Red Flag Words in your Grocery Bag

These words will not help your grocery bill or your health. They are liberally sprinkled by both the USDA and various anti-corporate agriculture groups (these days it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins). Keep your eyes open for

Food Security
Environment (-alism, -al)
Sustainable
Justice
Organic
Natural
Community
Local
Accountability
Green
Access
Empower
Coalition
Grassroots
Facilitate
Self-reliance

Here's an example so loaded with misinformation and propaganda, I hardly know where to start.

"In many communities it is difficult to exercise healthy food choices due to the lack of affordable, available, and accessible healthy food sources, which may result in higher than average rates of overweight."

No it's not--difficult. We have a huge number of choices available, even if the only place you have to shop is the local 7-Eleven type gasoline store, because I've gone in and looked. I could buy milk, bread, eggs, apples, oranges, bananas, and a limited number of canned vegetables and fruit. Affordable, available, and accessible. Yes m'am, I would have to by-pass many more choices of chips, snacks, cookies, pop, gum, and beer. But that's the choice a consumer makes in a land where people choose to put their time in playing computer games, going to bars, hanging out with friends, watching TV or sleeping rather than going to the store, purchasing real food, and bringing it home to cook it. Even if they wanted to buy prepared food they could still have a very healthy and adequate diet. Today's paper reported that only 47% of homecooked meals contain a fresh item such as a vegetable. Do you really think that's because vegetables are not accessible or affordable? Have you priced a 5 lb bag of onions or potatoes? They are dirt cheap. Considering the level of income and education of most American households, this 47% figure is outrageous, but it has nothing to do with "justice," or "accountability," and it certainly isn't the government's fault, or Hollywood's fault, or the food corporations' problem.

Today I've had an apple, a carrot, a handful of grapes, a 1/2 cup of walnuts, (breakfast) and grilled broccoli with onion in olive oil for lunch, and because I've got a hankering for something crunchy, two chocolate graham crackers. I'm guessing not a single item was local (probably 70% was from California), or sustainable, or community grown, or environmentally friendly. I'm betting all was grown with fertilizers and pesticides at some point. And no one has ever died or been made sick from modern agricultural methods. I live in Ohio, and about 9 months out of the year, all our produce has to be brought here by truck, train or plane. And for the moment, our tomatoes have not been pulled from the market.

Watch out for nannyism and alarmism by the government and the growing power of environmental organizations in the form of "healthier eating." There are only two things that cause obesity, 1) the genes you inherited from your parents, 2) eating more calories than your body needs. You have control over one of these two things. Get busy on it.