what’s for dinner? a strange and scary choice!!!

What’s for Dinner? A Strange and Scary Choice!!!

This little guy knows what’s for dinner!

A koala is a:

Specialized Eater

Koala’s Menu:

Breakfast: Eucalyptus

Lunch: Eucalpytus

Dinner: Eucalyptus

We, on the other hand, suffer from

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

(thank you Michael Pollan)

What is an omnivore?

An animal that will feed on any type or many different types of food, including both plants and animals.

When you CAN EAT just about anything, it is not always easy to tell what you SHOULD EAT.

We are deeply confused and anxious!!!!

We cannot answer the simple question, “what’s for dinner?” with any confidence that our choices will be healthy and sound.

We Want to Eat Healthy, but does that mean…?

ATKINS: low carbo-hydrates, high protein

SOUTH BEACH: like Atkins, but with more carbohydrates

ZONE DIET: carbs, proteins, fats eaten in 40/30/30 ratio respec-tively for each meal

ORNISH DIET: vege-tarian, “eat more, weigh less”

WEIGHT WATCHERS: all food given points, weekly meetings, celebrity spokes-woman

RAW, VEGAN, VEGE-TARIAN, etc.!

As our brains evolved, much Space was devoted to Safe Eating

• Avoid poisons: “Isn’t that the mushroom that made me sick last week”

• Towards nutritious plants: “The red berries are the juicier, sweeter plants”

Our Taste Buds also Help

“MMMM….SWEET!!!”

We like sweet foods which signal carbohydrate energy.

“EEEWW….BITTER!!!”

We don’t like bitter foods which is how many poisons taste.

Our inborn sense of disgust

Keeps us from eating something that might infect us, such as rotten meat.

One way we’ve solved the problem of what to eat:

We have the advantage of culture. Our culture sets up rules about wise eating, recipes, manners, and traditions.

In this way, we not only learn…

Through family meals, a child learns both what foods are healthy to eat, as well as how much food he or she should eat.

Did that look like your family?

Or do your family meals sometimes look like this?

Many of us lack a clear culture of food and instead…

We wander down the aisles of the grocery store wondering:

Organic or conventional?Local or imported?

Trans fat or butter or Not butter?natural grill flavor?

TBHQ or xanthan gum?Cage-free or range-fed?Carnivore or vegetarian?

Lacto Vegetarian or Vegan?

Industrial Food System

We can thank INDUSTRIAL FARMING for part of why we are so confused.

Say Good bye to the small family farm.

Say hello to scenes like this

Many animals are raised together, like a factory for meat.

Expensive farming equipment allows one farmer to operate a huge farm.

The story of the “industrial food chain” can be learned by studying:

CORN!

A modern supermarket contains approximate 45,000 items

Of these, more than 25% of them contain corn.

You Are What You Eat

“

“We North Americans look like corn chips with legs”

--Todd Dawson, Berkeley biologist who studied corn isotopes in tissue samples of hair and flesh

Corn Sex

The reason for all this corn in our diet?

Because of the way that corn is pollinated, it easily leads to human manipulation.

Corn is bred to be an industrial superstar

Hybrids of corn are created that allow the farmer to throw away his hoe and jump into his combine.

Corn is bred to:• Grow in tight rows,

shoulder to shoulder with other corn

• Be “stiff stalked”• Be uniform as

soldiers in formation

Corn’s best friend

In 1947, after World War II, a munitions plant in Alabama switched from making explosive to making fertilizer.

The development of chemical fertilizers vastly increased crop yields.

Better Living Through Chemicals?

Thanks to new forms of hybrid corn, combined with chemical fertilizers, farmers could now produce ENORMOUS quantities of corn.

Supply and Demand

STEP 1: Grow a lot of corn.

STEP 2: Try to sell it, but when there is a lot of something it sells for less.

STEP 3: When corn sells for less, farmers stop growing as much corn.

That is how it is SUPPOSED to work…

But enter this man…

Mr. Butt…sorry…immature joke!

I mean, this man, Earl Butz, secretary of agriculture under Richard Nixon

At first…

The law of supply and demand was working all too well.

Mr. Butz arranged to sell 30 million tons of American grain to Russia which meant there was less corn available to Americans.

Corn prices shot way up due to the shortage.

Uproar from American Public

In 1973, the price of groceries was at an all time high.

Foods became scarce.Horse meat started

showing up at certain markets.

The Housewives Were Angry

Housewives organized protests at supermarkets. President Nixon feared a consumer revolt.

Ain’t Nobody Happy When Mamma Ain’t Happy!

In order to make peace with the angry housewives (and with the American consumer in general), Earl Butz:

• Told farmers to plant their fields “from fencerow to fencerow”

• To “get big or get out” – to no longer think of themselves as a farmer but an “agribusinessman”

The Government made a promise

“Grow us corn, and we promise we’ll pay you $XXXX for it.”

So, when farmers produced a MOUNTAIN of the crop, corn naturally sold for cheaper and cheaper.

The government stepped in and paid farmers the difference (corn subsidy).

One problem…What to do with all that corn, corn, corn, corn?

Some of the corn is fed to cows

Mooo…cows like grass, it’s their natural diet.

Feeding them corn leads to a host of problems, but it does get rid of some of that corn!

What do these have in common?

• Citric Acid• Lactic Acid• Glucose• Fructose• Maltodextrin• Ethanol• Soribtol

• Mannitol• Xanthan gum• Modified Starch• Unmodified Starch• Dextrin• Cyclodextrin• MSG

If you said “things made from CORN” you’re a Winner!

These are some of the hundreds of different organic compounds that chemists learned to make from corn.

Totally Sweet!

In 1960, Japanese chemists “broke the sweetness barrier.”

They discovered an enzyme that could transform glucose into the much sweeter sugar molecule called FRUCTOSE.

Corn’s Most Valuable Food Product

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Produced by blending fructose and glucose

As a nation, we keep getting fatter and fatter

Much of this is related to subsidies on corn.

If you don’t have much money, which would you choose?

One dollar will buy:

1200 calories of potato chips and cookies

Versus 250 calories of carrots

875 calories of soda versus 170 calories for fruit juice

How much corn is in this meal?

Your car’s trunk filled with corn

That’s how much corn is in that meal.

When analyzed for the carbon isotropes that show corn:

McNuggets: 56% corn

French fries: 23% corn

Milk Shake: 78% corn

Or try a soda at 100% corn

Unlike the koala, we are ominvores

Eucalpytus! Eucalpytus!

Eucalpytus! Eucalpytus!

Eucalpytus! Eucalpytus!

Eucalpytus! Eucalpytus!

Corn! Corn! Corn! Corn!

Corn! Corn! Corn! Corn!

Corn! Corn! Corn! Corn!

Corn! Corn! Corn! Corn!

So what’s a body to do?

Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, says everything he's learned about food and health can be summed up in seven words:

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Pollan’s 7 Rules

#1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

#2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.

#3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.

#4. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. “As a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.

#5. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full.

#6. Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times.

#7. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

Thank you for listening.

For your time, please choose one of these:

Or would you rather have?

That’s All for Now Folks