Please Sir, I want some more

This classic line from Oliver, which won eleven Oscars (including best picture) in 1969, bears repeating today.  One in eight Americans is experiencing food insecurity.  It’s worse for seniors.  36% of those over 65 are bamboozled by an insufficient amount of nutritious food.  However, the problem is not due to farmers and their lack of production.  Our farmers are producing more than two hundred billion dollars’ worth of food (and in some cases, nutrition) that is never eaten and ultimately goes bad.  For every human in the US, 219 pounds of food is wasted every year.  Put another way, the average American family of four tosses out about $2000 worth of produce annually.

 Forty percent of food transported to grocery stores – valued at roughly one trillion dollars -- ends up in landfills.  10% of all US energy is devoted to just transporting food; of which a sizable portion is then tossed out.  So, it is clear that this problem won’t be solved by increasing the work effort from farmers or from truck drivers.  

What is fascinating is the recent embrace of food issues and food-as-medicine by health care professionals.  Trained physicians, who graduated from US medical schools, receive an average of 8 total hours of nutritional education. There are health care executives running Medicare Advantage plans with even less education.  Knowing what is good or bad about food consumption is vital in today’s Food-as-Medicine movement.

I’m struck by the bias afforded discount coupons for the farmers’ market or health cards that promote grocery purchases of fruit and vegetables.  Don’t get me wrong, the nutritional value of fresh produce greatly exceeds processed food “enriched” with worthless calories.  When seeds grow into produce on the farm, but end up rotting in the back of the refrigerator, then we have a nightmare scenario much bigger than a bread box.  

Most wasted food ends up in landfills, enough to provide 130 billion meals.  Literally one pound of food per day, per adult.  So it is not sating the hunger pangs of Americans; but it is a profoundly serious contributor to carbon emissions and climate destabilization.  Fruit and vegetables that end up in landfills generate methane emissions which are 30 times worse than the emissions from our automobiles.  Wasted food accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  

There is one more compelling facet of the wasted food problem in America: half of the land in the US and 80% of our fresh water is devoted to bringing food to our tables.  And yet we toss 40% of that food which never occupies are dining room table or ends up in our stomachs.  To sum it up, we produce all this food using are natural resources, transport it with trains, planes and trucks/automobiles and then dispose of it – after it’s rotted – in landfills where it's a huge part of our methane emission problem.  

Healthrageous believes in satisfying the specific appetites of seniors.  When living alone, seniors can rarely consume a whole bunch of celery or a bag of Brussels Sprouts.  Farmacies that deliver produce to MA members beware; if it isn’t easy to prepare, it isn’t making a difference.  The effort of washing the blueberries and strawberries may be too much.  Coring a pineapple, which would avert having to wash fruit, likely would yield more fruit than desired.  And then there’s the kale, potatoes, onions, etc. - all good for an elderly person, but requiring too much effort from a parent who probably spent decades raising a family and preparing, cooking and cleaning up for them.   

So to those well-meaning health care executives, striving to improve the nutritional consumption of seniors in your Medicare Advantage plans, embrace solutions that are EASY for your members.  

• Don’t impose label reading on them.  

• Don’t force them to learn what riboflavin is and how much they need.  

• Don’t hope that they will forsake the bag of potato chips for an hour in the kitchen preparing a single dinner for one.  

Consider the value of microwavable, heat-and-eat meals.  Every Healthrageous meal is portion-controlled (<400 calories), high fiber and protein, low sodium and sugar.  Every meal improves one’s Type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure.  Each meal from our company scores > 80% satisfaction from the thousands of consumers we are serving.  Sending fruit and produce to seniors, as a way to improve their diets fulfills the right intentions, but the execution falls flat if that produce ends up in a landfill, contributing to methane emissions.  So, the next time one of your seniors cries out, “Please sir, I want some more” be sure and satisfy their request with a nutritional, tasty, microwavable meal from Healthrageous.

For more information on Healthrageous’ Made Easy Meal program – and indirectly – how to slow global warming 😉, click HERE to request more information.

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