In international rankings, the life expectancy of Americans has been slipping. People in 41 countries are living longer than Americans. Where do these people live? In Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Jordan, Israel, to name only a few. This statistic is surprising since the United States has the most advance health care system in the world.  The question to ask is: how can this be?

 

Two indicators are commonly involved in life expectancy: Lifestyles and Nutrition.

 

Let’s examine each of these.

 

Lifestyles:  Americans are exercising more than ever. Gyms have been popping up all over the country in the last decade. Americans are working out, riding bikes, walking. (Mall walking has almost become a sport.) Yet, Americans 55 and over are much sicker than their British counterparts, according to an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

Nutrition:  Studies have shown nutrition plays an important role in preventing heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Yet, as Americans improved their diets by eating more fruits and vegetables, there didn’t seem to be a corresponding reduction in the incidences of these diseases. Scientists are beginning to recognize another factor is involved in preventing these and other diseases: how our food is grown.

 

Most of the food we buy in the grocery store is conventionally grown with toxic pesticides, not only with the food grown in the United States but in the food that is imported. The US chemical industry exports tons of toxic pesticides—often banned in the United States--- to third world countries from which we import food. Few regulations exist in these countries on the applications of these toxins. And even if there were, there is no one to enforce the regulations.

 

More than twenty-five percent of all fresh and frozen produce is the US is imported, fifty percent from Mexico. Mexico also happens to be one of largest pesticide importer in Latin America. Now, we have a “circle of poison.” We sell toxic pesticides to Mexico to grow the toxic food we import to eat.

 

The EPA ranks pesticide residues as one of the leading health problems in the United States. The National Academy of Scientists estimates that in the next 50 years, pesticide residues will cause one million additional cases of cancer in the United States. No wonder the United States ranks 42 in life expectancy.

 

What can we do to increase our life expectancy and the life expectancy of our children? We eliminate as much toxic pesticides in our food by switching to organic foods, by buying fruits and vegetables from local farmers who use little such pesticides, and by growing some of own fruits and vegetables. That’s what those other 41 countries do.