What’s wrong with this paragraph?

“It is no longer controversial to say that the United States food system does not support a healthy diet. Junk food is extraordinarily palatable and virtually omnipresent; its advertising is pervasive; many Americans do not live within convenient distance of a grocery store stocking healthy alternatives; and healthier foods are typically perceived as costlier. In this environment, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides 42 million low-income people with financial assistance to purchase food. Most SNAP recipients, because they tend to live in lower-income communities, are exposed to the worst of the US food system: more unhealthy food marketing through traditional and social media, more unhealthy foods in the stores where they regularly shop, and fewer healthy foods that are financially within reach. Although SNAP benefits are intended to provide low-income families with sufficient food-purchasing power to obtain a nutritious diet, there is broad consensus that current benefits are insufficient [1]. The US food system is in urgent need of policies and programs that support and facilitate better dietary habits.”

1.  There is no United States food system.

2.  There is no agreement on what is a healthy diet.

3.  There is no agreement on what is junk food.

4.  What’s the number in a statement like “many Americans?”

5.  What is a healthy alternative?

6.  Are healthy foods really more costly per ounce or per pound?

7.  How many are “most SNAP recipients?”

8.  What broad consensus and who are they?

9.  “Policies and programs” is code for more government.

10. When was it ever controversial to say we Americans didn’t have a healthy diet?  I’ve heard it all my life and I’m 79!

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002662

How to read the new nutrition label

This is the final week of programming at Lakeside, and the director of education uses our own Lakeside "experts" who present fine programming. Yesterday was Wendy Stuhldreher a retired professor of nutrition and public health explaining the new labeling for food (she used a one page FDA graphic issued Jan. 2018 which I've been unable to find). My take away was, "just eat your vegetables." She said it many times, especially at Q & A. Her point was that although vegetables may not be high in protein or calcium, they perform with other nutrients as an orchestra, and all play their part.

She also stressed that vegetarians must find compensatory nutrition because they don't eat red meat. The audience was definitely in the osteoporosis/bone loss age group, so she also stressed calcium, but added that it was an investment we needed to make when we were young because the body starts making withdrawals from the bank of our bones by middle age. For a cheese good for protein and calcium, she recommended cottage cheese.

My mother's generation started that 2% and 1% milk trend (she was 5'1" and always watched her weight), and now my generation is probably low on the calcium reserves that needed the fat content for our bones. I think I continued with the 1% and skim until a few years ago.  Don't give young children skim milk as a replacement for whole.

When I first decided to attend Wendy’s lecture, I thought I knew how to read a label, but there have been significant changes, and we found out why, like Vit. D is now listed, but Vit. A & C have been removed because deficiencies in those are rare. Sugar is sugar on the new label. Fat is fat, and "calories from fat" has been removed. Potassium need has been added. (You can't get enough by eating a banana, which most of the audience believed).

The public health concern about sun damage and advertising about sunscreen has been so successful, we now don't get enough Vit. D and today's children don't play outside as much as the boomers and Gen-Xers. She gave the new thinking on sodium/salt--because more of us are eating out, we're not eating as many vegetables--and it's not the sodium, it's the lack of vegetables.  One woman (very thin) in the audience commented about addiction to sugar, and Wendy said that has not been proven and commented on the difficulty of using control groups for nutrition studies.  But one she did recall concluded sugar was less harmful than other sweeteners.

I know how we all love to read those organic and health food websites, but when doing an initial search, I add USDA or FDA to check the research, aka bibliography/footnotes.

Caution for artificial sweeteners, especially for children

More and more artificial sweeteners are used in our food with approval from the FDA. The consumer believes this will help with weight loss, but that’s not the case.

“The food industry responds to the consumer demand, and increasingly replaces sugar with artificial sweeteners in order to provide tasty goods with lower sugar content. Most consumers expect that weight loss will result from switching to artificial sweeteners (because they contain no or fewer calories), but paradoxically the opposite may happen.”

A very small study showed children have much more of these artificial sweeteners in their systems than adults. Infants are ingesting it through breast milk and their systems may not be able to process it, plus it may influence their preferences for sweetness when they are older.

Unfortunately, this article does not cite the proper source, but says the research is in Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry, and year is not given. http://www.news-medical.net/news/20161024/Study-measures-amount-of-artificial-sweeteners-in-the-blood-streamc2a0of-adults-and-kids.aspx

Fake extra virgin olive oil?

From this health website with which I’m not familiar, comes this warning.  Many brands of olive oil are fake. http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/12300-is-your-olive-oil-lying-about-its-virginity.html  Where is the USDA which consumes billions of our tax dollars to promote safe food and accurate labeling?

Independent tests at the University of California found that 69% of all store-bought extra virgin olive oils in the US are probably fake.(3) This study reported that the following brands failed to meet extra virgin olive oil standards:

• Bertolli
• Carapelli
• Colavita
• Filippo Berio
• Mazzola
• Mezzetta
• Newman’s Own
• Safeway
• Star
• Whole Foods

The same University of California study listed the following brands as having met their standards for being true extra virgin olive oil.

• Corto Olive
• California Olive Ranch
• Kirkland Organic
• Lucero (Ascolano)
• McEvoy Ranch Organic
• Pompeii

Note: although I found the UC Davis Olive Center, I haven’t found the actual study so I can look at it.  It does produce its own olive oil for sale and is industry funded.  That’s not necessarily bad, but should be noted. So now I’m looking through the Olive Center’s FB page.

http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2015/01/new-missionaries/

Who’s fault is it?

       

[snark] I know who ordered that pizza, who bought that bag of chips and forced open my mouth. Yes, someone in the 1% who needs to be taxed more so I'll eat more fruits and vegetables which I grew in my backyard.

Have you ever looked at photographs of the over 50 crowd in 1910 or 1950—before the days of fast food restaurants, or 32 oz. bottles of coke?  Yup.  They are fat.  What’s different today is how heavy the young people are.  For that I think we can give thanks to the women’s movement of the 1970s, and less time playing outdoors. Women in the 1970s didn’t really calculate how much of their income was being taxed at a confiscatory rate [tacked onto their husband’s rate], and they were tired after working and driving, so they began taking the kids out to eat.  The restaurant industry and the processed food industry responded to the market, and so the next generation barely knew how to make a white sauce or hard cook an egg.  That gave rise to cooking shows and gourmet clubs and more food advertising, which lent itself to more and more government regulation.

See how neatly this all fits together?  Instead of blaming an industry or an agency, just eat less and move more.

Food deserts are a myth

If you're overweight it's not because there's a fast food business near-by and no fresh fruits and vegetables. I didn't even need the research. I have no shortage of information or healthy food. And I don't eat fast food (except an occasional McD's sausage biscuit). But you should watch me go through a block of healthy, white cheddar cheese or homemade buckeye candy (chocolate and peanut butter).

"Living close to supermarkets or grocers did not make students thin and living close to fast food outlets did not make them fat."

http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/296485/jig-food-deserts/julie-gunlock .

This sort of junk nutrition by social scientists results in a steady stream of government grants from USDA and HHS for public employees for a non-problem. I was looking at one of the "fast food" and stress sites today at OSU and the director (showed a photo) of the program was overweight!

The technology of candy corn

The ingenuity, quality control and passion for making candy corn just amazes me. It's a big seller at Halloween time.



HT Neo-Neocon

Genetically Engineered Pig With Earth-Friendly Poop

Imagine the unintended consequences! Be sure to read the comments about Enviropig.

"The “Enviropig” has been genetically modified in such a manner that its urine and feces contain almost 65 percent less phosphorus than usual."

Meet the Genetically Engineered Pig With Earth-Friendly Poop | 80beats | Discover Magazine

Alternative to coupons

I found the article--it was in the September 2, 1981, Upper Arlington News--about 28 years ago. Here's the points I made.

• I did the research after a conversation with co-workers who felt guilty that they didn't clip coupons, or didn't like it.
  
  
• At the time I was a librarian in the OSU Agriculture Library and had access to little known publications that provided the answers.
  
  
• If homemakers would use their time in preparation instead of coupon clipping and sorting and parties, they would save much more and serve their families better food.
  
  
• Coupons were most often available for highly prepackaged food which are the most expensive.
  
  
• I attributed women's (housewives) need to do this to being convinced they needed a paycheck to feel valuable (remember, we were only 10 years into the rush to go back to work as a result of the women's movement). "Clipping, filing, storing, redeeming--why it is just like office work, and you sometimes even get a check in the mail for your efforts. At last there is tangible reward for all your efforts," I said.
  
  
• Homemakers are given a false sense of contributing to her family's economic well-being by being convinced that she's saving money.
  
  
• The writer found my food budget very interesting--"she feeds her family of 4 (including a teenage son and daughter) for $50 or less a week. That's less than the government figures a family of four using food stamps must spend."
  
  
• I'd gradually changed my shopping habits to include more fresh items and I "shopped the walls" for produce, dairy and meat avoiding the sea of prepackaged foods found in the center aisles.
  
  
• I didn't drive around looking for bargains, read labels, bought generic brands.
  
  
• Our children thought "real cheese" tasted funny when I made the change, so I recommended making changes gradually and ease the family into healthier, lower cost eating.
  
  
• And of course, because I was a librarian, I recommended some books, "The supermarket Handbook" by the Goldbecks, and "Diet for a small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe, and More with Less Cookbook by Doris Longacre. I still use the Longacre book occasionally.

I get a chuckle out of today's greenies who think they invented this.

Do leftists know people are employed in the food industry?

The food industry--agribusiness, processors, packagers, designers, marketers, chemistists, nutritionists, magazine writers, etc.--will continue to be under attack by the left as we inch our way through the health care mess. Diabetes, cardiovascular problems--it's all the fault of evil capitalism, not our genes, not our personal choices.

Here's an item from today's paper that will thrill Michael Pollan. Even by suggesting in his editorial that the food industry is the next target of the Obama surrogates, he's probably killed investment.

"Marzetti Pfeiffer foods plant is to close in western New York putting 150 people out of work." Link

Oh look. The announcement came on 9/11--maybe the President could find volunteer jobs for all those people in Wilson, NY.

Back to the gardens and kitchens ladies! Drop those brief cases and get out the aprons. It's your patriotic duty.

Julia and Michael

Recently at Lakeside's Orchestra Hall (only movie theater in Ottawa County) I enjoyed Julie and Julia, which is not just about cooking, but also marriage and blogging. It's rare you'll ever see a movie about happily married people, but this be one! So it also launched Michael Pollan, who wants the government in your kitchen, pantry and shopping list, to comment on what overstuffed pigs we all are and why after Obama takes over 1/6 of the economy with his healthcare grab he should start in on the food industry. His book was also featured in the Public Library of Cincinnati moving slide feature (which moves way too fast for my reading level).

"The imminent release of Julie & Julia has so far launched about 5,000 articles, and this weekend, Michael Pollan will bring us one more. The film has inspired Pollan to pen over 8,000 words in The New York Times Magazine about, among other thing, the rise of cooking as a spectator sport, the decline of home-cooked meals, the evils of the processed food industry, and the brilliance of Meryl Streep.

As for whether Americans can reverse the trend that's taken us away from the kitchen and towards permanent posterior indentations on the couch, one food-marketing researcher Pollan interviews isn't optimistic: "We're all looking for someone else to cook for us. The next American cook is going to be the supermarket. Takeout from the supermarket, that's the future. All we need now is the drive-through supermarket."" The village voice

I just love being able to walk two blocks at Lakeside to the Farmer's Market, but I've read enough of 19th and early 20th c. women's magazines to know that eventually the greenies and the feminists are going to be butting heads. No one embraced the processed food industry more than the women who had sweated in the sun digging potatoes, drowning bugs, canning tomatoes and meat from the butchered stock, (I gag even remembering the texture and taste of home canned meat) and selling their eggs to put junior through school. Yes, we certainly don't need 14 versions of the Ritz cracker, nor do we need the federal government telling us what to eat.

The health care bill is just the first step says Pollan who lives and performs in Berkeley. You can expect more government control after this one is done.

"All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health — which means going to work on the American way of eating." His NYT op ed

It is always the dream of the liberal to find that next big thing--like purifying water which totally changed life expectancy in this country, or spraying mosquitoes with DDT which rid us of the scourge of malaria, or small pox vaccines, or the polio vaccine (needed because we cleaned up the water supply), or TB screening tests. I don't think changing our diets will be that, but they'll try any way, some in good faith, others for the power over our lives.

Why there were more hungry children in 2007

Hunger will never go away in the USA because the government keeps redefining and refining what that word means, and continues to meet other nanny state goals such as decreasing obesity or distributing healthy food, promoting environmental goals, safe neighborhoods and being step-daddy and sugar daddy for women making bad choices, holding both the taxpayer and low income families hostage to these ill-thought-out goals. Yes, big announcement by USDA this week:

Household Food Security in the United States, 2007—11.1 percent of U.S. households were food-insecure at some time during the year in 2007; 4.1 percent had very low food security. This report, based on data from the December 2007 food security survey, provides the most recent statistics on the food security of U.S. households as well as how much they spent for food and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in Federal and community food assistance programs.

The word HUNGER makes the headlines, but the government term is "food security." And that only has to happen once a year, maybe at the end of the month in which you went to Disney World or got new glasses for the kids, to be included in the report. For some people "food insecurity" is not being able to go to McDonald's regularly.

I know what food security is--I've seen it at the Food Pantry in 2007. It's a mother of 4 telling me that she doesn't need cereal (allowed 3 boxes that day) because the children get that at school breakfast (where they also get lunch and after school snacks too, and are fed in the summer when school isn't in session), or it's a grandmother raising her daughter's babies while she's in Marysville Reformatory for kiting checks saying no to applesauce or peanut butter because she has too much of that at home. I can tell from the brands that they were purchased in bulk from huge storage facilities that buy from companies that depend on government contracts to keep their business going. After years of misguided farm surplus to buoy up farmers, the government now supports food overproduction by agribusiness.

Why are food pantries short right now? It's not just that more people are unemployed and running short a few days of the month. There's an actual food shortage worldwide due to our ill advised biofuels policies and environmental regulations, and our regulators of herbicides, pesticides and improved agricultural methods are actually causing real hunger, causing real children to starve, or causing riots in very poor countries. Food banks now need to be "green" with squirrely light bulbs and solar panels--imagine the retro-fitting just so you can store food for the poor. So American food companies can now make more shipping their taxpayer supported surplus abroad than they can selling it to American food banks which redistribute it to our "food insecure" citizens who also have become dependent on TEFAP, WIC and food stamps (SNAP). The Columbus Mid-Ohio Food Bank has an operating budget of about $8 million and distributes about $22 million in food annually and is in the midst of an $16 million capital campaign to expand and remodel.

Behind the food banks and food pantries there are teams of academics--entomologists, plant pathologists, crop managers, ag economists, horticulturalists, small business developer, food retail specialists, agronomists and soil scientists, community developers, nutritionists, registered dietitians, educators, and biosystems engineers all sifting data and publishing results to assure no child gets left behind, or no child gets a fat behind, or no child sits on his behind. There are banks set up to loan farmers money to focus on locally grown food (to help the poor make smart choices), and training programs to employ staff to teach staff of non-profits how to get more government grants for food for the "food insecure."

The government also props up a variety of non-profits such as Children's Hunger Alliance, which in the same year received about $10.5 million from the Ohio Department of Education, over half a million from Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, and over $36,000 in federal grants, with the remainder of its $13,762,098 coming from foundations and contributions. This is not to say that CHA, and others like it, don't do meaningful work, but that's a huge food chain of salaries, production and distribution that are totally dependant on "hunger," who would all be out of business if hunger miraculously ended next month. Of course, we know that won't happen. The definition of hunger will most certainly be expanded in the next administration as child care block grants are expanded, affordable housing grants are expanded (convenient access to food sources), health care is expanded to ensure low fat, or low cholesterol diets, services to children of imprisoned are expanded (already in the family services budget), and all the various senior programs expanded to be sure the elderly who are taking care of grandchildren are also well fed.

There are so many jobs dependent on the poor and "food insecure", that new poor must be recruited for each one who manages to slip through the barrier to the next quintile and into a good job, self-sufficiency and pride.

Do not blame the poor. They didn't set up this system. They are the victims.

My peanut butter nightmare story

In my No Free Lunch newsletter, #13, (see the previous entry on the background of that newsletter) I wrote about my peanut butter fears. It sounds a bit like today's gasoline stories, so I thought I'd share it. I was actually discussing concentration in the food industry and reported that in 1963 the 50 largest companies accounted for 42% of all food manufacturers' assets, and by 1978 it was 63.7%, and that by 2000 it could be 100% (as reported in "The U.S. food and tobacco manufacturing industries," 1980). Here was my nightmare scenario in 1981

"I don't have a crystal ball and I'm certainly no economist, but as someone who has been eating peanut butter on toast for breakfast since 1945, I'd like to share a fear of mine with you.

There was a terrible drought in the summer of 1980--bad year for many crops, particularly peanuts. If you can get peanut butter at all, you're paying dearly for it. Peanut butter is a product that can be simply made (grind up, add salt, pack in jars) by a small company and can be marketed locally because of its wide appeal. If a national firm comes out with a $1.00 off coupon on their brand of peanut butter, the smaller firms will probably be out of business in a short time. And the American shopper will fall for it, because she thinks a coupon is saving her money.

And then, my nightmare continues, OPEC countries begin buying up acreages in the south that produce our peanuts, and decide to invest some of their oil earnings in the food conglomerates that produce our peanut butter.

Soon foreign investments are in control, and cutting back on what they'll let us buy, and American shoppers are lining up at the grocery store at 5 a.m. to get a scoop of peanut butter for breakfast."

See how worrying about tomorrow spoils today? I'm still eating peanut butter, but that last paragraph does remind me of the gasoline problem. We have no control over the source of our oil, but need it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything else. I also didn't remember this drought, I think because we had such a bad heat wave and drought around here in 1988. So I looked it up, and here's what I found in the Monthly Weather Review, v. 109, #10 (Oct 1981)

Economic losses during the hot, dry summer of 1980 were estimated at $16 billion. Despite these substantial economic losses, analyses of historical (1895–1980) monthly temperature and precipitation data across the 48 contiguous United States indicate that conditions could easily have been worse. Much more hostile conditions have existed in the past, particularly during the 1930's and the 1950's. However, the summer of 1980 does stand out from the past two decades as an extreme anomaly across the southern and southeastern United States.

Wasn't this during the time when we were warned about the coming new ice age? Well, at least this can't be blamed on President Bush.