We were reminded of the difference yet again last week when Martha Rosenberg (COUNTERPUNCH) explained:
Big Food is increasingly targeting poor countries as “emerging markets” to please Wall Street and shareholders––perhaps because getting people fat and hooked on junk food in rich countries has plateaued.
Supplanting the indigenous diets of people in poor countries with fast food, packaged goods and soft drinks is unethical for many reasons. In addition to creating obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic illnesses and dental degradation, the junk food supplants subsistence agriculture crops with GMO corn and soybeans. Even philanthropic groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have drunk Big Food’s Kool-Aid about GMOs “feeding the world.” Actually, GMOs drench the fields of poor communities with toxic pesticides and pollute their waters.
Nestle’s exploitation of the poor goes back more than 40 years when it convinced poor mothers to reject their own breast milk—the one thing poor mothers actually have to give their babies—in favor of its infant formula. Activist groups say babies die in poor areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America because their mothers bottle-feed them with Western-style infant milk.
What does that remind you of?
It reminds us of this:
Don't worry, before I took the consulting job, I gave 'em my whole psychohistory. I told 'em what drove me crazy was my last creative consultant job, with the Ritz Cracker mogul, Mr. Nabisco. It was my job to come up with snack inspirations to increase sales. I got this idea to give Cracker Consciousness to the entire planet. I said, "Mr. Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World. We got an untapped marekt here! These countries got millions and millions of people don't even know where their next meal is coming from. So the idea of eatin' between meals is somein' just never occurred to e'm!"
That's from Jane Wagner's play THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE.
By focusing on issues and not on celebrities (political celebrities), Jane Wagner captured and sent up the culture. She told truth. She deserves to be applauded for that.