> at this point the food industry is almost guilty of mass murder for profit
Agreed. Now how to fix it?
I like Dr Greger's "How not to Die" book, as it brings a lot of scientific evidence to the table. He also has an app "the daily dozen" that helps people improve their diets.
Given the power of lobby groups I do not expect that we can effectively use gov't to change the status quo.
I agree there's been far too much effective lobbying (and spending on junk research) in and outside the government that separating agenda and getting any change to the status quo will be hard.
In the last few months I have been changing my diet because of cholesterol readings. It's annoying, because I like steak, and I like coconut, and bacon, and ghee, and prawns and, and, and...
Desire for such a diet has always been with us. The food industry has, for the first time, made it affordable for hundreds of millions of us. They are guilty only of mass feeding for profit.
I don't understand your point. Of course we are addictive beings, that's why we invented laws and rules in the first place : so that we can live in order and not chaos. If we let people have access to everything they want (including killing half the planet, eating your children, murdering your parents), do you realise how chaotic the world would be ?
Murder takes away someone else's right.
But on the other hand, the government shouldn't be subsidizing heroin or food.
Liberty is extremely important, but we should always remember we're not alone. This belief that everyone should be 100% free and have the right to be whatever he wants with his life is, if not the only reason, part of the reasons why we're in this mess today.
How has that worked out? The War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure, as was Prohibition, making gambling illegal, etc. Can you name one time that the government has ever successfully "shielded" anyone from something negative?
Why would traffic laws deter someone from not wearing their seatbelt but not deter someone from speeding?
If you look at the traffic laws that work well - stopping at a traffic light, not driving on the wrong side of the road, etc. compared to ones that don't like speeding, using your traffic signal, crossing the gourd, you'll notice that most people decide on what laws to obey based on the risk of injury to themselves or someone else.
*Edited to include (or drugs)
Let's not forget the victims of the war on drugs. In Mexico alone that war has claimed hundereds of thousands of lives in the past 10 years while at the same time deaths from drug overdose have gone up dramatically in the US.
Something is very wrong with the response to this problem.
How is that annoying? All of these things can be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Why cut them out completely?
On the other hand, how the heck is the food industry supposed to moderate me, why also supplying these things that you point out are part of a perfectly sensible diet.
This is a result of the vast improvements in healthcare and medicine in the past 50-100 years. It's not rocket science.
The what?
There are a number health effects no amount of pills or surgery can reverse because entropy, despite marketing. Eat enough peanut-butter bacon sandwiches and cause enough chronic inflammation damage from smoking, then become obese, get diabetes and cancer.
Edit: I also know a world-class chef who agrees that the McRib is one of the most tasty things ever developed. But you don't eat that every day...
If you believe their research that is.
[1] https://rodaleinstitute.org/
[2] https://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/FST-Brochure-2015.pdf
We would have plenty only so many want to eat meat with every meal.
Citation needed. It's not like we'd have some food crisis if we didn't have a "food industry", by which people usually mean the actively harmful and inducing food staff that's mass manufactured, you know the 20,000 mass market varieties of sodas, chips, snacks, burgers and such.
If you just mean "agriculture at scale", we had that since ancient Babylon.
In fact, outside of floods and famines that are orthogonal to what we're talking about, many countries do just fine feeding their populations with 1/10 or 1/20 of such an industry as it exists in the US.
I ate a lot of food that came from cans, boxes and packages growing up.. and today its' far worse... I know a lot of people around my age (early 40's) who never eat any vegetables at all. none... Unless it's filler in something else they're eating. Lots of refined starches, more than enough meat... but very few actual veggies.
I mean, I'm not all about the veggies, I'm far from getting enough every day (per whatever standards), but I at least get 4-5 salads a week, and have at least 3-4 other times with at least a vegetable side that aren't starches (root-veg) a week. But man, there's something to be said for going from at least some, to almost none.
I'll admit, I do tend to favor lower-carb (I'm diabetic, I really have to), but the anti-fat fads of the late 70's through the 90's did more harm than good. Compounded by the proliferation of snack items and refined fats (mostly vegetable source), starches, preservatives, fillers and stabilizers is astounding.
I no longer have any children living with me, but I can't believe the number of ads for foods that aren't whole or at least minimally processed on TV, targeting kids... "fruit rollups", gellies, gogurt, soda, pops, drinks, fast-food and the rest... It's time to start saying no to kids, no to ourselves and trying to lead by better examples.
Another issue is thinness !== healthy. Metabolic syndrome is really dangerous when you don't show the typical outward symptoms right away. Body shaming doesn't work... We, as a larger society need to start making better choices for ourselves. And I say this as someone who has McD's for breakfast pretty much every day (breakfast sandwich, sometimes just an egg and sausage, no bun with a water to drink). If you eat fast-food, skip the side of fries and the sugar-water. Hell, use a calorie tracker for a week, and be surprised how much you really take in (including snacks, drinks, etc)... it can actually be hard to take in under 2500 kcal a day.
Take a look at this graph : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Human_populat...
The industrial era. What happened in the last 50 years is that the quality/quantity ratio went to almost zero. Industries now produce a LOT of stuff for a LOT of people, but the quality of this stuff is insanely low, food included. Industrial food is sometimes void of anything good for your health.
In my view we have two options : rebalance the quality/quantity ratio, ie make a LOT of stuff of quality, or if we can't, drastically reduce the quantity of stuff needed. I let you imagine the consequences of the second option.
I'm optimistic, but scared.
Adjusting for special dietary needs (diabetes, allergies, pku etc).
1: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/usda-protein-requirements-gr...
2: http://www.eufic.org/en/whats-in-food/article/plant-protein-...
If scale/cost was the only issue, we would not have a problem. You could replace most processed food in a typical naive modern diet with potatoes, beans, and/or eggs (which are extremely cheap) and increase the healthiness of the diet tremendously.
It is very cheap to eat healthy.
The problem is knowledge. The modern processed food/ad industry in the 20th century somehow managed to a lot of destroy traditional cultural knowledge in the west about cooking and eating, and replace it with its own brand new, untested ideas.
It's getting better, but very slowly. Too many people have been tricked by the newest big food lie: that choosing which foods to eat (eg, beef vs avocado) is not the most important thing, but rather what's important is the label -- it should be organic, local beef, not conventional, it must be an organic avocado, not just any old avocado. In this world view, eating healthy is reserved for those who can afford it and unhealthy industrial food is indeed unfortunate but a necessity. This world view is very convenient for food businesses, but is also wrong. In real life, the conventional potato eater is healthier than the organic white bread eater, despite spending much less money.