Our Food Sucks And You Know It
Despite being one of the most grotesquely overfed populations in recent memory, Americans remain preoccupied only with the quantity, and not the quality of their food. They don't mind if scientists inject their French fries with High-Fructose Corn Syrup as long as McDonald's Super-sizes their order for a nickel.
Yet, the attitude toward Vegetarianism is changing in the United States. While it's difficult to quantify how many vegetarians live within the borders, it's easier to observe the attitude towards vegetarians. Twenty years ago, "What're you, a Commie?" was a more typical response to a confession of Veggie brotherhood. Nowadays, despite the occasional stink eye, meat-eaters at least understand that Vegetarianism is healthy, if not a lifestyle particularly suited for them.
Even though the U.S. is more Veggie-friendly these days, it's still difficult to avoid crappy food even if one chooses to become a vegan (vegetarian, minus the dairy) as I did six years ago. Despite my decision, I found myself projectile vomiting into my toilet last week. Diagnosis: food-poisoning. Suspect: tomatoes. Unfortunately, becoming a vegetarian or a vegan doesn't ensure healthiness. Sure, vegetarians enjoy many health perks (low rates of: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.,) but we're still at the mercy of the meat industry in many ways.
For starters, the meat industry poisons the environment. A 2006 United Nations report described the devastation caused by the meat industry as "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Aside from global warming, meat production is a large factor in overexploited natural resources, deforestation, wasted land, and air and water contamination.
The water contamination may play a large part in increasing reports of vegetable and fruit contamination. In 2007, a California produce company recalled bagged fresh spinach after a sample tested positive for Salmonella. Nearly a year before, an outbreak of E. coli, in fresh spinach killed 3 people and sickened 200. This week, the tomato Salmonella outbreak has affected at least 145 people, resulting in 23 hospitalizations, and many believe water contamination is the cause of the infected tomatoes.
It's not the veggies that are to blame. The problem is the meat. Salmonella is an animal pathogen so it doesn't originate from tomatoes. Most experts agree that the bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal feces.
You read that right: Cow shit is in your tomatoes. Actually, cow shit is in everything: the water, hamburgers, other plant life, and if one ascribes to the the hippy, New Age belief that we are all one pulsating organism upon Mother Earth, then cow shit is in all of us.
But in a realer, more concrete sense, frenzied production lines coupled with lax management have resulted in a dramatic increase in food-poisoning. The shitty (literally) food is so prevalent that it's affecting non-meat-eaters. While Salmonella prefers fleshy fruit like tomatoes, our friend E. Coli prefers leafy greens like spinach.
The problem is prevalent. A recent census of produce outbreaks between 1996 and 2007 counted no fewer than 33 epidemics from Salmonella-contaminated fruits and vegetables.
Some scientists claim the cure for Salmonella and E.coli contamination isn't scrubbing clean the fruits and vegetables because doing so could remove the good bacteria humans rely upon for survival. The solution will come from the government and outraged citizens demanding that the meat industry clean up its practices so fresh produce doesn't suffer at the hands of hasty slaughter and over-crowded holding pens.
The outrage has already exploded in other parts of the world. While irresponsible butchers poison ground water and otherwise healthy plant life here at home, Americans remain mute about the diseased slabs of meat they're consistently forced to choose between at their grocery stores. Meanwhile, angry mobs took to the streets of South Korea when their government resumed importing beef from the United States. This wasn't some kind of fervent anti-American protest, but rather concerned citizens protecting themselves from potential Mad Cow disease.
In America, the only way citizens can protect themselves is to grow their own food or to buy their food from local, trusted farmers, who don't use chemicals or unethical farming practices. But many poorer, urban citizens have no choice but to buy whatever food is cheap and readily available.
Still, all of this isn't cause for concern. Unless, of course, citizens are worried about the expanding legion of rotund American children, who despise vegetables, binge-eat bagged chips, and walk only if the landscape slopes down hill. The obesity rate is so wildly out of control that Americans collectively celebrated this year -- not when the child population began to lose weight -- but when they ceased to get fatter and obesity rates finally plateaued for the first time in 20 years.
Unfortunately, Americans can't fix their unhealthy eating until supposedly "healthy" food is clean of bacteria originating in diseased cows. Of course, the crazy practices of the meat industry shouldn't concern citizens... unless they're worried about global warming. The Environmental Defense reports that if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted it with vegetarian foods, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.
In fact, the crazy practices of the meat industry probably won't rock citizens at all until they find themselves knelt over their toilets, hurling. Right about then, they'll understand how cow shit affects them all.
Follow Allison Kilkenny on Twitter: www.twitter.com/allisonkilkenny
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I believe we Americans have (for the most part) given up quality/nutrition for convenience, over the past several years.
It wasn't a conscious decision ... more a slow acclimitization as we let work and an increasingly hectic lifestyle encroach more and more into our limited time.
Business pushed this trend -- after all, there was more margin in pushing processed foods than raw materials. Preservatives to increase shelf life ... additives to enhance flavor or hide unpleasant tastes introduced during the processing ... synthetics that provided illusionary experience but were much cheaper than using real/good ingredients ... dyes to provide more enticing colour ...
And we, conditioned to believe that Business was looking out for us and would never do us wrong in AMERICA ... we continued to allow ourselves to be led along.
As a cave chick with O+ blood type I NEED my flesh. I tried vegetarianism, and being allergic to gluten, dairy, nuts and legumes I got very, VERY sick. I subsist on meat, fruits and veggies now. To each her own.
I enjoyed this essay from a blogger who looks to be from the U.K.
http://war
He's right: Our corporate overlords are hypocrites, telling the plebes to sacrifice, pushing "cap and trade" and Monsanto down our throats while ignoring more pressing issues, such as the POISONS in our food and water supplies. Maybe they're just trying to get rid of us.
"If the governments really cared about the environment, they would ban all pesticides which are also spermicides. They would go after Shell Oil and force them to take responsibility for choking the seas with their **** oil spills . . . These guys aren’t stupid. They are all organic food fanatics with fancy air and water filtration systems in their mansions who wouldn’t dare even sniff the stuff most of us scarf down daily. They are an*l about protecting themselves and if the world goes to h*ll you can bet they got a plan to ride it out somehow."
Factory farming is a global health hazard. Michael Greger, M.D., wrote "Bird Flu: A virus of Our Own Making" available free online at http://bir
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that confined farm animals generate more than 450 million tons of manure annually, three times more raw waste than generated by Americans. The waste is not treated and pollutes air, ground water, and destroys wetlands. http://www
Start reading your food labels when you shop. If I find high fructose corn surup, it goes back on the shelf. I no long buy or drink soda pop. I just don't remember so many overweight children when I was a child!!! Sure that was over 45 years ago, but I say alot of it's lack of exercise, the rest is our junk food the parents feed them!!!
I buy mostly locally grown produce every week at the farmer's market, or from the natural foods stores who buy produce from local growers. It is the best solution. There is a sense of community that you don't really feel at the Safeway produce counter. If more people did that, more small growers would get involved and it would help move us in the right direction. Plus, I grow a variety of food items here in my garden. I have no confidence in imported produce items, except maybe Fuji apples...
People should be researching Biochar techiques for enhancing soil fertility, it is the wave of the future.
I think it would be a good use of tax dollars to enforce health and food safety regulations.
I went through a few years of being sick to various degrees. In my case I tracked it down to both wheat and dairy intolerance. It was tricky to track down because the reactions to them are very similar, so a single substitution challenge yields a false negative result.
Now that I avoid them (still tracking down the last few things) overall I am better, but I wonder about the damage that could have happened over the 20 years that I put up with troubles that I thought were normal.
My experience helped me come up with these questions that I ask people sometimes:
1) If you were sick but you did not know it, would you seek a cure?
2) If you get used to being sick, are you still sick?
Your insight is very sensible from an FDA-oriented public health standpoint, but as a vegan, I'd expect you to have focused on the ethical basis for this natural diet matching human physiology. As far as I'm concerned, the myriad diseases incurred by humans invariably resulting from animal product consumption is simply Nature's way of evening the score in the dead/enslaved nonhuman animals' favor, at least post-mortem. It's what John Lennon (albeit not a vegetarian) would call instant karma. Here's another example of Newton's 1st Law of Physics: For every action, there is a reaction. If you murder nonhuman animals and/or consume their body parts or secretions (or support their exploitation any other way), the karmic wheel will come back to haunt you. The fictional film adaption of Eric Schlosser's book, "Fast Food Nation," directed by Richard Linklater, graphically portrays these problems using black humor in a soap opera trinity, exposing the horrific nature of the agribusiness industry. "Mad Cow U.S.A" by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber expertly reveals the history of mad cow disease (BSE) and its evolution to modern prevalence over the past 60 years. Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle" was only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to not only survive, but thrive toward the natural human life span, you'd best abandon animal products forthwith and eat as much organic raw food as possible. Mother Nature will otherwise punish you relentlessly whereas these outbreaks will look like child's play.
What a great piece! Its really sad that all this talk of "attack of the killer tomoatoes" fails to mention where the Salmonella comes from. Its as if tomatoes are evil... and last year spinach was evil. No, factory farming is evil. I hold on to hope that this country will wake up and realize what we do to 10 billion animals a year and the reprecussions that has on our environment and our health. Go vegan, eat local and buy organic when you can.
Great cult flick, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes".
Thank you for having the weight I didn't when I blogged on this yesterday.
I was amazed how S. Korea can come together and nearly rioted in the streets because of the shit beef we sell to them. Yet we sit on our fat asses like docile cows with no regard for the puke we're fed.
Seriously what is it going to take to expect our government to serve us as they should? Stillborns, yellow with toxins from their polluted mothers?
I know I know..."we should leave the regulation up to private industry” as any patriotic "capitalist” red blooded American would say. "Private Industry only cares about money and bottom line. Period. If they had it their way. They would inject addictive fillers to keep you on the hook for their product.
I'm sick of the weak protests we have in our country. Goofy marches, feckless boycotts and waste of time petitions. We need chaos to see results. Not unlike FREE countries like France and S. Korea. With no regard for an authority that has NO regard for YOU.
It is why 85% of Americans have diverticulosis by the time they are 40. It is why there is an every growing rate of colon cancer. Perhaps if they saw what a stoma looks like, or had to face life with their fecal material hanging in a bag off their abdomen, they would think twice about eating what they eat. And if one chooses to eat veggies and fruits and whole grains rather than rotting flesh, there is the distinct possibility that these foods are as tainted as the meat. When one goes to countries like Mexico or elsewhere south of the border, they are warned not to drink the water...Mo
Fantastic article, as usual. Personal and environmental health has recently become a fascination of mine (particularly, eating fewer meats and more organic fruits and vegetables), so the information you presented is a huge help. Thanks for keeping us all better informed, Allison.
Nice post! :)
My personal choice has been to eliminate beef and stick to one meal per day that includes meat (usually dinner).
Give up the meat entirely. Your colon will love you for it.
So we just have incisors for looks I guess...
Amen to that but if you can't give up the meat at least give up the beef. You won't miss it and it will help the earth. Believe me you will not miss it.
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