Article From Reuter's: Rent walkouts point to strains in U.S. farm economy

[dave1949]

Who or what has determined foods containing processed fat, sugars and salts are addictive?

Want pizza, chocolate, French fries? Highly processed foods linked to addictive eating -- ScienceDaily

Eating chocolate, for example, stimulates the release endorphins in the brain. So does sexual gratification.

Chocolate: Good for the Mind, Body & Spirit

There are a lot of obese and overweight people, and not just in the US. It is a growing problem in many places.
http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Obesity-Update-2014.pdf

 

[smstonypoint]

No doubt, but at the same time it's hard to argue that food quality has not declined while feeding the sugar/fat/salt habit of millions.

Why do people eat junk food? Because it's there and it is chemically altered to please your palette leaving you wanting more. Why is junk food sold? Because people buy it. That's a very tight circle with no mention of nutritional quality. I expect it is reasonably profitable however.

What about people with actual busy lives and demands on their time, not retirees gabbing. They may reasonably assume foods wouldn't be sold if it was 'bad' for them or their family. You can say they should alter their priorities or whatever, but ...

I'm no saint when it comes to eating, so don't take this as a holier than thou thing.

My point is that consumers' food choice set continues to expand. Every time I go the supermarket it seems that I see a new product that is either free of something that is supposed to be unhealthy for me or has an additive that is supposed to be healthy for me.

Of course, we could ban pizza sauce with corn syrup/sweetener, but then we would have to contend with the pesky Mexican and Colombian pizza sauce with corn syrup/sweetener cartels.

Steve

 

[dave1949]

My point is that consumers' food choice set continues to expand. Every time I go the supermarket it seems that I see a new product that is either free of something that is supposed to be unhealthy for me or has an additive that is supposed to be healthy for me.

Of course, we could ban pizza sauce with corn syrup/sweetener, but then we would have to contend with the pesky Mexican and Colombian pizza sauce with corn syrup/sweetener cartels.

Steve

Perhaps that noted expansion of choice is a marketing ploy? An attempt to get you to try something different, or to assuage your guilt that you are not eating as healthy as you might?

Someone said real food is food that has a one word name, such as apple, broccoli, potato, carrot or beef.

Reasonable people know that pizza sauce should contain red wine vinegar. :laughing: The canned pizza sauce I tried, on the recommendation of a fellow TBN member, lists sugar as the second ingredient after the tomatoes. More sugar than olive oil, which was third.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Who or what has determined foods containing processed fat, sugars and salts are addictive?

Sugars, fats, and salts have been shown to cause the brain to release dopamine. Dopamine is what makes things like heroine addictive.

Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of America Is Fat? - Dr. Mark Hyman

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/the-fat-drug.html?_r=0

Food Addiction Signs and Treatments

 

[smstonypoint]

We'll simply agree to disagree. But your second sentence, I'll agree with. And it makes my point. If I buy a bushel of grain, I should be forced to take delivery. If I sell a bushel of grain I should be forced to deliver. If that were true in today's markets you would see stability. The amount of stability can be discussed. But no doubt stability would increase.

Richard,

Let's talk this through. Suppose a farmer in Somewhere, Missouri is thinking about hedging his sales of the corn he will harvest this fall. He expects to sell the corn at his local county elevator. If he hedges those sales by selling December futures, he has no intention of making delivery of his corn to one of the delivery points specified in the futures contract -- he will liquidate his futures position by buying December futures when he sells his corn at the Somewhere elevator.

Neither hedgers nor speculators expect to make or take delivery on their futures transactions. However, the possibility of delivery assures that the cash prices at par delivery points will equal futures prices at contract maturity.

There has been a lot of academic research on the effects of futures speculation on cash (spot) prices. Here's the abstract from a recent example.

Does Futures Speculation Destabilize Spot
Prices? New Evidence for Commodity Markets
Martin T. Bohl and Patrick M. Stephan

Motivated by repeated price spikes and crashes over the last decade, we investigate whether the
growing market shares of futures speculators destabilize commodity spot prices. We approximate
conditional volatility and analyze how it is affected by speculative open interest. In this
context, we split our sample into two equally long subperiods and document whether the
speculative impact on conditional volatility increases. With respect to six heavily traded agricultural
and energy commodities, we do not find robust evidence that this is the case.We thus
conclude that the financialization of raw material markets does not make them more volatile.

This article appeared in the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 45,4(November 2013):595-16.*

Steve

* This is a journal with a reputation of excellence, due in no small part to my role as a Co-Editor back in the 1980s when the journal was called the Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics.

 

[Jstpssng]

Perhaps that noted expansion of choice is a marketing ploy? An attempt to get you to try something different, or to assuage your guilt that you are not eating as healthy as you might?

Someone said real food is food that has a one word name, such as apple, broccoli, potato, carrot or beef.

Reasonable people know that pizza sauce should contain red wine vinegar. :laughing: The canned pizza sauce I tried, on the recommendation of a fellow TBN member, lists sugar as the second ingredient after the tomatoes. More sugar than olive oil, which was third.

Hey Dave, on this point you and I are on the same page. I've been a compulsive ingredient reader as long as I've been buying groceries, forgoing the quick meal because I want to know what I'm eating. My pantry is stocked with very few items with more than 2 ingredients. It doesn't take much longer to build from scratch what others do with a can opener.

However, I think that you are tilting windmills... For every study that you cite I could probably find one which contradicts it, given an equal amount of time. I also agree with others that we are free to make our own choices... And the more necessary things are to live, the less many are willing to pay for them.
Got to keep up with the Joneses, after all.

Meanwhile, "The farmer is the only businessman who buys retail and sells wholesale...".

 

[smstonypoint]

Someone said real food is food that has a one word name, such as apple, broccoli, potato, carrot or beef.

Doritos?

Steve

 

[dave1949]

Doritos?

Steve

Do you grow those from seed, or ???

Aren't there about four flavors of Doritos now?

OMG! I had to look. DORITOS® Nacho Cheese Flavored Tortilla Chips

 

[smstonypoint]

Do you grow those from seed, or ???

Aren't there about four flavors of Doritos now?

OMG! I had to look. DORITOS® Nacho Cheese Flavored Tortilla Chips

Spam?

Steve

 

[dave1949]

Spam?

Steve

If it is copyrighted, it's not real food. No, you cannot eat your iPad.

Your confusion between brand names and the actual contents well demonstrates how successfully the marketeers have taken over your thought processes.

Please pass the Doritos.