Comment Re:Huge Idiot (Score 1) 477
You're so right, but it is even worse. There is lots of unnecessarily added stuff (like glucose) in our food, but it happens even more in cheap food (read: processed food) than fresh food (read: expensive food). And therefore the part of the population that could really need a "health boost" simply can't afford it. Hey, a single cucumber in my supermarket is more expensive than a burger in the fast food chain around the corner. Which should be completely the opposite. How tough is it to grow a cucumber and put it on a truck, while even a simple burger involves tens of ingredients and processing steps.
The worst is that this is all a matter of politics. Because Ohio has been a swing state for years and years, every president in the last decades has been pushing money to subsidize the production of corn. Sometimes with the argument that Americans need methanol (which recently caused a severe "tortilla problem" in Mexico), but most of it ends up unnecessarily in our food. As an example, glucose gets added to meat products like burgers. Mind you, even "0% fat yoghurt", made for the health fanatics among us, still has sugar products added. Check it yourself, read those damn "ingredients" small print on the labels. And BTW, I prefer the full-fat stuff, but still I want to decide myself if I like to add sugar or not.
The food industry is really, really sick. Lack of diversity, full of political lobbyism. 100% about money.
When it comes to how to cure this problem, first of all I agree with a former poster who said simply "let capitalism do it, and stop subsidies". That would absolutely be a good first step. Still I think that with something as important as food (which is the underlying foundation for health care) I wouldn't like to keep "the market" without control. Better have some stricter rules. Like banning hormones in beef, which currently results in you eating testosterone in your BigMagic. They are also in your daughter's burger, who - because of that - is now having her first period two years younger than the generation before her.