Commentary

The “resolution” rush is upon us and health food and supplement folks are dusting off their slick posters, comfort words, and all too often, magical nonsense.

The first quarter of the year is an advertising heyday for radio, newspapers and magazines, television, Internet, and emails offering answers to new resolutions regarding weight loss and health. In the fray are both science-based professionals and marketing-motivated commentators. This makes it difficult for the average person to make an intelligent decision.

Unfortunately the best marketers know all about marketing but little about nutrition. Therefore there’s always way more nutritional nonsense being drummed into the consciousness of the average consumer than useful science. Nutritional science is boring and it recommends significant changes which are really difficult to market. Therefore peer-reviewed nutritional science is often ignored, taken out of context, or used piecemeal.

It’s literally mind boggling.  The Veggie/PETA crowd and the conventional mythical wisdom nutritional/medical crowd have joined forces!  As usual most media/Internet outlets embrace their stories (without investigating the allegations) and are enthusiastically spreading their over 100-year-old myths far and wide.  The consequences of their combined misguided efforts will be an acceleration of chronic disease, misery, and suffering for billions of people worldwide along with accelerating the pace of global warming and desertification of the planet.

Is this or is this not total insanity?

The myths they push address two aspects of grass-fed meats.  One states unequivocally that eating red meat causes a whole host of chronic diseases and is cruel to animals.  The other is that raising domestic livestock causes global warming, saps the earth’s diminishing resources, destroys the land, and negatively impacts wildlife.

What kind of message does universal healthcare send to most Americans?  Yes, it is a government crafted message that will influence the actions of healthcare providers while also impacting the diets, exercise regimens, and healthcare decisions of millions of people even if they are independent thinkers.  What is that message?

Every government-imposed tax or law creates a reaction in the marketplace.  Some of the reactions are intended, others are unintended.  Our government has been passing laws regarding healthcare dating back to the Great Depression.  Since then a whole series of laws were crafted that forged how today's healthcare insurance and healthcare providers function.

The signing of the new Obamacare law in March 2010 (it is just now going mainstream) was a major extension of government control over what was once a free-market system.  The law states that every single living person in America, except illegal immigrants, must have health insurance or they will be fined.  When folks sign up for whatever health insurance policy they think best fits their needs, they pay various rates depending on nothing but their financial status.  This new government mandated health insurance program is not an option, therefore it is a tax.  If one does not sign up for Obamacare approved healthcare insurance the fine is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child in 2014.  That's correct, this is a tax on everyone in the United States who is alive.

Recently a first-page Google search for “grass fed beef” provided a listing for a John Robbins blog.  Obviously, a lot of folks are reading his blog and for sure it directly impacts us.  One might assume his comments would be a good thing for grass-fed beef, ranchers and farmers, and the American consumer.  But, hold on there partner, that is not the case.  John’s commentary slides around between facts, myths, religious beliefs, and outright distortions.  So, unless one really knows something about nutrition, ranching, grass-fed meat, the conventional food industry, and such, they would be inclined to think John Robbins’ blog is good information.  Since that is not the case, I have responded.

Some weeks ago I tried to leave a response on the John Robbins blog, but I cannot find its posting.  So, since I have my own forum (one of the good things about the Internet) I am going to post one of my typical straight-talk essays right here where he can’t edit me out of the picture (assuming he did).

My response may offend many who want to believe the worst about American agriculture and the American food industry.  But those folks are beyond being idiotic because all they do is sit around and complain through their mouthful of food.  And they are so lazy they want to blame American agriculture and the American food industry for their chronic diseases instead of taking measures into their own hands by educating themselves and changing the foods they eat.  Anyone wanting to do just that, can do it.  Therefore I’ll address both parties: the nut case John Robins and the misguided members of the American mob.

Many Americans are off the deep end in many ways.   Compared to bygone times morals, family values, health, nutrition, social and political values, education in the three "Rs" and science and history, fundamental wisdom, and the finances of too many citizens have deteriorated.  As a consequence for too many people their quality of life is not the same as it once was.

The SGFM web site addresses our nation's nutritional deficiency epidemic that was caused by a desire for cheap, mass-produced, convenient food products.  As a result, Americans live in a land of plenty, but the bounty no longer provides proper nutrition.

Somewhat the same thing can be said about our nation's finances.  Many people believe America is the richest nation on earth.  But is it?  Could it be that Americans have fooled themselves?  Have we literally spent ourselves rich with consumptive debt and soon the piper must be paid?  For instance, maybe you should check and see if the national debt was being paid off when our leaders claimed that's what they were doing.   Check and see.

The movie starts with heart-warming scenes of an aerial view of beautiful crop lands, a man baling straw with old equipment, a man on horseback herding cattle on a mountain range, and a nifty red barn, its white-rail fences, surrounding green pastures, and fluffy white clouds floating by in the sky.  Then as a mysterious voice drones on, the camera backs away and the scenes turn out to be posters in a supermarket.

Now I recognize the voice, it’s Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and he says:  The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000.  But the image used to sell the food is still the imagery of Aquarian America.  Then comes the movie’s first, of many, low blows to the American farmer/rancher when Eric says, You go to the supermarket and you see pictures of farmers, the picket fence, and the silo, and the farm house, and the green grass.  It’s the spinning of the pastorale fantasy.  In other words, Eric is saying that farmers and ranchers are no longer participants in food production.

Then Eric comments about the modern grocery store.  He starts with its 47,000 products, year around produce and then ominously talks about foreign produced, green picked, ripened with Ethylene gas, tasteless tomatoes.  Then he says it’s not a tomato, it’s kind of a notional tomato, it’s the idea of a tomato.  He offers no explanations for his comments, just leaves them hanging which effectively implies the consumer is being deceived.