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This article struck a nerve with me. And we wonder why mainstream America is overweight and poorly nourished. Food is a business, and nutrition takes a backseat to politics and profits.

USDA's subsidies ignore its own dietary advice

Exerpts:

"...corn and soybeans receive a good chunk of the $15 billion in subsidies to farmers that the Agriculture Department is doling out this year. And while that might seem logical because the food pyramid advocates a plant-based diet, most of the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. are used to fatten cows, pigs and chickens, while the pyramid recommends that consumers eat more fish and beans.

Corn and soybeans also are used to make artificial sweeteners and partially hydrogenated oils that the food pyramid urges Americans to avoid. Such oils also are derived from cotton, another heavily subsidized crop.

That disparity points out an awkward truth about the USDA: what it urges people to eat to remain healthy does not match what it pays farmers to grow."

"It's a classic case of once you provide a taxpayer benefit, you develop a constituency," said Dooley, who now is president of the Food Products Association, an industry trade group. "It is not just by chance that when you go to a hearing on farm policy the audience is made up primarily of lobbyists from the sugar industry and from other program crops."

"The new pyramid brilliantly avoids giving any `eat less' messages," she said. "The dietary take-home messages from USDA are: Exercise is what really matters, and you can eat anything you want."

Anyone else peeved about the pervasiveness of poor quality food in the US?

Gotta pick stuff that tastes good... If its a smallish local place its up in the air as to what they use chemicals wise. Then on the flip side you can find some real good fruit and veggies in the grocery store, but they last WAY longer than the fresh local grown. Since when is a strawberry good more than a couple days?

I like baking my own goodies... so honey or brown sugar gets substituted for the white stuff. Fatty stuff? Depends, egg whites only...

Then again I've got a soda drip feeder... gotta kick that one. Havent figured if its better to do sweet tea that you could stand on, or mountain dews.

really want to know how the global food system works:

read the Penguin Atlas of Food

Amazon link

http://tinyurl.com/92zud

This is also - by the way - a major fight between the US and the EU. America keeps insisting on "free trade" giving them the right to dump their tax subsidized, gene manipulated, over-insectizided stuff over here. Oops. So if you live in a major ag state, please tell your senators to leave us alone. (just adding the international perspective. It's even worse for India, some bastard had the nerve to patent the DNA of Aramanth, a grain people have grown for thousands of years and suddenly they might have to pay a company for the right to grow their own traditional food. I'll stop now, otherwise I'll never stop ranting...Mansato... nope... I gotta stop.....)

quote:

Originally posted by Elis:
America keeps insisting on "free trade" giving them the right to dump their tax subsidized, gene manipulated, over-insectizided stuff over here. Oops. So if you live in a major ag state, please tell your senators to leave us alone.

Here! Here! I hope the right ears hear your plea!