Nutrition and Freedom: Speed Blog Series Part I

Welcome to part 1 of the speed blog series. Since I will be spending less time on my blog over the next few months, I've decided to condense my usual long rants.

Here is Part 1: Nutrition

I've always associated the idea of nutrition with freedom. In order for the mind to function properly, the body must be in good constitution. When the body becomes weak, the mind soon follows. Fundamentally, at the heart of any system is a physical infrastructure.

Access to information is the most important, secondary to that is education. Healthy minds are efficient minds. Good education is useless if the mind is not fully able to absorb knowledge. I believe that culinary and nutrition awareness classes are as important, if not more than, as mainstream academia.

It is proven fact that a healthy diet containing the recommended intake of vitamins and minerals produces an individual who is able to think with greater clarity. This is particularly important with young children with growing brains, denying them a proper diet can impede the growth of their bodies and minds. Students who eat healthy have been shown to do better in exams.

Many of the ills and problems in modern societies can be attributed to bad nutrition. With processed foods becoming cheaper and therefore more accessible, people are turning away from freshly cooked meats and vegetables. Large corporations can be blamed for gradually introducing the dependency of 'quick preparation' foods. The cycle of buying the cheaper processed foods will, by a process of supply and demand, keep the prices of fresh food towards the premium.

Aside from cancer and other diseases, malnutrition is known to affect the attention span of the human brain. Deficits in certain vitamins and minerals can cause antisocial behaviour. Tests on prison inmates have shown that a good healthy diet can improve cooperation. Therefore, if the government invested more money into education and diet, then less would be spent on policing.

A healthy community is one that has less crime and fewer diseases. A more holistic approach targets the root cause of many of the problems, rather than the western 'quick fix' method which although effective for the short term, eventually overburdens itself.