If Life Gives You Lemons, DO NOT Make Lemonade!!!

Who would have thought all those ice cream sundaes, sodas and candy bars would be "bad" for your health? Well, it really caught me off guard too when the American Heart Association announced that, get this, all that sugar leads to obesity (WHAT?!!) which leads to heart disease (GET OUT OF TOWN!). I can't keep track of all this. Right here in none other than the ever truthful, ever reliable CW did I recently learn that it's really okay to be obese. So naturally I started increasing my intake of the aforementioned food groups. I mean, hey, don't we all want to live forever? Or at least as long as we can under whatever new health reform Pelosi-Reid-Obama bestow upon us?

Look, in all very brief and intermittent seriousness, there is little question that the American diet is somewhat inconsistent with what that Guy who designed the human digestive system had in mind for sustenance. I have done a fair amount of reading about how much better the body processses game meats, whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables as humans used to do before Al Gore invented the internet (okay, it might have been a few years before that, my memory is clouded with this sugar high). One of the consistent themes I've seen proposed is this notion that we could take a dramatic stab at reducing this trend toward Americans', uhm, "huskiness", by simply eliminating the government subsidies on corn (How do you spell "OMG!" in Iowan?). Anyway, the mindset appears to be that corn is used to fatten cattle unnaturally on feedlots (oh, but how I DO love a nicely marbled delmonico), how it supplies the corn syrup industry which all by itself accounts for 80% of unnecessary calories (I made up that statistic--feel free to insert the correct number any of you corn lobbyists who might be reading--I suspect it may be higher), and how it makes driving rather than walking a little cheaper (except when you leave that damned ethanol in your tank too long and you have to ungunk your fuel lines)--all of which contribute to facilitating our proclivity to make personal choices that lead to us become more rotund.

I think subsidizing most anything is poor governing. There are ample market forces to encourage farmers to grow corn...and if there weren't why would we need to grow it anyway? But I also read a lot about the FDA and Dept of Agriculture and how many of their policies actually encourage the kinds of practices that have tainted the very food supply they mean to keep clean. Things like NAIS (National Animal Identification System) represent an unaffordable government burden on many small organic or, "beyond organic" farmers who are committed to providing food sources that are free of the kinds of diseases found in feed lots and industrial chicken houses that require all manner of innoculations and antibiotics and to give us options in our food supply that more closely represent pre-internet diet (okay, that apparently wasn't funny the first time either) pre-industrial farming/processed food diet. It will also impact the poor sot who has this crazy notion that the nation in which he lives actually affords him the freedom to own his own milk cow or goat, maybe a pig and some chickens so he can feed his family and barter with his neighbors for items they might grow. Not so fast...they are impacted too. There's a farmer near Staunton, VA who wrote a book, "Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front" to document the battles he's had with USDA etc as he strives to raise food in humane, natural environments and in ways that exceed USDA requirements for "organic". I'll read it sometime and give you a book report.

So to summarize:

Lots of American's are fat and excess sugar is a nice, packet-sized culprit.
But, most Americans are fat because of their personal choices.
Of those choices, the government subsidizes or policy-izes many of the less healthy options from which Americans choose.
Many Americans are trying to provide healthier options but, in addition to the challenges of making themselves more vulnerable to weather fluctuations, insect infestations and natural predation, they are almost unanimously in agreement that their biggest challenge is the government.
Ultimately, we are still fat because of our personal choices.
But could we try to, maybe, level the playing field by exempting the small farmers who don't use feedlots or packed chicken houses, etc and who don't ship their goods farther than the nearest farmers market and ESPECIALLY those who just use their farms to feed their friends and family?
And couldn't we save a ton of money if we stopped subsidizing things that contribute to our less healthy choices and for which there is already a booming market?

And does anyone know of a book for brevity in writing?