the default state is “multiple parasitic infections and permanent semi-healed injuries”

People have a romantic view of nature. Nature is fucking _brutal_, unforgiving, and horrific. Starving to death, living with severe infections, broken limbs, chunks of flesh missing, and hopefully reproducing before you meet your fate - that's how most animals in nature live out their lives.

As humans, we've gained the unique ability to greatly control not only our environment, but also other living creatures' environments, and 'unnatural' is not inherently bad. Nature is, more often than not, extremely horrific for living things.

Could we live in a decent environment, where the food paste we eat tastes pretty good and keeps you at optimal health - somewhere between starving and overweight? certainly possible, some pet owners do this. But that's not natural, that's just 'optimal for long-term health' - which is only one input to life happiness.

Excluding the ones that are rapidly killed I guess

I disagree, animals starve if there are too many due to overpopulation and will get fat if they find an easy source of food. They often die from infections, collect tons of diseases, have many parasites.

It's easy to see animals be sad and mourn the loss of a pack member or child in certain species.

This is wildly incorrect. I volunteer at our local zoo. The animals there are given highly regulated diets that are tuned to their medical needs. They are stimulated often and receive plenty of exercise and care. This isn't the case for every zoo, but 95% of them operate this way.

Animals can be in zoos for many reasons. Many of them come to us due to sustaining injuries that would have otherwise killed them. Others come to us to avoid illegal poaching or the exotic pet trade. Others still come to us to participate in breeding programs that will, hopefully, accelerate that specie's repopulation. Zoos used to keep animals for entertainment but many of them are moving away from this model, and rightfully so.

This flagrant accusation was enough for me to stop reading.

[1] https://exauoliveoil.com/blogs/olive-oil/how-extra-virgin-ol...

[2] https://seloolive.com/en-ca/blogs/olive-oil/are-cheap-extra-...

Or you could buy (or grow, if you're hardcore enough) organic wheat, corn, and soy in their unprocessed forms and learn to cook. You know, like your ancestors did for thousands of years.

The problem is pesticides. Gluten intolerance only became a thing after they started dousing crops in round-up prior to harvest ("crop dessication").

what

And I'm on board with "you are what you eat"

I'm curious about carbs/sugar though. My mental state plummets if I eat too much. Or do I eat carbs because my mental state has already plummeted, as they're easy and rewarding...? And closer? (I have a convenience store opposite my house)

If you're going to note that specialization in our food system is what makes it possible to feed so many people with so few farmers, sure, go ahead.

Wendell Berry and many others that the reduction in the number of farmers enabled by that specialization is what has hollowed out rural communities to the point where many services can't be economically provided to people living in rural areas because there are too darn few people.

I didn't grow up in a rural or agrarian area, but I live in one now. I most recently got to watch this through the lens of the school budget. The four towns that comprise our school district add up to in total 500-some students across 12 grades.

Getting a budget passed took two tries and some cuts because getting enough teachers and students together and transported to school buildings is pretty high. There were other factors, but structurally the low density of students is a huge cost driver.

So yeah, would more farmers farming smaller farms be less efficient? From a food production standpoint, yes. Would it bolster rural communities? Sweeping away a bunch of other diverse issues that are no doubt affecting communities differently, in aggregate, probably yes.

Bringing it back to TFA: would it result in a healthier, more resilient food system in the US? Almost certainly.

> For a wild animal, the default state is health.

Maybe OP meant a state of balance? For all those that describe injuries and parasites - those kill the host if they aren't 'healthy'. Having parasites is not inherently unhealthy, there's a bunch of symbiotic relationships out there.

I agree though - you eat clean and get rid of the junk, you will be more healthy. Nothing in this article sounded crazy to me, and honestly shadow downvotes on reasonable replies with no reasoning leads me to believe the vested interests are in these forums as well protecting their image.

Also to be clear - OP is not talking about GMOs, they're talking about wonder bread where all the nutrition of the wheat is stripped out during processing, leaving you eating nothing but carbs and sugar instead of a more balanced food with fiber which helps you process the other things.

Basically: Polyunsaturated Fats are poisoning your Mitochondria, causing all sorts of metabolic illnesses.

Seed oils seem to be poisonous to humans. However, there is a global Trillion-dollar industry that depends on this not being true...

What could go wrong?

I was in Russia a few years ago and I remember that basically all the food I ate at my relatives' rural town was remarkably, stunningly better than even the best locally grown farmer's market food that I have ever been able to find in the US. It practically radiated goodness.

Now, part of this might be because of childhood nostalgia or some genetic factor that predisposes me to the food of my homeland. But I think I can tell that most of it is not nostalgia. That Russian food I ate in that rural town really was much better than anything I've ever found in the US.

Which is remarkable given that Russia practices the same sort of massive highly technological agriculture that the US does, it is not like when I was there I was eating the products of some small farmstead.

It's actually kind of funny that whenever I travel to Europe, like 90% of the junk foods I occasionally indulge in when home (like hot Cheetos for instance) are banned. The US supermarket really is a minefield. It's more important than ever to cook at home, imo.

Leaving the fact that so many big food and ag companies are intertwined at the board level, at some point maybe the distinction becomes irrelevant.

Yeah, sure.

Did you miss one important thing? Our homes are a minefield: chemicals, VOC, mold.