Food Inc.

And now the sister blog to Eric Schlosser's lecture from earlier in the year, on his baby Food Inc. There's not really much I can say that either he or Michael Pollan brought up that wasn't also covered in his film and thus wasn't also probably covered on here.

I do want to say, though, that people may not realize it but we have taken our first step to actually reforming the food industry. How? Universal health care. Now that we have passed a bill for the basic structure of a universal health care, we have started to address the health of the people and how best to keep us healthy. The next step, is tackling the costs and, ultimately, some of the causes of the major health problems in this country, and as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan keep telling us, it's mostly from the food industry and the raging obesity rate in this country.

Now that we have universal health care, that family in the film that has to live on a dollar a piece per meal will be able to afford more because hopefully the cost of medication will have gone down. That goes a long way to putting more money into the people's pocket so that they can actually afford healthy food. (I'm still amazed that anyone would think eating out was healthy at all - but it is getting healthier. Panera Bread is supposed to be one of the healthiest fast food restaurants.)

There is one other thing I would like to mention that isn't necessarily directly related to the movie, but I imagine it helps the meat industry in the same way that the pharmaceutical industry used it to keep costs low: lobbying. I really, really hate lobbying. Too often it drives the policy of this country and that is the very foundation of a corrupt government. I would very much like severe limits to be put on how much you can lobby say, each month, but I know it's not likely these regulations will pass since it's all about lining the pockets of our representatives and senators.

Much like how the food industry has a bunch of high level cronies running many of the institutions that are supposed to keep us safe, money is the driving factor here. Something should be done about it. I have no doubt that something will eventually been done about it too. It probably will not happen in the near future, but I predict a backlash of sorts to eventually hit Washington DC.

At the moment, though, we need to get through the insanity of the Republicans. They really need to level out before we'll be able to make anymore meaningful progress.