Washington Post Starts A New Column To Look Into The State Of What Americans Eat

In yesterday's Washington Post Ezra Klein, commenting on the recently released film Food, Inc., writes that "something is wrong with our food production system... Food, Inc. joins In Defense of Food, Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me and dozens of other polemical books and films in the necessary effort to convince us that checking out at the supermarket is, on some level, a political act, with consequences for ourselves, our families and our world."

I dropped out long ago. I was lucky that a girlfriend when I was in college was a health-conscious vegetarian and a great cook. I never made a decision to become a vegetarian... but it's been almost 40 years (not counting, in the old days, here and there, some chicken-- which my doctor says is worse than beef-- and fish). I do remember, much more recently, becoming a raw foodist. The aforementioned doctor gave me a choice: go raw (or, really, rawish) or die from the cancer that had recently been discovered. I learned-- with little fuss and no hesitation-- to love raw food.

When I started, there were no restaurants serving raw cuisine anywhere near my home. The closest was an hour away. Learning to prepare my own meals was a joy all over again. It's so healthy! Now there are several in L.A. I could walk to in a pinch. Actually now I'm in Bali and there are almost as many restaurants serving raw cuisine here as there are in L.A. In fact, the house I rented just outside Ubud is a paradise for a raw foodist with a Vitamix, a dehydrator and a wonderful chef who just made me some raw yogurt from coconut milk!

If I go to a "straight" American grocery store, it might be to get toilet paper, a light bulb or a battery. And that includes Whole Foods, which is maybe 10-20% more health conscious and more organic and less deadly than supermarkets with far less pretension. Ezra isn't talking about me when he points out that Americans "know rather less about our food than our grandparents did. In part, that's because the process of creating food in a lab is less familiar than the process of growing it in a garden. Food producers might have to print ingredient lists, but no one ever passed a law saying we had to understand them. (How do you hydrogenate an oil, anyway?)"

I know I'm not going to live forever, but my cancer is gone, I lost over 40 backbreaking pounds, I feel better than I can remember in decades, I don't get sick, I have more energy and my feet never itch. I don't eat food created in labs and I feel sorry for folks who eat hydrogenated oils.

But there also has been a concerted effort to pull a curtain across the food production system. You see that twice in "Food, Inc." Once, when a farmer who raises chickens for Tyson agrees to allow cameras onto his farm, only to have Tyson quickly call and persuade him to rescind his offer. And again, when Monsanto refuses to comment on, well, anything. It's one thing to be kept out of Dick Cheney's underground lair(s?). But we're eating this stuff.

Ezra interviews the director of Food, Inc. who points to the Inside the Beltway power structure: "Industry, committees on the Hill, the USDA, and very little input from us." He forgot the FDA. I'm sure Ezra will get around to it in his new twice monthly column on the politics of food, but no one mentioned the fount of death-by-eating, Congress' most corrupt enclave, the Blue Dog-dominated House Agriculture Committee. Forget the Medical-Industrial Complex and the banksters when it comes to running wild over their slices of our lives. Compared to AgriBusiness they are each thriving in an oasis of enlightenment, instead of the den of iniquity run by America's chief poisoner, Collin Peterson.