BROADCASTER ARCHIVES

Dr. Alan Greene at the Organic Farming Conference:
"Good food, grown right is at the core of human health."
By Bridget O'Meara

This article was first printed in the May/June 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service. Order an audio recording of Dr. Greene's keynote address through Resource Express.

The South Hall Ballroom at the La Crosse Center is filled to capacity at the 20th annual Organic Farming Conference in February. Participants pack the seats, stand in doorways, and gather in a nearby lobby to hear Dr. Alan Greene deliver his Friday morning keynote address, entitled "Why Farmers Are My Heroes."  After a rousing introduction by MOSES Board member Atina Diffley, Greene walks onto the stage, grateful to Diffley, impressed by the magnitude of the event, and genuinely honored to have been asked to speak. He opens with a story about sitting next to a pregnant woman on the plane and reflects on how the present is part of the future as well as the past.

"Sitting next to this woman, I began to think about how the egg that's becoming her daughter was in her before she got pregnant. . . . It was in her before she knew how to walk, when she was a little girl, before she was even born, that egg was there already. . . When she was there inside her mom and her mom felt her kick, that egg was in her fully formed and waiting. So that means that this woman had been carried in her mom and in her grandmother and that the little girl she was carrying had in her already not only her baby but hergrandkids as well. I sat next to five generations of women on that plane!"

While audience members laugh and try to wrap their minds around this extraordinary idea, Greene continues, "Here, today, this event represents our past, our present, and our future. We celebrate not only 20 years of the Organic Farming Conference, as amazing as it is, but also the fact that organic farming has been central to human life since the dawn of civilization. And, in the present moment, there is nothing more important. And, in the future, organic farming is the best hope for our environment, the best hope for our culture, the best hope for our economy, and, certainly, the best hope for our health."

"As a physician," he adds, "everything I do depends on what you do. In fact, what I do is the topping--what you do as farmer is the main course of health." 

Crisis and Transformation
Greene did not always understand the link between farming practices and human health, however. In fact, although he has long had a keen interest in nutrition, his pediatric medical training and his early years in practice were very conventional--until an unforeseen series of events changed the course of his life.

As pediatrician in the 1990s, Greene enjoyed his relationship with families in his care. Then the payment system changed and, in a year and a half, he went from seeing 3 families an hour to 8 families an hour; visits went from 20 minutes to 7 minutes. This changed quality of healthcare he could provide. He and his wife Cheryl started Dr. Greene's website (www.drgreene.com), the first of its kind, to stay connected and make health information available to families. The response was enormous, as more and more people sought out information online.

It was during this time that a lump was found in Cheryl's breast. Greene pauses and, with his voice full of emotion, recalls that Cheryl's primary concern was what to feed Austin, their nine-month old son.  "There is this deep instinct in all of us to feed our kids the best.  Sometimes we run into obstacles and it might be something like cancer or it might be school lunch program or TV advertising or fast food, but the instinct is there, in all of us, to feed our kids great stuff." The crisis led Greene to explore more deeply the questions of "What is best?" and "What are real differences in the quality of food we feed our children?" He could no longer say it was all the same. "How we feed babies and all of us changes us--it changes our minds, how we think; it changes our immune system; it changes how we grow; it changes our mood, our behavior, our attention. It changes so much about our lives." He began to realize that conventional medicine had significant gaps regarding the relationship between nutrition and health.

Further research into causes of breast cancer revealed direct and well-substantiated links between pesticide use and cancer rates in agricultural communities. Cheryl had grown up on a seedless-grape farm in central California and had been exposed to pesticides throughout her childhood. The pesticides used on her farm when she was girl had already been linked to breast cancer. "In fact," as Greene notes, "the closer that a woman's room is to the field the higher the risk of breast cancer--you can measure it in feet." He had learned nothing in his conventional training about this research... it was outside the vision of medicine.

"It was then I really got it: Good food, grown right is not just some optional nice little side-dish but it is actually the core issue of human health."

(Cheryl survived and is healthy today, thirteen years later, in large part to good food.)

National Crisis: Childhood Obesity
Greene then changes tack and focuses on the crisis that is taking place on a national scale: childhood obesity. In the last 30 years, childhood obesity has increased to the point where 1 in 3 kids is already overweight or obese--and, by the end of next year, the numbers will reach 40%.  Problems that used to be rare are becoming increasingly common in children: high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, abnormal triglycerides, abnormal blood sugars, Type II diabetes (formerly known as "adult onset diabetes") and/ or a waist-size over 40 inches.

"Obesity is just a visible sign that the way we are feeding kids today is failing, utterly. But, the good news," according to Greene, "is that organic food can prevent and reverse these trends and set our metabolism right, especially in early childhood." Organic food is more satiating because it's more nutritious. It has more antioxidants that prevent and repair damage and more micro-agents that slow the aging process. It is also grown without the use of pesticides that contain endocrine disruptors, which are linked to diabetes and to which the typical American consumer is exposed daily through diet. Investing in organic foods now will save not only health-care costs but also, literally, the lives of today's children.

Some people say organic food is too expensive. But, as Green points outs, a diagnosis of Type II diabetes will reduce a child's life expectancy by 10-20 years; it will cost more than $3 million and will be a chronic problem for the rest of a his or her life. "If we spent $100 million to provide good organic food to kids in schools and we could just stop 33 kids from getting diabetes, it would pay for itself-- and we would get delicious organic food to enjoy and we would save 300 to 600 years of those kids' lives to have relationships and love and family and work. We would save so much… What a bargain organic food is!" 

"When I was growing up, doctors were my heroes because they could help people who are sick. But, today, farmers are my heroes because you can prevent people from ever getting sick AND can help them when they are." The body sources food for all the good things it needs to keep us from getting sick as well as what it needs to heal when we do get sick or injured. We are what we eat in a profound way. We are built entirely from food. As Greene says, "When we feed a child, every bite is either an investment in a child's body or it's a debt you're taking out that you're going to have to pay back somehow, some way. How much better to invest than to take out new debt--especially in a tough economy."

Too Much Food, Not Enough Nutrition
Greene addresses a fundamental irony in the United States. At the same time that childhood obesity rates rise exponentially, kids in this country are suffering from malnutrition. Of the 40 known essential nutrients, kids typically get 13 at sub-optimal levels--levels low enough "to affect their intelligence, to affect their behavior, to make them get sick more often, and to accelerate the diseases of middle age." 

Changing what kids eats can change their health. Exzema in kids, for example, can by reduced by a third by just switching from conventional to organic milk. "Autism, ADHD, food allergies... all are nutrition problems with food answers. The answers to all of the most pressing problems in kids health and in our health are in this room--this is the answer, this is the core, this is central."

But conventional medicine has under-valued food as a source of health and has even downplayed the importance of food as a source of nutrition. Fortunately, new scientific studies contradict conventional wisdom. The potato, for example, long maligned as a "junk vegetable," contains not only fiber, vitamins, and minerals but also medicinal levels of coco amines, which have been proven effective against high blood pressure and cancer. In Greene's words, "The least of our vegetables is filled with things that we didn't even know existed that are so good for us."

And apples, similarly derided as nature's junk fruit by Western medicine, have an unprecedented ability to fight breast cancer and can lower cholesterol. The effectiveness of eating one apple a day against these conditions is as dramatic as taking a statin drug. "Apples taste better, especially organic apples, without all the side effects. Lipitor costs $4 per day--the apple is worth every bit as much and more." 

"Healthy food is the best answer to all of our health problems--and the research backs that up."

Greene cites an Organic Center study that compares organic and conventional produce. ORAC units (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity ) measure the affects of food on health. 3000 units a day are needed to maintain health; 5000 units a day improve health. Most serving of fruits and vegetables have about 1000 units. But most adults get 1200-1600 a day, a third of what they need for optimal health. Organic food on average across the board has 30% more ORAC units than conventional counter parts. Millions of people at the cusp between health and sickness could get 30 percent of what they need if we just switched to organic food. “In this room is the answer to our health care crisis,” Greene claims, pointing to his audience of organic farmers.

A russet potato has 5000 ORAC units, but what happens when the potato is submerged in boiling grease and turned into a French fry? According to Greene, "It destroys coco amines, greatly reduces ORAC values, and adds calories, fats, and carcinogens called acrylomides. It takes something that's beautiful from nature and destroys it."

Tiny Doses, Big Impact
In addition to too many calories and poor nutritional content, according to Greene, the food that most American kids consume contains too many chemicals. He observes that the potato (which in the form of a French fry is the most popular vegetable among adults as well as children) "after it's washed, after it's peeled, has the highest level on average of pesticides of any produce in the U.S." Some physicians as well as pesticide manufacturers insist that "pesticide residue is too small to have any affect on health--despite scientific research. They will say it's just too small, 100 parts per billion, to make any difference. But trace amounts do have major health affects." As Greene points out, the drugs that fill a conventional doctor's bag are effective at a fraction of even these minute levels.

Paxil, for example, changes brain function at just 30 parts per billion.

Pyraphosphorous an organophosphrous pesticide developed as a chemical weapon (nerve gas) in WWII, is now commonly used as a pesticide. Not surprisingly, a New York study showed that pesticide residue impacted brain size and cognitive function, and has been linked to learning delay, autism, and ADHD. Organophosphrous pesticides are used throughout the U.S.

A study conducted in Seattle tested kids' urine and found 3 times the EPA safety limit of organophosphorous. BUT when these kids switched to a mostly organic diet (no new foods just organic equivalents of what they'd been eating), "within 24 hours pesticides in urine were gone and stayed gone for the five days of testing." When these kids were put back on the regular diet, their pesticide levels spiked back up. "Good news: on their next shopping trip people can change their kids pesticide exposure. Organic food makes a difference."

Albuterol, another example, is an asthma medication that works at 2.1 parts per billion.

An Italian study of the impact of GMOs revealed  that mice fed Bt corn had a depressed immune system and their tissues were in an inflamed state throughout the body in a way consistent (in humans) with asthma and allergies.
"GMOs are NOT equivalent and have not been proven safe. Most Americans don't want GMO food and believe they've never eaten it, although most eat it every day."

Artificial food coloring and preservatives are also causing problems for kids. Greene says, "ADHD is not an issue of parenting or class size, but a real disease--the brains of these children are different; they cannot pay attention.  A study out of England put 2300 kids on a diet of food without preservatives or food colorings and ALL of their behavior improved. Then same kids were given a shot to drink at lunch, every day for a week: one had all the colorings and preservatives that they would have ingested in a conventional diet; the other was a placebo.  The weeks that the kids ingested the chemicals, their behavior was much worse. The weeks of placebo, their behavior was much better, noticed at school, at home, and in the doctor's office. The difference was on the same order as that seen with prescription ADHD medications."

Chemicals make a difference and can have positive or negative effects in tiny doses. 

Some birth control drugs function at 0.019 parts per billion to prevent fertility.

DES (estrogen) is an anti-miscarriage drug given to women in the 1930s. A 1953 study proved it didn't work, but doctors kept prescribing it (to as many as 10 million women)--little girls (daughters) started getting rare vaginal cancer and DES was pulled off the market in 1971. Health problems persisted for decades. A 2001 study found that there is a 30% increase in breast cancer in women who took that drug. Girls had trouble conceiving/carrying babies and boys had physical reproductive abnormalities--all from a tiny bit of extra hormone.  

Starting in 1950 DES was given to beef cattle. It was used through the 1970s, until a study showed that it impacted animal fertility, so cattle producers switched to the six different drugs in use today to control miscarriages. There is no evidence that these are safe; the few existing studies point to problems in today's beef.

The EPA is concerned, Greene says.  In 1996, the agency was given 10 years to address endocrine disruptors in environment and impact on human health, especially on kids and pregnant women... ten years later a draft list of what needed to be studied had been generated but no action was taken. When he talked to EPA officials, they responded, "'You don't understand, these issues are so complex; these things are so potent at such tiny doses that it's really hard to sort out and we want to do it right." Greene says, "You know, I really agree with them: it is complex, it is scary, these tiny doses are potent, we do want to do it right--but we should do it before we feed this stuff to millions of people!"

Meanwhile the U.S. is facing a fertility crisis. There are multigenerational affects.  Human sperm counts are down on farms, but it's not just farming communities that are affected. Consumers exposed to Atrazene are 11 times more likely to have damaged sperm (counts are going down every year). And not only humans--the reproductive systems of species in nearly every class of animals on the planet are being destroyed by Atrazene...

Greene's voice drops off and he pauses. Finally, he closes his wide-ranging, erudite, and passionately delivered speech with these final words:  "What you are doing is central to human health. Everything that I do depends on you, in the front lines--not just our health, not just our planet, but the future of our species depends on you. So it's time. It's time for America to wake up to the value of good food, of great food. And it's time for America to wake up to the value of the people who are laboring to bring that to us. And it is time for us all to wake up to a future of sustainable and ecological farming done right."

Bridget is a teacher, writer, mother and long-time supporter of sustainable and organic agriculture.