In the relationship between food and health, what matters is not only what we eat, but also how food is produced. Choosing organic foods, grown according to the principles of agroecology, can truly extend our lives. Here's why.
Imagine two tables, practically identical. Both are laid with simple foods: perhaps some vegetables, bread, a good wine. Despite the similarities, the food on the plates of one of them is healthy, has a low environmental impact and protects the body from disease; the food on the plates of the other, by contrast, destroys the environment and causes disease. How is this possible? What makes the difference when we talk about the complex relationship between food and health?
What differs between the two "twin" tables is the way the food is produced: the first comes from following the principles of agroecology, a system that applies to agriculture the principles of respect for the environment, the soil, and plant and animal biodiversity, avoiding synthetic products and favouring organic farming and livestock methods. The second comes from an industrialised and increasingly standardised system, where fields are monocultures that grow with the help of large quantities of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers applied to the soil, and livestock farms — which are intensive and leave no space for animals — cannot exist without massive use of pharmaceuticals. A system that represents the second leading cause of pollution on the planet, and one that, rather than producing food, thinks of "extracting" it, from the land and from animals, almost as though it were oil to be pumped from wells before it runs out entirely.
And if you are wondering whether the difference between the two tables truly matters this much — not only in terms of ethics or reducing our environmental "footprint", but also in terms of protecting our own health and psychophysical wellbeing — there is no doubt: the answer is "yes".
According to the FAO, the United Nations agency for food and agriculture, over the past hundred years humanity has lost 75 per cent of the plant genetic diversity linked to food production. Foods to which the digestive system of Homo sapiens had grown accustomed — and around which it had structured itself — over tens of millennia of evolution have completely disappeared within three generations from market stalls and supermarket shelves. The number of cultivated species is now only around 150 or slightly more, but the agency notes that the vast majority of human beings (95 per cent) feed primarily on no more than thirty plant species.
This is because the so-called Green Revolution, which began in the mid-twentieth century with the aim of "feeding the world", deliberately selected, standardised and "boosted" through chemistry only certain varieties, among which maize, rice and wheat stand out as prime examples: in order to increase yield per hectare, improve the market competitiveness of crops and lower prices, other species — more "traditional" but less "profitable" — were more or less consciously abandoned. The result has been a growing standardisation of diet which, according to recent studies, is increasingly being correlated with the onset of various conditions: from inflammatory bowel disease to ulcerative colitis, from cardiovascular disorders to liver disease and several types of cancer.
In particular, this situation appears to be especially harmful to the human microbiota — that is, the community of symbiotic microorganisms living in our bodies, in the intestine, stomach, mouth and throat — whose health is closely bound to our own, with its deterioration causing a dangerous weakening of our immune defences and leaving us exposed to disease.
That is not all. The loss of plant diversity has made cultivated plant species themselves weaker and more vulnerable to climate events, weeds and pests; the introduction of monocultures, the disregard for seasonality, and the abandonment of crop rotation — which allowed for the natural regeneration of the soil — have also required ever-increasing chemical intervention, generating a further vicious cycle at the expense of our health.
At various levels, we are all now exposed to pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other substances: they penetrate the soil and groundwater and are dispersed by the wind; we can find them as residues in food, and we can often come into contact with them without even realising it. One example is glyphosate, contained in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide: despite having been declared "probably carcinogenic" and despite several studies linking it to the onset of tumours, it has not only not been banned by the European Union, but is still used extensively to control weeds in vineyards, quarries, motorway verges, and rail yards and stations.
According to a growing body of research — which, moreover, examines individual active ingredients rather than the mixture of substances each of us comes into contact with every day — it is no longer possible to deny a correlation between pesticides and the onset of serious and increasingly widespread conditions, such as cancer, respiratory diseases, metabolic and thyroid disorders, infertility and reproductive disorders, autism, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and neurodevelopmental damage in children, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
For our health, the situation deteriorates still further if our laid table also features packaged, refined and altered foods, rich in preservatives, colourings and flavour enhancers. According to the World Health Organization, the so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) caused by inadequate diets — high in calories but low in nutrients, with elevated levels of fat, sugar and salt — cause 40 million deaths a year as they are responsible (or partly responsible) for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases.
Those most exposed are lower-income countries and the poorest segments of the population, who are more inclined — for economic reasons — to consume industrial food and cheap vegetables. A food and environmental injustice that also becomes social injustice and a public health emergency. The hidden costs, treated as externalities, are however staggering. Some examples? Obesity is estimated to cost 1.2 trillion dollars a year worldwide, while diabetes costs 2.5 trillion. Neurodegenerative diseases cost 2.4 trillion dollars in the United States and the United Kingdom alone. Infertility costs 3.6 billion dollars in Europe alone.
The picture that emerges of the complex relationship between food and health looks bleaker than ever. And yet there is a solution, and it has recently been pointed out by the FAO itself, which has declared the Green Revolution a failure and called for intensive agriculture to be replaced by agroecological practices — the only ones, according to the organisation, capable of truly feeding the world in a healthy and equitable way, while preserving the environment and the landscape.
But, just as is happening with the transition to renewable energy sources, transforming the agricultural system requires commitment from everyone. This means, for example, according to experts such as Fiorella Belpoggi, director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Centre at the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, calling on industry to invest in making food safer; it means, evidence in hand, calling on governments and institutions to streamline the bureaucratic procedures needed to ban harmful substances such as Roundup, and to establish broad awareness programmes — both for farmers, who must reclaim practices that have long been forgotten yet remain beneficial for soil, health and the economy, and for citizens, who must become increasingly informed in order to resist the pressures of a market still oriented towards industrial products.
These are precisely the themes addressed by the Siamo fatti di Terra project, born from the collaboration between Alce Nero, the participatory enterprise made up of organic farmers and processors, and LifeGate. The aim: to remind us that what is good for the environment and the Earth is also good for people, and, for this reason, to promote the importance of agroecological practices at every level.
Choosing simple, organic, local, traditional foods is good for your health: organic crops are richer in antioxidants (depending on the food, up to 69 per cent more), reducing the risk of cancer; they are not sprayed with pesticides; they have a better nutritional profile and protect against allergies, obesity and neonatal conditions. Organic animal-derived foods, as well as being produced more ethically, reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance.
In short, when faced with two tables — not quite identical — let us choose the one laid with organic dishes, produced using agroecological practices. If we want to protect our own health and the health of the people we love, it is the first step.