Why not replace the current emphasis upon authoritarian-type blanket bans and shaming and/or attempting to control people who choose to eat unhealthy food with one which concentrates upon helping people who wish to maintain a healthy diet, but are prevented from doing so? The present, morality-heavy, one-size-fits-all approach to diet is running the risk of failing due to sheer opposition – not all of which is coming from freedom-fighting bad-diet libertarians who object to being told what to do on principle. Attempting to find some legal means of forcing them to eat what we tell them to is liable to be unsuccessful, especially when considering the vast array of “permissible” food items which are equally unhealthy.
There are other, more effective and less authoritarian alternatives to issuing blanket bans on foods like seed oils. Perhaps a better approach would be to tax fast food out of the market, and protect people with allergies/sensitivities by requiring manufacturers of all ingestible consumer products to place prominent “warning” labels on items which contain allergenic ingredients, additives, and fillers. This would increase public awareness while opening up the market for non-allergenic products, as opposed to simply feeding the media frenzy designed to portray us as “kooks,” and “radicals.”
We do need a radical pro-health agenda, of course, but the point is to downplay the “radical,” and stop wasting energy on people who have been indoctrinated to believe that what we are proposing is “unscientific.” We also need to be aware that some of the policies being proposed will hurt the people who support our agenda – many of whom are also turning against us over the job cuts. But the bigger problem is that many of the proposals advocated by the pro-health movement really will result in increased ill health, and perhaps addressing this problem would win us back the popular support which is critical to the success of the MAHA agenda. This refers specifically to the fact that many natural foods cause reactions ranging from undiagnosed sensitivities to outright anaphylaxis, and the science which explains this is not widely known, let alone accepted as credible.
The most serious health problem afflicting our population is that so many people are sick in a general, “vague” sort of way, but nobody knows why. Traditional medicine cannot diagnose, let alone treat them, and health food advocates whose soul focus is on “natural” are unwittingly making everyone sicker by promoting products which will do exactly this. Olive oil is a case in point. It might be “healthy” according to some abstract, nutritional standard designed for an ideal world, but in reality, it, like many other problematic “healthy” foods, causes food sensitivities when consumed on a regular basis – with effects ranging from constant headaches and fatigue to outright anaphylaxis. Canola oil is the only oil on the market which does not cause food sensitivities or allergic reactions, and healthy canola oil eaters who switch to olive (or avocado, or coconut) oil after it is banned will soon become similarly sick and not know why.
To alleviate their symptoms, they will buy over-the counter pain killers which will make them worse, because unethical pharmaceutical companies who make pain relievers deliberately add allergenic fillers which cause headaches.
When cosmetic and personal care companies were obliged to abandon “bad” chemicals for natural alternatives, they also chose fillers which cause allergic reactions. For example, the once-ubiquitous chemical mineral oil (which they called “petrolatum”) has been replaced with the “all natural” castor oil, which is a known allergen but the cheapest alternative, and listed by the unfamiliar name of “ricinus communis” in order to disguise what is is. Toothpaste manufacturers have done the same thing, and they, also, are making everyone sick – not because of fluoride, but because of “natural” ingredients like real mint and seaweed, (which is labelled as “carrageenan”) both of which cause massive headaches and all sorts of other ills when ingested regularly. And to make it worse, manufactures all seem to agree to use the same problematic and potentially dangerous fillers, so even though there might be dozens of brand options for consumers to choose from, the list of ingredients for each is virtually identical. Concentrating upon increasing public awareness of unhealthy/potentially dangerous ingestible products of all sorts, rather than singling out and banning specific food items, would seem to be the most prudent approach.
If, for example, people were informed of the fact that the two most common causes of headaches are soya and corn, and that for this reason manufacturers of over-the-counter pain killers use them as a fillers, the guilty manufacturers would remove these ingredients of their own volition, and bans would not be necessary. Besides, banning single food items is not going to solve the general problem of poor nutrition.
Banning seed oils will not make people who consume a diet of fast food, healthy. But it will make it even more impossible for the involuntarily unhealthy bulk of the population with food sensitivities to find something – anything – that they can eat without having an allergic reaction of some sort. It will also punish vegetarians, who have an otherwise healthy diet, and do not suffer unduly from the small amount of canola oil which they consume.
Changing the way that French fries are cooked is not going to make them healthy. But quadrupling the price of unnecessary – and completely toxic – foods like sugar and highly processed items would render them unaffordable as daily staples, thus making it impossible for people to feed their children these things on a regular basis. Combined with subsidies on things like fresh produce, this would benefit the people who would willingly consume healthy food if they could afford it, while still permitting adults to make their own dietary choices, however unfortunate.
The idea is to abandon the hope that we can force people who do not want to maintain a healthy diet, to change their habits, and focus instead upon doing everything possible to assist people who are interested in the project, but are finding it increasingly impossible to obtain any food that they can safely consume, regardless of how much they are willing to pay for it.
The percentage of the population with food allergies/sensitivities is sky high, and if one takes into consideration everyone who hasn’t been diagnosed, the condition is the norm. Such people cannot eat dairy products or olive, avocado, or coconut oils; canola oil is the only oil which does not cause allergic reactions. Also, it must be noted that there is no such thing as “the” healthy diet. Different body types require different diets, and not everyone is (or ought to be) a carnivore. People who choose not to eat animal products – often for ethical and/or religious reasons – rely on seed oils and can’t just “replace” them with beef tallow or lard.
Fast food cannot be made nutritious. Deep-frying a peeled, chemically-contaminated, high-glycemic white potato in some MAHA-permitted alternative to canola oil does not really benefit anyone – especially if it is consumed daily alongside a huge piece of hormone-laced fatty meat on white bread and a sugar-laden beverage. Taxing sugar and white flour by, say, $10/lb would drive the prices of these things up by at least 5 times, making fast food affordable only as an occasional treat for the low income earners who now use it as a staple. And forcing farmers to raise their livestock in a humane way would raise its price by at least that much, making it more difficult for people to consume so much of it. It would also bring in enough in taxes to subsidize now-unaffordable items like fresh produce and organic whole grains.
Raising awareness about the dangers of allergenic food items and additives would benefit everyone. Nobody needs things like toothpaste, lip balm, and painkillers laced with allergens, and consumers need a wide variety of options – including canola oil – to accommodate their different dietary and health needs.