On a speaking engagement recently in Kentucky, I picked up a child’s coloring book titled WALLY CAT: A-Z coloring book on eating healthy. A lion-like cat in cape and superman tights holds a slice of watermelon and a clump of broccoli to attract youngsters into the book.
The book is a product of the University of Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension Service, published through its Nutrition Education Program—funded in part by two USDA programs: the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and SNAP-Ed, tag-lined “Putting Healthy Food Within Reach.”
Now that you’ve absorbed the money and instructional creativity behind the coloring book, let’s look inside. Opening page: “Wally Cat wants to know: Do you eat nutritious food?” Page two: “Wally Cat wants to know if you can find the six healthy food words: apples, banana, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans.”
Page three begins the alphabet, two letters per page, and two or three foods per letter. A is asparagus, apple, avocados. B is bananas, beets, and beans. Beef isn’t there; neither is bologna or butter.
C is carrot, cabbage, and cherries. No chicken and no cheese.
D is dates. That’s it. They couldn’t even put in duck.
E is eggplant and endive, but no eggs.
F is fennel and figs, but certainly no filet.
G is grapes, green beans, and grapefruit, but no ghee, goose, or goat.
H is honeydew melon but not honey.
I could go on, but by now I think you get the drift. The entire children’s educational coloring book on how to eat healthy has not one scintilla of anything derived from animals. How easy would it be to add sausage to S and pork chops to P? But no, everything animal-derived—including honey—must be summarily banished from children’s food options.
The book ends with a back page dominated by a circular plate and eight “fruits and veggies: cut them out and make a healthy plate!” Here are the options: lettuce, carrot, eggplant, cherry, pineapple, watermelon, lemon, pea. The book couldn’t even bring itself to offer a vegetarian option; it must be vegan.
Meanwhile, carnivore, keto, paleo, and ancestral diets are almost entering fad status these days as animal protein’s nutrition becomes more and more desirable. To his credit, RFK Jr. is trying to connect some of the nutrient deficiency-illness dots, but he’s fighting an uphill battle with such an entrenched cultural demonization of all edibles animal-related.
I find this coloring book, published by a taxpayer- and USDA-funded university extension program, both shocking and deeply erroneous. It’s yet another example of how our government gets it wrong. And yet we have a growing number of people, known as Democratic Socialists, who believe government is the most honest and honorable sector of society.
Plenty of studies, especially in Africa, show that even a tiny percentage of animal protein per day has dramatic effects on children’s IQ. And what about stress? Moodiness, anxiety? Vitamin B12 to the rescue, but where does it come from? Fish, red meat, poultry, eggs, dairy products. Interesting, don’t you think?
Is it possible that our nation’s political dysphoria and Gen Z’s socialist bent (related to entitlement, victimization, anger, anxiety) is because they’ve been fed a diet promoted by the USDA? What does a coloring book like this do to parents and children, who spend hours coloring and discussing the ideas devoid of anything animal-related?
I can imagine Dad grilling a steak and 4-year-old Sally looks through her USDA-funded coloring book to verify the steak is part of Wally Cat’s healthy eating regimen. “Daddy! No! No! No! Meat is not in here!”
Meanwhile, Washington sends $12 billion to soybean farmers to bolster their unnecessary and over-production business, and readies billions more to corn farmers to subsidize ethanol. This official policy mocks the millions of Americans finding benefits from increasing protein content and desperate for more beef. But cow numbers are lower than they’ve been since 1950.
Any policy predicated on land health, farmer health, and citizen health would encourage cows and quit incentivizing the six subsidized crops: soybeans, corn, wheat, sugar cane, cotton, and rice. Five of these are food and one is fiber, but all are annual mono-crops fundamentally soil extractive. Nature doesn’t have many annuals like these crops that must be planted every year. Nature tends toward perennials—plants that grow multi-year, like grass, trees, and bushes.
As a national policy, then, America incentivizes ecologically damaging crops that guarantee poor nutrition in our foods. As if that isn’t enough, government educational institutions and initiatives don’t have the decency to include the most nutritious foods, thereby keeping our children from ingesting vitamin B12 that would help them stay mentally and emotionally stable.
These policies synergistically cause damage. They damage the soil, damage rural economies and ecologies, damage children’s health, and feed national hand-wringing about what to do with all the problems. A thinking person might conclude we’re moving toward an insane society. And it’s all financed by us, the duplicitous taxpayers.
What’s the answer? First, don’t believe anything the government says. Once in a while, truth may enter the official narrative, but that seems more coincidental than planned. Best personal policy is to quit interacting with government anything.
Second, take personal responsibility. Find good farmers and patronize them. Directly. Stay away from supermarkets.
Third, get in your kitchen. Don’t buy anything processed. Invest in high-tech culinary gadgets to make scratch cooking efficient and easy.
Let’s defund the system and build a new one. That doesn’t require a law, government agency, or bureaucrat. All it requires is personal participatory responsibility. Let’s do it.
