Past time to change nation's eating habits

Kraft Foods announced it is passing along higher food costs caused, no doubt, by rising oil prices. The only excuse they had for selling their pretend food products was that since just after World War II, the industrialized food production industry could deliver food for less to the masses.

They never promised that food would have any nutritional value, which it has precious little of, but they have been feeding the masses, fairly cheaply all this time. Barring a growing number of recalls and poisonings, industrialized food production in America has delivered an almost edible food substitute. The people love their food substitutes -- cereals, frozen pizzas, packaged dinners, breads and buns, artificial cheese flavored pasta and sauces, cookies, cakes, canned soups and other concoctions. They all have lists of unpronounceable chemical additives on their labels and have become common place in the pantries of several generations since the war ended.

They have successfully learned to tweaked our human weaknesses for sugar with corn syrup and salt to make sure we crave their products. The industrialized pretend food producers have turned us into mass grain consumers, like cows.

They have created jobs and business for drug companies who produce chemicals to add good looks and vitamins in an attempt to re-enrich foods that have had their vitamins processed out of them in the name of "shelf life."

Where industrialized food producers fail at quality and nutrition, they excel in shelf life and advertising. They support a myriad of jobs and businesses that, not unlike the oil industry, feed off consumers.

Kraft's increase in prices should be less alarming than the increase in diabetes, heart disease, obesity and cancer since World War II. No, we need not feel sorry for them nor should we support them.

We need to eat old-fashioned bread made of whole wheat, water, yeast and a touch of salt and, for the sake of accountability, look eye to eye with the person growing our foods.

Rather than paying Kraft and the businesses they support, we should commit to eating simple real, whole foods.

If, as a society, we don't do this soon, Kraft's higher prices will be a drop in the bucket compared to the continued increase in medical costs and the devastating loss of family and friends to diseases that don't need to plague us.

Gail Talbot

Huntley