Bad Food

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with author Michael Pollan about America’s problematic food policies and what citizens might do for their –- and the nation’s –- health.

If any of you had the opportunity to watch this Bill Moyers' show on PBS last night, you may have been horrified to hear what bad food we are all eating. Everything we eat is loaded with high fructose corn syrup, which our pancreas cannot process, therefore does not create enough insulin, which causes type 2 diabetes and other horrible health problems such as obesity and heart disease. The huge farm lobby, is financed by huge rich corporations, that receive millions of dollars in federal subsidies that keeps that cheap bad and unhealthy fast food coming.

Corn fed cattle on large feed lots are creating unhealthy beef for our tables. Piles and piles of manure and piles of piles of corn can be found on these horrible feed lots, where cattle are crammed in to be fed up for slaughter.

Even our eggs from the grocery store are a problem as huge corporations keep the chickens in small cages just to capture their eggs as they drop them. To keep them from pecking each other to death, because of the terrible close quarters in which they are kept, their beaks are burned off....with no anesthetic.

Just as bad is the plight of pigs, also kept packed together until they are frantic. To keep pigs from trying to bite one another's tails off, their tails are pinched off with pliers, again, with no anesthetic.

The entire show may be available at pbs.org now. Check it out. It may change the way you eat.

Because of Bob's newly diagnosed diabetes, we check every label and we have found very little food without high fructose corn syrup. Even our bread is loaded with it. Most of the bread from the market has it listed as the second ingredient, which indicates that it is the second largest ingredient. I may buy another bread maker and begin making our bread again. I gave mine to Scott's (ex) wife several years ago since they had family.

The new administration will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of their new administration: unless this is done, we will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues that were campaigned on — but as we try to address them we will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and we will have to change it if we hope to solve them.

"Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses -- “A welfare program,” as TIME Magazine described it, “for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America."

In a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Obama cited a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office: “From 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff to qualify for such subsidies, “ he said. “If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president.”"

But the farm lobby exploded over this announcement and Obama backed down.

So farm subsidies, which are mainly paid to rich farm corporations, keep fast food cheap and fast food available. Something needs to be done about the future farm bill. Our best recourse as consumers at this point is to read labels and cook at home where we do have some control over the ingredients in the food we eat.

There's an excellent article in Time magazine about the lame duck president. It can be found at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1862307,00.html