won't be enough nutrition in our food supply for people to have enough cognitive ability to figure out what happened even if it is explained tho them properly. As you can see by this letter, it is not that hard to understand this problem and why it is happening and what we need to do about it. People are loosing their collective ability to think. They say things like look after your own family and that is all you can do. Like looking after our food supply is not looking after my lineage. You get my drift I hope. If not, start taking vitamins. While taking vitamins is not a cure and will not work for ever but it is the best defense against societies neglect of nutrition or lack of understanding about how our nutrition is finite in nature and is being depleted, spent, or used up you pick the word. I love you sweetheart, Dad