I request the creation of a new US Cabinet Secretary, the secretary of nutrition.

For too long, Americans have suffered from the effects of pesticides, herbicides, carcinogens, deleterious chemicals, preservatives, artificial colorings artificial flavorings, chlorination and fluoridation, hormones added to the diets of cattle and poultry and so many ruinous chemicals in their diets that life spans are shortened and quality of life suffers.

The present generation of young children in school is so adversely affected by poor nutrition, junk food, candy, chemically-laden breakfast foods and ruinous additives in everything to the point that performance in school, truancy, delinquency, poor test scores, lack of concentration and many other problems result from the dismal absence of standards in this realm.

I am not suggesting some new role for the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is a major part of the problem and has almost nothing to do with creating the solution. Since its creation, it has approved most of the biochemical mayhem in the American diet.

Towards creating a secretary of nutrition, I recommend a consortium of natural food advocates, chairmen of large natural food stores, leaders from the field of oncology, members of the sometimes nutritionally-conscious American Medical Association, some Native American elders and leading vegetarian advocates be assembled for one week in a beautiful outdoors working environment to develop a careful plan about what exactly we must do to complete a total overhaul of the mainstream American diet.

There is no question the Chemical Feast is ruining the gene pool, and thus, the future of America.

So many diseases and afflictions stem from poor nutrition, including arteriosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, dental problems, and many others.

Senator Jay Rockefeller was able to overhaul the public school nutrition in the West Virginia schools when he was governor.

By executive order, he got rid of the deleterious foods in the schools and replaced the junk-food vending machines in the vicinity of the schools with fresh fruit and whole wheat sandwiches.

Similarly, on a national level, a secretary of nutrition endowed with such powers, or in the meantime, a president willing to exercise his executive powers, could swiftly do wonders for America in a way the prior processes of conducting government could never accomplish in 100 years.

The public and private schools could be used as fountainheads of information, with children taking home pamphlets to educate their parents.

Noone should have to pay exorbitant surcharges for “natural foods,” or the purest waters which haven’t been poisoned with herbicides or pesticides.

Most of the founding fathers of America were gentlemen farmers who grew their own food and lived joyfully long lives. Raising their families, with absolutely no adversity derived from pollution and the onslaught of the American chemical industries.

They would all be completely horrified if they could witness the depths to which American nutrition has fallen and the disastrous effects it has had on our collective national creativity, adaptability and role in on-going global competition.

They would demand, then implement, exactly what I am requesting: the president, the vice president and Congress reach a rapid concurrence without elaborate “feasibility studies,” committee reports, and bogge- down processes.

We need, urgently, to allocate monies to create a new cabinet member and department, the new secretary of nutrition and department of nutrition.

This must be accomplished soon, for what good are transportation, energy, education, defense, state, treasury, and so on in a nation which suffers from such terrible nutrition?

Think about it for a moment: the bleach which makes your sugar and your flour white, the lead which lines your tin cans, the chemicals used to make chocolate and added to candy, chocolate bars and ice cream.

The chemicals fed to chickens to make them lay eggs, the wretched lives they lead cooped up in cages, debeaked by putting their beaks onto a searing red hot piece of metal, so they won’t peck at each other in their miserable cages.

The chemicals used to extend for six months the “shelf life” of packaged foods which should be destroyed in the first place!

Do you want to sanguinely sit back and be assured by the FDA everything is just peachy as the metabolic machinery of your every cell is gradually rotting away because of the glorious biochemical mayhem.

If insecticides kill insects and herbicides kill weeds, what precisely are they doing to you?

Do you know enough biochemistry to even begin to answer?

How many million copies of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” or Ralph Nader’s “Chemical Feast” would it take to galvanize the collective American reader into action?

With enlightened leadership, the new department of nutrition could be in place within one year with sweeping beneficent powers capable of enforcing new rigid nutritional standards.

There would be lawsuits, requests for injunctions and complaints from those who profit most from the prior flawed national nutrition system.

But perhaps they could be persuaded in advance to cooperate rather than fight losing battles in court, much like the tobacco industry has quietly acceded to the state attorneys general who sued them.

We should implement some aspects of systems of government found in Japan, England, Norway and Swaziland wherein a strong benevolent leader can accomplish so much so quickly simply by executive order.

If ever America needed such a strong executive to improve the lot of all Americans, rich and poor, it would be a powerful new secretary of nutrition. One who might beneficently oversee the nutrition of the entire nation .

The benefits and dividends to America would go on and on for all future generations. Clearly, this is one new idea whose time has arrived.

Stephen Fox

Founder University of Peace

Santa Fe, New Mexico