So life has gotten the best of me, and I’ve kind of let the blog go…again. The reason I’m writing is because I’m angry. I’ve got something to say, and I felt that this was the best place to say it. We’re talking about a grave threat to society as we know it. That’s right. I’m telling you right here and right now that the products you buy every time you go to the super market are leading to our demise in more ways than you can count. The dominoes are already falling. Can you believe it? You probably think I’m crazy, but bear with me.
This could easily become a series of articles, heck entire books have been written on just a portion of the debate, but let’s get started by going through why this is something you should care about. I mean really, if agricultural policy gets your juices flowing, raise your hand. Mhm. I thought so. Not one. A popular misconception is that it’s about as exciting as Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is charismatic (read: not very).
Before I give you a few examples of why this is fascinating stuff, let me tell you why I’m writing. Usually I like to discuss things like international development and sustainability on both a global and local level. Food is not my area of expertise, but something I’m really interested in. You see, like many other people who like to pretend their sophisticated, I’m a foodie in training. I love to eat and cook, and I’m pretty adventurous in both regards. Based on this passion and a horrible family health history that includes cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes and other fun things, I took an interest in eating things that are good and good for you at an early age. The thing is there’s more to being healthy than eating foods that are low in fat and high in essential nutrients.
What kind of a connection do you have with your food? Do you know what happened to your chicken in between the time it hatched and made it into that package of frozen chicken nuggets in your local super market? You don’t. All you [think that you] know is that chicken is a lean mean, and surely it’s less bad for you than beef. If only you knew that to mass produce those soulful nuggets, a whopping thirty eight ingredients are required. Thirteen of which are chemically modified bi-products of corn such as dextrose and lecithin, while others are entirely synthetic such as the toxic chemicals dimethylpolysiloxene and tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ). The former is a carcinogen, mutagen, and tumorigen that prevents the frying oil from foaming, and the latter is a form of butane that “helps preserve freshness” even though ingesting a mere gram can cause suffocation and collapse. Five will kill. The FDA thinks that’s okay, just in case you were wondering.
Don’t even get me started on beef. That hamburger you had for dinner? Chances are it passed through one of the country’s thirteen major slaughter houses. They process virtually all of our meat (and have a frightening amount of power over the entire process). If just one cow out of the possibly thousands that are mixed into that one hamburger had e coli, you and most of the country are at risk, leading to a recall of about a million or so pounds of beef. But by the time that happens, it’s probably already too late. Why have there been so many outbreaks in recent years? The antibiotics that we automatically mix into our cow’s feed are creating resistant strains of the bacteria, and since we eat their meat, we’re at risk too. The reason we feed them antibiotics is because the cows evolved to graze on grass and digest it in their three rumens. When switching them to a cheaper diet of corn health caused problems such a bloating so extreme that it caused suffocation, we resorted to technology to solve our problems instead of realizing our error. Surprise. Consequently when science told us to start putting ammonia our ground beef kill the e coli, we listened and now 70% of our hamburgers contain it. If you’re not scared yet, I hope you’re shaking after reading that the FDA has cut its meat inspections by more than two-thirds over the last twenty years. I’ll expand on all of this some other time but I hope I’ve piqued your interest.
This is just a small taste of where I’m going. If you want to learn more about why it’s time to think twice about what you eat, keep reading. I’ll connect the failures of our government in this area to national security, energy policy, public health, health care, immigration, the economy, the environment and other issues that traditionally sit atop the agenda and garner much more attention.
To be clear and forthright, my purposes in writing this column and the others that will follow it are two-fold. The first is to bring about change on a grassroots level. It is my hope that by reading what I have to say, a few of you will alter the way you personally make decisions about what you eat. If I change just a few minds, I’ve made a difference. The second, and more obvious is to lay out the problem in clear terms, why we should care about it and what I think Congress, the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration should do to rectify this dilemma, and thus enjoy a positive net benefit on all of the issues I labelled above.
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To learn more, I recommend reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, or the Oscar-nominated documentary Food Inc. While each has its own agenda (one that I sometimes disagree with) and takes their argument to the extreme, they are quite informative and are a great place to start.
