Food Industry Madness

Here's the real problem - the people who are running the U.S. food industry.

Let's say you want to go into the food business. You care about people's health so you decide to make something healthy like vegetarian burritos.

You buy organic wraps, and the other ingredients and mix them all up using a nice recipe someone gave you.

Then when you go to sell them through stores you set the price at five bucks each which seems reasonable for such a tasty and healthy food.

Problem is - you'll have over three dollars of ingredients in each one which doesn't leave you with much of a profit margin. You'll be lucky to make a single dollar in the end.

Now take a look at how the food industry works. They take extremely cheap ingredients such as refined white sugar, refined white flour, salt, colorings and other chemicals like MSG and mix them all together. How many different kinds of foods can they make with just these ingredients?

A lot. First you have all those chips and other salty, crunchy snacks. Then you can make an endless variety of soft, little cakes and other pastries - the kinds that come in those neat little cellophane packages.

You can make hundreds of different kinds of candy and lastly one of the most profitable food products are the soft drinks which are little more than water, sugar and chemicals.

And here's the best part - since all these foods can be made using dirt cheap ingredients the profit margin will be much higher than your burrito, much, much higher.

This is the central problem that is destroying the health of our nation. These incredibly unhealthy foods are by far the highest profit margin foods. The food industry makes billions poisoning us with the rubbish and then passes some of their ill-gotten gains to our politicians in Washington which protects them against criticism.

Today the food industry has a death grip on our federal government so I would advise you to avoid criticizing our food supply in that town.

You know those cute little tins of exotic sounding coffees one food company advertises on TV? The ones with enticing names like "Jamaican Mint" or "Caribbean Sunset". The main ingredient in those "teas" is of course refined white sugar.

If you calculate how much they charge per pound and compare it to the prevailing wholesale cost of sugar, the numbers are shocking. If they can buy sugar for thirty cents a pound and sell it for 89 dollars a pound, they just might make a nice profit at the end of the day.

Take a good look around your local convenience store. What a minefield of unhealthy substances! When you walk into the door you're greeted by a counter framed with various kinds of tobacco products including cigars, cigarettes (dozens of brands) and snuff.

The store racks usually form three isles. The first isle contains the candies. The second isle contains the cakes and pastries and the third isle is filled with salty, crunchy chips and pretzels.

And across the back wall are your soft drinks, loaded with sugar and my favorite - high fructose corn syrup. The only thing I ever buy in such a place are a newspaper, a bottle of water or perhaps a bottle of orange juice.

In the New York City suburb of Queens many of the local supermarkets have closed due to the declining income level of the people who live there. As a consequence the residents who remain are forced to do all their shopping at convenience stores. Out they go with their arms full of bags of toxic prepared foods.

Worst of all, our food stamp programs (which are under the influence of the food industry) promotes all this.

The WIC program that is supposed to provide food for hungry babies and small children even promotes the idea of buying high-fructose corn syrup sweetened juice drinks for children!

In primitive areas overseas many of the diseases we Americans suffer from so terribly were all but unknown until our American style convenience and fast foods appeared. Within a few short years the very first cases of high blood pressure appeared.

A dozen years later the first diabetics were diagnosed. While all this was going on their relatives who still lived out in the country and continued to consume a traditional diet remained completely healthy and free of chronic disease.

Diabetes is caused by consuming a diet high in unhealthy saturated animal and trans fats along with a steady intake of refined white sugar and flour. But don't hold your breath waiting for the food industry to do anything about it. They're too busy counting their profits! ■