"Nutritionally worthless foodlike substances"

[unixronin]

We need to stop flattering nutritionally worthless foodlike substances by calling them “junk food” — and instead make clear that such products are not in fact food of any kind.

That's one of the "money quotes" from this article talking about how to make US agriculture actually sustainable again, while improving the quality of food grown in the US and creating positive incentives for people to eat healthy diets instead of endless noshing on junkfood.

"Nutritionally worthless foodlike substances" ... or, in a more Adamsian bent, "Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike food."

Comments

[rbos.livejournal.com]

I just read that. Some of his suggestions seem a little inelegant (I don't like subsidies), but there's a lot to agree with.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

We refer to a lot of things around here as "not-food". The problem is they implement a large part of the "Food" interface, and so in a duck-typing system like the human brain, they *are* food...

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Typical socialist drivel.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything particularly socialist about it. It's a far better plan than continuing to churn out poor-quality feedlot beef and high-fructose corn syrup.

Money quotes

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Yet there are several steps the government can take to nurture this market....

Provide grants to towns and cities to build.....

"Agricultural Enterprise Zones"

Regionalize Federal Food Procurement.

Create a Federal Definition of “Food.” It makes no sense for government food-assistance dollars, intended to improve the nutritional health of at-risk Americans, to support the consumption of products we know to be unhealthful.

A few other ideas: Food-stamp debit cards should double in value whenever swiped at a farmers’ markets —

In the end, shifting the American diet from a foundation of imported fossil fuel to local sunshine will require changes in our daily lives...

And more and more...all about reducing choices and shoving more government at the invented problem.

Re: Money quotes

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

A lot of that is just measures to undo damage that's already been done.

Regionalize federal food procurement? That sounds to me like "Make government agencies buy [relatively] local". I see nothing socialist about that.

Federally defining what "food" can be bought with existing government benefits? Do you really want your tax dollars wasted on Fritos and Ho-Hos? Making the benefits buy twice as much at a farmer's market where they have to be spent on healthy produce ... I don't have a problem with that.



And yes, a fuck of a lot of things over the next few decades are going to require major changes in our daily lives, because the US has spent the past fifty years making the average American daily life utterly unsustainable in the long term. We can change it under our control and in some semblance of order, or we can let the change be forced on us when the whole house of cards we've built collapses.

It's not an invented problem. It's a problem that the US has ignored for the last thirty or forty years by sticking its fingers in its ears, shouting "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!", and going out to gas up the Cadillac. And it's been knowingly made worse and worse and worse, because in the short term, making it worse is PROFITABLE.

Fascinating - and thank you.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

The history is essentially correct. The analysis of the current situation is also fairly accurate.

I'm not entirely certain of the conclusions - I'll have to digest them. [punintentional].

Far from "drivel" though...

Re: Fascinating - and thank you.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's a few of the conclusions I'm not in complete agreement with myself. But he's on the right track. Our current scheme of subsidized industrial monoculture is insane and unsustainable. Americans are the most obese people on earth because we insist on eating garbage.