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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!"


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday April 21 2017, @08:31PM (6 children)

    by edIII (791) on Friday April 21 2017, @08:31PM (#497575)

    You're fucking on your own with that :)

    I'm not the only one that has problems eating insects. Not doing it. Don't fucking care. I would wretch trying to get the food down. Reminds me of SERE school, or some scene in a sci-fi movie where the guy eats something alien looking because he is starving. The only compromise might be if I have absolutely no idea. It MUST look exactly like a hamburger patty or chicken patty, and taste pretty much the same. No noticeable parts inside like thoraxes and legs or some shit.

    Then, after all of that, if I'm eating insects then the rich are eating them too. Or I'm going to eat the rich. Fuck them! Why do they get all of the luxuries while the rest of the planet slides into a hellish dystopia? Either that, or I'm allowed by law to raise my own cattle. I would do exactly that. Have a just a couple head of cattle, or buffalo, and then maybe eat meat a few times a year. If we all did that, it would be a massive reduction in meat consumption too. I'm getting ready to move to South America right now and we have chicken, rabbits, and Guinea pigs being raised for our meat consumption. I'll end up eating meat maybe once a week and then being vegetarian for the rest.

    Lastly, what is wrong with lab grown meat? It's going to get here before eating insects becomes mainstream and acceptable to our tastes. The best part is that it IS most likely vegan meat (I'll let a vegan confirm that). What's the difference between growing a side of beef in a large vat and growing a head of cabbage? Nothing died, and I did not have to kill to survive. That's a pretty big deal for most people, and would represent a major turning point in my life.

    Meat consumption itself is not what leads to our pressing health problems. That blame belongs to the sugar mafia putting sugar in fucking everything, or HFCS in everything, or MSG in everything, or "enriching" and "bleaching" the hell out of flour, and our generally shitty relationship to grains. Not to mention they fundamentally changed wheat for the worse. It has been genetically altered in ways that human beings are still adjusting to. Not all of us adjust to the new wheat, but instead have health problems from it. The new wheat is also packed with more nutrition meaning we can eat less of it, but instead we've eaten more of it.

    The proof is all around us. The obesity rates and just how fucking fat everybody is. Remember the fat kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder? Contrast that with the fat kid in Depp's movie and that is the "new fat". That fat kid from before is in somewhat better shape than near 1 out of 5 Americans that objectively qualify as obese. Perhaps morbidly obese.

    Sustainable diet is also very, very, very much linked to sustainable business practices. It is NOT sustainable to be moving food from California to New York, just because. It makes no sense to be so ridiculously inefficient and unsustainable. We need far more local farmers and produce to be consumed to benefit from the reduction in the associated environmental and economic costs of unsustainable transport.

    Fuck, we've not even spoke of the oceans yet. Our relationship to the ocean is diametrically opposed to the definition of sustainability. Nothing about how we interact with the ocean is sustainable. Nothing. That is the one that may cause a runaway race condition that threatens the ecosystems on land when the ocean is one vast cemetery of dead shit.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday April 21 2017, @11:58PM (2 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday April 21 2017, @11:58PM (#497677) Homepage

    Eating alien food is often not an alien concept. For example, when Captain Piccard in the "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!!1" episode was so starved that he greedily gobbled down the boiled taspar egg, [nocookie.net] he would have been even better-prepared for it had he consulted the ship's computer before his kidnapping to learn that the Earthian Island-mongrels had pioneered the dish [wikimedia.org] centuries before.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:17AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:17AM (#497718)

      Madred promised Picard a boiled egg but gave him a live egg instead, which Picard gobbled anyway.

  • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:06AM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:06AM (#497789)

    ...It MUST look exactly like a hamburger patty or chicken patty, and taste pretty much the same....

    Or green crackers that taste like... chicken, I suppose.

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:02AM (#497813)

    I pretty much agree with your post but just wanted to highlight this:

    Lastly, what is wrong with lab grown meat? It's going to get here before eating insects becomes mainstream and acceptable to our tastes. The best part is that it IS most likely vegan meat (I'll let a vegan confirm that). What's the difference between growing a side of beef in a large vat and growing a head of cabbage? Nothing died, and I did not have to kill to survive. That's a pretty big deal for most people, and would represent a major turning point in my life.

    I too am looking forward to vat-grown meat as the source of my buffalo wings and steak.

    Hmm, wings might be a bit harder since they'd need something for the bone (boneless wings--blasphemy!), but I'm sure they'll figure it out.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:45PM (#497890)

    As a farmer, I'm not sure if I'd rather eat CAFO pork or insects. They are equally disgusting. I guess you just interact with insects more than where your food came from.