Don't tell him he's stupid, he projects it onto the next newbie who
wanders past!

Good article, though. I like Michael Pollan, he shakes my thinking
up... Your "carbon footprint" is the big eco-thing over here, which
when applied to foods means that local farm shops are doing well.
We've also recently altered our own farming subsidies so that, among
other things, farmers are encouraged to leave wide strips of
uncultivated land around the outskirts of fields, and put back ancient
hedges where they've been ripped out to make bigger fields. Wildlife
looks very happy... it's the shrew mating season atm, it's difficult
to go for a walk along a field edge without being cursed in very high
voices by minute predators : )

Nicky.
T2 dx 05/04 + underactive thyroid
D&E, 100ug thyroxine
Last A1c 5.5%  BMI 25

I think he just called every overweight person lower class.
I thought Kurt was American, a citizen in a classless
society?

Now, it may have been true in Britain's class structure.
Remember shining examples of upper class lean-ness - Winston
Churchill springs to mind.


Cheers, Alan, T2, Australia.
d&e, metformin 1500mg, ezetrol 10mg
Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.
--
http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Athens and The Adriatic

On Apr 24, 1:18�pm, "Priscilla H. Ballou" <vze23...@verizon.net>
wrote:

The only trolls in this thread are you and Nicky.  But then again you
come out of your cave like a grouchy old bear just about anytime I
post something.

And wasn't it just a short time ago when you made a little joke about
an Alzheimer's link I posted?  But I'm a troll and stupid when I do
it?  Maybe you're the one that needs to consider logic, eh Prissy?

Kurt
But I thought you would be honored with my comment since you two so
love to make sarcastic one line jabs about the links that I
post...like the whenever  Spoken like a troll, which is what you do
just about anytime you respond to something I post.  So, in your world
of "logic" you can make a sarcastic comment about a link (which you
have done many times) that's posted to the group, but when I do it I'm
stupid and a troll?  That's some one sided logic.

Could be inactivity, but the laziness is just not true. I've worked
with a lot of very heavy people in the work force, and none of them
were lazy. They were very hard working, so just because people choose
to say fat and lazy in the same sentence doesn't make it true for
"most."

Cheri

Gantlet wrote in message ...

Hi Susan

There is much food for thought in this article about the
pressure placed on legislators and other organisations (the
USDA and ADA come to mind) by the lobbyists for the farmers,
particularly the grains producers.

Unless I misread it, the main thrust of the article was
about the effects on the economics of American eating habits
(obesity just being one of them) caused by subsidisation of
some crops and not others.

Those subsidisations led to highly processed foods based on
the subsidised crops (usually staples like corn, soy, wheat,
rice etc) being cheaper than healthier choices of
less-subsidised products such as vegetables.

For example, from the article:

"For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm
bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly
complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly
every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules
for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable
extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it
determines which crops will be subsidized and which will
not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm
bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the
cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the
Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates
and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of
the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the
tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the
others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as
long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S.
agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to
promote the overproduction of these five commodities,
especially corn and soy.

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers
by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can
grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting
production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food
system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added
fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat
and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill
does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh
produce."

The poverty implications were indirect, in that those with
lower incomes are likely to buy the most calories for their
dollars. Not always true - heavily targeted advertising and
the food habits learnt at home and from peers also have a
significant effect.

I did like this comment:
"A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately
wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has
called “an epidemic” of obesity would at the same time be in
the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose
corn syrup."

However, while it appears to be an obvious problem for you,
we have different subsidies here - and similar levels of
obesity. Some of that, I suspect, is related to our
nutrition advisors being trained using text-books and
guidelines generated in your country. So the skewing of
policies in the USA can affect countries with totally
different farm production situations.

Finally, one of the factors forgotten in articles like this
is that obesity as a nation is generally associated with
affluence; poverty is relative. Obesity isn't a major issue
in Darfur, Zimbabwe or Bangla Desh.


Cheers, Alan, T2, Australia.
d&e, metformin 1500mg, ezetrol 10mg
Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.
--
http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Athens and The Adriatic

"Susan" <nevermind@nomail.com> wrote in message

Yes.