In this segment the focus will change to the selling of food. Whole channels on the cable and dish networks are dedicated to food. For example: http://www.foodchannel.com/. The Food Channel, "Our Mission The Food Channel is a media company that is in the business of creating and publishing original content in order to provide food knowledge to the world.—trends, stories, recipes, products and show—to people in an entertaining way.
We are both author and finder of original talent, giving others a place for publication. While we originate and develop content, we also provide the electronic media to deliver and display the content online and via mobile.
Our Mission
The Food Channel is a media company that is in the business of creating and publishing original content in order to provide food knowledge to the world. That means we:
- Develop new recipes and insights into food, at times using new products on the market or offering menu innovation based around trends
- Test food and food-related products to evaluate and rank the "best"
- Offer our knowledge through foodchannel.com and its affiliates
WOW the Food Channel! I bet all of us here watch it every day, or.. We have never watched it and even if we stumbled across it we wouldn't watch it.
Would this channel be something the government could use? A channel dedicated to shaping your diets, all of us as a country eating what the government wants us to. Why, to live longer...?
I think not. Food stamps, this is the U.S. food channel, is it not? Should it be, should we demand of our Congress person a law to guide our eating habits, we have these laws for our public school children, why not the adults? I think some municipalities are already passing these laws, soft drinks, toys in the bag with the food, law after law creeping into our "free" society in city after city and state after state that control what we eat and the portion size, and if one can smoke nearby these eating establishments.
How on earth did we get to this point!!! Are we adults so intellectually challenged that we need our government to legislate what and how much one consumes?
Yes, clearly the explosion of choices we have now as compared to 30 - 40 years ago has ruined our health, made slaves of the poor and made "X" percent of the population overweight enough to force our healthcare system to collapse into the hands of greedy insurance companies and vote hungry politicians, with no end in sight and with no end of the expanding cost of our healthcare.
What will be the next industry to collapse do to our collective eating habits, the insurance industry or the medical industry? Or will the private businesses in this country, facing enormous costs to figure out how to still make a profit all the while juggling Obamacare, price in rising food costs that dwindling full time employees will have to figure out on their own as employers drop healthcare, or will the local hospitals just pick up the slack just as they always have... And what will be the cost of THAT!!!
This a a good topic, Twins. I'm glad you went back to it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with what you've posted.
I think it's mostly about what we subsidize - many folks' diets are determined by simple economics. $10 will buy me 900 calories worth of healthy nutrition or 8000 calories worth of artery-clogging crap.
Maybe we (meaning the gov't) should subsidize carrots instead of HFCS? Or maybe we just shouldn't subsidize anything and folks would choose to eat better because of price equilibrium?
Food for thought (pun intended).
Or just imagine a movement within the population which dedicates itself to the concept of personal responsibility.Responsibility for what we eat, how much we weigh, how physically fit we keep ourselves; but most of all how little we blame the government for the problems we create for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThere is a tendency within western countries, led by the US to blame the government for everything. At the same time there is the almost universal belief that you want less government. All this as you pontificate from your favorite arm chair, watch Sex in the City on the box and chew the biggest Big Mac you can find in the take away store. This last by the way is so "convenient" you do not need to get off your arse as you drive through .America, what have you given the world that the world really needs? I can think of a few. The atomic bomb, TV Sit Coms, Grid Iron football, High cholesterol, Left hand drive motor cars and a truncated spelling of words in the English language you did not invent!!
Are you all bad? No of course not, you invented new ways to go into hock and call it saving, a bank which oils the printing presses to print worthless paper and a treasury with the best spin doctors in the world to convince the rest of us that the almighty dollar is still worth something.!. At the same time you are doing all of the above, you have a hand outstretched to help some poor buggar worse off than yourselves. For this reason I have spent decades in trying to work out what makes you tick.( and yes I even like you!)
Cheers from Aussie
Many people would love to eat healthy or feed their families a well-balanced diet. They just can't afford it. "Personal Responsibility" gives way to personal finances in these cases. That's at least in part due to Agra subsidies courtesy of the taxpayer.
DeleteSo, "they just can't afford it... Or actually it's quite affordable, we just choose to be foolish with our choices. For example(s) I choose to buy and eat low salt ritz crackers, heck I check the sodium content of every single item I buy. They always cost less because nobody buys them.. Lol fing lol..
DeleteAgra subsides do play a huge role in this fine mess. In fact every government "improvement" to the agriculture business has actually been a double edged sword, the farmer often has to charge more for the "better" food the shipper charges more, the gas station, etc. etc.
Don't get me started on ethanol quite yet, it will have its own thread...
We have lost the art of having a small garden in our respective yards, hell, info mercials are always selling the tomato vine that hangs upside down, there most be at least a dozen veggies that could be grown even in the window boxes of Chicago ghettos, imagine the gang bangers shooting it out over who grows the biggest tomatoes...
We're killing ourselves, the food we eat is the very root of Obamacare and he knows it and does nothing about, his wife would make a better leader than him........
Kingston...
Delete"but most of all how little we blame the government for the problems we create for ourselves."
In the late 40's and 50's yes, there was very little government intervention into our lives, however once we reached the 1960's our culture began to change, and the war in Viet Nam generated a need for bigger government, the "war on poverty" and the Civil Rights movement all lit a portion of the fuses together and by the 70's the "need" culture had established its roots. The 80's were about greed and excess and the result was the 90's, a failed decade of legislation gone bad and the onset of the brick and morter of the hand outs. The failure of the Clinton Admin to kill Bin Laden brought about 9-11 and the failed war in Iraq. At the same time the old guard press began to die off and the new "MSM" with 95% donating and backing the Democratic Party... well you know the rest...
My point is that the evolution of the free ride brough down America, once the hippies realized they could game he system, they did and....
In the late 1990s, the Food Stamp program was revamped, with some states phasing out actual stamps in favor of a specialized debit card system known as Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), provided by private contractors. Many states merged the use of the EBT card for public welfare programs as well, such as cash assistance. The move was designed to save the government money by not printing the coupons, make benefits available immediately instead of forcing the recipient to wait for mailing or picking up the booklets in person, and reduce theft and diversion. The 2008 farm bill renamed the Food Stamp Program as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (as of October 2008), and replaced all references to "stamp" or "coupon" in federal law to "card" or "EBT."
In the 2012 fiscal year, $74.6 billion in food assistance was distributed. As of September 2012, 47.7 million Americans were receiving on average $134.29 per month in food assistance. In Washington, D.C., and Mississippi, more than one-fifth of residents receive food assistance.
And the rest is as they say.... "History"
A great countgry gone down the tubes, no need to work to live, no need to try, no need to do anything but stay on the dole...
Like many problems in this country, this is another one that has developed quite a bit over time. We learned during the Korean war, TD, that our diet was killing us. All we have done since then is change what is killing us. The way things work in the real world is that if the FDA actually publishes any of the truths you are speaking here, they get their funding cut by a representative whose benefactor in big agra is pissed. Very slowly, small voices are getting heard about how jacked our food system is. But, the counter winds are very strong.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff about food stamps crosses into an overlapping realm and you will likely not agree with anything I have to say on it. There are people who work and get food stamps and that F'n galls me. If somebody goes to work near full time, they deserve a wage high enough to buy food. There are plenty who work at wallmart who do not make enough. Why are we subsidizing Sam Walton's lazy heirs?
Misguided as liberal attempts may be, such as limiting the size of big gulps, or not allowing fast food restaurants to have a drive through window and so on, I see little effort from the right at all on this Brandt. Even you have been chided here by other right leaning types for suggesting the government should intervene. A lot of this, IMO, starts with the farm bill and that realm is thoroughly controlled by Republicans. Many on the right call the FDA a bullshit agency, but the minute the FDA actually tries to even publish unbiased information, they will be threatened to remove it immediately. That's not the fault of the FDA.
I support a lot of what you are saying here, but respectfully, potential solutions do not square with your bigger world view.
I was on food stamps recently, got off them just last month..
DeleteMy bigger world view may surprise you, just because I tend to support republican agendas does not mean I am illiterate.
I suspect most of everyone's bigger world views here would reveal that life is not black and white for anyone, I already know that your bigger view is more complex. When it comes to legislation, we get only two real choices. Whether Democrat or Republican, our legislative process with respect to food is completely owned by big agra. Some Republicans in office, I believe, completely buy into the myths that big agra sells us. Others, I suspect, believe that any solution that comes from "the market" is a good one. For years, discussing food has been the realm of tree hugger shit and soundly dismissed. For real change to occur on this, it is going to have to come from the right.
DeleteI almost commented on the last thread but they get left so quickly so didn't bother. I almost started a new one but have so much to say on the subject that I don't know where to start.
ReplyDeleteFirst I want to comment on a statement made by Mick: "Now, using gene splicing we can do it more efficiently, producing crops with desirable features, like improved nutrition."
Statements like this are what misguide the subject of food THAT WE ARE PROVIDED to eat. 'Gene Splicing' has not raised the nutritional value of one GM modified plant on this planet. While it may make a plant resistant to this or that or grow faster, the only thing that imparts 'nutritional value' to a plant is the medium in which it is grown. Nutrients supplied by fertilizers and crop rotation raise the levels of only three minerals. These three are absolute requirements for the plant to grow... without them the crop WOULD NOT GROW. Good quality growing medium has some 20 plus minerals, generally imparted to the soil by crushed, eroded or leached from rock in the soil. Our soils are extremely depleted of most minerals and they are NEVER replaced. unless a plant is left to decompose in place, minerals taken from the soil are gone and because less crop waste is left on the ground and stalks and leaves are not turned under but instead sold off for other products, those minerals never return. GM increases yield, not quality... Mick, in the link you posted, which was a mouthpiece article of the GM Agribusiness, it equates BRIX as a measurement of sweetness in things like molasses.... Learn about BRIX and why it is a quality marker for vegetables... all vegetables. Their comments were a diversion to the facts because mineral sugars have a big part to play in the ability to digest that vegetable.
pfunky2222 has summed up in a very succinct way what I have to say. To the subject of affordability, many people are misguided about foods nutritional value and its cost. TD, while your choice of a low salt cracker my be a wiser choice with respect to say.. high blood pressure... but the nutritional value is suspect and costs 3times that of white bread per calorie. We are being sold grain by Agribusiness, Food industry, Pharmaceutical/medical industry and indeed the government itself. Bigger tax base, cheaper labor and an ever expanding market drive these entities. In fairness to the medical profession I will say that much of their misinformation comes from dubious trials and ‘studies’ guided and supported by vested interests... if the facts do support the conclusion, the information never get coverage.
The subject of grains as a food source is a complete subject unto itself but suffice to say, A growing number of people are starting to see a disease ridden world in a new light and the chorus focusing on Fat and Sugar are in many ways a diversion... particularly with regards to fat. The need to keep up the grain myth is important on a lot of levels... were it not for grain at least a 1/3 of the world population would have to disappear! Not good for expanding markets and cheap labor. The problems with blaming the ill health of our population (primarily western) completely on poor life choices is that it allows for the discussion to be brushed under the carpet. People must eat X number of calories per day to maintain weight. Without that minimum amount of calories we would eventually die. Taking an average man of around 6ft. that is about 2500 per day. When you use income as a benchmark for gaining those calories, the type of food you can afford and its effects on how you eat is important. Using current average store prices in UK's ASDA (owned by walmart) eating bread is 12 times cheaper PER CALORIE than broccoli.. 8 times cheaper than chicken breast and 1.5 times cheaper than potatoes. So if you are on a lower income you are pushed toward the bread and potato sources of calories. For the average person, the retort to this is "So, let them eat bread" To this I say... the story gets more complex.
Next is the subject of grains. Essential for the feeding of our ever expanding world population, population and food production is yet another subject but suffice to say, grains and starches have become a vital source of nutrients worldwide but most importantly for the poor. Grains like wheat, corn and rice and root vegetables like potatos, like every other carbohydrate, turns to glucose in the blood stream. The speed with which foods are turned into glucose creates several responses in the body. One of those responses is a rise in insulin who’s’ job it is to carry glucose to all of the cells in the body for ready energy. The faster foods turn to glucose the higher the insulin response and the faster cells must absorb the sugar out of the blood stream because the body does not like high blood sugar.
ReplyDeleteWhat is never talked about is the fact that refined carbohydrates found in breads, pastas, mashed potatos, gravy and a thousand other products is that they turn to glucose just as fast as sugars like the much maligned high fructose corn syrup. Because of this spike of sugar in the bloodstream we get energy and a feeling of fullness but that feeling does not last but about 2 hours and the body starts signalling again that it is hungry. Fats and complex carbohydrates convert slower and keep a feeling of satiety much longer. The fact is that people who for whatever reason have a diet strongly based around these foods will actually go through a physical withdrawal process that lasts 3 to 4 days. Try not eating any sugars, grains, or starches for a week.... be careful of what you eat... they appear in many products in many different ways and be sure to have plenty of other foods on had... you might find yourself seriously calorie deficient.
While the cause for diabetes is not known, a serious line of thought is that over time the ingestion of these high glycemic foods punish cells forcing them to absorb glucose they do not need to the point where they start refusing to take it. The more cells resist the greater the response from the pancreas to produce more insulin to ‘force’ the cells to accept the glucose (insulin resistance) and punishes the pancreas which has to produce higher and higher responses to these foods and over time causing the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin to be damaged. What does that have to do with low income people? If you have to by 17500 calories and need to spent up to 40% of your income to get the cheapest available... You purchase them in the form of bread and potatos because that is what you can afford; you set yourself up of repeated bouts of hunger which leads you by the hand to a whole host of metabolic problems culminating in diabetes. People want to blame the problem exclusively on personal control and the inability to put down that big gulp. That is certainly a problem of a rather idol society but it doesn't explain why consistently 20 years after world food organizations enter a third world country with aid, that the country develops a diabetes problem. Those people are still poor... they don't get Big Macs, or Big Gulps or Jumbo sized Snickers.... they get refined grains... very little meat protein and almost no fats. The attack on sugars in food, while very relevant diverts attention from the damage grains and starches are doing to our health... but we wouldn't want the world to know that grains really aren't very good foods... I had someone ask me a while back... why do I think that it is never heard of other mammals, other than members of the Rodentia family, ravaging fields of grain but they will lay waste to vegetables in the next field.
TS,
DeleteI just read your posts, and I found them very fascinating.
Thank you.
Jean
TS,
DeleteSorry, I found your post quite provocative and had to return and ask a simple question. We have a small garden, and started composting about three years ago. Grass, leaves, kitchen food waste. Does that measurably add back? Judging from what you posted, I'm not so sure.
Thanks.
Jean
TS, thank you for a devastatingly solid read. The truth may be simple, but that doesn't mean it can always be summed up in ten words or less. This is a complex issue and your post is dead on. I believe liberals have made a similar argument for years and have been laughed at for it. When people won't listen to the rational arguments, the only thing left to do is go on jihads against portions and too much sugar which are equally scorned. If the day ever comes that Rush Limbaugh starts talking like you do here, drastic change will occur.
DeleteJean, Everything you add back to the soil is good. To understand the problem we have with our depleted farms, think of a plant as a sponge. It sucks up all of the nutrients it can as it grows. when you remove the plant, all of the nutrients that it absorbed are removed as well... If you cut off the fruit and till the rest of the plant, those nutrients return to the soil, so composting returns minerals back to the soil.
DeleteYou are right Max it is a complex weave of problems created by a variety of people. While you like to point to liberals as the good guys here, I must remind you that liberals have done nothing to force third world countries to check their birth explosions. I know that it is difficult to watch people who have malnutrition but we tend to exacerbate the problem with food aid that makes populations just healthy enough to procreate more leading to yet more aid etc.. etc... etc. I really haven’t heard anyone talk about the problem with grains except for people who embrace the Paleo lifestyle or diabetics serious about controlling their conditions without medication. Both parties find benefit in cheap food.... even if it is poor quality. I was diagnosed with diabetes last year and have gone on a crash course in today’s modern life style, foods and medical treatment. The deeper I go, the angrier I get. People have little idea that from a selection of over 18000 eatable plants on this planet, we are reduced to about 8 primary and only about a dozen others. This leads us directly to so many health complications which are ‘managed’ by more and more pills..... grrrrr.... I never doubted the story about fat being THE cause of obesity.... I never doubted the issuance of Statins for just about everything.... I never doubted the veracity of the claims made about Cholesterol....... No wonder I am called a conspiracy nut....
DeleteIt's not so much that I call Liberals "good guys" in this, and unfairly, that leads back to dismissing them. The remark about third world children does not really fit in here. I get that it's not unrelated, but be honest TS, are liberals the ones roaming the world telling people to have as many babies as possible because that's what God wants? Again, liberals recommend condoms and are laughed at and chided. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole though.
DeleteUntil I met my now wife, who was already vegetarian, and until I went into the medical field, I did not know how F'd up our food was either. Once I started to read up on factory farming practices, my road to disgust and contempt was complete. Follow the money is a cliche, but it is often a logical thing to do and is especially telling in this case. The dysfunction of our food system is generating a lot of profit from big agra to drug manufacturers to providers of medical equipment. There is a very vested interest in seeing things stay the same. Democrats these days are no more liberal then Republicans are conservative and as such, I draw distinction between liberals and Democrats. Further, I can't state any clearer what shitbags I think Democrats are for not doing anything to fix our problem. On that, you will likely agree with me wholeheartedly and quickly change the subject before indicting anyone else.
As long as people need to cling to their politics rather then accept the truths you are describing here, things will stay just as they are.