I suffer from a condition that I wonder is common? Though I might be recovering slightly over the years. Perhaps it’s a maturation of sorts and perhaps it is a realisation that has dawned more. We all see the world through different eyes and experience a different world depending on our circumstances. My problem is that I find it difficult to understand when others don’t see what I think is very obvious to the world. Opportunities to share your view of the world are fraught with censorship and self regulation though and our algorithms keep us firmly in our own lanes mostly. So as I learn to understand this reality more I am becoming more accepting that it is vital we keep talking to each other and be open to learn. Especially if the topic challenges your previous beliefs.. Edward De Bono has always appealed to me with his work on lateral thinking. Stretching our thinking to solve problems. The creativity of solutions are appealing. Working upstream on problems to prevent them happening does seem logical though and I cannot help but feel this point is fairly obvious to most..but perhaps it is my own delusion!
 
Let me point you to some topical information… I thought you might be interested in the report out on Sepsis from the HSE. Sepsis is a word we are hearing more commonly now in our language. It is effectively normalised. Organ failure from infection that cannot be controlled is perhaps a simplified story that is understandably a fearful prospect for us all who may need to go to hospital. The report tells a story too of where we are in Ireland. Health reports are not every ones cup of tea. Data can be played with to tell an appropriate story. Page 12 gives an interesting graph if you take the time to look. As more awareness of the condition is raised the more cases are diagnosed. When the definition changes the trend does too. As for 2020, well it looks like a significant drop in numbers but those cases may have been reclassified to covid instead. You might be forgiven for thinking its not so bad. But what I see is a distinct trend upwards. Antibiotics have been a game changer for the health system but we are seeing more and more resistance where our bodies are not as strong to resist the damage. By the time you go to hospital you are relying on the expertise and medical intervention to help you recover. The warnings are there of course and have been for a number of years that the hospital itself is struggling to be the solution. In many cases they accelerate the problem of ill health. Medical errors & intervention are suggested to be a leading cause of death. I often see this quoted but again I wonder about the source of the data and how this is manipulated. But let’s go back a bit shall we?
 
Antibiotic resistance is due to overuse of antibiotics and our bodies getting too used to the effect. How many courses of antibiotics have you had in the last few years? If you are counting your visits to the doctor you probably can remember…
 
If on the other hand you are used to consuming UPF and non organic foods you might be surprised that your antibiotic load will be significant with out you knowing. Roundup (glyphosate) is a registered antibiotic as well as a herbicide. Conventional grain is sprayed liberally with it. At many stages of growth and harvest. Fruits, meats, vegetables all have their dose too. Your daily loaf of bread may be the reason that your immune system takes a battering when you least need it to. How about sugar? It’s the season for sugar from October to December. Don’t think the sugar cane fields escape their dose of glyphosate to manage the yields demanded by addicted consumers…
 
And how about those cosmetic chemicals to add to the mix as well as our house cleaning chemicals..
 
Our bodies can take so much until they can’t. I am sympathetic to the medical world that is expected to work miracles at the last minute. Time is a great healer they say and time is what we have to use wisely. Build your immune system strength every day with real food! Eat organic foods! Minimise your toxic load. Give your self a chance. Don’t wait until you have to compete for a trolley space!

​Anne Maher

Our recent trip to Salt Lake City in Utah was a revelation in more ways than one. My brain hurts as I feel the cells growing and stretching!! It was fascinating…!
 
Interesting to note it had been 39 years since I last set foot in the US. A teenager experiencing an exciting new environment. Away from college, the farm and late 80s, it was only for the summer weeks on a J1 visa. But I remember a large gathering of family and relatives at the house before I left as if it was for a lifetime. Memories of emigration resonated. While my job was a live in au pair on the outskirts of Washington DC, I was so excited about the familiarity of McDonalds, Wendys, KFC. Still relatively new in Ireland at the time. It was like being on a movie set. First time on a plane. First time seeing obese people. I was so charmed by the pizza delivery concept. Far from it I was raised. Our food system has significantly changed in these years and I believe Taco Bell has arrived recently to add to the growing list of US outlets.  Drone deliveries are a thing now… That didn’t take long!
 
It was no wonder that the irony of my trip was to follow the movement of traditional foods, raw milk, nourishing broth and the like! Who knew! How the wheel turns! Is this a circular economy in action? 

​Anne Maher

The news today talks about the consultant fees in hospitals, highlighting costs that would seem to me to be excessive. A quick check on AI tells me that the average would be, let’s say, up to €400K a year. Call-out fees, private work etc, seem to bump this up. Earnings of €1M have been reported.
 
That amount would pay a lot of farmers to provide food as medicine. It’s easy to say that. But that is not how it works, alas.
 
We justify huge amounts of money and resources to be spent on health. Is it value for money?
 
Here’s a crazy idea. What if such consultants were paid on the success outcome? What if they were rewarded to reduce patient numbers by ensuring they recovered? We appear to measure the metric of medications delivered as a success.
 
Medication overload and toxicity is being increasingly acknowledged, though, and the reality is sobering. Have we poisoned a generation with paracetamol? The genie is out of the bottle regardless of the scientific skirmishes of who is right and wrong. We are beginning to question everything as a population, and that is no harm. Maybe this nourishing food thing is encouraging critical thinking…
 
I am keeping an eye on a company called Revero.
 
Here is the future of healthcare, where the expertise is in your pocket as a tech enabled on line medical clinic. Virtual clinics of experts to support you find the root cause of your issue. Autoimmunity being a hot topic among the other metabolic disorders.
 
Of course, the personal touch is important but hey this is a game changer on health care costs. I wonder will it come to Ireland? Or is this model here already?? Let me know…

​Anne Maher

Food recalls were a common feature of the news this summer. Ready meals and packed spinach were the targets this time. I always find these recalls fascinating. Food produced at scale means that when a recall happens there are major impacts for the businesses. Depending of course on the size of the business. Some are too big to fail. For small enterprises though a recall can be catastrophic and invariably an end.
 
The ”possible presence” of a pathogenic bacteria though is usually given as the reason lately. That is a very vague statement in my opinion. Is testing not specific enough in our technologically advanced world? Would this hold up in a court of law? I wonder.
 
What it does hold up in though, is the mind of the public. Condemned through fear, reputations sink through association and businesses sink or swim. Remember how the sales of sanitizer rose in 2020...?
 
Our lives are not risk free. It is worth reminding ourselves of this fact. A poor immune system reinforced with years of poor diet and lifestyle will not be protected by food safety recalls. The eternal dilemma of the germ theory versus the terrain theory needs a reminder. Removing the bugs with strong antibiotics, sterilants and sanitisers does not help in the long run although it is a lucrative model for those involved along the chain… The reality of health comes back to us protecting and building up our immune system. We are learning the hard way.
 
“The terrain is everything, the microbe is nothing” a famous phrase apparently attributed to Pasteur on his deathbed. 

Anne Maher

Draft proposals from the European Commission, according to RTE “indicate that from 2028, CAP funding will be merged with other EU budget lines - such as cohesion, migration, and infrastructure - into a single "National and Regional Partnerships" fund”. It is easy to interpret this as a negative.
 
Food production and farming are dissolving identity it seems. Bureaucrats can change everything with the stroke of a pen. But what will this mean for farmers? The first fear is grant support reducing. Will we see a huge reduction in farming as farmers exit the business? Anything is possible. But we also need to embrace a change. Sometimes things can work for the better. Now and then a shake up is needed to get us to see what we really have right in front of us.. 

​Anne Maher

Oh dear I am really digging deep now. Digesting as it were. Fermenting even. I have been ruminating on some information that is quite frankly an emperors new clothes moment.
 
I was wandering through the ChatGBT app to explore emissions in the organic sector and strayed into the livestock emissions. Dear oh dear. How dreadful are all those cow farts! The emission numbers are high…but I wanted to quantify how high as compared to something else. It puts things in perspective you see. So I thought, I know…I’ll compare it to the emissions from bombs. Afterall we hear about all the rockets and missiles and bombs every day in the news.
 
What a surprise to find this out and I am quoting Chat GBT here. “ Military emissions are largely excluded from national climate reporting ( eg Kyoto, Paris) making them a hidden carbon hotspot.” WHAT!!!!???
 
Please do check this one out for yourself. I’m still recovering from the shock. I cannot begin to take this CO2 emissions guilt seriously if there is not a true picture. Trust = Truth & Transparency
 
Farmers! It’s time to call out the system that is trying to break you. By being exempt from reporting then the Military Industrial Complex undermine the validity of this plan. Like research that exempts the data that doesn’t suit. Can we trust it? Before we count down to the time we will be expected to pay carbon fines there will have to be some serious kick back on this issue!  

​Anne Maher

​It is not that easy to keep up with tariff stories so I  might be very out of date by the time this goes out. I just wondered about butter. If Irish food exports were subject to tariffs which made them cost prohibitive then would this mean there is a glut available at source? Would we need to bury the butter in the bogs again to preserve the glut for the mean times… can you tell I obsess about this food? It brings back memory from childhood about my parents taking an organised bus trip from Portlaoise to a place in the North called Jonesborough in Armagh in the 70s. I remember boxes of butter coming back. Obviously worth travelling great distances as a group on a bus for this food. I guess the price was prohibitive at the time south of the border. I can’t say if this was a once off or a regular thing. But notable now when I dwell on the same desire to find good food. It seems too easy to get food but there is effort involved in the valuable stuff! The question I have today is how far will you go to get it? 

​Anne Maher

If you come from a farming background chance are you will have had some brain rewiring time to adjust to the use of the letters AI. Artificial insemination has become intelligence. It was only a matter of time perhaps! I have just read Klaus Swabbs book on the 4th Industrial Revolution. Gosh he was enthusiastic about how technology was going to be the wonderful gamechanger. Indeed it is difficult to deny the progress and speed of technology. But have you noticed the brakes being applied more lately? Screens have not been the answer to seamless learning in schools. In fact there is a return to pen and paper. A realisation that technology does not provide all the answers. Finding the balance of traditional and modern is our challenge today. Personally I find the automatic tills a challenge. “Unidentified item in the bagging area” This slogan is up there now with “Mind the gap” The latest gadget to keep up with. How bloody awful it is for the rising number of folk suffering with memory loss and dementia to have to cope with the speed of technology development. Are we checking out mentally I wonder? Screens are robbing our children of the ability to socialise and every daily interaction that can reinforce socialisation is being digitised. Social connections are so valuable for our health and slowly we are realising this. But will we be able to recover the virtualised children in time? That is the concern.  

Anne Maher