Why were people thinner in the 1970s?

from Boing Boing:

On July 26, Guardian columnist George Monbiot tweeted a photo of people on Brighton Beach in 1976, with the comment:

In this photo, from 1976, almost everyone is what we would now call slim. So what has happened? A sudden loss of willpower, as some rightwing journos claim? No. An obesogenic environment created by junk food manufacturers and their advertisers.

As you can see, lively Twitter discussion ensued. Monbiot did some research into people's dietary and exercise habits, then and now. He found that people actually ate more in the 1970s than they do now. Manual laborers are heavier today than they were in the 1970s. Kids move around as much today as they did 50 years ago.

"So what has happened?" asks Monbiot? His answer: lots more sugar.

The light begins to dawn when you look at the nutrition figures in more detail. Yes, we ate more in 1976, but differently. Today, we buy half as much fresh milk per person, but five times more yoghurt, three times more ice cream and – wait for it – 39 times as many dairy desserts. We buy half as many eggs as in 1976, but a third more breakfast cereals and twice the cereal snacks; half the total potatoes, but three times the crisps. While our direct purchases of sugar have sharply declined, the sugar we consume in drinks and confectionery is likely to have rocketed (there are purchase numbers only from 1992, at which point they were rising rapidly. Perhaps, as we consumed just 9kcal a day in the form of drinks in 1976, no one thought the numbers were worth collecting.) In other words, the opportunities to load our food with sugar have boomed. As some experts have long proposed, this seems to be the issue.

The shift has not happened by accident. As Jacques Peretti argued in his film The Men Who Made Us Fat, food companies have invested heavily in designing products that use sugar to bypass our natural appetite control mechanisms, and in packaging and promoting these products to break down what remains of our defences, including through the use of subliminal scents. They employ an army of food scientists and psychologists to trick us into eating more than we need, while their advertisers use the latest findings in neuroscience to overcome our resistance.

Ever been in a restaurant and felt like this?

HAA HAA

I did tonight!

....

School of Life Monday: Why We Eat Too Much

We’re hugely invested in the idea that the cause of obesity lies with diet – and that we should therefore solve the problem with kale and apple soup (and other such products). But the real cause of obesity has nothing to do with food. It lies in our emotional under-nourishment. We will start to eat less when we feel more connected, more understood and more in touch with our feelings.

Ruby Roth has a new book! HELP YOURSELF: COOK BOOK FOR KIDS

from:WeDontEatAnimals.com

Wish your kids would eat healthier? Try letting them help themselves!

The best way to teach children healthy eating habits is to involve them in the process.

Help Yourself presents 60+ irresistible recipes kids will beg to make themselves! Bursting with full-color photos, humor, Ruby’s charming illustrations, cute animal characters, and cool facts (did you know your brain actually shrinks when you’re dehydrated? Drink water, quick!), Help Yourself empowers children* to take charge of their own nutrition—for now and for life!

*Help Yourself also makes a great gift for busy/lazy adults.



FAQ's:

Is this book for vegan kids only?
Help Yourself is absolutely made for all kids to enjoy, regardless of current eating habits...the recipes just happen to be plant-based!

Will picky eaters like these recipes?
Everything about this book is specially designed to excite and engage kids, even the pickiest of eaters. The pictures are inspiring and the directions encourage taste-testing, making it irresistible for kids to try their own creations...and it works! The feedback from parents has been amazing—kids are getting into the kitchen and making and tasting things they never thought they would—and asking for seconds, no less!

I like this book, but I'm an adult...is that weird?
No! This is a kids book, but mostly in name and ease! It's a great gift for busy/lazy adults, or really anyone who likes simple, natural, easily accessible whole-food ingredients and recipes that can be made in minute

ZZ Top fan recreates the ‘Tres Hombres’ gatefold meal and then eats it.

from Dangerous Minds

 
It’s "arguably" the greatest LP gatefold image of all time: the drool-inducing food porn Mexican spread from the inner fold of ZZ Top’s 1973 Tres Hombres album. Only Coven’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reap Souls comes close to matching it’s exemplary use of the medium, but as far as gatefold images go, it’s hard to top THE TOP.

In what is destined to be the the greatest short film of 2016, Austin chef Thomas Micklethwait lovingly re-creates this enviable meal and proceeds to eat the shit out of it.

As someone who has often dreamt of being at that fabled table, all I can say is kudos to the chef for allowing me to live vicariously through him and yet not have to experience the following day’s Afterburner tribute.

Fans of ZZ Top or grande burritos, take note:

 

How to make a week’s worth of vegan meals for under $30 from Trader Joe’s

from the College USA Today:

Cooking under time constraints is hard. That’s why competitors get so sweaty and frazzled during cooking competition shows. In real life, when you’re a student or busy working adult, or just not feelin’ up to spending hours in the kitchen, assembling a healthy meal in a short amount of time can be a challenge.

Luckily, shortcuts exist. Like pre-cut, pre-bagged vegetables and squash, quick-cooking grains, and frozen pre-cooked grains (thanks, Trader Joe’s).

Here are 7 healthy, plant-based meals, all of which take less than 15 minutes start to finish, are budget-friendly (less than $30 total), and most importantly, delicious! You can customize these to your liking (such as by picking your favorite vegetables and beans).

Make one trip to the grocery store, and for the price of 2 cocktails in Manhattan, you can have an entire week’s worth of fast, nourishing meals at your fingertips (assuming you have cooking oil and salt and pepper at home already). But if you’re not vegan, you can make a week’s worth of dinners from Trader Joe’s for under $25 like this.

#SpoonTip: All of these meals are gluten free friendly if you use corn tortillas and swap quinoa for farro.

GROCERY LIST:

• 1 package cut and cubed butternut squash or sweet potatoes, can substitute 3 large sweet potatoes ($2.29)
• 1 package kale or romaine ($1.99; $2.29 for organic)
• 1 package arugula or spinach ($1.99; $2.29 for organic)
• 1 tomato ($0.29)
• 1 apple ($0.69-$0.79; $0.99 for organic)
• 1 avocado ($0.99)
• 1 lemon ($0.49)
• 1 lime, optional ($0.29)
• 1 bag Vegetable Medley with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, can substitute broccoli-cauliflower blend, Healthy 8 Chopped Veggie Mix, or Stir-Fry Vegetables ($2.29)
• 1 large cucumber ($1.49)
• 1 package firm tofu ($1.69)
• 1 package Organic 3 Grain Tempeh ($1.99)
• 1 box frozen Microwaveable Brown Rice, can substitute frozen quinoa, Rice Blend, jasmine rice, or frozen Organic Cauliflower Rice ($2.99; $3.49 organic)
• 1 can black beans ($0.89; $0.99 for organic)
• 1 can chickpeas ($0.89; $0.99 for organic)
• 1 jar salsa of choice ($1.99-2.29)
• 1 package 10-Minute Farro, barley, or quinoa ($1.79)
• 1 package Taco Seasoning ($0.79)
• 1 package seaweed snacks ($0.99)
• 1 package corn tortillas can substitute whole wheat or white flour ($0.99)
• 1 bag cilantro, optional ($1.79)
• 1 bag frozen edamame, optional ($1.79)

Total: $30.00 (+ tax), Organic Total: $31.50 (+ tax)

DAY 1: BLACK BEAN AND BUTTERNUT SQUASH (OR SWEET POTATO) TACOS

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

Beans and squash make for a filling, delicious twist on conventional tacos. Find out how to make these plant-based tacos here.

DAY 2: DIY SOFRITA BOWLS (OR TACOS)

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

Skip the lines at Chipotle, and make a sofrita bowl with tofu at home. Learn how here.

DAY 3: FARRO SALAD WITH CHICKPEAS, SWEET POTATO (OR BUTTERNUT SQUASH), AND APPLE

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

Haven’t you heard? #Grainz are the new #gains. Find out how to make this here.

DAY 4: PROTEIN-PACKED KALE SALAD WITH TEMPEH AND LEMON DRESSING

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

Kale salad with a protein punch. Chickpeas and tempeh give this salad major staying power. Add whatever nuts and dried fruit you have in your pantry for extra yums. Find out how to make it here.

DAY 5: VEGETABLE STIR-FRY WITH TOFU AND SESAME GINGER SAUCE

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

Way tastier, faster, and healthier than take-out? Triple win. Recipe here.

DAY 6: DECONSTRUCTED VEGAN SUSHI BOWL

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

It’s like sushi you can justify eating with a fork. Directions here.

DAY 7: FARRO, BEAN, AND VEGETABLE “CLEAN OUT THE FRIDGE” SOUP WITH MICROWAVE TORTILLA CHIPS

(Photo by Katherine Baker, Spoon University)

As the week ends, use up all your leftover veggies, beans, and grains and make this delicious soup. Extra tortillas can make tortilla chips for dipping in 3 minutes flat. Make it like this.

Facts I Want You to Know.

This is incredible.

Man who forced French supermarkets to donate food wants to take law global

from The Guardian:

Arash Derambarsh, a local councillor who kickstarted fight against food waste in his Paris suburb, wants to convince more countries to follow France’s example

A councillor whose campaign against food waste led to a law forcing French supermarkets to donate unwanted food to charity has set his sights on getting similar legislation passed globally.

Arash Derambarsh said it was “scandalous and absurd” that food is wasted and in some cases deliberately spoiled while the homeless, poor and unemployed go hungry.

Derambarsh – a municipal councillor for the “Divers Droit” (diverse right) in Courbevoie, north-west of Paris – persuaded French MPs to adopt the regulation after a petition gained more than 200,000 signatures and celebrity support in just four months.

The amendment was approved as part of a wider law – the Loi Macron – that covers economic activity and equality in France and is expected to be passed by the national assembly on Tuesday, entering the statute books shortly afterwards.

It will bar supermarkets from throwing away food approaching best-before dates and deliberately poisoning products with bleach to stop them being retrieved by people foraging through bins.

Now Derambarsh wants to convince European countries and the wider world to adopt similar bans. “Food is the basis of life, it is an elementary factor in our existence,” he told the Guardian.

“I have been insulted and attacked and accused of being naive and idealistic, but I became a local councillor because I wanted to help people. Perhaps it is naive to be concerned about other human beings, but I know what it is like to be hungry.

“When I was a law student living on about €400 a month after I’d paid my rent, I used to have one proper meal a day around 5pm. I’d eat pasta, or potatoes, but it’s hard to study or work if you are hungry and always thinking about where the next meal will come from.”

Derambarsh started his campaign by collecting and distributing unwanted food from his local supermarket. “Every day we’d help around 100 people. Half would be single mothers with several children, pensioners or public workers on low salaries, the other half would be those living on the streets or in shelters,” he said.

Derambarsh is planning to table the issue – via the campaign group ONE, founded by U2 singer Bono – when the United Nations discusses its Millennium development goals to end poverty in September as well as at the G20 economic summit in Turkey in November and the COP21 environment conference in Paris in December.

An estimated 7.1m tonnes of food is binned in France each year – 67% of it by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. The figure for food waste across the EU is 89mtonnes while an estimated 1.3bn tonnes are wasted worldwide.

Plant-based food companies are rising up against Big Meat

from QUARTZ:

Every five years since 1980, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issue dietary guidelines they call “authoritative [diet] advice for Americans.” The unveiling of the final guidelines follows a report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) and a comment period for the public to weigh in on the findings.

After issuing its last round of guidelines in 2010, the HHS received 1,159 comments. Its latest diagnosis of the American diet has received more than 8,000 comments (the comment period ends May 8), largely due to a controversial finding that a plant-based diet is both “more health promoting,” and “associated with less environmental impact than is the current US diet.”

It marked the first time that the DGAC had considered sustainability in its findings, and included a rare explicit recommendation to eat less meat: “A healthy dietary pattern is… lower in red and processed meats.”

While many faith-based organizations, universities, and health professionals have lauded the attempt to connect our diet to sustainability, the meat industry strongly opposes it. “It is not appropriate for the person designing a better light bulb to be telling Americans how to make a better sandwich,” Betsy Booren, Vice President of Scientific Affairs for the North American Meat Institute, said in one comment. Even USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has come out against discussing sustainability in the dietary guidelines, making the stipulation’s chances of survival seem slim at best.

If the clause has any chance of surviving, it might be thanks to a new counterweight to the US meat lobby. A coalition of more than 20-plant based food companies, including The Tofurky Company, Emmy’s Organics, and Daiya Foods, joined together to support including sustainability in the guidelines. “The DGAC’s findings reflect a substantial body of science that illustrates the synergies between a healthy diet and a sustainable food system,” Michele Simon, a food industry lawyer who runs the consulting firm Eat Drink Politics, wrote in comments submitted on the coalition’s behalf.

Sales of meat alternatives still only account for a fraction of US meat sales ($550 million in 2014, compared to roughly $70 billion in sales of beef, poultry, and pork, according to Mintel). But the coalition’s letter is a reminder to the USDA that plant-based food companies represent a legitimate sector of the economy, showing that “the ‘food industry’ is not one monolithic group but rather includes a wide array of food businesses,” says Kim Kessler, Policy and Special Programs Director of the UCLA Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy.

For the USDA, which has a dual mission to protect American agribusiness and advise on healthy diets, the meat lobby’s economic might counts for a lot. “In policymaking, pizza usually speaks more loudly than peas,” Doug Blanke, Director of the Public Health Law Center at William Mitchell College of Law tells Quartz.

But scientific evidence can be hard to dismiss, even for a business-minded regulator, Blanke adds. The coalition’s letter, he notes, includes 45 footnotes, pointing to medical and environmental studies, news articles, and government websites to support its conclusions.

Vegan Supermarket Chain to Come to US in 2016

via Ecorazzi

Jan Bredack wasn’t always a passionate vegan. In 2011, the former meat-lover started the world’s first vegan supermarket chain called “Veganz“. Founded in Berlin, Germany, the business venture has proven successful with plans to open dozens of branches across Europe.

In 2009, Bredack turned to veganism after suffering burn-out from a less than balanced life. After changing his lifestyle and ethical code, he wrote the book “Vegan für alle: Warum wir richtig leben sollten” (Veganism for everyone: Why we should live right) to share his transformation with the masses, but that wasn’t where he stopped.

After several trips abroad, the veggie entrepreneur, exposed to vegan products in other countries, decided to open his first store. Bredack says, “The decision to open a vegan supermarket came from a potpourri of ideas after coming across various vegan products in the US and Russia.” He noted that it was difficult to “shop normally” when one adopts a vegan lifestyle, and he wanted to make the switch to veganism more accessible to everyone.

Get excited, Americans! Bredack plans on taking his vegan chain to the United States soon. In 2016, Veganz will open a vegan shopping center in Portland, Oregon, the U.S. vegan homeland.

Has a tech entrepreneur come up with a product to replace our meals?

from Boing Boing:

The New Yorker says, "I thought you would be interested in Lizzie Widdicombe's piece in this week's issue of The New Yorker, in which she meets the founder of Soylent, a synthetic meal replacement, and—in part, by subsisting on it herself—looks at how it could someday revolutionize humanity’s approach to food."

In the May 12, 2014, issue of The New Yorker, in “The End of Food” (p. 28), Lizzie Widdicombe meets the founder of Soylent, a synthetic meal replacement, and—in part, by subsisting on it herself—looks at how it could someday revolutionize humanity’s approach to food. In 2012, a young Bay Area entrepreneur named Rob Rhinehart and his roommates were living off the last remaining funding for a failed technology startup. In a bid to save money, Rhinehart attempted various inexpensive—and unsustainable—diets. Having begun to see food itself as an engineering problem, he “took a break from experimenting with software,” Widdicombe writes, compiled a list of nutrients required for survival, ordered them from the Internet—mostly in powder or pill form—and poured everything into a blender, with some water. “The result, a slurry of chemicals, looked like gooey lemonade,” Widdicombe writes. He called the mixture Soylent, a term borrowed from a science-fiction novel from the nineteen-sixties. Rhinehart started living on it and shared his findings in a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” in which he championed the physical effects (clearer skin, thicker hair) and noted that his food costs had dropped from four hundred and seventy dollars a month to fifty. The positive response that the post received convinced Rhinehart and his roommates to enter the synthetic-food business. “Last week, the first thirty thousand units of commercially made Soylent were shipped out to customers across America,” Widdicombe writes. In addition to crowd-funding money, its production was financed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Widdicombe writes that, in her own experience, Soylent kept her satiated, though it did point out how much of our time revolves around food. “U.S. military and space programs have asked to run trials on Soylent, for possible future use,” Widdicombe writes. Rhinehart, who has been living almost entirely on Soylent for more than a year, hopes to figure out how to source all of Soylent’s ingredients—carbohydrates, protein, lipids—from algae. “Then we won’t need farms,” he says, adding that a Soylent-producing “superorganism” would eliminate the need for factories, too. To help a village full of malnourished people, Rhinehart tells Widdicombe, “you could just drop a shipping container” full of Soylent-producing algae. “It would take the sun’s energy and water and air, and produce food.” Then all we’d have to do is fix the world’s housing problem, “and people could be free.”

The End of Food in The New Yorker

word.

The History of Movie Popcorn

from Boing Boing

Popcorn really took off in North America in the mid-1880s, but it would take 50 years for it to become a favorite food at movie theaters. According to Andrew Smith, author of Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn, "movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn because they were trying to duplicate what was done in real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn’t want popcorn being ground into it.” Then the Great Depression happened and movies took off as popular cheap entertainment. Popcorn vendors set up outside to provide an equally cheap snack. By the early 1930s, a Kansas City entrepreneur named Julia Braden convinced theaters to allow her to bring her popcorn kiosk into the theater. Of course, eventually the theaters established their own concession stands. This week, both Smithsonian and the New York Times looked at the history of movie popcorn.

"Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?" (Smithsonian)

Who Made Movie Popcorn? (NYT)

Food Will Win the War: Disney's most surreal war propaganda cartoon, 1942

from Dangerous Minds

Not just a potato twice the height of the Rock of Gibralter… a sexy potato twice the height of the Rock of Gibralter

You may be familiar with Disney’s most famous World War Two propaganda, Der Fuehrer’s Face, in which Donald Duck dreams of an alternate life under Nazi rule. It’s weird, but not nearly as weird as Food Will Win the War. During both World War One and Two, the slogan, “Food will win the war,” was bandied about to both discourage food waste and encourage an increase in agricultural yields; the idea was that the U.S. needed to remain war-ready with a food surplus. In the film, however, the slogan is invoked more as a morale booster, and the result is a confusing mish-mash of messaging.

Instead of telling farmers to produce more and families to waste less, the narrator emphasizes our current glut of food, which is really counterintuitive to a message of prudence and industriousness. It’s as if the writers got so carried away with nationalist boasting, that they forgot the actual purpose of the film. Even more strangely, they demonstrate our surfeit of food by means of very strange scale comparisons.

For instance, did you know that if we had made all our wheat from 1942 into flour, we could bury every German tank in it? And if we had made it into spaghetti, we could weave from it a fashionably nationalistic sweater-vest to clothe the entire Earth! Why would you aspire to do such a thing, you ask? Why would we knit a celestial spaghetti sweater?!? Who cares! We’re America, fuck yeah!

Kids Will Eat Their Veggies If You Explain Why They Need To

from Smithsonian.com

Kids, it turns out, are not completely immune to logical explanations or adverse to eating vegetables. Combine these two things, new research indicates, and children are more likely to gamely down their greens. They may not start loving broccoli, but they’ll eat it for nutrition. ScienceDaily dishes:

The researchers assigned some preschool classrooms to read nutrition books during snack time for about 3 months, while other classrooms were assigned to conduct snack time as usual. Later, the preschoolers were asked questions about nutrition.

The psychologists conducting the study hypothesized that even preschoolers can grasp the concept of nutrition. Explaining why it’s important to eat vegetables, the researchers reasoned, would play into children’s tendency to “want to understand why and how things work,” they told ScienceDaily.

It worked. The kids assigned to read about nutrition ate twice as many snack time veggies as they had been—all of their own will. They also had gained a theoretical understanding of nutrition—that nutrients in food helped their bodies function. This second accomplishment was pretty unique:

When the conceptual program was pitted against a more conventional teaching strategy focused on the enjoyment of healthy eating and trying new foods, the results showed that both interventions led to increased vegetable consumption. Yet, the children in the conceptual program showed more knowledge about nutrition and a greater overall increase in vegetable consumption.

So perhaps the best strategy for convincing picky kids to dig into their lima beans and brussels sprouts is a two-pronged attack: explain to them why those veggies need to get in their stomachs and make sure to demonstrate just how tasty those healthy offerings can be.

Unbelievable Ways Companies Are Trying to Keep You From Seeing Where Your Meat Comes From

from AlterNet by Ocean Robbins:

The modern meat industry has some good reasons to fear the public finding out that Old MacDonald's farm isn't so happy these days.

Amy Meyer wanted to see for herself where her food was coming from. But in the state of Utah, she discovered, that was against the law.

On February 8, Meyer drove [3] to Dale Smith Meatpacking Company in Draper City, Utah, and took a look from the side of the road. She gasped as she peered through the barbed wire fence and saw what appeared to be a sick cow being treated like rubble as it was carried in a tractor. So she did what many people would do in this day and age. She got out her smartphone to begin recording.

For this, Meyer was arrested and prosecuted under Utah's new "ag-gag" law.

It turns out that similar laws are now in place not just in Utah, but also in Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri. And many other states are considering similar legislation.

The goal of these laws, it would appear, is to keep consumers from seeing where modern meat really comes from. Considering that 94 percent of the American public [4] believes that animals raised for food should be free from abuse and cruelty, the modern meat industry has some good reasons to fear the public finding out that Old MacDonald's farm isn't so happy these days.

Charges against Meyer were subsequently dropped [5], but Utah's law is still on the books. And now Amy Meyer is joining with award-winning author Will Potter and a team of organizations in filing a lawsuit [6] challenging her state's controversial law in the courts.

Soon thereafter, in Kansas on June 28th, a photographer working for a publication not generally seen as promoting a radical agenda, National Geographic, was arrested and briefly jailed [7] after taking aerial pictures of a feedlot for a series on food issues to be published some time next year.

George Steinmetz has taken award-winning photos in many dangerous situations, including a series depicting post-Gaddafi Libya. But it was his photographs of U.S. feedlots, taken from a paraglider in an area with hundreds of thousands of cattle [8], that got him put behind bars.

Kansas has its own "ag-gag bill," called the "Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act [9]." This law makes it illegal to "enter an animal facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera or by any other means."

Apparently, the feedlot executives may have considered paragliding [7] to be a form of illegal entry, and they wanted Steinmetz to feel the force of the law. Industry officials said they believe his actions represent a "food security issue." Steinmetz had also parked and taken off from private property, so "trespassing" is central to the charge he now faces. But do you really think he'd have been arrested for parking there had he merely stopped to read a book?

The spread of ag-gag bills is alarming for many reasons. Aside from exposing specific incidents of animal abuse, undercover videos have also drawn attention [10] to industry practices such as housing chickens in cramped battery cages that hasten the sickening of birds and the spread of salmonella.

Elizabeth Holmes, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Food Safety, comments: "The reason these are public health issues, and not just animal rights issues, is that those unsanitary conditions provide breeding grounds (for disease)."

Holmes has a point. Keeping animals alive in wretched conditions requires the use of massive amounts of pharmaceutical drugs. Nearly 80 percent [11] of the antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals, not people. The antibiotic overuse that allows meat producers to keep animals in filth and misery is spawning drug-resistant superbugs.

Earlier this year, an Environmental Working Group study [12] found antibiotic resistant "super bugs" on 81 percent of the ground turkey and 55 percent of the ground beef in America's supermarkets.

With antibiotic resistant bacteria costing us more than $55 billion [13] and killing tens of thousands [14] of people each year, you could even argue that today's factory farms have become a form of biological weapons factory.

But don't we have meat inspectors who monitor animal treatment? Isn't it their job to insure that the laws against excessive animal cruelty to animals, however weak they may be, are enforced? Aren't they being paid to look out for the public interest?

Unfortunately, thanks to the weight of agribusiness interests, even USDA meat inspectors don't always feel free to protect animals or public health.

After 29 years as a USDA meat inspector, Jim Schrier was recently stationed [15] at a Tyson Foods slaughter facility in Iowa where he reported clear humane handling violations to his supervisor. That's what he was supposed to do -- report the violations to his superior in the chain of command. But when Schrier presented his concerns, the supervisor reportedly became very angry [16], and a week later required Jim to work at another facility 120 miles away. Then the USDA reassigned Jim permanently to a plant in another state.

In what looks an awful lot like a form of whistleblower retaliation, after 29 years of service, Schrier must now choose between his job, and his family.

When Jim's wife, Tammy, launched a petition on change.org [17] exposing this story and calling for Jim Schrier to get his old job back, some of the first signers were other employees who had worked at the same plant and who corroborated Schrier's findings. Instead of being punished, they said, he should be rewarded and the whole plant should be inspected.

The significance of all this is huge. The first amendment [18] to the United States constitution states: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." There are serious questions about whether ag-gag bills, and retaliation against whistleblowers like Jim Schrier, are even constitutional. But whatever the courts decide, we are already paying a terrible price for the climate of repression they institutionalize.

Shutting up people like Amy Meyer, George Steinmetz, and Jim Schrier makes it hard for any of us to know where our food comes from. Shutting them up also allows the meat industry to get away with treating animals terribly, and with jeopardizing public health by breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria. But there's more.

Tyrants of all stripes thrive in the darkness. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate."

If journalists and whistleblowers aren't allowed to speak the truth, we're going to have an awfully hard time retaining any semblance of a functioning democracy.

This story [19] first appeared on the Huffington Post.

THUG KITCHEN: EAT LIKE YOU GIVE A FUCK

Dangerous Minds pal Glen E. Friedman turned me on to the glorious Thug Kitchen website. If you’re curious as to what Thug Kitchen has to offer, there’s an extremely helpful FAQ section.

“where the fuck am I?”

THUG KITCHEN, BITCH. THAT’S WHERE THE INTERNET BUS DRIVER JUST DROPPED YOUR SORRY ASS OFF. YOU’RE IN MY HOUSE. I’M GOING TO DROP SOME KNOWLEDGE ON YOUR ASS.

“what is thug kitchen?”

THIS SITE IS HERE TO HELP YOUR NARROW DIETARY MINDED ASS EXPLORE SOME FUCKING OPTIONS SO THAT YOU CAN LOOK AND FEEL LIKE A FUCKING CHAMP.  PART OF WHAT WE ENJOY ABOUT TK IS HOW, HOPEFULLY, IT WILL GET READERS THINKING ABOUT WHAT KIND OF ADDITIONAL BEHAVIORS THEY ATTRIBUTE TO PEOPLE WHO TRY TO EAT HEALTHY. EVERYONE DESERVES TO FEEL A PART OF OUR COUNTRY’S PUSH TOWARD A HEALTHIER DIET, NOT JUST PEOPLE WITH DISPOSABLE INCOMES WHO SPEAK A CERTAIN WAY. WE AIM TO EDUCATE AS WELL AS ENTERTAIN, MOTHER FUCKER.

YES! MY PEOPLE!







Not only are there plentiful amounts of useful dietary factoids on TK, it’s loaded with healthy recipes, too! According to TK, a cookbook is in the works:

“I’LL KEEP YOU POSTED ON WHEN YOU CAN EXPECT MY BOOK IN YOUR FUCKING KITCHEN.”

Agua Fresca recipe

Alright, so you want something sweet, refreshing, and isn’t made by coca-cola? Son, agua fresca is the fucking JAM. Look, all the shit you need is:

6 cups of fruit (I used cantaloupe, but you can use strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, etc)
1 cup of ice
3 cups of water
3 tablespoons of lime juice
3 tablespoons of agave or cane sugar
pinch of salt

Toss all that shit in a blender and zap it. Fucking done. Some people strain the blended fruit for pulp, which makes the consistency a bit more watery. Not me, I like some pulp in that shit. Every sip reminds me what I’m drinking isn’t gasoline. 

Natural sugar is way better for you than that garbage they put in soda.  No bitch, I don’t “wanta Fanta” go get the fuck on. Shit.

Visit Thug Kitchen for more recipes, bitches.



originally Posted by Tara McGinley at Dangerous Minds

CHOW tips

from my old friend Deborah Lewis at CHOW.com, and others:

Mother Natures Brand

‘Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer’ Chicago Billboard Provides Helpful Reminder

from Gawker

You know what season this is? It's hot dog season. Winter's over, baseball's spring training has begun, and people are wearing shorts again. Here in New York, it is time for hot dogs.

Or at least that's what we were thinking, before this billboard went up on the Eisenhower expressway in Chicago, and we immediately regretted every hot dog we've ever eaten or even thought about eating and swore to never eat another hot dog ever again. The signage is part of an ad campaign paid for by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and it is meant to make you clench your butt cheeks. (And, I guess, to point out how processed meats influence colorectal cancer rates.)

The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council has fired back against the ads, which exist in varying states throughout a number of cities by now (Miami's version warns, simply, that "Hot dogs can take you out of the game"). The Council says that PCRM is a "pseudo-medical animal rights group" and says that the ad campaign is nothing more than "an effort to advance their goal to create a vegan society."

"Hot dogs are part of a healthy, balanced diet," the president of the American Meat Institute tells the Chicago Tribune, but I won't believe it until I see it on a billboard.