You Might be an Idiot if . . .

Industrial Food?  What is that you may ask.

Industrial Food is food created by the food system in the United States and other countries.  This food system was spawned by the fast food industry.  Starting with McDonalds and continuing with Burger King, Kelly’s Jet System Hamburgers, Red Robin and all the others there was created a requirement for large quantities of low cost ingredients.  The supply needed to be reliable as it was sold all year, not just in season, it needed to be consistent so every hamburger tasted the same and could be prepared by low cost labor, and above all it had to bee cheep.

This demand coupled with the government decision to make food as cheep and reliable as possible created the modern industrial food system based primarily on corn.   (Note: I will use McDonalds as an example to make the discussion simpler, do not think I am only pointing the finger to McDonalds.   Swanson Frozen Foods and most other large companies are now in this same category)

If you look at a “normal” southern (US) meal from Mcdonalds consisting of a Big Mac, French Fries, and a Coke you will find that it could not exist without corn.  The meat in the hamburger is fed corn as its primary food.  The bread and Coke uses corn sweetener called High Fructose Corn Syrup.  The tasty costing on the french fries is from meat fed corn, and it is fried in corn oil.  So why all the corn?   Corn is subsidized heavily by the Federal Government to create cheep food.  This means that the corn in all these foods is partially paid for by tax revenue through the agricultural subsidy to keep the consumer price low.

While the government subsidy creates the low price, the massive fields of corn from many parts of the country, the corn processing and storage operations coupled with the massive feed lots create the consistency. See :  http://youmightbeanidiot.com/?p=15

This is a quick history of the origins of industrial foods.  There are other influences that push business such as the “low-fat” diet that was devised to sell low cost carbohydrates instead of protein and fats from animals and are much more expensive to produce and many other influences that you can easily identify by “following the money”

What is not to like?

Perhaps not everyone has tried a McDonalds hamburger or a frozen diner, if you fit that description, then you should make it a point to pick up a dinner an prepare it at home or pick up a McDonalds meal on the way home tonight.  In both cases sit quietly, engage you dinner partner in conversation , and enjoy all the flavor the Industrial Food system has to offer.  Everyone should try this at least once in their life because there is no other flavor like it in the world.  It is completely man made.  All the flavor comes from additives because neither the meat nor what passes a vegetables have taste on their own.

While you are eating,  try not to think about how the animal was raised.  Try to forget about the fact that the corn or soy bean that was fed the animals was raised on the same piece of land year after year.  In a similar manner you should ignore the fact that the vegetables you are eating are grown year after year on the same land.  To get the plants to grow at all, the farmers adds fertilizer made from petroleum, but the trace minerals that sustain life and provide taste have long been depleted from the soil. 

You should also try to forget about the massive amount of petroleum used in the production of this meal.  Starting with the oil used to make the fertilizer, to the fuel needed to move the fertilizer to the farm.  Then you must ignore the tractor fuel used to plow the hard compact soil, and the oil used to make the weed killer and pesticides used on the plants. Next you need to ignore the fuel used to transport the food to the factory where it was processed into the form you are eating, then even more fuel to refrigerate and store the food before it is again transported to you local store.  Finally you need to consider the fuel you used to carry this “food” from the store to your home for consumption one meal at a time.

The reason you must ignore all those things if that if you consider then, you will find that your cheap meal requires more energy to produce than you will receive by eating it.  Such is the price of Industrial Food.  If you understand this and the fact that all this fuel use is made possible by government spending our tax dollars. you will understand the first myth the Food Industry wants you to keep believing. 

Myth:  Industrial Food is cheap.

Clearly it is not since it cost hidden taxes and fuel uses far beyond its nutritional value.

Upon further reflection you will also note there is no truth to the second myth the Industrial Food Conglomerates want you to continue to believe:

Myth: Industrial Food Is Efficient.

With all the cross country transportation, storage, environmental impact there is little in the way of efficiency left, but the grandaddy of all myth’s is:

Myth: Industrial Food is Healthy.

This one phrase is the most important reason not to consume Industrial Food.  The old saw that goes: “You are what you eat.” contains more truth than most people understand.  The only place your body can get the building materials it needs to build new cells, ward off disease, and increase intelligence is from the food you eat.  If you eat Industrial Food that is missing nutrients due to poor soil and repeated plantings of the same crops year after year, you will become weak, and riddled with the diseases so prevalent in developed nations.

ASIDE:  Consider for a moment the purpose of bacteria, virus, and fungi.  They are nature’s clean-up crews.  If you have a dead animal, or fish, or even a piled of dead plants, what happens?  The cleaning crew arrives to convert this living tissue back to the form that can be used to start and sustain new life.  Is it any surprise that when we do not nourish ourselves that we get attached by these same scavengers.  They are doing the job nature intended by removing the weakest of us to make way for new life to form.

What to Eat!

By this time I hope you will find Industrial Food somewhat revolting, but wondering what to eat as everyone must eat something to survive. Here is what I suggest you research as you are looking for something nourishing to eat.

1 – Know the Farmer that grows your food.

As a society, we have lost the bond between the farmer and the consumer.  This is problem is clearly visible each time there is a food recall.  The food producer did not care about the welfare of the eater.  If they did, they would not send out food that contains contamination. In my youth, I knew Mr. Lambert. his wife, sons. and daughters that ran the dairy where my family purchase milk.  I knew the truck farmer, that purchased produce in season and brought to my house on a truck.  I knew the neighbors that shared their produce with our family and shared in the bounty of food that my family grew.  I even knew the freed slave that lived in the house across the road and supplied mother with the best moonshine available to moisten her fruitcakes.  In short, the entire community where I grew up knew where our food came from and we never worried about it making us sick because all the people that produced the food also ate what they produced and they cared about their neighbors and would never knowingly cause harm to any of them.  This statement applied equally to the man that owned the bank, owned the pharmacy, or cleaned the dairy.  

I hereby hope you find such a environment in which to get your food.

1 – Organic Food – Food that is produced in accord with the USDA standards for Organic food.  These foods are allowed to include the USDA Organic label on the packaging.  The Organic label for those that have not seen it looks like this:

USDA Organic Logo

When food is labeled with this logo, you can be sure of several things.

1 – No Genetically modified plants or animals

2 – Otherwise minimal standards  as to growing methods

Click the logo link to see what the FDA has to say about the logo.

It is unfortunate that the large corporations have taken over the USDA Organic logo to sell more of the same food they were selling before just stiffed up with a new label.  Sure, they have had to make some changes, but in general there is little difference between what is called Organic and the standard food grown in the US.

To understand this, consider the organic chicken.  To be grown as “organic” chickens must have “access to pasture at all times”.  That may seem to be a worthwhile addition as chickens raised on pasture have many improved qualities over those grown in giant chicken houses as I will describe later.  The problem is that these chickens can also be raised in large chicken houses.  They can be 100 wide by 1000 feet long.  They usually have completely closed sides so the light can be controlled and the chickens are shoved together so closely they can scarcely turn around.  To meet the organic requirement, the producers cut a chicken sized hole in the end of the house with a fenced in a 10 x 10 lot outside that door.  Now the chickens have “access” to this yard at all times.  Unfortunately, it is the nature of the chicken to stay close to home at all times.  It is possible to put a small chicken coop in the middle of a 10 acre field and the chickens will not roam more that about 100 feet from the coop.  So exactly what good is it to have a chicken door in the organic chicken farm.  None, except that it allows the producer to stamp the chicken with the word organic when you purchase it in the store.

2 – Certified Naturally Grown food – Small growers previously called their food Organically Grown to distinguish it from the other food in the supermarket.  The large producers of food saw the rapid rise in demand for this so called Organic food and pressed the USDA to define what was meant by organic.  The resulting regulations are much less than organic because they leave large loopholes as I described for the chickens above that the large companies exploit to maintain their production and still keep the organic label.  Once the people that were really growing organic food discovered their name had been taken over by the large growers they took action. Note: it cost $25,000.00 dollars and a three year wait, plus other hoops to jump through to have your farm certified as organic.

These growers selected a new name to once again distinguish their product. The new name for what these small producers were selling is Certified Naturally Grown.  They also have a logo that looks like this:

Naturally grown logo

If you see this logo you will know that the farmer that grew the food subscribes to the practices of the naturally grown organization.  These practices are much more closely aligned to what normal people think organic should mean.  Certified Naturally Grown chickens actually have to live in the pasture, only coming inside when it is foul weather or when they lay eggs.  These farmers  do not rely on the government for subsidies or inspections.  They pay their own way and use other farmers to inspect each farm to assure compliance.

While this logo is relatively new and hard to find. It is growing rapidly and is worth looking for.  Click the logo to learn more.

3 – Locally Grown food - This is food that is grown by a farmer in your area.  Whether it is beef or beets, it comes from a local grower that in most cases is more organic than that with the USDA Organic lable.  The real benefit of both this and the Certified Naturally Grown is that you can get to know your food producer.  That interaction between the grower and the eater is the best guarantee that you will get safe, tasty foods.

This food has no logo, but you will know it by the company it keeps namely the farmer that grew it.  You will find it in the field, in a CSA, in a farmers market and in food stands along the rows and byways of America.  You can even find it on the Internet at the Local Harvest web site.

4 – Industrial Food – This is the majority of food available in the market.  It is primarily grown as a monoculture (One crop in the same field year after year, using chemicals, and fertilizers made from pretorleum or natural gas).  It is harvested with large machines and the varieties are chosen for fast growth, good appearance, and long shelf life. The animals are grown in large confinement operations called CAFO’s.  You can learn more about then in other parts of my blog.

There are many logo’s for this type of food and they are advertised on TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet.  They have names like Swanson, McDonalds, General Foods, Kellogs, Cysco Foods, Souix bee, Burger King, Waffle House, Campbells, and the list goes on and on.  These names are all in the business of supplying food to the growing mass of people on this planet.

Which of these is the best food to eat?

I your goal is to get the largest volume of food for the least money, then the Industrial Food is where you will find all the action.  The agricultural research divisions of the land grant universities in the US, the UDSA, and the research arms of all these large companies have worked very hard for over 100 years to discover methods that would create the most food for the least money.  Monoculture allows each farmer to specialize in one crop.  They get all the latest equipment and quickly produce as much of that crop as they can at the lowest cost.  The large companies have added massive factories to combine these farm products into tens of thousands of products from dehydrated food for backpackers to breakfast cereals, to body building muscle drinks.  So if cheep is your goal, then get a sackful at McDonalds and enjoy your corn based dinner as you drive to the bar to have a drink with your friends.  If you prefer to roll your own so to speak, look at the center isles of any grocery store, or look on the shelf of your nearby minimart.  You will find the best this division of agriculture has to offer.  From Twinkies to Swanson T.V. Dinners it is all there.  Packaged in bright colors and boasting of all manner of benefits to your health in big letters on the front of the package.

Before you head off in this direction you should take note of a few things that have occurred in the rush to cheep food.  First and foremost, none of the research that pushed for higher yields and cheeper production paid any attention to the nutritional value of the foods they were producing.  In the 1950′s a scientist ran an experiment.  He feed some of his rats the cereal from a prominent cereal producer while he ground up the box and fed it to the other group of rats.  He surprised everyone by reporting that the ones that at the box lived longer.  He noted that both groups died earlier that normal, but if he had to chose, he would eat the box. You can imagine the stir that created.  The outcome was that all cereals began to “Fortify” their cereals with a few of the vitamins and minerals they took out in processing or lost in the farming methods so his experiment would fail if anyone tried it again.  I will leave it you to ponder if taking out all the nutrients then adding back some manmade imitations are the best for your health.

Highest yield is not always good

The plants and animals grown in Industrial Food production are chosen for highest yield or the shortest time to market, or the best transportation characteristics. All at the lowest cost.  Since there is only one perfect plant or animal of each type, the variety of foods grown has shrunk to very close to one per type and this one is not the one with the most nutrition or the best taste.  It is the one that makes the food companies the most money.

Monoculture destroys the land

The monoculture farming method is only possible because they add chemical fertilizers to the soil.  This means that over the years of farming, the plants use up all the micro nutrients in the soil and they are never replaced.  This means that the plants delivered to the market are missing key ingredients, iodine, iron, selenium to name a few that are required for your good health.  Every year that goes by, poorer and poorer quality foods are being delivered into the market. This gives rise to some of the diseases that beset civilization.  Don’t believe this, do a little research or keep reading.

Is Organic Food any better? You bet it is!

First of all,  in many countries and here in the United State if the food contains Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) it may not be labeled organic.  While the FDA and the USDA continue to claim that GMO foods are identical to the non modified versions of the food, they seem to have no basis for that claim.  No studies are available to indicate one way or the other.  At present much of the food in your local grocery contains GMO ingredients.  The vast majority of Corn (And therefore High Fructose Corn Syrup – soon to be known as corn sugar), soybeans, crook neck squash, cotton, and sugar beets produced in the United States are known to be GMO.  In fact, just recently the sugar beet producers have complained that there may be a shortage of sugar in the US because a judge ruled that GMO sugar beets may not be planted.  That shows how truly dependent we are on GMO products.  Since these GMO foods have never been tested in actual feeding trials, in human or animals, we as consumers do not know what if anything they do differently when consumed.  I would like to believe the FDA, but they do not have a track record of honesty in my book. So until there are some studies showing the safety of GMO foods, I will stick to the categories that do not include the GMO  items.

Here are some other examples differences in organic vs industrial foods:

Tomatoes From BBC news:

A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids – a type of antioxidant.  Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.

. . .

Dr Alyson Mitchell, a food chemist at the University of California, and colleagues measured the amount of two flavonoids – quercetin and kaempferol – in dried tomato samples that had been collected as part of a long-term study on agricultural methods. They found that on average they were 79% and 97% higher respectively in the organic tomatoes than in the conventionally grown fruit.

New Scientist magazine reported that the different levels of flavonoids in tomatoes are probably due to the absence of fertilisers in organic farming.

Milk – Again from the BBC:

Milk was tested from cows who were farmed organically and conventionally.

The study found cows farmed organically produced milk which was, on average, 50% higher in Vitamin E than conventionally produced milk. Organic milk was also 75% higher in beta carotene, which is converted into Vitamin A in the body. It was also two to three times higher in the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthine.

Dr. Anne Nugent, British Nutrition Foundation dismissed these finding by stating: “ Even if regular milk is slightly lower in some nutrients than organic milk, chances are you will be already be meeting your dietary needs for these nutrients by consuming other foods.”

Does that sound like good advice to you?

On the subject of Strawberrys:

Reganold JP, Andrews PK, Reeve JR, Carpenter-Boggs L, Schadt CW, et al. (2010) Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems. PLoS ONE 5(9): e12346. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0012346

Our findings show that the organic strawberry farms produced higher quality fruit and that their higher quality soils may have greater microbial functional capability and resilience to stress. These findings justify additional investigations aimed at detecting and quantifying such effects and their interactions.

If you would like to experience this difference for yourself, go into a store like Whole Foods, Kroger, or Publix during local strawberry season.  Walk over to the display of organic strawberries.  Smell.  Most likely you actually began to smell the sweet fragrance before you even reached the display.  Now go over to the standard strawberries and smell.  Smells like some organic pesticide instead of sweet succulent strawberries.  I have experienced this even when the strawberries were produced by the same company.  I now only purchase strawberries that smell like a strawberry, because I know when I get them home, they will taste just like a strawberry.

Grass fed beef – University of California Cooperative Extension Service (Warning: Large Power point slide) reported research that concluded:

[The cows] Diet significantly altered the lipid profiles within beef. Grass diets produced a product lower in overall SFA {Saturated Fatty Acids}, higher in PUFA {Polyunsaturated fatty acids} and a more desirable Omega 6 to 3 ratio. Grass-based rations increased CLA {Conjugated Linoleic Acid} by 50% and Omega 3 FA (Fatty Acids} by 40%

Free Range Chicken Eggs – Mother Earth News conducted research into the benefits of eggs from pastured chickens and found that:

Eggs from pastured chickens had 4 to 6 times more vitamin D, and

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

This tells me that all forms of foods that are Certified Naturally Raised,  Locally Raised, Organic, or just about any other way you can name to create food produces better food than the Industrial Complex that is now in charge of our food production.

I will leave you with this thought provoking quote.

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health,and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.  ~Wendell Berry