Ask AI Mark explains how the food system is broken, harming health, the environment, and the economy. He introduces Food Fix, a book calling for systemic change and innovative solutions to fix food and health outcomes worldwide.
Our food system is broken. It produces food that harms humans and the planet. It's both the cause and the cure for much of what's wrong in our world. Everything from obesity and chronic disease and its burden on our economy, to environmental damage, climate change, to social injustice, poverty, poor academic performance, and even national security. The world is becoming sicker and sicker. 60% of Americans have a chronic disease. 70% of deaths worldwide are caused by chronic lifestyle diseases like heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and dementia. The root of most lifestyle diseases, the number one thing that drives all of these illnesses is food. In fact, bad food kills over 11 million people a year more than any other single thing including smoking, accidents, guns, or war. Over the next 35 years, we're gonna spend $95 trillion on chronic disease in both direct healthcare costs and lost productivity due to chronic lifestyle related diseases. We can't keep this up. We need solutions. And this is why I wrote my book, Food Fix. As a doctor on the front lines of the chronic disease epidemic, it's increasingly clear to me that our industrial food and agriculture systems drive crises in not only chronic disease and its global economic burden, but many other things. The loss of our soil, for example, the UN estimates that we have only 60 years of harvest left. No soil, no food, no humans. We're depleting our fresh water by irrigating giant factory farms. We've lost 90% of our vegetable species, half of all our livestock species, and 75% of our pollinator species on which our agriculture depends. Our food system, and then, is the number one cause of climate change, far more than the energy sector. When I sat down to write this book, I asked myself, if the food system is the of this mess? What's the cause of the food system? We have policies that make it hard to do the right thing and easy to do the wrong thing. We have food companies that profit at the expense of our health and the health of our planet. Food companies get what they want and we pay the price. In order to save our planet and save our health, we need disruptive innovations that reimagine our current food system from field to the fork. And we need to take our health back from the companies and policies that profit from keeping us sick. I spent the last year researching individuals, organizations, policies, innovative companies and ideas and solutions that I believe can transform our food system and save our economy, our environment, protect and support farmers and animals and us humans. And I compiled it into an incredibly comprehensive guide for you. Food Fix is a call to action, a way to reclaim our health using the power of food as medicine, and a way to support a system that is sustainable and lessens the burden of chronic disease on our world. We have a lot more power than we think. We can vote with our fork, we can vote with our dollar, and we can vote with our vote. We can shift the system to one that is fair, that encourages health for all. We have a prescription for a new food system. We just need to take the medicine. And this is my invitation with Food Fix. Join the Food Fix Revolution and learn more at foodfixbook.com.
