I write to you with enthusiasm and excitement for the potential that Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods has to revolutionize our global food system for the better.

Having worked in food distribution and with businesses providing supply chain services to grocery stores and restaurants, I know first-hand the staggering degree of needs and opportunities for change we have in our modern, industrial food supply chains.

There is a reason I almost never eat at restaurants, and could count on less than 10 fingers those that I choose to visit from time to time. And, there is a reason I’m discerning about which grocery stores I buy food from as well.

It is about values, health, standards, intentions, sustainability, and integrity—in a food system where those principles are too rarely expressed as priority and rarer yet actually deployed in full effect.

Our food system—which has evolved out of the needs and scary pragmatism of the World Wars and the ensuing Cold War—is no longer serving the needs of people and planet the way it could. Our industrial food system is no longer serving the way we need it to. Food, as Hippocrates taught us 2,500 years ago, can be our medicine, and our medicine can be our food. On the other hand, food can be extremely poisonous—and so much of what we moderns call “food” truly is poisonous junk. Moreover, the modern industrial “food” system has become insidious in the slow, toxifying death spiral that is at the heart of so many physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral diseases ravaging our culture and civilization at this time.

But all of this can change.

Food can once again become the essence of health and nourishment, and provide a profoundly life-giving and delightful enjoyment. It can also be the primary mechanism through which we each as individuals choose to steward land, water, and air. Indeed our food and beverage choices are, for many of us, the most powerful daily means we have to help mitigate climate change and support social justice for all of our fellow human beings around the world.

This is the power of food and drink.

[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/09/open-letter-to-jeff-bezos-ceo-of-amazon-on-the-purchase-of-whole-foods/’ target=’_blank’ size=’medium’ align=’aligncenter’]Read More[/thrive_link]