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Labels for ugly things
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| Lilith |
This one was a new one-
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Fo...rity/labels.htm
"Very low food security"
It worries me sometimes that stark realities like starvation and hunger as being desensitive statistical labels. Especially when its 11 or so million people in a comparatively wealthy country, there are some things which shouldnt ever be glossed over like "Ethnic Cleansing" and other such wonders of beauraspeak.
| quote: | | Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomena being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have have a measure of that condition." . . . Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group. |
Last time I checked, hungry was a good a way as any as describing someone who doesnt have any food and wonder why last year when it was called exactly that as "food insecurity with hunger" makes it anymore quantifiable.
Heck, may as well just call them 'Diet Challenged' and offend no one... :( |
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| Moongoose |
| Very low food security doesn't sound nearly as bad as hungry or starving so it makes it easier to dismiss the problem as nonessential. Its also a mildly confusing term. When you hear hungry or starving you know exactly what it means but with "very low food security" you need to stop a bit and figure it out and many will not bother to do so but will just go WTF. |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moongoose
Very low food security doesn't sound nearly as bad as hungry or starving so it makes it easier to dismiss the problem as nonessential. Its also a mildly confusing term. When you hear hungry or starving you know exactly what it means but with "very low food security" you need to stop a bit and figure it out and many will not bother to do so but will just go WTF. |
I agree with both parts (not sounding as bad and confusing)
To be honest, when I hear "very low food security," I think of when there was the fear about terrorists attacking the food supply with chemical weapons that was being reported all over the media a year or two after 9/11. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| That's gross. "We need a term to desensitize people to starvation." |
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| Lilith |
| quote: | for me it would go something like this
- rich nutrition (people have access to enough healthy food )
- poor nutrition (people have access to enough food to survive but not a good variety to lead a healthy life, i.e prone to ill health)
- famine (people do not have access to enough food to survive) |
The one I highlighted in bold is of particular concern to me, when I was in the US a few years ago I basically for the lack of a better description, got very sick from the food. Hyperactivity, insomnia and high blood pressure which gave me headaches. Being the neurotic thing I am I went to the doctor thinking theres something really wrong and he quizzed me on what I'd been eating while I was in the country and what I was eating before I came there, rather than just kicking me out the door with a prescription :D
Real novelty to find a good one sometimes.
Anyhow.
Turns out to be sugar, lots of sugar which I wasnt used to eating as I tend to try and avoid large amounts of it because it makes me hyperactive, can't sleep, headaches, high blood pressure, bad for skin, fat and generally even more vile and evil disposition than I normally have.
"Stay away from sugar"
Staying away from sugar was like trying to sprint through a field of nettles in a short skirt or pants and trying not to get stung.
It's everywhere!
Sugar as in cane and beet sugar is fairly clearly labelled on most commodities but whats a little less obvious is the use of fructose.
Fructose's are sweeteners and of particular note is the high fructose corn syrups which are sometimes labelled as a "HFCS" and this stuff was quite happily it seems to be dumped in virtually everything that was a processed food and some where I never expected it like milk. It's basically sugar, just with a different name for all effects and purposes but it does get converted into fatty acids at a greater rate from memory.
Bit more digging around and it came down to either starving or looking for something organic and expensive to substitute into what I'd normally eat and that wasnt easy either. A lot of what has 'natural' on the label can have HFCS added to it without violating any local laws there and this is where it started getting kind of murky and worrisome as I was reduced to fruit, some kinds of bread and small amounts of meat.
Theres a general preference in the US to use a HFCS over a cane sugar because of the agricultural policy of the government, sugar in fairly much any country you can name is always a heavily subsidised commodity to support the people growing it. So I wasnt terribly suprised to find a lot of it wandering around, the main provider of such things like processed farm produce, (flour and things like HFCS) is a company called Archer Daniels Midland which I was passingly familiar with from commodities trading.
This is kind of interesting too-
http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_politic...len_Andreas.php
Seems to keep a lot of politicians in his good books, which in turn seems to pay off in the long run because they allow you to sell products in an environment where laws are favourable to you selling a lot of them.
"Interesting..."
(Damn, politicians are cheap, I'm going to buy me one as a pet! $5000 a year and maybe he'll even mow my lawns, wash the car and dance for my plea... eew no maybe not that last one)
Would it be too presumptuous for me to say, a great deal of poor nutrition stems back to governments allowing companies to produce food which has added ingrediants that arent healthy to the population in such large amounts?
I dont think so, seeing as sugars and salts get labelled as being the prime evils of heart disease, obesity and other diseases like diabetes. It's also a very different version of what I generally used to take for granted as being 'natural' as well. Change the label and it ceases to be as demonised. |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lilith
It's also a very different version of what I generally used to take for granted as being 'natural' as well. Change the label and it ceases to be as demonised. |
'Natural'. 'Organic'. 'Pure'.
Tongue in cheek marketing terms from a field that has no government regulations.
That leaves customers in an ad infinitum state of Caveat emptor because the food industry appears to keep moving the bulls eye when really it was all smoke and mirrors to begin with.
The target remains however we just have to keep becoming educated in the game of food. :mad: |
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| Lilith |
Natural- It came from something living once!
Organic- It came from something on or in the earth once!
Pure- After what we did to it, ain't nothing else in here!
:haha:
Ok, all joking aside, the dangers of to much sugar consumption are fairly well known. You get fat, your teeth rot and it can cause diabetes in people and that in its own way spins off a whole plethora of things which governments also have to subsidise, well some governments have to subsidise in terms of health care later on. Course, theyre not paying for it out of their own pockets but we get socked with it at tax time to fund the currently blooming crisis of obesity and diabetes in the developed world.
The effects on kids though is quite heartbreaking, often it wont be the parents fault as not everybody is as picky about what they eat or able to pick the best for their families. So your kids end up fat, suffer from nutritional deficientcies and childhood diabetes.
Not to mention it makes them horrible little monsters, I used to ban cordials and so on when looking after my little cousins because they'd turn into hyperactive monsters with the attention span of a goldfish and the screaming... :crazy:
(And that was before aunty Lilith got out the strap and started screaming too. They're all mostly grown up now and still fear me to this day :haha: )
Makes me wonder how many kids end up being loaded up with ADD medication by ignorant quacks when all thats needed is a change in diet, instead just load them up with tranq's and feed them anything, they wont notice! |
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