Microsoft Word - H.E.M.P Healthy Eating Made Possible - Paul Benhaim - Completed.docx

by  

  Paul  

  Benhaim

Symptomatic of our alienation from nature and
disconnection from the land is our dysfunctional relationship with
food and the way that we produce it. Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE), mad cow disease, is a cogent example of
this dysfunction. So distant is the food on our tables from the
reality of how it is produced, that we have allowed, in Britain for
instance, animal offal, innocuously marked as 'protein', to be fed to
other livestock. This has resulted in BSE in cows and Creutzfeldt
Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans. But we cannot simply blame the
farmers for this. We expect to buy cheap food. It is often
processed out of recognition and dressed up in elaborate
packaging, and does not take into account the health and
environmental costs of the product or the well-being of the animal
or consumer. The consequences are food miles, agrochemical
pollution, factory farming, even factory supermarket shopping.
Food is no longer a gift of nature but a highly commercialised
product.

Water needs of modern industrial crops:

Potatoes need 500 litres per kg

Chickens need 3,500 litres per kg

Beef needs 100,000 litres per kg

80% of arable land in the UK is used to grow fodder for
animals.

Permaculture

One way of repairing ecological damage is through the use of
permaculture. Permaculture is not a dogma or a religion but an
ecological design system. It tackles how to grow food, build