"As an emergency room medical doctor for 27 years, I treated what went wrong with society and public health. Often the 'prescription' was simply to eat healthy food." Dr. Stephen Rivard
Rita Billon: Why did you co-found Iroquois Valley Farms? Dr. Stephen Rivard: The health care system in America, while truly superb in reacting to many diseases and accidents, does not effectively deal with preventing diseases. In my 36 years in medicine, I saw that almost all disease trends related to food. It occurred to me that unless we changed our food system, we simply couldn't grow GDP fast enough to cover our medical costs. Iroquois Valley Farms was founded to help solve this problem. RB: What are the disease trends you observed over your medical career? SR: When I first got started in medicine, food allergies were fairly uncommon. For example, celiac disease was almost non-existent. And, adult-onset diabetes was rare.... Now, obesity is the #1 medical problem, and along with that you have high rates of diabetes and hypertension. Cancer is now the #1 killer of children: it skyrocketed in the US in last 40 years. RB: What is the relationship between food and these illnesses? SR: We're poisoning ourselves with toxic chemicals and nutrient deficient food. Our only real hope of recovery is to change what we eat. In the end, eating healthy foods and avoiding highly processed foods and those grown with herbicides and pesticides is the best solution. And it's better for the earth. RB: How did you and Dave Miller decide to impact healthy food?
SR: Eight years ago we sat down to make this dream a reality. We didn't know exactly the path, but saw the end: more healthy food free of GMOs, pesticides and processed foods. Little by little we're changing the food available for us to eat. RB: Is there a growing awareness of food related problems in your profession? SR: Yes ... research data is more prevalent on the unhealthy consequences of our modern diets. Many of our investors are healthcare professionals. I think that is telling.
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