Archive for the Food Category

The American Menu: Three Food Groups (January 6, 2014)

Posted in Consumerism, Food, Health Care, Market Solutions, Plastic, Pogo Plight on January 6, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

The Gyre of Death:

Breakfast:     Sugar, Fat, Salt

Lunch:            Fat, Salt, Sugar

Dinner:           Salt, Sugar, Fat

Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

. . .

A          “New Year’s resolutions are one of the earliest examples of recycling.  The list of resolutions could be stored with the holiday decorations and reused each year.”

B          “We need to reduce.  Hope springs eternal, particularly in the winter.  Better to have propounded New Year’s resolutions and lost than never to have propounded them at all.”

A          “We need to resolve to shed calories responsibly all year.”

B          “Better to have lost pounds.”

. . .

A          “Disregard the class and cultural arrogance and condescension that underlies the discussion and the problem still weighs on us.  We as a people are too chunky.”

B          “Too many Americans drive around all day poisoning themselves at the food shacks that litter the highways and byways and then drive to a bar and poison themselves with liquid intoxicants before taking that last drive of the day late at night back home.  We need to change our life style.”

A          “Obesity imposes a staggering additional tax on health care costs.  If the government chimes in and proposes something, someone whines about the ‘nanny state’ interfering in our lives.”  

B          “Granny may have been right about these things.  Moderation always in all things.”

. . .

A          “Beer companies seek to decant 11 rather than 12 ounces into a bottle and grocers now package five rather than six avocados in the bag.  How do you create the market conditions so that a sugar water company reduces the ounces in the bottle and the purveyor of French fries puts fewer spuds in the bag?”

B          “And change our life style so that no uses plastic bottles.”

. . .    

[See the “e-ssay” titled Back Door Inflation (July 16, 2007).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Pass The Mussels (November 19, 2012)

Posted in Food, Global Climate Change, Global Warming on November 19, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

I          “The local welcome wagon may have contributed maize to the cornucopia.”

P         “The menu was discarded, yet historians suggest that they ate oysters, mussels, seafood, ducks and geese.”

I          “We need to give thanks and take care of the sea.”

. . .

[See the “e-ssays” titled Plastic Pirates (August 6, 2012) and Playa Plastica / Plastic Beach (September 13, 2010).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

An ocean is a terrible thing to waste

We Ain’t Ants; We Are Grasshoppers (April 9, 2012)

Posted in Depression, Entitlements, Environment, Food, Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Pogo Plight, Society, Water on April 9, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

C1          “Eating out will make you eat in.  Or lose your appetite.  Americans devour too much food and waste too much food.  A friend said that he could not go a week in any activity catering to the American appetite because he could not stomach the gross waste of food.”

C2          “Americans put too much on their waists and then waste the rest.  They waist food and then waste food.”    

C1          “If Bill Shakespeare didn’t document it, Aesop did.  The timeless human experience.”

C2          “Bill on burgers, Aesop on arugula?”

C1          “I thought they relayed the ‘Ant and the Grasshopper fable’ to us to teach us to play well with others even if the others played too much.  I thought we would be directed to be a good ant and let the grasshopper come in out of the cold.  Then she read the ending and said that the ants rebuked and rebuffed the grasshopper when he sought to come in out of the cold.”

C2          “You can’t blame them.  The ants saved and gathered all summer while the grasshopper played and partied.”

C1          “But we are all playing and partying.  There are not enough ants.” 

C2          “Everyone must be an enlightened ant.  The grasshoppers are preparing by collecting guns.  The few ants must continue to save and gather and . . . collect guns.”  

. . .

[See the article “Clean your plate, save the world?: Scientific American.”]

[See the “e-ssays” titled “Beans and Bullets (April 6, 2009),” “On Entitlements (July 19, 2010)” and “Girding For The Going Grid (October 11, 2010).”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Personal responsibility; fiscal responsibility; legal responsibility

Providence prefers providence

Fukushima Daiichied (March 12, 2012)

Posted in Economics, Energy, Environment, Food, Gas/Fossil Fuel, Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Japan, Peak Oil, Perjury, Perjury/Dishonesty on March 12, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

Cs          “They aren’t telling us anything.”

Sr          “They aren’t tellin’ us nothin’.”

Cs          “The great flotilla of death is floating east to the West Coast from the Far East.  The Pacific is now a polluted pond.”

Sr          “It’s in the air.  An air raid.  That’s the overriding problem.  Death from above.”

Cs          “The only thing the authorities can do is the only thing the authorities do.”

Sr          “Lie.  The official language of government and industry.  The problem is so overwhelming that there may be nothin’ that can be done.”

Cs          “What do you tell a populace that is already angry, broken, confused, desperate, enervated, and frustrated.”

Sr          “And bitter, cynical and distrustful.”

Cs          “The energy source designed to transition us from fossil fuels to renewable energy blew up on us in a day.”

Sr          “We are so Fukushima Daiichied.”

. . .

[http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/nuclear/2012/Fukushima/Lessons-from-Fukushima.pdf]

Bumper stickers of the week:

3/11

Fukushima Daiichied Again

Boycott Food? On National Food Day? (October 24, 2011)

Posted in Boycott Series, Food, Society on October 24, 2011 by e-commentary.org

. . .

A          “At least the processed junk.”

B          “That is the way to celebrate National Food Day.  Prepare and enjoy one healthy meal and let it become habit forming.”

A          “We ingest so much junk in such massive quantities.  We commit slow suicide every day and haul far more weight around on our musculoskeletal system than its design capacity.  We need to secure our food closer to the farm and the field and consume it in smaller quantities.”

B          “That may require fundamental lifestyle changes.  Families, when they exist, are fractured and eat at different times on the run from a bag in the car.  Eating is most efficient and enjoyable when a meal is prepared for a group and shared over conversation.”

A          “Slow food poisoning, I tell you.  Meat is the big killer.  Too many resources are devoured supplying us with meat.  Some meat, maybe, but in much smaller quantities.”

B          “Go green; eat plants.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

“Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  Michael Pollan

Eat less meat; enjoy more plants.

Exercise your mouth less and your feet more.

Get your food close to the farm and the field.