Melanie Warner – Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal (Scribner)

There’s an old saw that says hot dogs taste great, but you wouldn’t want to see how they are made. While working as a PR flack for a business association I helped businesses to celebrate major anniversaries by pitching stories to the media. I took a TV crew through a local meat product producer’s plant to learn more about how hot dogs are made.

Decked out in lab coat, shoe covers, head covering and even a facial hair mask, I got the full tour; from grinding, to stuffing to the smokehouse. While the TV crew couldn’t film everything due to proprietary processes, we got to see the whole story. While the gelatinous glop that gets stuffed into the casings was a pretty scary, it didn’t cause to stop eating and enjoying tube steaks on a regular basis.

The question becomes, if you know how the food you consume is made and what it contains, would you continue to eat it? In Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal author Melanie Warner explores the process and ingredients that go into processed foods. If you are at all curious about what it is that you are putting into your body, this is a great concept.

I went into reading this book with an open mind, but I have to admit that I chafe when food nannies like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and alleged “experts” from organizations from groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest try to jam laws down people’s throats trying to limit people’s freedoms when it comes to what they put in their mouths.

While the concept is a good one and the subject is important, it’s the delivery where it falls apart. It may be an attitude thing; with these food police taking a superior, holier than though, I’m better than you stance. Yes, the food industry is a BIG BUSINESS and like any business profit is important. Yet many comments that lace this book, like the “food processing industrial complex” and the denigration of profit tend to overshadow what could be important information.

To approach this concept from the point of view of the way things used to be, when Mom made things from scratch just isn’t realistic. With population growth and a shift in our daily lives, the good days of local markets and farms could not supply the demand. Processing of foods became a necessity to get things to the marketplace and in a volume to meet demand.

Price is an important factor. While U.S. residents are paying a smaller percentage of their disposable income for food, 9.8% currently, compared to 20.6% in 1950, the cost of other necessities has continued to spiral upward. The fact that food stamp usage is at a record high, in excess of 48 million Americans should put those numbers in a different perspective. There’s the ideal and then there is reality.

Whether it’s vegan’s, global warming alarmists, Prius drivers or food police, liberals lose the what can be important messages when they put their nose in the air and look down upon the lowly masses and in the process they lose the real story.

When Liberals Attack

It must be painfully lonely to be a Liberal.

For four decades Bob Woodward has been heralded as one of the true bastions of journalism for his work on the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration, as half of the dynamic duo of Woodward and (Carl) Bernstein.

Woodward has continued to crank out regular investigative columns and bestselling books chock full of insider accounts and sources. He has been a regular target for complaints from conservatives and often scorned for being a central figure in the liberal media.

Now that Woodward has correctly called the Obama administration on their ongoing lies about who is the responsible for the so-called “sequester” mess and then let it be known that senior administration officials had contacted him and suggested that he would “regret” making those comments calling out the Obama-ites, liberal are in full attack mode on their one-time hero.

Liberal media types and even Obama administration types have labeled Woodward everything from a liar, to old, and even suggested he is “senile.” I thought liberals we for protecting seniors? Apparently that kind, caring false-façade only matters until you piss them off, then all bets are off.

This is just another example of the true colors of a liberal; while they attack conservatives as being mean-spirited, it is they who would truly stop at nothing to attack those that they see as a threat. Once you've crossed that line, you are on your own!

Who's the Biggest Jizzbag?!

Not sure if it's the election inching ever closer or what, but the whack-a-mole Liberals seem to be getting nuttier by the second. Some comments they're making have me wondering who the biggest liberal jizzbag is.

Some examples for your consideration:

Joe Biden

Liberals love to pass off the nearly continuous gaffs of Vice President Joe Biden as "Joe being Joe" but the more this guys does and says the more I wonder if the soon to be 70 year old is in the early stages of dementia or just plan batshit crazy!

Recently Biden was among the contingent of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who met with families of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Libya...let me repeat that to be perfectly clear; VICTIMS OF THE TERRORIST ATTACK IN LIBYA. Biden approached Charles Wood, the father of Tyrone Wood, who heroically tried to rescue the Ambassador to Libya, and asked Mr. Wood "did your son always have balls the size of cue balls/"

Mr. Wood recounts the story in this long, but worthwhile clip:

Seriously is that an appropriate comment ever, let alone in this somber setting? Keep in mind this joker is oen heartbeat away from being President!

Ted Turner

CNN founder, environmental wingnut, and certifiable loon Ted Turner appeared on Piers Morgan's CNN mess recently and since no one watches, I fugured you'd need to see this amazing clip of this batshit crazy Liberal commenting that he's happy that more American soldiers are commiting suicide than are dying in war.

Not sure what this ass clown is doing these days, but if he's selling something, product or service he deserves to be boycotted and put out of business! This jizz needs to be taught a lesson and treated the worst way possible and for him that is to be ignored!

Paul Krugman

New York Times columnist and alleged economist Paul Krugman recently told the Liberal Huff Po folks; “I think there’s a real chance that [Romney will] manage to pursue a policy in the first couple of years that simultaneously blows up the deficit and depresses the economy.”

Has this guy been sleeping for the past four years? Of course what would expect from the clown who said that Obama's economic stimulus plan failed, because it wasn't large enough!

Paul Krugman: Double-Dip Recession If Romney Wins