Farm Subsidies

I don't know what the situation is like outside of the US, but here there is a department of the government called the USDA (US department of agriculture) that actually helps the farmer's market their products and subsidizes them by giving them favorable tax rates, cheap or free loans and discounts on supplies and labor.

Most of these subsidized farmers are not growing food for direct human consumption, they are either raising animals for human consumption or they are growing plant foods such as soy and corn for animal consumption. Almost all of the animal derived products are subsidized.

This is why when looking at a menu in a restaurant, especially the fast food ones, the prices for the animal product foods, which contain meat, eggs and dairy are often unbelievably cheap. We've all heard of the dollar menus at all of the fast food outlets. Notice that there is never a salad on the dollar menu, unless that salad contains cheese and meat or eggs.

The foods that are grown and sold directly to humans for human consumption are hardly ever subsidized and therefore are more expensive than the animal foods. By far these foods are healthier to humans and the environment. Why then does the government want us to eat the unhealthy foods?

It all comes down to who the stakeholders are and how much pull they have. The ranchers get all the subsidies because they are supported by the large conglomerates such as the meat packers and the beef board. There are hardly any large conglomerates supporting the healthy plant based foods.

In order to make ends meet for many people who live close to the poverty line, they must consume the cheapest foods they can find. In most cases they will not even be able to buy healthy fruits and vegetables because they are too expensive. They get most of their calories from the subsidized animal foods.

This leads to poor health, an environment that is falling apart, plus an unsustainable economy that depends on the subsidies of the government to survive. These products should not be subsidized at all and instead they should be taxed by the government just like tobacco products are. Tobacco products are known to cause serious health problems in their users, similar to animal food products.

The system is backwards and these subsidies need to be reversed and changed into taxes. This would improve health of the population just because these people will eventually start to buy the cheaper plant based products when the animal foods will cost more. It will also allow plant based food products to compete with animal based foods so that people would be able to choose.

Food Addicts

As I mentioned on previous posts, there are addictive substances in many of the foods that are commonly eaten. These are opiod substances in dairy, which are there to make sure the baby animal continues to thrive by continuing to drink milk from it's mother's breasts, as well as in meat, which contains many substances created by the animal during it's life as well as during the short period of time it was undergoing it's death, and of course most grains contain substances that are addictive so that birds and other seed and grain eating animals continue to consume the seeds in order for the plant to spread it's seeds as the bird flies and drops it's droppings all over the planet.

Besides these, of course there are many other addictive substances in food such as certain herbs, spices, chemicals and processed foods that are addictive as well.

When people consume these addictive foods they do not notice that they are even addicted. In fact even people addicted to drugs do not realize that they are addicted. Some do realize it but they deny that they are. It's actually difficult to realize that you are addicted to food when the entire world eats these same foods and the government and the media continue to create an illusion that these are actually healthy foods.

What usually happens when someone who is addicted to these foods tries to stop eating the food they feel really sick. This is an expected response to stopping an addiction. We feel that we need to continue to have the substance that we are addicted to. Most people trying to quit smoking have an awfully difficult time quitting because of the addictive qualities of the chemicals in tobacco.

The feelings are usually so strong that they fail to stop eating the food and just go right back to eating it. This makes them feel much better as the addictive substances are now back in their body and they are no longer feeling the withdrawal symptoms.

This is why most people have a hard time changing their diet to a much healthier one. They try but quickly they feel symptoms of withdrawal and then go right back to eating the addictive foods, which usually makes them feel better and immediately they blame the bad feelings on the new diet and the less bad feelings are due to the old diet so they just go back to the old diet and give up.

Go Vegan Poem

Why oh why do they have to die

Packed into filthy pens

Cows, pigs hens

Evil corporations profiting from their suffering and pain

Animal foods are beyond insane

Cholesterol, atherosclerosis, gout, diabetes and cancer

Addictions, murders, killings is not the answer

Nutrition from plants clears the body and mind

Become vegan now and then you’ll find

The world looks better, nobody gets hurt

Hypocrisy goes away it gets left in the dirt

All life needs protection from harm

The world needs to be a sanctuary farm

Where all life can prosper and be happy

and the human race will cease to feel crappy

Paleolithic Diet and Cancer

There seems to be a big movement these days towards the caveman or paleolithic diet. There was a history of time when humans were hunters and gatherers. This is a long time ago.

They lived in caves and recently started to control fire. This allowed them to break down the cells of difficult to eat foods so that they were edible. Fibrous and hard food that were not consumable in nature now could be eaten.

Another use was the killing of germs. Obviuosly as soon as a dead corpse is killed there are opportunistic life forms that take advantage of the loss of immune system to kill them off.

Microbes of all types will take up residence in a dead corpse within minutes of it's death. That is why we use refrigeration and other forms of preservation. One of the ways to reduce this was to use fire.

Fire not only killed most of these microbes but it modified the food as well. Not for the better but obviously for the worse. There were new chemicals created when the heat touched the food.

For those who have some organic chemistry background, when heat is applied to almost any organic substance in the presence of oxygen there will be new organic substances created. Also the remaining substances will become modified as bonds break and new ones form. Many of these substances are carcinogenic, meaning that they promote the genesis of cancer.

The people who eat lots of cooked and especially barbequed flesh are exposing themselves to these carcinogens on a regular basis. Also when the body is in constant ketosis, which means that the body is turning fat and protein into sugar, there is less energy to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

All of these contribute to higher than average chance of getting cancer. Here is an article documenting the real fact that the inuit in Greenland in the 1400's were developing cancer. They had no contact with the white man up until that point and they were unable to consume anything but the low carb high fat flesh from animals. Which is similar to the paleolithic diet.

A Google search of the keyword "paleo cancer" will bring up a long list of links that include admission by many paleolithic dieters who have been diagnosed with cancer after they were on the diet (some for many years).

A vegan low fat diet is used to return yourself to health and remain healthy for a long happy life (as well as a happy life for the animals who you did not kill to eat).

Eating a paleo diet is also a big environmental disaster with most of the rain forests of the planet being cut and burned down to raise animals. The amount of water that is used to raise animals versus fruits and vegetables is astronomical. Animals also produce toxic waste products which need to be dealt with, fruit and vegetables produce no toxic waste, only healthy compost to grow more fruit and vegetables.

Mark Sisson Inconsistencies

There is a popular supporter of the "Primal" diet named Mark Sisson. He has a website and sells many products and potions. He also has written a few books on the subject.

If you don't know much about the primal diet it is sort of based on the low carb or Atkins diet. The idea of the diet is to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in one's diet.

When carbohydrates are reduced or eliminated from the diet the body is starved for energy and can not survive. Every single cell of the trillions that make up a living body requires carbohydrates all the time. In order to overcome this the body will turn protein and fat into carbohydrates.

This process creates ketones. These ketones are toxic and the body must eliminate them along with all of the other metabolic toxins. This requires a lot of extra work for the body and these extra toxins can cause diseases.

This process is a survival process and not a normal process. Normally our body was designed to consume vast amounts of natural carbohydrates and use them for fuel.

Mark Sisson has a question and answer page on his website. Here is one particular question and his answer following it:

What is your health philosophy?

Really, my health philosophy is surprisingly simple. I follow a diet based on an understanding of evolutionary science. I think it’s more important to eat, move, and live according to how humans are designed and not according to society’s artificial developments of the last 100 years. Fortunately, this regimen is not only incredibly healthy, it’s quite simple.

In a nutshell:

- fresh, organic, unprocessed food – no junk!

- daily activity – whether it’s the gym or a walk along the beach, it all counts

- plenty of quality sleep

- plenty of water, no soda or sweetened drinks

- antioxidants galore – the key to limiting stress

- a good fish-oil supplement

- lots of essential fats, reckless amounts of vegetables, and clean protein

- time for fun – don’t take anything too seriously – ethical behavior – because what goes around comes around

- taking responsibility for yourself and your life – openness to new things and ideas

This is where I have a problem with Mark. He mentions that we need to eat fresh, organic and unprocessed food. He then recommends eating moderate amounts of animal flesh. Animal flesh can only be fresh if you kill the animal yourself. I don't think Mark is out in the woods right now slitting a deer's throat.

I don't know where he gets his supply of animal flesh but certainly it can't be fresh unless he kills the animal himself. Organic for animal flesh is really a big lie. There are no organic guidelines for animal flesh. Most meat that is sold as organic is really the same as the factory farm meat. It's not easy to force animals to eat organic food, they will eat whatever they find. All meat has to be processed or it will putrefy in a short time. No meat is unprocessed unless it is eaten as soon as it is killed. For example a lion will take down an antelope and eat it within minutes. The lion will consume everything from head to hoof and eat it raw. Humans just do not seem to want to do this.

He says to get plenty of quality sleep. Further down the page he said that he sleeps 7 hours a day. The recommendation for sleep is 8 to 10 hours by every health organization around. He obviously is not even following his own advice.

In order to get antioxidants (galore) someone needs to consume a lot of colorful plant foods like fruit and vegetables. Meat and animal products contain none to a trace of antioxidants. If you are recommending people to eat animal flesh then you can't at the same time recommend they eat antioxidants (galore), because that is a conflict.

The part about ethical behavior is self explanatory. How can you consume thousands of harmless sentient animals, destroy the environment and recommend that others do the same and call that ethical. I believe that he is right however on the part about what goes around comes around, so Mr. Sisson, remember you said that and not me.

These are just a few of the inconsistencies of a supporter of the low carb or primal diet. If you read a few more of his webpages you'll find many more.

Trends in Alcohol Marketing

It's been a while since I posted anything here. I was just enjoying the weather and had a few short trips.

If you spend much time online, I'm sure you've seen some of the ads recently for alcohol. Not just beer and wine but the hard liquor is now going low carb.

I saw an ad for Bacardi low carb drinks. I had to check twice to be sure what I saw was real.

Why would someone who drinks hard liquor want to worry about carbs? Some of the ads also stated that they are low calorie. Do you know how much booze someone needs to drink in order to put on weight from drinking booze?

A person would need to practically live off of booze. That is they would need to get most of their calories from booze. This means that they would need to be intoxicated all day and night. This is the only way someone would possibly be able to gain weight from booze. The number of calories is small, less than most vegetables.

Why bother creating a booze that is low calorie or low carb? Most booze drinkers are not very health oriented either. Sure there are social drinkers who are health minded and drink once in a while. These people will get such a small amount of calories from the liquor that it's not even worth mentioning it.

Then there are the alcoholics. These people drink excessively and most if not all of them couldn't care less about their health. These alcoholics are the only people who would actiually be gaining weight from the liquor.

What are these companies thinking about when the develop these products? There is no target market that makes any sense. The people who want a low carb or low calorie drink probably don't drink much and therefore the amount of calories from the liquor that they drink is minimal even if they drink "full calorie" or "full carb" drinks. The people who actually would get a substantial amount of calories or carbs from liquor are too drunk to even understand the difference.

Besides they wouldn't care if the liquor was low carb or high carb as they just care about getting drunk.

If you have any comments, let me know, I'd like to see what you think about this.

Feeding America

I have seen this so called charity advertise on many billboards around the town that I live in. Whenever I see ads on billboards immediately a warning signal goes off in my head.

Billboard advertisements are not cheap. When you see someone advertising on billboards they are making a substantial amount of money and there is some profiteering going on.

Besides that I also see tons of ads online for them. One of the taglines is that 1 in 6 people in the US are struggling with hunger. I wonder what that really means. Just look at some of the people on their website who they claim are struggling with hunger and what do you see?

Obese and overweight families. Sure hunger and obesity are not opposites but if these people are hungry then what are they eating when not hungry to get so fat?

Besides that as is commonly known the population of the US is 35% obese and up to 80% overweight. How can nearly 17% of the population be hungry when at the same time they are overweight?

If I assume that the 80% of the population that is overweight is not hungry and 17% of the population is dealing with hunger then there is only 3% left who are not hungry and not overweight.

The US is known to be one of the wealthiest nations on the planet and there are only a total of 3% of the population who are not overweight or hungry?

I say to follow the money and be very careful with these charities. Do not just blindly donate money or any other valuable to just any charity without doing more indepth research. There has to be at least a small group of people getting quite rich on Feeding America and few who are really benefitting from the donations.