Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Mickey D's and You

On any given day, 7%, that's SEVEN PERCENT, of the ENTIRE AMERICAN POPULATION, will eat at McDonald's. This absolutely staggers me.

In fact, this whole article from the current month's Harvard Magazine staggers me. It's one of the best articles I've read on nutrition and health since... well, since last month's issue of Harvard Magazine.

Two especially good tidbits for all you conspiracy theorists out there:

-- Notice how the base of the Food Guide Pyramid is grains. It makes no distinction between whole grains and refined (garbage) grains, it's just... grains. The Pyramid recommends a staggering six to eleven servings of grain a day. The Pyramid also makes no distinction between "legumes," "nuts," and all meat; recommending that you eat two to three servings a day from this "group." Further, it recommends two to three (!!) servings a day of dairy. So who writes and distributes the Food Guide Pyramid? The National Institute of Health? The Department of Health and Human Services? The Food and Drug Administration? Nah. It's the DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. Guess whose lobbying drives the Department of Agriculture? (Hint: what moos while munching amber waves of grain?)

-- Half, that's HALF, of the net income of farmers in this country comes from Uncle Sam in the form of price supports and land set-asides. But not all farmers are treated equally. Ever notice how cheap grain products like wheat and corn (from whence come refined white flour and high fructose corn syrup) are, and how expensive fruit and vegetables are by comparison? Is this the market at work? Yes--but the *political* market, not Adam Smith's. Subsidies are for grains. Vegetable, fruit, bean and nut farmers do not get subsidies. Says Harvard medical school professor David Ludwig, "The foods that are the worst for us have an artificially low price, and the best foods cost more. This is worse than a free market: we are creating a mirror-world here."

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