When we go to the grocery store to shop for our food, typically we have over 47,000 products to choose from. Do you have any idea where some of this food comes from, how it’s made, who’s controlling it, who’s making the profits, and who’s overseeing the safety? I’ve been hearing rumblings that were quite disturbing for years, but lately, it’s hard to get away from the “rumors” with so many different ways for people to communicate.
Regarding grocery store produce, since there are no seasons anymore, fruit is usually picked before it’s ripe, ripened later with ethylene gas. And just what is ethylene gas?
After doing some research, I have discovered that the way we eat, meaning the way our food is grown, has changed a lot in the last 50 years, more so than in other time frame of our history. I have tried to ensure I have done valid research, on this subject in particular, because it affects my family, my grandkids, me, and you and yours.
I am old enough to remember that when I was growing up autism was rare. I knew no one with it. I knew a lot of kids and I was the only one I knew with asthma, which my mother also had from the time she was a little girl. There was no ADD or ADHD, and a good percentage of children were not on prescription medication. It is no longer that way.
From early on, I wanted to raise a few livestock of my own, and have my own garden, and buy other essentials in their natural state from my neighbors. I almost made that dream happen. See, I was paying attention to what was going on long before I even realized it.
As I began to really pay attention to what I was serving my family, I noticed that in tracing food back to its origins, that most of it was not grown or raised on farms, but produced in factories, factories that from the outside look like farms, but are anything but when you begin to understand how they operate as large assembly lines and/or scientific experiments.
Just as some have said about our communication and media sources becoming too sanitized distributing the same messages via a very small group of owners with specific interests being dangerous (another topic for another day), so too is our food supply.
Much of the food found on the shelves of the average grocery store is made and controlled by a small group of multi-national corporations – from the seed to the end product. Technically, a handful of companies are controlling our food system in the United States – what we eat and how it’s produced.
Big pharma and corporate chemical companies, with their genetically modified experimental commodities, are threaded thick through this food tapestry. And you might be surprised at the number of people who work back and forth between these corporations and government regulatory agencies over the years – I know I was.
Though food is absolutely necessary to our survival, don’t ever kid yourself, IT IS BIG BUSINESS and it is not about sustaining the population and its health, it is about PROFIT, pure and simple.
Stay tuned if your interested, as I have more to say on this subject, just don’t want to make this post too long.
Anyway, just something I’ve been thinking about, for quite some time now . . .
Just something I was thinking about . . . 
Another example of what happens when the watchdogs share in the profit stream. Big pharma, big agriculture and big government, an unholy trio.
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I know – I have more to say about that …
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Never thought about it, don´t want to either. Would be like going to the best restaurant human´s have ever created “Wendy´s”(Is that still around over there by the way?) and ask about the quality of the meat….no way I want to know that. I know it tasted damn good, it was big burger, and cheap. That´s as much as I want to know. It would be some strange way of torturing myself to know where all the ingredients came from and the rest of the healthy or better said unhealthy things.
I think now kids are diagnosed from ADD to ADHD to a million things more and are put on drugs. In my days, when I was constantly day dreaming in school or throwing something at another kid one row ahead of mine because i couldn´t concentrate in some boring thing the teacher was saying, well normally a good slap on the back of the head by my teacher quickly got my attention. No pills necessary. I think, specially in the U.S you´re starting to treat you kids, like their dolls. That if you tell them or do to them a bit of “hard love” they´re going to break. And what is that thing of handing out trophies for participation? You either win the game and you get the trophy or you loose and you get a mouthful from the trainer as to what you did bad. You guys are wussifying the children. And you know I love the U.S, but things are changing quite radically. Now you guys investigate anything and everything. Quite cool by the way. And it´s amusing in some way to see, this kid has X or Y if he acts bad. Well maybe that kid does have X or Y and maybe is the simple fact that he is a bad kid….so just smack him around a little. Like they did with me, the kid will get the point. Are you going to send the kid out to the world to get a job interview and if he screws up you invite him to eat a nice meal and give him a little trophy and say “honey, don´t worry, at least you tried and that is what it counts”…..come on.
I know the food industry is big business, I don´t care. Taste good. And the little chickens I eat I know they inject them with certain things in order to make them bigger or grown them faster so they can kill them quicker out of the assembly lines since they are born there and killed there, and put them out there on the grocery store as fast as they can one after another. We do live in the 21 century, I wouldn´t want to do all that killing, for the fact that I´m lazy and that is too much work. And it´s not poison, you do have the FDA there, it might not be the best of the best of quality but your still not eating poison.
And if you where thinking about breeding stock in your garden….remember I´m always available. So breed me!! Clone me, that would be something…. humanity would be so better off with a bunch of Charly´s the Priest´s roaming around.
Wew, that was a mouthful Sadie, and is only quarter to eight in the morning here. Go play pinball to distress yourself about the food 😉
Love ya.
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That was a mouthful – that’s what I’m here for {wink} ! I have a mouthful more to say, too!
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Well….bring it on !!!
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Working on it – but slower than molasses these days . . . 😉
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This article is a good place to start thinking about the problem if you haven’t before. But of course, many have. I live in a small town of 9,000. Besides two “chain” grocery stores, we have a Food Coop of equal size, and in good weather months, a very robust and active Farmer’s Market twice a week. If you are willing to take the time and effort to read all the labels, you can find out any and all info about what you intend to buy or consume.
In all the stores, having a “locally grown” sticker is coveted. You can trace the label by its number to a local farm, and physically go check any of them out. The Coop is a wealth of information. In addition to what’s on the shelves, they have a great deli and even make fresh sushi. They also have a customer service counter manned by employees able to connect you to local vendors or give you info on how their products were chosen for sale.
Because we now live in a more polluted environment than we used to, it’s necessary to take more care to get high-quality food. And yes, it costs more to buy that way, perhaps 30% more. But is there anything more important to spend your money on than what will benefit your health?
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Love it! & I agree!
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Hey Sadie! Well ranted. That being said, the topic you have chosen is very large, very complex and wrought with twists and turns of unknown logic. It is not possible to paint our food supply with a wide brush that defines sameness. You can have two identical looking pieces of food, with identical chemical analysis that come from very different origins and that were treated very differently in processing.
For instance the eythylene gas you mentioned. There are two sources for EG – natural and man-made. So, bananas produce EG in order to ripen. It is a natural process that has been going on for eons – as long as bananas have existed in nature and completely independent of mankind. We, of course have come to realize this and have figured out how to make ethylene gas from chemicals. Samples of the two gases side by side in a lab are 100% indistinguisable from each other. Pefect so far.
So, we then start to interfere with the breeeding of bananas, chosing certain qualities that make them easier to transport, make them more resistant to attacks of disease and vagarities of weather. This is all done with selective breeding – a sort of natural breeding that is like nature would do by selection. Nature has done this type of selection to better achieve survivablility for as long as life has existed. One of the quailities breed in by humans is a longer and less sensitive ripening period allowing for easier transport and less wastage during transport. Now these bananas don’t produce as much EG naturally so they cannot ripen too easily and be over-ripe for marketing.
So, these super bananas are transported half way around the world (by ship) to markets that could never have the nutrition and posiive medical benefits of the bananas because of their cold and long winters and inability to grow due to soil, temps, sunlight, water, etc conditions. Bananas are high in potassium, a natural chemical that is critical to the human heart staying healthy. These bananas are now green as this is the sturdiest form for transport. They arrive at wholesalers green and are loaded into huge ripeneng rooms – called, surprisingly, banana rooms. Ha! So, bananas are stacked in boxes in these rooms so that air can circulate between the boxes and then man made EG gas is introduced to the room in a controlled and very specific rate and concentration to ripen the bananas according to the best schedule for marketing. As soon as the bananas are the pefect color to sell, they are displayed at retailers for your buying pleasure.
If you took a banana that ripened completetly naturally and placed it beside the banana man-ripened they would look identical. And if you analyzed them, they would be chemically identical. And yet this man-made process has allowed bananas to be enjoyed by people who would never be able to have them otherwise. Has the man-made EG made the bananas dangerous? Maybe but how? And are the dangers acceptable in order to have bananas (and their health benefits) where they were never available before? Personally I think so – but others do not agree, it is a rather personal decision.
Oh, by the way, the big danger from bananas is not the man-made EG or ripening rooms or selected characteristics. The big danger of bananas is you – the consumer. And here’s why. Consumers demand that bananas have a specific shape and color and taste. And they will leave bananas that do not have those qualities, to rot on the shelf. As a result, more and more bananas are bred and grown to meet those characteristics. There used to be many varieties and types of bananas – but there is only so much land that will grow the “good” bananas, and so those other varieties of bananas are slowly being selected out according to consumer preferences – not natural selelction. Many varieties of bananas no longer exist and many are barely hanging on to existence. The bananas you see in the store are now almost 100% of the existing banana types ( a few planters are also bred, but very few). Now we have removed variety – the biggest natural defense against a catastrophic bacteria or infection or infestation event that could destroy bananas forever and make them extinct. And in so doing destroy a very important source of some nutrition.
So, yes, EG is used in artificial ways to ripen bananas. But, as you can see, the story is very complex and twisted and damage to the food chain and humans from this piece of info seems pretty small and manageable – compared to teh dmaage to the species of bananas being done by consumer selection.
Sorry about the post-length comment Sadie.
Very thought provoking post – thank you. .
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Well said, Paul, and number me among those who really just don’t care that much about the process. Just because an ingredient has a chemical name doesn’t mean it’s evil. Our bodies need all sorts of seemingly evil-sounding things to function. Even water’s proper name is “dihydrogen oxide.”
There are inevitable consequences to trying to feed a nation of 300+ million souls. Industrialized food is pretty much the only way that’s going to happen unless we’re willing to pay a lot more than we do. It’s simple economy of scale.
A better focus might be on the general health — meaning fat and sugar content — of the crap we stuff ourselves with. If we could just wean ourselves off high-fructose corn syrup, high fat content (which, tragically, is oh, so yummy), and sugar in general, we’d be a lot better off.
That said, if you’re doing research on modern food, I highly recommend Michael Pollan (if you’re not reading him already). He has a wonderfully sensible approach that I think you’d like.
His overall advice about eating is great: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
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Actually Wyrd, you hit the nail right on the head. I hadn’t even thought about the issue from that perspective, There are always unknowns in our world and some are bound to be in our diet. The bottom line should be our health and we should start with what we know: we are aware that the diets we choose are often nuts, way too much sugar, way too much salt, way too much fat, not enough fruits and vegetables and not nearly enough exercise. If we concentrated on what we knew first and fixed that, then we could go looking at unknowns. I’m willing to bet that 95% of our problems we know what the solution is and fail to pursue it. The other 5% may be accorded to multiple fatcors, including GMO’s, and quality. And realistically, our bodies are like machines – the better we take care of them, then the less damage external negative factors will have. When i used to truck, i always made sure that mantenance was done religiously in the winter (even though it is harder) because the strain of cold temps, slushy and snow covered roads, rough roads, etc – will inevitably cause anything not well maintaned to break under stress. Same with our bodies, well maintained they will brush off the stress of extenal issues easily – poorly maintained they will collapse whenever stressed. Never mind the stressors – fix the maintanence and the other problems will be minimized.
Well said Wyrd.
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Paul, so true – “Very large, very complex and wrought with twists and turns of unknown logic” I have more to share …
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Hey Paul – no worries about the length of your comment – I look forward to them, short or long! EG really isn’t my biggest concern, and I agree with you on the consumer “controlling” what is being chosen to grow by what their wants and tastes dictate. Our food story is very complex and twisted . . . and I need to get off my ass and find the time to finish up what I started here. In my research, I have discovered several “interesting, to say the least” stories and facts I feel the need to share. As soon as I get this insurance exam completed, I am bound and determined to start writing more regularly!! I’m way behind on my reading and have missed writing, as well!!! Thanks for sticking with me, my friend 🙂
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With your permission Sadie:
Thank you, Hariod.
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Thanks so much, Hariod!
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Very interesting post Sadie. the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, share most of the responsibility of food safety inspection. The Federal Drug Administration does some food inspections, but the USDA is the biggest organization. Keeping track of our food and it’s safety is a huge undertaking. Before the mid 1930’s there was no oversight of food or drugs. The catalogs for example were splattered with radium cough drops and many other products that harmed consumers in horrifying ways. Meat had no inspection either, spoiled meat was prolific. Canned products which were thought to be a god send in preserving food were sealed and the cans lined with lead and lead solder. People literally went blind and were brain damaged by lead contamination. The food supply of the U.S. was a mess.
So here’s the problem, it was discovered almost a century ago that food manufacturers could not be trusted to be self regulating. No one in the food chain could be trusted all the way from the grocery stores, from the packagers, from the major bulk markets down to the growers that were only paying pennies to the pickers.
If the government hadn’t done anything the United States would have literally starved or poisoned itself. Thus the USDA and FDA were created. I’m not even going to get into the benefits of the USDA when it came to price stabilization.
I am convinced that government has to be involved in the process of supplying healthy foods to us. The growers and packers and marketing chains proved decades ago that they can not be trusted without government oversight. That is core to our citizen’s needs in this democracy. It is also core that in order to feed the growing populations, large farms and god forbid me saying it, corporate farming and research and development is a necessity to being able to supply the quantity of food that the world requires. Family organic farming simply can not provide it in the quantities needed.
So where is the balance? We have to backup and respect the government agencies that are responsible for food and drug safety but at the same time demand honesty and integrity in all of the departments. We truly cannot survive with out their honesty and watchful oversight. We do no want to destroy these departments but we have to conduct major housecleaning within them and also neutralize the grip that we have allowed the major corporate food suppliers. We have to do this or we will be back to eating lead in our breakfast cereal and god only knows what else we will be consuming.
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Hey DSS! IMHO – Major house-cleaning is probably in order. Our government is dropping the ball on our food safety in so many ways. I don’t trust any of them – the government, the food producers, the food chain – so many of them are in cahoots. Shit, knowing what I know, it is amazing that I eat at all . . . especially all that yummy Mexican food I like to eat out 😉
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