You had better hope they can, otherwise you and your loved ones are being killed by a grinding profit machine.
Here is the US, business runs criminal and is totally uncontrolled. They can lie, cheat and swindle science as much as they want and they are protected by law. The food industry is just part of that; Big Pharma and the banks are probably the worst. Meanwhile, public officers go after little herb producers and whole food factories.
The US, factually, is run on criminal corruption and bribes, not due process of law, and DEFINITELY not the much-vaunted Constitution. As in the old Wild West days, the “law” here is guns. The FDA thinks nothing of bursting into a doctor’s office or a mom and pop food store and throwing everybody against the wall at gunpoint.
They have subsumed this power to themselves, which does not exist. It’s illegal. But they find it easier to carry out their perverted control mechanisms (on behalf of the people bribing them), without bothering to use troublesome court procedures, which they have found out they might lose.
Now Mark Bittman of the NY Times is asking, could the food industry be persuaded to do it right and still make a profit?
No Mark. It couldn’t.
But they could be FORCED to come into line with reason and the public good, instead of pampering only to the greedy shareholders and corporate executives. That could happen if the US Congress had the will. But Congress, unfortunately, is even more corrupt than business. Congressmen and women are lining their own pockets, through extensive bribes, at the expense of others and their children.
The legislature here seems to be more a process of maneuvering and outsmarting enemies and competition, rather than a process of societal change and improvement. Take, for example, Monsanto using its billions to bribe politicians into passing laws to make growing your own fresh food illegal (yes, it has happened).
The US government is worse than Nazism, because at least the Nazis believed in what they proclaimed. In the US, it is normal to mouth one set of values, while subscribing to another, altogether evil, set of values. And hypocritically attacking others for being wicked, at the same time!
Is There A Public Will To Change?
It’s reasonable to ask, in the USA (with lessons for other developed countries), do people really want to be healthy? They have been told a thousand times or more: eat better or die! Get slimmer, cut down calories, or die! Ignorance of the issues and health implications can NOT be explained away by ignorance. Yet still 70% of the US population is overweight; 40% of the US population is gluttonous and obese.
Well, in a country that’s already bankrupt and will soon have to declare, the USA had better look at saving money through health. Currently treating preventable and curable lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and most cancers is costing the US one seventh (15%) of its gross domestic product. That’s one in every seven dollars spent is money WASTED on diseases that shouldn’t exist, if the medical profession did its job.
A sane national diet policy alone would save the US hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe more. That would mean reining in the food manufacturers and make them accountable for the lies they tell and the filth they sell. But will it change?
Doing nothing isn’t really an option. Cardiovascular disease will cost more than $800 billion annually. Throw in about $276 billion of what they call “real indirect costs,” like productivity, and you have over a trillion.
Similarly, Type 2 diabetes is projected to cost $500 billion a year come 2020, when, if the current trend continues, half of all Americans will have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Can you imagine that?
Currently the annual health bill is $2.3 trillion and it’s set to double and soon triple.
You would think it’s a national emergency to get this right, as quickly as possible. But are they doing nothing? No—it’s far worse than that. Billions of dollars are being spent by lobbyists, trying to PREVENT any change. That’s what is so insane in this country… Whether it’s conservation, health, food, climate change, or whatever: billions of dollars are spent in opposing needed improvements and solutions.
Let me suggest that the United States is a very sick country indeed; and I don’t mean its citizens, I mean its government, laws and corporate culture.