For book club I’m currently reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
It had the potential to be a decent book. The family took a year and lived off only local foods that they knew where it came from.
But the whole book so far is preachy, sanctimonious, irritating, and making me crabby. She’s concerned with the government not doing enough including teaching kids about food vs algebra and the government doing too much by favoring corporations over local farms etc.
So far it’s not occurred to her that what she’s doing, freely, independently is what a lot of people do anymore. We make our food choices based on food.
My staunch Republican step dad has grown his own food forever.
My rich Republican sister has shopped farmers markets forever.
These are choices. In the meantime how can the government be “not be doing enough” yet, “doing too much”? You get the government involved and yes, they do too much because that’s how they get funding. We’re a capitalist country with a capitalist mindset which means “grow”! Next year get more money. That’s the object and it’s part of our government too.
So here you have the new health care bill offering money for parks, playgrounds, farmers markets etc in order to increase healthy lifestyles of people. And here you have the farm bill passed last year by a Democratic congress, subsidizing corn/soy and what amounts to the fast food culture and agribusiness.
Keep the dang government out of things and some people will continue to live on bad food and others will choose a healthier lifestyle. Why can’t we decide for ourselves?? And spend our food dollars where we want to vs spending them on taxes for your food dollars?? What is so wrong with that??
0 Responses to “Health and America”