Intentions vs. consequences. This battle rages across time, subject, and culture. It is a fundamental question of philosophy and critical thought. Do “good intentions” justify any action? Do negative consequences impose guilt on actors behaving with the best of intent? This juxtaposition underpins the old saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” These differences are why we differentiate between 1st Degree Murder and Involuntary Manslaughter. Outcomes being equal, intent must be weighed.
But when it comes to the current state of affairs regarding the health and wellness of the American population, and increasingly the entire world, there is no question of equal outcomes. The food, food industry, dietary guidance, government policies, agricultural subsidies, media, insurance industry, and medical industry (and I’m confident I’m leaving a few out) have conspired, with or without intent, to make us fatter, sicker, and more mentally unwell than ever before. The level of intent you attribute to any of the actors involved depends on your level of knowledge, skepticism, cynicism, naïveté, or tolerance for conspiratorial thinking.
As an exercise in critical thinking, let us explore the following Guardian article (linked here - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/04/americans-diet-public-health-food) with an eye toward parsing the language and identifying the ploys used by the author to shape our perception and influence our actions (the very definition, by the way, of propaganda.) I’ll apologize for the length of this article now, but the logical consequences of these types of arguments have monumental impacts on our health, our environments, and our future. This conversation demands diligence.
Starting with the title: “Telling Americans to ‘eat better’ doesn’t work. We must make healthier food.” Who’s doing the telling, and who’s asking to be told anything? The FDA just changed its definition of “healthy” foods. That is a tacit admission that they’ve been getting it wrong for 30 years. I’ll seek my guidance from a source with a better track record, thank you. And why must we “make” food? Nature makes great food if we’ll get out of her way. And should we not assume that where she must be assisted and augmented, the closer to naturally we do so, the better? “Making” food is what put us here in the first place. Do we trust the same actors who made Lucky Charms, and those who then told us they were “heart healthy,” to be the actors to whom we now defer to inform us of their new opinion?
“Diet-related chronic disease is the perennial number one killer in the United States, responsible for more deaths than Covid-19 even at the pandemic’s peak.” 100% correct. A hallmark of effective propaganda. Ground in truth.
“For a healthy population, we must mandate or at least incentivize growing real food for nutrition, not cheap meat and corn and soya beans for junk food.” Sweet, more mandates from people who got it wrong in the first place. Not only that, but these are the people who subsidized the food they decree as guilty in the first place! Why do we have cheap crap? Because the government incentivized those programs. They would only do so if they were ignorant, evil, or purchased. Not the crew I’m looking to for advice, nevertheless mandates, thanks again.
“As omnivores..” To be accepted without debate. I’ll let this lie for now, but there is serious science and lots of evidence that calls this basic assumption into question. If you’ve ever healed yourself with a carnivore diet, you’ll know just how powerful the difference between “can eat it” and “designed to eat it” can be.
“60% of the calories in the food supply are in the form of ultra-processed foods (UPFs, or junk food), which are the primary cause of diet-related diseases.” Again, true.
“It’s not enough to say “eat plant-based”, because most junk food is in fact made from plants.” What a coincidence, why might that be? Because they are inherently unhealthy, devoid of nutrients, and highly profitable?
“The future of food, especially when you add environmental factors, is plant-centric but minimally processed – plants in close to their natural form, in diets that resemble those eaten traditionally by almost everyone in the world until the 20th century.” Not true. Even a little bit. Given the option, most cultures until the industrial revolution prioritized animal-based nutrition. Those that didn’t do so largely out of necessity. And the narrative changes even more dramatically when you consider pre-agricultural revolution. Watch one episode of Alone, Survivor, or Naked and Afraid. You won't see a lot of people crying for joy when they find a leaf. Sure, minimize processing, but prioritize real nutrition. Food that doesn’t have to be fortified to be healthy.
“Junk food and meat are both damaging…” By dictate. Not to be debated, to be assimilated as fact because they said so. Everyone knows it to be true and to deny it is to deny science and common knowledge.
“While eating meat itself isn’t necessarily unhealthy, producing 10 billion animals per year – in the US alone – for consumption has devastating effects on our health and environment.” Not only is eating meat not unhealthy, it is critical to optimum health. But nice try. And yes, commercially produced meat has historically left a lot to be desired when it comes to resource management and husbandry. That is why we support regenerative agricultural practices, holistic management systems, and prioritization of local supply chains. Even the USDA was recently forced to concede that holistic regenerative agricultural practices are critical to restoring soil and ecosystem health, critical to future food requirements. And most of the land used for animal husbandry is marginal land unsuitable to crops, anyways, so the opportunity cost of using that land is minimal.
Conversely, mono-crop agricultural production decimates huge swathes of land, eradicating all competitive plants and coexisting creatures. It demands huge amounts of petroleum-based inputs and chemicals. Drive through farm country after the harvest. Find a sign of life. Go ahead, I’ll wait….
“Although few are in favor of outlawing meat {I love how he sneaks that idea in, “Inception style}, it’s important to move beyond a fetishization of “animal protein” as critical to human health (it is not), and to acknowledge that meat consumption in industrial nations must be reduced.” Couldn’t be more wrong. The massive amounts of supplements required by vegans and vegetarians to meet their nutrient requirements belie this assertion. Animal nutrition is chock-full of nutrients that cannot be found in a plant-only diet. Animal nutrition is of paramount importance to achieve optimum physical and mental health.
“Rectifying the gross historic injustices in US land distribution, which has historically disadvantaged or shut out farmers of color, women and queer farmers, and encouraging new farmers to grow good food well, is also a critical step.” Nice move, tying it to a hot-button topic, seizing the moral high ground, and ensuring that the intent outweighs the likely outcomes.
The rest of the article - dismissing “primitivism,” supporting “innovation,” and “nudging” (you know, not “mandating”) change - is all critical to undermining dissent, marginalizing facts, and appealing to emotion and consumerism.
As much as I would love to rant for pages, I must spare your time. That said, the logical consequences of the arguments the author makes are simply more of the same. Sick people eating mostly plant-based foods, subsidized into profitability, further degrading our soils and ecosystems. Eat less meat, innovate our way out of the problem, and mandate behavior WE ALL ALREADY KNOW IS BEST. You know, the same way we got here in the first place…with the best of intentions.
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