Joel Haugland
Dear editor:
The new food and beverage policy for Ontario schools is a step in the right direction to promote healthier citizens, but there’s a lot more to do than to prepare a policy.
Parents and care-givers of children must know what to do to start enforcing the policy.
It is a task for Health Canada and provincial authorities, aided by medical professionals, to make food and beverage producers “toe the line” (i.e., conform by the rules).
As it is today, beef producers, turkey farmers, chicken and egg producers, as well as pork producers, are using an over-abundance of chemical compounds, and also must be legislated to “toe the line.”
A new educational policy for schools across Canada must be legislated to produce a nation of healthy citizens to ease the strain on the health-care system and save billions of dollars yearly.
Newspaper, radio, and television advertisements regarding food and beverages from producers and retailers, especially from fast-food outlets aimed at people’s taste buds, must be curbed to allow proper parenting to survive.
Being a Canadian by choice, I was lucky to be delivered into this world by a good mother who began teaching us, as toddlers, the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, what to do and what not to do. A common phrase at home was: “It’s what you eat after your stomach is full that makes you fat.”
Farming was organic. There were no pesticides around and no radio, televisions, or computers yet—and no fast-food outlets to advertise in newspapers.
Daily menus consisted of regular country fare: home-baked rye bread, home-churned butter, cheese, jam or marmalade, syrup, and/or meat.
Your digestive system begins working as soon as you put food in the mouth. While chewing your food, the tongue keeping rolling around and around, adding enzymes, while the salivary glands lubricate.
Next, but only after being salivated properly, the mixture should be swallowed—not flushed down with a beverage.
The “mixture” then goes down the esophagus to the stomach and duodenum, which it is mixed with more juices to digest the broken-down content before sending it down the small intestine, where digested food is absorbed into the bloodstream.
Water and undigested food now moves into the large intestine. Water is absorbed back into the body while waste food moves along the rectum to be expelled as bowel movements.
That’s it, regardless of what kind of food you eat.
It should be done slowly, without talking; and at least a half-hour of rest (for general labour) before starting to work again.
Sincerely,
Joel Haugland
Dryden, Ont.
