Alabama charges the overweight, Fat-Tax

AP---

"Alabama has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.

Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors."

Since overweight America is one of the biggest taxes on the health care system, I don't think this is such a bad idea. What do you think?

9 foot tapeworm----

Since the title of my blog is "Epicurean Ideal" I couldn't pass up the chance to talk about a man in Chicago who is suing a restaurant for negligance in cooking his salmon salad lunch. Apparently the fish called him to pass a 9 foot parasite. The lawsuit is for $100,000. I think some people pay top dollar to have a tapeworm as a weight loss mechanism?
Anyone hungry for lunch?

Obesity Billboards Hurt People's Feelings

Boohoo!

Face the music people. Not accepting the problem is the true problem. How about the cost of the obesity EPIDEMIC.....we take every other epidemic more seriously. People are just waiting for a vaccine and not facing the music. Keep the ads coming.

USDA expands its Recall of Beef

Food safety is becoming a national crisis. I think the strong media attention to these issue only reinforces the necessity for people to take on the role of knowing where their food comes from. Relying on government just doesn't cut it. It is just like the tomatoes. How many pounds if tomatoes were tossed because of that saga? Now BEEF being flushed down the drain...contaminating our water a second time. This country has got to curb its beef addiction and fast. Especially when 7 pounds of grain produces 1 pound of beef. Good grief.

Wall Street Journal
USDA Expands Its Recall of Beef
Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. -- The Agriculture Department expanded a beef recall after USDA investigators determined that Nebraska Beef Ltd.'s practices on June 24 couldn't have effectively controlled E. coli bacteria.

USDA investigators decided that 160,000 pounds of meat should be added to the Aug. 8 recall after examining the June 24 records for the Omaha plant. Most of the meat produced that day was included in the recall announcement, but the company omitted some meat produced later in the day after it switched to a different product. About 1.36 million pounds of beef is now included in the recall

Beef mergers

From the Center of Rural Affairs:

The Department of Justice is looking more closely at the anti-competitive impact of JBS S.A.’s acquisition of Smithfield Beef’s Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, according to our investigations and several reports in financial trade publications. JBS announced in March their intention to acquire Smithfield Beef Group and National Beef Packing, purchases that would make JBS both the largest beef packer and cattle feeder in the U.S.

Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, a joint venture between Smithfield Beef and Continental Grain with the capacity to feed over 800,000 head of cattle, would come under the ownership of JBS if the transaction is approved. In conversations with a variety of government agencies looking at the JBS mergers, the ownership of Five Rivers by JBS has been called a “significant area of inquiry.”

Our investigations also lead us to believe that the JBS purchase of National Beef’s Dodge City and Liberal plants in Kansas combined with the JBS Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, as well as the combination of National Beef’s plant in Brawley, California, and Smithfield Beef’s plant in Tolleson, Arizona, are points of concern for the Justice Department.

Thousands of people from across the U.S. have weighed in with the Justice Department in opposition to the JBS - Smithfield Beef - National Beef mergers. We encourage you to keep up the pressure by expressing your opposition to the JBS mergers at
http://www.cfra.org/JBS