Healthy Thoughts

April 2009

Vote with your Dollar

Part of an ongoing series called “Things that make you go huum”

By Jay P Vanden Heuvel PhD

In 1968, 50,000 people a day would protest against social order. Sometimes, this resulted in the death of innocent people. We protested over the war, the government, women’s rights, and racial prejudice. If you lived during that time, protests were also happening in Check Slovakia, Mexico, and Russia. But no protest was more immense than here in America.

Why? People were looking for change.

Martin Luther King tired to do this peacefully (we all know what happened to him in Memphis). The point is he and other voices (the non-powerful law-makers), ached to be heard. Many times falling on deaf ears due to powerful lobbyist and special interests.

Maybe the speeches and/or violence could have been averted by another way?

Yes, there is an easier way to make change for what we all desire. Our aim today, is to achieve quietly without protest, a better quality of life.

We can do this without blood-shed. We can do this without having to be on a podium or in front of an open mic. We can do so without having to march on Washington D.C., and without police retaliation. Change can happen quickly and quietly, just by simply “voting” in this country with your dollar.

What you spend each day determines your individual, local, state, country, and the planets out-come. Your dollar always determines what, if anything, will change.

What is it at times, we are trying to change? The economy? The Planet itself? Well, if you are reading this article, in this paper, most likely it is to help change all of that. You probably believe your lifestyle is not optimum, your environment is suffering, and stress is destroying your life. You agree with what this paper offers. It is in tune with some of or all of your beliefs. You want what surrounds you to change. You aspire to a higher quality of life.

Enter in the idea of voting with your dollar! The sad part is, much of what we don’t like about our life, is due to the purchases WE have made prior to today. Every second, our choices we make (spend), our hard earned dollars impact the system’s in place. The simple law of economics is: supply vs. demand.

Instead of us protesting that the Government, FTC/FDA, big Pharma, or the AMA, have to change, WE (the every day consumer) must change. Our purchases must change. We need to change our spending habits. So, what we all purchase with the almighty dollar is the greatest way to make change. It is the biggest and loudest voice ever to be heard. If you don’t like something, stop supporting it with purchases. Most likely, it will go away or more importantly change, to your liking.

For instance, the Department of Energy says that if every household in America bought just one compact fluorescent light bulb, we’d save enough energy to light 7 million homes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to 1 million cars. Things like that make me go “hmmm”, and it should. In addition, over the 10,000 hours the bulb will last, it will save you about $41.25 in electricity cost. This is a no brain(er) right? What may stop you from doing this no brain(er) is the concern you have when you look at the cost of the bulb upfront…$18.00! Then you freak out. You forget about the long term savings when a cheap standard bulb is only $0.75. I always say “you get what you pay for”. Before voting with your dollars, you may need to do some background investigation. Let me help you with that.

Buy locally. Buy in your hometown farmers market when you can or grow your own food. One pound of Asparagus from Chile to New York uses 73 pounds of fuel and releases 4.7 pounds of CO2 into our air we all breathe. Asparagus grows in ditches in Wisconsin for free.

Buy Organic. For each 1% increase in organic food purchases in the U.S. alone, pesticide/herbicide is reduced by over 10 million pounds per year. A typical bag of potato chips has been subjected to over 50 chemicals from seed to shelf. Organic potatoes? Well you do the math. The average American consumes 14 pounds of chemicals a year from additives, food colorings (a known carcinogen), and preservatives. 2 pounds of the 14 mentioned are pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, and heavy metals. Careful “what” you buy and how you “vote” for food with your dollar. How about an organic cotton shirt? Cotton accounts for 25% of all insecticides used worldwide. Yet cotton only accounts for 3% of the world’s farmland.

Ok, I can go on and on with these stats. I will, but can you see how voting with your dollar changes everything? Let’s say you read a cosmetic you were about to put on your face that you bought recently. It says “Imidazolidinyl urea”. A good rule of thumb is: would you eat this? If not, it most likely doesn’t belong on your skin then.

Wait a minute, you bought it! You voted for it! They will continue to supply it to your demand. By the way, this (I-urea) is a common preservative in cosmetics and classified as a known toxic chemical. Our concept becomes simple, stop voting for it. They will stop supplying it. I personally vote for all botanical cosmetics instead, a line I like is “Natria” from Natures Sunshine Products, just to name one. That is who I decide to vote for to supply me with cosmetics.

Buy Recycled. If every household in America replaced just one box of facial tissue with 100% recycled, you would save 163,000 trees. One roll of toilet paper? 423,900 trees. One paper towel? 544,000 trees. Paper napkins? 1 million. Is recycled paper really more expensive? Do you look for the recycled symbol or just buy what ever is the cheapest and on sale that week? "Hm".

Quality vs. quantity. I recently helped a gentleman who “had” depression. He wanted to know what I might recommend for this. I stated “Saint John’s Wort” (a very popular herbal remedy). He said he had tried it. I asked where he got it, he stated a local superstore. He took 3 capsules a day for a month with no results. I asked what he paid for that, “$12 for a month supply” he replied. I showed him a high quality similar product and asked him to try it for a month. The cost of this similar was $25. He balked at it. I then informed him that many cheaper supplements use dirt, fillers, or wrong parts of the plant, to make it so cheap in the first place. I even educated him on the fact that this herb must be picked between 10 o’clock a.m. and 2 o’clock p.m. in the summer solstice to be effective. I asked him to try this higher quality one, if he got no results, I would refund his expense. In two days he called me to say “he felt like a new man”. It only took just one capsule a day versus the three a day of the other cheaper one. He couldn’t understand how two bottles of this supplement could be so radically different. “Aren’t all supplements created equal?” “No”, I replied, “Because, you get what you pay for”.

If you do the math, both bottles had a 60 count and same milligram per capsule. The cheaper one, at 3 a day, would have required him to do about 3 bottles in 2 months. 3 bottles X $12 = $36 (and yes, he wasn’t even getting results). Now the $25 bottle lasting 2 months, at one a day, seems to be the better deal doesn’t’ it? He also got results faster with a more upfront cost, but he got long term savings. Similar to the light bulb we already discussed. You do get what you pay (vote) for.

There are thousands of more examples that help illustrate this point about “you vote with your dollar”. I have given just a few. This idea is a wonderful non-political way to make change. You can make environmental, political, less-stressful change, with every purchase. Every decision and every choice will make impacts to the systems in place. Then come on America, let’s make change. Improve your quality of life by voting with your dollar. Change what you don’t like and support what you do like. This is just one of many little articles that will be ongoing in this paper, designed to make you go “huum”. To make you think and help you act in an educated responsible way. Good luck and good buy.

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