The word diet tends to have a negative connotation attached to it. However the word alone literally means the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats. The word itself is neither negative or positive. We live in a country where close to 70% of our citizens are overweight, with approximately 40% of the population being obese. It is now trickling down into our younger population. Our children are our future, and we must make a change in order to ensure that our future generations can live happy, healthy, productive lives. I get comments all the time about how well my children eat. Many years ago a news reporter actually stopped to film her snack that I packed because he couldn’t believe that she was eating such a healthy snack. We have become accustomed to believing that children will only eat a limited diet of processed food. If we take look at how children eat in other countries, we find some key major differences. However, our society is set up in such a way that we now believe that our children will only eat chicken nuggets, butter noodles, pizza, and sugar. We need to retrain our future, but we need to take a look at ourselves first. Children watch how we eat, take care of ourselves, and how we interact with food in general. We need to set good examples in order to change the trajectory of American health.

Our overall health is consistently rated much lower than other wealthy developed countries. While we invest massive amounts of money into our healthcare system, we focus on reactive interventions and treatments rather than being proactive. This is incredibly expensive to maintain and keeps wealthy CEOs in place controlling our care in our for profit medical system. Coming from a family of physicians, I have watched how our medical system has drastically changed over the last 30 years of my own life. Physicians are becoming increasingly overworked and stressed due to the massive debt they incurred just to get started. Americans are coming in with more and more idiopathic autoimmune disease, cancer, heart related issues, and other unexplained medical complaints. We are so focused on managing their symptoms that we have failed to invest time and energy into addressing the root causes of our medical battles. Why do so many Americans need to rely on pharmaceuticals? Why do so many Americans struggle to just feel normal? In addition, there is a huge discrepancy amongst care and medical research regarding medical issues that are specific to the female population. Our system is broken. What can we do to fix it?

There are many issues that are beyond our control. However, commanding answers when it comes to our health should be an utmost priority on all of our lives. We should not be living in an existence of managing symptoms. What can we control? This is a question that every individual needs to be asking themselves. While our food has become more and more processed, depleted of nutrients, and full of sugar, we must focus on the choices we make in the grocery store. This can be toughtto manage as many companies are taking advantage of our diet culture though creative labeling and marketing. Taking a step back from these fad diets and focusing on consuming real, whole foods in portions that fuel us can get us back to more mindful eating practices. This is incredibly important in order to circumvent eating disorders and to maintain optimal health.