Does the Government care about the American People at all?

For the last 8 years, Capitalism has been moving farther and farther away from an economic system to a system that rewards corporations with ever increasing profits at the expense of the morals and ethics. These corporations have been allowed, with the backing of our current President, to further their political agenda in a way that we should all be ashamed of. What is their political agenda you ask? Many corporations and industries want lax regulations, or deregulation of their industry so that they can increase their profits in order to satisfy their shareholders. It's not so much that I have a problem with corporations, I have a problem when we say that we live in a democracy, but it has become a cover up for the reality that we live in a place where corporations control our daily life.

My favorite industry is the food industry, not just because I love to eat, and boy do I like a great meal, but because people believe that everything that is sold as "food" is "safe" for them to eat. It's not an absurd thing for people to think, I mean we have a whole government agency that's sole purpose is to protect the citizens of the US from products that are inherently unsafe. They have a budget for 2009 of $1.77 billion dollars (The Iraq War costs the American People about 1.88 billion dollars a day). With a budget as small as that for an agency that governs an essential need for every individual in this country there is no question in my mind that they would fail, the agency has become obsolete and is indirectly controlled by big food industry corporations, pushing their agenda further and further at the expense of the safety of the American people.

The meat industry is a great example of how much power and ability they have to influence the government, and thus the American people. Let's start with the basics of nutrition, another one of my favorite topics. Fat is an energy source that we need in order for our bodies to function, if we consumer an excess amount of fat, our body stores it for future use. There are two types of fats, good fat and bad fat. Bad fat is what would be considered saturated and tran-saturated fats. These types of fats are solid at room temperature, and for this reason are more dangerous that unsaturated fats, good fats. Saturated fats are more likely to clog our arteries and lead to health related heart problems (a major problem in the US) in the future.

The main source of fat in all meat is saturated fat so it is wise to eat meat sparingly. The average American eats half a pound of meat a day, more than twice the recommended intake of protein per day. Eating meat in greater amounts directly affects our future cardiovascular health. Meat is everywhere we go, we have been conditioned to eat meat in greater and greater amounts, well above what our body needs or is good for our body. Heart disease has become the number one killer in this country due to the industry embraces an eat more approach as opposed to the eat less approach.

We are bombarded by eat more meat everywhere we look and it has become the center of every meal due to the meat industry. They solely want to sell their product, they don't really care about what their product does to people after they consume it. They lobbied the USDA, which controls our Dietary Guidelines and Food Pyramid, to exclude any wording on the pyramid that would suggest that meat is bad. They wanted to be represented as equal to fruits and vegetables and severely objected to any format of the pyramid that showed them in a negative light. They believed that it would drastically change consumption amongst the industry. The current groups all proteins together with the same guidelines. This means that meats and beans are grouped together, this is misleading to the average American. Meat guidelines are worded as such: "Choose lean meat" and "if higher fat choices are made, make sure you count those calories in your daily caloric intake." There is no mention of saturated fats and their disastrous effects on health in large quantities.



This is just an example of how corporations and industries control our government and with that we, the American People, are given information that is not as informative as we think it is. The dietary guidelines that are given to us, say a lot about nothing, they are ambiguous, and mostly confuse people, rather than helping people make good food decisions. This has directly affected the health of this nation. We are suffering from an epidemic of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and laziness all from this "eat more" approach that we have been conditioned to carry out. We have been trained to expect big portions at restaurants, eat meat at every meal, replace vegetables with potatoes, denounce fruits as a healthy alternative to sweets, and in essence feed the corporations huge amounts of money to continue them to do this and exploit us at our own expense.

This is going to continue regardless of who is the next president, but big corporations will continue to thrive under McCain at the expense of the people but will be slowed under Obama in efforts to help the people reclaim their voice.