You have two paragraphs criticizing the low-fat fad but failed to say why low-fat food is bad. I agree that processing the fat out of avocados is stupid but what about meat and dairy?

Foods that are naturally low-fat are extremely healthy for you, and you should eat a lot of them.  

Foods that have been altered to remove their naturally occurring fat have more than likely had something else added to preserve the taste, and that something is generally 1) high fructose corn syrup, 2) salt, 3) artificial colorings and flavorings, or 4) partially hydrogenated vegetable fats.  

That's why Tom was criticizing the low-fat food fad - because of the processed crap that we let into our lives in the name of "healthier eating".

Thanks for the laugh, Ekolmus!  I too am texeme free (whatever those are.)...
Karen

"Butter made from the milk of grass-fed cows, for instance, is fundamentally different from the stuff churned out in vast quantities by the mega-dairy operations."  Fundamentally different?  That qualifies as a fundamentally incorrect statement.

That's why Tom was criticizing the low-fat food fad - because of the processed crap that we let into our lives in the name of "healthier eating".

As pressed for time as we Americans claim to be, we love bumper-sticker diet plans.  Anything that can be explained in five syllables or less, and promises spectacular results with minimal effort, we'll do it.  So when we hear that "don't eat fat" or "don't eat carbs" is the fast ticket to Slimville, we're all over it.  Unfortunately, "Natural foods, daily exercise" doesn't seem to make the cut.  Sure, it takes time and will power, but the thesis isn't all that hard to grasp.

But of course, the processed food world is all too happy to oblige our crazy-ass diet plans.  I can appreciate Tom's low-fat guac story; two years ago I saw a bottle of low-carb catsup.  "Only two [grams of] carb[ohydrate]s per serving!"  (I can't stand marketing jargon.) Curiously enough, the normal catsup, made by the same company, also had two grams of carbohydrates, but cost about half as much.  When everything from celery to mayonnaise to buckets of chicken define themselves as healthy, it's probably time to find a new dictionary.

Back to the point of the post, though:  if you know anything about the processed foods industry, you should know by now that everything they do is done in the name of cutting costs, boosting yield, and maintaining consistency.  Flavor and texture don't matter a bit.

"Next thing you know, I'll be trying to link corn to the calamities unfolding in Iraq."

Don't forget that the war in Iraq made us aware of the fact that "we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." I now cringe when I hear that phrase because I think that this ethanol boom is probably gonna do more harm than good. Consider the "tortilla crisis" going on in Mexico; anyone else think that's just gonna contribute more to our immigration woes?

I just wanted to make a comment regarding  corn being one of the 'triumphs' of humans domestication of plants. There are common misconceptions regarding how 'triumphant' corn domestication actually was for the health of native americans.
 Within Jared Diamonds book, The Third Chimpanzee - a book I thoroughly recommend, he addresses the common misconceptions regarding corn domestication, I will quote him directly since it is  researched and valid:
 "Corn, first domesticated in Central America thousands of year ago, became the basis of intensive farming in those valleys around A.D. 1000. Until then, Indian hunter-gatheres had skeltons 'so health it is somewhat discouraging to work with them,' as one paleopathologist complained. With the arrival of corn, Indian skeletons suddenly became interesting to study. The number of cavities in an average adult's mouth jumped from fewer than one to nearly seven, and tooth loss and abscesses became rampant. Enamel defects in children's milk teeth imply that pregnant and nursing mothers were severly undernourished. Anemia quadrupled in frequency; tuberculosis became established as an epidemic disease; half the population suffered from osteoarthritis and other degenerative diseases...Thus corn, usually considered the New World's blessing, actually proved to be a public-health disaster....They are in effect, cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition. Today just three high-carbohydrate plants - wheat, rice, and corn - provide more than 50 percent of the calories consumed by the human species"

- It seems as though unfortunately our soceity is going through again a similar phase of health issues that hunter-gatheres experienced when they transitioned to plant domestication. Our great dependence on corn, or I should say 'supplier induced' dependence on corn through gov't subsidies has resulted in a large majority of our population consuming, as Diamond says - empty calories at the cost of nutrition.

Using the "eat food" advice of Michael Pollan, I was planning on eating corn (and sweetening my ultra-awesome salsa with it) this summer, but had the same concerns raised by your other reader. But in the heart of corn country, I'll definitely quiz the grower before I go home and enjoy it with butter.
I love summer.

As I understand it, nearly all societies show steep health declines after transitioning from hunter-gatherer to ag. There's little doubt that highly varied hunter-gatherer diets were better for humans than ag, which severely narrowed the variety of available comestibles. Theoretically, it also stabilized the food supply, but as R. Manning showed in Against the Grain, human history since the advent of ag has been fraught with famine. It should never be forgotten that agriculture represents a relatively brief period of human history. The question then becomes: why did people switch to ag? And that remains hotly debated.

By corn as a triumph of domestication, I meant the actual act of transforming teosinte, the wild-grass progenitor to corn, into a concentrated source of protein and other nutrients. As to traditionally grown corn's nutritional value, I can only point to evidence that present-day Mesoamericans, when they make the switch from old diets to new-fangled U.S. ones. show a steep decline in health--not unlike that of their ancestors who switched from hunter-gatherer fare to corn.

The yellow corn is a very poor choice for any diet,The blue corn variety has better properties.The corn syrup allergic reactions come from the concentrated improper carohydrate trying to tell the body that it is improper.Folks whose bodies deal with corn syrup and corn products well have actually too much intesinal bacteria that are so numerous that they de-complete the excess sugars before your system even registers it.Try a proper bacterial cleanout and eat a corn syrup product and you will get a reaction every time.YOUR BODY IS TELLING YOU SOMETHING,PAY ATTENTION. As far as butter goes,DONT EAT IT.Use oils sparingly and use a flower oil,it works much better in your system.Olive oil is a fruit oil and is not a very good oil actually because of the fruit acid. So blue corn is really the only corn you should eat.Try drinking soda with just sugar,and watch your weight go down compared to drinking the same amount with the corn syrup(If you can find any,Groan) I drink only sweet juices and tea,cuz I know better,and eat very few carbs,cuz I know better.I have a couple of treats now and then ,but never the corn syrup as the body stores the carbs that your body cannot assimilate,so the rule of thumb is ,if you gain weight with a carbohydrate , your body is saying no.Simple and sweet.

Thank you for the words of common sense.

Thanks for sharing the thoughts and research of Jared Diamond. Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee should be quoted more often. However, all of Diamond's books are great. Agriculture was not the boon to the human race that it's often depicted as.

My wife is one of millions of Americans who are allegic to corn.  (She's also allergic to soy and dairy.)  In the past 3 years I've stopped eating corn entirely, and pretty much stopped eating soy as well.  I've never felt healthier.  Now, when I eat products containing corn syrup, corn starch, or other corn ingredients, I feel sick, and realize how bad it really tastes.

Also: what happens if some sort of virus or bacteria or something should suddenly wipe out corn?  World hunger?

In the US, continuing corn subsidies are probably most strongly lobbied for by giant food processing companies like ConAgra and Cargill, who purchase most of our corn (at prices cheaper than the cost of growing it). The gigantic feedlots that have been able to greatly condense the amount of time and space it takes to "grow a steer" (because of the wonders of excessively cheap corn) also have an interest here. I'm not sure who else would object to corn prices actually rising.

I read in the Omnivore's Dilemma that the government used to have a loan program for corn farmers that helped balance out the good/bad crop years, but then in the sixties it switched to the straight subsidy payments. Does anyone know what caused that? Anyway, the subsidies mean that, no matter how low the price of corn goes, the only way for a farmer to make more money is to grow more corn, because the government will still pay him for it. The subsidy is also why many farmers have switched to monoculture, growing only the crops that are guaranteed by the gov't to bring in money.

So now we have a bunch of farmers just getting by on the subsidies (they're certainly not getting rich off them), so there's also got to be pressure on the government to keep these farmers in business. So where can the government go from here? They can't just do away with the subsidies, so can they lower them a little at a time? It's such a complicated situation, that it's hard to predict what would happen. More expensive Happy Meals? I'm inspired to write a letter to Congress, but I'm not sure what to ask them to do. Any ideas????

I rarely drink soda but I do like to drink ginger ale now and then (and I believe that it really can help to settle an upset stomach) and G.U.S. (Grown Up Soda) makes a nice one that is made with sugar and doesn't have the weird, overly caramelized taste that a lot of other natural foods-type sugar-based ginger ales have.

Lily is absolutely right. This is one of the many reasons I don't watch television, because the fear tactics of the "newsmagazines" waver between insulting and ridiculous. I call them the "what you don't know about your toothpaste might kill you!" programs.

Because our schools do not teach young people critical thinking skills, the majority of U.S. citizens are vulnerable to this kind of emotional pressure (think of the myriad ways in which 9/11 has been manipulated).

Sooner or later, a not-very-well-informed person (one of my brothers fits this description; he has a high-school education) quits listening to any of it, considers it all "junk science," and has no way of evaluating any of the information about food and health coming their way, shrugs their shoulders and eats whatever they want (which they are programmed to want by TV advertising). I bet if you mapped education levels and obesity rates, you would find an incredible overlap.

It's not a conspiracy, exactly (although many of the patterns of food-processing ownership of Cargill et al., called "vertical integration" in the industry) are incredibly predatory and strategic, designed to screw everyone from small farmers to consumers. Oh, excuse me, for "screw" read "make a HEALTHY profit for shareholders." It isn't healthy for anybody else--not your body, not the land, not the small farmers.

If corn is trashed it is because of the modified seeds of today. Most people who have stopped listening to big brother about anything to do with food,do not want it. Even the bees do not want it. It is a sad state of affairs where most of our grain foods have been modified in some fashion and then cross pollenated. Also many of the seeds we all buy at grocery stores are questionablely modified to not produce seeds which leads me to wonder if famine is clearly on its way...Consider this, where many will say they eat it all the time and it is fine, so do the people who moved back into their homes around Chernoble eat their foods grown locally and say they are fine. Sometimes it takes a while for the harm to show up...

If you like ginger ale, Reed's Ginger Brew is the best kind I know.  Good clean ingredients, very gingery.

Food that you love to eat need not be bad for the earth.  Reject false choices.  Don't stop buying what you like just because it's unsustainable.  If you love it, buy it--and dig in and work to make it sustainable.