...but it's not easy!

To opt out, you need to know or learn how to cook,
how to grow
your own food or find and afford naturally-grown food,
and take time for all of this.

All in an environment where you're considered a freak
for even thinking it matters. And unless you isolate
your children, they will want to be like all the other
kids.

Is the book helpful with these issues?

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The comment before me raised some real issues....growing your own food? finding all natural produce? Kids getting teased by their peers?

In 1976 I taught a course in the Adult Ed section of a local community college on all these topics from water, pollution, preservatives, environment, etc. Though it is hard one must 'break from the pack' so to speak. I sent my kids to school with homemade bread filled with fresh ground peanut butter, dates stuffed with walnuts(their friends stated they were eating roaches)and fresh fruit. They had chicken sandwiches, homemade cookies with butter and walnuts, thermos with milk from a farm, or some juice minus sugar. I made their baby food when born. I nursed them. I believe this made a difference. Friends kids sick with colds, runny noses, coughs constantly, low energy, weight gain etc. My sons rarely sick. Friends ate bologna sandwiches on white bread, coke in thermos, Twinkies for dessert. The few times they did see a doctor it was commented their diet the best of all his patients. It's a question of realizing that Food IS Your Best Medicine, and making effort to eat well pays off.
A Chiropractor, when I was 19, alerted me to sound nutrition. After kids born I saw no doctor for almost 38 years save for a sprained ankle
and some female stuff.Usually people don't change until pain or tragedy takes over.Or,not improving with the horrid pills given like candy by the medical industry and the horrid side effects that occur. There are alternatives! Children are given too many choices. Mothers holding up a TV dinner at the case in the supermarket to their 4 or 5 year old, "Sweetie, if I give you this tonight will you eat it?"WRONG!
Parents, be firm! Give SMALL portions of meat, veggie,fruit. Must eat all first before seconds.
A sweet on Sunday. 4 hours TV only each week. On YOUR approval. Their little minds are gardens and must be planted with care.
I am 72 now and aside from an elevated BP my tests, blood work all good. I give thanks always to my sister's Chiropractor husband who opened my eyes at age 19. The more we seek farm markets, read labels, eat fresh, and enjoy outdoors more. Keep it simple. Whole. No sugar. No white flour. No colored foods. More nuts, fruit.Think of these things as vitamins. I asked my students to look at a food, Is this the way Nature intended?It's all about loving yourself and building your body up from inside out to withstand the ever increasing onslaught of chem trails, preservatives, smells, etc. Sugar is in almost everything. Terrible. You could live on a banana alone it is so power packed with nutrients. Almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds.Why the Roman legions marched and fought for days eating only sesame seeds. Hardened, strong men and they survived.Eat main meal mid day. Light meal at night before 6. In time you will feel good that you give your body wonderful things and THINK COLOR!!!!Orange, Red, green veggies sing with vibration of LIFE! Be well!THINK!Use the wonderful mind the creator gave us all.

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Many food processors have no sick leave, no health insurance, and poor wages. The workers show up sick both to keep their jobs and as revenge on the bosses who devalue them. Your children eat the food and you end up with sick kids and big pediatric bills.

If you process your own food at home, you know who cooked and handled the food, and your children will have less down time. So, incidentally, will you. This is not a guilt trip for women, since men have two hands and are quite capable of food prep.

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Food 100 years ago was pure and safe? Don't schools still require the reading of THE JUNGLE?

A mid 19th century issue of Scientific American listed 55 adulterants put in milk. This business of tainted food by corporate interests is as old as the hills.

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Our farmers were doing fine thank you very much before the hostile Corp takeover of our farm lands in the '80's. In fact our food was not only comparatively cheaper, we had far fewer instances of wide spread food borne illnesses.
And let not forget how much 'food' is being shipped in from other countries- which given a chance WE could produce here. MI is a huge producer of apples- yet I have Chinese apples in my produce aisle- WHY? Can't We use those seeds to produce those varieties here?
Here's an interesting stat- in 1983 an average loaf of bread cost about $0.53, now we are lucky to get it under $2.00- that is an increase of almost 400%. With an annual 'cost of living' increase in wages at only 4%, that loaf of Bread should only cost US now(to keep up with this index)about a $1.05.
All raw food items (corn, wheat, pork..) should be not only returned to those who have the real expertise and dedication to be real farmers- but also be taken off the gamlbing tote boards of Wall Street. As they drive up Oil prices on pure speculations, so do they when it comes to corn (etal) pricing.The only ones seeing a bigger profit when these prices go up are those betting middlemen.These gamblers are also profitting when the bet the price will go down. Whos' the ones getting screwed by this interloping in the market place- both producers (farmers) and consumers. Whens the last time you saw a loaf of bread drop price because Wheat or flour went down in the stockmarket- never!
This is not the only Commodities which need to be deleted from the Gamblers casino- same goes for any and all resources necesary to human life or national economy. Let them gamble on max Factor vs Revelon, Jack Daniels vs Jim Beam- shit that does not effect citizens everyday life, nor the nationals ability to produce products.Most Notably- ENERGY resources- Oil, NG, electicity...It takes energy to produce our food supply, heat our homes, keep our factories humming and more poignantly those natural Resources Are the property of the United States- these corps are not only interferring with our ability to compete globally, they are pilferring these resources by poaching on our lands to do it.

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yesterday, one of the brainstorms on how to pay for health care for all, an idea came up of taxing a can of pop $0.10 each to raise money... a use tax for sugar and corn syrup...

how about taking this idea to the grocery store??? we could use-tax the cereals with added stuff, the cookie aisle, candy aisle, most of the baking aisle, most salad dressings, the bread aisle, most of the frozen section, go from there...

if you want to eat junk, pay for it up front with a use-tax... you're going to need health care from eating this stuff in the first place...

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They were red all the way through (commercial berries have tasteless white cores) and although I gave them a quick rinse with tapwater, I knew that they were pesticide-free.

I almost wanted to cry. Because what was once a normal experience, eating delicious fresh food with no anxiety, just enjoyment, has become almost impossible thanks to agribusiness.

Babies cry. Adults solve problems. In a small back garden, I have two apple trees, a fig tree and four very "hentertaining" chickens. Today I'll be planting mint in a hanging basket. On my kitchen windowsill I have potted chives, coriander, basil and thyme.

The rosemary, lavender and sage are on the allotment. Have planted lots of squash, lettuce, beans and will be transplanting corn, celeriac, beetroot, peas, chard. The rhubarb and globe artichokes are too new to harvest from this year, but there will be blackberries, currants, raspberries and (possibly) grapes.

I know I'm far from self-sufficient, but I will be eating better than most. Plant things to eat and enjoy them!

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Despite the fact that our food is slowly killing us, our life expectency keeps creeping upwards. It seems LIVING is killing us, regardless of our nutrition.
When I was a kid growing up in a largely Italian neighborhood in New Jersey, there were specialty food stores, where you shopped daily for fresh meat, chicken, produce, etc. Enter the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, or A&P, the first supermarket I can remember. The concept was simple: Make only ONE trip to ONE store, and save yourself some valuable time as well as money.
Prices were a little bit less, due to the mass buying ability of a large corporation. This was the beginning of the end for greengrocers, chicken markets, etc.
Supermarkets not only raked in huge profits for themselves, but changed the way people thought and conducted their lives. Whereas in the old days, the stay-at-home wife would spend a considerable portion of her day at the various markets, there was a real plus there. Socialization, exercise, and fresh, locally produced foods were among them.
Once supermarkets took over, their main competition was gone until rival supermarkets appeared. This began a race to provide the most tempting products, such as out-of-season produce from foreign countries, or places like Florida and California.
Thus, the internationalization of the food system began, and this is where we made a huge mistake. The quality of our food made a steep decline and only advances in medicine kept us alive longer.
To sum things up, we're eating crap, and STILL pushing the limit of longevity upward. One can only wonder how much eating healthy, natural, and in-season foods would improve this.

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...but it's practically impossible. Even living in rural PA, I could get it only when a friend, who had a few cows, would slip it to me on the sly because it was illegal. Dairy farmers are put through hell if they try to sell raw milk.

And I would love to buy organic, but I can't afford it on a fixed income (that was one of the points of the movie--that junk food is affordable but the good stuff isn't). So I grow some veggies in pots on my deck, mostly tomatoes and peppers, and then can homemade jams and sauces. But it takes a lot of time; the average person is too busy trying to earn a living to spend hours in the kitchen.

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I have been into alternative health for more than 30+ years. Started out in the 1970s when there was almost no organic food in the health food stores of the time, except for carrots.

During this time, in the 1980s, I owned a 1200 square foot natural food store. None of the food in my shop had sugar, white flour, caffeine, chemicals - pure food. It was wonderful. This was the best of times.

Then, everything went to hell. Multinational corporations started buying up companies that, until that time, were the leaders. The products changed and, in my opinion, went downhill until now, it is difficult to find really decent food to eat in the health food stores.

What is to be done? Where can I buy my food. I live in an apartment and have no way to raise my own food. Since I'm no longer a vegetarian, I have to buy my organic protein from the health food stores and it is doubtless produced by one of the multinational corporations that have already destroyed health food.

I have been buying from the farmers' markets but there is only so much to buy. They don't carry everything I eat.

The article is not realistic. It doesn't address the problems of people like me.

It has been said that when you buy something, you are in effect voting for it. I'm more than willing to vote for good, decent, nutritious food. Just tell me where I can get it!

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There's currently a program called National Animal Identification System (NAIS), backed by big agriculture corporate farms. Small farmers will have to pay for the equipment to tag their animals. It will cost small farmers out of business so the corporations can take over.

They are saying it's "voluntary", but it's already MANDATORY in Michigan and other states.

If we don't stop this, we will no longer be able to get healthy food from farmer's markets and roadside stands.

We'll be FORCED to either eat the chemical-ridden food provided by corporate farms to the grocery store or try to grow our own vegetables and fruits.

If the system is in place, we won't be able to have farm animals without tagging them so they can be traced. Very expensive.

So, I hope everyone here is a vegetarian with a plot of land and a green thumb.

Learn about NAIS here - http://nonais.org/but-what-is-nais/

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you need to fight the corporate giants that spew out all our food; ConAgra, Tyson, Cargill and the Mighty MONSANTO! All have mega-lobbyists in Washington pushing for less organic, homegrown, grassfed, free range foodstuffs. NAIS for animals is only the beginning (pushed by representatives of urban areas who wouldn't know a bovine from an equine) vegetable and grain farmers do not want Monsanto's genetically enhanced seed, yet if you're a farmer growing organic surrounded by farmers growing genetic your crop will eventually be infested with genetically modified blowover from your neighbors. We as citizens should know what bills are being put forth by our illustrious leaders and scream to high heaven about allowing "immigrated" Canadian beef (where MadCow has been found)to be imported, then labeled USDA "citizen" American beef by the time it gets to the store.
The problems with our food supply do not stem from family farms and ranches. We do our best to sow without pestisides and naturally graze our beef. The problem is with big business Agriculture and until the American People have enough and rant, rave and vote out our idiot representatives we will continue to have the problem. Family farms and ranches are going the way of the Indian as the establishment is making it unsustainable for youth to carry on this noble tradition. If you want safe food you must make your voices heard; not at AlterNet, but at your county, state and federal levels.

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The choice is not between agribusiness and a return to the old ways of labor intensive farming. There is a well-proven method for sustainable food production that can be created, designed, implemented and maintained in a completely sustainable way- that will actually repair the earth that we are destroying daily with our corporate extensive farming, AND provide much higher levels of production efficiency. It is called PERMACULTURE--
Why this is being ignored by all of the commentators here, and by the author of the article is beyond me, but I urge you all to simply do a websearch on Permaculture, and read about it. Simplest and easiest book is called Permaculture in a Nutshell. We can ALL - every one of us -- become self-reliant and sustainably productive- while we build community and do reparation to the earth. Please- check it out immediately.
Thanks,
DR

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Forget fast food altogether. None if it is healthy eating. Do your own cooking. It doesn't have to take hours to prepare a decent meal. Don't buy prepared food. That too, is all junk. Chicken, fish, a vegetable and pasta or potato,some spices, cooked in olive oil some ice cream for dessert. Local stuff that's in season is nice. Save the splurging for dining out and holidays. Read labels! Eating well is actually cheaper. People who do their own cooking actually have a healthier diet. Who really makes their own fattening sauces? I notice that we are sourrounded by food advertising, and that doesn't help. ANNA

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"Local" won't work if a feedlot is within 50 miles. I can understand the basic idea of processing meat in sunshine to kill bacteria, but what if there are clouds for three days? For that matter, couldn't some inventor come up with a better system?

We need a system where co-ops and the most reputable stores will promise to subscribe to a third party verification process. The stores and co-op demand a fair third party process, and the verification organization demands (or reports) farmer and processor compliance all along the way.

Sometimes the verification needs to be as simple as a ten minute call to a small farmer. "Hello, I never use pesticides on the meadow, no hormones, and I have ten cows right now." Part of the third party process is an obligation to not overtax the little guy.

In turn, this information gets reported to the co-ops, and the co-ops decide whether the farmer's standards are good enough. The third party organization must poll the co-ops and stores to see which standards are important. Is fair labor law compliance important? Is verification of the general health of the cows important? Is the ideal of working with small, local farmers important? Is the farm corporation too big to fail? What sanitary standards not required by the FDA (feeding ground-up cow brains to other cows may cause Mad Cow epidemics eventually) are important to the co-ops and stores?

This way, the individual consumer doesn't pick through thousands of regulations covering thousands of farmers and manufacturers. That's not the individual consumer's job. Which consumers have time for all that inspection? The store should choose its minimum standards, and the verification organization should see that those standards are met, or else tell the store that a product has a few flags, and then the store or co-op can drop the product.

Yes, multiple verification organizations are a good idea. This creates a free market in the verification business. Disreputable verifiers, like disreputable corporate auditors, will tend to lose their cachet, lose their clients and go out of business. Reputable stores and co-ops will of course try to avoid verifiers who have themselves gotten too big to fail.

Know your local verifier. Let her, him or them know your farmer.

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The newest, and perhaps more insidious, threat to small farmers is the push for investment in farmland (Fortune magazine). Just think, the same bastards who brought you the real estate bubble, CDO's, and the AIG collapse are now hawking a farmland bubble- 'cause "farmland is a finite resource". Commodify everything until there's nothing left but desert and death. Thanks, you investment vultures!

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I would certainly not discourage anyone from "declaring their independence" from fake food-- after all, it's probably a great investment in one's health and one's community. However, it is important to realize that the vast majority of Americans do not have the wherewithal to withdraw from our system of corporate food. In order to ensure the safety and dignity of all Americans, we must frame the issue of getting real food on the plates of all Americans who want it not as consumer choice, but as REAL social change. When we adopt a consumerist mindset, we see the sort of developments that are happening now-- every corporate supermarket sells its "organic goods" to wealthy consumers, and the less fortunate buy groceries from Wal-Mart or a corner store.

The poor, especially urban poor who often lack reliable access even to a supermarket, need community gardens, better school lunches, etc. We must fuse our well-intentioned food politics to the politics of anti-racism, anti-poverty, anti-gentrification, and anti-capitalism to truly be effective.

Additionally, I find it curious that that this article, like so many other pieces in the wide world of bourgeois food politics, doesn't mention vegetarianism, which is a choice far more accessible to most Americans than "declaring independence" from coporate food. Sustainability, animal welfare, and feeding the world are just pipe dreams so long as those in the developed countries continue to shovel animal flesh down their throats.

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In a way, this is a conservative point of view. This is good because much will stay the same until we get past the illusions of liberals and conservatives and see our common interests and get each others help politically, with a system bigger than either one side.

Many conservatives complain about the control of government over our lives. Liberals complain of the control of corporations over the government. It's really different pieces of the same control system. Big agriculture controls the government more than small farmers, gets subsidies and laws to give them advantages, and works with big media to blah blah blah.

I'm taking back the words liberal and conservative to their true meanings and I hope you do too. Conservative doesn't mean right-wing warmonger gay marriage haters who want to impose on everyone, and liberal doesn't mean deluded eco/animal/gay friendly democrat supporters of mass murderers and terrorists who want to impose their happy delusions on everyone. There seems to be plenty of that on both sides, but that's not what those words mean. It's more like the democrat/republican options we are currently given. Real liberal and conservative values intersect for the common good. No FISA, no war on drugs, no Patriot Act, no big agricultural subsidies. Of course there's a limit to how much laze-fair you want, but right now it's a little fascist, with big corporate government domination of many aspects of our lives, and a media focusing on portraying people who think for themselves as kooks at best, and racist terrorists at worse.

It was conservative mothers and fathers telling their kids butter was better than margarine and real food and exercise better for you than supplements, regardless of what the TV and newspaper decided was the new hot standard for everyone. There are thousands of years of wellness traditions we could learn from, which most modern western medicine extracts its cures from.

We can all retreat into our own conservative/liberal worlds and grow our own food or do co-ops, but until we fix the system, every single dollar we pay taxes on goes to mass murder, overthrowing other governments through covert insurgence, global poverty and big corporate domination of food and medicine. If we act like ostriches about this, many will continue to pat themselves on the back while destroying the world, albeit unwillingly. I hope we take care of each other by addressing the huge amounts of our tax dollars going to distorting the system and our options, but if that's too hard, I guess growing our own food or eating better is better than not, as long as we remember what we're still supporting, which is a system that limits other people's options...

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Since i didn't notice any comments related to this subject, and in conjunction with both the thoughts of the "Carnivore's Dilemma" and that of Polyface farm; I thought it would be worth noting that the corn industry is the biggest culprit of contributing to food insecurity going. Try finding something in the grocery store w/out corn in it. Try living without corn in the foodstuffs you eat.

FWIW, wife and I have had thoughts regarding this and have concluded that the best scenario is going vegan; eating nothing bearing eyes. Since we are not ready to adopt full vegan and continue to consume meat, hunting is the closest way to exist w/our env. Not ready to hunt? Raise your own livestock. Send them to a neighbor for slaughter. If you can't do that then
buy a grass-fed 1/4 from a local cattle-person.

Whatever you decide, it will take your business away from the humongous feed-lots so you won't be contributing to the problem and you'll be both supporting localvore and eating better.

my .02

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As I read this and respond, my canner is sputtering away full of 1/2 pint jars of smoked red salmon my husband and I caught a few days ago, I just pulled two loaves of bread out of the oven and I'm getting ready to head to the greenhouse and harvest a bunch of spinach which I will blanch and freeze for the winter.

Like some of the earlier commentors, my family enjoys a lot better health than our neighbors who eat more "conventional" foods. And we get great family time together participating in the activities of gathering and preparing.

I'm not saying its always easy, but the feeling of security I get knowing EXACTLY where my food comes from and how healthy it is, is well worth every bit of hard work. And I have the added bonus knowing my hard earned money isn't going to the Industrial Food Corps that I despise.

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Just want to chime in that you can find food raised humanely and sustainably, if the farmer/producer has been approved by the Animal Welfare Institute. Our goat cheese dairy just received approval and I would recommend shoppers visit their website www.animalwelfareapproved.org to find farms in your area.
Laurie
www.fairviewfarmdairy.com

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Salatin's proposal is fine, but how is it any different from supply and demand?

The market already provides raw milk and local pot pies in proportion to what consumers are willing to pay for. If people clamor for more or different kinds of food, the food industry will readily adapt, as it always has. One thing it won't do is go away.

Salatin's complaint is really not that with the food industry. It's with millions of shoppers who don't eat what he thinks they should.

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...if you've got the money!

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