Food Freedom Bills and an Outbreak of Reason

What if you could take a flamethrower to everything that was wrong with 2020: the lockdowns, the riots, campus speech codes, chokeholds, the endless emergency orders by fiat? The Indiana assembly has all that and much more in its sights this season. Isolate Grandma? She should soon be able to see a caregiver she's related to. Caught rioting? Three hots, a cot and no government job for you. States of emergency? Not without permission from the legislature, and they're in no mood for mission creep. Speakers you disagree with on campus? Grit your teeth or head for a safe space. Defund the police? LOL, the assembly is looking to repeal the law requiring licenses to carry handguns by persons not otherwise prohibited from doing so.

Also on the agenda: prohibition of conversion therapy, civil forfeiture reform, a ban on police chokeholds, decriminalization of marijuana, body cams and dash cams for the police, allowing pharmacists to prescribe and dispense birth control pills and patches, and making female genital mutilation a felony. The clouds are breaking; the whole world hasn't gone crazy.

Indiana state capitol building. Photo by Massimo Catarinella.

Remember the run on groceries last year? Possibly in response, along with other factors, the assembly has several bills to increase food freedom.

Oases! Establishment of food desert grant programs.

Farm to fork! Allows sale of meat products from custom exempt slaughtering establishments.

Food trucks! Provides a statewide license for food trucks, without local fees or permits.

4H! Allows schools to purchase up to $7,500 of food per year from a youth agricultural program.

Hot coffee! "Micromarkets" can include hot beverages. A micromarket is a self-service kiosk you can purchase fresh food and beverages from.

Cold lemonade! Allows minors to operate refreshment stands free of fees, licenses and most regulations.

Cold beer! Lets you buy it at the grocery store.

Cottage food! Allows home cooks to sell their products in person, by phone or online.

Urban farming! Allows urban land to be rezoned as agricultural.

Good grief, did a new Age of Reason creep up on us? It may be February, but I feel like I could look outside and see blossoms on the trees. This year-long winter finally feels like it's nearing the end.

Comments

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here . * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh. Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good. I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds. Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog