America Likes Sick Cows: Health and Food

It's finally time for the opinion nobody wanted. I've run out of all kinds of opinions to have in your direction and this one is the last of the spares I had in my metaphorical pockets. This one all began with a second trip to the first Carl's Jr and the second subsequent set of bowel upset in my Best Beloved and lifemate.

The suspect at the time was the beef. We've since figured out it's in the milkshakes, but... The question of 'why' remains.

The finger of suspicion pointed towards "American Sourced" beefs or, in this case, milk. And the thing with American sourced stuff is... well... the food regulations aren't as strict as they are for us here in Australia.

For instance: We don't have 'fattening pens' here in Aus. Nor do we have slaughterhouse employees paid by the pound processed.

Now, this may upset any vegans in my audience, but I long ago came to the realisation that all life feeds on the death of other things. Circle of life, people. So I figured if I wanted to get ethical about my food, I should probably get the food that had its best possible life before being sacrificed so mine could continue.

That means the animals I consume are free range, to roam the fields and chill and live as naturally as they can in captivity... and the plants get all the natural fertilisers like blood and bone or animal poop. [Yeah, there's no such thing as food that doesn't profit off of animals. Deal with it] And a minimum of pesticides involved in their production.

Neonicontids and the people who use them can die in a hole for all I care.

So. The American way of making food is... not that great. For a start, there's the corn industry making everything they possibly can out of corn. I mean, sure, it was originally a native American crop, but selective breeding has turned it into a massive monoculture with the nutritional value of a cardboard box. When they're not making everything out of corn, they're feeding it to Europe-origin food animals.

The animals in Europe evolved to eat grass, wheat, millet, oats, and other European plants. They cannot digest corn very easily and will develop gut infections if fed large amounts of corn. So the USA, in its infinite wisdom, locks their cows into 'fattening pens' where they don't have the room to scratch themselves, and feed them massive amounts of corn.

Sure, the cows get fat, but they also get huge gut infections as well as fat. Sensible people, you can pick the most logical next move:

1. Stop feeding cows corn
2. Initiate sanitary slaughtering processes
3. Add copious amounts of antibiotics to the feed and thus breed up a whole bunch of antibiotic-resistant superbugs
4. Continue processing meat as fast as possible, but soak it in ammonia bleach so all(?) the bacteria die.

If you picked 1 and 2, then congratulations, you're smarter than the American Meat Industry. They go straight to options 3 and 4 and then wonder why people get sick as a result. Now, it's not an instantaneous poisoning. If it was like that, there would be more outrage about the entire process. No, instead, it's a slow progression that enhances natural ageing processes.

A progression of illnesses, ailments, and susceptibility to progressive diseases like diabetes. It looks totally natural until you take a look at the people for whom this doesn't happen. As far back as a century ago, diabetes wasn't a natural result of ageing. It was a feared disorder and required a special diet to reduce its impact on the sufferer.

[And then some genius figured out how to synthesise insulin and things went downhill fast. Back to the proper topic]

It's no surprise, then, that successive scientists are coming out with studies that say the same thing: The more processed your food is, the worse it is for you. It's something that should be blatantly obvious. You could chew sugarcane pith your entire life and never come to harm. Eat pure icing sugar for two months and -boom- diabetes.

Same thing with Coca leaves. You can chew on them for a cuppa-joe-level boost and never once have a problem. Refine them into cocaine... it's a whole 'nother level of trouble. Same with Crack. It's souped-up cocaine to the Nth level.

Therefore, white flour is the worst, but wholegrain flour is the best. If you're on Keto like me, no flour is even better than that.

It's interesting that of the diets with the better reputations for health [eg: Keto, vegan, vegetarian] are also the ones that necessitate preparation close to 'from scratch'. Sure, you can get some processed stuff, but the restrictions on that help the dieter self-filter.

We have a LOT of pre-processed food on our shelves. Bread, biscuits, chips, cereal... all of it claiming to be good for you in various ways. What we don't often look at is the amount of processing in our meat and dairy. Here in Australia, there's rules about the quality and not the quantity.

In the USA, they much prefer quantity over quality. More is better, faster is better, and when you have slaughterhouse employees chainsawing through internal organs, you have a need to literally clean that shit up from the infected meat. Hence the aforementioned ammonia.

Sure, they clean that up, but the process involves more chemicals which they say are harmless, but I have my doubts. Every time my Beloved goes to the states and eats the burgers there, they get sick. There has to be something alarming going on with that stuff.

But of course US citizens would disagree with me. Well. The ones who aren't vegan or vegetarian, anyway. Because of course the US is the light of civilisation and order in a chaotic world and contains the absolute best of--

I can't keep a straight face. Things are hinky in the States and the quest for profit will literally kill all its citizens before anyone does a darn thing about it. This blog can only warn y'all. I lack the power to do anything more than that.