Big Fat Liars, Part 2
In our last episode we learned that the MainStream Media are just now coming around to admitting the fact that our government has been feeding us the wrong stuff for decades (literally and figuratively). My contention was that they were just waiting for the Democrats responsible for this mass poisoning to get to safe ground so they can rip into the Bush administration. (Taubes’ article ran in the NYT Magazine in July of ‘02.)
The MSM aren’t interested in criticizing something unless they can somehow blame it on the Republicans. (Take for example the issue of sexual harassment: During Clarence Thomas’ hearings, the issue of a superior inviting a subordinate out socially was treated like an archaic institution of torturous oppression that had to be dragged to light and destroyed. But for some reason, in less than a decade, Bill Clinton’s rape victims were snubbed by a dismissive media who were no longer interested in what someone does in his private life.)
Have a Coke and a smile.
So now that a Republican sits in the Oval, it is safe for the Times to print a story describing how, years ago, the U.S. Government pontificated ill advice which led to a thirty-year period of weight gain in America. The media’s implication is that Bush and Cheney are killing us on purpose. The truth is that it was a Democrat who sought nutritional counsel, a Democrat who proposed those fallacious recommendations, and a Democrat who made it policy.
With the exception of Republican President G.H.W. Bush, who appointed future Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the mostly cosmetic position of Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and who oversaw the introduction of the USDA’s first “Food Pyramid” in 1992, it has been liberal Dems who have aided and abetted the public poisoning of the last four decades.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Peace Corps helped send America’s bounty around the world, delivering tons of niacin-enriched farina to protein-starved under-developed countries. Was it a good thing? Certainly, little bad can be seen in the generosity of the American people giving away food. But we could ask if any of those cultures are better off today, having survived for two generations thanks in large part to western grain shipments.
Kennedy’s plan was to export the goods America had to offer in an effort to strengthen our image with our would-be adversaries. Billions of dollars' worth of American food has been given away in the name of humanitarianism to our sworn enemies over the decades, and what have we to show for it? I mean, besides Ground Zero? So gloriously has America’s image flourished internationally that when generous Americans yet again donated millions in supplies to victims of the recent tsunami disaster, there was a rumor that relief workers had to make sure no U.S. flags were worn on their sleeves, lest they would offend the delicate feelings of the gentle practitioners of the religion of peace. We couldn’t dare let the beneficiaries of our exported culture believe that we were exporting our culture. That would be mean.
Kennedy apparently had the idea that if we gave free food to the U.S.S.R. they would no longer try to annihilate us. True to liberal tradition, he was wrong. The cream-of-wheat had no sooner left the dock than Russia began building nuclear missile silos on the island nation of Cuba. Kennedy’s solution to the stand-off was to stop sending free stuff to Cuba. For the four-plus decades since, Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist self-proclaimed President-for-Life Fidel Castro has sulked about America’s stubborn refusal to send Havana more free stuff. If only we’d end our ‘blockade’ against our socialist neighbor, Castro’s people could be free to, well, try to destroy us again.
“Please don’t kill us and we’ll give you some rice.”
JFK’s Food For Peace Program: It’s Not Just for Foreigners Anymore
After helping the Nanny State solve the problems of world hunger, McGovern was awarded for his success and was assigned the task of properly feeding his own people. McGovern’s committee was very successful achieving their goal: Using tax dollars to deliver fattening, artery-clogging, insulin-stimulating bleached flour and hydrogenated vegetable shortening to America’s poor urban and rural communities.
The poorest among these target areas was, and still is, Native peoples who generally as a race carry a genetic propensity for insulin sensitivity. There is a tribe in Arizona 50% of whom are diabetic. Some studies show that some tribes of Native Americans, Inuit and Native Alaskans who live beyond the age of 45 acquire Type II diabetes at a rate of between 40% and 70%. McGovern’s brainchild sent them free white flour, shortening and sugar. The only protein included in Uncle Sam’s care packages was powdered milk.
Admittedly, McGovern’s war on domestic malnutrition was one of the most successful programs to come out of Washington, despite its shortcomings cited above. By the mid-Seventies the Committee was preparing to wrap up their work, having succeeded in their endeavors. Of course that would mean dozens of federal employees would have to be reassigned or let go from their positions. But before they cleaned out their desks, they decided that America also had a weight problem they could fix.
McGovern: Poster Child of Insufficient Funds
Time was running out for the task force so they had to work quickly, had to take a couple shortcuts. At the time, and for a short time, McGovern and his wife were on the Pritikin Program, a severely low-fat, high-carbohydrate plan. The Committee decided to create a set of recommendations based on their boss’ diet, and then to assemble a panel of experts, scientists, doctors, nutritionists who would be asked to validate the merits of this low-fat plan. The estimated cost of such a thorough, well-supported study came in at a billion dollars. So they cut corners.
A panel of consultants were chosen who, it was understood, already agreed with the Committee’s low-fat thesis, and would quickly sign off on it. A couple days’ worth of neat, cosmetic hearings cinched it. Nick Mottern, a newspaperman with a penchant for labor advocacy, was selected to write the paper.
Of these shoddy hearings, Dr. Barry Sears writes, “It’s only in the murkier areas of nutrition…that consensus conferences are organized by the government to approve its actions.” (The Omega Rx Zone, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 155.)
We Americans have, as a people, been growing fatter for the past thirty years. Coincidence? No. Not at all. As Walter Willet, Harvard Medical School’s Public Health Dept. chair, is quoted by Taubes, “Something else bad is happening.”
Summary For The Not-Yet Bored
So. Democrat President Kennedy hires liberal Democrat failed candidate McGovern to study poverty in the world, and allocates millions to implement McGovern’s plan to send all the wrong food all over the world. Democrat President Johnson tasks McGovern to form a committee to eradicate malnutrition in the country, and allocates millions to give away for free the same wrong food to poorer Americans.
After nearly eight years of ‘research’ and nothing to show for it, Republican President Ford reminds McGovern that something productive is actually expected, and he had better come up with some nutrition recommendations before his committee is disbanded. For a whopping 2 days they hear testimony, then hire a labor-union propaganda journalista to ignore the scientific data and write his infamous report, “Dietary Goals for the United States”. Fifteen years later they would unleash the ‘Food Pyramid’, along with more confusing government mandated nutrition labels, an expensive bit of bureaucracy trumped only by its reincarnation in 2005. (See my earlier post, below).
During this period, Robert Atkins, a doctor presenting a contrary recommendation to the public, was ridiculed. Congress actually sat him down like a kid in front of the principal’s desk to explain himself. He did; they didn’t take heed.
Now we know better. The government surely knew all along, and so Republican President Bush is to blame.
The frustration caused by the McGovern’s arbitrary low-fat recommendations is dealt with in various intensities.
William Stone III types:
Kind of radical, Stone, but we hear you. We want to do something about it. Even the MSM wants to. But it’s proven very hard to un-ring McGovern’s bell. Willet is also quoted by Sears: “You really need a high level of proof to change the recommendations, which is ironic, because they never had a high level of proof to set them.” (Ibid., p. 156)
Don’t ya think?
The MSM aren’t interested in criticizing something unless they can somehow blame it on the Republicans. (Take for example the issue of sexual harassment: During Clarence Thomas’ hearings, the issue of a superior inviting a subordinate out socially was treated like an archaic institution of torturous oppression that had to be dragged to light and destroyed. But for some reason, in less than a decade, Bill Clinton’s rape victims were snubbed by a dismissive media who were no longer interested in what someone does in his private life.)
Have a Coke and a smile.
So now that a Republican sits in the Oval, it is safe for the Times to print a story describing how, years ago, the U.S. Government pontificated ill advice which led to a thirty-year period of weight gain in America. The media’s implication is that Bush and Cheney are killing us on purpose. The truth is that it was a Democrat who sought nutritional counsel, a Democrat who proposed those fallacious recommendations, and a Democrat who made it policy.
With the exception of Republican President G.H.W. Bush, who appointed future Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the mostly cosmetic position of Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and who oversaw the introduction of the USDA’s first “Food Pyramid” in 1992, it has been liberal Dems who have aided and abetted the public poisoning of the last four decades.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Peace Corps helped send America’s bounty around the world, delivering tons of niacin-enriched farina to protein-starved under-developed countries. Was it a good thing? Certainly, little bad can be seen in the generosity of the American people giving away food. But we could ask if any of those cultures are better off today, having survived for two generations thanks in large part to western grain shipments.
Kennedy’s plan was to export the goods America had to offer in an effort to strengthen our image with our would-be adversaries. Billions of dollars' worth of American food has been given away in the name of humanitarianism to our sworn enemies over the decades, and what have we to show for it? I mean, besides Ground Zero? So gloriously has America’s image flourished internationally that when generous Americans yet again donated millions in supplies to victims of the recent tsunami disaster, there was a rumor that relief workers had to make sure no U.S. flags were worn on their sleeves, lest they would offend the delicate feelings of the gentle practitioners of the religion of peace. We couldn’t dare let the beneficiaries of our exported culture believe that we were exporting our culture. That would be mean.
Kennedy apparently had the idea that if we gave free food to the U.S.S.R. they would no longer try to annihilate us. True to liberal tradition, he was wrong. The cream-of-wheat had no sooner left the dock than Russia began building nuclear missile silos on the island nation of Cuba. Kennedy’s solution to the stand-off was to stop sending free stuff to Cuba. For the four-plus decades since, Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist self-proclaimed President-for-Life Fidel Castro has sulked about America’s stubborn refusal to send Havana more free stuff. If only we’d end our ‘blockade’ against our socialist neighbor, Castro’s people could be free to, well, try to destroy us again.
“Please don’t kill us and we’ll give you some rice.”
JFK’s Food For Peace Program: It’s Not Just for Foreigners Anymore
After helping the Nanny State solve the problems of world hunger, McGovern was awarded for his success and was assigned the task of properly feeding his own people. McGovern’s committee was very successful achieving their goal: Using tax dollars to deliver fattening, artery-clogging, insulin-stimulating bleached flour and hydrogenated vegetable shortening to America’s poor urban and rural communities.
The poorest among these target areas was, and still is, Native peoples who generally as a race carry a genetic propensity for insulin sensitivity. There is a tribe in Arizona 50% of whom are diabetic. Some studies show that some tribes of Native Americans, Inuit and Native Alaskans who live beyond the age of 45 acquire Type II diabetes at a rate of between 40% and 70%. McGovern’s brainchild sent them free white flour, shortening and sugar. The only protein included in Uncle Sam’s care packages was powdered milk.
Admittedly, McGovern’s war on domestic malnutrition was one of the most successful programs to come out of Washington, despite its shortcomings cited above. By the mid-Seventies the Committee was preparing to wrap up their work, having succeeded in their endeavors. Of course that would mean dozens of federal employees would have to be reassigned or let go from their positions. But before they cleaned out their desks, they decided that America also had a weight problem they could fix.
McGovern: Poster Child of Insufficient Funds
Time was running out for the task force so they had to work quickly, had to take a couple shortcuts. At the time, and for a short time, McGovern and his wife were on the Pritikin Program, a severely low-fat, high-carbohydrate plan. The Committee decided to create a set of recommendations based on their boss’ diet, and then to assemble a panel of experts, scientists, doctors, nutritionists who would be asked to validate the merits of this low-fat plan. The estimated cost of such a thorough, well-supported study came in at a billion dollars. So they cut corners.
A panel of consultants were chosen who, it was understood, already agreed with the Committee’s low-fat thesis, and would quickly sign off on it. A couple days’ worth of neat, cosmetic hearings cinched it. Nick Mottern, a newspaperman with a penchant for labor advocacy, was selected to write the paper.
Of these shoddy hearings, Dr. Barry Sears writes, “It’s only in the murkier areas of nutrition…that consensus conferences are organized by the government to approve its actions.” (The Omega Rx Zone, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 155.)
We Americans have, as a people, been growing fatter for the past thirty years. Coincidence? No. Not at all. As Walter Willet, Harvard Medical School’s Public Health Dept. chair, is quoted by Taubes, “Something else bad is happening.”
Summary For The Not-Yet Bored
So. Democrat President Kennedy hires liberal Democrat failed candidate McGovern to study poverty in the world, and allocates millions to implement McGovern’s plan to send all the wrong food all over the world. Democrat President Johnson tasks McGovern to form a committee to eradicate malnutrition in the country, and allocates millions to give away for free the same wrong food to poorer Americans.
After nearly eight years of ‘research’ and nothing to show for it, Republican President Ford reminds McGovern that something productive is actually expected, and he had better come up with some nutrition recommendations before his committee is disbanded. For a whopping 2 days they hear testimony, then hire a labor-union propaganda journalista to ignore the scientific data and write his infamous report, “Dietary Goals for the United States”. Fifteen years later they would unleash the ‘Food Pyramid’, along with more confusing government mandated nutrition labels, an expensive bit of bureaucracy trumped only by its reincarnation in 2005. (See my earlier post, below).
During this period, Robert Atkins, a doctor presenting a contrary recommendation to the public, was ridiculed. Congress actually sat him down like a kid in front of the principal’s desk to explain himself. He did; they didn’t take heed.
Now we know better. The government surely knew all along, and so Republican President Bush is to blame.
The frustration caused by the McGovern’s arbitrary low-fat recommendations is dealt with in various intensities.
William Stone III types:
Via Unconstitutional, immoral policy, government is making us fat. It teaches our children lies about how to stay healthy. Its policies encourage health industries to advise and promote lifestyles that are actively unhealthy.
Low-fat dieting is a fairy tale. It is a myth. It is an urban legend. It is an old wives' tale. It has no more scientific basis than the Flat Earth Theory.
Yet, massive parts of our lives -- education, food production, nutrition, medicine,exercise, legal practices, government agencies -- are entirely based on it. …
…Government's notions of what constitutes a healthy diet turn out to be complete fiction. The only way to solve this problem is to remove government from health policy forever.
Kind of radical, Stone, but we hear you. We want to do something about it. Even the MSM wants to. But it’s proven very hard to un-ring McGovern’s bell. Willet is also quoted by Sears: “You really need a high level of proof to change the recommendations, which is ironic, because they never had a high level of proof to set them.” (Ibid., p. 156)
Don’t ya think?
posted by adam | 1:59 PM
1 Comments:
Great blog I hope we can work to build a better health care system as we are in a major crisis and health insurance is a major aspect to many.
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