The truth about food today

[502mania]

Corruption in the American Food Industry



   There are a few vital keys to human survival, food is a big one. Although food is such a vital key, it tends to be ignored by the government, food industries, and even the consumers. Currently, up to 45% of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, along with up to 85% of soy and 70-75% of food in grocery store aisles contain genetically engineered ingredients. Almost Every food sold in this day and age is processed garbage. And if genetically engineering food isn’t bad enough, most foods contain harmful chemicals and preservatives. It seems every drink you see, even juices with “made with real fruit juice” bannered across the front of the carton contain high fructose corn syrup.
   But of course, you can buy organic foods but they cost too much for the average middle-class income family to afford a steady diet of and even they contain chemicals. The USDA simply require they have below a certain percentage of such, and as long as they do, they can be labeled and sold as organic. But what does “USDA-approved” even mean? McDonalds beef is USDA-approved, and just about everyone knows how horrible for your body McDonalds is. Remember Super Size Me? With all these harmful chemicals that only scientists can identify (such as sodium-nitrate, a known cancerous chemical), it’s no wonder we have to count calories and read nutrition labels to stay acceptably healthy. And nutrition labels don’t even tell the whole truth about what’s been put in and what’s been taken out.
   Maybe that’s why the U.S.A. is the leading contender in obesity amongst the whole world. In fact the FDA has issued over 20 recalls of foods during the month of August, 2010! There shouldn’t be that many in a whole year. Even pet foods are dangerous and filled with harmful chemicals, preservatives and meat by-products (parts of the animal humans don‘t eat: you can only imagine). The word dangerous shouldn’t even be in the same sentence as food.  But back to human foods. Although there are fat-free and sugar-free alternatives, they are still very bad for you. Fat-free foods are just swapped out with sugars and vice versa.
   But why does this problem live on? Because profits of the government and industries are prioritized before the health of the general public. Remind you of anything? Hint: Big Tobacco. It will take more than dieting to resolve the food problem in this country. If nothing else is safe here, food should be. And if this pattern persists, there won’t be a general public to profit from.

By Chase Sweat

[sheenu]

  

[502mania]

people have been patenting GE foods and allowing the seeds to spread to the small time organic farmers crops. they did that to a small family and sued them fo growing "their" plant. i dont think plants should be able to be patented.

[502mania]

*shakes head*  why??

[shernajwine]

This issue really upsets me. Especially since I have children and I try to feed them healthy foods, but no matter what I give them, unless I'm growing and slaughtering it myself, it's just plain hurting them 

[502mania]

what i want to know is: HOW IN THE HELL ARE THEY GETTING AWAY WITH IT!? I thought the usda and fda were here to protect us from exactly this. It seems they're just helping the food industry pump ur food full of garbage and completely get away with it. no investigation. no concern for us. just let it hapen, let them put mercury in our children's vaccines, and tell the parents they have to get them or they will not be allowed to attend school. pardon my freedom of speech, but i'm tired of this *bleep*.  

[rcbrad]

This is an interesting article.  I never thought of the food industry being compared to the tobacco industry, but there are some similarities.  It's Money, money, money ahead of doing what best for people.  This is true for so many areas of our lives today.

[502mania]

This is an interesting article.  I never thought of the food industry being compared to the tobacco industry, but there are some similarities.  It's Money, money, money ahead of doing what best for people.  This is true for so many areas of our lives today.

Thanks  . I wrote it myself. I thought people might like to know what we're pretty much forced to eat these days. Just want to spread the info

[fudion14]

Yeah they talk about much of that in Food, Inc.

Corruption in the American Food Industry



   There are a few vital keys to human survival, food is a big one. Although food is such a vital key, it tends to be ignored by the government, food industries, and even the consumers. Currently, up to 45% of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, along with up to 85% of soy and 70-75% of food in grocery store aisles contain genetically engineered ingredients. Almost Every food sold in this day and age is processed garbage. And if genetically engineering food isn’t bad enough, most foods contain harmful chemicals and preservatives. It seems every drink you see, even juices with “made with real fruit juice” bannered across the front of the carton contain high fructose corn syrup.
   But of course, you can buy organic foods but they cost too much for the average middle-class income family to afford a steady diet of and even they contain chemicals. The USDA simply require they have below a certain percentage of such, and as long as they do, they can be labeled and sold as organic. But what does “USDA-approved” even mean? McDonalds beef is USDA-approved, and just about everyone knows how horrible for your body McDonalds is. Remember Super Size Me? With all these harmful chemicals that only scientists can identify (such as sodium-nitrate, a known cancerous chemical), it’s no wonder we have to count calories and read nutrition labels to stay acceptably healthy. And nutrition labels don’t even tell the whole truth about what’s been put in and what’s been taken out.
   Maybe that’s why the U.S.A. is the leading contender in obesity amongst the whole world. In fact the FDA has issued over 20 recalls of foods during the month of August, 2010! There shouldn’t be that many in a whole year. Even pet foods are dangerous and filled with harmful chemicals, preservatives and meat by-products (parts of the animal humans don‘t eat: you can only imagine). The word dangerous shouldn’t even be in the same sentence as food.  But back to human foods. Although there are fat-free and sugar-free alternatives, they are still very bad for you. Fat-free foods are just swapped out with sugars and vice versa.
   But why does this problem live on? Because profits of the government and industries are prioritized before the health of the general public. Remind you of anything? Hint: Big Tobacco. It will take more than dieting to resolve the food problem in this country. If nothing else is safe here, food should be. And if this pattern persists, there won’t be a general public to profit from.

By Chase Sweat

[lvstephanie]

I know, GE foods seem to be everywhere now! What ever happened to the good old maze and grass seeds; now we have things like corn and wheat. We shouldn't be playing God by modifying a plant's genetic features just to produce a trait that is more desirous for us. In the past they cross pollinated different crops in order to pick up particular "good" genes, but in the process they introduced so many other unknown genes into the newly modified plants. Who knows what havoc that could've caused creating these mutant hybrids?! Anyone remember the movie The Fly?! Maybe by cross-pollinating some different strains of potatoes caused them to become more susceptible to the potato blight which caused the Great Potato Famine!

Now the GE foods have just been modernized; instead of mixing up the genetics of plants (and animals, mind you!) just hoping that there'd be good traits that over-shadowed any bad one that were also picked-up, we now can determine more specifically what traits we want to incorporate and thereby reduce the risk of passing on unwanted traits. And you know who I blame for that? The Church! If it wasn't for Gregor Mendel fiddling with his peas, we'd never had gone down this road of trying to pick and choose what genes we wanted to keep.

And I wish that companies weren't able to hold a gun to our heads to make us purchase those overly processed foods that are high in calories. I'd rather buy fresh ingredients and make my own meals from scratch, but no. I have to buy the damned Campbell's soups instead. I even saw a McD's that had arranged to have a tank shoot cars off the road if they refused to go thru the drive thru and order a super-sized meal!