Food Inc.

Some other good books are coming out from Chelsea Green. I just got a batch of new ones, and two of them are about food.

>>I see a couple issues here: one, the fact that heavily-processed foods are far cheaper than healthy, whole foods;<<

Yes. That requires wide-scale effort to fix. However, there are some places where whole foods are cheaper, like a good food co-op. They can use their bargaining power to cram down the prices on bulk items.

>> and two, big corporations are doing things to the food supply (adding chemicals, genetically modifying raw foods) and trying their darndest not to let the public know about it.<<

Yeah, that really infuriates me: forcing people to buy stuff they would not choose to buy by removing the information that makes it possible to make informed decisions. The only way to avoid that nonsense is to buy nothing but organic -- which is very limiting and very expensive.

>> It's hard to work against that kind of machine, except little by little.<<

True, but it's kinda fun to shine a light on things and watch the cockroaches run for cover.

>>The trouble comes when corporations succeed in keeping things off their labels -- and when my kids are so indoctrinated (and their tastebuds trained) to love the really-bad-for-you foods.<<

Get them to read the labels, or read the labels to them. Do you know what this is? Do you know what it does? No? Then why are you eating it? After a while, they'll probably move beyond "I dunno, I just like it," and really start thinking about what they eat and why.

You might also talk about human evolution -- our bodies "like" sugar and fat because those are high energy foods, and historically we couldn't always find enough calories. But in today's world, that once-good instinct is a boobytrap. The superegg discussion is also a good one, about how a hyped-up fake signal can outcompete a lesser real signal. Red candies are tempting because they look like red berries, but the berries are better for you.