Oink

…corn is king for fattening cattle.

–Charles Sanders

Charles Sanders’ prescription for what to add to your cow’s hay to make sure he fattens nicely for slaughter:

1000 lbs. corn
100 lbs. beef supplement (protein)
50 lbs. molasses feed

Ingredients in a popular “Organic” (healthy!) breakfast cereal:

Whole Grain Corn, Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Salt, Organic Molasses.

Ingredients in feed for fattening pigs:

Ground Corn, Ground Oats, Soybean Meal, Soybean Hulls, Dried Whey, Yeast Culture, Plasma, Animal Fat, Dicalcium Phosphate, Fish Meal, Calcium Carbonate, L-Lysine, Copper Sulfate, Artificial Flavors, DL-Methionine, Zinc Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Defluorinated Phosphate, Mineral Oil, Niacin Supplement, Manganous Oxide, Vitamin E Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Magnesium Oxide, Biotin, Menadione Dimethylpyrimidinol Bisulfite, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin B 12 Supplement, Folic Acid, Potassium Iodide, Vitamin D 3 Supplement, Sodium Selenite

Ingredients in a certain honey oat cereal:

Whole grain oats, sugar, modified corn starch, honey, brown sugar syrup, salt tripotassium phosphate, canola and/or rice bran oil, natural almond flavor, mixed tocopherols, calcium carbonate, zinc, iron, sodium ascorbate, niacin amide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, palmitate, folic acid, Vitmin B12, Vitamin D

Vanilla crisp flavored cereal bar from a famous company:

RICE, WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT, SUGAR, WHEAT BRAN, SOLUBLE WHEAT FIBER, SALT, MALT FLAVORING, MALTODEXTRIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2]), SOLUBLE CORN FIBER, FRUCTOSE, CORN SYRUP, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL AND SOYBEAN OIL, SOYBEAN AND PALM OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS)†, MALTODEXTRIN, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF WHOLE GRAIN OATS, DEXTROSE, WHEAT FLOUR, SORBITOL, GLYCERIN, BROWN SUGAR (SUGAR, MOLASSES), APPLESAUCE (APPLES, WATER), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL VANILLA FLAVOR, NONFAT DRY MILK, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT, COLOR ADDED, NIACINAMIDE, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), BHT (PRESERVATIVE).

The only real difference is at least the pig got some protein from the fish meal.

All the above human foods are advertised as suitable for anyone who wants to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle. In fact, the bars are specifically marketed to those who want to lose weight. And all of the products have the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check Logo. This is the same AHA that sells the right to slap this logo on your food for as much as $700,000 annually.

I’m so happy that the AHA cares so much about my health that they’re willing to charge a food company nearly a million dollars a year for their endorsement. I mean, that’s the way to ensure the food manufacturers don’t start marketing junk in an attempt to make more money to cover their new AHA certification.

I’m thinking of making my own endorsement. It’ll look like this:

I’m going to run around and start slapping it on cows.

Now I hate to start talking about motives. We can’t know hearts. It makes me angry when people talk about fast food restaurants as if the owners’ sole goal in life is to kill people. I did take a few classes in economics in school. I believe I remember that principle #46 goes something like this:

#46 If you deliberately try to kill people with your products you will probably lose their business.

Which is closely associated with #47:

#47 Dead people, while still permitted to vote in the USA, are unable to order things on Amazon.

The upshot of all this economic theory is that the fast food joints don’t actually care whether you want to eat a Triple Stacked Pounder Slider Bacon Cheeseburger Bomb, or Broccoli Surprise. They just want to feed you what you’re willing to pay them money to eat.

But it’s no good saying that fast food restaurants aren’t trying to deliberately hurt anyone, but then go on to say that Big Agriculture is. And that’s a disturbingly common trend in the low-carb world. However, there are some things to consider:

First, while fast food restaurants are more adaptable (i.e., they can offer you chicken or carrots, depending on what you demand), enormous agricultural conglomerates don’t turn on a dime. You can’t invest millions in growing grains and then next year start producing butter and eggs.

Second, there’s a difference between actually going about trying to hurt people (which is usually a jail-able offense, unless you’re just trying to hurt a fat person) and finding out you were unwittingly hurting people, but then trying to minimize the damage to your company. Especially if your whole economic future depends on it.

So this is where heart motives go into it. I don’t think we can assume that the American Corn Growers Association realized about 15 years ago that the obesity and diabetes epidemic was worsening right in time with the message to eat more and more and more grains and vegetable oils and less and less animal fat and meat and thought “BWWWAAA HA HA HA!! Igor, our plan is succeeding!”

But perhaps we can view them as perfectly normal people. When a senate committee in the 60s decided that people capable of misplacing a battleship (i.e. government) were best suited to telling Americans what to eat–even when they themselves couldn’t get a consensus from doctors about what that was–grain growers saw a perfectly normal business opportunity in the public flagellation of red meat and fat.

It was just gravy when the message to eat more grain was added.

And 20 years later–you’ve been making lots of money and expanding–and along come some doctors who start pointing out that people are fattening like pigs for slaughter ever since the government started telling them to eat less fat and red meat and more grains. They point the finger at you: but it goes against accepted wisdom, so you very naturally set out to defend yourself. The cry gets louder, and you fight back harder.

I don’t have a problem with anyone trying to defend themselves or their livelihood. What I have a problem with is the government siding with one kind of food producer while simultaneously trying to destroy others. What I have a problem with is the government subsidizing research that supports what they’ve decided is fact, while vilifying, ignoring or declaring “too complicated” any research that goes against their position.

Stop subsidizing…EVERYBODY. Let the grain growers grow, the sugar manufactures bleach, and the cattle ranchers ranch. Let researchers get their own funding to do their own studies to find out what’s true. Let medicine search for what’s best without your interference and influence.

Because, guess what? Before the government started telling us what to eat and how much to exercise, back when people thought starches were fattening, animal foods were strengthening, and too much exercise was foolish; back when there were no marathons, no margarines, no gyms, and no such thing as partially hydrogenated vegetable oils–in other words, about the time my grandparents were growing up, back when Americans ate far more red meat and animal fat than they do now, and far less grain:

Obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease were all far rarer than they are now. (People die of heart disease less today, but that’s because of medicine, not diet. The percentage of people who contract heart disease has only increased). In fact the only real problem was hunger and malnutrition. I don’t say that to be dismissive of hunger. What I mean is it wasn’t that we didn’t know what to eat; it was that we couldn’t all get enough of it. Those are two very different problems.

If you want some stats, head over to the CDC to see how obesity has climbed since 1988.

Or here, to see how the percentage of people diagnosed with diabetes has increased 167% since 1980.

Or think about heart disease. We don’t die from it as often or as soon as we used to, thanks to better skill on the part of our medical community, but it’s still the number one cause of death in the United States. How can this be if people are eating less fat, exercising more, and eating more whole grains, as we know they are? If you question why we’re all fatter and sicker than ever, we’re told that it’s because we won’t stop eating fat and red meat and we won’t exercise.

But that’s not true:

We eat about the same total amount of meat as in 1971, but far less red meat and far more chicken…just like we’ve been told.

Have a look here, to see how we’re eating less fat, eating more lean meat, exercising more, eating more fruits and vegetables and eating more grain and sugar since 1970-yet still getting fatter all the time.

For more detailed info for the scientifically minded, try here.