We are Blessed

As a whole, we’re blessed here in America with enough food to eat. I say that hesitantly because we all know that is not true with all Americans, and that is not right. Even in all the towns in Wyoming and the area, there are people who are hungry. As a nation, for the most part, there is ample food supply, but that is not true worldwide.

Food security is a buzzword now, and America is so food secure that a number of us are a little large around the middle.

In a column in BEEF, Dave Sjeklocha comments, “If a country can’t feed its people, the country doesn’t work. Lack of food security leads to crime and social breakdown.” He goes on to say, “The problem with food security is that once it reaches a certain level, people become critical of the very food that has made them secure. That is a luxury that is both wonderful and contemptible.”

Sjeklocha says that a speaker at an animal welfare seminar a few years ago was a veterinarian from Chile. He was asked how much attention was directed towards animal welfare in Chile. The vet responded, “Our people are far more concerned with where their next meal is coming from.”

We have every right to know where our food comes from and what is in it, but sometimes we just go too far. Sjeklocha says, “Many consumers don’t realize that everything we eat or drink is a chemical. The classic example is dihydrogen monoxide. Every person who has ingested this chemical either has died or will die. The common name of this chemical is, of course, water.”

A while back in a survey, people were asked about the chemical, and not knowing what it was, many said there should be a regulation outlawing it. Ignorance does play into what we eat or drink.

Oftentimes with food, it is the part that is bad for us that entices us to buy and eat that food. Take potato chips for example. It is the fat, salt and the flavoring that we like, not really the potato itself. An energy drink is ok if we have just run a marathon race, but we don’t need all the sodium just to quench our thirst. Try a cold glass of dihydrogen monoxide or a frosty beverage instead.

Then we bring in the discussion of genetically modified foods (GMOs). This really gets the emotions running high. I think with GMOs one has to be careful about what they like or dislike. There are a lot of plants that have been genetically modified that are good for you, probably most of them. But people say that because a large company developed and has made money from the plant, it is bad.

As the column in BEEF said, it is the technology that has developed the efficiencies in producing an ample food supply that has given America food security. Be proud of that. On our forests and other federal lands, it is ok to graze sheep and cattle for food. It sure beats just using forests to pick mushrooms from or having them burn up.

I’ve read, “It is good enough to talk of God while we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer lunch, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day? To them, God can only appear as bread and butter.”