Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Fascinating Insights - our Big Grain Problem

The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
"All this would be bad enough if the government weren't doing its best to make matters even worse, by recklessly encouraging farmers to produce even more unneeded food. Absurdly, while one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow. We have been hearing a lot lately about how our agricultural policy is undermining our foreign-policy goals, forcing third-world farmers to compete against a flood tide of cheap American grain. Well, those same policies are also undermining our public-health goals by loosing a tide of cheap calories at home"

A very good read, by the same fellow who wrote the widely read article some months back about antibiotics and steroids in our beef industry.
  

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