I love the TED talks, and I found this one today that I really enjoyed.  Mark Bittman, New York Times food writer, gives a very interesting perspective on what’s wrong with the way we eat today.

Mark Bittman talks about global warming, and the fact that, second only to energy production, livestock is at the top of the list when it comes to contributors to atmosphere-altering gases. In fact, as he mentions, a fifth of all greenhouse gases are generated by livestock production, even more than those generated by transportation.

As you may expect, together with the environmental consequences of modern western diet, there are the health problems that come with it. And he talks about the epidemic of the so called lifestyle diseases. The food choices we make are responsible for the health crisis we are living, no question about it. We eat the wrong foods, and way too much of them. And he does highlight the fact that media, industry and the government, have for years mislead us, and convinced us that the more dairy, meat and poultry we eat, the better.

There are many angles to it, some people look at it from the perspective of the energies in what we eat, Bittman talks about the environmental impact of food choices, We, at Eat Alkaline Foods concentrate a bit more on the health effect of what we eat in terms of nutritional content and pH balance. The point is, regardless of how you look at it, if we are honest, we would all agree in one thing, we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, and less animal products and junk food.

World population just recently hit 7 billion people. And, according to the statistic presented by Bittman, we are killing 10 billion animals every year!! We don’t need to eat that much meat, we eat many many times more protein than our bodies need, plus by eating animal products we are putting in our body a lot of things that are harmful to our health.

When you listen to Mark Bittman’s talk, you will enjoy his narration of the last 100 years of history in terms of what we eat. Our eating habits have change dramatically, and we are seeing the consequences.

We need to make changes, and we need to look into the future, both our own, and the planet’s and decide to be proactive. Eat more plants and less animals, eat more real food and less junk processed products.  I’ll have to agree with Bittman when he says that the USDA is not our ally here, and nor are the big food companies. It is a tough fight. How can we change the course of things? How can we counteract the political lobbying of the involved parties? How can we go back to something at least similar to the way things were 100 years ago in terms of the kind of food we eat? How can we stop this epidemic of lifestyle diseases, and cut down in the environmental food print of the food industry?

Share your thoughts with us, there seem to be too many questions and too few answers.