MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Thu, 23 Feb 2006

Ketchup is a Vegetable, Milk is Junk Food

Remember when the USDA decided that ketchup is a vegetable in the Reagan years? Well, it seems as though the State of Indiana is trying to do them one better: Senate Bill 0111 would effectively classify whole milk as a junk food. Milk that's been processed, dried and had every bit of natural goodness sucked right out of it would be just fine - but not whole milk, and certainly not real milk. Hel, that's illegal to sell in Indiana, if you want to drink it you have to own a cow share.

If anyone out there still suffers from the delusion that our government is run by rational folks, this should go a long ways to dispelling it.

/Agriculture | 5 writebacks | permanent link

On 2/22/2006 13:30:52
Adam Thada wrote

$13 / gal?

I did the math on the cow share. If you split the cow with 6 others and drink 1 gallon / week, the milk is over $13 / gallon! (that's assuming the cow only produces for one year). So say the cow produces 5 years and rent stays constant. You're still paying over $11 / gallon. In my limited opinion, this still seems hefty for masses of people to convert to. Then again, I guess you were selling TPC milk for $10 / gallon... Anyway, I'm watching and learning from your browsing. See ya around. (I'm the kid from the university that bought eggs and a chicken. BTW, the roasted chicken was mighty tasty... lots of fat made it oily, mmmm. However, having never really baked a whole chicken, I was surprised at how little meat was on it. It guess I now realize that chicken meat is not $2.50 / lb, just the chicken).

On 2/22/2006 15:11:26
Steven wrote

How the hell do people let this kind of stuff happen? Day by Day closer to needing John Galt.

On 2/23/2006 07:12:42
Arwin wrote

Whole couch potatoe

Is "real milk" pastuerized? If not I'll pass. I'll also pass on the $13/gallon too. As for whole milk being junk food: nonsense. The real problem isn't necessarily fatty foods. It is inactivity and genetics.

On 2/23/2006 09:06:17
Dave H wrote

Milk cost , pasteurization and chicken meat

Well, I couldn't believe the $13/gal figure you came up with, Adam - it just seems way too high, even though the consumer price on TP milk was $12/gal.! So I did a bit of checking and think I found an error on Debbie's pages - if you look at her FAQ page you get the cow split 20 ways to get a gallon of milk a week rather than 6 on the page I referenced. I written and asked her about this, but I suspect that the 6 was a typo of some sort, as she also mentions the fees being split 20 ways later in that paragraph. Which would put the final cost at around $5/gal in the summer and $8 in the winter, less the cost of the cow herself (which can be depreciated, believe it or not) and the plastic jugs. Real milk is *not* pasteurized - and I suggest you do a bit more investigation on the process and the reasoning behind it before passing on it! Ask yourself: when was the process invented, why was it invented, and when was it mandated. Then compare the conditions you find to those today. Here's a hint: "refrigeration" wasn't even a word when we decided that every batch of milk had to be scalded before sale... they were still using a literal ice box for cooling, and you can imagine how efficient those were! Chicken meat: your comment explains why "boneless, skinless" chicken costs a lot more than whole ones, that's for sure! But in the exact case of the chicken you purchased, IIRC I suggested that you might want to stew her rather roast, and in no case to bother frying. She was an old hen, and they will be a bit fatty, no doubt. And while that fat adds the flavor, if it's just roasted most of the flavor is dripping off into the pan! Stewing, on the other hand, captures that flavor ion the broth (which can be frozen, by the way) and makes for really good soup, noodles, etc. The other hint I can pass on is that a lot of chicken is wasted - and I mean alot, whether it's processed commercially or at home, by roasting or frying. This is just simple mechanics: it's nearly impossible to separate all of the meat from the bone using a knife or other cutting tool. Stewing, on the other hand, does get all of the meat off the bone - and if you don't like chicken and noodles, there's nothing better than a "pulled chicken" barbecue sandwich! Probably 45% of any chicken is bone or gristle - but on the plus side, chicken bones are very light weight. Thanks for all the comments and Be well, Dave H.

On 2/24/2006 07:57:25
Arwin wrote

Personal accountability

I did a little research on pasteurization before posting. At your suggestion I did a little more. I'll still stick with the pasteurized milk. I think the risks outweigh the benefits of real milk or raw milk as this wiki describes it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization. In fact in the UK they are trying to determine if pasteurization is enough. So there are folks on both sides of this discussion. Having said that it seems to me you should be able to distribute/buy raw milk if you want. Surely existence of raw milk next to pasteurized milk in the dairy counter wouldn't pose a health risk. Of course as Dave points out in other posts here if someone confused the two products and were to get sick the lawyers would circle. So much for personal accountability.

:: Categories ::

agriculture
asatru
copywrongs
humor
musings
politics
technology
index
haxton.org

:: Search ::

:: Blogroll ::

A Mindful Life
The Accidental Smallholder
Austro-Athenian Empire
Cauldron Born
Center for a Stateless Society
Dances with Ewes
Dispatches
egregores
Hardscrabble Creek
Honk & Helen
In Siberia
Laudator Temporis Acti
Lorrie's Livejournal
Masson's Blog
MyAppleMenu
NoNAIS
Notes on Religion
Numenous Thoughts
OrangeGuru
Overlawyered
Prophet or Madman
rogueclassicism
Sugar Mountain Farm
Thud Factor
Universe of Discourse
Wildhunt Blog
within the crainium

:: Archives ::

←February →
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28

:: Site ::

Contact Me

MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

lunar phases

Unless otherwise noted, all original
work on this site is licensed under a

comment...


Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.

Name:
URL:	(optional)
Title:	(optional)
Comments:
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time