The Weight of the Nation

The Weight of the Nation http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/films

For our community day on January 17 we watched this four part documentary about the obesity epidemic in the US. It was very informative. Right now 1/3 of the US population is obese, 1/3 is overweight. The short and long of it is, being obese or overweight puts stress on everything else in your body. Excess fat accumulates around your organs and makes them work harder, it can shut down liver and kidney function, and increase risk of just about anything, diabetes, cancer, heart attack, high cholesterol, stroke, high blood pressure, arthritis from the extra strain on your joints...

Anything else that is bad or can kill you comes much faster due to obesity.

As the film worded it, these are adult problems, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc., but more and more studies are showing these problems are developing in the children. Some cases shown in the video were middle schoolers, one girl was only 7 years old and showing these signs. Research was showing early signs in kids in Kindergarten! Unhealthy diets mostly just corn, corn syrup, soy, wheat, potato, and meat give Americans excess fat reserves and are leading to obesity much younger, and to more people than ever before.

PE is optional in schools in all but 5 states.  What’s up with that? Nature Camp does 3 rec. periods every day because the kids won’t sit still.  How do we keep them sitting still in math class without PE? And school lunches have the nutrients of, well, school lunches. Many communities don't have access to parks or healthy foods. Kids aren't outside so much for various reasons. Kids born today will live shorter, and be sicker in their life than their parents. The film said that several times. I'll say that again, kids born today WILL die before their parents.

It is a problem for all of us. Sometimes we have to talk money to get policy to move, so listen: Our tax dollars will see and are seeing increases in Medicare/Medicaid as obesity causes further expensive health problems. Employers will see and have already seen increased healthcare costs for their employees who are overweight. Solution:  A construction company in the film saved $600,000 a year by doing health testing and blood work for their employees and encouraging healthy wellness behavior rather than just paying for healthcare! This also led to fewer sick days from their employees and fewer healthcare coverage claims.  Healthy workers=successful business!

The film outlined all the typical culprits you see in the food movement videos: fast food, subsidies on corn, breakfast cereal marketing, sodas, sugary drinks (which includes most fruit juices). Speaking of sugary drinks, grape juice has the same content of sugar as soda, and stuff like PowerAde can be sold in schools to young kids but isn't anything but sugar water.

My favorite fact from the film:  Sugar-sweetened drinks (ie anything you can buy at the fridge in a gas station) have no nutritional value at all even the orange juice. They squeeze out the sugar and throw away the pulp where all the nutrients are. You'll get so much more vitamin C eating the whole orange, or even a bell pepper than drinking that pulp-free sugar water we call minute maid. Look at the ingredients. It's just soda without the bubbles. These drinks have a 90% profit margin for coke and Pepsi, and 0% of your nutritional need. Who wins there I ask?  You just lost $1.69! These non-soda drinks are nothing but diabetes and obesity in a can, and they get all the success of marketing toward school age kids who don't need anywhere close to that much sugar because kids aren't exercising as much today.

We set them up for failure. We set them up for obesity. We set kids up for a life shorter than ours.

I was inspired by all the talk of personal change stories from the second video, and the things communities are doing from the 4th video. The things people did when they resolved they didn't want to be obese any more. It is that spark of change that has to generate inside someone to get them started, and then all the group exercise and therapy people used to hold each other accountable to keep off the weight.

The story is that we can solve this problem, and paying a little more for healthier foods now and committing to exercise is much cheaper than getting the liver surgery, or the bypass surgery or the autopsy from it later down the line. We can solve these problems and we will when we realize life (in biology terms) is a battle with death and we have to make the decision to get up each day and live each day, and not just sit around all the time.

Personal changes in diet and exercise are the best individual start, but we must also build a society that teaches and encourages healthy living, exercise, and fighting disease. Not one based on money and profit margins.

Change is coming, be the change you wish to see in the world. It is your life. Live it.

The Eleventh day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me eleven hypotheses for why the bee colonies are collapsing.

Also as part of the snowed in community day we also watched this documentary The Vanishing of the Bees: http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/397072?playlist_id=1688&asset_scope=movies

This one is longer than Save the Farm. But it gets you just as fired up about the problems in the world. The film outlines the phenomenof Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD), the mysterious disappearance of entire honey bee colonies.

Our entire agricultural system relies on bees. You may think bees only give us honey, but they pollinate all kinds of flowers and help them make all kinds of fruits. Not just what you call fruits like apples, oranges, pears, peaches, melons, etc., but also some things the FDA calls vegetables like squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, beans, nuts, and peppers. These are actually fruits, botanically speaking because they develop from the ovary of the flower once it's been pollinated. Without bees our farmer's markets would only include the true vegetables (roots, stems, leaves) and the wind-pollinated grains (corn, wheat, rice) and other random fruits pollinated by other means (bats, birds, beetles, ants, etc).

Bee keepers can actually make their living transporting their bees to surrounding farms to assist in crop pollination, so bees are essential to our fruit and vegetable production.

THANKS YOUTUBE!

 

The problem addresssed in this film is that bees have been mysteriously disappearing rapidly by the colony. They are just gone and people are confused as to why.

This film addresses some of the latest theory of why this is happening.

In general, the research and the experts blame the pharmaceutical companies and systemic pesticide use from the farmers. Prolonged exposure to small amounts of pesticide on each flower eventually kills the bees or at least confuses them so they forget how to get back to the hive. I've seen other bee films blame it on the GMO crops with pesticide inside the plants. And that makes sense, chemicals designed to kill harmful insects just might be harmful to bees--which are insects.

I was surprised in the film by one biodynamic (super eco-centric version of organic) farmer Gunther in Floyd. VA who didn't blame the crop farmers, but blamed the current bee keeping system. He said it may be the way new queens are introduced to the colony, or how the queens are artificially insiminated to select for traits that weakens bee colonies. The film also introduced me to the organic bee keeping idea that doesn't expose the bees to crops with pesticide use.

I liked that idea of looking inside your own practices when addressing the problem, it's something I'd not seen in researching bee problems before. Way to go Gunther, start by changing your own beekeeping practices to help save the bees.

The Tenth day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me ten inches of snow (it wasn't really nine feet).

For part of the snowed in community day we watched a documentary called Save the Farm. It shows the struggle of a very successful community farm in the south central neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/265201?playlist_id=1040&asset_scope=movies

Some very sly politics allow a very rich man to buy the community land from the farm. The film tells of the long time community who relies on the farm to feed themselves, and their battle to save the farm from the rude rich man who evicts them and attempts to develop the land.

There is much drama on the weeks leading up to the eviction.

It makes me angry that a 14 acre farm that feeds hundreds of people in an industrialized, polluted neighborhood can just be bought and snatched away from them by someone who just has the money to make more industirialization and pollution to make more money. The story is a battle between history and attachment to the land vs power and money. Watch the film and see who wins. And watch the crazy hippie protesters who camp out in a tree.  It speaks to nonviolent protests and community organizing.

Why do we give so much power to money?  Why does ownership of land and resources come down to those who have the most power instead of those who’ve put in the most work, or have depended on it for generations.  Why were we Europeans able to claim land from the natives and other clans in the development of this nation?  Why can we say it is ours?  Is it ours? What are we doing to each other?

Please watch the film and feel free to answer one or two of these questions for me.

The Ninth Day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me, nine feet of snow! 

It snowed a lot for about 24 hours so we stayed in.  I worked from home, and finished reading one of our assigned books.

Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster.

 
Read it.  It cleared up a lot of the duality I had about simple living.  I’ve been committed to simple living for a long time but couldn’t really explain why.  I always saw it more as an environmentalist or hippie thing to do than a spiritual thing to do.  It’s partly out of cheapness, partly out of my admiration for my hording grandparents and great Aunt Nancy who kept everything they ever got that made me re-use and re-purpose things.  

In college I became a science major with an energy concentration, so I’ve been passionately seeking simple living via energy conservation from the academic sense.  A  passion for the planet and those who live on it was always in the back of my head, but conserving kilojoules and megawatthours was the focus.  Simple living can save energy resources and money by keeping the lights turned off as much as possible, the heat low in the winter, the A/C on a high temperature in the summer, biking instead of driving, etc.  This saves resources for further generations and lowers our impact on the environment.  That’s enough, right?

This book presents simple living as a Christian discipline, not a call to environmentalism, not a call for energy and resource conservation, but a way to become more fully Christian.  It does happen that caring for God’s creation and taking care of the other people on it—sentiments shared by environmentalists, Christians or not—are key elements of simplicity. 

Foster gives biblical quotes from the Old Testament, the New Testament and theologians throughout the ages on why we should live simply. Basically I can summarize it as the Old Testament prophets have been shouting God’s command for us to take care of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and those who can’t take care of themselves since they first heard God’s voice. Commandment #10 says do not covet.  Jesus asked the rich man to sell his possessions give the money to the poor and follow him. 

As Christians, we are to seek ways to help those in need.  How simply we can do this by Loving thy neighbor, sharing resources, and not taking more than our share are just a few.  In today’s world most of the economic activity we support can exploit the poor, the oppressed, the widows and orphans.  That’s where local food, and fair trade comes in the picture.  Collectively Foster calls all these practices “simplicity.”  Freeing ourselves from our own wants and complexities inside and out, brings us closer to God and allows us to be aware of and love our neighbor.



Image taken from http://theartofsimple.net/what-is-simple-living/ 
(Probably an Indian proverb and said by many more people
than just Mother Theresa and Ghandi)

Simplicity is not easy.  It’s complicated.  It’s all about being self aware of your motivations, your actions and your thoughts and then being intentional about what you do, and how you treat one another.  That’s the spirituality of it.  It is an inward simplicity and an outward simplicity, and a corporate simplicity as a body of Christians.  The simple lie isn’t the easy one, but the self-aware and intentional one.

This book showed me Yes God does want us to conserve our energy resources, to use less stuff, to throw away less, because that builds up the widows, the oppressed, the poor, and the hungry. 

I now live simply not only to be cheap, not only to experience the life of my great Aunt Nancy, not only to use less fossil fuels, but because these are ways I can love my neighbors more.  These are ways I can focus on God more than my stuff.  Simplicity allows me to ignore distractions so I hear and feel God, and the love of those around me, and I can show this love more freely.

I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.  I see it now.  God wants us to take care of this world, to live simply, to live freely.

The Eighth Day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me, eight items served for dinner at Rosie’s place. 
 
I described Rosie’s place, the drop in center for women in Boston when we worked the food pantry on December 26.  On January 1 we served dinner at Rosie’s Place.  Here is a moving video of their work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmt_Ef3kYg4 
and their website: http://www.rosiesplace.org/

The eight part menu was

1.       Bread
2.       Soup
3.       Turkey-stuffed-peppers
4.       Bean salad
5.       Rice
6.       Peas
7.       Orange
8.       Granola bar-rice crispy treat

Between the soup and supper we also had donated toiletries, lotions, shampoos, soaps for the women to take.  I stood behind a counter and served food and gave out some toiletries to women who just needed food and shampoo.  But why was I on my side of the counter and not theirs.

One lady kept talking about how her new sleeping bag could keep her body 70 degrees inside the sleeping bag no matter how cold it was outside.   

One woman spoke no English and we used hand signals to help her distinguish which toiletry bottles she grabbed were shampoo, lotions, and soaps.

I sat down to eat at a random table with some of the ladies who were almost finished.  They both spoke Spanish to each other so I awkwardly ate there smiling to my dumb white non-bilingual self until they left.
 
One woman said "Happy New Years" three times every time I saw her.

It is humbling serving people. They walk into this place and ask for soup, then they look at it and ask for more broth or less broth than what you gave them, in a kitchen I’ve never been in before. And we do what they ask from behind the counter. Here, now, I serve them. The women who come to eat are in charge. This may be the only place they have a say on what happens to them. Maybe it is not. I know very little about what happens to other people in real life.

It is a lifestyle I am learning more about every day.  I think it may be just a family inheritance and a house, utilities, and job provided by this YAV program that separates them from me.  How easy a job, money, a home can slip away.  We’re all people who need to eat, and to clean ourselves.  What is it really (besides a counter) that separates me from these people?  God doesn’t even see that counter as something to separate us.  He calls us to love people on my side of the counter and on the other side of the counter.  God even calls us to remove that counter that separates us. 

It is a cold night, and I’ve seen and handed food to women who may be sleeping out in it.  Thank you God for a house and oil in the furnace.  Thank you God for a warm place to sleep.  Help us provide these things for those who can’t provide them for themselves. 
 
Make this more than a prayer. Make it action.  Get on the other side of the counter.  We are the hands and feet of God.

The Seventh Day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me, a high of seven degrees.

Decber 31, I had a shorter workday with my people at the Presbyterian Church in Burlington.  Some more planning for the new year.

After dinner we headed downtown for the First Night Celebration.  There were lots of ice sculptures, musical performances, improv performances.  Evidently everything started at 10 am and went until midnight and we just caught some of the last of it.  Then we came home and stayed up until 3:30am discussing life, the universe, and everything as if we were still in college.


Three lovely ladies and Marshall stood around me as we watched fireworks to carry in the new year, with people we didn't know five months ago,
                                                      in the cold,

Photo taken by Marshall, and stolen
 from Kathleen's facebook page

in New England,
a place we may never be again,
a place we may be missing when 2015 arrives,
a place none of us thought we be at this point a year ago,
a place we may be for 2015 fireworks,
a place where God is working,
a place where warmth is found, 
in New England
in the cold.

As part of the dinner conversation I remembered two great moments of 2013.  Walking at graduation, and seeing one homesick kid at camp start to enjoy himself toward the end of his session.  That kid asked me to sign his special intrest award book.  There were plenty of good times, and actually more happiness last year than bad times.  Even though it was a hard year with a lot of loss and heartbreak for many of us, there was a lot of light. A lot of good. And good times ahead. 

Photo taken by Kathleen Murphy Copyright 2014

We look ahead for God's plans to be revealed in 2014. 

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed." Romans 8:18.

"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, " Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever"  Psalm 23:6

The Sixth Day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas, my YAV year gave to me, six hours sorting canned goods at a Place to Turn.

Today, December 30, we volunteered at A Place to Turn, a food pantry and clothes closet in Natick, a township to the west of Boston.  My roommate Kathleen works there part time along with the Hartford Street Presbyterian Church just across the parking lot on the property backing up against the Natick Mall (A HUGE mall).  Her project is to start a community garden on the church property with 75 plots that community members can use to grow their own produce after being asked to donate at least 10% of their produce to A Place to Turn.  http://www.aplacetoturn-natick.org/
 


The five of us (YAVs plus Marshall) spent four hours sorting through their donated canned and boxed food items.  They are largely dependant on donations, and they've recieved a ton of food from holiday food drives from local boy scouts, schools, and churches.  Our job was to sort through all the donations to categorize it by food type, baking goods, veggies, beans, rice, tomato products, pasta, etc. and to pull out the food that would expire before February 2014 to get it on the shelves today, and to put the food that expired within the last 6 months out on the "Expired"shelf--clients take whatever they want of recently expired items but are not forced to take it.

They are God's people.  Maybe we shouldn't insult them with items far past the end of their lifetime.

Much like Rosie's Place, APTT lets the guests walk through and choose which of each item they want from the shelf giving them more control over their food selection.  Clothes items, toiletries, diapers, cleaning supplies--all things people cannot purchase with food stamps-- are also available.  Anyone in the "Metro West" area in need can be served here.  The food is actually pretty good, there is usually some fresh produce donated from grocery stores, lots of canned vegetables, and relatively few snack foods.  It's a well run operation, on the outgoing side, however we did see the high need for quality control on the donations.

We threw away five large boxes full of donated good that have past their "best by" date.  Some of it made it to the "shelf of shame" (a place reserved for only the oldest and nastiest donations).  In my mission trips to Baja, they referred to this as "Junk for Jesus"--things people just give away instead of throwing away no matter how nasty it is thinking they are helping someone, but they forget the golden rule, "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you".  In the donations that arrived between Nov. 1 and today that we looked through we found shelves upon shelves of useful items, but plenty of old, nasty things to keep it fun. 


There were plenty of expired cans, boxes of hamburger helper, beans, jelly, etc. some from 2007 or earlier.  The ones that surprised us were opened and used bottles of soap and shampoo, opened and used toothpaste, and you won't believe it when you hear it, Hemorrhoid medicine pads from 1978!

image taken from:
 http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/supersized-hunger-pangs-supersized-waste-infographic

Some of those donations to the food pantry should have gone to the landfill directly from the person's home...twenty years ago!

We did rescue some of the expired goods from 2012 and 2013 for our lunch. 

As always this comes back to the bigger issues of food justice:  More than 1/3 of the food produced in the U.S. gets wasted!  We saw that today.  Why don't people eat all their food before it expires?  And why is the holiday boy scout food drive the only time people look through all the food that's in their house?  Food Justice starts at home folks!  America, lets cut back on the waste and eat the food we buy.  Forget all the labor and energy that went into it if you want, but you did pay for that food, why didn't you eat it? I've done this before, but I'm likely not to do it again after this year.  Why are so many people hungry if there is so much food wasted?

These are questions we must investigate.


A few tips for donating food items to pantries:

• Ask what specific items are needed and supply those. 
• Check your cabinets and cubbards on a regular basis to make sure you are using all the food you bought. It will save you money in the long run.
• Check the date, don't donate old things to the food pantry, In Massachusetts, if it's more than a year old they can't even put it on the shelf for expired goods.  Either eat it yourself or throw it away. (better yet if it's