I realized something today, and, amazingly, it took this long for me to realize ... I come home every summer to visit my small coastal hometown. And I love my hometown. However, the blatant small-town mentality - again - reared it's unending ugly head today in posts Facebook-wide.
Ignorance is NOT bliss...not when you find out the hard unavoidable way that you could have done something had you only had the right information and made the effort to make a difference before your health or life became jeapordized. And to do that, you have to go outside your comfort zone and actually open your eyes to the realities in life. Accept that you are NOT a know-it-all when it comes to things you "think" you know everything about. Accept that everyone else are NOT "just fools that feed off the mainstream media idiots".
There is a huge world outside of the small coastal towns off the Pacific Northwest. We should NEVER be so arrogant to believe we are "armchair experts", sitting in our homes saying everyone else are the fools. No, those who spew ignorance are making themselves the fools for all the world to see. I fear for them if they ever leave that small town and venture out into the wide unknown. It will be a rude, uncomfortable awakening when they realize that they really have zero understanding of what life is REALLY like in the world, that what they thought they knew is actually all a huge misconception warped by small-town mentality, or that for once their friends are not the best source of pertinent information.
The world opened up for me the moment I left a small town and saw the world. Yes, I left the USA and went elsewhere in the world - and a HUGE world it is, with far more to it than any one person can ever imagine. Different cultures, ways of thinking and lifestyles are widespread and very diverse.
It's amazing the things you see, learn and experience when you leave that cocoon of small-town living and mentality.
My world opened up for me even more when I came back to the USA and worked hard towards a college degree. Having that degree handed to me was one of the best, most rewarding moments of my life.
It's time that people look outside their small tightknit communities and really pay attention to what is going on in the world around them, because it is very real.
To put it plainly:
The breakdown of our governmental regulatory commissions are very real. Organic standards that have been, until now, safe and trustworthy are being systematically torn apart by special interests with ties to major agro-chemical industries. FDA has been shown to be much less than trustworthy, and they have since shirked their duties in making sure our food is safe to eat.
GMO dangers are very real. There have been no studies that say GMOs are safe for human consumption or use. NONE. No matter what chem companies and regulatory commissions will tell you. And that is because they are NOT safe. They want to tell us that "in time we will see that there was nothing to worry about". That same sentence was said about smoking. And look where we are now.
But there have been many independent studies done showing GMOs are far from safe, and show alarming signs towards diseases and disorders that we have seen rise significantly since the introduction of GMOs into the food supply.
Agent Orange and the devastation that it caused both in the Vietnam War and still today is very real. We can thank Monsanto and Dow, among others, for those atrocities perpetrated on our soldiers and the Vietnamese people (and both their offspring! But that's a whole other topic...).
And still today, elements of Agent Orange are now approved for use in those pesticides that are sprayed on your food. Not to mention the GMO pesticides that are inserted into your food.
Gluten intolerance is very real. It's skyrocketed since the introduction of more potent pesticides and GMOs.
Chemicals like Red Dye #40, HFCS, and more ARE health hazards. Red 40 has been shown to contribute to higher levels of anxiety and hyperactivity in susceptible children. These things are NOT natural products, therefore the body does not assimilate it the same as it would if it ingested, say, cherry juice - or something similar - used as a color enhancer. Cherry juice or another fruit product used to color foods IS a natural product - Red 40 is absolutely NOT, and neither is HFCS - - again, GMO-laden products to poison the population more and more, little by little.
Shifting to an organic lifestyle is VERY realistic. It's not a "stupid idea", "a fool's notion", or even "a gullible idiot's fantasy"... the dangers we are facing each year as the quality of food production in this country continues to degrade is astonishing. One only has to actually pay attention and do a little research.
Grow your own food, using certified organic seeds and/or starts! COOK!!!! Ditch the processed foods and go back to COOKING for yourself.
In other parts of the world they don't even allow genetically modified organisms in their food supplies. In other parts of the world they live an organic lifestyle with little to no processed foods naturally, without even thinking twice. In those places they don't have the same kind of diseases and disorders that we do here in United States and other rich countries.
In other countries, their citizens literally look at us Americans as mindless fools, overindulgent sloths, and more unflattering terms...(and those are terms exactly as they were said).
It's time this country wakes up, gets their collective heads out of the sand, and take some kind of initiative to take back our health, and our freedom to CHOOSE!
Support labeling GMO! At least then you'll know what your eating and can choose whether or not you want to eat real food or genetically modified food-like organisms.
And NO - labeling foods is NOT going to raise costs, put people out of jobs, raise taxes, make you surrender your first born, etc...NONE OF THAT WILL HAPPEN. Stop listening to the special interests that are only out for THEIR INTERESTS. They simply do not want foods labeled because they KNOW that then the purchasing power of the consumer will be more powerful, and people might actually *gasp!* become more educated about what goes into their foods! Oh, the horror!!! God help Monsanto when everyone becomes the dreaded "informed consumer"...whatever will Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturer's Association do then?!
When we have entire countries denying import of our foods because of GMO issues - perhaps it's time we start taking more notice to the world around us and the issues we keep trying to ignore at home. Wake up, America.
