{"id":889,"date":"2017-07-28T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/master.k8s.p4.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/press\/889\/live-to-eat-and-eat-to-live-long\/"},"modified":"2024-05-28T20:05:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T13:05:23","slug":"live-to-eat-and-eat-to-live-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/story\/889\/live-to-eat-and-eat-to-live-long\/","title":{"rendered":"Live to eat and eat to live\u00a0long"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It may not be obvious but I love to eat. However, participating in the Food for Life campaigns of Greenpeace and being a part of\u00a0#IAmHampasLupa<\/a>, a group that advocates for mindful consumption among Filipinos, made me put more effort into choosing the food that I eat. After all, \u201cYou are what you eat<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image by NETFLIX<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026This is the tenderloin for the sophisticated restaurants. The Mexicans love the feet. I know, go figure! We all love the face and the anus, as American as apple pie! Hot dogs. It\u2019s all edible. All edible, except the squeal.\u201d -Nancy Mirando, Okja<\/em><\/h3>\n

I watched\u00a0Food, Inc. (2008), Super Size Me (2004), Okja (2017)<\/em>, and other documentaries, films, and Youtube videos related to food. I also read articles and books, and participated in advocacy events that further discussed the topic. I know, it seemed like I was brainwashing myself but aren\u2019t we supposed to be concerned about stuff that goes into our bodies? Well, from all these so-called \u201cindoctrination,\u201d I came up with the following (obvious) conclusions:<\/p>\n

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  1. We have a broken food system. We are disconnected from nature, and the food that we eat- we don\u2019t know how it\u2019s produced and where it comes from.<\/li>\n
  2. Processed food is bad news. But we know that already.<\/li>\n
  3. Corporations, as always, are in control of the food available in the market.<\/li>\n
  4. We don\u2019t know the long-term effects of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) but we\u2019re probably eating them every day.<\/li>\n
  5. We eat more meat and less fruits and vegetables leading to health problems.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In an ideal world, you would be growing and cooking your own food. You would be buying local produce and would constantly check the label of products you buy. You wouldn\u2019t be wasting food. Who does that anyway?\u00a0Did you know that it\u2019s the third best way of cutting greenhouse gases?<\/a>\u00a0And you would eat more fruits and veggies because aside from its health benefits, it can curb greenhouse gas emissions too.<\/p>\n

    So what\u2019s stopping us from eating healthy? Let\u2019s start from home. Busy parents have no time to cook and resort to the convenience of fast food takeaways and processed food. Kids get used to eating junk early on. And then these big corporations, which don\u2019t really care about your well-being, offer the \u201cbest-tasting\u201d food in the planet, with the demand further fueled by these #hugot-inspired advertisements. Witty as they appear to be, sometimes how corporations take advantage of values, relationships, and emotions as marketing ploy can be disturbing.<\/p>\n

    If you live in the city, the readily available options you have are of course fast food and processed food yet again. Organic choices may not be that affordable to many but that begs the question, \u201cHow much value do you actually put on your food and yourself?\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n

    Another eating habit issue is this notion that meat is normal, necessary, natural, and nice which drives us to consume more meat with less or no veggies at all. A\u00a02003 World Health Report<\/a>, however, estimates that 1.7 million deaths worldwide is due to low consumption of fruits and vegetables. You don\u2019t have to be a vegan or a vegetarian but health experts encourage a more plant-based diet for a healthier you.<\/p>\n

    Climate change and the environment, and animal welfare may not faze you in terms of your diet but if you want to live long, that should motivate you to give more thought to what you\u2019re eating. Quite literally, it\u2019s a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n

    Ryan Bestre\u00a0<\/em>is an environmentalist, a teacher, and a writer. He currently works for a renewable energy company in Manila. He is a Climate Reality Leader and Campaigner of #IAmHampasLupa Ecological Agriculture Movement. Check out his blog GreenmindedMe<\/a>\u00a0.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It may not be obvious but I love to eat. However, participating in the Food for Life campaigns of Greenpeace and being a part of\u00a0#IAmHampasLupa, a group that advocates for mindful consumption among Filipinos, made me put more effort into choosing the food that I eat. After all, \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":2297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,17,94,91],"p4-page-type":[16],"class_list":["post-889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consumption","tag-food","tag-gmo","tag-health","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}