________________
112
THE FAMILY AND THE NATION
nutritious food and sub-standard, devitalized food. It's becoming more and more difficult to obtain clean, wholesome food as people have taken to processed and fortified food products in the belief that they are more nutritious. Such foods don't just have preservatives, additives, flavourings and colourings, they also have chemical pesticides and fertilizer residuals. Is it a wonder that degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis and others are escalating proportionately? Is it a surprise that many of our children, particularly in urban areas, are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD/ADHD)5 and other biochemical disturbances that are devastating their families, and ultimately, societies?
Instead of going to the core of the problem, mainly nutritional deficiency, we perpetuate and compound the situation by overmedicating our children. What are we doing to our children? What are we doing to ourselves as a species? How can we claim to nurture and protect our young while giving them food and water laced with chemicals? This is not what Nature intended. Why do we persist in destroying the very thing that nourishes and sustains us? How much longer can we delay the real solution?
We think we are untouched because some of us are fortunate enough to have eluded illness thus far. But with cancer striking one in five persons, heart disease taking more lives of people in their forties, countless people subsisting with crippling pain and deformity, what makes us the exception? We can no longer pretend that we are not aware. Regardless of what the disease is called, its root cause is still deficiency and toxicity. The typical conventional methods of cut (surgery), burn (radiation), and poison (medication) have little effect as they do not address these issues. What if some are able to buy a little more time at the expense of quality of life?
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
