Truth Behind Facts

My focus lately has wildly been on healthy eating, various diets and finding the true source of where our food comes from; behind the labeling/packaging, behind the marketing....what am I really eating? Prior to this new obsession food has always just been...food. Something I knew I needed, never questioning its source. However various documentaries, books and articles have slowly opened my eyes to just how misleading labeling and marketing can be. Understanding long term effects of unhealthy eating is always a big topic and even more recently understanding the long term effects of "healthy" eating is being researched more and more. What we THINK is healthy is largely based on the fact of what we are TOLD. However, who is checking and questioning the person that is telling us?

This concept of questioning what we are being told has made me think about other areas of my life that I used to blindly accept (or perhaps still do). In regulatory affairs we are told to follow different standards and guidelines. The information within a standard is not necessarily something I would question, rather I would question the interpretation of those standards. The interpretation of standards leads to either the correct or sometimes incorrect implementation. This is what varies throughout the industry. Therefore, an understanding of why certain companies comply one way while others comply a different way is important. I have been able to realize this as I work with more and more companies. Sometimes it is not even a matter of right or wrong, it is more a matter of being able to support why you are complying a certain way. Auditors come in and look for compliance, they go through the standards and ask for proof of compliance, and it is the company's responsibility to show their interpretation of what is acceptable using the standards as justification. It is the regulatory affairs department's responsibility within a company to make sure that the interpretation of a specific standard is accurate and will hold up in an audit.

Digging deeper into the truth, rather than just accepting what we are being told on the outside I believe is important in having a successful career, a healthy life etc.

--Jillian F. Walker