Hmmmmmm, I knew that tasted fishy.

An excerpt adopted from "Fast Food Nation," by Eric Schlosser.

Two things I want to say:

1- When you have to over compensate for doing something it should be clear that the original thing is probably the result of ridiculously tortured thinking, and a better and more efficient solution is out there: exhibit A here, you need to add chemicals to processed foods to make them taste like real food (or, for that matter, to keep them from decomposing.) Solution: eat real food. Food that needs chemicals to taste like food is not, in the first place food. This is entirely different from spicing, which you'll surely notice if you read the article.

exhibit B, an example from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma:" waste products at factory farms. Where waste used to be used as fertilizer, it is now too far from farms to be used as such, and, in the gigantic quantities that you accumulate when your feedlot consists of tens of thousands of animals, is poisoning the water supplies for hundreds of miles. In addition, chemical fertilizers must be used to replace the nutrients in the soil no longer naturally replaced by "waste."

This is not just silliness, it is indicative of a way of thinking that is destroying the very things humans need for their survival. Five hundred years ago, there was no such thing as waste. When there is only so much on the planet to make waste out of, isn't there a predestined end to that?

2- If you want to know what you're eating (say, if you're vegan, vegetarian, keep kosher, halal, etc., simply conscientious) it's impractical if not entirely impossible to do this and eat any processed foods. As an example: I bet you didn't know (if you hadn't read this book or the article) that you've ingested parts of thousands if not millions of bugs called "Dactylopius coccus Costa" whose dessicated shells are used as red and pink coloring in such obviously meat laden products as pink-grapefruit juice and Dannon Strawberry Yoghurt.

Oh yeah, not to mention that we really have no clue what most of the thousands of chemicals the average person ingests on any given day actually do to the long-term health of the human body.

Things aren't this complicated, and there's hope on the horizon. People are finally starting to realize, in large numbers, that things aren't this complicated in the real world.

We just make it that way.

What the World Eats

An interesting photo essay at Time Magazine, chronicling what families around the world eat in one week, and how much it costs them.

I think it's interesting how little fresh fruit and vegetables are in the American's diets, even compared to other first-world families, like the German family. The Mongolians even appear to have more, which is something if you've ever been to Mongolia, I hear. Notice that the Mexicans are the heaviest, and also have the most coca-cola lined up in the background. (In a tangential note, because I think Mexican Coke has sugar and not high-fructose corn syrup, a study recently found that fructose causes your body to store more calories as fat, and that, compared with somebody who drank no fructose, drinking fructose as much as four hours before a meal causes the body to store the meal as fat. One more reason to stay away from processed food, especially in America.)

The Egyptian family is astounding as well, in that they feed all of those people for only sixty-something dollars a week. The Tibetan family feeds a lot as well for only five dollars, but Tibet is a pretty poor area. (They actually may not be Tibetan, I have no idea where that city is, but wherever they're from, it's clear they're fairly poor.)

I was also fascinated by what the people had in their house, what room was chosen as being the best to display things in, what furniture was there, and the level of accumulation of other stuff. Big ups on the Germans for their library.