wow, interesting.

Couldn't agree more,

when you say actual real food,
you mean gummi bears right?

"I think it would be great if people started feeding themselves and their families actual real food, like before technology and corporations came and fucked it all up."

You know, I agree, but people who generally eat shit food are people who don't have a lot of money to buy the real stuff. A box of macoroni and cheese that is highly processed is like 69cents, whereas you go to Trader Joes or Whole Foods to get some whole grain pasta and cheese and whole milk to make it yourself, its at least 3 times as much.

The processed foods industry markets to lower middle class and with good reason. They don't have the money for organic products, or even conventional milk with no RBST. Its really quite sad. I think, however, instead of bitching like some people do about these people feeding their families crappy food, put yourself in their shoes.

I know so many people who come into my work and use their food stamps, because they can for once afford to eat good food. Its the people in the middle income bracket, who are making $25,000-$30,000 and are single parents or whatev; who dont qualify for government assistance in food programs and cant otherwise afford $150 in good unprocessed groceries. I know, I've been there.

I love good eating and I hate fastfood. I try to cook something every day and to minimize the days with eating from mcdonalds or something similar. And I love to go out for a dinner with friends or to have a barbecue on our roofgarden.

i may have to check that out

That's a really interesting read, thanks for sharing. I feel compelled to say though that I don't know where he got his info about our con growers because, well, basically it's not entirely true. Corn prices were going up because producers used the raise of gas prices as a pretext to dramatically increase the price of their product, not because of the NAFTA, which is the latest fad down here, we have been importing corn forever, only now there won't be restrictions, and the vast majority of the producers grow their grain for local consumption.

A problem that specialists have been addressing for ages down here is the insane amount of crap beverages we consume, and to be honest that's one part where I agree with Pollan in that for some bizarre reason, coke and other refreshments are sold cheaper than water and are far easier to come by especially in the lower income families. There's this brand called Big Cola that will sell you a gallon of cola for about the price of a liter of purified water. When you do the math, the amount of soda a kid will drink over the course of elementary school is scary.

It's even scarier when you consider that Mexico is second only to the US in the soft drink global market, and your average 8 year old will consume a can of coke at school, one or two at home and maybe one in the afternoon, without counting other snacks.

I have a friend who will down about 50 oz. with every meal. Spooky huh.

Basically, child obesity, diabetes and hypertension. Of course those are just the "main disease", there's a number of other problems that come with them and rank from severe back pains, stressed joints, to infertility, loss of hair, you name it...

You know, it was only after I moved someplace where processed foods were, for the most part, completely unavailable that I realized the veracity of what you're saying. I felt so much better. I try to stay on that path now.

But based on this experience, it seems to me that the real problem isn't just individual personal choices, which we can make to alter our lives (and should try to make, definitely). It's the bigger problems of subsidizing terrible food products and overpricing things that should be cheap. And lack of health care. And people being forced into two jobs and being too tired to eat proper meals with family and friends.

Here's what I'm getting at: the anger shouldn't be about individual choices, but about social change, right? I'm not saying don't encourage people to make better choices on an individual level. But, I think it's more important to work to make an environment in which such choices come naturally.

I'm sorry if I offended you, I was making the mac and cheese example because Its something most kids like to eat, and I thought we were talking about feeding families. I came from a poor family, and its been hard to ween myself away from crap for food, just because I didn't even know how to cook healthy!

my apologizes if I sounded preachy.