{"id":977,"date":"2012-07-03T07:23:57","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T11:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/?p=977"},"modified":"2012-07-03T07:34:36","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T11:34:36","slug":"the-least-patriotic-food-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/the-least-patriotic-food-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The least patriotic food in America?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the headline in the <em>Washington Post<\/em> and their answer is, yes, the hamburger.\u00a0 The article is in four parts: the burger itself, the bun, the fixings and equality.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line is that fresh, nutritious, real food has increasingly been reserved for the more affluent.\u00a0 The poor are left with the artificial, cheaper, processed food&#8230;dressed up with salt and flavorings, packaging, and advertising.\u00a0 It was a problem Thomas Jefferson worried about 200 years ago, noting that the wealthy ate vegetables and the poor did not.<\/p>\n<p>The major points in the article:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The burger.\u00a0 85% of all the burger Americans eat come from just four giant food processors.\u00a0 They control the market and they control the farmers and ranchers prices.\u00a0 Since a cow needs to be slaughtered within a two-week window, the food giants can easily force the price down and force the farmer off the land.<\/li>\n<li>The bun.\u00a0 Walmart sells 25% of all the buns made in America.\u00a0 Simple economics has forced the consolidation of our food supply and, while that has kept consumer prices down, it has come at a cost of\u00a0 &#8220;cheapening&#8221; the food.<\/li>\n<li>The fixings.\u00a0 Just about everything we put on a hamburger has to be picked by hand.\u00a0 That means immigrant labor at near starvation wages.\u00a0 We often hear about how &#8220;expensive&#8221; vegetables are at a roadside stand.\u00a0 That&#8217;s because that farmer is trying to make a living and feed his family.<\/li>\n<li>Equality.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to deride the poor for the food choices they make&#8230;and their resultant obesity.\u00a0 But price does dictate their choices and they do unconsciously eat the volume they do and sugar drinks and salted chips\u00a0to try to satisfy their body&#8217;s demand for nutrition.\u00a0 You can certainly be fat&#8230;.and starving.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jefferson wrote to Madison that &#8220;the small landholders are the most precious part of the state&#8221;.\u00a0 There, and elsewhere, he argued that democracy would only survive if small farmers survived.<\/p>\n<p>As recently as 70 years ago, the small farmer&#8217;s annual income was just about the same as the average doctor or lawyer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the headline in the Washington Post and their answer is, yes, the hamburger.\u00a0 The article is in four parts: the burger itself, the bun, the fixings and equality. The bottom line is that fresh, nutritious, real food has increasingly been reserved for the more affluent.\u00a0 The poor are left with the artificial, cheaper, processed food&#8230;dressed up with salt and flavorings, packaging, and advertising.\u00a0 It was a problem Thomas Jefferson worried about 200 years ago, noting that the wealthy ate vegetables and the poor did not. The major points in the article: The burger.\u00a0 85% of all the burger Americans eat come from just four giant food processors.\u00a0 They control the market and they control the farmers and ranchers prices.\u00a0 Since a cow needs to be slaughtered within a two-week window, the food giants can easily force the price down and force the farmer off the land. The bun.\u00a0 Walmart sells 25% of all the buns made in America.\u00a0 Simple economics has forced the consolidation of our food supply and, while that has kept consumer prices down, it has come at a cost of\u00a0 &#8220;cheapening&#8221; the food. The fixings.\u00a0 Just about everything we put on a hamburger has to be picked by hand.\u00a0 That means immigrant labor at near starvation wages.\u00a0 We often hear about how &#8220;expensive&#8221; vegetables are at a roadside stand.\u00a0 That&#8217;s because that farmer is trying to make a living and feed his family. Equality.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to deride the poor for the food choices they make&#8230;and their resultant obesity.\u00a0 But price does dictate their choices and they do unconsciously eat the volume they do and sugar drinks and salted chips\u00a0to try to satisfy their body&#8217;s demand for nutrition.\u00a0 You can certainly be fat&#8230;.and starving. Jefferson wrote to Madison that &#8220;the small landholders are the most precious part of the state&#8221;.\u00a0 There, and elsewhere, he argued that democracy would only survive if small farmers survived. As recently as 70 years ago, the small farmer&#8217;s annual income was just about the same as the average doctor or lawyer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,8,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-nutrition","category-on-the-soap-box"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}