{"id":29090,"date":"2010-11-17T10:20:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T15:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=29090"},"modified":"2013-12-02T23:23:02","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T04:23:02","slug":"u-s-cheese-policy-contradictions-in-the-interests-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/11\/17\/u-s-cheese-policy-contradictions-in-the-interests-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheese: Contradictions in the Interests of the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent New York Times<\/a><\/em> article on cheese<\/a>, brought to my attention by Jordan G., beautifully illustrates the fact that the U.S. government is not a coherent bloc, but a collection of competing interests.<\/p>\n

Last month Domino’s Pizza released a new pizza named “The Wisconsin.” \u00a0 Named after a superbly cheesy state (one close to our hearts here at SocImages), the pizza\u00a0has six cheeses on top and two in the crust. \u00a0The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> that one quarter of a pie (an amount I could certainly put away without effort), had more than 3\/4ths of the recommended maximum in a day and double the calories of some of its other pizzas.<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin:<\/p>\n

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Cheese, it turns out, is the main source of saturated fats in American diets and saturated fats contribute to significant morbidity and mortality in the U.S. \u00a0The government, accordingly, recommends that we eat less of it.<\/p>\n

Document from the Department of Agriculture:<\/p>\n

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And here’s where the story gets interesting. \u00a0The Department of Agriculture is not only responsible for the health of Americans, it’s responsible for the health of the American food industry. \u00a0As consumption of cheese and non-low-fat milks declines in the U.S., the dairy industry suffers. \u00a0According to the New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Every day, the nation\u2019s cows produce an average of about 60 million gallons of raw milk, yet less than a third goes toward making milk that people drink. And the majority of that milk has fat removed to make the low-fat or nonfat milk that Americans prefer. A vast amount of leftover whole milk and extracted milk fat results.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The government used to buy cheese and butter from its dairy farmers, leading to a vast collection of dairy products stored in underground caves in Missouri (totally not kidding). It’s switched strategies — after all, how much cheese and butter can one country hoard? — and while one arm of the Department of Agriculture tells us to eat less cheese, another is telling us to eat more.<\/p>\n

In fact, the government spent $12 million American tax dollars marketing The Wisconsin pictured above. \u00a0Dairy Management is the dairy marketing arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. \u00a0It has a budget of nearly $140 million per year… and it is in cahoots with pizza chains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one way that we can support dairy farms across the country: by selling a pizza featuring an abundance of their products,\u201d a Domino\u2019s spokesman said in a news release. \u201cWe think that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s sell more pizza and more cheese!\u201d said two officials with Pizza Hut, which began putting cheese inside its crust after holding development meetings with Dairy Management, according to a\u00a0memorandum<\/a> released by the Agriculture Department.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Random suspicious documents:<\/p>\n

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Dairy Management’s Pizza Hut promotion in 2002 (the “Summer of Cheese”) reportedly pushed an additional 102 million pounds of cheese into American bellies. \u00a0And consumers are eating up Domino’s new pie. \u00a0The Times <\/em>reports that sales have “soared by double digits.”<\/span><\/p>\n

My co-blogger, Gwen, specializes in rural sociology and agriculture. \u00a0Discussing this post, she confirms:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
It is a deeply, deeply divided government entity, with the “let’s sell more!” side almost always better funded… [than] the “but it kills people!” side.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Next up: Tobacco.<\/div>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent New York Times article on cheese, brought to my attention by Jordan G., beautifully illustrates the fact that the U.S. government is not a coherent bloc, but a collection of competing interests. Last month Domino’s Pizza released a new pizza named “The Wisconsin.” \u00a0 Named after a superbly cheesy state (one close to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,98,2124,252,23703,304],"class_list":["post-29090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-capitalism","tag-foodagriculture","tag-healthmedicine","tag-marketing","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29090"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59557,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29090\/revisions\/59557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}