You Are What You Grow
There was an interesting article in the New York Times today. The article starts with the question: "Why is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?". I thought I would touch on a few points.
The article describes eating on a budget is to eat badly and get fat. "Processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening".
These problems begin with agricultural policy.
There is a food bill that needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters. For quality of food and not quantity of it. There are people who think that food should just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the food quality would be. This cheap food costs more than anyone can imagine. Artificially cheap food depletes our health, the land, animals and our economy. Don't you miss life when it was simple?
I encourage you to read the entire article.
-Fer
The article describes eating on a budget is to eat badly and get fat. "Processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening".
These problems begin with agricultural policy.
There is a food bill that needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters. For quality of food and not quantity of it. There are people who think that food should just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the food quality would be. This cheap food costs more than anyone can imagine. Artificially cheap food depletes our health, the land, animals and our economy. Don't you miss life when it was simple?
I encourage you to read the entire article.
-Fer
posted by Fer at 7:58 PM
3 Comments:
Good article, except:
"The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies."
WTF? Why don't we have subsidies for the "overproduction" of iPods or paper or cars? Oh that's right - because their prices are set by the market, not bureaucrats.
Have you ever read any of Daniel Quinn's books? He touches on food policy in the context of sociology and philosophy quite a bit. I know that sounds ridiculous and confusing, but he's an amazing writer with some incredibly forward-thinking ideas.
You might enjoy it: [ www.ishmael.org ]
Look for his essay entitled "The New Renaissance".
Trev-
I will check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.
-Fer
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