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The whole 'gym' mentality is broken. The problem is that people eating less doesn't make anybody rich.

Well, neither does running the trails in a several-year-old pair of Chuck Taylor knock-offs.

You don't need to join a gym to exercise. Second-hand bikes are cheap; if you want to go running, if you shun expensive, injury-producing running shoes it's pretty cheap (and contrary to common practice, you don't actually need an iPod or other music player to go running); walking remains free, as do calisthenics; and you can usually find some sucker in your neighborhood teaching yoga or karate or something along those lines at little above cost.

It's certainly true that our massive caloric intake -- which increased 24.5 percent between 1970 and 2000, and I'm sure has only gone up since then -- tends to swamp weight-loss effects from exercise for many people. You won't burn off an extra 500 calories a day with moderate exercise. But exercise has benefits apart from weight loss; and once caloric intake is down to something more sane, it will help burn off minor excesses.

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" (snip)

You mean the Department of Agriculture, right? Here's a link to their advertising wing.

They are destroying what's left of America's agriculture industry and trying to spread their influence into other countries as well.

"The level of U.S. farm output in 2008 was 158 percent above its level in 1948, growing at an average annual rate of 1.58 percent." Source

It doesn't look too destroyed to me...perhaps you should use facts rather than feelings in your posts.

according to this and this, net agriculture export from US to China is about US $9b in 2009.

according to this and this, net agriculture export from US to China is about US $9b in 2009.

So sorry, communism may sound nice on paper but it has never worked in the real world on a large scale.

Maybe you should check in on REI? Bunch of communists and their outdoor equipment. How about Employee Owned Companies? Dirty communist organizations fail all the time. (SAIC anyone?)
How about **many** organized religions. Many Budhists, Christian organizations practice communist living.
How about Farm Cooperatives? Those crazy farmers have ruined us all with their shared processing/sales facilities...

US people can move up and down depending on what they do in their life.
Maybe after WW2, but not anymore. How would they do this?

Access to higher education has been cut off by shifting the cost of tuition onto the students. Public education is universally derided in the U.S. and therefore resource starved.

Innovation has been constrained by intellectual property law.

Real wages have only gone down for the bottom 50% over the last generation.

Another difference is that there is not a "rich/poor" divide.
Distribution of wages and assets is fundamental to a stable economy and social system. Pretending it doesn't exist harms the political and social fabric of a country.

Our poor are not, by the standards of much of the world and history.
Lack of basic medical care? check.
Lack of food? check http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/food_frequency.htm
Lack of housing? check http://www.misd.net/homeless/statistics.htm http://www.hcd.ca.gov/hpd/homeless0508.pdf I won't bore you with other states, but all 50 have the same issues.

Wait, I know, these are damned lies and statistics designed to steal your Tax dollars right?

You have no awareness of the consequences of your views. None. Please, just accept you are horribly misguided and go volunteer at a homeless shelter or a children's hospital.

well, doing some quick back of the napkin math
he put no more than 1/20th of a gallon of oil into that container and said it took 1 pound of hay to clean that up.
The explosion and resulting leak happened 25 days ago.
It's been leaking about 50k barrels per day according to recent (non-computer scientists) estimates.

At that rate, it's going to require ~525,000 tons of hay.

According to a quick search for some kind of US hay production values, in 2008 we produced about 145,000,000 tons in 2008
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Missouri/Publications/Brochures/Hay_Facts.pdf

Although noting is said about how much of that was used to feed livestock. However I suspect that it was most of it.

So this would be less than half a percent of the US annual hay production. That doesn't seem completely unrealistic to me. Difficult and our infrastructure is likely not set up for this kind of thing, sure, but not flat out unrealistic from some 10 minutes worth of estimating. Add in other realistic aspects of the situation however, and things could get out of control pretty easily, but I would at least say this warrants further exploration of this idea.

Yeah. I stopped being impressed the instant I found that it was only 95% water. Lettuce is also 95% water (depending on the variety, you can look them up at a USDA website).

That’s the whole idea of an aerosol or gel. It’s mostly one substance because of its properties that you like, but has just enough of another substance (that also has certain properties that you like) to give the overall gel or aerosol those properties.

Barring a government(probably federal) initiative

This is already happening.
I know of at least one company that is building out fiber networks in semi-rural towns of a few thousand using federal loans under rural development programs. Those rural towns have better service than I do, now.
http://www.usda.gov/rus/telecom/broadband.htm is the program they are working with, I believe.

Your analysis rests on GDP per capita, as if that's how much workers mak, but it's not. GDP per capita might be $48,000 in the US, but it's not shared evenly by everyone. The median personal income is only about $32,100. Chinese median personal income is hard to find cited, but in 2003 urban median household income was about $900. In 2007, the US median household income was about $50,000. The American median is about 56x the Chinese urban median (rural China's large and poor population would make the difference even bigger, but they're not competing with Americans for factory jobs).

The GDP per capita is an average that includes all the money made by the few richest. All the profits on labor taken by corporations and investors. In America that disparity is pretty large, but in China it's larger.

How many generations are you separated from the farm Ellie??

Don't bother answering that, it's retorical. Animal production farms are always associated with crop production farms where the manure is spread on fields as fertilizer. Landfills are full of trash, not animal waste (unless you count cat and dog feces).

We don't feed 75% of our grain production to ruminants. We don't even feed 75% of our grain production to livestock (which includes pigs and poultry). According to the USDA, nearly a third (~ 4.25 billion bushels) of domestic corn production is expected to be used for ethanol in 2009/10. In the same season, ~5 billion bushels (~45%) will be used for "Feed and residual uses" which includes both human consumption and livestock use, and another ~2 billion bushels will be exported.

As to the original topic, putting cows on treadmills, I don't see it being feasible. Cows are rough on equipment, so the treadmills would need to be very robust. Cow manure is very corrosive, so they'd either have to use expensive equipment that is durable, or have a high rate of failure of various parts. I do have to admit though, that cows do a fair amount of walking in free stall barns, but I just don't see how you'd get them to use the treadmills instead of walking up and down the isles as they do now. IMO, it's a case of something being technically plausible, but ultimately unfeasible.

Definitely an intriguing idea though. I'd be interested to see if they could do something similar with an animal that is raised in a more confined environment, like a gestating sow. It would require that she get more food, but her appetite already oustrips what she's allowed to eat so that's not an issue (whereas dairy farmers don't want their cows to be wasting any of the energy that could be going into milk production, and the cows are already offered ad libitum feed). It would come down to whether the electricity a sow could generate would save the farmer more money over the increased feed, equipment, and management costs.

Yup, because that's the only thing we've ever bred for our own gains.

    Pretty much any domesticated or farm animal you see has been bred for centuries to give us what we have today. It's not limited to animals though. Fruits and vegetables are the same way. Farmers have always taken things with preferred traits, and disposed of the ones with unwanted traits. Something as simple as a tomato started out as a fruit the size of a berry. Now we have our nice large tomatoes that we recognize today as a common food, and it's even grown "naturally" to make the tree huggers all warm and fuzzy about their organic disposition. Sorry, you're eating a genetically modified (through selective breeding) food. And no, I don't just make these things up.

    Some animals and plants can still survive in the wild on their own. Look at feral cats and dogs. Many survive very well. Some just can't make it and die off.

Not that I can find. I did find some studies involving HFCS as a food for bees. Apparently there are some other byproducts that are toxic to bees. Unfortunately, HFCS is commonly used as a food for bees to prime them. This article has a lot of information and analysis of commercial HFCS. Could this be part of the bee death problem in America? This is something we're going to be hearing about more and more over the next few years unless they can get to the bottom of it. It's not surprising, to me, to find another outlet for corn syrup causing problems. I hope that the increasing consumer education and pressure will hopefully lead to it fading away, or at least higher purity being enforced. Also, possibly alarmingly, a lot of commercial HFCS is made in China, and more than likely it finds it's way into food here in the US.

His parents graduated the Moscow State University. They did not pay for their studies at all, not a penny.

Well, except for the fact that the Soviet citizens earned about one seventh to one eighth as much as their American counterparts. So, yeah, except for the ~85% tax for the rest of their lives, their education was totally free.

I've actually had to increase my sodium intake to get to the recommended amount. My diet (lost 80 lbs so far!) has been moving me away from processed foods, which means that on some days, I'm consuming as little as 600mg of sodium. The present USDA recommendations (available at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI//DRI_Water/water_full_report.pdf ) for people my age (9-50) are between 1500 and 2300, unless they're in an at-risk group. This means that some days, I have to add a teaspoon of kosher salt to my food (which can be trouble if you're trying to salt raspberries). The WHO recommends less than 1700mg ( http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/WHO_TRS_916.pdf ), so I've been trying to keep my intake between 1500 and 1700.

In all cases, the WHO recommends keeping your sodium and potassium levels equivalent (70mmol of sodium, 70-80mmol of potassium, or 2800-3200mg of K). Too little potassium/too much sodium results in too much muscle activity and hypertension, too little sodium/too much potassium results in too little muscle activity, heart arrhythmia, respiratory collapse, coma... The FDA recommends a bizarre amount of potassium (120mmol or 4700mg) based on the sodium sensitivity of African Americans and something about kidney stones. For most people who do not have a sodium sensitivity, this will just be eliminated by the body, which may cause problems with the kidneys and liver. Also note that while sodium is mentioned on food labels, potassium is usually not, and some foods are very high in potassium but don't bother to mention it.

Each of the documents I linked has a long list of studies that they used to determine those levels, but I'd really like to see something more concrete and which doesn't simply vilify sodium. Alas, that's far too common in the diet advice I see online.

I agree illegal immigration has reduced the incentives in the US to automate agriculture for decades. And I say that as someone who was long interested in agricultural robotics since the 1980s, but there was little money for such research. Ultimately, because organic agriculture has been knowledge and labor intensive, robotics will help farmers produce large quantities of cheap organic food without as much pesticides, conventional fertilizers, or widespread irrigation, by precision irrigation, robots that can pick insects of plants, and other things. (Still, many people do like to be around growing plants... So I'm not saying we have to automate all of this, or that we should, just that we could...)

Still, the alternative to illegals is sometimes cheap imports from places with relatively cheap labor (like from China).

We would be importing, say, cheap sugar from South America, and sugar is healthier than corn syrup (even as raw sugar can be unhealthy too) except for import duties on imported sugar, created mostly for the US farm lobbies to appease corn growers.
    http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/imports/ussugar.asp
So, instead the typical US consumer is paying more to have their pancreas destroyed by HFCS and become diabetic.

We have not had much illegal immigration for factory work in the USA, but we still have lost a lot of jobs both to imports but even more to increased productivity in the USA. See the graphs here:
    http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/us-manufacturing-is-not-dead.html
"US Manufacturing is alive and well. The real issue is manufacturing employment, which is dropping like a stone. And the reason for the drop is an increase in productivity."

Ultimately, even preventing illegal immigration will not fix these overall trends and the effects on US jobs, even as above, I agree that having people around willing to do dangerous jobs for little pay distorts the labor market and affects what things we choose to automate, and it also removes the likeliehood there will be anyone around to blow the whistle on things like agricultural pollution. (So, we have polluted watertables instead...)

Eventually though, robotics are going to be cheaper than illegal immigrants. It's only a matter of time with all the continuing advances (including ones driven by the military for various reasons). Of course, by then, most US jobs will be going the same way, as indicated by factor work. The fact is, only about 1% of US employment is in agriculture, down from 50% a century ago. Fixing the illegal problem in agriculture won't make much of a difference in that sense because we are talking such a small percent of the workforce, even as those unskilled agricultural jobs illegal immigrants take are otherwise great for people who want a job and like the outdoors (if they paid well).

US manufacturing employment has dropped from about 30% fifty years ago to about 12% now (and continues to drop). I'm not sure how many illegal immigrants work in US manufacturing? Maybe you know? Again though, even if we tried to employ more people in US manufacturing, between automation and offshoring, the trend is towards less employment. (I predict, like agriculture, we will see 1% of the workforce still in manufacturing in a couple decades...)

That leaves services. But many services can be offshored, and most services are optional. By the time we have 1% of people growing all our food, and 1% making all our stuff, then I think we need a different model for our economy than 98% of the population paying each other for hair cuts and investment advice you can get for free from friends or through the internet.

...the United States is pretty unmatched in agricultural exports because of the natural resources at its disposal. China seems to be the biggest importer of agricultural goods from the U.S.

That's not an unreasonable speculation. The United States is one of the most efficient agricultural producers in the world, we have a tremendous amount of arable land, and are only employing less than 2% of our population in the agricultural sector. To compare, the real population density (population per km^2 of arable land) for the U.S. is 179, whereas for the PRC it is 943. Every year China is losing more and more of its arable land due to pollution and desertification.

During the end stages of the Cold War ('87-'89), the United States was one of the largest exporters of wheat to the USSR, which was incapable of growing a sufficient amounts to feed its population. A similar type of agricultural dependency could develop between China and the United States in the future.

It turns out that markets are not the magic spring of happiness for society that some would have you believe...

It would be incorrect to assume that everyone who advocates free market solutions believes they are a "magic spring of happiness for society". However, many people believe that free markets based solutions tend to be better than the next best alternative - and believe that's sufficient justification to consider free market solutions.

Also, definition of "happiness" varies from person to person. Some people would be happiest with a system that gives them everything they want and requires them do nothing (this is the "From each according to his willingness to get off his fat butt, to each according to his desire to consume" philosophy of life). Others find the give and take of competition pleasurable and enjoy winning while also enjoying learning from their losses. Some have an intense sense of independence and would rather be independent and hungry than caged and well fed. Others would happily give up all their freedom for a steady diet of yummy food and all the cable channels.

Obviously these differing views of "happiness" (assuming that everyone seeks "happiness" - which is not necessarily the case) are likely to result in different evaluations of a particular system.

Look at Wal-Mart, who is such a behemoth that it can dictate the price it wants to pay for goods.

To some extent, Walmart (and brethren such as Target) has done to retail what modern agricultural technology (biological, engineering, chemical, etc) did to the field of agriculture. In 1900 41% of the US population was engaged in agriculture, in 2000 only 1.9% were. Yet, during this same time, farm productivity went up. Sure, this displaced a lot of farm workers and families and created anxiety for them - but it meant those resources were eventually put to better use. As well, food prices declined as a result so people had more discretionary income (to buy things like transportation and improved medical care). The forces that the likes of Walmart put on the market have had similar beneficial effects and have created similar anxiety. The anxiety arising from such innovation is passing while the benefits are lasting and accrue to future generations.

Walmart does not "dictate" the price it pays for goods. It tells a producer what it's willing to pay for a product and the producer tries to convince them to pay more. Both sides desire to maximize profits and certainly not to lose money. Walmart buyers are strong negotiators, but Walmart can't force anyone to sell them products at any particular price. If a producer is inefficient and a more efficient producer comes along, Walmart will likely shift to that producer in exchange for a lower price -- some of which, in the aggregate, Walmart's retail customer will see via lower prices on the shelf.

This is little different than what the American car buyers did to the inefficient producers of cars such as GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The customers chose better value cars from Honda and Toyota - no matter how "big" GM was, they still lost the battle. That failure is what killed Detroit, not "foreign labor". Toyotas were just better cars and a Toyota worker (even though a US citizen working in the US) was willing to sweep the floor if the line was down for some reason -- unlike the GM worker whose union rules "protected" him from this indignity and allowed him to do nothing for two hours until the line was restarted (while a "janitorial" worker was called over, and paid, to sweep the floor - frigging insane).

It turns out that markets are not the magic spring of happiness for society that some would have you believe...

It would be incorrect to assume that everyone who advocates free market solutions believes they are a "magic spring of happiness for society". However, many people believe that free markets based solutions tend to be better than the next best alternative - and believe that's sufficient justification to consider free market solutions.

Also, definition of "happiness" varies from person to person. Some people would be happiest with a system that gives them everything they want and requires them do nothing (this is the "From each according to his willingness to get off his fat butt, to each according to his desire to consume" philosophy of life). Others find the give and take of competition pleasurable and enjoy winning while also enjoying learning from their losses. Some have an intense sense of independence and would rather be independent and hungry than caged and well fed. Others would happily give up all their freedom for a steady diet of yummy food and all the cable channels.

Obviously these differing views of "happiness" (assuming that everyone seeks "happiness" - which is not necessarily the case) are likely to result in different evaluations of a particular system.

Look at Wal-Mart, who is such a behemoth that it can dictate the price it wants to pay for goods.

To some extent, Walmart (and brethren such as Target) has done to retail what modern agricultural technology (biological, engineering, chemical, etc) did to the field of agriculture. In 1900 41% of the US population was engaged in agriculture, in 2000 only 1.9% were. Yet, during this same time, farm productivity went up. Sure, this displaced a lot of farm workers and families and created anxiety for them - but it meant those resources were eventually put to better use. As well, food prices declined as a result so people had more discretionary income (to buy things like transportation and improved medical care). The forces that the likes of Walmart put on the market have had similar beneficial effects and have created similar anxiety. The anxiety arising from such innovation is passing while the benefits are lasting and accrue to future generations.

Walmart does not "dictate" the price it pays for goods. It tells a producer what it's willing to pay for a product and the producer tries to convince them to pay more. Both sides desire to maximize profits and certainly not to lose money. Walmart buyers are strong negotiators, but Walmart can't force anyone to sell them products at any particular price. If a producer is inefficient and a more efficient producer comes along, Walmart will likely shift to that producer in exchange for a lower price -- some of which, in the aggregate, Walmart's retail customer will see via lower prices on the shelf.

This is little different than what the American car buyers did to the inefficient producers of cars such as GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The customers chose better value cars from Honda and Toyota - no matter how "big" GM was, they still lost the battle. That failure is what killed Detroit, not "foreign labor". Toyotas were just better cars and a Toyota worker (even though a US citizen working in the US) was willing to sweep the floor if the line was down for some reason -- unlike the GM worker whose union rules "protected" him from this indignity and allowed him to do nothing for two hours until the line was restarted (while a "janitorial" worker was called over, and paid, to sweep the floor - frigging insane).

I'd be curious to see where the two countries started out at. Take the GDP(PPP) in today's USD from 1950 and see how much either has grown/shrunk. I wouldn't be surprised if China grew by an order of magnitude or more while Cuba fell a few thousand bucks.

According to this file (warning: Excel spreadsheet), Cuba's GDP in 1969 (in billions of 2005 USD) was $15.61; China's was $101.83. In 2009, Cuba's had grown to $43.12, while China's exploded to $3338.56. During that period, Cuba's average annual growth rate was 2.7%; China's was 9.2%.

I can't find a similar table with population data from the same years, but just using this information it's clear that China has done a much better job of providing economic opportunity to their people than the Cubans have.

Which it's obviously not, because what it does is re-classify CO2 as a pollutant, which it is not.

pol.lut.ant n
:something that pollutes

pol.lute vt pol.lut.ed; pol.lut.ing
2b: to contaminate (an environment) esp. with man-made waste

The world's oceans are becoming acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the last 55m years, threatening disaster for marine life and food supplies across the globe. Hmm. Maybe some man-made waste that contaminates the environment that threatens to turn the oceans into a barren wasteland could, just maybe could be justified to be called a pollutant.

but surely the concentrations of such a critical component of photosynthesis as CO2 must have some effect on yields as well

While I couldn't quote a study about the past yields, studies have shown that contrary to expectations a higher CO2 level didn't contribute much to higher yields, while other effects that result from global warming like increased temperatures and dryer soil reduces yields.

So will our attempts to "solve" the Global Warming "crisis" have other unintended consequences like ... starvation?

No, first because increasing CO2 levels are less significant than other factors, see above. Also, noone is talking about stopping global warming, that would mean stopping _all_ manmade CO2 emissions and scrubbing the atmosphere and shoving the already exhausted CO2 back underground somehow. The best we can achieve is controlled disaster management.

A large yolk contains more than two-thirds of the recommended daily intake of 300 mg of cholesterol (although one study indicates that the human body may not absorb much cholesterol from eggs[18])

A large yolk contains more than two-thirds of the recommended daily intake of 300 mg of cholesterol (although one study indicates that the human body may not absorb much cholesterol from eggs[18])

Calories In vs. Calories out - at least at the level that any reasonable person can measure it - is worthless. I that it's easy to remember and even sounds kind of cool - but science doesn't support it. There are plenty of studies that show things eating the same number of calories and having dramatically different weight gain or loss.

Measuring what you eat and estimating how much you burn by your daily activities is clearly not enough to accurately determine if a person will gain or lose weight.

Here's two studies - you can find many, many, many more....

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v17/n11/abs/oby2009264a.html
Here's a study where different groups of mice ate the same number of calories, but at different times of the day/night, and the different groups saw different levels of weight gain/loss.

http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/206775.html
Here's a study where different groups of mice ate the same number of calories, but one group had a low-gi diet and another group had a high-gi diet. The high-GI diet mice gained more weight than the low-GI diet mice.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and I like the 'gist' of the Hacker Diet. But the entire premise of the diet doesn't hold up. Not in any way that a regular person can measure. Maybe, the habits like how much you sleep or when you eat or the GI index affect either how much you burn (even though your activities are no different) or how effective your digestion is - but until you've got a magic toilet that tells you how many calories you've just dumped off and a watch that will tell you exactly how many calories you are burning - it's not useful.

But yeah, the general idea of eating less, eating better, and exercising are all generally good things. Those things are hardly unique to the 'Hacker Diet' though. I don't know of anyone who eats healthy food, in moderation, and follows some sort of physical fitness routine who isn't in decent shape; but grossly oversimplifying what's going on doesn't benefit anyone.

There is a tariff on sugar: http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/imports/ussugar.asp

Even the most unnatural, mutated, inedible freak of a plant is organic, because it is made of friggin carbon. That's the definition of organic.

Others have probably already answered this but I'll reply anyway. There's more than one definition of organic. Even the US Department of Agriculture has it's own.

Falcon

Can't words have multiple definitions?

Lets see, we have the chemical definition of "organic," on which a diamond is, of course, not organic (because it has to have C and H). We have the usage of "arising organically" which is supposed to mean something like "coming together in a way that resembles natural processes". And then we have what is apparently your favored definition, something like "arising on earth without human intervention" (or something, I'm not totally sure what). And then we have the food-industry word, which is really a legal word defined by the USDA to denote certain standards of food production.

So, which of these definitions would you like to call "correct" and which are "incorrect"?

You've hit on one of my pet peeves man. Hell, DIAMONDS are oraganic, and so is pencil lead. They way these people use the term incorrectly drives me nuts.

Strictly speaking, there are very significant variations of what "organic" means, even among various scientific contexts. For example, "organic" generally means something significantly different in the context of biology than in the context of chemistry.

So, while on one hand I agree that it feel as if the "organic" food label misleadingly seems to imply that other food is somehow "inorganic", on the other hand I realize that from the USDA's perspective, "organic" certification reflects the adherence to a fairly well defined set of food production, handling, and processing practices.

Yes, I'm sure the hundreds upon hundreds of farms I've passed and visited while living in the middle of rural America for my entire life are *completely* unrepresentative of how beef cattle are raised in this area. ... Most people raise their cattle on a mix of grass and corn...

It's true that most cattle are fed grass at some point during their lives, but 3/4 of US beef is finished on corn (or other grains) in a feed lot, i.e., not grazing the pasture down by the road. I think finishing can comprise a significant portion of the steer's life (at least for grain finished beef), though I don't know the numbers off-hand. Of course, a high density feed lot is, well, high density and takes up a lot less area, which might explain why your experience from driving around was not representative. Remember, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

All over the place, according to the USDA:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AP/AP036/

The areas mentioned in the summary as hardest hit is the Deep South, this is some of the most fertile land in the US. No, it is not the endless fields of grain like the Midwest, but its fields are cleared from a pine forest that stretches from Texas to the Atlantic. Fresh vegetables are simply everywhere. Wild game is everywhere. The whole of the region mentioned is inundated with feral hogs . Oh, and lets not forget that this is a region known for eating just about anything - Mmm, possum and armadillo.

If you want to think outside the box a little, just about every town in the US as a livestock feed store of some sort. With hunting season coming up deer corn is relatively expensive, but even the extra fancy glossy bag stuff is $6-7 for 40lbs. You can feed quite a few mouths with 40lbs of corn. Sure, it is not sweet corn, but we are thinking cheap. If you buy in bulk it gets even cheaper.

I don't see many people going with the livestock feed option, but instead of grabbing the frozen pizza, potato chips, and ramen noodles they could hit the section of the store with the 5-10lb bags of rice and beans. Combine this with some veggies grown in a few flower pots, some wild game, and you have a much better diet. Sadly, that is not nearly as convenient, and if there is one thing we Americans are it is lazy.

I will not claim to know the root of the issue, but it has something to do with lifestyle choices or the lack there of. It is not a question of money. There are very few truly poor Americans. They may have little of no earned income, but that does not make them poor. I know plenty of people on various flavors of welfare. Most you would guess by looking at them that they are typical middle class families. They all have current generation video game systems, cell phones, fashionable clothing, boats, motorcycles, ATVs, and they all smoke & drink. Maybe they could shift some of the money that I roundaboutly provide them with to healthier lifestyle choices so that I don't also have to pay for their oxygen tanks and scooters when they get older. I seriously doubt it though.

At what point does food stop being organic? that simple question is enough to stump 99% of people and so i stand by my statement that the organic food industry is duping people.

It's actually quite difficult for a farm or product to get organic certification because the regulations are very specific and strict. Obviously the law varies from country to country, but generally they're very well defined. If you're interested in how the USDA defines it, have a look at their website: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification

Working- and lower-class people in the US have diets dominated by heavy starches, red meat, high fructose corn syrup, and heavy food additives. The middle and upper classes, especially on the coasts, have diets dominated by fresh vegetables and seafood, and usually can afford the time and energy to go to the gym, etc..

Can we please stop splitting the US up this way? Whether or not you live next to an ocean has no correlation with obesity, education, income, poverty, or anything else.

Here is a map of adult overweight/obesity rates by state. Here is a map showing the rate of childhood overweight/obesity rates. The trends seem to be regional, with the West and Northwest having the lowest rates and the Midwest and South having the highest. Notice that Colorado and Utah have lower obesity rates than New York, California, or Washington. Your first point about income level is closer to the truth, but as these maps show, it is not even close to a direct correlation. Many more factors are involved.

Assumptions:
- They can actually generate 20,000 gallons per acre per year
- 1 gallon of biofuel will get you the same mileage as 1 gallon of gasoline

US gasoline usage = 378,000,000 gallons/day = 137,970,000,000 gallons/year
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Area needed: 137,970,000,000 gallons/year / 20,000 gallons/acre/year = 6,898,500 acres = 10,779 sq.mi.

Comparative area: Massachusetts is 10,555 sq.mi.

So, we'd need an area slightly larger than MA to generate the needed biofuel. This may seem like alot, but...

Farmland in US: 922,095,840 acres = 1,440,774 sq. mi.
Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm

Percent farmland to convert to biofuel: 10,555 sq. mi. / 1,440,774 sq. mi. = 0.73%

This isn't much, if you ask me.

Now, for the financial incentive to do so:

Value of 20,000 gallons of biofuel at $50/barrel: 20,000 gallons = 476 barrels * $50/barrel = $23,000

Corn yield of one acre: 162 bushels/acres (Iowa)
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a1-14.pdf

Value of 162 bushels of corn: 162 bushels * $4.77/bushel (Estimated 2008 Calendar Year Average) = $772.74
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a2-11.pdf

So, converting one acre of corn farmland to one acre of biofuel farmland will increase the revenue from $773 to $23,000, a nearly 30-fold increase.

So, this looks like it might be worth it depending on the cost of conversion and cost versus revenue. It'll certainly be interesting to watch.

For reference that would require the entire east coast be filled to ~55 miles inland.

Ever driven across the central part of the US? There's lots of corn... 87 million acres, or about 136,000 square miles, actually. Now, I know not all of that corn is used for ethanol production. However, there are large swaths of land in the US within reasonable distance of an ocean which aren't much use beyond growing pine for timber (like coastal areas of North Carolina or Texas) because they're not suited for growing other crops. This could be a much more efficient use for such land.

Plus, not all of that 24 acres is actually producing ethanol. We're talking 3100 tanks that take up 250 square feet each, or about 17.79 acres. As this technology matures and as farms are scaled up, you'll likely see increased output per acre.

The food price stability argument is bullshit. If the government were really concerned about food shortages in times of crisis they would set up emergency food supply stores across the country. You would only need to store things like grains, which last for a very long time and provide enough nutrition to live on until the crisis has passed. This would cost the US citizen significantly less per year than the farm subsidies do.

Lol... You must be a special kind of ignorant. This is already done and has been since the mid 1930's. That's what most of the subsidies do. OF course instead of letting the grain rot, we give it away as foreign aid when we rotate it out. But then again, if all the farms went under, we couldn't even do that now could we? Maybe you should look at the USDA site a little better. Pay particular attention to the Commodity Credit Corporation. And don't be thrown off by the words Corporation in there.

Lobbyists, duh.

Does the GP ACTUALLY think that the massive and powerfull aggricultural lobbies exist to keep corporations from "winning"? Large "family" farms (usually a corporate operation privately owned at that size), very large family farms, and non-family farms (8 percent of all farms) account for 68% of production in the US. Who do you think is benefiting most from a price floor? Cut prices by 3/4 and eliminate the competition or make twice as much with a price floor. Hmmm... USDA stats on the matter are here.

Not too many high paid lobbyists schmoozing politicians for the guy who works but can't afford a decent meal. The fact that the corporations can make more money ripping off their customers via the US government than they can by killing off small family farms is just a happy side effect for the little guys.

The food price stability argument is bullshit. If the government were really concerned about food shortages in times of crisis they would set up emergency food supply stores across the country. You would only need to store things like grains, which last for a very long time and provide enough nutrition to live on until the crisis has passed. This would cost the US citizen significantly less per year than the farm subsidies do.

http://broadbandusa.sc.egov.usda.gov/files/BTOP%20Peer%20Reviewer%20Letter%207-6%20v2.pdf

I followed the link in the article to the paper that supposedly requested reviewers, and I got a 404.

A cursory scan at the Federal Register notice (Vol. 74 No. 125; Wed July 1 2009) hasn't have anything stick out either as far as volunteers.

In order to qualify as a "volunteer" for this service you need to be an employed member of the business community relevant to the topic.

Wrong. Per the announcement linked in TFA, current employment in the field is not require, but "[t]o be considered as a reviewer you must have significant expertise and experience in at least one of the following areas: 1) the design, funding, construction, and operation of broadband networks or public computer centers; 2) broadband-related outreach, training, or education; and 3) innovative programs to increase the demand for broadband services." (emphasis added)

Indeed, being currently employed in the field probably makes it more difficult, since you have to abide by the Department of Commerce's conflict of interest rules; I'm not familiar with their particular rules, but certainly you'd be less likely to fall afoul of them if you didn't have any current direct interest in that market despite prior experience.

"To be considered as a reviewer you must have significant expertise and experience in at least one of the following areas: 1) the design, funding, construction, and operation of broadband networks or public computer centers; 2) broadband-related outreach, training, or education; and 3) innovative programs to increase the demand for broadband services. In addition you must agree to comply with Department of Commerce policies on conflict of interest and confidentiality." http://broadbandusa.sc.egov.usda.gov/files/BTOP%20Peer%20Reviewer%20Letter%207-6%20v2.pdf

I think the problem here is further reaching than just getting volunteers to approve $4.7 billion in grants. For instance, why was the USDA tapped to handle the grants? Certified 5-star corn fed angus broadband is coming to your area!

"Food isn't free."

Agreed.

"Just because a few people produce something doesn't mean it's abundant."

Put that way, you're correct. As it happens, food is abundant. What's more, a small increase in workforce applied to food would produce a much larger increase in food production, so in this case the small number is important.

"All the usual market forces still apply,..."

All the recent ones. But things like frozen food technology did intervene over a longer time span.

"...and it is just as costly to eat well as it's always been."

Using the Hershey bar Index:

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq5.html#candybar

and measuring Worth to adjust dollar values:

http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators.html

In [1908] 9/16 oz.....2 cents and in [2008] 1.55 oz Hershey Bar purchased at Super FoodTown (regional grocery chain), East Hanover NJ...59 cents gives us the raw data. For 1908 its 0.035556 cents per ounce and for 2008 its 38.064516 cents per ounce.

Using the Purchasing power of the US dollar:

"$0.02 in the year 1908 has the same "purchase power" as $0.38064516 in the year 2008."

So the candy bar cost nearly twice as much per ounce in 1908 as in 2008.

But at:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/Expenditures_tables/table11.htm

we can see something else--a clue to the production cost. Look in the 3rd column and see that production costs as a fraction of retail prices dropped. Now look at column 1 and see how restaurant prices increased as a fraction of retail price. Look at that divergence.

Roam through the statistics as you will, the same story emerges for wheat and bread--bread prices soar, wheat doesn't. Similar stories show up in manufacturing.

So if its not cheaper to eat well--why not? Shouldn't it be?

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

Say what you will about that being to vague, but a loan to a car company to produce affordable, clean transportation definitely qualifies for general welfare... Transportation has become critical for economic success.

Telephone service in areas where capital expense is to high is treated the same way: http://www.usda.gov/rus/telecom/telecomact/act.htm

You got the sixty million right, but are an order of magnitude out on the current population of cows. Here's my comment to Salon magazine 2 years ago on this subject:
Here are my calculations, with references, courtesy of google and an hour of my time. Thanks also to the USDA and PBS.
Size of national herd, all cows and calves: 106 million.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Catt/Catt-07-20-2007.txt
Number on feed (multiplying their GHG impact): 11 million.
(in short, they are only on feed near The End.)
http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/cofd0907.txt
Number of bison they ecologically replaced, bison that ALSO produced GHGs:
60 million.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife/essay8.html
OK, so because of the 11 million on feed, the 106 million cows have the GHG impact of a good 120 million grass-fed, so they have double the "natural" level produced by the bison?
But wait! Or, rather, weight:
Bull bison (37% of herd): 1800-2500 lb.
Cow bison (45%): 900-1200 lb.
Calves (18%) :35 lb up to numbers above
sources:
Herd composition:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-541X(198907)53%3A3%3C593%3ACOBPEW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
Weight:
http://www.gunpowderbison.com/Kids%20Corner
So the TONNAGE of natural ruminants on the North American plains can be calculated from the above numbers (giving calves half the average of cow and bull) to be an "average bison" weight of 1559 lb. Times 60M, is 46.8 megatons.
The US herd is lighter because it's mostly younger than a natural one; we slaughter cows at 2 years, bison live 20, so a higher proportion of the total is calves.
My first reference also notes that just 33M of that national herd is over 500 lbs. Conservatively giving them all the full adult weight (from wikipedia, "cattle") halfway between 1300 and 1900 lb, and the average of the other 74M that are under 500lb, conservatively, at 400 lb...we get a total tonnage of beef at 41.2 megtons.
Bottom line: there are fewer tons of beef now than there were of bison in the 19th century. Beef eater's disturbance of the natural methane balance is zero, indeed it may be NEGATIVE.
Maybe not; 41.2MT is only 12% less than 46.8MT and my whole-hour of research may have missed a few things. Also, the amplification of GHG output by the 10% of the herd that's on feed is a factor. I'm willing to call it even, although my weight numbers were quite conservative.
So, there's no GHG impact at ALL, compared to the original, natural state. At least not in North America -- but what was the former methane production everywhere that are now cattle ranches? Most ranching is done where there was an equivalent animal before. And even swamps and rainforests have quite a bit of decomposition that produces methane.
Until you do that part of the calc - the previous GHG load from the former "natural" environment, you don't have a calculation, you have HALF a calculation.

There are only 94.5 million cattle in the U.S. now versus 60 to 100 million bison in the 19th century.
That's pretty much a wash, so blaming any alleged global warming (or climate change or whatever you dopes are calling it these days) on cows just doesn't fly.

Compare this with the 2002 Census of Cattle and Calves in 2002: http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/atlas02/Livestock/Cattle/Cattle%20and%20Calves/Cattle%20and%20Calves%20-%20Inventory.gif

I for one am very glad you factually included when the 2002 Census of Cattle and Calves occured.

It would seem that we've already greatly reduced the amount of cattle in the United States. From one estimate, there could have been upwards of 200million bison/buffalo: http://www.emporia.edu/cgps/tales/BISON.htm

Compare this with the 2002 Census of Cattle and Calves in 2002: http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/atlas02/Livestock/Cattle/Cattle%20and%20Calves/Cattle%20and%20Calves%20-%20Inventory.gif

I actually love seeing quotes like, "If every US dairy farmer reduced emissions by 12 per cent it would be equal to about half a million cars being taken off the road." Because it makes it seem like it would be easier to genetically breed "low emission cows" then it would be to take cars off the road. It almost implies that if we reduced enough greenhouse gasses from non-automotive sources we could go back to black smog belching cars/trucks/SUVs.

OK, I haven't had time to dig back into all the numbers, but here: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/FoodReview/Jan1997/Jan97a.pdf is a USDA report showing 96.4 billion pounds of food per year wasted. With 31,536,000 seconds per year, that's about 3056.8 pounds of food per second. The other numbers I'll stop throwing around until I confirm them independently.

Thanks for questioning the figures. It's good to verify our own rhetoric sometimes.

HFCS is not precisely the problem.

The problem is mostly that American's caloric intake increased almost 25% between 1970 and 2000, while at the same time we became more sedentary. Any difference that the sort of calories (fat, protein, complex carbs, simple sugars, whatever) might make is swamped by the fact the we just eat too much gorram food and don't get our asses up and moving enough.

A couple hundred extra calories a day above your metabolic needs is going to make you a lard-ass whether you eat them as wheat germ and broccoli, or as bacon double cheeseburgers. (Though the bacon double cheeseburgers will probably still hit you harder in terms of cancer, heart disease, and other fun effects.)

As for Taubes and his famous "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie" story, he's full of crap.

Check it out and notice how far down on the list Bananas are for potassium content.

One cup of tomato paste (granted, it's concentrated) has roughly 5 times the potassium content that a cup of banana does. A baked potato has just about double a banana, and a 1/2 filet of halibut has not quite double. More reasonable tomato sauces also double the potassium content of bananas. A nice meal of filet of halibut and baked potato is worth 4-6 bananas, depending on if you go for the full or just half filet.

So, if you're going to drink 9 liters of cola per day, just be sure you also get the super-sized french fries when you go through the drive-through, that has about as much potassium as about 4 bananas!! (assuming 2 cups, which seems about right to me, probably on the low side)

I don't want a large Farva! I want a liter-a-cola!