What We Eat

March 17, 2005

Here we are in the honorable profession of producing food. That's what farmers and ranchers do. Malnutrition and starvation are serious concerns in many parts of the world. What we hear ringing in our ears all of the time are the problems with our bountiful food supply.

Sixty-five percent of Americans are overweight or obese. We eat too much. We don't eat healthy (whatever that means.) We crave too much salt. Now the energy is trans-fat. Some critics wanted to blame our fat problem on corm sweetener. That took some imagination. Governor Schwarzenegger wants to take all the sweetened soft drinks and snacks out of California schools. I see where a Florida school district plans to pattern their school lunch program after the "South Beach Diet."

Over the years, we have seen so many different accusations against different foods that the consumer just doesn't believe what the experts say. At one time, butter was bad for you and margarine good. Now, butter is better than margarine. Milk is now listed as a vital food. We knew that all along. Baby pigs, baby calves, all animals including humans are fed mothers milk. The Adkins Diet has thrown all the nutritional experts in a tizzy. Some are even reluctantly acknowledging that meat may not be so bad for you after all.

We finally have our Dietary Guidelines. I don't find anything so surprising in this except perhaps -- they call for one hour of exercise most days. Good luck! We can't even get people to get up to switch TV channels.

My take on all of this talk about food and obesity is that the consumer has been told so many different things that he is not going to listen. Logic tells all of us that the calories we eat turns into fat if we don't burn them off. It's a sad, inescapable reality. So, get some exercise.

Until next week, I am John Block from Washington.