If You Can't Read It, Don't Eat It

            The definition of food is any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc. So why have we turned it into a commercialized taste festival? As we all know, every other commercial on television is advertising food in one shape or form, from fast food burgers to gourmet entrees of exquisite cuisine. There was once a time where food and sustenance meant the same thing; now, food is just a money making market, promoting taste and décor over health and nutrition. With that in mind, there is also a growing problem in America with obesity among adults and even children. The cause: too much concentration on the flavor and look of the product rather than the essential vitamins and nutrition to sustain a healthy body. The growing rates of diabetes, high-blood pressure, heart attacks, iron deficiency, and other health problems caused by unhealthy food are the reason for the cranked up medical insurance bills that people have to dish out every year. But the food industry doesn’t want to lose business because what they are selling products that are barely edible, so they come up with other ways to keep the same great taste without the bad side effects. Too many times food corporations try to sell their product by saying they are fat free or don’t have any sugar, but the substitutes that replace the real things have just created new problems to face.

As the labels on the food containers become more and more elaborate with their promotions of a new “healthy” recipe, the nutrition facts become less and less legible. If you have ever tried reading the ingredients on these high processed foods and found that you can’t pronounce at least half of them, and the other half of the list you’ve never heard of anyway, then you probably shouldn’t be eating whatever is in that box. With all the unusual chemicals that they add to enhance flavor, texture, and even smell, you really don’t know what you are putting into your mouth. Perhaps consuming dirt would be less poisonous than eating mixed tocopherols, maltodextrin, bleached beeswax, and partially hydrogenated oil (found on a box of instant oatmeal I had lying around). A wise solution to this problem would be to actually read labels when going to the grocery store, cutting out the fast food, and only eating things with ingredients made by the Earth rather than by humans. If you can’t read it, don’t eat it.

Go Green or Go Home

Wasting the Earth is an epidemic. We, as people, have turned against Mother Nature and formed our own alliance, stealing what she has offered and betraying her trust. We were given air to breathe, water to drink, organisms to eat, land to grow, and the sunrise to enjoy; what we have returned is polluted air, dirty water, commercialized overproduction, raped land, and stars we can no longer see. Besides the fact that we have degraded our planet by taking all that is left, we have also twisted materials together to form new hideous inventions like plastics, chemicals, and other nuclear abominations that were never meant to be naturally recycled by the Earth. We have been forced to find a place to put the leftover waste or find new ways to get rid of it, causing an infinite loop of destruction that we can’t seem to get out of. The only way to end the cycle is to stop the production of these materials, which means that we must learn to coexist with business and nature.
As an Environmental Representative for Southern Methodist University, I have discovered that many students don’t know how to live sustainably or don’t know how to reduce, reuse, or recycle. Mostly it is because of the lack of education provided by their parents or their community that don’t demonstrate how or what to recycle. Other times it is because of the lack of convenience to live eco-friendly because recycling bins are scarce or there are no recycling plants around. If we were able to have recycling bins next to every trash can, students would mostly choose to just throw their bottles in the correct container because of its convenient location. Also, we need to educate people about the proper recycling tecniques by labeling what item goes into what container. To sum it up, if the material has a number from 1 to 7 in a recycle triangle, recycle it; otherwise, throw it away if it is food products or used napkins. Many recyclables need to be washed out too if it has leftover wet food stuck inside of it. If young people are educated now about living sustainably, they would be able to expose their children to recycling or low-waste living at a young age, and we would alleviate the disproportioned consumption of the Earth’s resources by improving how we can coexist and even open up the job market for future generations on green living.