An equally important issue, in my opinion, is the impact on health of large industrial middlemen tampering with our food, whether in the form of dangerous adulteration like trans fats, or the promiscuous use of industrial sweeteners a la hfcs, or bizarre pseudofoods like “olestra”.

It’s astonishing to realize how much of an uncontrolled human experiment the industrial food system is that we’ve been engaged in, to which we are all unfortunately the unconsenting guinea pigs. More than ever, I come back to the Precautionary Principle, which leads straight back to the immense value of promoting greater knowledge of local food, seed saving, heritage varieties, and traditional folkways, whether in gardening, cooking, food preservation, and so on and on.

1) Consumers are repeatedly lied to, either directly or through omission, by junk food makers about the nutritional merits of their products. The USDA and FDA are complicit in this.

2) There is evidence that shows that several key ingredients in junk food, alone and in combination, cause people to exhibit classic addict behaviors in order to get them. The junk-food addicted rats study is a good one to mention. In other words, an addicted person’s decision-making abilities are compromised thus making them easier targets for #1.

3) Junk foods are some of the cheapest you can buy.

4) Junk foods require little to no cooking skills to make edible. Let’s ignore raw fruits and veggies for the sake of the argument.

If you believe any the above then it doesn’t make sense to tax the consumer. That is in effect punishing them for being ignorant, manipulated, poor, addicts. Instead let’s punish the junk food makers by taking away their ability to advertise and adding a tax to the producers. It was done with cigarettes and to a limited degree with alcohol. Sure, it hasn’t stopped people from drinking too much and smoking cigarettes but in the case of junk food children and teens are being targeted more heavily and directly than practically any other age group. Kids usually can’t purchase food themselves but they can demand that it be bought for them.

If processed foods were more costly to produce then they would be more expensive in the store and healthy whole foods would become more competitively priced. The revenue could be put into better food education and direct subsidies on whole foods.

Getting together with your folks for dinner tonight…….

Max scored……he is working as the set designer for a new Miranda July movie (“You, Me and Everyone We Know”-2005) in L.A. right now. He will be in production through all of March. If you are not familiar with this director/actress/performance artist, Google her. She is fascinating. I’m so excited for Max!

Rooting for your cause!

Gail

You can rent “Me, You and Everyone We Know”……Jared, you will love this quirky movie that took major indie awards……it has an element of “Mr. Shitty Hands”)

A person keeping a total of three or fewer chickens, ducks, doves, pigeons, pygmy goats or rabbits shall not be required to obtain a specified animal facility permit. If the Director determines that the keeper is allowing such animals to roam at large, or is not keeping such animals in a clean and sanitary condition, free of vermin, obnoxious smells and substances, then the person shall be required to apply for a facility permit to keep such animals at the site.

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