Joan Gussow: Tying Nutrition to Agriculture is Long Overdue

#010: Do our health statistics reflect a very different story about the American diet and the overall quality of our food than we tell ourselves? Joan Gussow says "absolutely" - especially if you focus on 21 year old males.

Called "the Matriarch of the eat-locally-think-globally movement" by the New York Times, Joan Dye Gussow has taught Nutritional Ecology at Columbia Teachers College since the early 1970s. As a dedicated environmentalist, she has challenged  the greater nutrition community to incorporate ideas and teachings about sustainable agriculture and soil health into their conversations. Joan is the author of The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology, The Nutrition Debate, and Chicken Little, Tomato Sauce and Agriculture and is a member of the Real Organic Project Advisory Board.

To watch a video version of this podcast please visit:

https://www.realorganicproject.org/joan-gussow-tying-nutrition-to-agriculture-is-long-overdue-episode-ten/

The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Dave Chapman and Linley Dixon, engineered by Brandon StCyr, and edited and produced by Jenny Prince.

The Real Organic Project is a farmer-led movement working towards certifying 1,000 farms across the United States this year. Our add-on food label distinguishes soil-grown fruits and vegetables from hydroponically-raised produce, and pasture-raised meat, milk, and eggs from products harvested from animals in horrific confinement (CAFOs - confined animal feeding operations).

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https://www.realorganicproject.org/farms

We believe that the organic standards, with their focus on soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare were written as they should be, but that the current lack of enforcement of those standards is jeopardizing the ability for small farms who adhere to the law to stay in business. The lack of enforcement is also jeopardizing the overall health of the customers who support the organic movement; customers who are not getting what they pay for at market but still paying a premium price. And the lack of enforcement is jeopardizing the very cycles (water, air, nutrients) that Earth relies upon to provide us all with a place to live, by pushing extractive, chemical agriculture to the forefront.

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