Do Health Ministers Protect Health?

What impact does affordable food have in your community?  I encourage you to call your local food bank, find out first hand what's going on in your home town, and report your findings here so we can all learn from it.  Enter your comments below.

I blogged a few days ago about the critical effects on health from lack of affordable food.  Here is some additional support for that idea from Michael Pollan, best selling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (and many other books)

 
Today, I thought, "Why waste a good posting; turn it into a letter to the person responsible!"

So that's what I did.

Here is a copy of the letter I wrote to Ontario's Health Minister, with a copy to the Dieticians of Canada.

Some scientists estimate that 75% of all disease today is directly caused or contributed to by poor nutrition.

The consequences of not being able to afford the food you need is immense.   Just one of the many consequences is causing or contributing to the onset of Type II Diabetes.

Here are some key facts about Diabetes:

• 2.3 Million Canadians have Diabetes today
• Of those, 621,000 reported that they suffer some degree of nerve damage from their diabetes
• 345,000 (~15%) will develop a diabetic foot ulcer sometime during their life
• Diabetic foot ulcers cost the Canadian health care system $150 million per year
• Diabetic leg ulcer cost Ontario $15.6 Million in 2005
• Diabetics are 23 times more likely to have an amputation than non-diabetics
• More than 4,000 Canadian diabetics had a limb amputated in 2006
• 1,500 diabetics in Ontario had a limb amputated in 2008
• 85% of amputations are from non-healing diabetic foot ulcers
• 50% of all lower limb amputations in Ontario are directly related to diabetes
• 30% of Canadian diabetics will die within a year of their amputation
• 69% of Canadian diabetics will die within 5 years of their amputation

Hopefully Ontario's Health Minister (and the Dieticians of Canada) give sober second thought to the benefits of ensuring affordable food for all Canadians.

That's hard to do when the #ChickenMafia are encouraged to price gouge Canadians 300% more for chicken, and the #EggMafia price gouge 52.6% more than fair pricing.

Will Ontario's Health Minister, the Hon. Deb Matthews, MPP take actions to save the people, and the taxpayers from all the expensive and wasteful consequences from food insecurity?  Can she convince her Cabinet colleagues to take action all across the government, that is both MOHLTC and OMAF (Ministry of Agriculture & Food) for the unjustifiable excesses of the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia?

If she is successful, Small Flockers will be standing at the ready, waiting for the clarion call to feed our communities.