There is way too much rubbish and processed food in the western diet especially in English speaking countries. Fast food, highly processed meats which are full of sulphates and other chemicals, high sugar content in food, refined sugar and corn syrup, fats and chemicals. Think about highly processed tinned foods, breakfast cereals and soft drinks. Add chemical fertilisers over the decades that have replaced natural fertilisers and these remove nutrients from the earth and this in turn yields less nutrients in our crops, and we have known this for years now. I have always wondered what these chemicals do to our bodies year after year. Do these chemicals build up in our bodies? What are the long term effects on our bodies from chemical fertilisers in our food chain?
Feeding children a modern diet that is full of harmful ingredients sets these children up for health problems and behavioural issues. Parents are time poor these days and currently there is a difficulty in affordable healthy food, so to feed their children they have to turn to what they can afford.
Healthy diets to me are the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian diets. But moderation is part of the process in establishing a healthy diet and lifestyle. If we in the western world went back to a pre ww2 diet we would be much healthier, however our lifestyle today makes it very difficult for everyone to do this. I am trying to do this myself and it is not easy for me. Life is busy and time is short nowadays but we need to take matters into our own hands if we are to stay healthy and help prepare for old age by being responsible for our own health by being careful about what we eat.
As we age the whole cooking thing becomes tiresome to many people so this is where people often get fed up with cooking and take easier options. I do think that the damage is done before we get to the stage of not wanting to cook a meal because we are old and tired. Pinpointing when the risk of plaque building up in the brain is the tricky part. What age should we be getting assessed for memory loss? Are we going to be fobbed off by doctors that just doesn’t have the time to investigate each patient for signs of dementia because there are so many people developing dementia?
There is a shortage of doctors currently and the western world’s health system is falling apart, so who knows how long it will be before we get an adequate amount of new doctors to step in to close the gap. Meanwhile people are aging and developing dementia and unaware that they are in the early stages of dementia. It’s a frightening illness and we are unable to control the disease at this stage, and how long will it be before we get a big breakthrough in treating dementia.
