Farm v/s Pharma

IRAC METHOD

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The project “Farm vs. Pharma” is focused on improving the quality of life and the perception of health of everyone, starting with US citizens. Most people in the country currently rely on clinical medicine to cure them when they are sick. The objective is to restore balance between science and nature, need and power, rights and duties. We aim to educate and spread awareness across all levels of society about the relevance of nutrition as a source of health, wellbeing and happiness that should be consider before relying on pharmaceuticals.

ISSUE IDENTIFICATION

East Harlem and the Upper East side are merely separated by one street, however, the side of that street that you live on might affect your life expectancy by 9 years. Why are East Harlem’s neighbours more likely to die sooner and have higher rates of diabetes, obesity and chronic stress than their neighbours to the south? The answer, of course, is very complex but it is mainly related to income, education and access to opportunities and health.

Concrete Safaris is an organization that is trying to improve the community’s health by growing gardens in two New York City Housing Authority Buildings. The gardens have been in two housing complexes for more than 3 years and the organization still struggles to get any neighbors to engage with them, take part in gardening activities or even take the food that is grown locally and organically for them -literally- in their backyard. What is the issue behind this?

The community doesn’t value the collard greens, swiss chard, strawberries or mint leaves they could get from the garden. Most of their meals consist of cheeseburgers and fries at McDonald’s, making them unhealthy, malnourished, stressed and fatigued. This case is just an example of a bigger trend that affects thousands of american homes.

Obesity in Poverty In stark contrast to other countries where poverty is associated with malnutrition, in US, obesity prevails in the low-income population. Nearly 75 percent of Americans are overweight. This is not an accident. Specific, traceable forms of marketing and lobbying efforts by Big Food, Big Farming, Big Pharma and government policies have led and continue to increase the spread of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Lack of Education People living in East Harlem don’t value the greens because they don’t know what they are good for and they have no idea of the impact they could have in their lives. This lack of education is more persistent in lower income communities, but not exclusive. Most people in the US are not aware of the specific nutrient as well as medicinal value of the fresh food around them. A quick survey around people we met at the Farmers Market and some of our classmates showed that people with different levels of education can be completely uninformed about the subject. Even more, people with higher income levels that live in busy cities are often aware of the benefits of fruits and vegetables in their lives and health, but go to packaged “healthy” food instead of real,

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natural food. There is an expansive list of nutrient value and composition written on the labels of packaged food, but none on the fresh produce. We want to change this. For people in East Harlem, for people in Chelsea, for everyone.

Blind faith in Pharmaceuticals Medicine used to be a practice that required religious, spiritual, philosophical and botanical knowledge. Over the years, the medical profession and others around it have evolved. Modern medicine is scientific, organized, structured and standardized and is the predominant method of health for western societies. Alongside, the pharmaceutical industry has grown over the last century to the point that it has become one of the most powerful in the world. Unfortunately, its power and influence is held by few companies and is rarely used with the common good in mind.

They execute intricate patenting strategies, limit the possibility of competition, invest heavily in marketing campaigns and pressure and influence doctors to favor them by promoting their drugs or publish scientific studies that benefit them. The effectiveness and the immense public health benefits that some inventions of modern medicine and pharmaceutical drugs have had all over the world has granted them the good reputation they currently have and the blind faith that people have in them.

RULE IDENTIFICATION

For the rules associated with this issue, we have to consider international and national law. On the international sphere, the main regulators are two United Nations agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Both organizations have regulations and recommendations that the member countries should abide by, but the correlation these actually have with national regulation and the degree to which they are enforced varies depending on the country.

In the specific case of the US government, the policies and regulations related to food and medicine are closely impacted by the decisions made by the President, both houses of Parliament and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Commerce and Energy. The main institution that oversees these issues is the Food and Drug Administration, whose regulatory authority derives from the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which was first enacted in 1938 and has been revised several times since then. Other sources of regulatory authority come from the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, the Public Health Service Act, The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, and many others.

Often, responsibility for enforcing these acts may also be shared with other federal agencies.

Other important organizations and agencies that work closely with the FDA are the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Foreign Agricultural

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Service (FAS), the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The FDA coordinates with other federal agencies and operates at all levels of government in the country. US state governments are involved in regulation and safety of food and drugs because they have the local manpower and access to enforce them, but always work in collaboration with the federal government. In broad terms, the FDA’s regulation ensures the safety of most food, animal drugs and feed, the effectiveness and safety of all drugs, biological products and medical devices, and assures that cosmetics, medical and consumer products that emit radiation do no harm.

For this project, we are particularly interested in this perspective of regulations that aim at “doing no harm” regarding food and drugs for human consumption. We believe that there is a gap in regulation where there is room to work and promote products that “do good” and have proper regulations that help educate and improve consumers lives, instead of only preventing them from exposure to potentially harmful goods. In this sense, we are especially interested in how labeling is currently handled.

In 2014, the White House and the FDA announced that the current food label design would be updated in order to help american customers make healthier choices about what they eat. The idea was developed up until 2016 and edited back in June 2017 by the Trump administration. The spirit behind the initiative was to make the important things very easy and evident for customers, like the amount of calories, the real serving size and the amount of added sugars. We believe the spirit behind the idea is correct, but that it is still revolving around content that is too hard for the consumer to understand, and still framed from a “no harm” perspective.

ANALYSIS

Big Farming, Big Food and Obesity Big Farming, Big Food, Big Pharma, supported by Government agencies and policies in the US thrive on making people sick and fat. Successful lobbying and marketing efforts by these big companies have strongly affected the way Americans perceive nutrition, food and well-being.

This doesn’t only affect consumers; drug companies have invasively corrupted the way that the healthcare industry delivers its vital services. Doctors and patients alike are focussed more on preventing the immediate harm and not in promoting long-time wellness.

Big Farming grows 500 more calories per person per day than 25 years ago because they get paid to grow extra food even when it is not needed. The extra corn (sugar) and soy (fat) are turned into industrial processed food and sugar -sweetened beverages – combinations of fat, sugar and salt that are proven to be addictive have made three out of four Americans obese.

Effective marketing techniques by Big Food resulting in omnipresence of cheap, high-calorie, nutrient-poor processed foods (or “food like substances”) in homes, schools, government institutions and food programs, and on every street corner creates default food choices that drive

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obesity. The fatter people become the more they develop heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a myriad of other chronic ailments. The sicker our population, the more medications are sold for high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and many other lifestyle driven diseases.

Current food policies and subsidies encourage Big Farming to overproduce corn and soy which are then used to create sugary, fatty, factory-made, industrial food products sold as processed, fast, or junk food as I noted above. The government essentially stands in line next to us in fast food chains helping us buy cheeseburgers, fries, and cola. On the other hand, in the produce aisle of our supermarkets, we are on our own – the 2010 Farm Bill offers little support to farmers for growing fruits, vegetables, and healthy whole foods. How can you eat fruits and vegetables when you can’t buy them in your neighborhood convenience store or their price has increased five times as fast as sugar-sweetened beverages?

Big Pharma, Healthcare & FDA As the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., prescription drugs are among the most dangerous substances in the world. The ethical and legal issues related to Big Pharma are complex, uncountable and wide-ranged, for instance, their control over FDA, their influence in the healthcare industry and practice of medicine, intricate patenting strategies limiting competition, and unregulated marketing and advertising.

The trinity of the US medical establishment (American Medical Association), insurance industry and Big Pharma makes the US the most costly, broken, corrupt and destructive healthcare system in the entire world. The structured system is designed and layered with built in incentives at every tier to make and keep people sick, chronically dependent on their drugs for survival that merely mask and smother symptoms rather than cure or eradicate the root cause of disease.

Because doctors now are forced to rely so heavily on drug companies for information about what they prescribe, they’re ill equipped and ill-informed in their lack of adequate knowledge and training to understand what all the interactive drugs are doing to toxically harm their patients.

Most doctors never ask patients what they are eating, and focus instead on finding the right prescription medication—or often a cocktail of pills.

Also because natural healing substances cannot be patented, Big Pharma has done its sinister best to repress any and all knowledge and information that come from the far more affordable means of alternative health sources that explore ancient traditional cultures’ medicinal use of hemp along with thousands of other plants and roots that could threaten drug profits and power of Big Pharma and modern medicine as they’re currently practiced and monopolized.

The intentionality of Big Pharma is far from promoting health and wellness of human beings. This is evident in their association with FDA. A recent Harvard study1 slammed the FDA making the accusation that it simply “cannot be trusted” because it’s owned and operated by Big Pharma.

1

https://www.naturalnews.com/043265_FDA_Big_Pharma_Harvard_University.html

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With complete autonomy and control, now pharmaceutical companies knowingly market drugs that carry high risk dangers for consumers. By design, they so tightly control its supposed regulatory gatekeeper, drugs are commonly mass marketed and before the evidence of potential harm becomes overwhelming, billions in profit have already been reaped at the deadly expense of its victims. Additionally, doctors, pharmacists and patients rarely even hear about important recalls due to dangerous side effects or contamination.

Big Pharma also invests more dollars into advertising than any other industry in America, transmitting its seductively deceptive message direct to its consumers (on television, radio, internet, magazines, saturating every media outlet), explicitly giving them marching orders to request specific drugs from their doctors. Their message – pleasure, relief, peace of mind, joy, love and happiness are all just a pill away. No problem or pain in life can’t be conquered by a quick fix – compliments of Big Pharma. Regulation free advertising raises the ethical question of intentionality of these companies.

Clinical Medicine v/s Food Nutrition To evaluate the ethical and legal issues related with this subject, we must consider how we value food and how we value clinical medicine nowadays. Different cultures around the world have very different approaches to both subjects. Rural and traditional societies often maintain ancestral knowledge about the use of their plants and crops to cure different conditions. These cultures also value the ties in their communities and consider affection, love, care, and food as complementary sources of wellbeing and health. More industrialized and urban populations have been permeated by the influence of clinical “western” medicine, which is evidence based and relies purely on verifiable facts. Even though doctors originally practiced a mix of strict science and traditional methods, the mainstream view in the US is that sicknesses and diseases are cured through medication and pills.

Both sides have a strong ethical arguments to defend them. If we consider a tribe in the Amazon basin in Peru that has a plant based cure for a strange fever and person decides to go with that option, who are we to tell them that that is not the answer? On the other hand, if there is a sick boy who only eats fish and fruit and lives in a hut and has cholera and malnutrition, wouldn’t we demand that he be treated with vaccines and antibiotics to save his life? Is it responsible from a public health perspective to promote natural nutrition as the main source of health? Clinical medicine has developed and perfected its methods and regulations over the years to prevent doing harm -at least for the greater good-. What regulations and safety standards can we uphold nutrition and food as sources of cure and treatment? Is it worth risking people’s lives?

The supermarket aisles with vitamins, enhancers and immune system boosters keep growing every year. The same happens with the “vitamin water” category, which has grown exponentially in the last decade because consumers are looking for healthier options to consume. However, this trend is often abused by food and beverage companies, which have been quick to label their products as “non GMO”, or “no Trans Fat”, or “made with natural ingredients”, marketing them as “healthy” while they are still processed un-natural sources of nutrients. A study published in the

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medical journal BMJ Open found that United States’ consumers get less than 1% of their calories from vegetables and that the main source of added sugar in their diet was “ultra-processed” food, which is filled with additives, emulsifiers, flavors and colors.2

In this context, we have millions of sick people all over the world trying to get healthy without being successful. There are several degrees of pain and disease, of course. Infant mortality, HIV, cholera outbreaks, Meningitis, Tuberculosis or Malaria represent cases where modern medicine might be the only answer and pharmaceutical products will be the saviors. Even if most of the treatments have side effects, the possible positive outcome is worth taking the risk. On the other hand, there are hundreds of other silent, common sicknesses that we have gotten used to as a society and don’t realize are truly preventable and curable with alternative medicine or just natural nutritious food.

CONCLUSION

The power of nutrients in natural food like fruits and vegetables is turning into a myth. We can’t change the way industries work, or redesign the policies or regulations. Even to change consumer behaviour in how they consume food and medicine is a mountain of a task. But through design and technology, we can spark conversations about how food is not just a source of energy but, a source of enriching nutrients, that plays a vital part in our well-being and healing.

The FDA currently mandates that a nutrition label be added on processed food, informing consumers about its contents and the potential harm the product might have. However, there are no mandates for labels on fresh fruits or vegetables. People lack knowledge of the nutrients that an apple or a carrot has. Sure, we learn about these briefly in school, but we hardly apply it in our real lives as we are so influenced with the pill focussed environment around us. Even the ultimate source of information in the 21st century - Google-, directs us to the dietary supplement pills when asked for vitamins in vegetables.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with artificial food and nutrient supplements,

“How can we push humanity by linking back to our roots and negate artificial beliefs and foods?”

Recommendation We aim to spark conversations and thoughts regarding the power of food in human health and well-being; people need to know the value of natural food - what nutrients it has, how does it promote good health, what diseases and ailments it can help recover or prevent and what is the best way to consume it? It will also be helpful to know where the fruit and vegetables came from, what kind of seeds, pesticides, fertilizers and farming methods were used to grow it? This information will make the supply chain more transparent and traceable, give credibility to the farmer using the best and sustainable practices, and incentivize other farmers to go organic, 2

http://time.com/4252515/calories-processed-food/

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focussing on quality and not quantity. This way, we will create a positive reinforcement system that keeps promoting good practices.

This information can now be made available to consumers through technology. The MIT Media Lab and Ideo3 are working on a technology: a spectrometer that analyses a specific piece of fruit or vegetable for its nutritional value and calorie content. Additionally, the blockchain technology4 applied to food can help us trace back the source and journey of a particular fruit, increasing the transparency of food supply.

Our strategy is to use these two technologies in a way that provides the information to the consumers in an interactive way and provokes the thought about healing power of natural food and makes them question the pills they have been taking all these years. We plan to introduce this technology though small pop-up stalls or kiosks in civic commons, public spaces like parks, open markets, supermarket, farmers markets, and eventually schools, institutions and hospitals, where anyone and everyone can come and experience it. These civic commons will become learning centres for human health.

This design can be implemented in partnerships with non-profit organisations like GrowNYC and alike, which aims to promote local and organic food sourcing. We can potentially collaborate with natural healers and share their learnings on the platform.

Spectrometer to be kept in stalls or kiosks in public spaces along with human assistance

3

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/you-may-soon-be-able-scan-piece-fruit-check-nutritional-val ue-180958710/ 4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/themixingbowl/2017/10/23/the-blockchain-of-food/#44db8d95775f

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Information available from the scanner

Impact Assessment The idea of Human Flourishing and the efforts to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment personally or within a community can be developed through awareness. Awareness in the foods we eat, places we shop and the way we heal can all enhance human flourishing. The impact of alternative healing such as nutrition often takes time. The awareness of the journey of healing can eventually be more understood and accepted rather that a cocktail of pills. The medicines that are used to create beliefs of getting better and healing are killing many everyday slowly.

Starting the conversation about food being a lifestyle and a way for you to receive more nutrients can be introduced to provide different alternatives. More than 75 percent of patients diagnosed with cancer will try dietary and other alternative therapies and many do not disclose them to their doctors, relying instead on the advice of friends or the media. We propose not stopping the use of conventional medicine but adding new ways to heal. For sinus infection, antibiotics are okay.

But for a low-level cold, drinking ginger tea, inhaling eucalyptus steam, and eating turmeric with honey can also fight a cold from the source..

The ideal impact of this project would cause industries to shift. Pharmaceutical companies could take more responsibility in the dangers their drugs are providing and discuss how to heal instead of covering up. ​Doctors would feel the need to educate themselves about different alternatives seeing the impacts a clean diet and proper fruits and vegetables can have may be a source of inspiration. The ​fundamentals of being a doctor and curing would include the concept of healing from within, and not only on prescribing medicines. Farmers can also be seen as the new doctors and the farmers who a practicing clean farming can be acknowledged for the lives they can save.

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