Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – According to British MP Michael Gove, cheap food damages the environment and encourages poor people to overeat.
True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises, says commission
Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Tue 16 Jul 2019 06.00 BSTRadical change needed to make UK food and farming system sustainable within 10 years
The true cost of cheap, unhealthy food is a spiralling public health crisis and environmental destruction, according to a high-level commission. It said the UK’s food and farming system must be radically transformed and become sustainable within 10 years.
The commission’s report, which was welcomed by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, concluded that farmers must be enabled to shift from intensive farming to more organic and wildlife friendly production, raising livestock on grass and growing more nuts and pulses. It also said a National Nature Service should be created to give opportunities for young people to work in the countryside and, for example, tackle the climate crisis by planting trees or restoring peatlands.
“Our own health and the health of the land are inextricably intertwined [but] in the last 70 years, this relationship has been broken,” said the report, which was produced by leaders from farming, supermarket and food supply businesses, as well as health and environment groups, and involved conversations with thousands of rural inhabitants.
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“Farmers are extraordinarily adaptable,” said Sue Pritchard, director of the RSA commission and an organic farmer in Wales. “We have to live with change every single day of our lives.
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Gove said: “This report raises issues that are hugely important. We know that it is in the interests of farmers and landowners to move to a more sustainable model.” He added that the government’s agriculture bill would reward farmers with public money for public goods and a new “farm to fork” food review would look to ensure everyone had access to healthy British food.
The report was backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “This monumental report is a powerful and profound account of the ecological transformation of our food and farming system that we urgently need – and where we can start.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/16/true-cost-of-cheap-food-is-health-and-climate-crises-says-commission
I’m less than reassured by Gove’s promise that everyone will have enough to eat after he abolishes affordable food.
Green energy Britain has an atrocious record of helping people suffering fuel poverty. Occasionally even young people in Britain die because they missed a meal once too often to ensure their children are warm and have enough to eat.
This would be a good time for some links to photos of store shelves in Venezuela and Cuba. I doubt you will find any photos from NK.
This man has been promoted in government way above his ability to act sensibly. If Boris becomes Prime Minister he must give Gove the order of the boot without delay, and not let him anywhere near government for the next 50 years. He has already wasted £billions of taxpayer money on his ridiculous Green projects, and is responsible for bringing the car industry to its knees. His demise will be one of the better aspects of losing the May government.
Why aren’t they banning forks too.
There is a HUGE difference between cheap, unhealthy food and cheap food! And the unhealthy part has nothing to do with the farmer.
And as in 1984, chocolate rations have been increased from 30 gm a week to 25 gm a week! AMSOC!
This guys picture makes him look like he belongs in that old Monty Python Upper Class Twit Of The Year competition skit.
You can bet he won’t be missing any meals or foie gras either.
Clearly, the compassionate solution to poverty is to starve poor people to death.
Utter misrepresentation by Gove. Those on the right side of the Bell Curve are in all likelihood not going to be represented in the ranks of unhealthily obese owing to the fact that they likely do not consume too much of the rubbish foods produced by the big FoodCorpo’s, who no doubt donate healthy amounts to the Conservatives in the hope of not being made the targets of any laudable efforts to improve the dietary lot of those eating themselves into a premature appearance before the Throne 🙂
I think they’re talking about junk food Eric, but nice dog-whisling.
The easiest way to increase the price of food is to tax it. I doubt that increasing the price of food will have any effect on global climate. Increasing the price of food could be devastating to the poor and of only little concern to the rich.
I spent some time looking up what type of diet was advocated. Basically it is a slight improvement on the diet that brought us obesity, diabetes, and NAFLD (Non Alcoholic Fatty liver Disease). Its only improvement was a 50% reduction of sugar in the recommended diet and that might have not gone far enough. This might be a healthy diet if people are willing to spend the time, are educated, are fanatical, and are not already suffering from insulin resistance. Only a small percentage of busy people would be able to follow this diet. They would instead eat processed foods.
If people are already suffering from insulin resistance a high fat diet that avoids vegetable oils and sugar would be a better approach.
The UK is currently ruled by a cross party cabal of antidemocratic Europhiles. Many farmers in the UK receive funding to do nothing and let their land lie fallow, from the EU (sourced by UK tax payers). Gove wants those farmers to feel secure as/if we leave. He adopts green language to ingratiate himself with the liberal and green elites.
Gove is an oleagenous politician who supported Brexit but since the vote has allied himself with the Tory government who have done everything in their power to thwart the vote of the people to leave the EU.
None of these politicians are scientists, most studied Politics and Economics at Oxbridge. I don’t think they have an intuitive grasp of the scale of industry. Hence they can talk about concepts like organic farming or carbon neutral economies without embarrassment because they don’t get scale. And they certainly have no intuitive feel for atmospheric physics.
Hey oh!
Affordable food is usually supported by massive govt subsidies and tax cuts for fuel, agriculture bonuses etc.
It means we are bombarded with corn syrup and ground beef and can afford to eat massive portion sizes. Let alone all the waste.
For the best and survival of the planet, let’s not any more allow the propagation and the means of survival and evolving prosperity of all these or those who make it by depending in cheap affordable food and cheap affordable energy sources.
Lets terminate the cheap food for the cheap people, for the sake of whatever we consider as saving the planet.
Cheap people do not matter much anymore, never did,,, did they!
Lets better the odds by terminating cheap and affordable food, for the sake of saving the planet…will we!
The not “worthy” cheap ones do not qualify for the way forward, too cheap, for not saying too dirty…
let’s drop them all, the cheap and dirty ones, before the planet gets it…
cheers
Price has nothing to do with obesity.
Sugar and carbohydrate foods increase hunger to cause overeating.
Also insulin is stimulated which causes fat storage in the body. Cut out sugar and carbs and obesity will be history. Eating fat does not cause fat unless it is eaten with carbs.
Nanny State idiocy at its finest. “The public refuses to be as slim as we think they should be, so let’s make food so expensive that they will starve since they can’t afford to feed their family any more.” When are the sheeple of the UK going to say enough is enough and toss the rascals out? Guess they’ve had the qualities of individualism and ability to think and care for themselves bred out of them.
‘Radical change needed to make UK food and farming system sustainable within 10 years’
If they don’t make it, will you give them another 10 years?
The BEST way to make UK food and farming system UNsustainable is to put government in charge. Millions will die.
I demand an end to his food, to combat Global Stupid.
Gove.. the gormless, chinless poster boy of the tory party “Fail Upwards” tradition.. “no good at your ministerial job? Here, move up to a post where you can do more damage.. What’s that? You know nothing about the remit of the job? Never mind, none of us know anything about anything we’re responsible for but we learn by our mistakes.. sometimes..”
He was selected out of the current leadership race by some tactical vote rigging, thank god! But the two remaining contestants are no better, Boris the buffoon and Hunt the rhyming couplet (a nickname he earned whilst dismantling the NHS) both have left a trail of destruction behind them. Either one will be the worst Prime Minister since.. well, since Theresa May.
It takes an incredible elitist to suggest something this arrogant. Not to mention tossing it off as ‘junk-food’.
This isn’t even ‘let them eat cake’ – it’s ‘let them starve’.
How long till they demand that govt ration food, and that only those who are in good standing are permitted to receive their daily ration.
I hate Social Elite twats like this.
“Oh! We need to make fast food more expensive! Then less people will eat it!”
Okay then genius, here is a challenge. Take $10 (pounds, Pacific Pesos, Whatever) and go to your nearest franchise fast food joint. Spend all the money on take away food.
Now take the same amount of cash and go to a fruit and veg shop. Spend all the money.
Go home and compare the size of your purchases.
Take away food is NOT CHEAP.
It is CONVENENT.
This man is either an idiot, a tyrant in waiting, or both. Regardless of which the world would probably be better off if he simply resigned and buggered off to Sweden to live in Saint Greta’s garden shed.
Isn’t this, “greater cost, less food”, the business model of Whole Foods?
And this is a Conservative Party guy! Imagine what the Labor party thinks!
U.K. has rotted to the core.
In 1815 Great Britain enacted the Corn Laws, tariffs and other restrictions on the importation of food. After that the industrial revolution took hold and the population exploded. British food production could not keep up. In 1839, Richard Cobden a self made Manchester businessman, self-educated economist, and politician, founded the the Anti–Corn Law League. Cobden’s arguments and the Irish Famine convinced Prime Minister Robert Peel* to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. The repeal made food cheaper and more abundant and was a reason why Britain did not experience a violent revolution in1848 unlike the other countries of Europe.
And now this idiot wants to go back to the Corn Laws.
Facepalm.
*Peel was the one who hired professional law enforcement officers to patrol London. They are known as Bobbies in his honor.
Well, British food has needed an overhaul for a long time. Working there a couple years I could only find food in Italian and Indian restaurants. Fish and chips were fine but hold the mushy peas!