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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #147: America's failing food system

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt is from Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet -- One Bite at a Time (2020), by Mark Hyman, MD.

"As a doctor, it is increasingly clear to me that the health of our citizens, the health of our society and our planet, depends on disruptive innovations that decentralize and democratize food production and consumption, innovations that produce real food at scale, that restore the health of soils, water, air, and the biodiversity of our planet, and that reverse climate change. I cannot cure obesity and diabetes in my office. It is cured on the farm, in the grocery store, in the restaurant, in our kitchens, schools, workplaces, and faith-based communities."

All these things and more can provide the seeds for the type of transformation needed to solve one of the central problems of our time -- the quality of what we put on our fork every day. . . . Changes to our own diet are necessary but not sufficient to truly create the shifts needed to create a healthy, sustainable, just world. . . .

"If we were to identify one big lever to pull to improve global health, create economic abundance, reduce social injustice and mental illness, restore environmental health, and reverse climate change, it would be transforming our entire food system. That is the most important work of our time -- work that must begin now."