Food Choices and Health

I found this Op-ed over on Thoughts on the Table. With all the emphasis on health care reform these days it is well worth considering the connection between our diets and the abysmal state of our health in the US. We must break the grip big pharma has on our hospitals and healthcare. We must learn to take care of ourselves as if we knew how, because we do!
Here's an excerpt;

"Fresh, local vegetables are healthier than processed foods. We should have them in our hospitals. Access to nutritious food should be factored into policy as preventative care.

There are several significant reasons why this hasn’t happened yet. First, four companies control 80 percent of America’s beef production. Two companies process 75 percent of the precut salads in the country. The voices of such companies are powerful in Washington. Second, pharmaceutical companies aren’t big on preventative health care. Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are in cahoots. Third, the industrialization of America’s food system destroyed much of the infrastructure that would have allowed large institutions to source locally. In almost any region of the country (except perhaps California), it is difficult to coordinate the arrival of enough locally grown food at a hospital kitchen. Fourth, our policymakers aren’t prone to holistic thinking, and so we are left struggling to find something other than band-aids to help heal our environment, our economy, and our health. We don’t usually consider the complex options that might help cure, all at once, these ailing elements of our society. And finally, we need a leader. We need someone in Washington who will commit to introducing healthy food into hospitals, and who will integrate nutritious food into our health care plans." - Annie Meyers