Food articles always get good traction here. Maybe it’s because we all have to eat? AWD should love this article.
Seriously, I was kind of freaked out with my salmon incident. I learned that 83% or our seafood is imported and 22% comes from China. I learned that labels don’t mean jack shit when it comes to seafood … that fisheries get virtually any exemption they want. If you’re paying less than $25/lb for salmon it is virtually certain to be farm raised, even if the label says Wild Caught. The seafood industry is one giant fucking fraud. Except King Oscar sardines. The meat industry isn’t much better. And god-only-knows what the fuck you’re eating when you stuff a chicken in your mouth. You can’t even eat spinach for fear that some Mexican cocksucker didn’t fertilize it with human shit.
It’s a doom and gloom article for sure. Or, maybe it’s a Wake Up call for those here who aren’t yet aware of the poisonous human-killing scam that is processed foods. It is so so so SOOOO hard to eat healthy in this chemical fake world. But you must. Or, at least must try. Your health depends on it.
I think in the coming shitstorm Processed Food executives should also be swinging from the gallows.
The author references two books; 1)In Defense Of Food and, 2)The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I have both and read both more than once. Outstanding informative books. You might want to check them out on Amazon.
Bon appétit’
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The Obese Hunger of Famished Psyches
The Pathology of the Processed Food Industry
by MANUEL GARCIA, JR.
The “Western Way Of Life” is an eating disorder. We are increasingly a culturally stunted, attention-deficit herd of obese individuals, the gooey interiors of mechanical beetles whose carapaces are the obese automobile-like trucks we drive in a constant tangle of frantic low-milage scrambles to fetch, carry and appear, rolling our individualized dung balls of acquisitiveness, like dung beetles as compulsive as Sisyphus and trained by televised marketing brainwash programming to consume through our world, giving our planet a fever, and eating up our lives in commercialized cycles that extract our psychic and metabolic energy to swell the flows of labor, money and adulation milked by a parasitic capitalism.
The pathology of the processed food industry is that rather than earning a reasonable living by selling healthy nourishment, they hustle for hyper maximized profits by selling taste addictions as stealth wrappers around food-like media whose consequences of consumption they externalize as our costs in obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, strokes, cancers, and an explosion of health care costs sapping the national economy.
Chemically modified foods (say, more than 5 ingredients), grain-fed meat and fish, and artificial food-like substances that are largely a media of corn or soy flour (refined carbohydrates) heavily doped with salts, trans fats (hydrogenated vegetable oil) and high fructose corn syrup (sugar), are ubiquitous and cheaply available in comparison to fresh natural (organic) whole foods.
The scientifically engineered taste impressions of these processed foods so easily seduce the tastebuds of an unwary public that a gargantuan torrent of it is allowed to sluice very profitably down into the nation’s stomachs, and from there its loads of hydrogenated oils, refined carbohydrates, sugars, salts, and preservatives (which will keep your corpse from rotting as quickly as corpses used to before the 20th century) can diffuse throughout your body, accumulating as body fat and artery-clogging lipids and excess glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream.
If you eat, then you should read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense Of Food. It is a magnificent presentation of the full panorama of the natural web of food and human health, and its commercial exploitation in industrialized societies. (1)
Perhaps no food-like substance is more poisonous to American health than sugar drinks (whether fizzy or “natural”) and processed carbohydrate media loaded with high fructose corn syrup (e.g., “frozen yogurt”). Broadly speaking, carbohydrates are first converted to glucose (a sugar, as are sucrose and fructose) that flows in the bloodstream as instantly available metabolic fuel. When an excess of such sugar-fuel circulates (because there is insufficient activity to burn it up) it can be withdrawn and converted to stored fat. This is accomplished by the release from the pancreas of the hormone insulin, which escorts circulatory glucose toward storage as body fat. A persistent excess of such blood sugar, which is beyond the body’s ability to reprocess, leads to the malady known as diabetes (which has several forms).
The sudden fall in insulin levels after glucose has been stored is a trigger to appetite, a signal which we all know as that craving for “more.” The consumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates are particularly addicting in this way, you eat these “empty calories” and then are soon “hungry” again. In too many cases, people find themselves in a negative feedback loop of eating more and more (‘carbo-sweet’ stuff), getting fatter and fatter, and always being “hungry.” This type of counterproductive hunger-craving is absent with a proper (vegetable based) diet (more on this later). One lively presentation on sugar and human health, which expands on the points here, was posted by Louis Proyect. (2)
Data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for 2009-2010, show that 69.2% of American adults over 20 years of age carry excess body weight, and among them are the 35.9% of American adults who are obese. More disturbing is that obesity occurs among 18% of American children between 6 and 19 years of age, and even 12.1% of youngsters between 2 and 5 years of age! (3) For a riveting examination of the political economy of obesity in America, and efforts to reverse it, see the documentary film Obesity And Poverty. (4) A similarly sobering report on the obesity crisis in Britain was recently televised. (5)
The terms “underweight,” “normal,” overweight,” and “obese” are defined by a quantity called the Body Mass Index (BMI). The ratio of a person’s mass in kilograms, divided by the square of their height in meters, is called their BMI (which has units of kilograms per meters squared). This quantity was first used in scientific research by Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), before 1850. In 1972, physiologist Ancel Benjamin Keys (1904–2004) published a research paper demonstrating BMI to be the best proxy for body fat percentage among ratios of weight and height. (6)
The BMI is a convenient but not perfect gauge of a person’s amount of body fat, and by extension their probable degree of fitness. Of course, no simple physiological ratio can capture the full reality of every individual life. (7)
The upper boundary of the normal range of BMI was identified as numerically equal to 25 (in metric units). To find BMI using body weight in pounds and height in inches, divide the pounds by the square of height in inches, and multiply that result by 703.
Taking as your ideal physiological condition a body mass (“weight”) that produces a BMI equal to 25 for your height, then: you are “underweight” when below 74% of ideal weight, “normal” when between 74% and 100% of ideal weight, “overweight” when up to 120% of ideal weight, and “obese” when over 120% of ideal weight. Conditions below 64% of ideal weight and above 140% are termed severe (underweight and obesity, respectively).
The natural way to maintain a healthy body (a normal BMI) is to eat a diet composed primarily of organically grown: leafy vegetables eaten raw, steamed vegetables, fresh fruit, and supplemented with fish, beans, grains, and occasionally meat (100% pasture raised) if you are so inclined. Oil enters this diet in small quantities, such as the olive oil in salad dressing or used in the grilling of fish steaks. Salt enters as a minor ingredient in cooking, and sugar is reserved for the sweet treats one has now and then. The quantity of food consumed each day should be just enough that it supplies the calories needed to power your daily metabolism. Exercise, which is activity that increases heart rate and causes one to inhale oxygen more rapidly and deeply, will increase the daily metabolic rate (calorie burn), requiring a higher amount of food consumption above that necessary to maintain a sedentary routine. Additionally, exercise will increase endurance (aerobic exercise) and strength (anaerobic exercise).
It is a given that the maintenance of health requires forsaking all pernicious habits, like: smoking (all smoke inhalation diminishes oxygen intake, and introduces aerosols into the bronchia), excesses with alcohol, self “medication” or the many forms of willful intoxication; and good health also requires a restful sleep of at least 8 hours each night (or, within every 24 hour period).
So, given a basis of healthy behavior, time for proper rest (8-9 continuous hours) and exercise (20-30 minutes) every day, the availability of fresh wholesome (organic) foods, and the time to prepare, cook and eat them (for a family), one should easily be able to maintain an ideal state of health, both physically and mentally.
Our problem as people in industrialized societies (subjects of capitalism) is that the compulsions driving our Western Way Of Life are entirely hostile to granting individuals the time for proper rest, exercise and feeding (“slow food”), and they deluge us with sweet, salty, creamy, fast and cheap hyper-tensing diabetes-izing food-like media whose mass consumption sustains an industrial profitability beyond the dreams of a Croesus possessing a golden egg-laying goose.
A fundamental act of rebellion against capitalism is to expel it, in its form as processed food and your excess fat, circulatory lipids and glucose, from your body. This is not a trivial act, but a strenuous discipline for self-directed and life-long management of one’s own metabolism. In becoming more aware of my body’s metabolic management, I gain in health, which is to say I am more in control of my own destiny as it is influenced by my vitality and physicality, and I untangle myself a bit more from ensnarement in a political economy that is sick unto soullessness.
From our own daily experience, my family has learned that getting, preparing and eating healthy food is both time consuming and expensive. While processed, chemically modified (additives, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides), and corn-based, -fed or -loaded foods are marketed everywhere, one has fewer locations or occasions for getting real foods, as in weekend farmer’s markets. “Eating healthy” is today entirely a matter of being wealthy enough to indulge in that luxury. This is criminal, but the logical result of our industrialized food system (see 4 and 7). There is always some would-be boss or would-be owner who sees your time as their potential money. Hence, people pressed for time and money by the exigencies of their economic struggles will have a harder time resisting the lure of “convenience” and “fast” food, which besides making them fat, diabetic and hypertensive, adds to pollution because of all the plastic packaging.
Most of our healthcare costs, like the “war on cancer” (which is also a socialized externality of the tobacco industry), the epidemics of coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes, are simply the result of the population swallowing the pernicious externalities required to produce the profitability of the processed food industry. The “market solution” to our financial crisis of healthcare would be to tax all processed foods sufficiently to fund full universal nationalized healthcare. (Processed food could be defined leniently as any individually marketed item with more than 5 ingredients, or rigorously as any food that is not certified organic).
Such a scheme would undoubtedly cause the food industry to revamp its product lines so we the people could eat real foods bought conveniently at our local supermarkets, and not get sick: obese, diabetic, hypertensive, arteriosclerotic, cancerous, and prematurely dead. This would consequently lower the costs of our healthcare. When the healthiest foods are both widely available in all their varieties, and are also the lowest priced foods, while the processed stealthily toxic stuff is the most expensive ($50 McDonald’s “Happy Meals,” $15 Coca Colas) then many (most?) Americans will regain their health.
Your body is the physical center of your consciousness, the mother-ship of your imagination, and it marks out the path of your world-line in the four dimensional space-time continuum. Purging the residues of capitalist processes from your body is the regaining of awareness, health and self-control, it is both a political rebellion and a personal return-to-nature.
Now, with every thoughtful forkful consumed and every sip, with every bead of sweat and pant of catch-my-breath from self-directed exertion, and with every considered moment of selecting food at markets and then preparing it for family meals, I bring the operations of my metabolism into closer harmony with the natural cycles of energy flow on our planet. This type of awareness is as described in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (8)
What is important about this personal rebellion is not its degree of completeness, but its enduring persistence.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/22/the-pathology-of-the-processed-food-industry/
chen says:
Stucky – “You can’t even eat spinach for fear that some Mexican cocksucker didn’t fertilize it with human shit.” I’m impressed that you posted a diatribe purportedly written by said cocksucker.
Food and feces attracts commentators like flies. We were warned not to eat certain fruit in central america because it was most likely fertilized with night soil. I watched an old italian movie where a farmer is calling out to “cagoni” in town to come drop their load in exchange for an onion.
My suspicion is that these things like e-coli tainted food and mysteriaously falling bridges did not happen before 2001. The MSM does not do any investigative reporting, it simply said that the cause was unknown or that authorities were “investigating”. Reporters abandoned their job to the government.
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23rd February 2013 at 4:37 pm
Eddie says:
Many permaculture advocates vigorously endorse the use of human feces in gardens, rightfully pointing out that human manure is just as safe as animal manure, which is used in compost by many, if not most organic farmers. Proper composting destroys nearly all pathogens, including E. coli and even the more dangerous Vibrio cholera.
They like to point out that flush toilets represent an enormous waste of fresh water, which is a scarce resource in a lot of places these days.
I still have my flush toilets. Just wanted to point out that it isn’t the feces, but rather the way it’s handled, that usually causes problems.
http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/humanure_sanitation_paper.pdf
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23rd February 2013 at 5:08 pm
Thinker says:
Ironic that someone who advocates for growing one’s own food also suggests that 8 hours of sleep a night is a necessity. Clearly, they’ve never tried to do both, while making a living above a subsistence level.
Look, there are processed foods that aren’t as bad as others. Growing your own is great, but it takes far more time and investment in equipment than most people realize. Eating raw out of the garden (or nature, if you’re foraging) is practical for only 4-5 months of the year, depending on where you live.
It’s vitally important to learn to read labels, do some research and increase your level of knowledge when it comes to the food processing industry. There are a lot of regional companies that still produce products the way you would at home — but cheaper because they do it in quanity, and safely because they have to follow basic food processing regulations. I’m sure readers here can name a handful of such companies that exist in their own back yards. The number of these are growing every day, as consumers increasingly are willing to pay more for locally-produced products and producers are willing to take a risk and put in the effort to produce them.
Then there are the national companies who are based in the U.S. and have processing facilities that source locally, but manufacture products that are shipped nationally and even internationally. Red Gold tomato products (Indiana), Del Monte (HQ in San Francisco, but operations throughout the midwest), General Mills, Kellogg, etc. — there are a lot of companies that may be international in scope but still produce products locally and support entire communities in their efforts to produce products that are shipped worldwide. Learn which ones they are, and which ones they aren’t.
Never — no matter what — buy food products produced in China. There’s a reason why 80% of Chinese people are afraid to eat what’s produced in their country (I’ll provide sources, if you need them). Read labels… if it says, “product of China,” leave it behind. If it says only “distributed by” but no country of origin, leave it behind. While fresh products are required to have detailed product-of-origin labeling, processed foods do not require that. And that means that they may be processed anywhere — say, Argentina — from product sourced anywhere — like China. Products that are sourced and processed in the same country will clearly state what nation they are a product of.
Beyond that, you need to gain basic nutritional knowledge. Read labels to determine level of sodium. Read ingredients. Understand that “light” or “low fat” products often have salt or sugar added to make up for the decrease in taste after fat is removed. Understand how sodium/salt levels or sugar intake is to you, given your own health conditions. For some, choosing slightly higher fat, but significantly lower sodium levels is preferable. Others should avoid sugars — particularly high-fructose corn syrup — rather than fat or sodium. Learn to understand the trade-offs and what matters most to you/your family, given health conditions and history.
And, please, don’t trust “organic” labels just because they’re there. Organic doesn’t mean NO chemicals. In some cases, it means not only chemicals, but untreated/unaged manure. And I could name a number of vegetable species which naturally produce carcinogenic compounds in response to insect or fungal attacks, but benefit from appropriate farming that uses pesticides in small amounts at the right time (i.e., integrated pest management, IPM).
Unless one understands the complexity of not only agricultural production but also food processing systems, it’s difficult and often scary to figure out what’s best. Companies on both sides of the divide — “Organic” proponents and large Agribusiness — try to sway people on emotional messages about the safety of their food. Being able to recognize the motivations behind both is the most important lesson one can learn.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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23rd February 2013 at 6:36 pm
Stucky says:
chen / Eddie
Perhaps you are correct. Human shit as fertilizer is A-OK if done correctly.
But, please don’t ever invite me over for dinner.
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23rd February 2013 at 6:38 pm
Joe says:
I have stopped all the bad chemicals in my diet, but I do still eat chocolate.
I take vitamins but am getting ready to stop because I just found out that most of them are manufactured in China. Vitamin C is derived from corn which is most likely genetically modified. Most fish oil also comes from China. I don’t trust China to live up to any cleanliness standards that I would approve.
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23rd February 2013 at 6:54 pm
Stucky says:
Joe
I stopped taking fish oil and switched to Antarctic Krill Oil …. one of the few supplements I take cuz I know my normal diet is lacking in Omega-3. (It does not come from Antarctica … it is a species of krill).
Many are manufactured here in the USA.
I won’t tell you which to buy … but here is an article on how to evaluate them
http://krill-oil.wellwise.org/krill-oil-reviews
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23rd February 2013 at 8:13 pm
Stucky says:
“It’s vitally important to learn to read labels, ” —– Thinker
Very nice post!! But labels only work if the fuckers DON’T LIE re their labeling.
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23rd February 2013 at 8:16 pm
AWD says:
Great article Stuck. Your story on the salmon was priceless. There’s no telling what the hell we’re eating most of the time. The government (FDA) is supposed to be protecting us, what a joke that is. Anything you eat from China is almost guaranteed to be toxic.
I talk till I’m blue in the face about obesity, and it falls on deaf ears. People don’t care if it’s going to kill them in 5 or 10 years. They just don’t care. What does that say about our society? I see so, so many massively obese parents with small children. They won’t be alive to see them grow up. And the obese kids are statistically doomed to be in miserable health the rest of their short lives.
At least some people get it, like this author. The truth is uncomfortable, but somebody has to tell the truth for fuck sake. I don’t know what the answer is, but something drastic has to be done. 340,000 people are dying from obesity every year. The buffet restaurants are packed 24/7, and people can barely even walk far enough to get into them. Nice job bringing up this topic.
MRI’s don’t lie
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23rd February 2013 at 8:34 pm
Eddie says:
“But, please don’t ever invite me over for dinner.”
Your loss, my friend. Tomorrow I’m having a fresh gulf shrimp boil. My buddy is bringing me 6 pounds back from Rockport. Gulf shrimp and oysters are the best in the world, imho. No Chinese seafood served here.
So far I’m not using humanure in my garden. I am currently composting aquatic plants the city digs out of Barton Springs Pool, however. Even that pristine source may be a little suspect these days, though.
http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/barton.html
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23rd February 2013 at 8:45 pm
Bostonbob says:
As kids we had goats and used goat manure for the garden. Our veggies grew enormous. We had several friends who would ask to take barrels of manure to use in their gardens. The Japanese have used processed human waste for fertilizer for years. I believe that many of the waste processing plants in this country produce fertilizer.
Bob.
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23rd February 2013 at 9:09 pm
KaD says:
Human waste can be used for fertilizer but it has to be done right; when it is it’s Humanure: https://www.lehmans.com/p-2608-the-humanure-handbook-guide-to-composting-human-manure.aspx
As for healthy food I like free range native sweetgrass eating born on the prarie never see a feedlot or slaughterhouse shot and dressed on the range bison; which is lower in fat and calories than boneless skinless chicken breast, higher in protien and iron than beef and loaded with Omega 3′s like wild caught salmon:http://wildideabuffalo.com/healthier-red-meat/
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23rd February 2013 at 10:01 pm
KaD says:
I think in the years ahead as TSHTF the food supply is going to re-localize which is going to solve many problems. In the meantime ask yourself who benefits from a population of unhealthy and obese citizens.
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23rd February 2013 at 10:04 pm
KaD says:
Btw, if you EVER have the good fortune to sink your teeth into any Wild Idea Buffalo, you MUST get the book “Buffalo for the Broken Heart”. It is one of the best damn books I have ever read. If it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes AND make you laugh out loud you should check to see if you still have a pulse.
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23rd February 2013 at 10:15 pm
Stucky says:
KaD
I checked out that book. Looks pretty good. Added it to my “Books to buy” favorites tab …. which is now up to 38 books. Some day I’ll be rich and buy all of them. Thanks.
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23rd February 2013 at 10:02 am
Stucky says:
For my pal AWD only
Article in Brit newspaper about a BBW fashion show in Brazil.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283660/Plus-sized-models-storm-runway-display-curves-evening-wear-bridal-gowns-swimwear-lingerie-Brazils-Fashion-Weekend.html
Most of the pics are too large (pun !!) to post. But here is one that fits.
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23rd February 2013 at 10:04 am
Stucky says:
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23rd February 2013 at 10:07 am
Stucky says:
Fuckit.
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23rd February 2013 at 10:07 am
Maddie's Mom says:
I will never again complain about my size 6 hips.
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23rd February 2013 at 8:44 am
anotherjuan says:
MM, all women are hot, some more than others. we wont complain either. if not for women walking around in their sexiness men would die of alcoholism or boredom.
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23rd February 2013 at 8:56 am
Eddie says:
Stucky
My shrimp was fucking amazing. I served nine people and there were less than a half dozen shrimp left over…and they didn’t make it til bedtime. I’m bursting at the seams with Omega 3′s. I’ll probably live forever.
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23rd February 2013 at 9:03 am