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Alcohol production! Genetic Diversity! Microclimate!

http://michaelpollan.com/books...

And you have what facts to go on? Mass produced milk, wheat, meats, fruits and vegetables are routinely dumped. Putting needed food to good use is far better than wasting it. I see America now, crumbling infrastructure, mass unemployment, environmental decay, crippling debt, failed education system, vanishing industries, and I do not like it. This failure is America now, and it is sinking like the Titanic while everyone dances blissfuly along. I am not a big fan of it. Putting a stop to mass waste is a good start. You obviously sound privileged and well fed, and you could care less about waste. Start reading this guy http://michaelpollan.com/ and others who research and write about sustainable food. You see this idea of mass production which in turn begets mass waste, and is unsustainable. Changing our consumption patterns to something more sustainable is far better than your Reaganomics.

I suppose I am begging the question a little in stating that avoiding those foods probably wasn't terrible advice, because I'm definitely thinking of more than just the trans-fat content. I consider it a good enough rule-of-thumb to guide my own decisions, but not really a cogent argument to advise others. I could elaborate if you cared to read, but it's probably just fodder for tl;dr otherwise.

But, while I agree that more time needs to be spent discovering and discussing the specific mechanisms that cause health problems (or benefits), I'm countering what I perceive to be your first argument: that it would be better to educate people on "the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects". By many folks' definitions, that is exactly what studies on fats, or carbs, or saturated fats, or trans fats, etc, are doing. Yet, advice based on any of these may potentially be equally counter-productive as rule-of-thumbs such as "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." or "regular light excercise, moderation and variatoin". By and large, I think these rules of thumb, when their reasoning is understood at a basic level and followed thus, can be effective guidelines. But yes, there will always be the proverbial bakery-goers who don't bother to understand anything other than a sound bite and think they're following some catch-all guideline and may then get demoralized. I guess I just think that for the rest of us, rules of thumb might not actually be so bad.

Hell, I even consider "eat a different color of vegetable every day" an alright rule of thumb, although obviously it is hugely susceptible to misuse by consumers and trickery by producers. But so is yours: a friend's definition of "variation" was to order different toppings on his weekly order of domino's pizza (which he kept in the fridge and ate throughout the week).

Sorry - my referenced URL was not present - here it is http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/

We do Chick-fil-A. Does that count as crap food?

Depends on your definition of crap food. Using a standard value meal as a guide, original chicken sandwich, fries, and a soft-drink, you are looking at about 1,000 calories: 430 for the sandwich, 430 for the fries, and in excess of 100 for the drink. While I will admit that their fare is better than the competition, it is by no means good food*. Following are the nutritional pages for reference:

• Breakfast Items
• Classics
• Condiments
• Desserts
• Dressings
• Drinks
• Salads
• Side Items
• Wraps

* Michael Pollan and others may even disagree that it is even food.

I think that before that, The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food should be read. Also, watch Super Size Me. I can honestly say that I don't like the idea of ingesting chemicals that are designed to fool my sense of taste, something that has been honed over thousands of years to identify food my body needs...

I think that before that, The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food should be read. Also, watch Super Size Me. I can honestly say that I don't like the idea of ingesting chemicals that are designed to fool my sense of taste, something that has been honed over thousands of years to identify food my body needs...

Better than a tax, how about just getting rid of food subsidies and pricing food as it actually costs (including costs to the environment, clean-up, etc).

We're biologically programmed to crave the taste of sweet, fatty foods. Now that famine is the exception rather than the rule, this doesn't seem to work in our favor. Especially since it costs approximately the same for 1000 calories of processed food (say, potato chips) as it does for about 100 calories of fresh veggies (say, actual potatoes).

How can we expect ourselves (because, oh yes, I'm guilty of it too!) to make good food decisions when the food industry spends millions of dollars a year to prevent us from doing that. They spend a couple of pennies processing on their end, we get Cinnamon Toast Crunch for $5 per box in the supermarket.

Farmers are paid to grow more and more (and more and more) corn in unsustainable ways, and then we need to find thing to do with it. So we feed it to other animals who never evolved to eat corn (like cattle, and farm raised salmon). We could go a long way, instead of taxing consumers, by just eliminating the crazy subsidies.

Seriously, The Omnivore's Dilemma...a very good read.

Corn? Yes, Corn!

Michael Pollan will convince you, that this is no accident. You are eating nothing but corn - with a four-carbon configuration that is destroying your healt and nutrition, as it wrecks ecosystems in its cultivation.

Thanks, Cargill! Thanks, Mosanto! If Chevron-Texaco is Emperor Palpatine, these two are Darth Vader and Tarkin.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That seems to be the optimal human diet, summed up nicely in seven words. That's the main reason I'm a vegetarian. As I went through my biology coursework in college, I realized that eating red meat wasn't great for me. From there, I eventually cut out other meat. Now as I look around my cubicle farm of IT staff, I'm one of the few thin and fit people around.

The other reason not to eat so much meat is economic and environmental. It's inefficient. When you convert sunlight to meat, it has to go through a plant phase, and you end up having to cultivate a lot of grain to make a little meat. It's simple physics, and difficult to argue against (the best I've heard is that you can graze animals on land not useful for much else).

Vat grown meat might help with the latter issue, but probably won't help much with the first one. Eating lots of meat likely isn't the most healthy option for humans. It's not inherently bad, but causes health issues in the quantities Americans seem to eat it.

Where to begin!

I previously - jokingly - believed SETI and Voyager to be like cosmic spam. Now, we are beaming to space, evidence that no intelligent life exists on Earth?

Doritos! Here's six ways to poison a carbon-based lifeform! Maybe we can beam the text of "The Omnivore's Dilemma", too...

Corn. Also, corn. Would you like corn with your corn?

GMO-related concerns aren't "nonsense." You might want to do a little research on that topic before you go spouting off about it. For starters, watch this documentary: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU8XrioF4CE Then, read this (enjoyable) book: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php Beyond the immediate (human lifespan) health concerns, there are patent nightmares aplenty. GMO plants are treated as IP. Seed from the GMO plants contaminates traditional farms, the farmers are sued by large companies like Monsanto, and the farmers are forced to destroy any saved seed as part of the eventual settlement. As a result, we're losing biodiversity at a shit-your-pants rate. If a slate-wiper disease strikes zea mays, we've got a real problem. The health concerns are real. It's not that eating some GMO canola oil will kill you; it's that almost all of our food is derived from the same few plants, and "minor" changes to the plants can have major effects on us. Further, we have the insane situation in the U.S. that GMO foods don't even have to be labeled as such. Most of us are stuck either paying through the nose for pseudo-organic and heirloom foods, or else eating... whatever the corporations feed us.

To put it another way, if we weren't subsidizing corn farmers, they'd be producing less corn. Less corn means less corn syrup (and subsequent sugary beverages) and more land for other crops like vegetables (thus cheaper healthy produce).

Government routinely screws things up with its intervention. Is anyone surprised?

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan points out the corn -> cheap calories -> obesity link in the article. He also criticizes nutritionism, which is in abundant supply in the replies to this post. His book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, is a good read, and quite relevant to the discussion.

"you might want to stick to regular Coca Cola or Diet Coke which appear not to contain this stuff."

Or try coffee if you want caffeine or orange juice if you want orange, or just plain soda water if the fizz is your thing.

Honestly, you pay a fortune for a drink that's poisoning you, why would you choose one of the companies other products? If they know there is concern over this, and they still put it in in some countries, then this is not a company that's doing you any favours. I wouldn't trust them with any of their other products.

http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php

Remember that article recently, where his first paragraph told you to 'eat food', and reminded you that food is the stuff your grandmothers could recognise as food. Every time I read about how food manufacturers have found news ways to screw around with processed foods, I'm just glad that I stick to eating food. My dad use to make phosphoric acid for Coke, he said, don't touch the stuff.

Now if I can only stop them pumping chemicals into the meat to get it to absorb water to make it seem bigger than it is, I'll be happy. And don't get me started on the move to replace cocoa butter in chocolate with cheaper fats, and still be able to call it chocolate.

The first chapter in "Omnivore's Dillema" is pretty much all about corn.

  http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=5

Read this for a glimpse into why reliance on corn is such a bad idea. Some of these essays on the subject shed more light on the corn conundrum.

Read this for a glimpse into why reliance on corn is such a bad idea. Some of these essays on the subject shed more light on the corn conundrum.

It's not about creating prion-free cattle. It's about cheap meat. The meat industry is all about high density feedlots for cattle, pigs, and chickens. It's all about providing you with the cheapest meat, not necessarily the safest for you or the meat animals. The industry players want you to think that cattle spend all of their days frollicking on the range and munching on grass instead of being cooped up in their own shit and forced to eat antibiotics so they can eat corn which they did not evolve to eat. I'm a devout omnivore and won't stop eating meat, so those more rabidly zealous vegans can get stuffed. I can and will however eat safer and better raised meat.

Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma . It has a fascinating account of Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms. You can have a win-win situation between raising meat animals and the enviroment. Finally, everything you ever wanted to know about high density feedlots can be found in cartoon format at The Meatrix.

"First stop was a hopper filled with Rumensin, a powerful antibiotic that No. 534 will consume with his feed every day for the rest of his life. Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as they're placed in the backgrounding pen, they're apt to get sick. Why? The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The shift to a 'hot ration' of grain can so disturb the cow's digestive process--its rumen, in particular--that it can kill the animal if not managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics."

- Power Steer, 2002

Soon we'll all be eating cloned beef from cattle raised in high density feedlots who stand around in their own feces and urine pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. Then the meat will have to be irradiated to kill the resistant strains of E. coli created in the cattle's stomachs because were forced to eat corn that they didn't evolve to eat.

Since consumers will expect their irradatiated meat to glow in the dark, they'll create glowing cattle just like the glowing pigs.

Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma if you want to or watch Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms talk about the real future of raising meat (long) and how to turn vegetarians back into meat eaters and why it's important to have promiscuous healthy earthworms.

As we age our brains may ossify and turn us all into natural luddites. But, it seems that a "hi-tech" solution to another "hi-tech" solution is a problem. We need to step back and look at how this bacterial problem occurred in the first place. Say hello to the high density feedlot where cows live in great metal buildings standing around in their own filth being fed unnatural foods and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. Antibiotics? The overuse of antibiotics has created superstrains of bacteria. And it is those stronger strains that are showing up in our meat supply.

The practical solution is simple. Grass finished beef. Corn fed isn't natural or healthy. Let the steers eat grass for their last two weeks before slaughter. They can still do the dense feedlots, CAFO's but most of the problems caused by CAFO's are mitigated by grass finishing diet. But they determined it wouldn't be cost effective so they pass the real cost onto the consumer to make sure their meat is properly handled and cooked and the medical costs associated with tainted meat. Oh well.

The real solution is free range grass fed beef. Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and check out Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms. After reading about CAFO's, I can see why some people become vegans and vegetarians, but I won't stop eating meat. I'll just eat meat that is safer and healthier for me.