The primary role of government is supposedly to ensure its citizens are safe in their pursuit of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. However, if you look beyond the overt military gestures at the regulations (or lack thereof) on things that directly effect our everyday life, like food, you’ll come to a sobering realization: we are not nearly as protected as we think we are. The quality of food in America, while not as bad as described in Sinclair’s The Jungle, is the lowest its been in many decades.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, after much pressure from industry lobbyists, the FDA finally allowed the inclusion of aspartame and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) into the mainstream production of American food. Both chemicals were used as cheaper sweetening alternatives to sugar, with aspartame also simultaneously serving as a “diet” option for the newly weight-conscious nation. Just after these chemicals were introduced into American foods, doctors across the nation first noticed an alarming rise in both heart disease and obesity. Over 30 years later, scientists the world over have discovered this correlation is no mere coincidence, with countless dozens of studies that show how our higher consumption of both chemicals have direct negative effects on everything from the circulatory system to the brain. Yet, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), over one third of adult Americans are clinically obese and a quarter of all American deaths are related to heart disease, and our consumption of both HFCS and aspartame has never been higher.
If the federal government was really as concerned for our safety as they claim to be, why has there been no effort to impose harsher regulations on food production in our country? While both military an terrorist threats are a real concern, millions upon millions more American citizens are negatively effected by the poor nutritional standards the food industry has coerced our government into accepting.
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