zlacker

> Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.

Are those relevant to addressing America's national diet deficiencies? None of them are currently anywhere big enough to make a practical difference to most people.

Also most of the health problems with what people eat are from what foods they eat and how much they eat rather than from not choosing the highest quality of those particular foods. E.g., someone might snack often on candy. If they can be convinced to switch to snacking on fruit it doesn't really matter much if they get that fruit from Safeway or a farmer's market. Maybe the farmer's market fruit is healthier for them than the Safeway fruit but the difference will be tiny compared to the gains from switching from candy to fruit.

>>tzs+(OP)
I think it's less about that farmer's market produce being healthier, and more about it being tastier. I've encountered plenty of people saying things like "I don't like tomatoes" when it turns out all they've eaten are pale, out-of-season tomatoes from the supermarket.

A big part of getting people to eat better is educating them about seasonality and what good produce should taste like, so that they end up actually liking it.

>>dml213+c31
A farm by our cottage had a sign out last year, selling vegetables. We bought some cauliflower and had it for dinner. It was supposed to be a side dish but it was so darn good I don't even remember the main dish.

Later I got some vegetables from a friend who had grown them at a local allotment garden. Made some vegetable soup with them and I swear it's one of the best meals I've had, and I've had some real nice meals.

Flavor in each case was so far beyond what I can get in the grocery stores here it's hardly comparable.

>>magica+Bi1
A lot of it comes down to what the person you're responding to said, seasonality. I grew up in a very rural farming area and now live in a very large city. While the produce at the grocery store is generally inferior to that of being near a farm, when things are in season, it is at least comparable. That apple you buy in July is never going to be as good as one bought in the fall, it doesn't matter where you buy it from.

>>tzs+(OP)
The point is with many hundreds of pages maybe there could have been something like

"local farmers markets have shown to address concerns about food deserts especially in lower income communities" or some obvious non-controversial observation. Maybe "community gardens have been demonstrated to increase lifespan in multiple studies"

The point is these things are decided on by a committee. To find out where their priorities are one of the bigger tells is when you find really obvious things that are not there.

If this was a sincere effort, where is all the obvious stuff?