Health Spectator

1974: Richard Nixon proposes healthcare reform

It is one of history’s greatest ironies that had Richard Nixon not run afoul of the Watergate scandal, Americans might long ago have obtained universal health care. But thanks to Watergate, Nixon found himself on the path to impeachment and resigned his office. His “sweeping new program” for “comprehsive health insurance” lay dead on the table.

It is another of history’s ironies that Nixon’s successor, President Jimmy Carter, did not have the clout to push through a similar program. We recall sitting with a friend in a bar in New Jersey the same night that John Lennon was shot. A German was expounding on an issue we had never considered before.

“The thing you have to understand about American presidents,” he intoned in his Teutonic accent, “is that they always do the opposite of what you expect them to do. It was Nixon who opened the door to China, and Kennedy and Johnson who got us into the Vietnam war.”

He was claiming, in effect, that a Democrat could get away with sponsoring a program or course of action that, were a Republican to attempt it, would arouse cries of “Nazism.” And a Republican—such as Nixon—is more likely to be successful pushing through a program that, were a Democrat to attempt it, would be called “socialized medicine.”

A tale of two presidents

We happen to think that he was right. And as a consequence, both Jimmy Carter and Hilary Clinton were doomed in their attempts to change our healthcare system. We personally were opposed to Hilary’s attempt and wonder if it is the times that have changed, or have we merely begun to see through the smokescreens that hid the truth from our eyes in former years?

Certainly we have become wiser by experience. We no longer view with suspicion government-sponsored health insurance. In fact, along with a growing majority of healthcare professionals, we have come to see it as the only realistic recourse for a system that is badly broken. Treating health care as a privilege available only to the few who can afford it is simply not a reasonable course of action, in our opinion. We would hope that a humane approach to health care would be an acceptable alternative to a majority of Americans.

We should mention too that we are entirely sympathetic to those who fear that government involvement might bring lowered health care standards. Indeed, we would heartily agree were it not for the fact that private industry has already set the bar so low that even the government can provide better bang for the buck.

Like many conservatives, we wax queasy when others speak of “Medicare for all” as if Medicare were some sort of laudable standard for heath care. Indeed, it is not. There is much to be improved in Medicare, and most of the incursions by Congress into that realm in recent years have been disastrous. (Investigate Medicare Part D if you doubt us.)

Everybody in, nobody out

But getting back to the stated theme of this piece, the essence of a single-payer system is the motto, “everybody in, nobody out.” This is the crux of the matter. When everyone—congressman, senator, doctor, lawyer, president, tax-payer, homeless war veteran—becomes entitled to the same health care, we think government health care standards will markedly improve. Certainly the care meted out by Veterans Administration hospitals is no standard to emulate for the rest of us. But who more deserves the kind of coverage and care afforded to Federal employees and elected officials than those who gave their bodies to defend those same exalted healthcare standards while defending our freedoms? Should we deny any veteran—whether or not she can now afford a home—the very best health care?

We think not. But our system does, daily. And this is unfair.

Health care for patients, not profits

Unfortunately, those who stand to profit from the status quo—mainly health insurance and pharmaceutical companies—have sought to address the discussion of this issue by kicking up dust. They have filled town meetings with loud lackeys who seek to block meaningful discussion.

But this does not mean that the rest of us cannot both study and discuss the issues. The billions of dollars of industry profits are not fiction and they are not funny. If that money were going towards health care in a single-payer system, we would all be receiving better care without higher taxes.

Keep in mind that those industry profits are paid for by those of us who pay out for health care, whether through health insurance premiums for policies we don’t use or through emergency-room visits that we pay for out of our own pockets. If you pay any money at all towards health care, whether you use the healthcare system or not, you are supporting it. Your taxes go towards Medicare and Medicaid, systems for people that private insurers do not cover because it is not in their best economic interest to do so.

Insurance coverage for the rest of us

A government system that cares for everyone, on the other hand, would operate the way insurance companies should in theory, but don’t in practice. That is, the premiums paid by the healthy would go to pay for the needs of those who are sick. Most of us are lucky enough to start out our lives healthy, though most of us gradually develop more need for health care later in life.

Real insurance systems are designed to deal with these disparities among individuals and could do so quite well, we think, were not billions of dollars annually drained from the coffers to pad the pockets of health-insurance CEOs.

A Harris poll taken last fall showed that only 1 in 14 Americans trusts health insurance companies. Yet, Obama and the Democrats in Congress seem to be trying to put together a system that everyone—including Republicans and the insurance companies—will feel good about. We think that goal is as impossible as it is unwarranted. So long as some of those billions in excess profits floating around the health care industry are donated to politicians to get them to support the existing system, there will be those who are not aligned with our common interests. We can’t expect them to be happy about eliminating all that waste when they are the beneficiaries. Obama himself has received massive amounts of money from the healthcare industry, which might explain his recent restraint in pushing for a single-payer program.

Eliminating unnecessary costs

costs
We need a system that provides everyone good and equitable health care. That should be our first priority. Dr. Sidney Wolfe, a physician and acting president of the non-partisan group Public Citizen, has stated repeatedly that eliminating the current healthcare industry would save $4 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s in contrast to offers from the health insurance industry—now faced with possible extinction—to save up to $2 trillion in costs over the same period.

Why would we want to pay an additional $2 trillion to sustain current inequities? What is intrinsically desirable about paying high premiums and high deductibles for health care, much less having a significant portion of our population under- or un-insured? Are we really afraid that going to the doctor will surpass going to the mall as a form of family entertainment in our society?

It is time to set aside emotion in dealing with this issue. Shouting and name-calling are simply not constructive. Now more than ever, Americans need to focus on what is truly desirable in a healthcare system and to stop thinking in terms of what we have done in the past. We have the opportunity to create something new, a system that is designed to serve all our people. We should not waver from that goal just because it will require some politicians to roll up their sleeves and do some work.

Stop the interference

“There’s no way we are ever going to have good health insurance for everyone so long as there’s a health insurance industry in the way, obstructing care,” says Dr. Wolfe.

“In Canada, you can go to any doctor, any hospital you like,” explains Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard University, founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. “Canadians have better choice than we do,” he adds, while “[they] spend half as much per person as we do on health care.” Himmelstein admits that if we wanted to cut our healthcare expenditures in half to match the Canadians, we would have to put up with longer waits than we do now. But, he says, if we are willing to maintain our current per capita level of spending on health care, “we could cover everybody with terrific access to care” and still not have to pay copays, deductibles, or insurance premiums. (In other words, our health care would be covered by our current level of taxes and would be better care than most of us receive now.)

His statements have been confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). These are solid figures, not empty promises.

Keep your doctor, keep your hospital

And note that there is nothing here about having to give up your favorite doctor or be refused procedures your doctor legitimately thinks you need. That is one of the primary reasons distinguished physicians such as Drs. Wolfe and Himmelstein are behind single-payer. It simply promises us a better system of healthcare for a given amount of money.

Perhaps the best part is that we can eliminate thereby interference in healthcare decisions by non-doctors who are simply trying to amass profits. Insurance companies currently hire hundreds of individuals whose job it is to say “no” to legitimate healthcare decisions made by doctors simply because the insurance company would have to pay to cover those benefits. In a healthcare system in which doctors have the final say on medical decisions, patients are better served. In such a system, doctors are not trying to set aside money to be paid out as profits to CEOs and shareholders, they are simply trying to provide healthcare to their patients.

And isn’t that the point, after all?

Editorial

former CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding

We came across a post on the autism site Adventures in Autism by Ginger Taylor claiming that former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chief Julie Gerberding, who stepped down from that agency in January of this year, has since accepted a position with public relations giant Edelman.

The Edelman website confirms this, and we quote:

Edelman has created the Global Task Force on H1N1 Influenza to help its clients and partners navigate the communications challenges associated with the potential outbreak of H1N1 flu. The task force comprises a network of public health and crisis communications specialists, including former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who are ready to help organizations engage their internal and external stakeholders early and protect their reputations.

Perhaps this is vindication for those Gerberding critics who claimed that while she was head of CDC, her interest was more in protecting careers and reputations than in saving lives. We don’t know.

We do know that the transition back and forth between agencies in the public sector and such major industries as the oil, chemicals, food and pharmaceuticals industries supposedly regulated by those corresponding agencies has been an easy one to make of late, a situation that we find mildly upsetting. We say “mildly” because, while we could easily work ourselves into a sleepless frenzy over this, it happens all the time. That would leave us sleepless for life were we to agonize over it too much.

Gerberding has every right to represent the same large pharmaceutical companies she was accused of representing all along, and at least now her paycheck does not come directly from our taxes. (It is siphoned off, instead, via the extra healthcare costs we pay for healthcare we may or may not receive, depending upon our ability to pay for it after having supported with our taxes massive government agencies that are supposed to be guarding us. For more on these issues see the interview with a CIGNA exec and Michael Moore’s Sicko.)

Corporate vs. public interests

We wouldn’t mind the job security conferred upon the ruling elite by these arrangements nearly so much if only those public servants were more diligent in their defense of the public (as opposed to corporate) interests while serving their brief tenure in public posts. But so few of them have actually been able to switch off the defending-corporate-interests part of their personalities while allegedly serving the public.

If you read Ginger Taylor’s references to Gerberding it becomes clear that she feels intense frustration at Gerberding’s frequent calls for more research that were then followed by total inaction in instigating such research.

Taylor, meanwhile, is a Maine housewife living the daily frustration and horror of parenting a child disabled by autism. It is one thing to sit and read countless papers (as we do) trying to decipher the contradictions among research reports to arrive at some sort of informed opinion on the subject and quite another to have witnessed, as Ginger Taylor and too many other parents have, the transformation of a formerly healthy child to a sick and damaged one after receiving a shot or a series of shots.

Cause and effect are total abstractions in the first case and heartless assassins in the second. If you watched your child or spouse regress from a healthy state to an autistic or demented one, wouldn’t you too be bitter or at least hostile towards the vaccine and mercury amalgam manufacturers who continue to claim there is no relation at all between these afflictions and their products?

As for Gerberding, she probably makes the sort of next-door neighbor you would visit with for hours given the opportunity. But we can understand Taylor’s feelings towards her. That frustration comes through in the interview below of Julie Gerberding by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, with text insertions provided by Ginger Taylor. Following that, we have also posted an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who has performed extensive research on the thimerosal issue.

Thimerosal and vaccines

Thimerosal, in case you’ve forgotten, is a preservative used in many vaccines. Kennedy’s article Deadly Immunity, published in Rolling Stone and Salon.com is a must read on that subject.

While we’re on the subject of mercury and autism, we would like to add that we don’t think the thimerosal in vaccines (or that in mercury fillings, for that matter) is the sole cause of autism and other apparently mercury-related injuries and illnesses. We do believe that many individuals have been injured by the mercury in vaccinations and in mercury fillings, don’t get us wrong.

But the body is a complex organism and there are often multiple paths to the same result. A lack of vitamin D, for example, might induce similar disorders and certainly does induce asthma, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, to name just three among many. Pregnant mothers and infants have grown increasingly deficient in this important vitamin in recent years (See our piece Vitamin D, the versatile vitamin for more on that.)

Holistic approach works best

But there are other culprits as well. Aluminum not only exacerbates the presence of mercury, but can fill in for it as a damaging agent. Fluoride is another toxin that can cause untold damage, particularly when combined with aluminum. Even monosodium glutamate, aspartame and other excitotoxins may play a role. All these toxins—mercury, aluminum, fluoride, glutamate and aspartame, as well as vitamin D deficiency—have been implicated in the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. They can also cause, in various combinations or singly, childhood-onset disorders such as autism.

For many individuals, the sheer number of vaccinations given to children these days may be the cause. Not only are the additives such as thimerosal cumulative in their effects, the assault on a young immune system that each of these vaccinations represents has to be considered cumulative as well. Then too, the measles antigen suppresses the immune system for up to several months. During this period, another vaccination that might otherwise be tolerated by a given individual may cause disastrous results.

So a holistic approach to this problem works best. For the sake of argument, if you consider health to be the absence of disease and its contributing factors, you could define health, in this context as adequate vitamin D and other vitamins in the absence of mercury, aluminum, aspartame, MSG and fluoride from the diet and the environment.

Start adding any of these toxins back in, and you dramatically increase the risk of any given child displaying autism.

So, while a given parent may witness a child becoming autistic after, say, a flu vaccination (most flu vaccines still contain mercury) that doesn’t mean another parent may not witness either a different result from mercury or a different cause of autism.

The heartbreak of autism

In any case, it certainly does not mean that any of these parents should have to put up with ridicule or indifference on the part of the medical establishment and even less so on the part of our government. And it certainly does not mean that the CDC should continue to allow thimerosal and other forms of mercury to remain in vaccines. Nor should the FDA continue to allow it to be used in tooth fillings, for that matter.

Whereas in Europe the phrase “First, do no harm” is paramount, the United States has developed a different set of standards. Ours is more along the lines of “Do not interfere with business.” The health and welfare of our citizens, sadly, takes a back seat to the profits of corporations.

That situation has got to change.

As the Kennedy interview makes clear, autism is a disease with a well-defined history. It was first described in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins University. Kanner had studied 11 children between 1938 and 1943, to which he ascribed this new disease.

Thimerosal was invented in the 1920s and first put into use in vaccines in the 1930s. So those who equate autism with the use of thimerosal have a solid base on which to stand. In fact, the House Government Reform Committee that studied the history of autism and thimerosal concluded in its final report, “This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin.” The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of “institutional malfeasance for self protection” and “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”

You can read all about it here.

We have added the following video (The Truth About Vaccines) from the Shoot ‘Em Up website. The clip can also be found on the Maryland Coalition for Vaccine Choice website. The people who shot the Shoot ‘Em Up documentary from which this video clip is derived produced a feature-length film on the subject. You can purchase that film on DVD from their website. Meanwhile, watch the clip here by clicking on the image below.

Dr. Julie Gerberding Autism interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN – March, 2008, edited by Ginger Taylor.

Below, the Kennedy interview with Joe Scarborough is about Kennedy’s research on autism and thimerosal, a preservative used in many vaccines. This is a subject that both Scarborough and Kennedy know much about. (Scarborough has first-hand experience with autism.)

Keep in mind too that Scarborough is an ultra-conservative, while Kennedy is—well, a Kennedy.

In honor of Earth Day, we thought we’d re-visit a subject that has been dear to us in the past: organic and natural foods. This time, rather that emphasize the benefits of wholesome foods, we thought we’d spend some time telling you where to get them.

If you’ve been paying attention, you are no doubt aware that not all organic foods are created equal. You may also know that Whole Foods, the largest “health food” retailer in the United States, has increasingly come under fire for being more interested in profits than principles. For about the past seven years, Whole Foods has been largely focused on taking over its remaining competitor—Wild Oats. The antics of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in this regard have been anything but amusing.

Readers may or not be aware that Mackey’s actions made headlines in July 2007 when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission revealed that the executive had posted messages on a Yahoo! chat forum under an alias for years. In those posts, Mackey extolled the virtues of his company while trashing Wild Oats in an attempt to lower Wild Oats’s stock price. Wild Oats had turned down a buyout bid from Whole Foods in 2001.

We mention all this just to make readers aware that there is nothing sacrosanct about buying organic foods. We wholly endorse buying organic, but don’t think that just because the label says organic—or because a vendor sells a large quantity of food labeled organic—that you can close your eyes and just assume that all is well.

We ourselves shop at Whole Foods and have long been concerned at the quantity of conventional produce and products the store carries. Since not all produce is available as organic at any given time, this does make sense for a store whose main function is selling groceries: if you go to the store looking for beets, for example, you may well accept conventional beets if organic beets are not available. We have also outlined a way by which consumers can limit the expense of converting to organic foods by avoiding the most contaminated conventional varieties and purchasing their organic counterparts instead.

So, we accept that not all produce available at Whole Foods is necessarily organic. You simply have to pay attention to the signs and labeling to make sure you know what you are purchasing.

Buyer beware

Of greater concern to us is the assertion that Whole Foods may carry products that contain MSG, for example, when MSG is on the store’s list of unacceptable ingredients. The same source also points out that rBGH (genetically engineered bovine growth hormone) is not on the Whole Foods list of unacceptable ingredients. This is particularly alarming in light of the fact that “conventional ” grocers such as Kroger and even WalMart have taken a stance against stocking dairy products that contain rBGH. Safeway, Chipotle and Starbucks have also jumped on this bandwagon. For Whole Foods not to ban rBGH seems unconscionable.

Dairy cows injected with this artificial hormone are forced to produce more milk than they would normally (on average, a gallon a day per cow) with dire consequences to their health. Cows injected with rBGH are far more likely to need treatment with antibiotics and to end up as “downer” cows entering the meat supply. Not only is it inhumane to subject cows to this treatment, it shows a flagrant disregard for the health of consumers.

At any rate, you get our point. If you are at all concerned about your health, you have to be concerned about what you eat. In order to assure that you consume the highest quality foods, you should not be limited to your local supermarket, and not even to your local Whole Foods. The truth is that the supply of truly healthy food in this country is so limited that there is not enough to supply the major outlets. So you need to line up your own sources as soon as possible.

As consumers have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing sources of healthy dairy, meats and produce, the demand for such foods has increased dramatically. If the supply of these healthy foods does not increase phenomenally, the enforceable standards—particularly for organic foods—will be sacrificed. Therefore as a consumer you must be increasingly vigilant as you make your purchases.

WalMart, the world’s largest retailer, recognized at least two years ago that organic foods were the place to be. Because WalMart exerts so much pressure on suppliers, the large food manufacturers such as Kraft and Kellogg are ramping up fast to supply organic-labeled products. For the most part, this is silly. Will packaged organic macaroni and cheese be that much healthier than the non-organic varieties currently available? We suppose we should support any effort to produce food that results from sustainable agriculture, but we cannot help but question how sustainable such efforts are.

Remember, organic foods are produced without resorting to pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers or artificial hormones, as well as being free from irradiation and genetic modification. The idea is to produce food that is entirely natural not in some legalistic sense, but in the most wholesome way possible. Manufactured food is not healthy food. Chips made from organic ingredients are no doubt preferable to those made from conventional ingredients, but we do not believe that is enough to classify them as health food. They simply have become marginally less unhealthy. So while simply re-manufacturing current manufactured foods with more wholesome ingredients is laudable in some ways, it totally misses the point. The end result should always be greater health for us and for the environment, which is, ultimately, the same thing. We cannot remain healthy without a healthy environment.

Groups such as the Weston A. Price foundation have recognized these principles and make them the cornerstone of their practice and teachings. But before we go on to discuss such organizations, let’s review one other basic tenet of healthy living that has become of concern much more recently: consuming locally grown.

A rose is a rose is a rose…

In principle, it matters not where your food was raised if it is nutritionally dense. That is, for the immediate purposes of your health, an organic apple from, say, Nicaragua is no different from one from Oregon or from a farm ten miles from your home, assuming each was raised in healthy soil and so on. The problem arises when we consider sustainability and the very practical matter of transporting that apple to your home.

Foods that are transported long distances are less likely to be equally ripe and fresh. Fruit that is to be transported long distances will likely be picked earlier in the ripening cycle so that it will not be over-ripe when it arrives at its destination. What is more, the carbon footprint of an apple that travels thousands of miles is necessarily greater than that of an apple that you buy at the farm and then take home. The notion of a carbon footprint is normally applied to humans or groups of humans, but our point here is that transporting food necessarily contributes to environmental deterioration as well as contributing to the deterioration of the food itself.

Viewed in this way, the apple from ten miles away may look a lot better. If the farmer avoids pesticides and the soil is reasonably rich, the local apple picked when ripe will be your best bet. But what if instead of a relatively small apple orchard, the farm in question has hundreds or thousands of acres of apple trees that are maintained using mechanized techniques so that trucks or airplanes apply pesticide sprays and powders at regular intervals? Now your local apple doesn’t look so good, does it?

Research has shown that conventionally grown produce has only about 83% of the nutritional value of the organic equivalent. What’s more, rats fed an organic diet fared better than other rats fed the same foods of non-organic origin.

Farming on a smaller scale

One of the primary differences between locally grown and distantly grown food is that you yourself have the option of inspecting the farm. Or you can rely on the sticker “certified organic” to do that inspection for you. Farming in the United States has become an operation performed increasingly on a large scale. Even family farms seem more likely to be large, industrial-scale farms these days. To some degree, this is an inevitable result of consumers’s priorities. The average consumer is probably still more concerned with the price of the apple than with its pedigree or nutritional content. In the United States, we have become accustomed to our food being relatively cheap, and the food price inflation of recent years has been a scary experience for most of us.

At the same time, it is easy to see that as the scale of the operation becomes larger, the involvement of the farmer with any individual element becomes drastically reduced. A farmer with a dozen hens will likely recognize them all and might even give them names. A farmer with a thousand hens or more isn’t even going to interact with them all directly. It is easy to see why those who are concerned with the fruits of the farmer’s labors favor farming on a smaller, more personal scale.

Having said our piece (for the time being, at least) on the issues involved in the way our food is raised and distributed, let us go right to the main subject here: where you can find sources of meat, dairy, poultry and produce that inspire confidence in the nutrition you will receive.

And the winners are…

One of the organizations that emphasizes healthful local sources of food is the Weston A. Price Foundation. Weston A. Price was a dentist who spent his vacations traveling the world and studying the traditional diets of indigenous peoples. He reasoned that the best way to determine what constituted a healthy diet was to examine people who enjoyed good health and see what they ate. The foundation that bears his name was founded by Sally Fallon, a writer and nutrition researcher, and Mary G. Enig, PhD, a nutritionist and expert on fatty acids (lipid biochemistry). Enig, the Foundation’s vice president, has authored over 60 technical publications and serves as President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association.

Together, Fallon and Enig wrote two books that are recognized for their contribution to practical nutrition. The first, Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats is a cookbook that challenges what you may think you know about nutrition, drawing upon the research of Weston A. Price and more recent experts such as Enig.

The second, Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats might be considered a manifesto for the nutritionally impaired. It not only informs the reader on the principles of nutrition embraced by the Weston A. Price Foundation, it contains a wealth of recipes, including how to make your own condiments and such healthful tonics as ginger beer and Kombucha. The more standard fare of the everyday diet is not neglected either, but enhanced.

We highly recommend visiting the Weston A. Price website. It is full of information and links and you can find out there how to join or start a local chapter, which will enable you to obtain organic food delivered to your area by an organic farmer. One of the primary goals of the Foundation is to make raw (unpasteurized) milk, butter and cream available to its members. If you’ve never had coffee with real (raw) cream, we highly recommend trying it. You will probably never resort to Half and Half again, except in emergencies.

We have found the organic meats available through sources we contacted via Weston A. Price chapters to be the best meats we have eaten. The commercially available product—including those we’ve purchased at Whole Foods—simply did not come close in overall quality.

To find a family farm near you or to explore the local farmer’s markets—care to start your own?—check out localharvest.org. Here you can also find a list of local farms participating in Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) which allows you to establish a relationship with a farm to receive or pick up weekly deliveries of groceries during the growing season. You can also find lists of farmer’s markets, restaurants and co-ops in your area and other useful information. This site belongs on your bookmark list unless you grow all your own organic food yourself. Even then, if you ever like to eat out, this site will tell you where you can go to find food that is up to your standards.

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service also maintains an online list of local farmer’s markets you can peruse. This site is not so user-friendly as the local harvest site mentioned above. However, it does provide additional information and we list it for the sake of completeness.

Beef the old-fashioned way

For those who want to sample grass-fed beef and haven’t yet found a local source, check out Tallgrass Beef, which supplies grass-fed beef by mail order. We can’t say we’ve tried it—we’ve found a local source for naturally raised beef, pork and poultry—but this looks like the real deal. We were lucky enough to grow up with grandparents who raised livestock the old-fashioned way, and we think it’s the only way to go. The quality and taste of the meats we obtain direct from the farm simply is not like anything we’ve found in a store. And since grass-fed, free-range livestock provide meats much higher in vitamins, minerals and omega-3s, they’re much healthier, too. You simply can’t beat it.

Remember that the spirit of organic farming is really more important than the USDA certification. A local farm that you can see for yourself uses de facto organic farming techniques may serve you better than a certified farm hundreds of miles off.

And what better time than the week of Earth Day to make a commitment to better health for yourself and your family through eating more wholesome, sustainable food? That is the best way to support the spirit of Earth Day year ’round.