Flathead Beacon: Food Fight
Most in Congress ignore the growing hunger for better food. Today a budding constituency is fed up with the quality of our school lunches and the laboratory modifications made to real food.
Food has become a social movement. It makes sense: people make eating decisions three times a day. And eaters do not like all that junk added to processed food, ingredients that you cannot even pronounce.
A few years back, the Montana Legislature debated a bill that required the labeling of cloned meat and milk products. A session prior, a bill required labeling of genetically engineered foods. Labeling affords consumers a food choice.
Needless to say, Big Ag worked relentlessly to slaughter the labeling concepts in the Legislature. If citizens want their engineered or cloned foods labeled, they may have to do it through initiative.
First Lady Michelle Obama has proven a tireless advocate for healthier school lunches and better food choices for kids. Obama tilled a vegetable plot onto the White House lawn, the first Victory Garden since Eleanor Roosevelt worked the dirt during the war. The garden is a powerful symbol to encourage others to grow their own food.
During WWII, the U.S. military advocated for better school lunches as recruits were in poor physical condition due to malnutrition. Today a battalion of retired military generals insists it is time to reexamine school lunch menus as recruits pose a national security threat because youngsters are “too fat to fight.”
Montana Sen. Jon Tester is the only active farmer left in the U.S. Senate. He grew up “picking rocks” on his grandfather’s farm. He now operates an organic farm, growing crops like lentils, peas, barley and wheat.
