How can we help our economy and create jobs while improving our health through better nutrition?

1. Let's start by eliminating all taxation on the production and consumption of food. Eating should not be a taxable event, and we should not tax those who work to feed others.
2. We must eliminate our complicated system of agricultural subsidies, which disporoportionately benefit the politically-connected at everyone's expense.
3. Finally, we must  permanently eliminate the estate tax, which is one of the biggest barriers to keeping family farms productive between generations.

These three changes will empower our communities to feed ourselves, and remove a massive amount of regulatory overhead that discriminates against local and regional producers.

As the current administration continues attempting to force one-size fits all "health care" on the American people, more people are realizing that increased government control and regulation of medical care and health "insurance" is not a panacea.

Recent news articles from the UK and Canada both warn of the dangers of state controlled medicine -- consider the Telegraph article above, which illustrates how patients have even less recourse against government malpractice than they do against unethical or negligent private parties.

I have long maintained that the cure for our American health care system is decentralizing power, not further consolidation of power in the hands of government bureaucrats and insurance companies. The proposed healthcare initiatives from Washington continue moving in precisely the wrong direction, however.

Besides pushing back against this obvious encroachment on the rights of individual patients and providers, I believe we need to re-educate ourselves on principles of attaining and maintaining true health, as opposed to simply asking how we can afford to treat symptoms, and medically manage chronic disease.

While there is no short-term "fix" in pursuing long-term wellness, we must start looking at health and wellness from a personal, individual, and long-term perspective.

For those who are fortunate enough to enjoy good health today, how can you maintain that priceless asset over time? For those who are still relatively healthy, but heading on a path towards debilitating chronic illness, how can you reverse that course?

Hippocrates was quoted as saying, "Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food." There is ample evidence linking dietary habits to chronic disease, yet we spend more time worrying about affording three pills per day than we do figuring out how to obtain three healthy meals per day.

I recently gave a presentation connecting the topics of our economic crisis, agricultural system, and health care challenges (three parts, thirty minutes total):