Mooshie peas <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:
Quoted message said:On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 12:12:55 GMT, <[email hidden]>
posted:
Quoted message said:On
white people can digest milk easily as an adult--the recommendation is
basically racist.
What ARE you talking about?
It's a standard anti-milk argument which completely ignores the fact that
the majority of Westerners (particularly Americans) with African or Asian
ancestry are in fact of quite mixed ancestry and therefore have a much
higher rate of lactase persistence than indigenous Africans and Asians.
Most "non-white" Americans have no problems with the amount of milk
recommended in the food pyramid. The argument appeals to what I call
"aristocratic liberals" who make a great show of how much they care for
oppressed or marginalized populations, but don't really know a whole lot
about those populations or what their members desire. The vast majority of
Americans who think that the promotion of milk is racist are well-off
whites.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The current food pyramid will be done away with in the
next few years and is thought to be one main cause of an increase in
diabetes.
No, that's caused by eating too much and sitting on your ass. Both
things advised against by the food pyramid.
I like the "is thought"? Is thought *by whom*? Religious low-carbies,
that's who. They always change the subject when asked how the food pyramid
can be causing diabetes, making people fat, etc. when there's no evidence
that a significant number of Americans follow it. Such a belief is,
though, quite consistent with libertarian ideology; it's a recommendation
*by* the government *for* an aspect of people's personal lives, and
a certain brand of libertarianism says the government *always* screws up
when doing such.
(There's an amusing thought experiment to determine which functions of
government a caricatured libertarian thinks government can be successful
at: imagine kids playing at doing it. If the activity would attract mostly
boys (army, cops and robbers, etc.) it's legitimate; if it would attract
mostly girls (playing house, cooking, etc.) it's best left to the private
sector. It seems they're not so much against paternal government as
maternal government.)
It also strikes me that low-carb doctrine usually calls for the replacement
of foods with culturally feminine associations (e.g. grains) with foods
with culturally masculine associations (e.g. meat). In fact, the "the food
pyramid is making America fat" story strikes me as a thinly disguised
version of the Garden of Eden story; there's a strong theme there of the
world going downhill as a result of the feminization of the culture. Of
course, some arguments for veganism are nothing more than the other side of
the coin, based on some rather loopy feminist doctrines and tying in with
the old superstition that eating an animal gives you the strength and
aggressiveness of the animal (a variation of the "doctrine of signatures"😉,
where "aggressiveness" is interpreted as "rape" (which doesn't fit in well
with the fact that most of the meat in the American diet comes from
castrated animals, but since when does logic affect such matters?).
So I do think that some aspects of the Battle of the Sexes have leaked into
the nutrition debate, as well as aspects of political and economic
ideology.