Is ‘Food Freedom’ Going Extinct?

Government-Connected Agriculture, Processing & Drug Companies Threaten Good-Neighbor Food Producers & Consumers

I began outlining my thoughts for this article while preparing myself a big bowl of ice cream. Because I like to eat healthfully.

Seriously, I try to eat (sort of) healthful foods, even for dessert. “Less bad” is better than “more bad.”

AI-generated image of vanilla ice cream in a dish with peanuts topping. Mine didn’t look quite this fancy, but it was delicious!

(With apologies to the old Jif commercial) Choosy Dom chooses …

I’m not going to claim I make my own ice cream from the most perfect ingredients. No, I bought it at the grocery store, because I had a digital coupon for this particular brand. So, I did the first thing I always do when thinking about a food purchase: I looked at the ingredients list.

My health is downstream of my food choices. I try to eat simple foods that have no or minimal industrial processing. Even on the rare occasion when I enjoy something a little “bad” for me, I still do it within reason and avoid things that are especially awful for my health.

The vanilla bean variety of ice cream had the least amount of added sugar and saturated fat of the several flavors available. The ingredients list — skim milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, whey, guar gum, carob bean gum, ground vanilla beans, natural flavor — didn’t have anything terrible (like high-fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, hydrogenated vegetable/seed oils, things I had to read very slowly in order to pronounce, etc.).

Not a bad ice cream, all things considered.

And then, there was the topping I chose: peanuts! And the peanuts (and almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, and walnuts) I prefer are dry-roasted. Again, no need for them to bathe in what are usually vegetable/seed oils before a dusting of salt and maybe some other spices are added.

Relatively simple vanilla-bean ice cream and dry-roasted, lightly salted peanuts … it was magnificent!

Agriculture —> Food —> Healthcare

The food that heavily influences my health, is itself downstream of how those foods are cultivated. Here’s where, admittedly, I have less knowledge about what’s happening. And this brings me to a potentially huge series of confrontations in the “food freedom” space.

Image by user mughalsahib2335, available at Pixabay.com.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending another Brownstone (website, Substack) Supper Club in Philadelphia (I wrote about the first one on April 10, 2024). This latest event featured a keynote presentation by Tracy Thurman, who works with the 1776 Law Center. She is part of the team representing an Amish farmer, Amos Miller, and his centuries-old, truly organic farming practices and “raw milk” dairy production that run afoul of the USDA and other regulators.

The 1776 Law Center focuses on threats to Political Freedom, Financial Freedom, Medical Freedom and Food Freedom. Those often overlap; the Amos Miller case is deep into all four categories, as you can glean from this description of Food Freedom from the firm’s website:

Food Freedom protects the rights of privacy, bodily autonomy, private association, political affiliation, religious expression, child-rearing, and the fundamental liberty to decide your own diet for yourself without the government dictating it against your informed consent.

Food Freedom promotes the important need of self-sufficient, small farming using traditional and truly organic methods that dominated our food culture for centuries before Big Ag took over our food supply with the enable aid of government bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats are boiling mad over raw milk

Thurman characterized the attack on raw milk, particularly, as the “tip of the spear.” If good neighbors can successfully produce, source, buy, and sell dairy products without the bureaucratic behemoth driving up costs — and without those crony regulations creating less healthful, processed milk and derivatives! — then these bad citizens will be a living example of the futility and indignity of government manipulation in our health and food.

Crony corporations understand these connections and use them in their synergistic businesses: Pharmaceutical products become an expected part of “good health,” fueled by food that’s heavily processed and modified, stretching as far back as the agricultural practices and chemicals used to treat crops and livestock.

Sometimes, the same company, like Bayer, which bought Monsanto a few years ago, can be involved in chemically engineering both the foodstuffs and the people who consume them.

AI-generated image of an etching of a cow in a field. Such a moooooo-ving picture!

I don’t use much dairy in my diet and have never consumed raw milk. But I’m still cheering for Amos Miller to prevail. I don’t have to use a specific set of products myself to know that people have a natural human right to cultivate food, trade with others, and make informed decisions about their nutrition.

And maybe one of these days I’ll get to try some raw-milk ice cream. Probably with dry-roasted nuts sprinkled on top.

Another valuable freedom is Comment Freedom!

You are, of course, free — and encouraged — to share your thoughts on today’s themes in the Comments section.

Do you grow food as a business and/or for your own consumption? What do you think of different farming/gardening techniques? Ever encountered the very organic methods of an Amish farmer like Amos Miller?

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? And do you put nuts on it? If not, what’s your favorite topping(s)?

Anything else you’d like to ask/comment about from today’s article?

Exercise your freedom below …

CORRECTION: This article originally misidentified Tracy Thurman’s position. She works with the 1776 Law Center on the team representing an Amish farmer, Amos Miller, but is not an attorney on the team.