By Nathaniel Allison
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinions on ScoonTV
“Food Will Win The War” – President Herbert Hoover (1917)
What’s for dinner? I’m too lazy to cook a sirloin steak tonight, so I guess I’ll have some kind of Meal Ready to Eat. I’m craving a restructured meat patty slathered in BBQ sauce and processed cheese, stacked on processed bread. It comes complete in a heat stabilized flexible plastic pouch. You just pop it in the microwave – and boom! – a steamy bag of what tastes exactly like a McRib from McDonald’s. It’s that authentic lab-grown texture you can taste. I skipped the veggies because I had a smoothie for lunch; mixed up some protein powder and a few scoops of freeze-dried “greens” mixed with a few artificial juice pouches and powders. For after dinner I’ll be snacking on a chocolate energy bar and cup of Instant-Coffee. Who doesn’t love that sticky, syrup-slathered brick of “nutrition” packed with genetically modified organisms, microplastics, and pesticides. It’s paired well with a cup of Instant Coffee loaded with molds and mycotoxins.
All of the food mentioned was originally created in military labs. Little do most people realize, the military now occupies our kitchens, and has militarized our munchies. The junk-food universe exploded like a greasy Big Bang during World War II. The center of this industrial food nexus is the Natick Soldier Systems Center – a military R&D enclave that spawned many of the innovations that changed not just how we eat, but the entire system of food. It silently manipulated the American diet. The Natick Center used a constellation of corporations like Kellogg’s and Nestlé to utilize and improve these technologies.
These processing techniques were originally designed for soldiers as combat rations, not for daily consumption. Why are most of our children eating like they’re in the Special Ops now? Maybe we’re the subjects in a massive public health experiment? The data is in. Eating like this day to day causes sickness. Science has consistently shown this kind of diet is bad for your health. Fast tracking even more artery-clogging atrocities, these foods are chalked full – a smorgasbord of endocrine disruptors, phthalates, pesticides, parabens, forever chemicals PFAS, heavy metals, phytoestrogens, etc, etc. This junk food jamboree is the usual for some people. I don’t know what you call it, but I call it Dummy Cuisine. The fuse is lit on for more fast-food fiascos.
Most food now has been designed to fool our senses and appetites – adding ingredients to trigger the pleasure centers of the brain by increasing palatability. Scientists search for various ways to use aromas, sounds, colors, and textures to maximize enjoyment. From the crunch of chips to the fizz of soda, it’s been manipulated. After manipulating food with foreign microbial enzymes and bacteria, using emulsifiers modifying structure and texture, and the adding of fake additives and binders, you’re left with mummified and shelf stable foodstuff that no longer resembles its original, natural state. Anyone who’s made homemade fresh bread knows it goes stale in a day or two. These ultra-processed foods are linked to inflammatory and metabolic diseases. They disrupt the gut microbiome and cause low-level inflammation. We’re talking obesity, cardiovascular disease, digestive diseases, and autoimmunity.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower
The problem is that modern warfare demands large quantities for food. Particularly food that won’t spoil, and will remain shelf-stable for extended periods of time. These foods began to be developed as combat rations around World War One. During the First World War it was industrial villages and small farms that prospered feeding the United States Army. The Great Depression left these small farmers with a large surplus of food which the unemployed couldn’t buy. The Second World War brought forth an even greater need for increase of agricultural production; for soldiers and civilians, both at home and among the Allied nations. By providing farmers with this new market for their surplus of food, the war pulled agriculture out of the Great Depression. America ended the war as practically the only nation to have a thriving agricultural section.
The Government demanded the U.S. food industry shift to a more mechanized and large-scale system. This also introduced the industrial use of chemicals. After World War II, when the post-war economy was booming, the suburbanites were demanding even more self-serving supermarkets. Instead of daily trips, customers began shopping for the week. Prolonged shelf-life became a priority. Affordable plastic materials were in abundance after WWII – the war had dramatically increased plastic production for military applications, which were re-purposed for consumer goods. It was off the charts with the invention of things like cellophane, Saran wrap, Styrofoam, plastic-coated paper cartons for liquids, and frozen meals with microwave-safe plastic, it became the dominant packaging material. Stand-up pouches and other specialized plastic containers were designed to increase appeal and convenience for the consumer.
This process got moving with the first self-serving grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, which opened in 1916. The store revolutionized how people shopped. It was the first time customers were able to select their own pre-packaged food. Instead of the clerk gathering the items, the shoppers were able to browse shelves at their leisure, filling their own baskets. This style of shopping enabled a whole new batch of merchandising techniques. The many family-owned grocery stores went under during the 1930’s with the Great Depression. Driven by the changing economies and shifting consumer habits, the mom-and-pop shops began to die. Corporations took this opportunity to create the large chain store, and ultimately the Super Market. Giving shoppers more convenience to browse a wider array of items – the dry grocer, butcher, and greengrocer in one massive store.
“As long as people send guns instead of food to starving people, there will be wars”
– Bob Marley
The chemical company, Monsanto, was a major player in our revolution in food. Since intimately working with the military in the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic bomb, and the production of synthetic rubber for the war, they started by manufacturing artificial food ingredients like saccharin and vanillin – which if you remember the flavoring was sourced anything from beaver butt to petrochemicals.
It was by the 1950’s that they shifted their business focus toward plastics. They were one of the largest producers of the type of plastic used to make Styrofoam trays for packaging. They developed the first plastic bottle for Coca-Cola, but they found this “cycle-safe” plastic made from acrylonitrile was a carcinogen that leached into the beverage. Monsanto became notorious in the 80’s for creating the artificial sweetener NutraSweet – which is a cute word for aspartame, another potentially carcinogenic chemical.
During the Vietnam War, Monsanto was contracted by the military to manufacture the Army’s recipe for Agent Orange – the herbicide that was set to be used for the military’s defoliation program in Vietnam. Agent Orange was later found to contain the toxic compound dioxin, which caused a range of severe health problems. It was during this same period Monsanto’s chemists developed a less toxic herbicide for food crops based on the chemical glyphosate.
By the 1980s the company’s focus shifted again, this time to actual food ingredients. GMO development was like a new gold rush for the agri-chemical companies. Monsanto now moved into the agribusiness with genetically modified seeds for crops. These seeds were modified to be resistant to herbicide, allowing farmers to spray even more weed killer. It led to the development of the Flavr Savr Tomato, the Bt Potato, and Herbicide-tolerant, Roundup Ready crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans. Since then we’ve genetically modified papaya, alfalfa, sugar beets, salmon, apples, pineapple.
In the early 90’s there was a biotech company that attempted to insert an antifreeze gene from the Arctic fish into a tomato, but it never reached the market. But now with the advancement of genome-editing technologies like CRISPR, we’re more successful manipulating food by inserting foreign genes. Scientists are now editing genes of wheat and soy to be more drought-tolerant, bananas to be disease-resistant, pigs to be more virus resistant, to create non-browning produce, and even seedless blackberries.
After the war, the American Establishment tried taking control of the global monetary system with Bretton Woods, but the American Century was coming to end. The United States needed a new avenue for dominating world affairs. They saw petroleum and food as the main pillars supporting the new economic shift. Washington D.C.’s post-war policy was oriented in the domination of the global agriculture trade, oil markets, and world defense. As American industry was turning to rust in the 1960’s, the US elite decided to re-branded food, and voila a new industry was created, US Agribusiness. The Rockefellers funded a relatively unknown project out of Harvard Business School that coined the term Agribusiness. It also created the framework for globalizing food production.
Agribusiness and the Green Revolution went hand-in-hand revolutionizing our food system. The Green Revolution ultimately ended up being a slight-of-hand magic trick. It was mainly designed to sell huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides. Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations worked with the CIA and USAID to further foreign policy goals. The Green Revolution did a wonderful job of clearing the peasants from the countryside around the world – “accidentally” creating new cheap labor pools for the forthcoming US multi-national corporations.
“Famine makes greater havoc in an army than the enemy and is more terrible than the sword.”
– Flavius Vegetius Renatus
Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, was largely responsible for reorienting US agricultural policy. He did this by negotiating huge grain sales with the Soviet Union, 30 million tons of grain. Food was now a form of diplomacy. Kissinger once said “Agricultural policy is too important to be left in the hands of the Agriculture Department” The order was so large Washington had to turn to private grain traders, creating a US-based grain cartel. It was Kissinger’s food policies that created a global agricultural market for the first time.
Earl Butz, as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970s, famously declared that “Food is a weapon. It is one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit.” A new tool for the Cold War strategies of tension toolbox. The real use of food as a weapon doesn’t come from its ability to sustain, but from the restriction of it – it’s the weaponization of famine.
Global depopulation and food control became policy under Kissinger. He wrote National Security Memorandum 200, it dealt with food policy and population growth, but under the bureaucratic language it consistently promotes population reduction. It refined the techniques of food as weapon techniques. Kissinger wrote “One of the most fundamental aspects of the impact of population growth on the political and economic well-being of the world is its relationship to food.” Before World War 2 we called these techniques of Malthusian science eugenics, afterwards it got rebranded as population control. The science of Eugenics transformed into the science of Genetics.
By the 1970’s many of the population and food policies that were adopted by the U.S. Government, were coming out of the Rockefeller Foundation and their Population Council. The Ford and Carnegie Foundations were pumping out similar policies. People forget one of the first philanthropic projects undertaken by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920’s were to fund American Eugenics, the other was Planned Parenthood.
“A hungry man can’t see right or wrong. He just sees food” – Pearl S Buck
Julius Caesar conquered and pacified Gaul by controlling Gallic food supply. Russia defeated Napoleon by utilizing a scorched-earth policy against the French destroying any access to food and shelter. Abraham Lincoln adopted a similar “scorched earth” policy, and tried to starve the Confederacy of supplies by blockading its coastline with naval ships and seizing control of the Mississippi River. Food warfare has been a commonplace tactic all throughout history, with countless examples predating the 20th Century. The technological developments since the World Wars has only intensified and expanded this weapons efficiency. We are witnessing it implemented on an unprecedented scale.
This food imperialism gave a few American agri-chemical corporations the ability to take over the seed and pesticide market – and eventually used that monopoly to make even more by selling their patented GMO plants. The family and community oriented farmer stood in their way. The family farm was now mandated to morph into the factory farm. We now have global banks and investment firms treating food as financial assets, which contribute to price volatility and food crises. Local economies in-turn become dependent on global trade.
The world is currently watching food atrocity happen live in Gaza. The weaponization of food is everywhere, all over the world, just look. From Africa to Yemen. From Haiti to Palestine. Food imperialism is as intense as ever, and soon it’ll be coming to a neighborhood near you. Even if you don’t see it, the battle for food is still being waged, it’s just the seeds of destruction are finally beginning to mature. Don’t trust Geneticists who play God.
Curtis Scoon is the founder of ScoonTv.com Download the ScoonTv App to join our weekly livestream every Tuesday @ 8pm EST! Support true independent media. Become a VIP member www.scoontv.com/vip-signup/ and download the ScoonTv App from your App Store.
