Category Archives: Food

In Bad to the Last Drop Tom Standage gets to the point: $46 billion is spent every year on bottled water, substantially all of that in America and other developed nations where the tap water is indistinguishable by taste and insufficient to avoid any potential contaminants by volume. For less than a quarter of that every single human being on the planet can have safe water and sanitation, the lack of which kills millions and sickens many more.

In the world of Star Trek Rick Berman is a name held in deep content by a large faction of the franchise’s biggest fans, blamed for the banal, money over art productions delivered since the midpoint of The Next Generation‘s run. In Washington, DC, though, there’s another Rick Berman and this one seems to be doing work that would put the other to shame.

Striking Back at the Food Police looks at the efforts of Berman’s lobbying group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, and I read it twice, some parts more, without understanding how even with what are presumably very generous fees Berman can utter such quotes as this with straight face:

“You can’t accommodate these people,” he said, referring to archnemesis Michael Jacobson and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “They’re not going away. If you create some healthier products, they’ll go after all the unhealthy ones you still make.”

I know. Tragic how foolish men like Jacobson want to help the rest of us eat food that’s good for us. Not because of an emotional connection to animals like the PETA crew but to help us all avoid an early death or diseased final years.

Another Times article, In Overhaul of Social Security, Age Is the Elephant in the Room, points out that we’re living longer. As the title indicates the direct concern is for the future financial health of social security payments and the inability of the Congress and Administration to strike a deal. Hell, the Democrats won’t even come to the table until Bush takes private accounts off it.

I couldn’t help thinking of the foolishness of the DC Berman and his corporate backers (regardless of the name you didn’t think he was getting paid by freedom loving individuals, did you?) in their shortsighted pursuit of profit. After all, people have to eat and a healthy customer eats longer than a sick one. So why not develop and sell food that’s not full of crap like high fructose corn syrup and refined white sugar?