[manmal]

You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice ("The problem is..."). Either you allow arguments by others (you are no biochemist either I guess?), or you stick to it, and leave it where it is - there is no scientific consensus about what "is the problem in our society". We can only argue about that, without facts.

I can't find the paper, but I read that high insulin levels are the new devil. If that's true, then bread (remember, mass production started only during the industrial revolution), corn, and especially sugar, are to be restricted as much as possible. Alas, you in the US have a massive corn lobby (real sugar became scarce during the Cuba crisis), so it would be difficult to do away only with corn.

IMHO the root of the problem is not that there's too much food, but the industrialization of the food processing industry. Everything has both advantages and disadvantages - we can choose from 1000 bread sorts, but many of them are heavily processed and freed from all micronutrients. And like every system, the food industry can go haywire, and I think it already has. E.g., look at what kind of chickens KFC breeds for use in their products. Food has therefore become a comodity, and people treat it like that. We are just not used to paying large parts of our income for food anymore, but we really should be - it's an essential part of life, just like housing. They key is quality, and being nice to both animals and environment is important.

[MDS100]

Regarding Insulin, you'll probably love reading this: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Agree, but eating healthy isn't that much more expensive than eating processed foods. Or at least doesn't have to if you buy the right things (bulk frozen veggies, meat etc.).

[manmal]

Oh, by healthy I also mean that the animals I eat have eaten healthy :) E.g., beef quality is really bad if cattle are not fed grass, but corn and soy instead (or animal meal, shudder). Same with chicken/turkey which are fed mostly corn instead of grains, seeds, worms, etc.

If organic is too expensive for you (here in Austria organic farms have a huge financial overhead because of cert. programmes -> products are almost twice as expensive), you can still by meat of good quality, e.g. grass-fed beef. Because you will find residuals or even large quantities of their fodder virtually everywhere - mostly stored in the fat.

Another thing is the way animals are kept - if they are kept in crowded rooms, then you need antibiotics for them to survive until they are slaughtered. Those antibiotics residuals reportedly act like estrogens in our bodies, reducing sperm count and testosterone level. That's the actual reason why I consider organic meat the only meat worth buying - at least in Austria, organic means there is a minimum of available space for animals, they have to be fed a certain percentage of natural fodder, they must not be fed antibiotics, etc.

[niels_olson]

>You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice

You want to stick around for the decade of training in between?

The 'stain of Earl K Butts' is the outrageous corn and grain subsidy.

That really is the biggest problem, by a massive factor. TV is probably second.