Another Sign of Europe's Dying Civilization

Eat Bugs: New EU Food Policy 

Promotes Less Meat, More ‘Alternative Proteins’

Virginia Hale
Breitbart London

Europeans must move to a “more plant-based diet”, according to new EU food policy, which also revealed the bloc will promote “insect-based proteins and meat substitutes”.

The European Commission’s Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy for creating a “fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly” food system insists that such a transition “will not happen without a shift in people’s diets”.  “Moving to a more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat and with more fruits and vegetables will reduce not only risks of life-threatening diseases, but also the environmental impact of the food system,” asserts the strategy, which was unveiled Wednesday.

In order to promote such a diet, the strategy said research in Europe will focus on “increasing the availability and source of alternative proteins such as plant, microbial, marine, and insect-based proteins and meat substitutes.”  A change in eating habits is “critical” to reducing obesity, according to the Commission, which also acknowledges in its F2F Strategy that Europeans want food that is “fresh [and] less processed”.

The Bug Burger

It is unclear how promoting a move to eat less meat will address these concerns, however, as plant-based meat substitutes are considered to be “ultra-processed” foods, which research has linked to weight gain as well as poor health and early death.

Some activists were disappointed with the strategy, an earlier draft of which reportedly suggested that the Commission would propose to “stop stimulating production or consumption of meat”.

The Good Food Institute Europe (GFI Europe), which lobbies on behalf of the plant-based meat substitute industry, hailed the strategy as a “significant step forward”, claiming so-called alternative proteins “play a critical role in Europe’s transition to a more sustainable, healthy and just food system”.

According to the EU document, the F2F Strategy is “at the heart of” the European Green Deal, the Commission’s “roadmap” to making Europe “the first climate-neutral continent by 2050”. 

“It maps a new, sustainable and inclusive growth strategy to boost the economy, improve people’s health and quality of life, care for nature, and leave no one behind,” boasts the unelected EU executive.

Many scientists are sceptical about plans to drastically slash carbon emissions, however, with Cambridge engineering professor Michael Kelly warning that scrapping reliable energy sources such as coal and nuclear in favour of renewables would be an act of “total madness” that would necessarily result in a collapse of living standards.

“In energy terms the current generation of renewable energy technologies alone will not enable a civilized modern society to continue,” the Hughes Medal-decorated physicist wrote, in a 2016 paper which noted that renewables supplied only seven per cent of global electricity needs while “the rate at which fossil fuels are growing is seven times that at which the low carbon energies are growing”.

“The call to decarbonize the global economy by 80 per cent by 2050 can now only be described as glib in my opinion, as the underlying analysis shows it is only possible if we wish to see large parts of the population die from starvation, destitution or violence in the absence of enough low-carbon energy to sustain society,” he warned.

Another Urban Myth

Eating All That God Has Given

For most of the period following World War II, the West--or at least the US, Australia, NZ--has been told that eating fat is a gross dietary sin, insofar as it makes the one who ingests obese.  Consequently we have been hectored without end to avoid fatty food.

The largest exporting dairy company in the world--Fonterra--recently sponsored a piece in the NZ Herald debunking this particular urban myth.

Myths are difficult to debunk - look how long the old saw that people must drink eight glasses of water a day to avoid dehydration has been around. Here's another one: fat makes you fat.  The eight-glasses-a-day mantra is still a thing. So are fears that fat will make you, well, fat - and will play havoc with your heart, weight and make it more likely you'll develop conditions like diabetes.

Now many scientists are beginning to re-draw the boundaries of nutritional knowledge, shifting away from the old thinking that saturated fats (as found in dairy) should be avoided and that the rush to 'low-fat everything' may have been misguided. In fact, in some instances, what we replaced saturated fats with may have been worse.

As is so often the case, the "advice" of the health police turns out to be bad actors.

Letter From the UK (About Baloney)

Nutrition 'Experts' Are Stuffing Us Full of Low-cal Poison


Peter Hitchens
Mail On Sunday

Whenever I see a ‘low-fat muffin’ in a coffee shop, I have to control an urge to pick it up, jump on it and shout rude words.  I am myself an expert in getting fat, and know that this evil blob of sugar and starch is a rapid route to a bigger waistband.

Fat doesn’t make you fat. Butter is good for you. So is cream. Skimmed milk is a futile punitive measure, not a foodstuff, a way of making ourselves needlessly miserable which has taken over the world on the basis of an illusion.  Fat doesn’t make you fat. Almost everything most people think about food, and almost everything shops tell them, is completely wrong, says Peter Hitchens

This is because almost everything most people think about food, and almost everything shops tell them, is completely wrong. In an unending struggle to get this across, the National Obesity Forum last week made a renewed attack on these mistaken attitudes.  Sugar, not fat, is the menace to our lives. And this has been known since 1972 when a brave scientist, John Yudkin, wrote a book – Pure, White And Deadly – showing it was so.

He and his unfashionable message were buried in abuse.

A Nation Lives By Its Stomach

Do the Hard Yards

Stupid parents load their children up with sugar.  Maybe it's because they don't love them enough to regulate their eating.  Maybe the parents are lazy and too busy with other things.  Maybe they have lost any sense of discipling and ruling the lives of their children and indulgently go with the flow.  Maybe they love sugar themselves and think that to protect their children from it would be hypocritical.  Maybe it is a combination of  "all the above".

The UK (along with most Western nations) is facing a sugar crisis.

Fresh Catatrophes Loom: Woe To Us All

More Rules, Regulations, Restrictions Needed

Scientists Hit Back At W.H.O. For Claiming Red Meat Causes Cancer

by Nick Hallett
Breitbart London

Scientists have rounded on the World Health Organisation (WHO) for claiming that sausages, bacon and ham could pose as big a cancer risk as cigarettes.

Breitbart London reported yesterday how the WHO is due to add red and processed meats to its ‘encyclopaedia of carcinogens’, possibly leading to new government legislation demanding warning labels on packs of meat.

However, a number of scientists have expressed their concerns about the new classification, telling The Telegraph about their scepticism.

Dr Ian Johnson, Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Food Research, said:

“Although there is epidemiological evidence for a statistically significant association between processed meat consumption and bowel cancer, it is important to emphasise that the size of the effect is relatively small, and the mechanism is poorly defined.  “It is certainly very inappropriate to suggest that any adverse effect of bacon and sausages on the risk of bowel cancer is comparable to the dangers of tobacco smoke, which is loaded with known chemical carcinogens and increases the risk of lung cancer in cigarette smokers by around 20 fold.”

Professor Richard Knox, formerly of the Institute of Cancer Research, echoed Dr Johnson’s comments, saying “most cancer deaths will not be due to bowel cancer and even fewer linked to meat consumption.”

Hunger Is a Great Discipline

Indulgent Parenting Leads to a Nanny State

There are at least two perspective on offer when it comes to the nurture and raising of children: the first is the world-views requiring parental indulgence; the second is world views requiring parental discipline.

Whilst it is a generalisation-- we trust not a hasty one--the Chattering Classes and the Commentariat generally favour parental and societal indulgence when it comes to raising children.  The little tykes are assumed to be nascent adults and the more they are treated as if they were adults, the more quickly they will mature.  In contrast, those adults whose parenting involves consistent rules, structure, and discipline are regarded as harmful agents, implicitly guilty of child abuse.

A recent newspaper piece illustrates this great divide.  The issue was food--the right food--for children.  Some parents complain that whilst they know sugar-saturated food is bad for their bairns, the whole world conspires against them

More Food-Nazi's Desperately Needed

Bankruptcy Alley a 'shocking commentary' on NZ--Debt Commissioner

Matthew Theunissen is a reporter for the Herald on Sunday. (This piece documents another attempt by the Commentariat--of which we are an important part--to argue for more state intrusion to protect people from themselves.  Our reporters are on task and remain zealously committed to seeing it done.  At the Herald, we are proud to be making a difference.)

Liam Joyce and Alex Wood with their lunch from Burger Fuel, Lincoln Road. Photo / Michael Craig.  Smart Kiwis Avoiding the Debt Trap of Fine Dining.

A NZ Debt Commissioner has dubbed a 3km stretch of road featuring more than 30 expensive fine dining restaurants as  "Bankruptcy Alley".  In Central Auckland, the Viaduct precinct, Vulcan Lane and O'Connell Street offers an astonishing 33 high priced restaurants, 30 of which will force patrons into even more credit card debt, such is the exorbitant cost of their meals.  The remaining three have only two items on the menu,  so the bankruptcy risk is not as great.

Debt Commissioner, David Impecunious described it as a "shocking commentary on our exorbitant, gratuitously wasteful, first-world country".  "I don't think it would be going too far to call it Bankruptcy Alley - call it what it is. If it's going to be contributing to people's increased use of credit card debt, it's going to cause more financial stress, leading to more heart attacks and strokes--and even suicides  Yes, let's call it for what it is."

He said it was compounding an environment where being in debt was the norm.

Startling Discoveries

Healing in His Hands

A startling discovery has been made in the area of public health.  Sometimes things surprise.  At other times, the surprise is so surprisey that one ends up staggering around in the daylight like a sleep deprived inebriate.  We still struggle to believe the scintillating insights delivered by a university health study.  Against all expectation the astute researchers made the completely unexpected discovery that obesity is caused by eating too much food. 

You have to have a PhD in social medicine and a second PhD in public health to enable such rarefied  discoveries to be made. 

When it comes to eating, consumers are biting off more than they can chew.  That's the finding a New Zealand study that confirms the link between energy food supply and the global obesity epidemic.  The findings, published today in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, show that overeating is the driving force behind the global obesity epidemic in high-income countries like New Zealand. [TVNZ News]

The lead researcher was one Stephie Vandevijvere.  Her research is so startling and novel that it made the pages of the World Health Magazine.

Too True

How Little We Understand Our Food Chain

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

Letter From America (About Government Enforced Diets)

Michelle Obama’s Control-Freak Lunch Program

It can’t make kids actually eat what they’re served. 

By Michelle Malkin
May 21, 2014
National Review Online

Look out, everyone: The nation’s school-lunch lady, Michelle Obama, is mad. With her federal nutrition program under fire across the country and now on Capitol Hill, Mrs. Obama put out a “forceful” call to arms this week to “health activists,” according to the Washington Post.  She’s cracking the whip. Her orders are clear: There must be no escape. The East Wing and its sycophants zealously oppose any effort to alter, delay, or waive top-down school-meal rules. Big Lunch must be guarded at all costs.

Progressives blame kid-hating Republicans and greedy businesses for the revolt against Mrs. Obama’s failed policies. But the truth is right around the corner in our students’ cafeterias. Districts are losing money.   Discarded food is piling high. Kids are going off-campus to fill their tummies or just going hungry.

According to the School Nutrition Association, almost half of school meal programs reported declines in revenue in the 2012–13 school year, and 90 percent said food costs were up.

The Poison of Nanny McPhee

 A Disastrous Diet With Deadly Consequences

Never trust "official science"--that is, the science being pushed by government agencies.  If scepticism is the good oil of solid scientific research, once the science becomes "official" in the sense of being accepted by government programmes and enforced by government regulations, healthy scepticism withers on the vine.  At that point, science has become intermingled with, if not captured by, propaganda: the trustworthiness of science diminishes substantially.

To make matters worse, there are lots of vested interests vying for commercial advantage when science becomes "official".  Engineer a government "tick" and millions can be made.  Achieve the promulgation of a government programme, and millions can be parlayed into billions of dollars.  It becomes, in the coarse words of US Vice President, Joe Biden, a "big . . . deal"--that is, a crude joke.

It is now becoming clear that generations of diet advice--official diet prescriptions--backed by scientific research, is wrong.  In fact, it has done enormous damage to human health.  A significant essay recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, by Nina Teicholz:

Deadly Official Dietary Advice, Part II

Public Policy Demands Science Be "Settled and Certain"

Public Policy Requires Junk Science

In our previous post on this subject, we canvassed how much  "official" dietary and food advice of the past fifty years is turning out, not just to be counter productive, but actually harmful.  This advice has been delivered with emphatic certainty, as if those giving it were utterly convinced of the accuracy and truthfulness of what was being purported.  And they no doubt were.

The reason for such certainty turned upon the overwhelming veracity of  Science.  The discipline which exploded all myths, errors, and superstitions, replacing them with certainty and truth was Science.  That is an overwhelming presumption of our world.  "Science says" is tantamount to the word of a god in our  understanding--an understanding held in common by officials, governments, scientists, the Commentariat and even the common man.

Much of the research into diet and human health relies upon statistical research and analysis.  Much of the research and inferences there-from are flawed.

Deadly Official Dietary Advice, Part I

The Ministry of Food Propaganda

Almost everything the "authorities" have told you about bad food over the past forty years is wrong.  The assertion was made in The Guardian by  Joanna Blythman. There are at least two aspects to this story, equally important.  The first is to expose the errors, fallacies, and chicaneries for what they are.  The second is to expose the research methodologies, posing as scientific, for the sugar puffs they often are.

First, the exposure of the errors.

Could eating too much margarine be bad for your critical faculties? The "experts" who so confidently advised us to replace saturated fats, such as butter, with polyunsaturated spreads, people who presumably practise what they preach, have suddenly come over all uncertain and seem to be struggling through a mental fog to reformulate their script.

Last week it fell to a floundering professor, Jeremy Pearson, from the British Heart Foundation to explain why it still adheres to the nutrition establishment's anti-saturated fat doctrine when evidence is stacking up to refute it. After examining 72 academic studies involving more than 600,000 participants, the study, funded by the foundation, found that saturated fat consumption was not associated with coronary disease risk. This assessment echoed a review in 2010 that concluded "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease".

No convincing evidence.  None.  Nada.

The Futility of Taxing Foods to Achieve Social Change

Lazy Intellects and Food Zealots

We have endured the monstrous regime of the feminazis.  We continue to labour under the monstrous regime of the foodnazis.  There are those who wish to command and control all that we put in our mouths--for our own good--and, of course, society's good, since the state pays for health care.  And we are facing a plague of illnesses, about to descend with more deadly intent than the Bubonic Plague.  Obesity, diabetes, heart disease: this evil triumvirate must be combated with taxes, rules, regulations, controls, bans and government sponsored cotton-wool. 

One biggie is the cost of fast food--you know, that fatty stuff sold in burger bars and fish 'n chip shops.  What's wrong here, you ask.  Well, it's too cheap the foodnazis tell us.  It is being bought and consumed by the truckloads because it is cheaper than decent food.  Coke is cheaper than milk.  So, let's force the price upwards. Let's tax it.  The new-left command and control economists tell us that if you tax something, you get less of it.  Let's put a tax on sugar saturated drinks.

Such moves would hit the poor obese, forcing them to consume something better, argue the zealots

Soup Nazis

Ubiquitous Food Police

One of the most famous episodes in Seinfeld is the Soup Nazi. It has probably been watched more than any other.  (In case you have missed it, there is a YouTube highlights version below.) 

As life once again imitates art, years later we find ourselves beset by food Nazis of all kinds, telling us what to eat and, more importantly, what not to eat.  But the matter does not stop at nagging and hectoring.  It is ironic that Seinfeld, which was such an acute insightful commentary upon New York City and New Yorkers, has ended up parodying-in-advance the actual charge by Nanny Mayor Bloomberg to rule and regulate what New Yorkers can and cannot eat.  Bloomberg became the actual incarnation of the Soup Nazi, aspiring to control every part of the human anatomy--for our own good, naturally.  And so it has come to pass that Food Police are now everywhere--yearning and lusting for the reins of power--passing rules, regulating, and controlling, all to protect us from ourselves. Bovine New Yorkers love it.  The rest of us?  Not so much.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

On Taunting the Cows

Posted on Wednesday, February 5, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

The task this morning is to follow up on some reasonable questions raised in the comments of the previous post, God’s Bistro. The basic outline of my response will be to grant a point at the center, but to differ as to what the appropriate responses and applications ought to be.

The questions I want to address concern the pervasive force and influence of advertising, questions about justice in the production of food (e.g. fair trade), and the matter of basic health issues and diet.

I quite agree that advertisers and mass marketers have figured out that there are a lot of people out there who are like sheep without a shepherd. They want to prod and steer everybody into various purchases and brand loyalties, and they industriously work at it. This is something we should respond to, but my suggested response would not be to say that people have to choose between Ads and Adbusters, between corporate and fake alternative corporate.

Protesting the new global economy and actually escaping it are two different things.


My response has been to encourage the establishment of Christian schools that teach kids how to think like Christians, how to identify fallacies, how to stand up to group-think, and so on. Nothing is more truly counter-cultural than holiness.

Doug Wilson's Letter From Moscow

God’s Bistro

Posted on Tuesday, February 4, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

What is the balance to be kept when it comes to saying that God “doesn’t care what you eat,” which He doesn’t, and saying that we are to exercise dominion in all that we do? If there is no neutrality anywhere, and there isn’t, then how does this fit with statements like “God doesn’t care”?

The answer is that God cares about everything, but He doesn’t care about things the same way we do. Our job is to learn how to care the way He does, instead of invoking His name to make it seem like He cares the same way we do. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the dead end of that cul de sac is death (Prov. 14:12). Men have a way of esteeming things that God considers below dumpster scrapings. “And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

So there no neutrality anywhere, but this is not the same thing as saying that everything matters in the way we want it to.

Government Wowsering

Up in Smoke

In New Zealand we have a messianic crusade to make the country "smoke free" by 2025.  The definition of this paradisaical state is as follows:

 What does Smokefree New Zealand 2025 mean?

• Our children and grandchildren will be free from exposure to tobacco and tobacco use
  

• The smoking prevalence across all populations will be <5%. The goal is not a ban on smoking.
  

• Tobacco will be difficult to sell and supply.  [http://smokefree.org.nz/smokefree-2025]

Of course this is being promulgated by government and its agencies, and driven by particular wowser-politicians.  We do not question the motives of said protagonists.  Smoking can cause much harm.  But we do question the wisdom of the wowsers. 

Moreover, we are also deeply sceptical of government promoted programmes and causes where the underlying object is to restrain government spending on health (as is the case of the anti-tobacco movement).  The reason is straightforward: when an entire population (that is, more than 5 percent) is dependant upon government provided healthcare, the government has been given a license to control human behaviour to an extraordinary extent for its own ends.  In this case, the broader campaign against smoking shows every sign of not being driven primarily by concern over smokers welfare, but by a desire to restrain public health expenditure.

Letter from the UK (About Chicken)

Water Worth Its Weight In Gold

The article below documents a rip-off practice in the UK.  We do not doubt that pretty much the same occurs in New Zealand.  When you next buy that oh-so-cheap chicken in the supermarket and find it to be superbly moist upon roasting, reflect on the origin of the moisture.  The same goes for most bacon.  Try frying it in the pan, and you have to evaporate the copious volumes of water coming out of the meat first, before you can brown and crisp the meat.  A sure sign that water has been injected into the meat. And think about that juicy chicken from the fast food restaurant--the juice is most likely just heated water. 

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Gravy of Grace and Gratitude

Posted on Tuesday, November 26, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

If you like to eat what you like to eat, this means that you are a human being. If you are morally indignant about the food choices of others, this means you are well on the way to becoming a food leftist.

Leftism is that impulse that wants to establish coercion and call it community. Apply the coercive impulse to food and farming choices, and you have the food leftist.

And it begins with the indignation. Once the indignation is established, it becomes possible to draw on a hidden premise that too many Americans share — that sins should be crimes — and move from that position to the idea that made up sins should be made into real crimes.

When the food regulators change their minds, and start cracking down on this product instead of that product, this is simply part of the way authoritarian regimes operate.