I’m a big fan of AlvinToffler, who writes books that predict the future. Though best known for Future Shock, I found his 1990 book, PowerShift, to be eye opening in describing how the shift to a knowledge-based economy would lead to unimaginable social and technological change the world over. His latest book, published last year with his wife, Heidi, is Revolutionary Wealth, and one of the things I find intriguing is their assessment of health care.
While they don’t discuss trends like growing interest in real foods or sustainable agriculture, they express similar frustrations as others on this site have about seemingly unsustainable trends in health care. “Medical specialization…has reached the point at which communication among specialties is perilously poor. Bureaucracies are on the edge of unmanageability. Hospitals go broke…Today’s main killers…are heart disease, lung cancer and other illnesses that are clearly affected by individual behavior…”
They predict “radical reconceptualization of the entire problem of health in the twenty-first century.”
That radical reconceptualization includes “a more take-charge attitude on the part of” the patient, based on greater access to both information and self-diagnostic technology. But it also includes something I haven’t heard much about before: educating young people about the realities of disease and health care. “In a densely cross-connected knowledge-based economy, why continue to think of the health crisis and the educational crisis as separate, rather than as interlinked?” they ask.
I couldn’t help but think about how useful it would be for young people to learn in school the lessons offered by Mary McGonigle-Martin, Don Neeper, Steve Bemis, and Ron Klein in their comments on my Wednesday post concerning the soil. Perhaps we’re seeing the beginnings of such a move in that direction with the new attention schools are giving to reining in obesity among children.
As nice a thought as that might be, I expect the divide I spoke about in that same posting to rear its ugly head as schools increasingly seek to move into substantive education about nutrition and health. After all, exactly what will they teach about the connections—between soil, pasture, veggies, animals, and people?
In this society, where the 99-cent cheeseburger combo meal is still a viable option, it can be a daunting task to teach anything else.
My husband is a 5th grade teacher and between us we’ve decided that "No Child Left Behind" should be more about nutrition and health instruction than standardized testing……. Feed them better and better test scores will follow.
We have a very strict, healthy diet for our son and it is terribly difficult to live so opposite our fast food generation. Im curious as to how everyone handles this issue socially. Our son is not allowed to have soda, typical cookies, candy, cake, etc. If he goes to a friends house, we send food for him to eat.
We also use supplements in the winter to boost his immune system instead of giving him a flu shot.
The very real and growing threat to our health comes from factory farming methods.The farmers that risk everything to provide people with an alternative to factory farmed food are not only being attacked by government agencies and misinformed citizens but also by new invasive species of bacteria and virus that come on the wind and through the water from neighboring factory farms. These are very real "bombs" or bio-weapons that we are suffering under every day.
The only hope for the livestock or for us is to support the immune system with excellent nutrition and hope that our living immune system can adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances.
Ken, what you are talking about is of high importance and quite scary. Thank you for sharing it.
I have been reading the discussion. Lots of people are holding up the pro fresh milk end and Melissa is doing a good job representing the government-industry side.