[Marxism] a corrupt food system

[Dbachmozart at aol.com]

clip -
 
OR: Can you talk about how the individualizing of obesity and health  
problems is problematic? 
RP: The first edition of the Atkins diet had a long tirade against the sugar  
industry. Atkins was saying that we're being poisoned by the sugar industry 
--  they're putting sugar in everything. But then Atkins makes the turn that is 
very  common in America: It's a problem of the industry, it's an economic 
problem,  it's a political problem, and the solution has to be individual. The 
solution is  not to confront the sugar industry, not to legislate, not to use 
government to  change that, but to exercise an almost Puritan control over the 
will as a way of  getting out of a situation that has everything to do with 
politics. 
That's why the diet industry is so very big. It is a particularly American  
solution to the problems of obesity. Why is it that 20 percent of fast food  
meals now are eaten in cars? This is a figure that you get from Michael Pollan's 
 work. He bemoans the fact. But when I explain to people outside America that 
20  percent of fast food meals are eaten in cars, they are blown away. It's  
inconceivable to them. They wonder whether it's because Americans like their  
cars so much. 
Here, we understand that this isn't some preference for the dashboard; it's  
because Americans work much harder than any other industrialized country to be 
 able to have health care, to have the promise of a pension. In particular if 
 you're from a working family, your income has been dropping in real time 
since  the 1980s. Chances are you live far away from where you work because you 
can't  afford to buy land or buy a house there. So you spend a long time 
commuting and  if you're in a community where people are of a lower income, you'll 
find less  access to fresh fruits and vegetables, less access to green space. 
Is it any  wonder that so many meals are eaten in cars? Is it any wonder that 
across the  industrialized world, we're seeing levels of obesity in communities 
of poorer  people going up so fast?

full article --   _http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85395_ 
(http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85395) 
 
 
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it  is 
violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur  
Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

 



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