The Dark Side Of Our Food System

Inspirational Wednesday is presenting you with a talk about “what is wrong with our food system”?. What makes today’s topic quite unusual is that it’s being presented by an 11 year old. Birke Baehr gives an adult performance about the industrial food system which we are all exposed to.

A lot of people are unaware of the quality of our food system. Paying just a little attention or even researching into it, you will be quite shocked with the results, and more importantly with what you are actually eating. Individuals are easily influenced by marketing, whether it be price, promotion or even packaging. For example, food packaging seems to influence people in a positive way, for example; the more green the packaging looks the healthier they believe the product is. This is far from the truth. Media has an important role to play, especially with kids. Just because a can of beans has a picture of a cute teddy bear doesn’t mean this is ideal for kids. We must not let media influence our decisions when buying certain food items. Before you buy something, educate yourself about your products and how they are actually cultivated.

Even though we have a harmful food system there are ways to bypass this, accessing healthier food sources. How is this possible:

1. Growing your own vegetables or fruits. Not everybody has a garden to be self-sufficient. Some of you may have come across Earthboxes. This is a container which permits you to grow vegetables, suitable for apartments or homes without gardens. By growing your own produce you have total control over the process. Organic is orgasmic!
2. Buy from local producers or from neighbors. I personally am self-sufficient and we sometimes sell some of our vegetables and fruits to our neighbors.
3. Researching into what you usually buy. This will give you some background information on what you eat, giving you the necessary comfort.
4. Don’t be influenced by media and marketing. 

We need to question why there are so many people infected with diseases today. A number of factors are to blame, but one of the main causes is because of what we choose to eat. We need to understand and realize that standard quality control practices and company ethics are not 100% reliable these days and so we need to act as control units protecting our bodies. Take a few minutes to watch this 11 year old give an outstanding Tedtalk explaining the dark side to our food system.