Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Friday April 21 2017, @05:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the snowpiercer-protein-bars dept.

Among scientists, there is a remarkable consensus that the current [food] policy direction cannot continue. These contradictions are unbearable – literally so, because if the world continues the trend to eat like the West, the burdens on ecosystems, healthcare systems and finance will be unsupportable. That, at least, is the uncomfortable conclusion one must draw, when one looks at the evidence.

But since when has the politics of consumption been about evidence? The few studies conducted into consumers' response to this big picture about unsustainable diets show that consumers become a little indignant when they find out. A careful study by Which? found consumers asking: why weren't we told about this? They want to know more. Rightly so, but how, and from whom?

Hard-pressed teachers turn to commerce for fact sheets. Parents are too often in the dark, if truth be told. Nor could any food label convey the depth and scale of what consumers really need to know. Giant food companies have replaced schools and parents as sources of public "education". They are the Nanny Corporations, replacing the fictitious Nanny State. They filter what people are to know. Coca-Cola's annual marketing budget is US$4billion (£3.18 billion), twice the entire World Health Organisation annual budget in 2014-15, and much more than its budget for non-communicable diseases ($0.32 billion) or for promoting health through the life-course ($0.39 billion).

How can this by unlocked? Consumers buying food too often without knowing the consequences. Politicians distancing themselves from this unfolding disaster. Workers and companies vying with each other to produce more for less. This is crazy ecological economics – self-defeating food culture. It piles up burdens on public health.

It's obvious really – a new politics of food has to unfold in which academics treat consumers with dignity and tell them the truth. Politics follows the public, not the other way round. So it's the public which must be helped. The neoliberal rhetoric is of consumer sovereignty, yet everywhere they are kept in the dark.

That must be why authorities are encouraging entomophagy: "Let them eat bugs!"


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @06:04PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @06:04PM (#497511)

    What is this "sustainable diet" these clowns are pushing... I'm sure it is not one that in which they have some monetary investment in....

    You know what is a real "sustainable diet?" One that keeps me fucking alive. The chief benefactor of "diet" is the person consuming it, not your imaginary meta-entity.

    And you know what a definition of "study" is? Bunch of bologna that "concludes" whatever the person who paid for the "study" wanted to say.

    This is definitely not an advertisement for a $40 book that claims I'm destroying the world by converting O2 into CO2. And you want my money? BTW a book written by some schmuck for money is not "evidence."

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
       Troll=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   -1  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @07:15PM (#497537)

    I'm sure it is not one that in which they have some monetary investment in....

    As apposed to those who have money invested in the status quo and would rather Americans ate more meat and dairy as apposed to healthier mixtures with more vegetables than anything else. Wouldn't it be better for Americans and humanity as a whole if we all simply started growing and eating our own vegetables again? That's the kind of "Sustainable diet" they're talking about, not the next latest self help book on eating yourself thin. You sound like a man desperately trying to stop people from losing interest in an industry that pays your paycheck. Americans self-growing food does not do the food industry any favors.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:05AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:05AM (#497680) Homepage

      That's the difference between the Western and uncivilized lands' ways of life. The globalists want to flood the Western nations with uncivilized people so that the untermensch will be content with diets of bugmeal which frees up more money for the elite to dine on caviar-topped seal pup bacon-wrapped white truffles.

      France was one of the nations chosen by the global elite to be flooded with savages for the very reason that they're already used to eating snails and blood-sausage.