Obama, Bush, Romney, Clinton: "Let Them Eat Cake" Politicians on Organics

Who eats organic fruits and vegetables? Top U.S. political leaders, both liberals and conservatives, but most desperately don't want you to know.

Many, many D.C. politicians select the highest-quality, healthiest foods for themselves, but insist that far lower quality fare (often grown by their donors) is good enough for the rest of America. 

Wanting to eat organic produce is understandable, given that organics are:

• Not genetically modified.
• Free of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides
• Free of antibiotics
• Free of chemical fertilizers, plant steroids
• Not prematurely ripened with chemical gases

Understandable, since these bureaucrats have likely heard that the EPA, which is part of the U.S. Agriculture Department, "considers 60% of herbicides, 90% of fungicides, and 30% of insecticides potentially cancer-causing."

Or maybe our leaders have heard the dire results of research done on this new experiment called genetically modified foods. "The results range from intestinal damage, allergies, liver or pancreatic problems, testicular cellular changes, tumors, and even death in the experimental animals."  (Source - Care2.com)

So who are these "let them eat cake" politicians who quietly quaff organic goods while foisting legislation and federal agency appointees on us to aggressively force non-organic food on American homes? 

Supermarket Chickens Laced with Bacteria, Feces, Chemicals

Chickens are supermarket bargains for the budget-conscious, often priced as low as $3 and rarely more than $7 per semi-frozen bird or package of choice parts. Shoppers feel relieved to find a source of inexpensive protein for delicious, popular dishes. 

I used to stock-up on chickens at cheap prices and freeze them for future use.  Five years ago, I roasted at least two supermarket birds weekly to feed my then family of three.  

No more. Today, I'm nauseous at the thought of buying, handling, and particularly serving these contaminated industrial food products. 

What changed? I got educated on the hidden, ugly, unhealthy realities of industrial-produced chickens. Despite "natural" appearances, they're a particularly disgusting food product of the industrial fake-food industry. 

Per Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine:

"'More and more people are realizing that chicken is anything but a healthful, wholesome food,' says Joseph Gonzales R.D., L.D., a registered dietitian with the Physicians Committee. 'Adding grilled chicken to your salad or sandwich can actually add carcinogens, chlorine, cholesterol, superbugs—and worst of all, feces.'"

Life Magazine on America's Bounty of Food: The Way We Were and Could Be Again

"Food, perhaps alone among the riches of the earth, pleases all the senses of man," exuded the November 22, 1962 Life magazine.  

"Taste, of course, and smell. Vision? Behold it. Sound? Who has not placed a crisp vegetable on a pine board and heard the delicious noise of a keen knife cleaving through leaf and stalk? And touch? In this picture, it is texture most of all that delights: the rough and smooth, soft and firm, all invite the hand."

"Could odor arise from these cold pages, how sweetly would they fill the air! The tang of apple, pear and such small fruit would drift above the smell of sun-warm strawberries, blending with the rich scent of melons."

Distinguished British historian and Oxford professor Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975) believed that the health of a nation is only as good as the health of its diet, and that a downward spiral in the quality of a nation's diet foretold a nation's cultural and political death spiral. Toynbee illustrated his hypothesis with innumerable examples of fallen countries throughout civilization and pre-civilization. 

In 1962, the United States was a robust and growing nation that enjoyed a healthy, balanced diet, much of it still grown by local family farmers (although food-chain industrialization and commercial pesticide use had begun in earnest). 

Observed Life editors, "After the lush variety of the modern American diet, as shown in this issue of Life, it is rather unsettling to see how the rest of mankind eats."

In the 50 years since this 1962 Life magazine, Americans have gullibly adapted the fake-food message of greedy U.S. industrial manufacturers that only real-food facsimiles oozing with fat, sugar, and salt are culinary nirvana.   (For details, click here for "Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans.)

The results have been truly disastrous for U.S. public health.  Many historians today detect Toynbee's cogent hypothesis to be sadly observable in 21st century America. Today, "it is rather unsettling" to see how America eats. 

It doesn't have to be this way, friends.  We can return to healthy, deeply delicious diets. And the U.S. can easily return to being the world's envy with "the miracle of our plenty" grown by American farmers.

Just yesterday, I picked up my family's weekly carton of freshly-picked produce from California family farms... a huge carton for the bargain price of $37, overflowing with:

• Three kinds of tomatoes: large red, cherry, and heirloom
• Four large cucumbers
• Half a dozen sweet peppers
• A watermelon
• Eight ears of sweet corn
• Two eggplants
• Two generous heads of romaine lettuce
• Four zucchini
• A plethora of the sweetest stone fruit imaginable: peaches, nectarines, apricots

My carton could have graced the cover of Life's 1962 "Bounty of Food" issue.  

One inexpensive trip to the grocery store, plus to the butcher for perhaps three nights' of better-quality meat, and my home is set for a week.  Both our budget and healthy eating habits are in top shape.  And we feel better! Much better... 

In 2013, the United States is not nearly the robust and growing nation it was in 1962, nor does it  universally enjoy either a healthy, balanced diet or even passably acceptable public health.  

According to Professor Toynbee's theories, we could start to return our great country to its former glory and world preeminence by first cleaning up our own lives and ways. 

That starts with each of us taking responsibility for our own personal health, and our food choices. 

That starts with ignoring the false message of industrial fake-food corporations that fatty, sugary, and salty highly-processed foods are the stuff of the good life. 

They're not. They're the stuff of bad personal and public health, bad federal food policies, and quite possibly, the implosion of great cultures and nations. 

First Fourth of July Meals: Finest Ingredients, Not Hot Dogs or Other Chemical-Laced Food

The first Fourth of July celebration occurred on July 4, 1777 at the City Tavern in Philadelphia, when members of the Continental Congress gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  

The City Tavern website proclaims:

"The Tavern was built 'for the convenience and credit of the city' by a group of eminent Philadelphians who felt that their hometown deserved a fine tavern which reflected its status as the largest, most cosmopolitan city in British North America... "

Because leaders of our fledgling nation were dining at one of Philadelphia's best public houses, the first meal marking the birth of the United States was elaborate and of the finest ingredients.  

"Current tavern chef Walter Staib says the menu likely was based on the recipes of the British culinary authority Hannah Glasse,whose book 'The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy' dictates not only every dish of the three-course dinner, but where it should be placed on the table.

"Glasse’s July menu suggests the signers of the Declaration would have supped on roast turkey and fricasseed rabbit, pigeon, crayfish and lobsters. There would have been tongue and turnips and lamb testicles. And for dessert, apricot tarts and roasted apples, plums, jellies and custards.

"Because Philadelphia was a major port, the meal likely also would have included delicacies from abroad, Staib says. Limes from the West Indies were used for lime curd. Exotic fruit such as mangoes, pineapples and coconuts might have been available, as well as spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, mace and vanilla. Plus, there was local seafood, such as salmon, sturgeon and oysters." (Source - The Japan Times News)

The former longtime owner of Cambridge, Massachusetts mainstay The Fishmonger, had her own historic take Fourth of July fare:

"Every year Dorothy Batchelder, whose father's family settled in Massachusetts in the 1600's and whose mother traces her family's arrival in this country to the Mayflower, eats poached salmon, peas and new potatoes and strawberry shortcake on the Fourth of July.

"Now that Ms. Batchelder owns a shop called the Fishmonger in Cambridge, she poaches the salmon there, just as she does for her customers, and takes it to her mother's house in Beverly Farms where there are always about 20 people for lunch.

"The Batchelders, like thousands of other New Englanders, are simply following a tradition begun by Abigail and John Adams on July 4, 1776... this stunning combination of salmon, sweet peas and new potatoes became a New England tradition simply because of seasonal availability." (Source - New York Times, June 28, 1989)

In the 21st  century, Americans greet Fourth of July not with culinary elegance or the finest, first-fruits ingredients, but with unhealthy fake-foods hawked by corporations... hot dogs made with scraps and mystery meats, hamburgers dripping with Kraft "cheese" products, weirdly-flavored potato chips, and industrial ice creams laden with chemicals, emulsifiers, additives, and artificial colors and flavors. 

Our Early American ancestors would be appalled by the casual, chemical-laced junk food we merrily consume to mark one of the most important days in the life of our great nation.   They would no more have gobbled grimy pub food to mark the Fourth of July than we would serve cheap take-out pizza at our family Thanksgiving tables... 

My pipe-dream is that someday, 21st-century Americans will respect our nation's history and culinary heritage, and their health, enough to commemorate the Fourth of July with glorious, homemade meals of the finest meats, breads, produce, and dairy.... including a return to drop-dead delicious homemade ice cream.

I'm just saying... wouldn't that be a grand birthday party for America?