Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.
Hello everybody. I'm excited to be guest-blogging for Boing Boing ... More.
The secret: It's not the creepy chemical additive you thought. A couple of weekends ago, I caught an episode of the public radio show "The Splendid Table" with soothingly voiced chef Lynne Rossetto Kasper. The topic was BBQ and I was shocked (Shocked!) to hear Lynne* and her guest recommend liquid... More.
A young Iraqi woman died tonight in Arizona because her father believed she had become too Westernized. Noor Faleh Almaleki, the 20-year old pictured here, moved to the Phoenix area in the mid-90s with her family.
Her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, feared that her American upbringing had led her t... More.
Saul Friedman, a long-standing Newsday columnist, has quit the paper over its decision to implement a paywall, pointing out that by charging $5/week for readers, they'll drastically cut his audience size (and, presumably, the present and future opportunities that having a large audience afford to a ... More.
Ape Lad sez, "The bowling alley I once enjoyed as a child (in Riverside CA), is now furniture."
An abandoned bowling alley finds a second life in this beautiful series of furniture by LA-based designer/woodworker William Stranger. Crafted from reclaimed strips of wood salvaged from a local defunc... More.
Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon -- circa 2009.
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Here, I'll save some trolls the trouble of typing this in:
Pfft. More hate-America first liberal food nazis who want to tell us what to eat!
Here's a graphic showing amount of manure produced anually by different livestock...
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_He5bfLq5vq0/R5-3ueo8z3I/AAAAAAAAAYU/MHz0glYDuJQ/s1600-h/20080127_BITTMAN2.650.669.jpg
but bacon is sooooo goooood. (to change the world we have to want to change our lifestyle. good luck with that.)
Burdt: http://www.mysteak.com/MyCart/ProductListing/85/Dry-Cured_Applewood-Smoked_Bacon.aspx
That's what's in my fridge. Right now. It tastes awesome.
@Stefan Jones: Pretty comprehensive. Another angle could be: "THEY are just using their mass media organ to soften the psychological blow when we're all fed veggie patties in the concentration camps!!!"
"feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic"
That's just a little sensationalist. Beef (even regular, non-lean beef) is pretty healthy for you in moderate amounts (to the point that most people can't afford). This whole thing of "chicken is healthier than red meat" thing has been blown way out of proportion; yes, chicken is slightly healthier than red meat, but the amount of spin that's been put on these facts is astounding, reading the health risks of read meat in Wikipedia is like watching "Thank you for Smoking", except Nick Nolan is now working for the Chicken Lobby. A tasty, 12-16oz steak and potato dinner with salad and beer weighs in at less than a #1 big mac meal (medium size) by a couple hundred calories, has no additives and is just as healthy as most meals you can whip up using chicken at Whole Foods or Central Market. The only way the limited unhealthy fats in that steak are going to affect you is if a) you're already overweight from a lifetime of poor health choices and b) almost exclusively eat red meat. But mostly A.
Anyways my point is, there's no rational link between meat and obesity unless your primary meat intake is Big Macs and Whoppers, and even then it's the Cheese, Mayo and French Fries, not the burger itself.
I grow cheeseburgers the way my Granpappy did. It was good enough for him, it's good enough for me. Oughta be good enough for you and your'n, too.
Was it on bOING bOING that we had the recent Rolling Stone article on pig farming, and then a pig farmer's own rebuttal/defense? I can't find the rebuttal now, but as I recall the two pieces were interesting.
LINK: (had to break the line, sorry)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_
producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters
After living in Asia for year, I realized first hand just how awful the North American diet is.
"food" is either heavily processed, deep fried, or meat.
After adjusting to a Korean diet, I not only felt better, I lost 30 lbs in 11 months!
I had always had trouble with heartburn, I was on prescription medication to reduce my bodies production of stomach acid, and now I don't need to take anything.
Now that I'm used to healthy, real foods, junk food and fast food makes me feel physically ill.
I will never adopt a vegetarian diet, but there is no reason to eat as much meat as we do. A steak dinner is great on occasion, but that much meat isn't good for every meal.
Rather than eating a whole pork chop, steak or chicken breast per person for dinner, do up a stir-fry and divide 1 good piece of meat between the whole family.
The Headless Rabbit, you're so right.
The world would be so much better if every meat eater simply reduced consumption.
Enjoy bacon, occasionally. I miss bacon!
I grew up eating meat at every meal, literally!
I miss meat, but it is without a doubt unsustainable.
I now rarely eat meat and only eat meat that has been ethically raised and slaughtered, without hormones or antibiotics. Guess what, it tastes better!
Meat, as currently produced, is a waste of sunshine and oil reserves, to say nothing of the environmental impact.
Hopefully my boys will be vegetarians, by choice, not by necessity.
I really compartmentalize on this.
On one hand, I can't see an animal without wanting to scratch it behind the ears and look it in the eyes. I've been teased as "Doctor Dolittle."
On the other, I eat beef, poultry, eggs and fish. Sometimes I go fly fishing.
Eating animals isn't a goal in my life. Eating a low-fat low-cholesterol diet is. The logical conclusion is...
Agricultural subsidies make me rage.
It would be nice if we all lived in harmony with Mother Earth, but considering the people I've been seeing on the TV at the Townhall Meetings, I have absolutely no confidence that human kind will change it's ways. The final human will probably die gasping for breathable air clutching the last Twinkie. I firmly believe in the 'grim meathook future'. Until then I plan to live a full and happy life with lots of tasty things to eat. If I'm still alive when the end comes, I plan to avoid the suffering and utilize my 9mm opt out plan.
So, eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die... all of us.
Always save the last round for yourself.
Well I certainly don't buy into meat is what makes me fat.
Hell if anything is the amount of sugar and hfcs I consume.., but I'll digress.
Frankly everyone should read On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250908816&sr=8-1
There is a whole section devoted to diary and the fact that while grains are healthy, animals (including people) gain much more from the transformation of grains into dairy and meat products (like complex amino acids and fat). Yeah really a 20oz porterhouse is to much, but frankly a nice 6-8oz steak suits me fine.
And I've heard it all before about pig farming. Smithfield food products (a LARGE pork company) is in my state, so yeah they occasionally pop up in the news. Frankly you can pry the bacon from my cold dead hands after I've died of a heat attack/stroke. Nothing beats a mater sandwich with good bacon, Blue Plate mayonnaise, and a homegrown tomato.
Poustman @#8 (as well as Anonymous @#2 and ThreefJeff @#4):
You don't have to break any links (although it was thoughtful of you, Poustman) and you don't have to post links so long that they extend out of the Discussion area and make the browsers generate horiz. scroll bars. You can use a bit of HTML markup like this in your post:
See my <a href="">LINK</a> on this topic.
You include your URL in the "" above. So we get a short, clickable link for the Rolling Stone story above like this:
LINK: (did not have to break the line, link works)
We're designed to eat meat. To deny that is ludicrous. The amount of processing that you have to do to eat grain should give you a clue that we weren't designed to eat it.
Sure, some people can eat grains and sugars and not have problems. Just like billions of us can eat meat and not have problems.
Tk yr gnd nd stck t.
Meat makes us fat, huh?
Odd, before the white man came along, the Inuit diet was 100% meat and fat. They were known to be extremely healthy, free from disease, packed with muscle that could tow in a 200 pound seal on their own...
Strange, you'd think that a diet consisting entirely of meat would make them bloated, fat, their heart's exploding in their chests by the age of 25...
A Healthy Diet includes GOOD FOOD in moderate amounts. Fat is important to good health, so is natural protein and other vitamins one obtains in meat. Vegetables and fruits have also been an important base on our diets for a few hundred thousand millennia.
Humans are omnivores - Vegans get over it.
Eat good portions and walk around and you will have a healthy body.
Nail, you HAVE been researching.
@15, No human gets fat on meat. It's the carbs that do it. I'm mostly vegetarian, but every 90 days or so I gotta do a big BLT. You're SO right on that!
I do not eat..."meat"... (from 3:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isl82M4MKRg
Unsustainable? Isn't that a synonym for Organic/Slow farming practices, which would have to take up a sh*tload of more land than normal agriculture, so much land that only 4 billion of the people of the world could survive? "Slow" food would only cause people to starve...slowly. Is that where the name came from? Give me "fast" food- fast growing, big, easy to grow food that people everywhere can have access to. Now that's sustainable!
mmmmm bacon
alt.food.michael.pollan is a nonsensical newsgroup name, therefore this article is invalid.
I agree with sbarnes2. Not being able to feed people is probably the first problem about organic food There are other problems and even worse there are HUGE misconceptions about what organic is.
First off, organic farmers use fertilizer just like any other farmer but they use organic fertilizer that plays by some weird rules set by the National Organic Program. Organic fertilizer is like any other fertilizer they contain the same three elements of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Synthetic fertilizer contains less dilute quantiles of the exactly the same three elements. This is not surprising because, synthetic fertilizer was developed by studying what compounds in the ground makes the plants grow and uses them without the unneeded materials that are found in the ground. The problem with organic fertilizer is it has these chemicals in lower quantity per ton. The chemicals that the plants need are stuck in with a bunch of useless matter. Matter that comes from what the fertilizer was made from as per the rules from the NOP. Organic fertilizer is made from things like fish meal, human waste, animal waste, bones, shells and all sorts of other things. All these items have the needed elements but also come with a lot of stuff that isn't needed so, to get the same amount of nutrients the plants need organic farmers have to use more fertilizer than non organic farmers per ton of fertilizer. They are also transporting a bunch of stuff that doesn't do a single thing to help a crop grow but it is there in the ground purely for ideological reasons.
Organic fertilizer is not very sustainable. There is not enough organic fertilizer needed to feed the people we are feeding now. Worse still, the fertilizers costs an arm and a leg and we soon go back to spending most our money and time on producing food. We can still use the animal and human waste as a fertilizer but I just don't think we should only use it for our food crops on a large scale. Synthetic fertilizers get their nitrogen from the air that is a part of a global cycle, they get the potassium and phosphorus from mines but there are manufactures out there getting the stuff from sea water that also runs in cycles and is easily sustainable. We would spend less money and time growing food, this is a good thing and is apart of sustainability.
The problem with chemical run off will still happen even if we used organic methods. The reason we this chemical run of causing havoc today is we are are growing a lot more food for a lot more people then we used to. If we switched to organics we'd also see a lot more farm land then we are used to, that is because it's a far more inefficient process that today's conventional farming. That farm land would have to come from somewhere so we'd be chopping down forests and other things to make way of organic farms and we'd still chemical run off
Don't even get me on organic pesticides (yes there are organic pesticides)
Sustainable my ass.
for a good talk I'd listen to these
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4166
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4019
Sheesh. If trolling produced food, I'd never be hungry again.
Agribusiness - the agricultural production system in the United States and many parts of the world - is a collection of processes for converting OIL into FOOD. In this system, the process for producing BEEF is less efficient than the process for producing PORK is less efficient than the process for producing CHICKEN is less efficient than the processes for producing SOYBEANS and MAIZE; these last two processes underlie the meat producing processes.
These processes are not sustainable. They will not feed 10 billion people for very long. Just do the math, people, like Frances Moore Lappe did in 1972, and stop defending burgers as non-fattening because, because, because the buns are the problem. That's hardly the issue. Billions of people starving is the problem. No, that's right, not today and not tomorrow, but in my lifetime and in my son's lifetime - and yours.
Sheesh.
I found this article on costs often unrecognised in organic food. I really like the idea of sustainable food but it (like everything) has costs.
I'll bet this amazing new KFC sandwich is plenty sustainable!
Homer: Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Lisa honey, are you
saying you're *never* going to eat any animal again? What about
bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!
Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
After reading these comments I'm convinced we're doomed.
This is from an animal eater (about 4-6 oz a day, estimate), fat eater (2-3 oz/day possibly) and carbs eater (the rest) whose daily calories intake border on 3000 (5'11", average boned) and who lost 35 lbs since January at that rate (from 235 to -200), 1 lb a week on average, steadily. I move, fast and quite a bit, which does it.
First I'd like to point out that Xeni's post was about a debate finding its way into a larger segment of the medias, nothing else. I wonder why so many of her posts elicit so much paranoia?...
I'd like also to point out that meat lovers all glossed over the fact that the very vast majority of food animals in North America (and elsewhere I'm sure) are torture-raised. I am fairly sure that they mostly died insane. I avoid encouraging this.
Lastly: stop subsidizing meat production and the price itself will tell if its production is sustainable. Aren't most meat eaters also fierce free market proponents?
@10 - "ethical slaughter". That's a new one.
Woah Woah addicted to meat, who wrote this article? The country is addicted to SUGAR...
I think something that a lot of people fail to realize about bacon and its relationship to the American diet is the incredible utility of bacon grease to the frontier lifestyle.
That it tastes good is not the sole reason that Americans have grown up eating bacon.
That said of course, factory farming is one of the greatest abominations ever trust upon the planet Earth and should be stopped at all costs as quickly as humanly possible by any means neccesary.
Babe: They eat pigs?
Cat: Pork, they call it - or bacon. They only call them pigs when they're alive.
Babe: But, uh, I'm a sheep pig.
Cat: [giggles] The Boss's husband's just playing a little game with you. Believe me, sooner or later, every pig gets eaten. That's the way the world works. Oh, I haven't upset you, have I?
[chuckles softly]
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Bacon-Soap/
It's well known that obesity is mainly due to an addiction to carbs, not meat.
Uhmm bacon
Animal fat causes cancer: just as alcohol does. (Exercise for intellectuals: compare and contrast marijuana!).
Eliminate the two former from your lives, and chances are (says our best science) that you'll live longer: the scientists are (or were, in the USA, until Pres. Reagan moved to preserve the ignorance by banning all research into marijuana!) still trying to show the latter is bad for you...and they have not yet succeeded!
In fact,I understand that they keep getting embarrassed by the results of their marijuana research: showing that its occasional use is not just harmless, but for many, beneficial! Or rather, it would be so, if the police forces weren't trying to punish people for not following the right-wing authoritarian politicos' Diktat about it...
Guess the FDA's been too busy approving "wonder drugs" like Oxycontin, eh? LOL...
Meanwhile, I say: Viva, science! Viva, Mexico!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html?_r=2
Back OT: it's my understanding that marijuana makes an excellent crop to grow on lands left fallow, to rejuvenate the soil. Maybe I'm wrong...
pfft. factory farms and cafos. everyone knows michael vick is history's greatest monster for what he did to a dozen+ dogs.
it's them or us:
http://lds.about.com/od/mormons/a/church_membership.htm
Lets try humane slaughter, though slaughtering animals for food instead of sport or fun is indeed ethical.
Hell, lets try taking care of our domesticated animals. Thousands of cats and dogs are killed every day because we don't take care of our pets. How will we convince people to treat food humanely when they don't give a damn about the dog or cat they see every day?
The solution is not to eat less pig, it's to eat long pig.
I figured someone would mention the early Americans due to their high meat diet and natural athleticism; a few points of data are missing here:
1. Until the Europeans introduced horses, the natives got their meat ON FOOT. Yeah, I've hunted deer in Oregon using a gun, goretex, etc. You know what? It's VERY VERY hard to shoot a deer. They did it on FOOT, with BOWS. If you ran 10-15 miles daily and shot a deer every 3-4 days, you wouldn't gain as much weight as Tommy T-Bone chowing down at "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse" (don't get me started on the stupid, stupid name.)
2. Ever eaten game? No fat. You can't cook elk and deer in it's own fat ~ there's not enough to do it. We used to keep a jar of bacon grease by the stove for just this reason (my Dad liked to hunt and was good at it; we ate game 3-5 times a week.)
See, the deer and elk don't get to eat as much as they want from a trough of high quality grain, while standing around lazily looking at the landscape. They're in the WILD. They eat; they run. They run some more, and then they eat. Whatever they can find (no, they do not find fields of ripe corn, wheat and rice fortified with vitamins and antibiotics). They are lean, lean, lean.
I love meat ~ most kinds. But don't kid yourself that going to In N Out burger is OK because the Native American diet was primarily meat. No relevant comparison is possible.
Lanval
I'm a vegetarian. My wife and kids (all 8 and under) do eat meat. The kids can choose what they want to do when they're older but for now, my wife is the one who is at home with and does the cooking -- she can give them whatever she wants.
Conversation from the other day.
8 yr old: What don't you eat meat, dad?
me: Because I don't want animals to die for me to eat.
8 yr old: They don't KILL them dad, they wait until they die... right? right?
I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth.
I became a vegetarian because I do not want animals to suffer so that I can eat.
I am a bit of a hypocrite b/c I drive milk (sometimes but not much) and eat eggs (tho not often). Those chickens and cows aren't living it up.
It's not like we would free the chickens and cows if everyone stopped eating them. We would simply eradicate them.
That just goes to show what a royal mess we've made, not act as proof that we can eat all the animal products we want.
Few Native-American cultures were "primarily" meat eaters. The *buffalo culture* of the great plains was the notable exception, and it only lasted a couple hundred years until the European-Americans, whose horses had created it, destroyed it. One could argue that the Pacific Northwest was primarily a meat-based culture, if you define marine life as meat; but other than that, only the arctic culture fits the description. The rest, from Panama to Canada, California to Maine, ranged from agricultural to horticultural to acorn-gathering, root-grubbing hunter-gatherers whose diets were light on animal protein and heavy on plants, roots and tubers.
These juiced-up meat things we breed and manufacture today in farm factories bear as much resemblance to the animals of a hundred years ago as Mr. Olympia does to the average man in the street.
@46 Jimbuck:
Has anyone ever tried waiting until the animals die before processing them? If they're still decently tasty, maybe someone could make some money with "moral meat".
#24 Anonymous, you come on like some kind of expert, but I'm sorry to say you are lacking in or are missing some very basic fundamental facts.
First Big Agra business is totally dependent on the petro chemical business for its fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, but produces nearly twice the # of bushels of wheat or grain per acre than was produced in 1950. But there is another significant difference: A pound of grain produced today contains less than 40% of the nutrients than one pound produced then. In order to get the same amount of nutrition, one must eat 2.5 times the quantity eaten back then.
Second obesity: 70 to 95% of body fat comes from eating simple sugars, (sucrose, fructose, dextrose, lactose, maltose, honey, maple syrup, and molasses) and from denatured processed and nutrient stripped grains but not by eating animal fat or butter. The fats that are worthless and harmful to the body are, vegetable oils mainly corn, soybean, and others that are extracted under high pressure, high temperature and with solvents. The primary exception is extra virgin, cold pressed olive oil.
A good example of bad fat is potato chips: A pound of potatoes has about 425 calories, a pound of potato chips has 2600 calories (84% from bad fat).
Third: It takes over 60 nutrient to grow healthy food, not 3 as used by big agra. Herbicides and pesticides kill the micro organisms in the soil, that are necessary for the conversion of the contained minerals into a form the plants can use. Therefore the adding of synthetic compounds become necessary.
I am not a fan of China, but they feed the largest nation in the world without being dependent upon the chemical business, genetically engineered and gene spliced seeds, and American farming techniques, yet supply their own needs and nearly all the produce for eastern Russia and even export food products to the US, Yes they do import some American wheat and soybeans. But today America is a net importer of food, not an exporter as it was 50 years ago without big agra business. Then we had 4.5 years of surplus food in storage for emergency use, today it is less than 4 months.
Fourth: You have very little understanding of nutrition or real organic farming. Food consumption in the US could easily be reduced by 50% with no loss in quality of life, if healthy nutritious foods were produced and not the nutrient stripped sugar laced crap we now have on the store shelves. Nearly all foods available in the US are designed for shelf life and profit for the middlemen and have nothing to do with health.
We are the best fed but worst nourished industrial nation in the world. Your generation is the first in the last 100 year that will not live as long as their parents.
Where am I coming from? 33 years as a secondary medical and health researcher, not a journalism major, that is a word smith. I'm sorry but you sound like an industry shill to me.
Humans are primarily meat eaters. While large agribusiness may not be sustainable, I bet smaller local producers could be it there was a more active market.
@#51 Doc-Watt said...
News flash: China loves biotech. China's Genetically Altered Food Boom in Time Magazine.
And also: The Survey of Gene Modified (GM) Crops in China.
Sadly, because Chinese farmers are also using pesticides, they sometimes get things wrong and poison themselves. Don't worry though: GM crops are there to "save" the day, apparently: Insect-Resistant GM Rice in Farmers' Fields: Assessing Productivity and Health Effects in China from the journal Science.
It may be true that for thousands of years, Chinese farmers were capable of farming in what we now call "sustainable" ways. I don't hold much hope for their future, though. Many of their fresh water sources are polluted, contaminated, or just plain gone. Without good water, those poor sods ain't got a prayer. Ok, not to veer OT here...
Wrt the staggering amounts of pig poop generated from U.S. hog farming enterprises, I'm wondering why the manure can't somehow be processed with various dung-phillic microbes, bioremediated for toxins (heavy metals, etc.) and packaged as fertilizer, like Dillo Dirt(TM) from Austin's sewage treatment plants.
I whole heartedly agree that America's fast food mass consumerism diet for the average american is unhealthy. That being said if one takes the time to actually go to the grocery store, buy food and eat a well rounded diet, there is no need to go all Vegetable Nazi on our asses! One, it's healthy, two, it's cheaper than fast food crap. I find with all my over weight friends that no matter how much they complain how fat they are, and no matter how often I explain to them, "Buy your own groceries, learn to cook, keep you calories down to 2k or so a day." - they don't understand that exercising daily but gorging yourself on fast food 3x a day isn't going to work.
For all that babble what I'm saying is - go to a grocery store, buy real food, learn to freaking cook. Meat won't kill you, but McDonald's 3x a day for 365 days a year - year after year sure won't help the situation.
forget about the current generation, they are lost.
The issue is: how do you teach kids not to eat shit?
and 52? Read the second last sentence.
http://www.manticmoo.com/articles/jeff/scholarly/an-evolving-human-dentition.php
I'm sorry, but what IS this?
http://www.365black.com/365black/index.jsp
365Black is a PR ploy to raise McD's image in the African-American community; the usual blackwashing of any corporation whose clientele is primarily working class.
#51 DOC-WATT-Your post was most informative but what exactly is a "secondary medical and health researcher?" Is that cum laude or magna cum laude?
Entry level employment with room for advancement. Franchise opportunities for small business owners. Good tasting, low cost food that is widely available and reasonably nutritious. Free public restrooms.
I know it makes me uncool and everything, (haha) but I think fast food is not the worst product in the world.
It would be good if we could pressure companies like McDonalds to stop burning the rainforest for soy to feed the cows. And enact better animal rights policies. Probably could afford to pay their workers more. And they could make adjustments to some of the recipies so that they are not so egregiously harmful to health.
But other than that, I applaud the fact they are providing jobs to people who might not otherwise have a job and providing food and drinks, some shelter, bathrooms and play-yards to people who might not have those things either.
reasonably nutritious? I'll grant much of the rest but nutrition? And, like Walmart, the giant shades out the possible little suppliers that would have reason to be healthier. Nay, the Empire of the Evil Clown preys on children.
I have a ten acre farm. I grow all of the food my family eats throughout the entire year. 100% of our diet comes from here. We do not import any fertilizer. Careful crop rotation and cover crops provide all of the nutrients that the soil needs. Not only do we feed ourselves, but we also run a successful CSA for 30 families and sell produce at the local farmers market. How is this not sustainable? How can people make the claim that factory farming will feed the world but small sustainable farms will not?
Protein, carbs, fat. That's nourishment in my book.
Good point about the giant shading out the little guys, but I would say in many cases it is because they provide a better product from the consumers' point of view.
I don't buy the "they prey on kids" argument. It appeals to kids because it is made for kids. The little toys, the mild predictable food- these are things that kids like. They get something out of the deal, and so does McDonald's. That's the nature of commerce, it goes both ways.
The main point of the article, and one I failed to acknowledge, is the polluting farming practices behind fast food. But McDonald's does not own the polluting farms, do they? Shouldn't we focus on the chemical companies that produce the harmful pesticides and fertilizers? Or do like Zuzu says and sue the farms that are responsible for the toxic run-off?
what did you think of "Supersize Me"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food
If we didn't subsidize Corn (Maize) then we, as consumers, would have a much healthier diet. I was reading the ingredients list on a loaf of organic, whole wheat bread the other day. Apart from flour and water, the most prevalent ingredient was High Fructose Corn Syrup.
All in all, there was quite a bit of sugar in that bread. Sugar(carbs) that didn't need to be there in the first place. If you want to blame America's obesity epidemic on something, corn and HFCS deserves a lot more blame than meat.
Did you know that cows that are fed an equal caloric amount of corn vs. grass will gain weight much more quickly?
Why do people eat so much meat?! Why the need for bacon at breakfast, sausages at lunch and steak for dinner? I'll eat meat twice a week (maybe), and fish/prawns maybe twice a week. I'm by no means a vegetarian yet I value the fact that eating less meat is actually GOOD for you (and the environment, considering the food and water going into making even 1kg of meat). It just requires a change of habit ie NOT throwing in packets and packets of crap into the trolley when you buy groceries.
as you get older, fatter and sicker you tend to eat less meat anyway.
Right now, the world produces >3000 calories/person on Earth/day of food. This is ~90% from grain, with the rest from potatoes, fruits, vegetables, fish, and grass-fed meats.
The claim that organic farming, and sustainable farming in general, are less productive, is false, or at best dramatically overstated. But even if it weren't, our ability to feed people is not currently production limited. It is limited by politics and market conditions. The fact that is takes 7 calories of corn too make 1 calorie of beef, or 4 calories of corn to make 1 calorie of chicken, doesn't help either.
But the US, due to poor farming practices, has lost ~1/3 of its topsoil in 50 years. That's a pretty strong case for being unsustainable. Organic farming, or even better, permaculture, result in a net increase in soil depth and fertility, year after year.
Yes bacon tastes good. So does ice cream. But that yummy ice cream's not only harmful to the cows, perhaps, and maybe the environment. But also the workers.
Milking cows (and related work) it turns out is dangerous, sometimes deadly, and the laws don't do much to protect workers.
This is an excellent, harrowing account of the work:
http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.15/the-dark-side-of-dairies
http://www.livescience.com/health/090825-obese-brain.html