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Stepping Up to Better Health
(Conclusion of the 12 Step Series)
baltimore eats - July, 2008
by John Shields
I
f you, dear reader, have not been following this column so far this year, let me explain that my focus has been on a 12-Step approach to fighting our addictions to industrially over-processed food.
Several weeks ago I was invited to participate as a panelist in a discussion on "Diabetes, Nutrition and Life-style Changes" at the Baltimore Medical Society. One of the doctors who assembled the panel reads baltimore eats regularly and she was fascinated with the 12-Step approach we've been discussing here. The audience included diabetes sufferers, nutritionists, health care workers and doctors. We heard that the main causes of type 2 diabetes are diet and a sedentary lifestyle.
It was fascinating to hear professionals talk about the epidemic proportions of type 2 diabetes. There were lots of recommendations for a balanced diet that includes proper ratios of protein and good carbohydrates. The doctors and health specialists also urged for education geared to getting folks to switch to a more healthful diet. Again and again it was emphasized that diabetes sufferers need to have more self-discipline, and become better informed about their diets and lifestyle.
While I agree with all the sentiments mentioned, I feel that the industrially overly-processed foods we are constantly encouraged to consume are the main culprits in the diabetes epidemic running rampant in our city and country. Just today I read that there were 10,000 new cases of diabetes in Baltimore City in just the past two years-and that it came as no surprise to health care experts. CDC statistics indicate that there are over 300,000 cases of diabetes in Maryland. These are staggering figures!
Yes, we should all be mindful of how diet affects our health. But the companies that produce the junk that they call "food" share complicity. Given the facts compiled and the studies conducted on the effects of consuming this type of over processed, fatty, sugar and salt enhanced food, it is clear that they are a primary cause of many of the diseases that affect this country. And it is also clear that the multi-national corporations producing such "junk food" are directly responsible for suffering and death. No matter how you slice the Twinkies it is criminal and immoral behavior.
Many here in our communities, especially in lower economic neighborhoods, are literally addicted to these unhealthy foods. Thus the 12-Step approach. I'll finish by listing the last steps involved starting with:
Step 6 - Be entirely ready to have our higher power, or the power within, remove our compulsion to consume unhealthy foods.
Step 7 - Ask to have our higher power, or the power within, take away the defects of overeating and our reliance on overly processed non-nutritional foods.
Step 8 - Make a list of all people we have harmed by our eating habits and be willing to make changes in how we feed our friends, our families and ourselves.
Step 9 - Make direct amends to these people and to ourselves wherever possible and vow to help each other to make better choices in food and lifestyle.
Step 10 - Continue to take personal inventory and record our daily meals and snacks, and when we have made poor choices, promptly admit them to another person who understands our efforts at recovery.
Step 11 - Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our higher power, praying only for knowledge of that power's goal for us, and for the power to carry that out.
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening about our unhealthy eating choices and the consequences of this manner of eating, we then carry that message to others who are also suffering.
It's really not so difficult to cook and eat in a way that heals our bodies rather than poisons them with overly-processed, nutritionally empty and fattening food. To free ourselves from the addictive grip of this nasty, unhealthy stuff, we need to keep ever mindful that this is a "We, not a Me," way of recovery and life. We all need support to undo the harm these "foods" have inflicted on our bodies and our greater community.
I wish us all success in our efforts, and hope that by making some of these changes in our lives-one day at a time, as they say-we will be able to reconnect to the many joys of real, simply cooked food, to know again the joys of delicious healthy meals shared with one another at our Common Table.
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