Food for Thought

Article Provided by Steamshovel Press (http://www.steamshovel.press)

by Kenn Thomas

Recent health issues reminded me again of one of the most obvious manifestations of—what should we call it?—institutional conspiracy? Conspiracy as usual? The parapolitics of nutrition? That is, the great poisonous well of edible consumables known as the global food industry. The enormous rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary disease and related maladies stemming from the over consumption of salt, sugar, fat and the products of bizarre genetic manipulation.

Something not natural about all that and yet seems fundamental to the economic pillar of food service. Places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s provide a different marketing scheme to present their pre-packaged wares in PC yuppy wrap but they belong to the same conspiracy as most most grocery stores.

Finding actual whole food requires a strategy to sidestep the constant hard sell. Shop the outer periphery of the store for produce, dairy, eggs and meat. Everything else is salt and sugar in boxes and cans. It’s bad for you and will diminish your health and curtail your life.

Weird, simple, true, and many grocery shoppers seem oblivious. The German store chain ALDI provides the only exception: there, the produce is generally found in the middle of the store and the junk fills the rest of the store.

Advertising and conspicuous consumption famously drive the demand for bad food. It’s an artificial situation held up by the grand megacorporate grocery conspiracy. Recently the FDA made pronouncements that may lead to a reduction of trans fats in many foods, a common sense measure that will prevent a great deal of heart disease. Like every great bureaucracy, though, the wheels grind slowly if they move at all. And many more things need to be done with the food supply than this obvious, clumsy and long overdue move to clean up the grocery ghetto.

Soylent Green recently aired on TV—the second best known of Charlton Heston’s dystopian movies (after Planet of the Apes). Heston’s famous final line in the movie, “Soylent Green is people!” seems tame from the current vantage point—where it’s not just people eating people; it’s the food product eating the people.

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