1. Chapter 6: Choosing a Healthy, Sustainable Lifestyle

2. Learning Outcomes
Understand how modern agriculture creates environmental problems and affects health.
Explain how diet contributes to the explosion of modern health problems.
Explain how different farming practices can solve environmental problems and improve overall health.
Understand how living a more active lifestyle brings a higher quality of life.

3. Reasons for Poor Health
Crop monocultures
Contaminated and processed foods
Obesity
Sedentary living

4. Chronic Health Problems From Diet
Type II Diabetes
1 in 3 chance for Americans born in 2000
Cancer
Cardiovascular disease

5. Food Dilemma Industrialized diet Green and Industrial Revolutions
Processed foods high in fat, sugar, and salt
Green and Industrial Revolutions
Allowed for increased crop yields by using pesticides and fertilizers
Higher yields per harvest

6. Industrial Farming Emphasis is on more yields, thus more profit.
It degrades soil.
It creates social and ecological problems.
It contributes to increased obesity and malnutrition.
Leads to chronic disease and increased costs for health care

7. Farm Economics Governmental subsidies
Give a faulty perception of the actual costs of food
Corn, soybean, and meat
Healthier crops not given the luxury of government subsidy
Developed countries spend 10% of income on food; undeveloped countries spend 75%.
Fossil fuel use and farming

8. High-Meat Diet Associated with affluence Problems with CAFOs
Energy intensive, creates pollution, degrades soil
Causes digestive problems in most animals because they do not naturally eat corn
Why can’t animals be put out on pasture?
Not enough land; decrease in profits
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9. High-Meat Diet (continued)
Overgrazing results in desertification.

10. Overgrazing Leads to Soil Failure

11. Industrial Versus Sustainable Farming
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12. Industrial Versus Sustainable Farming (continued)
Biodynamic farming
Three sisters crop system
Perennial polycropping
Seed banks
90% of crops are hybrid strains or genetically modified organisms
Titanic syndrome

13. Community Agriculture
Buy local, seasonal food directly from the farmer.
Farmers have a set market.
Shared risk and reward promotes a sense of community.
Farmers’ markets are an example.

14. Campus Garden

15. Smart Choices Campaign
“Smart Choice” certification
Still contain lots of fats, sugars, salt, and chemical additives
Can be highly processed

16. Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Your food purchases are a choice for or against sustainability.
Choose foods your grandparents would recognize as food.
Avoid processed foods.
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17. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
United States grows large quantities of food.
Obesity
Malnourishment
Creates emotional problems and poor discipline
Soils devoid of nutrients
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18. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
Lack of exercise exacerbates the problems of a poor diet.
Exercise has many benefits for individuals and the community.
Lowers risk for diabetes, heart disease, back pain, osteoporosis
Increases social networking in the community
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19. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Each day 1,200 deaths are attributed to bad diet and inactivity.
Childhood obesity has tripled in the past 30 years and continues to rise.
Blue Zones Vitality Project
Creating community change in regard to diet and exercise
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20. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
70% of healthcare spending is attributed to preventable illnesses.
Lack of exercise
Poor diet
Smoking
Alcohol consumption
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21. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
What do you notice about people in the 1940s-1950s?
Dieting is a modern phenomenon.
Healthy lifestyle promotes:
Healthy eating
Activity
Healthy agriculture
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22. Healthy Lifestyle Choices (continued)
Sustainability is looking systemically at how you live and making choices to live better.
Benefits of 30 minutes of exercise each day
Reduces stress
Improves self-esteem
Increases overall sense of well-being
Increases cognitive performance
Decreases risk for major medical problems

23. Good Versus Bad Stress

24. Esperanza
What do you think a trip to the grocery store looks like for Esperanza?
Do you like that vision? Why or why not?
How does your current lifestyle in terms of diet and exercise look in comparison to that of Esperanza?
Do you prefer your lifestyle or would you prefer that of Esperanza? Why?