Agriculture Secretary demands Americans reduce their food portions
We’re here to help you! The Obama administraton’s agriculture secretary on Monday called for Americans to stop wasting food by reducing their food portions.
Vilsack declared that “first and foremost, America can stop wasting food.”
“We can reduce portion sizes, we can have a more informed consuming public,” he said. “The USDA is providing an app that allows you to sort of go online and figure out if something’s been in the refrigerator for a couple of days, is it still OK to eat that type of thing? And if we can’t reduce it or reuse it, then we need to recycle it. So that’s one strategy that we’re working on.”
He was trying to outline ways to solve future food shortage issues as well as landfill shortages. However, this is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, I wonder if he has ever looked at the food that is routinely wasted at every Washington function at the fancy buffet tables that are made available to every participant. I doubt it. I suspect that food alone could probably feed the populations of several third world nations.
Morever, what business is it of his to tell us how much food we are allowed to eat? Since when did the federal government gain this power? Worse, I expect that every proposal that the government will try to solve the problem is only going to make it worse. Instead, the government should just shut up, get out of the way, and allow competition, freedom, and necessity to find solutions, quickly and in the most efficient manner.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
We’re here to help you! The Obama administraton’s agriculture secretary on Monday called for Americans to stop wasting food by reducing their food portions.
Vilsack declared that “first and foremost, America can stop wasting food.”
“We can reduce portion sizes, we can have a more informed consuming public,” he said. “The USDA is providing an app that allows you to sort of go online and figure out if something’s been in the refrigerator for a couple of days, is it still OK to eat that type of thing? And if we can’t reduce it or reuse it, then we need to recycle it. So that’s one strategy that we’re working on.”
He was trying to outline ways to solve future food shortage issues as well as landfill shortages. However, this is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, I wonder if he has ever looked at the food that is routinely wasted at every Washington function at the fancy buffet tables that are made available to every participant. I doubt it. I suspect that food alone could probably feed the populations of several third world nations.
Morever, what business is it of his to tell us how much food we are allowed to eat? Since when did the federal government gain this power? Worse, I expect that every proposal that the government will try to solve the problem is only going to make it worse. Instead, the government should just shut up, get out of the way, and allow competition, freedom, and necessity to find solutions, quickly and in the most efficient manner.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Its a theme:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/leonardo-dicaprio-climate-change-deniers-not-able-hold-014317444.html
Q: How many private jets does it take to get non climate deniers to France?
A: As many as they want.
The elitists (university types) who know far more than others. They really need to be in charge of every aspect of daily life; what we believe, what we think, how to feed ourselves, who to vote for etc etc. I am convinced these folk think this. While I am a Ph.D., it was in chemistry with a solid foundation in physics and math. Just stuff the elitists do not like. If I were to go into the lies the universities perpetuate, we could be here for a long time.
However, remember that it was the elitists who were the proponents of the genocides wherever they happened. Think about the members of the NAZI party. Even in other countries, it is the elitists in charge.
One way to think about this is the higher the degree the more some one knows about less and less. Try convincing a Ph.D. who studied the electrical transmissions across and never junction. If they have not realized that what they learned was how to dig deep then they will be unemployable for anything other than the specific job they did for the degree.
I talked to a professor of biology from Briton. He never took any physics at all. It is no wonder he came up with theories (or supported them) which go against the laws of thermodynamics.
These people are all elitist Statists.
I’m not a tin-hat on all this, but consider; we have 40 million people who are on SNAP (food -assistance) & that’s generally delivered via Electronic Benefit Transfer Cards (EBT).
They have the ability to control what those cards can purchase, down to the SKU, if they want to…
Or consider when they get rid of cash-money and we all have to conduct commerce electronically, with some sort of universal ID & ration-allocation…
(yow.. that sounds sorta Biblical eh? and that’s not my bag, but it is …interesting.)
Robert asked: “Since when did the federal government gain this power?”
Since the Supreme court ruled that if government attaches a tax to it, they may do anything that they want.
It was bad enough that they used the Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to assure fair dealings between states, in order to regulate virtually every commercial action, including what crops are grown on any given farm and whether the farmer may use his own crops to feed his own livestock — which aren’t even commercial transactions.
Now the government directs us as to the contracts we individually must engage in with companies. Under usual circumstances, coercion to enter into a contract invalidates that contract, but not now that our tyrannical government requires such contracts.
All they need to do is place a tax on consuming more than some amount of calories, and viola! They have given themselves permission to do so.
As for the success of the ideas foist upon us by the intellectual elite, ask the hungry school children who are victims of Michelle Obama’s school lunch program. Among other critical mistakes, she failed to take taste preferences and the calorie requirements of athletes into account.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/19/is-congress-finally-about-to-bring-michelle-obamas-school-lunch-rules-to-an-end/
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act indeed.
Robert is right, it seems that every proposal that the government tries in order to solve any problem only makes it worse. Probably because these intellectuals are not nearly as smart as they think they are.
Hell, those brainiacs got outsmarted by individual school children.
This is JUST a suggestion.
– First they make a suggestion.
– Then comes a nudge.
– Next, its a shove.
– Eventually they send someone (never their own precious self) with a gun.
One of the best ways to reduce food waste is to re-evaluate the arbitrary “sell by date” or “Best if used by date”. It is illegal for a market to sell or even to give away food that is “out of date” and the dates stamped on all our products is not based on ANY actual test data. It must be discarded. They used to be able to sell it to pig farms. now it goes to landfills.
Someone once suggested that some of the 80,000 deer killed each year on Pennsylvania’s (alone) roads be collected and dressed out to be donated to food kitchens other government food services. They were not allowed to because they could not verify the time of death.
What do they imagine that the problem is? What happens to food thrown in the garbage? Is it wasted as in leaving planet Earth? Or is it naturLly recycled in the garbage heap?
PeterF– good stuff
We have the same “waste-of-good-deer” thing in Michigan as well.
Programs that receive Federal money, can’t serve them to the “public.”
These “suggestions” are never “voluntary.” It always ends with barbed-wire & death-camps, always & forever.
PeterF, If humans don’t eat the deer, the road kills, someone else will. Nothing is wasted in nature.
Localfluff- you are correct, nothing is ever wasted in nature. What is wasted is the effort to produce, transport, store, and market human edible food. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Yes?
I’ve always maintained that the problem with hazardous/toxic waste isn’t that it is hazardous or toxic, it is that it is wasted. That means that the materials or resources that had to be gathered to produce whatever generated it in the first place will be wasted by not reusing/recycling/repurposing. Whatever activity resulted in the (leftovers?) will have to gather and process new (virgin) materials so that the activity can continue and generate even MORE waste.
Most petroleum byproducts used to be considered hazardous waste until some pocket protector wearing egghead found something to use it for. Propane was just burned off till they invented an entire industry to use it.
The accidental discovery that coal tar based dyes stuck to bacteria and not human cells formed the basis for modern pharmaceuticals. (It helped that the guy whose hobby was playing with microscopes had a father that owned a coal tar plant – new economic opportunity!)
Spent nuclear fuel is treated as radioactive waste because the power industry is not allowed to reprocess it.
Did you know that Platinum is more abundant than U238? Who in their right mind would suggest burning platinum to make electricity?
Sorry, I digress, The scolds in the agriculture department are telling us to “Eat your peas! Don’t you know that children are starving in Biafra?” And the “Blame America First” crowd are only too happy to accept yet another example where western civilization can be made to look bad. (ignoring that with all this “food wasting” our number one health problem is obesity.
The only places where people are actually starving (not “suffering from hunger” like the US) are in the socialist paradises that have universal health care and rules discouraging emigration.
@PeterF, Throwing away food is a rational way to handle it! It would cost more, i.e. need more resources, to make sure that every piece of food produced end up swallowed by some human. It would be like “recycling” the paper fragments from when you punch holes in a paper to put it in a binder. When a house has burned down, you don’t try to repair the char coaled items left over, you throw them away because it is much more rational to manufacture new ones. To “waste” food creates more wealth than to try to put it in someone’s mouth. Recycling food would increase starvation.
Bootleggers, Baptists, and Recyclers
Prof Mike Munger
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/06/13/michael-c-munger/bootleggers-baptists-recyclers
Now that the “War on Drugs” has been lost, we can re-purpose the D.E.A. (Never terminate a government agency!)
Henceforth, the D.E.A. is now the Diet Enforcement Agency
It will mandate:
Caloric controlled substances
Random weight testing
Pre-employment weight screening
Mandatory minimum sentences in boot camps to “retrain” the food addicted
etc.,
This will dovetail wonderfully with obamacare.
Cool Hand Luke (1967) – The Captain’s speech ” What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=452XjnaHr1A