socialist politics

i think this is some of the best news i've read in months.

my own personal ambition is to eat locally.
hyper-locally if possible, i would prefer to grow as much of my own food as possible. there is such great satisfaction and such ease in being able to walk out your door and select your food. its why i would like to be raising chickens (i currently am, but its tenuous situation at best.) its nice to use food when its in season. rhubarb in the spring, fresh salad, berries in early summer, corn and tomatoes in late, apples in the fall.

to some extent my location and my budget restrict me. not to mention that locally grown does not always mean organically and not even organically always means "best" or "healthiest." i think everyone should read this book--------------------->

even before this book, i have had a particular bone to pick with what i can only call the food system. it began with a boyfriend's assault on msg. monosodium glutamate is everywhere. it can even be found in the foods with carry the label No MSG!

as far as i know, it has not affect me in the least. but it is a neurotoxin and you couldn't throw a can of beans and not hit something in the grocery store that contains it. and that just disgusts me. (i admit, i still drink diet coke. despite the aspartame.)

so you start looking at labels.

and you wonder why your can of tuna contains five ingredients, if not more. why your frozen peas do not contain just peas? canned vegetables are full of salt and likely bleached of most of their nutrients. flavored yogurt is full of high fructose corn syrup. why you are paying money to buy food that isn't food and you pride yourself in the great buy you just made because its cheap?!

it is an especial bone i have to pick when i take into consideration all the people who can't afford to buy organic. or locally. the people who subsist on cheap foodstuffs (because that is what they are, they are not food. foodstuffs.) all the people who are clueless or uneducated, who don't even have the opportunity to choose wisely.

this strong opinion that i had was why i was interested in reading pollan's book. the book made me more aware, more upset, and more committed to my convictions. because not only are there all the problems i knew about, there are others. (really, you should all read the book. i'm not going to give a synopsis here.)

so back to my original point.
why i think what bloomberg's doing in new york is awesome.

i think the government is responsible for helping people eat right because they were responsible for the degradation of the quality of our food in the first place, in cooperation with the capitalist ideals that we are so proud of. they have outright financed the corn industry, not to mention the nitrate fertilizer industry. the quest for capitalist perfection, the constant competition and driving of prices down have driven people to sell us food that is the most cheapest to make. the government alters the standards by which our food is judged so that companies can produce it for cheaper and be held to less rigid standards.

yes, the mass production of food lowers the price that you pay at the store. it also lowers the quality of the food that you buy, the nutritional value and actually raises the actual cost (and societal cost) of the food. just think how much fossil fuel is used driving your cheap beef from feedlot to kill lot, to packaging to grocery?

so i think that it is the government's responsibility to undo what it has done. if you didn't want big government, if you don't want them messing around with what you eat--too late. you should have spoken up fifty odd years ago.

they already are big government, and up until now they have been acting on the behalf of the business man, the investor, the capitalist. well its about damn time that they act on our behalf.