The chronicles of my life experiences are not an expose’ of my accomplishments but those of my colleagues throughout my career. For mine is the greatest generation of champions and heroes, that changed and ordered the course of agriculture and the health sciences in the modern era. Our collective pursuit of the truth brought together medical scientist, doctors and researchers, in partnership with agriculturalist, ecologist, and farmers, men and women from all walks of life in the shared belief that health was transcendent, and the principles of stewardship, ordained our steps to care for the earth and the health of our people. Our collective diversity found commonality in natural law and the philosophical ideals of the “organic movement.” Our pursuit of health forged alliances, confronted avarice, and battled bureaucracy. We fought to establish laws insuring the purity of organic products and your right to choose alternative health and wellness programs, reinvesting in education and research, we took insurmountable academic and economic risk bridging our understanding to where it is today.

I have traversed this country from farmhouses to the white house, debating policy and programs, convinced that our health does not exist apart from the earth. The interrelationship between soil, food and health has been my life’s work. Recognizing farmers as our “health providers” in that wholesome, nutritious foods are the very foundation of human health. Today virtually every grocery store in America offers customers fresh organic produce, thousands of prepared and frozen organic products, grass feed organic meat, free range eggs and organic dairy products. Dietary supplements, and nutritional products mass themselves on shelves responding to increasing consumer demand. At the same time over 60% of our population confront problems with obesity, the incidence of heart disease and cancer remind us daily that health and wellness still exist in a void for people all over America and the world.

After four decades in education, teaching and writing, advancing the merits of organics and brining those products to the marketplace, espousing the value of nutrition in preventive medicine, I am “forever” in the literature reviewing the latest advances in nutritional science, following a growing number wellness physicians and intricate dietary programs that are unyielding in their pursuit of preventing chronic metabolic disease. The past and the future remind me, that there are still “giants” to slay, diseases to vanquish, and farms to save. Perhaps my greatest motivation is the opportunity to help a young mother with a chronically sick child, struggling to find answers, or an elderly man convinced that he must live with the pain of his arthritis. Helping people, transforming lives, A Healthier You is our opportunity to continue “this pursuit of health,” as I extend an invitation to join me.

Bill Francis