"Eighty thousand chemicals have been approved for use in our environment. Every year 1700 new chemicals are approved -- that's an average of five a day. Have scientists studied the effects on our bodies of all these chemicals? No. However, those chemicals that have been researched -- in occupational studies and in studies of lab animals -- have been shown to play a role in triggering autoimmune reactions."
(Donna Jackson Nakazawa, 2008)
Pictured here is an actual junior high school textbook...
Published by McGraw-Hill, this book could possibly be found in just about any classroom in America.
This book has a unit on biotechnology, with a small section on artificial foods - it praises modern science for creating growth hormones for cows (giving us more milk) and pesticide-resistant corn, among other wonders. It even mentions Nutrasweet by name. It goes on to entice the reader with thoughts of future food mutations (an edible pencil, and a turkey with three drumsticks). The entire section is written in a positive light, with absolutely no input about the adverse effects of these artificial substances on our bodies.
I found this book today in an eighth grade technology classroom and just happened upon this information while glancing through it.
The book was published in 2002. An older printing was sitting nearby, so I picked it up and compared - this version was printed in 1994 and had a similar section with almost word-for-word exactly the same writing.
It is now 2014. Twenty years have passed since the 1994 printing of this book. This means that for at least the past twenty years, middle school students have been exposed to this way of thinking about artificial foods.
An entire generation of children have been taught in school that chemicals and artificial ingredients in our foods are not only okay, but are somehow superior in quality to what our ancestors ate.
This month, I have tried to educate you just a little about the adverse effects of artificial ingredients and processed foods on your health. I have shared with you my own story of healing, and I've invited you to come along with me and experience a cleansing diet and big changes in the way you think about food. I hope you can begin to imagine my horror when I read in this school text book today the exact opposite of what I stand for and tried to comprehend the number of students who have been exposed to this.
I hope you know what your children are being taught in school, and I sincerely hope you are educating them at home and feeding them a variety of real food to help them grow up with diverse tastes and able to make healthy choices.
Don't our children deserve better than the mistakes we've made with our health?
(For more information on the rise of autoimmune disease in the past four decades, look here...)
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