To Orwell Today,

Hi Jackie,

I have a comment on the article you posted called "is safeway sucking your soul". While i'm not sure about the references to eastern philosophy that the author places within it, i can agree fully with everything else.

Is Safeway sucking your soul? (American consumer culture is teeming with neon-colored, overprocessed, demon-spawn products). SanFranGate, Apr 17, 2005

The subject of our food supply is one that is constantly discussed by myself and others close to me, as it is quite obviously clear that most of what is sold is, simply put, rubbish; all of it packed with chemicals and anything else that is harmful to us, with everything else removed.

There was a 4 part series on the UK channel 4 network a few months ago (which i did not see at the time, but heard a great deal about and consequently downloaded from the internet) which had a well known chef cooking school dinners for a couple of schools in London, and, to put it shortly, i was close to tears at parts because of the kinds of food the kids were served - but more so because of the obvious signs of addiction that the kids displayed to the worst kinds of food.

It was a stark and moving picture of how big business and government see us.

If you would like to see the series, i can give you links to where you can download them (4 programs, each 350meg). i'm not usually one to recommend a tv program, but this series is a brilliant, if upsetting, glimpse at the situation.

very best regards,
james (sheffield, uk)

Greetings James,

I can empathize with your being close to tears over the food they're feeding our children these days because I too am very upset about it. Yes, I'd be very interested in seeing that program so please do send the link.

When I read the "Safeway sucking our soul" article yesterday it reminded me of exactly how I felt when I returned to Canada after traveling through England, Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia & Singapore to Australia in the 70s.

At that time those countries didn't have the huge, modern grocery stores that we have here and I loved how there was a separate store for everything. A person went to the Butcher's for meat, and to the Green Grocer for fruits & vegetables, and to the Bakery for bread, and a couple of times a week to the big open markets teeming with local farmers selling their produce. In England I was particularly amazed by seeing the farmers' Meat Vans where the Pork Chops were still attached to the pig's backbone with the skin and hair still recognizable. And there were fresh cheezes and eggs and cream floating on the top of milk bottles. And people had to bring their own shopping bags. There were no flimsy, plastic bags to worry about disposing of and contaminating the environment with.

Then to come back to Canada and return again to the atmosphere in our massive food-chains where everything is placed on styrofoam trays and covered with Saran Wrap was an incredible culture shock. I longed to return to Europe.

Now, these thirty years later, it's much worse. Canada even imports food from China (canned mushrooms for example) and from Mexico and Thailand and elsewhere. Our apples and green peppers etc all come each with their own individual sticky label that is almost impossible to get off. And fruits and vegetables now are so HUGE that one wonders what they've been injected with, or if they're even natural. I assume that most of them are now genetically modified.

My research over the years has led me to the realization that the powers-that-be are planning to control our food supply the same way they plan to control every other aspect of our "natural" lives. See TAKE NOT OUR DAILY BREAD & FOOD-WEATHER-WATER-AIR CONTROL

All the best,
Jackie Jura

15.Life In Oceania (...The food with its strange evil tastes)

To Orwell Today

Here is the link just in case site readers want to have a go;

http://www2.digitaldistractions.org:8080/torrents.php?showid=15

On that page there are 4 programs with the title "Jamie's School Dinners"; those are the ones to go for.

They are downloaded using Bitorrent.

best regards,
james (sheffield, uk)