American poison aka beverages & food

[Deleted]

You and your terrifying orange juice

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 5:40PM - Tuesday, February 12, 2013

CONFESSION! I do not drink much orange juice. I do not ever buy those giant, brightly colored cartoon jugs that look like caricatures of life, those carefully molded plastic things covered in scripty fonts and clip-art trees and pretty, hyper-saturated oranges made to look as if your own exploited Mexican laborer picked them five minutes ago and squeezed them into a drinking glass just for you, and then died.

I imagine if I lived in a different part of the country, had a few unruly kids and cared only for the price/convenience matrix most of the country lives by, I would, like millions of Americans, buy giant tubs of “All Natural” and “Grove Made” and “Sunshine-Licked” and whatever else the misleading label claimed, thinking it fine, good enough, hey the kids like it and who has the time to worry about juice?

I most certainly would not know that something like Simply Orange, which sounds so chaste and humble, is actually a creepy, Frankenstein-ian creation of the Coca-Cola corporation, and the manufacture of Simply Orange is one of the most ginormous, technologically advanced, hyperindustrial processes you can imagine, and that this anything-but-simple process is sort of terrifying and miraculous and sad, all at once. Thanks, BusinessWeek, for enlightening/depressing me all over again. You rock.


Simply Sanitized Beyond Recognition.

This much we know: Few humans on earth fully grasp the scale and scope of America’s dystopian industrial food production systems anymore, much less how those mega-systems are swallowing small, family-owned operations and are bleeding over to the rest of the world and changing not only what and how we eat, but how we think about food — or rather, don’t think about food, as the manufacturers and government bodies surely prefer.

Thoughtful books, awesome documentaries (see video clip below) and Michelle Obama aside, only a fraction of Americans still have any idea where, how, and via whom our heavily processed, factory-sanitized food hits the store, much less how harmful or degenerative most of those ingredients and processes are, which is exactly how venomous industrial farming leviathans like ConAgra, Cargill and Monsanto want it. Same as it ever was? Yes. Only much, much worse.



Here in Medialand, facts and figures prance on by via terrifying headlines, giving the finger to your better sense. Example: Did you know the meat industry still consumes a staggering 80 percent of all antibiotics in America? Or that industrial farms injected nearly 30 million pounds of it into your meat in 2011 alone? It’s like the federal deficit, deep space or the sheer quantity of hate the Koch brothers have for everything you love: “Brain unable to process, just hope we don’t die.” That’s all you get.

Nevertheless, the “America’s heartland” myth prevails. Witness, please, the hilarious Funny or Die spoof (well worth watching, click on the link) of that saccharine “So God Made A Farmer” Dodge pickup truck commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. Try to count all the levels of shameless pandering in the original (see video clip below). Behold how the beloved American family farm (which still exists, but barely) is but a decreasingly important crumb to be swallowed by heavily subsidized Big Agra, all to better help the Coca-Colas of the land make their factory-churned, algorithmic juice.



The wisdom is simple enough: You should not, common sense says, be able to buy a bottle of “fresh” orange juice all year round, in either Los Angeles or Alabama or Chicago, and have it taste exactly the same everywhere. Such bizarre uniformity is deeply antithetical to the gorgeous mess that is human existence, with its endless variables and dissimilar locales, not to mention those pesky things called “seasons.”


Bullshit, increasingly.

Of course, we’re way past that now. The fast food industry, population growth, industrial farming, and the wonders of chemistry have all colluded to convince us that sameness and uniformity are not merely safe and desirable (and profitable), but that to question those quasi-religious qualities is downright un-American.

Just ask conservatives, or the church, or the NRA, or even Starbucks or Yum! Brands; anything existing outside the comfortable and numb, the factory-produced and the corporation-owned is to be suspect and should probably be deported, burned at the stake or shot, just for good measure. Now shut up and enjoy your Whopper.

Besides, let’s face facts: There might be no way to feed seven billion rapacious humans without factory farming, genetic engineering, billions of tons of pesticides, inventing violently unnatural ways to maximize yield, strip out nutrition and engineer our experiences just so things like orange juice look, taste, feel, pour exactly the same everywhere. This is the argument. It’s quite persuasive. It might also be partly true. Sort of.

But then again, not really. Here’s the rub: Deep down, we know that sameness equals death. Conformity numbs the soul. Forced consistency kills the spirit, ingenuity, snuffs the very spark of why we are here.

Witness shopping malls. Witness those lifeless slabs of big-box stores every 15 miles off the freeway. Witness cruise ships and chain restaurants and the soul-numbing hell of Disneyland. Spend a significant amount of time in any of these places and watch your anima shrivel into karmic gristle.

It’s not enough to say that we are not the same. That we are not here to look, act, eat, screw like everyone else. That it’s all just an ugly illusion, foisted upon us by pale old men in ugly robes and shiny suits, seeking control, power and money.

You must go wider, see the staggering machinations and industrial practices involved in making places and products look, taste, feel the same. From synthetic flavorings to high-fructose corn syrup all the way down to the Canada’s noxious tar sands and the brutal Keystone XL pipeline (forced consistency’s carbon footprint is enormous), industrial food manufacturing destroys the unique vibration of nearly everything it touches.

You gotta see the interconnections, look at the energies at play to see why we are the way we are. Let’s put it this way: If you don’t think America’s dumber-than-thou fetish for apocalypse porn, zombie doom, hysterical health scares, trash TV, junk food, gun mania, sex scandals, vacuous celebrities, ultraviolence, factory foods and hormone-blasted meat is all tied together in a lethal, self-perpetuating mushball of low-vibrating energy that feeds into and off of itself, you aren’t paying enough attention.

The wise ones teach (and even Einstein agreed) on one overarching, universal truth: all is energy, vibration, pulse. Which is why all spiritual practices the world over teach one essential skill: discerning high from low, nourishing from morbid, true health from blandified corporate sameness that cares for you the way a hammer cares for spun glass.

And then you choose, move, love accordingly, to the best of your ability, with the understanding that the practice is ongoing. That it never really ends. That it’s a maddeningly slippery and gorgeously imperfect system. Which, of course, is exactly as it should be. You know, to put it simply.

•

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/02/12/you-and-your-terrifying-orange-juice

[Deleted]

oh for fuck sake, give it a rest, or go live as a trapist monk or something?
Do you wear jeans KTJ ?
They're american, better go naked, eh ?
Listen to Rock or Blues ?
Better throw away your music collection then.
Lets face it, your hatred of any thing American, makes you no different to the Flaggs or the Stellars or the Jesus' of this joint, and their hatred of Muslims/Africans/hindus/aboriginals et al
You're just as much a racist bigot as they are.

[pim]

Thank you HG, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one among those who aren't KTJs polar opposites (and therefore similar to him) in feeling that way.

KTJ gets his politics from left-liberal c & p's - that it, American left-liberal c & p's which he then uses to further his own radical chic anti-American agenda. He either c & p's from Mark Morford or from the LA Times. I guess if that's the sum total of your "deep" reading then you'd believe that Mark Morford is a Daniel come to judgement. I don't.

I read the c & p. It's so easy to nod your head in vague agreement as Morford flays the evil Big Agribusiness and tut tuts about factory farming. I suppose that in Morford's neighbourhood there would be plenty of alternatives and there would be all the organic food outlets that anyone would want. We've all met these people: dinner party conversation is about which organic food market is the best. A bit like that other great middle class topic of conversation at dinner parties: which private school you send your kids to and the wonderful educationally relevant programs they have on offer.

He nods in the direction of the early 21st century reality of a planet with 7 billion mouths to feed in one 3 line paragraph, grudgingly accepts that factory farming might have a point with demographics like that ... and then disappears into a cloud of phony spiritual karmic bullshit.

But then, he can afford to, can't he! In the meantime what does a single mum with a couple of kids and a casual job facing huge financial issues on top of all the other shit in her life do?? She does what my Mum did when I was a kid and there were 7 kids in the house: if potatoes were 2d (that's tuppence) a pound cheaper in a shop the other side of town that's where she went ... on public transport. You go to the big supermarket chains and you buy whatever's on special. The economic argument trumps every other consideration. And don't pretend, KTJ, that it's otherwise!

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2013 19:27:08 GMT 10 @buzzock said:

a woman died of Coca Cola poisoning.

that stuff is deadly - like MacDonalds

toxic sludge people get addicted to

Exactly.

A New Zealand Coroner found at an inquest that excessive Coca-Cola consumption was one of the major causes of death of a 30-year-old woman from Invercargill. Coca-Cola attempted to block the decision in spite of their lap-dog medical expert having the minority opinion amongst all of the other medical experts called to give testimony at the inquest. Coca-Cola are scared of the consequences of that Coroner's Court finding, because already government agencies around the world, including the American Food & Drug Authority, are sitting up and taking notice of that decision about a poisonous American beverage.

[jody]

Didnt that woman drink 10 litres of it a day? That is insane.

[Deleted]

Just as tobacco companies deliberately set out to addict their customers to their products, the Coca-Cola company likewise produce a product which they know will prove addictive to many people, even though it is basically poison.

[pim]

Moderation in everything.

Personally I detest the taste of Coca Cola and I'm not at all fond of fizzy drinks with their high sugar content. But that's just me and I acknowledge that lots of people enjoy fizzy drink so I see no point in being a wowser about it. Unlike smoking where if someone is smoking near me I'm forced to inhale their sidestream smoke so their smoking makes me an unwilling smoker too so I've a right to object, if someone is enjoying a Coke in my presence I'm under no obligation to share their fizzy drink so it's their business. The occasional Coke or Fanta isn't going to hurt anyone. The fact that this individual consumed 10 litres of the stuff per day is not about "American poison" so much as this woman's addiction, as Buzz pointed out.

[jody]

10 litres a day is beyond addiction.

[Deleted]

• 14-year-old hamburger free of mold? McDonald's says it's no big deal

(Los Angeles Times — Wednesday, April 24th, 2013)

[Deleted]

[Deleted]

My brother studied food science as part of a hospitality management diploma years ago. First lecture, the lecturer came in with a Big Mac and without a word, dissected it, wiped off the 'all beef patty' and pinned it to the cork board at the back. Over the next few months of that semester, they watch in fascination and increasing horror as that 'all beef patty' slowly desiccated to a black disc with nether mold nor bacteria choosing to make a home there.

[Deleted]

100 percent all natural lies

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 5:02PM - Tuesday, August 06, 2013

LITTLE THINGS, but important. Things you wish everyone knew, across all cultures and genders and IQ levels, for then the world would only be a better place, healthier, less overtly depressed, disillusioned, poisoned. You know?

Here is all natural. Or rather, “all natural”. Here is this completely empty phrase/marketing ploy that has been in use for decades and which adorns hundreds of food products from here to peanut butter marshmallow bacon-wrapped blueberry graham cracker deep-fried microwave pizza colon bombs.

Did you know the phrase “all natural”, or perhaps “natural ingredients” or even “natural flavorings”, as they apply to food items you thoughtfully purchase, place in your mouth and then swallow, believing them to be at least remotely near “organic” or “healthy” or, at the very least, “derived largely from nature”, meaning plants, meaning minimal processing and certainly no chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, or synthetics, did you know these common words are utterly meaningless, arbitrary, and nearly always a flagrant lie every time you see them on any product anywhere? It’s true.

Little things. Things you wish everyone knew, but shockingly few actually do.


Naturally flavored! By hateful trolls!

Truth: The FDA gave up trying to define “natural” for US food products more than 20 years ago, and does almost nothing to prevent companies from using the word however they want. The USDA sort of half-heartedly tries to outline some basic guidelines, but never does much to make it stick.

In sum, no agency anywhere actually enforces anything related to the term, partly because it’s so vague, but more because food monoliths are every day trying like hellspawn to get away with far more hateful, egregious, cancer-causing atrocities in their myriad processed food globs than some little white lie on products that are at least occasionally better for you than Snapple or Monster or Kraft or any of the other 15,000 chemically blasted, cartoon-colored products and liquefied sandwich meats lining the shelves at your average Safeway.

The FDA, for its part, “discourages” food companies from using “natural” on labels, which is sort of cute, and which is a bit like “discouraging” a boa constrictor from being so cruel to those nice bunnies. Good luck with that.

The agency does urge that “for a product to be called natural, it must be free of artificial or synthetic ingredients or additives, including color, flavor or any ingredient ‘not normally expected’.” Of course, they don’t really do anything to enforce it, but at least it’s something. (By the way, “organic” isn’t much better in terms of meaning what you think it should mean, but at least there are enforceable guidelines in place).

Once in a great while, someone will complain (read: sue) loudly enough, and a given company is forced to sigh an evil sigh and remove the words “all natural” from a particular label, given how the product is actually derived from old motor oil, pulverized cardboard and the tears of tortured migrant workers. You know, more or less.

Just happened to poor PepsiCo, in fact, which recently had to change the labeling on its Naked fruit juice drinks and pay out a grumbly $9 million for lying about the “all natural” ingredients on a product line that, ironically, really once was 100 percent natural, but ever since Pepsi purchased the company and expanded the line exponentially, Naked juices have duly become injected with all sorts of assorted mass-manufacturing goodness, because that’s just what happens when you want to sell bottled fruit smoothies in convenience stores in every state, 365 days a year, to compete with your evil Coca-Cola/Odwalla archrival.


Naked, except for all the parts that aren’t.

It’s always this curious dance, isn’t it? Where to direct your ire? Where to feel abused and slightly mauled by wayward corporations who care about your health and well being the way Russia cares about gays, or Texas cares about human intelligence?

How angry, exactly, should you be that every time you see “all natural” or “natural flavorings” on a product, it probably means the exact opposite of what you think it means, and hence they’re just sort of slapping you across the face like their bitch, albeit gently?

How incensed have you been in the past? Like when you learned that you can waste two or three or sometimes even six bucks on a bottle of glorified tap water from Aquafina or Dasani (among others), and never even realize that the EPA’s guidelines for tap water in most cities is actually more stringent than the FDA’s for bottled?

Truth: Most municipal tap water is usually cleaner and better for you than bottled, and is certainly no worse. And bottled water costs a staggering 300 times more than tap (which costs only pennies per gallon), whereas bottled water costs far more than what you pay, all things considered, for gasoline. Bottled water is one of the greatest food scams of this century. Have you been screwed so well and for so long, you no longer even realize it?

It looks like you have. The bottled water industry remains a booming, multibillion business, with no end in sight. The food monoliths already won, to the tune of $11.6 billion in sales last year alone. Your basic intelligence, common sense and wallet already lost. Someone oughtta sue.


Package design by Crayola, to appeal to the ignorant
three-year-old in you.

Maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe these lies and misprisions seem small and relatively insignificant, even harmless, particularly when compared to larger and more ominous issues of the day like Syria, the NSA, terrorism, gun fetishism, the wild ignorance of the extreme right, or the existence of Florida. Maybe there are far uglier and more volatile things to worry about than the basic knowledge that 74% of what’s in the average American supermarket is crap.

Nevertheless, I am oft amazed and saddened when I hear from baffled readers after I post something about one of these truths, readers who simply cannot believe that, say, there is really no such thing as 1000 thread count sheets, or that smoking really isn’t all that difficult to quit, or that terrorists are generally morons, or that most of what ails your mind, heart and body can be cured by eating far less (and far better) meat, cutting way back on sugar and bread, eliminating processed foods, exercising, meditating regularly and tripling your intake of fresh water, maybe with a little lemon or bourbon because hey, it’s bourbon. It’s 100 percent natural.

But maybe these lies are just a little bit important? After all, the wise ones tell us the simple truths are the most profound. It’s why we seek out “all natural” or drink water in the first place, because they’re supposedly pure, unspoiled, free of politicized bulls–t and corporate lies.

And when we find out they’re not, that we’ve been lied to and casually insulted for years and even decades, well, something cracks, and bitterness and cynicism sneak in. And baby, those are the most dangerous poisons of all.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/08/06/100-percent-all-natural-lies

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2013 17:48:03 GMT 10 huntergibson said:

oh for flip sake, give it a rest, or go live as a trapist monk or something?
Do you wear jeans KTJ ?
They're american, better go naked, eh ?
Listen to Rock or Blues ?
Better throw away your music collection then.
Lets face it, your hatred of any thing American, makes you no different to the Flaggs or the Stellars or the Jesus' of this joint, and their hatred of Muslims/Africans/hindus/aboriginals et al
You're just as much a racist bigot as they are.

You're just as much a racist bigot as they are? Just how do you justify a statement like that.
I agree with you Kiwi's comments about Americans are OTT but how is it racist - I don't find any indication that he's racially abusing Americans ( caucasian, black, hispanic, asian or a.n. other )?

How are his comments 'racist' - the generic term Americans isn't a race?

[Deleted]

Kiwi, HG has a point ( can't believe I just typed that ) - you use American software ( some of it developed in Israel ), American developed internet, jeans, American technology all over the place. I'm sure you'd be surprised the amount of American discovered and developed technology in your life then you claim 'the Americans are dumbflips.' Does that include your future husband Mark Moronford - another American you spam endlessly from?

[Deleted]

You gotta hand it to Skippy and his bare-faced hypocrisy,don't you ?
Not content with critising me about being racist towards Skippy, and patronisingly declaring that America is "not a race", in the very next post, he critises KTJ for being racist to Americans.
Talk about trying to walk both sides of the street.
And, that's even before we go into the fact that he is responding to a post I made over six months ago. Someone must have thrashed him from pillar to post, how else do you read his desperation here ?


And he wonders why he gets labled as a f***ing idiot.

[Deleted]

While I would never eat anything from MacDonalds, I must say a kind word about Red Rooster. For $8.70, you get a "Classic Roast" - a big piece of real chicken, gravy and four vegetables. The only thing wrong with RR is the sound of Ellen and her crazy audience screaming from the idiot box behind me.

[Deleted]

Cant we all just love each other like brothers and sisters?

[jody]

Matt are you on the mushy's

[KTJ]

Cartoon broccoli: How to make America slightly less fat

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 11:57AM PDT - Monday, July 11, 2016


Great American Wall of Death!

THESE THREE THINGS are self-evident, but bear repeating because they are intertwined in an endless dance of uniquely American doom:

America is, still and officially, the fattest nation on the planet. Women and men, on average, are each now 30 pounds heavier than they were in the early '60s. As reddit pointed out from the CDC data, the average American woman now weighs the same as the average man did not 50 years ago. America remains the fattest major nation on the planet… and still getting fatter.

You need not hear it from me, or even them. You need but glance around Anytown, USA to notice excessive girth, mass, burden, heft, excess and spare tires galore, all resulting from the most lethal combination of all-American forces we have yet invented: junk food in megaportions, coupled to sedentary lifestyles, coupled to a vast, ruthless conspiracy orchestrated by the world's most toxic industries (soda, fast food, sweets, ignorance, violence), to keep you addicted to their product as long as humanly possible — which, if you keep eating their goods, will not be very long at all.

Meanwhile! McDonald's is happy to announce the expansion of its “breakfast all day” campaign, given how sales are up 5% overall, because who doesn't want to inhale six frozen slabs of chemically flavored hash brown and a half-dozen heavily processed McMuffins and some HFCS-soaked McGriddles at four o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, as your colon recoils and your kidneys wish you ill? The fast-food industry is to healthy, conscious living what the NRA is to peace and human kindness.


Eat this and feel disgusting!!

But wait! All is not lost. Over here, a fascinating new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, aiming to see if schoolchildren will eat more healthy fruits and vegetables, if said veggies are marketed more or less the same way fast food is — which is to say, directly to them, in the lunchroom, by way of either a big vinyl banner, and/or an animated TV video that plays alongside the table of veggies, extolling nature’s virtues.

Can you guess what happened? I bet you can: Kids ate more veggies. A lot more.

The results are actually sort of staggering: Upwards of 90% more kids ate more veggies when there was a big ad banner around the serving table. And a whopping 236% more took more veggies when the banner was combined with a TV ad that featured cartoon-character vegetables talking about how fantastic they were.

Does it seem sort of obvious? That's because it is. The study, of course, only mimics, in reverse, what McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell et al have been doing for decades, which is making heavily processed, larded-up garbage foods look grossly appealing to adults and kids alike, products that taste delicious for roughly 37 seconds before they turn you fat and sick and diabetic and promote heart disease and bad skin and Donald Trump and low-level, chemical-induced misery, all the time, forever.

Of course, as they study points out, there are already lots of ways to make fruits and vegetables more appealing to kids in school lunches, from offering it in more attractive bowls to simply retrofitting lunch lines to serve healthier food, by default.


LEFT: Someone, somewhere is going to find out how to make billions of dollars
extolling portion control and lightness. | RIGHT: Step away from the diabetes.

The problem, of course, is that no one is championing the vegetables. There is no corporate profit margin, no industry to coddle, no lobbyists to be made rich by pushing more organic broccoli legislation through Congress.

Put another way, the Crudité Producers of America is not raking in billions by promoting portion control and more warm spinach salads, mostly because the Crudité Producers of America doesn't exist — and even if it did, McDonald's and its ilk would surely stab it in neck at the first opportunity.

Lest you forget, this is America, where we've somehow managed to make all the toxic, heavily processed things the most viciously profitable: oil, Coca Cola, guns, cigarettes, Taco Bell, booze, major pharmaceuticals, HFCS, intolerance, Donald Trump — while all the healthy and decent things — nature, plants, natural foods, basic decency, kindness — are inherently disadvantaged, shouted down, neglected.

Who will be the first to reverse the trend? Will there ever be a time when the CDC releases historic, mind-blowing data that suggests America has slimmed down, is eating less garbage, has lost its triple chin and by the way our supermarkets just can't keep enough fresh produce on the shelves? When will Taco Bell be officially listed as the neurotoxin it so obviously is? The way we're trending now, the planet simply cannot survive us much longer.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/07/11/how-to-make-america-slightly-less-fat

[KTJ]

Your Dunkin' Donuts will kill you now

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 4:59PM PDT - Tuesday, August 16, 2016


Enter here and say to hell with nature.

YOU KNOW what's delicious? Placing multiple deep-fried spheres of artificially flavored, heavily processed, colon-hating dough into your face at six in the morning, and then following it with a mediocre caffeine chaser, as you wonder why, roughly nine minutes later, you feel sort of oily, and flatulent, and your large intestine is spasming and you think you might be dying, even though you’re not, but you actually sort of are.

Even better? Waiting in line, for many hours at a time, to do it.

So it went in the sleepy, pseudo-hippie coastal commune known as Half Moon Bay this past weekend, as the perky, pastel-colored death machine known as Dunkin' Donuts opened another adorable lard cannon next to the pumpkin patches, goat farms and famously foggy, windswept beaches, the ones fewer and fewer humans have the stamina or lack of obesity-related heart conditions to stroll on much anymore.

Did you hear about the new Dunkin' Donuts in Half Moon Bay? As news stories go, it barely registered, something about the “massive” (not really) line that formed in front of the cute little hell-mouth many hours before its first opening — because who needs rest when you can go stand in line at 1am at the donut outlet in hopes of being one of the first to accelerate your interminable march toward diabetes and prescription medication?


Six every morning should be about right. You know, for the diabetes.

I know, I know — geez, lighten up a little, would you? It's just donuts. It's just one of life's simple, decadent pleasures. What's the harm?

I totally agree: It's all just cute and fun and delicious, until it turns depressing, and weird, and points up the entirety of America's nightmarish health problems — a nation that, despite the popularity of organic this and kale that, is more obese than ever (especially kids), as the average American female now weighs what the average male did in the '60s, and the average male weighs as much as a pre-diabetic gorilla.

It's sort of dizzying, really, this vast, debilitating chasm between clean nutritional integrity and what passes for “food” and “eating” America. It's not simply garbage food versus healthy. It's not just “bad” things versus “good”, or calorie input versus calorie output. You do not eat a few salads to “counter-balance” the Oreos and the Diet Dr. Pepper. This is childish thinking, and also deadly.

The truth is more plain: The vast majority of humans in this nation eat thoroughly dreadfully, and way too much, and far too frequently and, because due to lack of education coupled to decades of nefarious corporate messaging, don't even realize it. And if they ever do, they're often convinced it's far too difficult to change. Why even try?


Now comes with portable colonoscopy.

Here is the titanic secret you probably already know, but which nearly everyone waiting in line in every Dunkin' Donuts in America right now tacitly refuses to believe: Losing weight, staying healthy, eating well, feeling good? It's actually easy.

There are no complex algorithms, no elaborate, expensive diet plans, no pre-made meal deliveries, reward cards or silly point systems. There is only a simple, powerful re-examination of your fundamental relationship to food. There is only a calm re-education of what is truly nourishing, versus what is debilitating and poisonous.

But here's the rub: If you're like most Americans, you have, of course, been trained to think otherwise. You have been led to believe by messages, both subtle and shameless, that true health and enjoyable fitness are extremely difficult and require massive sacrifices, lots of money, horrible diets, flavorless foods and miserable, hateful workouts, with tiny portions of quinoa and tofu where the massive quantities of beer and pizza used to be.

You are taught this nonsense by the usual market forces: junk food makers, addiction zealots, pop psychologists, Big Pharma, not to mention the massive, for-profit diet and healthcare industries that makes billions on all the surgeries, treatments and bullshit snake-oils they get to sell to you, over and over again, as most Americans are unwilling/unable to see the connection between how bloated, listless and sick they always feel, and how many cases of Diet Coke and Costco-sized boxes of “fat-free” cookies are in the pantry right now.


Toxic starts young! That giant donut is roughly equal to the amount of junk food the average American child eats by age five.
I just made that up. But it sounds about right, no?

It's just propaganda, of course. Things like portion control, exercise you learn to crave and love, eating lean proteins, organic vegetables and fruits, healthy grains and oils, whole foods and zero chemicals and minimally processed anything? These are not exactly complicated. This is not intellectual snobbery or hippie liberalism. It's just the fundamental human condition. It's just reconnecting to source.

It's simply re-aligning your body with its truest needs, as opposed to your whiny senses' habituated, depressed cravings for bright pink lard at 6am in a vain attempt to reach a vague, sugary itch you will enjoy scratching for about three minutes, but which you will die from for the rest of your life.

• Email: Mark Morford

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blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/08/16/your-dunkin-donuts-will-kill-you-now