Your Money or Your Health

Image via Wikipedia

It's interesting to see what pops up when you concern yourself with the food that you eat. After recent conversations about restaurants and local "health drinks" I was shown a website about a local weight loss program, Hopkins Fusion,  that sells Herbalife, the same protein powder/sports mix that City Blendz sells, and out of optimistic hope to be able to make a difference I wrote to the company to see if, at least, they knew about the unhealthy ingredients in their "health" shakes, forwarding the link to my recent article about their product. I was a bit taken aback by the response I received.

Dan,

I don't know about that - all I know is that Herbalife is a $4 billion business only profiting in sales, it's in 72 different countries, it's been around for 30 years, and is on the NYSE.

Have a great day!

It was a very disappointing response since what it says to me is that they don't know and don't care whether what they are selling is actually helping or hurting their customers' long-term health. They only care that they're part of a large business that's making lots of money.

And this isn't some major, faceless corporation, but a local business that just so happens to sell products made by a major, faceless corporation. These are regular people we're talking about but as long as they're turning a profit, they may as well be part of the machine. Why don't they care? Because it's not personal at all for them. It's business. If you've watched Food, Inc then by now you've heard the take-away message that in order to talk to people like this you can't appeal to their good nature. You can't reason with them. You can't just tell them how wrong they are (with rare exception). You have to talk with your pocket book. You vote for a better food system every time you buy your groceries, choose a restaurant, or go to the coffee shop.

via Downing Street on Flickr

It is good, and hopeful, and ... a little lofty to express hope for change in this, as recent TED winner and famous Chef Jamie Oliver wished for in his recent acceptance speech. Even admitting that some may be beyond hope, I fully support him in this goal and he is right that we are at the tipping point where food is no longer food. We need the education that Jamie talks about because people don't know how to choose healthy options and have no passion about healthy food. After all, why wouldn't someone choose health if given the option? Several reasons. Because they don't know. Because they're choosing the subsidized junk food with their lightened pocketbooks. Because others are able to make a lot of money off of them by selling that cheap garbage to them, and in high demand. All of these reasons will change with education.

Don't make it an all-or-nothing undertaking, at least to begin with. People are slow to change, wont to backtrack from time to time, and most of all they need to feel that the decision they're making is their own. Hopefully people won't have to go through a personal revelation in order to wake up to how important this is. Having once been on the definitely-overweight end of the scale, I speak from experience: You want to know this stuff now! It comes down to your money or your health: choose one.

This article is part of Real Food Wednesday, this week at Cheeseslave.com

Related articles 

• A Food Revolution is Coming (fooducate.com)
• City Blendz Definition of Nutrition (psychiclunch.com)
• How do you get your friends to care (Simple Green Frugal Co-op)