One of the most important lessons Dr. Zach Bush learned while working with patients is that humanity wants to be healthy and well.
What don't consumers want? Codependency with Big Pharma, Bush said in an interview with Kelly Noonan Gores on "The HEAL Podcast."
Bush, a physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology and hospice care, is an internationally recognized educator and thought leader on the microbiome as it relates to health, disease and food systems.
In his work, Bush highlights the need for a radical departure from chemical farming and pharmacy, and the need to provide a path for consumers, farmers and mega-industries to work together for a healthy future, people and planet.
While in medical school, Bush said it was hammered into his mind this idea that patients are too lazy to get healthy and just want to be prescribed a pill. "We accept that the pharmaceutical toolbox is the only thing that's going to work," said Bush.
But the truth is that many patients are willing to make lifestyle changes, they just don't always have the information on how to do it, said Bush.
When food failed to deliver the clinical outcomes Bush expected in his patients, he began studying food sciences and the nutrients and medicine within food. That led him to understand soil and the nutrient deficiencies caused by genetically engineered crops and pesticides such as Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller.
Bush said he was "astounded" medicine wasn't looking at the soil and food systems as the source of our nation's massive chronic disease epidemic.
Bush said:
We are surrounded by these chemically saturated pieces of nature. What that chemical [Roundup] does is undermine the plant's nutritional content. The plant becomes deficient in its mineral content and other things. So, it starts to suffer in its immune system and then you need more herbicides and pesticides to try to support this failing plant in the field that looks green because you've pumped a bunch of nitrogen in it, but its biology isn't working and so you're having this failing immune system and you become more chemically dependent.Listen to the interview to hear Bush discuss how doctors and farmers have been indoctrinated by the pharmaceutical industry, and how to support the regenerative movement to heal the soil and the microbiome of the planet.
Reader Comments
a path for consumers, farmers and mega-industries to work together for a healthy future, people and planet.
Mega industries working for something other than their own bottom line?? Why would I pay attention to someone who could write this?
I remember when, long before it became 'fashionable', organic produce uniformly looked like shit compared to the pesticide and fungicide laden garbage that was proudly arrayed alongside it in the few markets that carried both. I always remember thinking, "This must really be organic, as it is rife with little holes and nibbled edges where insects had taken a small meal or two". I found the same to be the case in our own organic gardens that my first wife and I had in our back yards over the years. Occasionally we would luck out and get some pretty nice looking produce, and we always tried to do the "carrots love tomatoes" gig, where you try to naturally mix the various veggies you are cultivating so as to minimize predations on the harvest without chemicals. But by and large, insects usually got a tiny bite here and there, and we were fine on sharing with our tiny garden denizens.
Thus, I never trusted the 'organic' produce in the big chain supermarkets, as it was nearly indistinguishable from the ubiquitous poisonous alternatives. But maybe things have changed and organic can be as 'pretty' as conventionally farmed produce.
What are other SOTT readers' takes on this? Do you trust the organics to be truly 'organic'? We all know about regulatory 'capture', and so I wonder if our organics are truly as 'pesticide-free' as we would like to think. I have read that independent testing shows the presence of prohibited chemicals in much of the produce touted as being 100% 'organic'. But maybe that, too, is just bullshit to make you doubt the pedigree of organic produce, paid for by Big Agriculture with the intention of smearing organics.
Any and all opinions are very, very welcome!
(And yes, "grow your own and be 100% sure!", is a great rallying cry, but not everyone can do so, sadly.)
Hydroponics, is the other option. But that's not truly cost effective in Canada, becasue the grocery stores drive the price they'll pay a local farmer for the product, by saying they can get it cheaper in Mexico. I knew of a guy who did this. He gave me a tour of one of his bubbles. He had 3, about the size of those golf bubble domes. One year he lost a crop because someone entered and had a bug on them, devastated the crop and no more tours for the pulbic. 2 years later the local grocerer basically forced him to close up because they wouldn't pay him a fair price for local, had to be competative with Mexico. He only grew cucumbers and tomatoes.