Hallelujah! Mark Bittman Puts the USDA, Oprah, and Walmart in Their Places!

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Feb 09, 2011 at 13:06:16 PM PST

The truly healthy alternative to that chip is not a fake chip; it's a carrot. Likewise, the alternative to sausage is not vegan sausage; it's less sausage.

Here's what he says on the Dietary Guidelines and their new acronym, SOFAS (Solid Fats and Added Sugars):

The problem, as usual, is that the agency's nutrition experts are at odds with its other mission: to promote our bounty in whatever form its processors make it. The U.S.D.A. can succeed at its conflicting goals only by convincing us that eating manufactured food lower in SOFAS is "healthy," thus implicitly endorsing hyper-engineered junk food with added fiber, reduced and solid fats and so on, "food" that is often unimaginably far from its origins. When it comes to eating more "good" food, the report is clear, because that can't harm producers. When it comes to eating less of what's "bad," the language turns to "science," because telling us which products to avoid - like a 3,000-calorie fast-food "meal" or a box of low-fat but chemical-laden crackers - would play badly with industry. Instead we're told to avoid SOFAS. Where's that SOFAS aisle?

And Oprah (on her attempt to have her staff go vegan for a week):

Intriguing, except her idea of surviving without meat and dairy - no explanation given for why we should go from too much to none - is to fill your shopping cart with fake versions of both, like meatless chicken breasts and dairy-less cheese.

And Walmart:

We are promised more affordable produce, which undoubtedly means that Wal-Mart will beat the living daylights out of produce suppliers, crushing a few thousand more small farmers. (In fact, what we need is higher-quality and probably more expensive produce, that which is less damaging to the environment, laborers, and consumers, but that gets into the "how do we afford it?" argument, which must wait for another day. Let's leave it that we like Wal-Mart's goal of selling more produce.)

The real problem, again, is Wal-Mart's other promise: "healthier" packaged foods. And whether baked, low-salt chips are "better" than fried ones, is not only arguable - the baked ones are more likely to be chemical-laden - but misses the point which, again, is that real foods are superior in every way.

Bittman is, of course, right. There is no alternative of substitute for eating real food and COOKING real food. But the beef lobby wouldn't be happy if the USDA simply quoted Michael Pollan's "Eat food. Mostly Plants. Not too much." So instead they made up a new acronym to obscure the facts while offending no one.

380,000 Pounds of (Mostly Eaten) Meat Recalled From WalMart

by: JayinPortland

Tue Aug 24, 2010 at 14:17:12 PM PDT

"It's believed most of the affected products have already been consumed," [Gary Mickelson, spokesman for Springdale, Ark.-based Tyson] said. The sandwiches have been removed from store shelves nonetheless.

It wasn't immediately clear how many stores sold the meat products. A spokeswoman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest retailer, could not say where it was sold.

Listeria monocytogenes was detected in a product sample from Georgia.

I thought these people tracked anything and everything, down to the nano-molecule?  But when it comes to tracking who's eaten their potentially poisoned sandwiches, or where they were even sold, it's "I dunno"?

Anyways, if you've eaten one of these (list at the link) sandwiches from WalMart recently, give it back somehow.  They've been recalled...

Blanche Lincoln, Senator of Wal-Mart

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 22:11:09 PM PST

A: I don't know either.

When Blanche Lincoln took over as chair of the Senate Ag Committee, one friend (who knows what he's talking about) assured me that life was pretty much the same at the Ag Committee and that Lincoln was going to do an okay job on the Child Nutrition Reauthorization. After all, Harkin can always take his chairmanship back after the 2010 election -- if Lincoln even keeps her seat! So what does Sen. Lincoln do when she's given the chance to hold a hearing on major child nutrition legislation? Here's the hearing line-up:

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry
Full Committee Hearing Notice
To: All Committee Members

Title: Reauthorization of U.S. Child Nutrition Programs: Opportunities to Fight Hunger and Improve Child Health

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Time: 10:30 a.m.

Place: 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Witness List

Panel 1
The Honorable Tom Vilsack,
Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC

Panel 2

Dr. Margaret Bogle, Executive Director, Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Little Rock, AR

Mr. Rich Huddleston, Executive Director, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Little Rock, AR

Ms. Rhonda Sanders, Executive Director, Arkansas Hunger Alliance, Little Rock, AR

Ms. Jennifer Smith, Director, Compliance, Walmart, Bentonville, AR

As you can see, everyone's from Arkansas. And the last person to testify is from Walmart. WTF?