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Why Food Inc. Should Make Us All Retch
A two-year-old boy called Kevin ate a hamburger on holiday with his family. Ten days later he died, his organs overwhelmed by a mutant form of the E coli bacterium found mostly in feed lots or so-called concentrated animal-feeding operations - vast animal-fattening centres, without a blade of grass, where cattle stand up to their ankles in muck all day. These are where America now produces much of its beef.
Robert Kenner's film Food Inc, released in Britain tomorrow, follows Kevin's mother, Barbara Kowalcyk, though the offices of Capitol Hill as she lobbies politicians to pass Kevin's Law. This would re-empower the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, to close down meat processors that regularly distribute contaminated meat. It is amazing that it does not have these powers, or rather that they have been taken away by industry lobbying. It turns out that many of the people who sit, or sat, at the head of the FDA came from the industry it is supposed to be regulating.
There is no doubt that Food Inc - based on Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma - is a powerful and forensic film with an unerring eye for human stories about the cruel US industrial food system, which abuses animals and workers in many ways.
British audiences, however appalled, are bound to look away and say: it can't be that bad here, can it? They will be right, up to a point. There are no British equivalents of the feed-lot operations that turn subsidised maize into meat that sells for less than vegetables. We have banned growth hormones and still rear most of our cows on grass. Our regulators are independent and have not so obviously been corrupted by political and legal appointments.
Yet feed lots have crept into Italy. American pork producers, such as Smithfield, now have vast operations in Poland and Romania.
There are signs that the downside of super-efficient, globalised agriculture is coming our way: it's already within importing range of our supermarkets. The film may just be, as Schlosser put it drily to me last week, a preview of coming attractions.
The beef, chicken and most processed food found in American supermarkets all have one thing in common: they depend on cheap subsidised maize, which Americans call corn. The United States subsidises maize in disgraceful ways, just as the European Union used to subsidise other commodity crops. Subsidies encourage the use of fertilisers, boost carbon emissions and skew the whole American agricultural system to make the unhealthiest calories the cheapest.
Yet, I hear you saying, this maize dependency is an American phenomenon. And isn't industrial agriculture the price that has to be paid for feeding the world?
Well, maybe - but I know representatives of British farming who have emerged from the film pretty shocked by what could happen to them at the hands of the monopolistic agri-industrial corporations that are the villains of Kenner's film.
We see big chicken processors enslaving smallholders by insisting on constant "improvements" that keep them in debt. We see big companies exploiting immigrant workers. We see investigators hired by Monsanto prosecuting farmers suspected of keeping patented genetically modified seed for re-use the following year. For farmers, this is scary.
And for the rest of us? We have just a slim chance in global markets to influence our future. We can vote three meal times a day by using our power as consumers to promote the kind of local, sustainable food that we want.
But those of us who call for proper food increasingly face the accusation from advocates of intensive agriculture that we are being unrealistic and elitist, because only the rich have the luxury of fussing about the provenance of their food; the poor just need to eat.
Food Inc strikes this argument a killer blow. The camera follows a Mexican-American family around southern California. The quietly articulate father has diabetes. The mother explains that she would like to cook her children healthy meals, not give them hamburgers, but she has no time because she works long hours and they cannot afford it. You can buy a double cheeseburger for 99 cents. You will pay more than that for a head of broccoli. American industrial agriculture makes the poor the most likely to become obese and get diabetes.
Kenners film argues persuasively that it is ordinary working people who are the real victims of America's super-efficient, industrial form of agriculture. The rich will always eat what they want.
It follows that we in Europe should be vigilant against Food Inc slipping in by the back door. We should try actively to prevent Food Inc becoming Food Ltd.
As Schlosser puts it: if you see someone ahead being clubbed, you don't go further down the alley. His point is well made. I recommend you see this film.
55 Comments so far
Show AllIt will keep getting worse unless we all start pressuring our governments to increase regulations on coporations, the corporations will continue their devastating financial schemes (banks), protection rackets (insurance), toxic, overpriced food and drugs and anti-consumerism.
No, pressuring the governments won't be what changes the feedlot system. Eventually, by terrorism or by mistake, some disease is going to break out in the feedlots. Most likely would be foot and mouth disease, but it could be some other form of bug that wipes out the herds. I hope the government can be pressured to fix the problem before a disaster strikes, but my hopes aren't that high.
The corporation won't change its ways until it looses money, or is forced to change by the government.
We don't have to wait for government. We can eat organic meat--and vegetables on our own.
Feedlots are a disgrace. For more details, see Nicolette Hahn's book, The Righteous Porkchop. She is a vegetarian and a cattle rancher with her husband, Bill Niman.
Defy corporate domination!
I wonder how well a restaurant would work if it served straight vegetarian food and charged almost nothing for it.
No menu, no trappings, just long refectory tables, 2 set menus, one for diabetics and dieters (very low carbs), the other for people with unimpaired metabolisms. Ring changes on different traditional world cuisines. Unpaid staff, or paid in kind. Prices reflecting the cost of rent, utilities, and ingredients only.
So if you're poor (or just cannie), you can come in and get a solid, nutritious meatless meal for a dollar or two. Maybe it's Mr Peng's Homestyle Chengdu Doufu one night (I just made that for myself last night, so it's still on my mind. yummers), Enchiladas Verde de Tempeh another night, a Pakistani thali, etc.
Thoughts?
They ought to have public school cafeterias set up on that model--in fact, I seem to recall seeing a story about something like that done in a school out in California. The kids help raise the veggies, and they like the food!
Y'know, that's a **very** nice idea! I wish I'd thought of that part.
That would _really_ cut down on the cost. Get the community involved in raising the food, prepping, cooking, and cleanup. It could make the whole thing close to cost-free, couldn't it.
Now that you've got my mind working, why not also open the woodshop and metalshop facilities to the community, too, for home-maintenance projects or even prototyping good ideas?
I saw this documentary a few weeks back. Excellent - and disturbing - film. There were many parts I simply could not watch and had to fast forward through . . . namely, the scenes of the awful, violent conditions of the animals. It made me sick. Luckily, those scenes were few. The rest of the film was a well-articulated discussion of the entire twisted system, from the above-mentioned conditions to the health repercussions, to the lobbying power of the ag giants and the ever-revolving door of CEOs and government officials, to the dark shadow of GM-monopolizing seeds. Every American needs to see this film. Already being a vegetarian, nothing of it was really new to me nor inspired me to change my already-established habits. Still, I came away with the conclusion drawn that Monsanto may very well be the most evil entity on earth.
A must-watch.
In fact, here's an idea . . . go rent this movie from your local video store tonight and watch it instead of the ridiculous NFL Stupid Bowl that will be hypnotizing most of the knuckle-draggers of this nation.
"The rich will always eat what they want." Yea, grass fed beef, free-range chickens, BST free milk, organic farms, non GM crops , "fair trade" and "equal exchange" and local farmers markets all produced at premium prices for a 'special' and limited customer base- mostly middle-class folks who regard these developments as a solution to global problems which continually pile up, as a way to chill their consciences while maintaining their preeminent positions as modern consumers.
In fact, there are plenty of good regulations governing mass production of agricultural products. For example, beef are required to walk into the slaughter house under their own power, not, in case their treatment has been so bad, be dragged or shoveled by bulldozers. The skinning process cannot commence before they are dead. Chickens have to have a certain amount of square feet and ventilation in the shed, access to the outside. Inspections of plants are supposed to be regular, and proper facilities available for the inspectors themselves who must be certified. Manure from the pig farms is supposed to be contained and treated.
However, as one might expect, the agencies responsible for oversight are underfunded, understaffed & hand-in-glove with the industries they are supposed to regulate. Nor is there much progressive legislation that would at least begin to lead out of this bondage. "Pie-in-the-sky" is the name of the game; or high tariffs, protectionism, tax breaks and product subsidies.
Not to mention: farmer workers and processors a high percentage of whom are foreign "guest workers" or 'illegal' immigrants who pay into the social security system without any hope of future benefits, are denied educational and health benefits, live in substandard conditions, at very low wages and are liable to arbitrary deportation proceedings.
a whole new class of indentured servants with a legal and "constitutional" status equivalent to "enemy combatants", but upon which the entire price structure of the American Food industry is inextricably linked.
If Congress is made to support small family organic farms with the same legislation as the huge conglomerate farms we might all get healthier food at reasonable prices.
I eat organic and natural for taste and health.
But the public wants cheap fatty food not reasonably priced healthy food.
Pass the word...we are getting there. Check out the forum sections. Hooyah!
http://www.theeasygarden.com/
http://www.backyardchickens.com/
I'm glad to see this documentary covered by CD. I think that our food system is a microcosm of the dysfunction in all our systems. It's just one racket among many. Just like regular people were sold mortgages that they didn't know would increase on houses that wouldn't hold value, people are unwittingly sold food made under terrible, unhealthy conditions. Just like the banks that sold the mortgages get a large helping hand and the blessing of Uncle Sam, so to do the large agricultural corporations get huge subsidies that they do not deserve. I think you can see linkages with the military industrial complex and the big pharma, big insurance healthcare rackets as well.
If Britain wants to keep these kind of "agricultural" practices out of its country, you need to build movements now and you need to prevent corporations from wholesale running your government. They've been running the show for quite a while here, but with the latest Supreme Court ruling the veil has come off.
" Corporations get huge subsidies that they do not deserve". Yeah, too bad these subsidies are not called by their proper name: CORPORATE WELFARE.
Want to help? Consider joining our grassroots small-farm and ranch lobbying effort in Washington, DC March 10. Congress will also be served up a local food feast. For complete details, see www.NICFA.org. Joel Salatin--featured in Food, Inc.--is the emcee. Check it out, pass it on, join us!
That's why you need to cook the burger first before you eat it.
E. coli can survive being cooked under certain circumstances. It's a hardy little bug, one that has evolved in the last few decades to be more resistant to antibiotics. (the fundies might not believe in evolution, but the bugs that kill us certainly do.)
But if you want to defend raising your food in its own shit...
Eating locally grown food is a good idea. I live in Oregon and we have 16,400,000 acres in agriculture production with a population of less than 4 million. The leading crops are hay, grass seed, christmas trees, greenhouse and nursery plants, wheat, onions, potatoes and pears. Anyone got a good recipe for christmas trees? Anyway...if the world economic system collapses, as it surely will eventually, the grass seed may actually be edible if cooked properly.
just another example of corporatization ruining the world for the short term buck......
and don't expect any help from the neo-fascists in congress....
I've heard that over 85% of all laws passed are corporate subsidies or barriers to entry that prop up corrupt corporations....
government of, by and for we the corporations.....
“ We the Corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect marketplace, establish Profits, insure workforce instability, provide for the common defense of corporate handouts, promote the general Welfare of the Wealthy, and secure the Blessings of Greed to ourselves and our subsidiaries, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of Corporations.
In Greed we Trust"
Planning to go out to a restaurant? Why not call it first and ask if it serves industrial feedlot meats or local grassfed, or local organic produce instead of industroveg? If they are an outlet for industrial foods, thank the person on the other end of the line while you decline stating you're looking for wholesome, not industrial, foods. If the restaurant serves non-industrial, say great, I'd like to make a rerservation. Of course, most of the chains you don't need to call, but I suggest doing so as their managers (I was one once) want customers more than anything else; and if the key to getting more customers is by using, and touting, non-industrial foods, then management will change to stay-in or increase business.
Complimentary with the anti-industrial foods movement is what's called Radical Homemakers (movement, book and website name) that greatly helps our understanding of how we've ended up in our current situation, while advocating a method that is more commonsensical than radical. Both movements validate the rightousness of the back-to-the-earth movement from the 1960-70s associated with Hippies.
As Pollan has stated, it's possible to change what is made available for us to eat by voting with our forks. The only way to promote orgainic vegetables and pasture fed meat products is to buy those products--this can be viewed as a boycott of industroag/Food, Inc.--so that more will be produced, which will eventually drive the price down. The same can be said about supporting restaurants that use locally produced and organic foods in their menu. Here in Oregon, we even have an oxymoron--organic, wholesome fast food--both vegetarian and non-.
Last, there's a Milwaukee-based company called Growing Power with the goal of producing organic foods in urban "food deserts" that was recently given a positive review in Yes! magazine and deserves further scrutiny. The food production paradigm is going to change as its fossil-fuel based inputs deplete and the "organic" practices of the previous millenia return as the norm. But this paradigm is one that us folks can change from the bottom-up by making conscious choices about the foods we buy.
then management will change to stay-in or increase business
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Do you really reckon so? Or might they just lie about what they serve?
Lying about what you serve is a really poor choice as noted by lawsuits aimed at the various fastfood corps who have done so show. In the local community, they can easily mean the death of your business. Promoting organic and naturally/grass-fed animal products in a very transparent manner such that any customer could call the advertised provider and ask if the business's claims are correct is the method I would employ if I was still a restaurantuer and is what I told my clients as a consultant.
Pollan is correct about the "Food Movement" providing the basis for broad-based action to oust corporate control over government. Everybody eats. No one wants to be poisoned/polluted. Corporations poison us in myriad ways and then deny us the ability to seek treatment to heal ourselves. Connecting Food, Inc to the other Incs is just what Pollan suggests. This is why he's blacklisted, which is an admission to his message's power. IMO, one of the best places to "table" is farmers markets, flea markets and other venues free from corporate control. In my rural county, there's a farmers market at some locale daily during the growing season. In some of the cities, Eugene for example, there are several each week. It's thus possible to be a fulltime political activist.
This article makes very good points, and the agribusiness crowd needs to be strictly regulated to prevent something similar to this incident with this little child recurring. These deaths are entirely preventable and are a result of greed on the part of some without regard for consequences.
AD
If it's cheap and tasty, it's here to stay. If maize subsidizations were to disappear, then what would replace it? Rich people are free to choose their fancy foods but how do you expect people making less than 25k a year to buy organic food which might be any better than regular food? We're in the middle of a great recession and our only expectations are putting food in our stomachs. I get food in bulk quantities from a price club store at a huge discount that last my wife and me 2-3 weeks. We also buy locally when we can. Local food can be different and tasty but I don't know how sustainable it can be by itself. In the winter season, growing food can be difficult and expensive compared to getting it cheap elsewhere. Maybe food corporations need to be regulated some more and food safety rules need to be enforced.
You claim that maize subsidies are necessary, and then wonder where the money for organic food would come from, and what would replace maize subsidies?
I'm not an agri expert so I could be looking at this all wrong. I thought corn maize became popular and that it led to rising demand for it that government had to subsidize it. I'll have to watch the Monsanto documentary and I'll talk to my farmers in my area about corn maize to see what else is going on.
Stuff like high fructose corn syrup is hardly a popular food. It is popular amongst food manufacturers because it is cheap. It is cheap because it is subsisised.
If you talk to corn farmers in your area, obviously they are going to come with excuses as to why they absolutely must be subsidised, and how their by planting subsidised corn, they are feeding the world.
Check out the documentary "King Korn"....
Another great documentary to watch is "Flow" regarding the privatization of fresh water globally.
The subsidies are for the farmers because they over-produce the stuff, and cannot get a decent price to make a profit. The "demand", beyond its basic use as a foodgrain, is artificially created. There has always been overproduction in the US - of wheat, and later corn. And there have always been various forms of subsidies to the farmers - direct subsidies, as well as indirect ones - such as irrigation works funded by the taxpayers. It's not just the farmers that get subsidies - it's the ranchers too. Lots of it. "Welfare Ranching, the Subsidized Destruction of the American West" is a book that talks about subsidies to ranchers. BTW, farm subsidies are not limited to the US. The European Union too has its subsidies - but slightly more regulated, with more conditions.
For thousands of years, people ate what was local and seasonal--there was little else, although there was long distance trade in a few bulk commodities that were capable fo being transported: food oils and grains mostly. To cope with that reality and live, folks knew how to prepare and preserve what were local and seasonal, which is a skill-set very few in any "advanced" country retain. This inability is directly connected to food security, which is to say everyone's personal security. The way to rectify this is to learn how the locals in your region provided for themselves, preferably before the arrival of Europeans. Places as inhospitible as Death Valley are able to support some degree of human habitation provided the human's have the skill-set to exist in such environments. In most "advanced" countries today, millions of people would die in short-order if their grocers suddenly had no food for sale; that is NOT what would happen in so-called thrid-world countries, where folks still retain the fundamental food security skill-set.
The main problem is we've been told that Food, Inc. increases our comfort and ease while the opposite is actually correct in that it promotes discomfort and disabilities through its polluting of the food it produces and the environment it exploitates. Food, Inc.= Food Pollution and brings with it all of pollution's negative outcomes. The lessons re-learned by Radical Homemakers need to be learned anew by cityfolk--lessons that are liberating and a source of accomplishment-based pride.
You offer great ideas on how to get people to think locally on food before oil and grains dominated and I think it could work ideally. The issue I see coming up is population growth that is making it difficult to defeat Food Inc. We don't know how well going solely local on food would sustain for a planet's population of 7 billion but I don't rule out that idea. This might be a weakness of mine but I am led to understanding that it is impossible to replace agri-business when it comes to feeding on a large scale. It might be possible to correct the nature of how those agri-businesses operate. I will point out though that ever since the recession started, local food trading in my area has grown but not at the pace where they could compete with agri-business yet. There might be some hope yet. If there is a global recession, there might be a chance of eliminating agri-business or maybe not depending upon the upfront costs versus the long term costs are.
IIRC, the ratio of arable land to the number of people on the planet is about 2.4 hectares per person--just enough to get by IF the distribution of food is equitibale. The reasons we always have hunger somewhere on the planet is because of those two factors, both of which are cultural/contrived, not biological/natural. Yes, it is the perverseness of greed that causes the factors leading to hunger, although it is true the planet cannot support too many more humans. Techniques and ideas like food not lawns have nowhere nearly been implemented at any scale, nor has the model presented by Growing Power.
A recent NOVA showcased the Inca's marvelous Machu Pichu's construction (amongst other things). The Inca had no metal tools and just llamas for beasts-of-burden (useless for anything over 250 pounds), no written language or engineering colleges. Yet Machu Pichu is probably the greatest human engineering feat of all time. Have you ever seen Mesa Verde or other cliff-dwelling communities in the Southwest? I look at those works and wonder if "modern" man could do as well and am forced to answer no ... but ... if....
Be the difference.
the ratio of arable land to the number of people on the planet is about 2.4 hectares per person--just enough to get by IF the distribution of food is equitable. ... although it is true the planet cannot support too many more humans.
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Actually, it can't support the number of people now here. That's why we're in such trouble. The technology and land use that makes it possible to feed the current population is the same technology that's killing us by greenhousing. We've deforested too much of the planet to make cropland. Too many humans pump out too much CO2 for the remaining sinks (forests, oceans) to handle. And there's no end in sight except the end of life on Earth.
I just began reading Hansen's book and it's literally giving me nightmares.
karlof1, you mention some important points - the most important being 'equitable distribution' of food. I, for one, refuse to accept that a human being, having been born, somehow does not deserve to get a decent meal to keep him/her alive. The "logic" is simple: it's not the fault of a child to be born. Yes, those at the reproducing stage *MUST* think a thousand times before deciding to have a baby. But once a baby is born, it's not the baby's fault to be born and to need food to survive. I hope all those who claim to be "Christians", "socialists", "humanists", etc., understand this basic concept. The only decent thing to do under the present circumstances is to share whatever food is available equitably, without hiding behind clever arguments about overpopulation. That argument can be shot down on ethical grounds: most of those who are living in North & South America, Australia, New Zealand, etc., are living on stolen land, and not content with resources available in these lands, some of the elite now want to round up resources elsewhere too. While spreading the message about the need to reduce human population, keep in mind that it will take a few generations to achieve that through natural means. In the meantime, lowering our own consumption levels to our fair share is what is needed - at least by those who agree that fairness is important - either on religious or philosophical or spiritual grounds. It's NOT either/or: overpopulation is a problem, but over-consumption is the one that needs to be addressed immediately.
Agreed that everyone now alive deserves a dignified life.
But I disagree that overpopulation doesn't need to be addressed beginning now. Poverty and overpopulation are two sides to the same feudalist coin.
When the necessities of life depend on supporting someone else in luxury, something's badly broken. And the only way to mend it is to *provide* for the current generation by sharing openhandedly and *halve* the next generation by mandatory sterilisation after 1 live birth. And meanwhile pull the rug out from under the feudal overlords, hanging them from lampposts if need be.
Mairead, I agree with you in principle, but not necessarily on the exact details :)
Hi Mairead--I would agree that overpopulation threatens the rights of others as spelled out in the UNDHR provided in my reply to Alcyon.
I also agree that there's a distinct problem with feeding the current global population as the chemical inputs that made the "Green Revolution" possible are replaced by traditional soil-building methods, which will take time--perhaps two decades--to heal and rebuild soils burned by such chemical applications, and people will certainly suffer as the ineqities of the current distribution system are exacerbated. However, once soils are rebuilt, I believe, at present, there's enough arable land to feed 6 Billion people. The wild card is how Global Warming will effect currently arable land.
Hi Alcyon--Thanks for your reply. It's really shameful that the uSA, which made them possible, has never ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Here's the URL of a pdf copy,
http://www.aspire-irl.org/UN_Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights.pdf ), where Article 25 states:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the healthand well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
"Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children,
whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."
As you might expect, there are a great number of articles the USA has violated, to the point where the USA is the leading denier of human rights on the planet outside of the other dysfunctional states who mostly lack the means to implement and protect people's rights, whereas the USA has no such excuse.
Everyone should see this:
"The World According to Monsanto"
http://twilightearth.com/environment-archive-2/the-world-according-to-monsanto-full-documentary/
I take it that the domination of agri-business against farmers is a combination of their successful corporate strategies and our resignation to them because it's harder to resist. That doc on Monsanto looks interesting. I wonder if that's the same reason we have corn ethanol for fuel instead of a better biofuel such as switchgrass ethanol.
Bad food? Good food? What food to eat?
Please take a look at Will Tuttle's " The World Peace Diet"
Excellent book.
I second that. Food is *MUCH* more than just calories and nutrients. It's one of our most direct links with nature, so it's crucial to be mindful of this link, and not let the advertisers and the capitalist system "educate" us on this vital aspect of our lives.
An excellent book on traditional cooking is "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, who is the President of the Weston A. Price Foundation. westonaprice.org It includes gems like how to make bone broth, ferment vegetables and dairy, cook organ meats, etc. Spend your money solely on high quality ingredients, your time in the kitchen and you can eat better than 99% of US citizens.
The Foundation is at the forefront of the beyond organic movement.
PS: We have plenty of poor people here in Miami but almost none think of making a deal with the owner of a perpetually empty lot to grow high quality produce or small animals that could end their poverty.
We sure could use Trader Joe's in Florida.
"But those of us who call for proper food increasingly face the accusation from advocates of intensive agriculture that we are being unrealistic and elitist, because only the rich have the luxury of fussing about the provenance of their food; the poor just need to eat.
Food Inc strikes this argument a killer blow. The camera follows a Mexican-American family around southern California. The quietly articulate father has diabetes. The mother explains that she would like to cook her children healthy meals, not give them hamburgers, but she has no time because she works long hours and they cannot afford it. You can buy a double cheeseburger for 99 cents. You will pay more than that for a head of broccoli. American industrial agriculture makes the poor the most likely to become obese and get diabetes.
Kenners film argues persuasively that it is ordinary working people who are the real victims of America's super-efficient, industrial form of agriculture. The rich will always eat what they want.
It follows that we in Europe should be vigilant against Food Inc slipping in by the back door. We should try actively to prevent Food Inc becoming Food Ltd."
Many of the militant "veganarchists" seem to forget about this.
"I wonder how well a restaurant would work if it served straight vegetarian food and charged almost nothing for it.
No menu, no trappings, just long refectory tables, 2 set menus, one for diabetics and dieters (very low carbs), the other for people with unimpaired metabolisms. Ring changes on different traditional world cuisines. Unpaid staff, or paid in kind. Prices reflecting the cost of rent, utilities, and ingredients only.
So if you're poor (or just cannie), you can come in and get a solid, nutritious meatless meal for a dollar or two. Maybe it's Mr Peng's Homestyle Chengdu Doufu one night (I just made that for myself last night, so it's still on my mind. yummers), Enchiladas Verde de Tempeh another night, a Pakistani thali, etc.
Thoughts?"
That's actually not a bad idea, but I doubt most restaurants would do that.
I do think that there should be public kitchens that only serve healthy food though, not necessarily vegan, but healthy.
And of course food should be locally produced. The corporate megafarms should be abolished.
That's actually not a bad idea, but I doubt most restaurants would do that.
I do think that there should be public kitchens that only serve healthy food though, not necessarily vegan, but healthy.
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That's what I was talking about really --a non-profit, public "restaurant" that would make healthy food available at cost. And RedJeff's insight about timesharing public-school cafs for the physical plant was truly inspired.
American industrial agriculture makes the poor the most likely to become obese and get diabetes.
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I didn't pick up on this yesterday, but there's another 'interesting' facet to this: fewer pure-White people have the genetic problem that produces diabetes, especially type 2 (insulin-insensitive) diabetes. And what population, as a population, is more likely to be poor and unable to afford the low-carb diet that helps prevent obesity and thus the overproduction of the resistin protein? Yep, non-Whites. It's not by accident that Black and First Nation people have more obesity and diabetes (the stats for insulin-insensitive diabetes in the Tohono O'odham population is truly horrifying: 70%! They've instituted a crash program to do their own farming and get back to their trad anti-obesity diet)
I had another vegetarian lunch today. Maybe I'll be having more of them. You folks could be onto something after all.
All the best to you. Like I've said before, if you can eat a bit of spicy food, there's much more variety - there's Indian food, Chinese, etc. But ideally, you should have someone experienced prepare it for you, if you aren't used to it :)