In Defense – Part 2

American’s make compromises over a great many topics on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. We make compromises over movies, over music, and over even bigger things. Most of these we manage to do without a real impact on our physical health. I mean, sure, if you were to compromise and sit on the couch with me instead of running that might have an affect on you physically… But, we don’t generally think that compromises are made about our well being often, and we wouldn’t dare think that our own government would compromise our health, right?

Well, politics can be a dangerous thing. In my last entry, I spoke briefly about how we were beginning to see food as a combination of nutrients instead of as a “food.” Well, that came into being when science tried to tell American’s that they needed to cut back on their meat intake, specifically that of meats, poultry, and fish. After the firestorm of criticism from the meat and dairy industries, the statement had to be changed to: “choose meats, poultry, and fish that would reduce saturated fat intake.” So, instead of just eating less meat (which we are not allowed to say because of the effect on profits), we now have to continue to eat meat in its leanest form. See the difference? Imagine where we go from there…

To continue on to this profit-driven science of nutrition, I’ll just give you a few facts from “In Defense” about the lack of separation of nutrition and state. The World Health Organization recommended that no more than 10% of your daily calories should come from added sugars (Not the sugar you’ll find in fruit, the sugar you find in sweet tea…. The good…ahem, BAD stuff.). Now, back to the compromising… There is a super-powerful, evil empire of a lobbying group on Capital Hill that is dead-set on destroying the WHO recommendations: The U.S. sugar lobby (www.sugar.org, which you can at least commend for differentiating between sugar and high fructose corn syrup). Obviously driven by money, the sugar lobby threatened to lobby Congress to cut WHO funding unless these limits were raised, and eventually were able to force Congress into compromising and allowing a 15% increase in allowable daily sugar intake. It is now part of the official U.S. recommendation that the maximum permissible level of free sugars in our diet is 25% of daily calories. A full quarter of your daily fuel from added sugars? Holy $#!T.

I don’t know how to feel about this, really. I mean, we don’t have to eat sugars because it’s in the U.S. Recommendations, but what kind of message is that sending?

(Search www.washingtonpost.com for an article called “Big Sugar” for more dirt on the sweet industry. I’d give the link, but I don’t have internet where I’m writing.)

Again, the facts in here are mostly pulled from Michael Pollan's book, many opinions are added by me....