"Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say."
Wow, I thought. I was thinking it was all the criminals running the White House. Guess not, its fat people! Now, I hate fat people as much as anybody but blaming them for the coming Apocalypse? A bit of stretch, no?
I do believe people should take responsibility for their own health. Just because that mystery meat burger at the golden arched bistro is a dollar doesn't mean you should buy it. But there is another side to the issue. That 99 cent miracle of argo-chemical engineering shouldn't exist in the first place. And why does it? In this lazy BBC reporters attempt to fog over the issue we find a clue.
"First of all the increasing demand for food, drives up production.
This means that agricultural processes are using more oil to meet demand, which contributes to the rising cost of fuel."
Which came first? The insatiable appetite that drives up production, or the incredibly sweet, salty, fatty garbage on the shelves at our grocery stores? My guess? The Twinkies came first. How could I want a Twinkie if I never had one?Its kind of like cocaine. I know I will love it if I try it. Thats exactly why I stay the fuck away. But just like the Twinkie somebody had to bring cocaine across our borders. For Twinkies, the border between real food and agro-chemical Frankensteins. So why did these agricultural George Jungs do it? For the money, of course.
Just like blow, they take cheap commodities, do a couple of chemical cart wheels then bam! mark it up a thousand percent, sell it to poor ignorant people and walk away millionaires, with a wake of destruction behind them.
To the millions locked up for drug charges we say "Hey, you had a choice. You chose to shoot up" And thats right. They chose to consume a dangerous chemical that we've decided was so dangerous that we need to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives on stopping its production, importation, and consumption. And despite all our efforts people still smoke crack, do line of blow and, god forbid, smoke a doobie.
Unlike the politically unpopular drug traders, the incredibly politically popular "Big Agro" actually receives money from the government to produce the garbage that pollutes our grocery stores, destroys our environment and kills us one gram of high fructose corn syrup at a time.
Here is an example of the kind of legislation that is causing these problems.
But thats another issue (A Really Huge Fucking Issue) but not as the other big issue glazed over by our buddy at the BBC World Service, read again.
"This means that agricultural processes are using more oil to meet demand, which contributes to the rising cost of fuel."
As detailed by the brilliant Michael Pollen in "The Omnivores Delimma" The world experienced a seismic shift in agricultural production when it became possible to turn petro-chemicals into fertilizer. Before this, we were dependent on the time limited energy of the sun to produce the energy we need to grow our plants. Over a given period of time, only so much sunlight can be absorbed by plants that turn those rays into the chemically bounded energy that fuels all of life.
But with the advent of petro-chemical fertilizers we had a huge supply of cheap easy to produce instant energy to fuel the growth of our plants and to fuel the expansion of our waistlines.
The sun was no so last millennium. Who needs it?
Coupled with terrible government policies we can now produce monstrosities like Twinkies for dirt cheap. I don't have the facts but I would guess that the total cost of the basic material that goes into a Twinkie is less then 5 cents. Five cents of flour and corn syrup and some chemical that mimic "flavor" Mix together in some shiny machine, wrap it up sell it, get rich. Then take your excess capital and invest in Lane Bryant stores and get even richer.
People are not starving because fat people are eating to much. People are getting fat in well-off countries because garbage food is dirt cheap. People are starving in poor countries because they can't even afford the cheap garbage.
The problem is not an unequal distribution of calories. It is a massively unequal and unjust distribution of wealth.
While we should all agree that people should take personal responsibility for the size of their own ass, some extensive reforms in our agricultural policies would go a long way to solving both the world food crisis and the obesity epidemic.
