Green Health advocate Michael Pollan once again raises heightened awareness of the political, socio-economic, and health issues raised by the American agricultural system. In his recent piece in the New York Times yesterday You Are What You Grow, he continues his message of educating the effects of highly processed food via tangible examples:
"Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?"
He speaks of the farm bill's impact on the American food system by incenting American farmers to sell their crops abroad far less cheaper than it cost to grow them. He continues to describe the major environmental, poverty, and immigration impact and degradation that will ensue.
But, in his usual optimistic manner of supporting existing movements supporting organic, local, and sustainable food movements, he ends by encouraging "eaters" to come together:
"At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely. Eaters want a bill that makes the most healthful calories in the supermarket competitive with the least healthful ones. Eaters want a bill that feeds schoolchildren fresh food from local farms rather than processed surplus commodities from far away. Enlightened eaters also recognize their dependence on farmers, which is why they would support a bill that guarantees the people who raise our food not subsidies but fair prices. Why? Because they prefer to live in a country that can still produce its own food and doesn’t hurt the world’s farmers by dumping its surplus crops on their markets."
Check out the full article here
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