There’s been strong rumours floating around today that the post-Brexit UK US trade deal has progressed further than anyone realises. Information about a country being force fed American bio-hazardous food abounded. Force fed because if we fall off the cliff edge that is a No Deal Brexit, we’ll all starve.
This is horrendous on so many levels. While in the EU we can be assured that our fresh food is good and healthy the US alternative is quite the opposite. For decades, US big business has been adding to and manipulating food in order to make more money.
It’s a bit like heroin. After all, making bad food more addictive is always going to ensure a steady supply of customers. As a social experiment, it has been very, very successful in the US. Just a glimpse at that photo of Trump and the burgers in the White House, meant for some elite sportsmen, justifies the years setting up the infrastructure.
With regards to dietary mythology, we only have to look at the evil monster that was Ancel Keys, it’s also interesting to look at how Capitalism has affected the way we live and eat. (To be fair, the two are linked anyway.)
America, supposedly the land of the free, has embraced the concept of capitalism with both arms and a few belonging to other people. The country is fed on an almost constant diet of making money. Money is good. Money is power. Money is everything.
This philosophy is responsible for just about all the woes in the US. When you equate money with good you get an odd imbalance. The rich just keep getting richer off the back of an increasingly poorer population. And it’s important that the rich maintain this imbalance otherwise they might end up being in the same position as the people keeping them rich in the first place. That probably explains why people threw themselves off buildings in 1929 when the stock market crashed.
I’ve often moaned about how parents clearly can’t love their children very much if they feed them crap but in the US I don’t think they have a lot of choice. Unless the food is fresh, certified organic and the certification is reliable, it’s as bad as feeding them poison.
This is an unsolvable problem for the US. They won’t change. Look at gun control and the killing of their kids. They don’t care about that. They don’t look at facts and come to reasonable conclusions. Their wonderfully retrograde solution to mass school shootings is to give the teachers guns.
Just like their solution to getting rid of corn syrup by feeding it to cows. Or making a butter substitute and adding food colouring to it so people will buy it.
I could also mention the ridiculous her and his nonsense that pervades all shops and markets. Do people really believe that men and women need different types of razors? Or, my personal favourite, why do men need man-sized tissues? Noses aren’t that different between the sexes.
It’s all to feed the beast that is power and money. We all do it but America is the expert. And come a No Deal Brexit, we will ‘benefit’ from shit food because we won’t be able to afford the proper stuff.
When that happens, I think we’ll move back to Oz. I feel very sad for people who don’t have such a choice.
