food for thought

my friend jeanne lives in mexico city and has been doing some research on snack food... today i got a very interesting email from her:

I'm doing research today for a new, snack food account that we just won.

The information I'm coming up with is really disgusting.

The snack food market in the US was worth 28 billion dollars in 1999.

In Mexico, it's currently worth 1.24 billion dollars, and we IMPORT another 54 million dollars in snacks.

That doesn't include soft drinks. Just sweet and salty snacks.

World hunger could be eliminated if people just stopped SNACKING.

If everyone gave up their potato chips and candy bars and donated the money to the UN, there would be no starving children in the world.

And the ugly facts on the other side of the coin...

Last week I was working on information for a pharmaceutical company that makes a prescription weight reduction product. (Never a dull moment in advertising.)

According to a new report by the WHO, for the first time in human history the number of overweight people rivals the number of the starving.

I was totally stunned by that news.

In the 1980s the number of the world's undernourished dropped slightly to 1.1 billion, where it remains today. However there are now an estimated 1.2 billion overweight people in the world.

Can you believe that?

We're doing something terribly, terribly wrong.

I can't quite get my mind around the logic of it all.

well, no kidding.

and this all comes to me at a semi-interesting time as i feel the need to do a whole-life fast. meaning, clean food, clean thoughts, clean intentions. okay okay, i am virgo hear me go on and on about improving to a squeaky clean lifestyle, but it is what i want. truly. well... mostly.

and so i am thinking of pledging for one month to not eat pre-packaged snack food. including soda. i'm not committing now. i'm just thinking out loud. more to come.