How to Be a Conscious Eater

33

SUPERBUGS AND

THE FOOD SUPPLY

A

s I write, I’ve got two buns in the oven. A year before you

read these words, I’ll be swept to the hospital in a flurry,

enduring the greatest pain known to womankind, and

put under the care of trained medical professionals. I’m lucky

to live in a place where I pretty much trust these people to

safely bring two humans into the world while keeping me alive.

If it comes down to it, I may require a C-section. That’s a major

surgery but one conducted with such routine frequency in the

United States, most of us don’t blink an eye at the prospect.

But what if the drugs used to ensure safe surgeries—or to

administer chemotherapy to cancer patients, or to treat an

infant’s bacterial ear infection—stopped working? This poten-

tial “post-antibiotic era” is not a sci-fi movie but a very real

scenario that experts predict could mean 10 million people

dying each year from antibiotic-resistant bacteria by 2050.

That’s compared with about 23,000 Americans dying each year

from them already. It would mean overtaking cancer as the

leading cause of death worldwide. Antibiotics are so essen-

tial to public health that it’s hard to overstate how reliant we

are on them working as intended. Nobody wants to die from a

small cut on their hand.

We all agree that we want antibiotics to work. How do we

make that happen? The total use of antibiotics, which is cur-

rently excessive and has been on the rise for years, must come

down in order to preserve their effectiveness.

Stuff That comes from animals 129

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