Cleveland's Urban Agriculture Awakening

Our food system is completely broken. The foods that nourish us, elevate our health, and prevent chronic illness are more expensive for farmers to produce and for consumers to buy than those that have been proven to create disease. They’re also destroying our environment and causing climate change at the same time. Children are being fed nutrient-poor sugary, starchy foods at school and we wonder why so many of them can’t focus and why they’re always sick. They are being led on a difficult, lifelong path right from the start.

And then there’s the national economic burden of disease, which is only increasing as rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity do the same. In fact, one in three Medicare dollars is spent on diabetes, and poor food choices kill 11 million people every year. Over the next 35 years, it's going to cost the US a whopping 95 trillion dollars to deal with diseases that can be prevented by lifestyle and dietary choices. These are grim statistics, but the truth is that we CAN do something to elicit change. We can ban together to change the food system and promote better health for our global community. My guest on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, joins me to talk about how we can change our food system, educational system, economy, environment, and public health with community-based solutions.