UNIFIED HUMAN FOODS PROGRAM

                  To great fanfare and media blitzes, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA, or FDuh) has announced a new Unified Human Foods Program, designated the biggest shake-up at the agency since its inception. 

                  Here's the official plan straight from the agency: “The establishment of the Human Foods Program allows us to most effectively deliver on our mission to protect and promote public health through science-based approaches to prevent foodborne illness, reduce diet-related chronic disease and ensure the safety of chemicals in our food,” the press release said. “This will enable us to zero in on those issues where intervention has the greatest opportunity for the prevention of disease and for the promotion of wellness.”

The new HFP, which affects more than 8,000 FDA employees and modifies nearly every aspect of the agency’s operations, is designed to improve the agency’s approaches to preventing foodborne illnesses and reducing diet-related diseases. FDA has also restructured field operations under the new title of Office of Inspections and Investigations, formerly known as the Office of Regulatory Affairs.

                  Along with the USDA, these people think Cheerios and Fruit Loops are more nutritious than beef. In short, this is much ado about nothing, apologies to William Shakespeare.  The mindset, corporate capture, and corruption within the agency won't change a lick.  And as for science, I think by now we all know that government science is fraudulent.

                  So I have an extremely unscientific approach to what folks should eat.  It wouldn't deal with everything, but it would be a really cheap and easy start.  Several years ago I was doing some presentations in California and I visited a Middle School divisional initiative that incorporated a 3-acre farm into all aspects of the curriculum:  science, english, history, math.  The two ladies running the farm were vivacious and creative.  All the students spent half a day a week at the farm.

                  The farmers built a worm box about 8 ft. long, 3 ft. wide and 3 ft. high.  It fascinated the students, much like any community in nature.  Leveraging the students' fascination with the worm box, the farmer-teachers encouraged the young people to bring an item of food the next week as homework.  The next week the kids dutifully brought Twizzlers, Velveeta Cheese, Pop Tarts, gummy worms, white bread, and Fruit Loops.  

                  They carefully placed all these food items in one end of the worm box.  The farm teachers put their samples on the other end of the box:  an apple, a pork chop, a boiled egg, a banana.  The next week the students ran to the box, opened the lid, and looked in.  All their food items sat there, just like they'd been placed the previous week.  The whole food on the other end was completely consumed by the worms.  

                  With all the diplomatic challenge they could muster, the two teachers then admonished:  "Why would you want to eat something the worms won't eat?"  It was a profound and powerful lesson. 

                  So here's my proposal:  how about going through the supermarket and submitting every food item to a worm box?  Whatever the worms eat in a week gets to stay on the shelf.  Whatever they won't eat in a week the FDA does a media blitz condemning it as unappealing to worms (as a libertarian, I don't want these foods banned).  Shaming on a grand scale can work wonders.

                  Several years ago I had a booth at a local food/wellness fair and had purchased a pound of conventional ground beef to cook and make 4 burgers along with a pound of our Polyface ground beef.  The 8 burgers sat in the sun all morning at the fair and I didn't want to eat them, so decided to offer them to our four cats.  I put the storebought burgers on one paper plate and the Polyface burgers on another paper plate.  The cats came running, sniffed both, then all four piled on our burgers and licked those up without touching the storebought.  I took pictures.  It was dramatic.  Animals know.  This could be another test the FDA could conduct. 

`               None of this would require much money and they could fire all but about 50 of their 8,000 employees.  Over the course of a year, each week they could publish a "demon food of the week" and bring shame on that product.  Better yet, eliminate the FDA, but that's another post for another day.  I'm trying to figure out something meaningful the FDA could do that would truly shake things up instead of posturing for change without doing anything.

                  What food items do you think the worms would be least interested in?