Conspiracy Theory Versus Conspiracy Facts

It’s not the snack aisle, the cereal aisle, or even the bread aisle...it’s the profit aisle.

What do you call it when some people actively and knowingly promote lies so as to profit to the detriment of those who believe those lies? A CONSPIRACY.

Yet so many people have been conditioned by our modern media to automatically reject anything as soon as the word CONSPIRACY is mentioned. So much so, that whenever somebody goes out of there way to point out all of the signs of a blatant conspiracy, they still couch in terms of denying it is "CONSPIRACY THEORY" to try and avoid the Pavlovian response that has been programmed deeply into the psyche of the average sheeple in our BraveNewWorldOrder.

J. Stanton of Gnolls.org has quickly become my favorite Paleo-diet blogger (one of these days I'll get around to buying his book). Like myself, he does not post regularly, about once a week or so. But his posts always prove to be well worth the wait (I'm sure I can't say the same for myself, as sometimes I'm just uninspired or busy, and I do sometimes put up throwaway posts simply because I'm tired of having an old post headline for weeks...but I digress).

His most recent piece, You Are A Radical, And So Am I: Paleo Reaches the Ominous "Stage 3" is a complete dismantling of conventional wisdom regarding diet, nutrition and health care. He basically deconstructs the propaganda that permeates our society and clearly exposes the motive as to why so many organizations and corporations have vested financial interests in promoting so many falsehoods and lies.

First off, he describes a basic principle of how a healthy economy works: by adding value to a product or service.

Adding Value: The Foundation Of Functional Economies

An economy based entirely on selling the same things back and forth to each other for ever-increasing amounts of money is doomed to eventual collapse. As we found out just a couple years ago, flipping houses isn’t the same as having a manufacturing base and a world that wants to buy what we make.

Stated more generally, an economy is only sustainable to the degree that its participants add value by their actions. Factory workers add value by turning raw materials into clothes and cars and electronics; farmers turn seeds and soil and sunlight into crops; ranchers turn calves and grass into beef; engineers turn ideas into buildable products; truckers move things from where they are to where they’re wanted; cashiers and stockers and managers and janitors turn a locked building full of things into a system by which you can find what you want and exchange money for it; and so on. Added value – cost of design – cost of production = profit.

This is not to be confused with the labor theory of value, which claims that labor has intrinsic value, and indeed, is the only ‘fair’ measure of value. This is hogwash. It’s easy to spend years of effort and not add a single penny of value—because value is determined by the buyer, not the seller. It doesn’t matter how much time I’ve spent making a coat rack if it’s ugly and no one wants to buy it!

Moving ahead: the more value we can add, the more profit we can make. It should be obvious that one way to add value is to transform cheap raw materials into an expensive finished product.

So far so good. No one can complain if you take a raw material, and improve it into a valuable product to increase it's value, like turning some gold into a beautiful piece of jewelry.

But when it comes to the food industry, this concept becomes insidious and clearly lays out an iron clad motive for why so many vested interests support the promulgation of lies and misinformation regarding diet and nutrition.

There’s one big reason that industrial food manufacturers like Kraft (Nabisco, Snackwells, General Foods, many more), Con-Agra (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Healthy Choice, many more), Pepsico (Frito-Lay, Quaker), Kellogg’s (Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Nutrigrain, more) are huge and profitable.

It’s because grains are cheap, but the “foods” made from them aren’t.

One reason grains are so cheap in the USA, of course, is gigantic subsidies for commodity agriculture that, while advertised as helping farmers, go mostly to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland ($62 billion in sales), Cargill ($108 billion), ConAgra ($12 billion), and Monsanto ($11 billion)—and result in a corn surplus so large that we are forced to turn corn into ethanol and feed it to our cars, at a net energy loss!

“There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”
-Dwayne Andreas, then-CEO of Archer Daniels Midland

“At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10.” (Source.)

(And if you’re not clear on just how deeply in control of our government these corporations are, here’s another example: Leaked cables reveal that US diplomats take orders directly from Monsanto.)

That cheapness, however, doesn’t translate to profits for farmers or cheap food at the supermarket. Let’s do some math!

(Note: these are regular prices from the CBOT and my local supermarket, as of today. Supermarket prices will be somewhat cheaper on sale or at Costco.)

A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds and costs $6.85. That’s 12.2 cents per pound.
A bag of Tostitos contains about 10 cents worth of corn, and costs $4.00.
That’s a 4000% increase.

A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds and costs $7.62. That’s 12.7 cents per pound.
A loaf of Wonder Bread contains about 16 cents worth of wheat, and sells for $4.40.
That’s a 2700% increase.

A bushel of soybeans weighs 60 pounds and costs $13.64. That’s 22.7 cents per pound.
A box of “Silk” soy milk contains about 4.5 cents worth of soybeans, and sells for $2.90.
That’s a 6400% increase.

In other words, it’s highly profitable to turn the products of industrial agriculture—cereal grains and soybeans—into highly processed “food”.

This is precisely why I believe we are regularly misinformed by the mass media about the "dangers" of meat and saturated fats, and why we should all eat a plant-based diet.

Stanton continues:

Note that the profit for the processors and middlemen comes out of the pockets of the producer and the consumer. Farmers are squeezed by the 12 cents per pound, and consumers are squeezed by the $4.40 per loaf.

In contrast, pork bellies cost $1.20 per pound today.
A pound of bacon costs about $5.
That’s a 400% increase…

…which looks like a lot until you compare it with 2700%-6400% for grains. Also, unlike grain products, bacon must be stored, shipped, and sold under continuous refrigeration—and it has a much shorter shelf life.

It’s clear that it’s far more profitable to sell us processed grain products than meat, eggs, and vegetables…which leaves a lot of money available to spend on persuading us to buy them. Are you starting to understand why grains are encased in colorful packaging, pushed on us as “heart-healthy” by the government, and advertised continually in all forms of media?

And when we purchase grass-fed beef directly from the rancher, eggs from the farmer, and produce from the grower, we are bypassing the entire monumentally profitable system of industrial agriculture—the railroads, grain elevators, antibiotics, growth hormones, plows, combines, chemical fertilizers (the Haber process, by which ammonium nitrate fertilizer is made, uses 3-5% of world natural gas production!), processors, inspectors, fortifiers, manufacturers, distributors, and advertisers that profit so handsomely by turning cheap grains into expensive food-like substances.

There you have it. Stanton reveals all the motives necessary for why Big Ag corporations and their Government lobbying and funding for misleading "studies" and the complicit corporate media scaring the masses into consuming their grain products as "healthy."

And yet he still felt the need to write the disqualifier in his conclusion:

Conclusion: You Are A Radical (And So Am I)

Simply by eating a paleo diet, we have made ourselves enemies of the establishment, and will be treated henceforth as dangerous radicals.

This is not a conspiracy theory. By eschewing commodity crops and advocating the consumption of grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and local produce, we are making several very, very powerful enemies.

The medical and nutritional establishments hate paleo, because we’re exposing the fact that they’ve been wrong for decades and have killed millions of people with their bad advice.
The agribusinesses and industrial food processors hate paleo, because we’re hurting their business by not buying their highly profitable grain- and soy-based products.
The mainstream media hates paleo, because they profit handsomely from advertising those grain- and soy-based products.
The government hates paleo, because they’re the enforcement arm of big agribusinesses, industrial food processors, and mainstream media—and because their subsidy programs create mountains of surplus grain that must be consumed somehow.

He wrote a brilliant post showing precisely why there is in fact a very real Conspiracy...but has to put this disclaimer on it so that certain people don't ignore his rock solid case because of the cultural programming to discount anything labeled as "conspiracy theory" as outlandish and improbable.

It's not a conspiracy theory that giant agricultural corporations lobby politicians who in turn appoint their stooges to regulatory agencies like the USDA and FDA.

It's not a conspiracy theory that many Doctors understand the truth about grains and the lies regarding saturated fats and protein...yet the mainstream medical establishment still promotes statin drugs, and high carb/low-fat diets as their solutions to the problems of diabetes, heart disease etc.

These things are not conspiracy theories...they are conspiracy FACTS.

Oh SNAP

S.N.A.P. is the acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

That would be a new name for an old program - our modern day food stamps program, now made more convenient and widely accessible with Electronic Benefit Transfer cards. Over 44.5 million Americans were enrolled in the program in 2011. As this infographic demonstrates, this is why we don't have the visual of long, winding breadlines at soup kitchens in cities across the nation that were the hallmark of the 1930's era Great Depression's landscape.

Thanks to the EBT program, the reality of our economic situation can be hidden from plain sight.

This is why mass media talking heads, pundits and "experts" can get away with lying in their broadcasts and publications, prevaricating that we are "in recovery."


Many folks on the conservative side of the so-called "aisle" often castigate the food stamp program as socialism. Wealth transfers from the producers to the non-producers.

The manosphere points out a different aspect of this wealth transfer - from working men to non-working, dependent single mothers married to the State.

Both points are true...but only partially so.

Don't forget who else gets their slice of the transfer lucre, like the Banksters-too-big-to-fail, (BTBTF) who distribute and administer the EBT system.

Don't forget too, that every single benefit transfer is an entitlement expenditure...one that is done with fiat currency printed up out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, for which we the enslaved sheeple are liable for in interest-bearing debt that adds to our ever escalating tax burden.

Don't forget that Big Ag gets it's cut of this "benefit" transfer as well. From the Eligible Food Items Page of the USDA's SNAP website:

 - Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items.

- Seafood, steak, and bakery cakes are also food items and are therefore eligible items.

- Since the current definition of food is a specific part of the Act, any change to this definition would require action by a member of Congress. Several times in the history of SNAP, Congress had considered placing limits on the types of food that could be purchased with program benefits. However, they concluded that designating foods as luxury or non-nutritious would be administratively costly and burdensome.

Oh sure, it would be costly and burdensome. It wouldn't have anything to do with allowing EBT transfers being made from the taxpayers debt burden to the Big Ag corporations that produce all the processed "food items?" Remember, it's not It’s not the snack aisle, the cereal aisle, or even the bread aisle...it’s the profit aisle:

There’s one big reason that industrial food manufacturers like Kraft (Nabisco, Snackwells, General Foods, many more), Con-Agra (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Healthy Choice, many more), Pepsico (Frito-Lay, Quaker), Kellogg’s (Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Nutrigrain, more) are huge and profitable.

It’s because grains are cheap, but the “foods” made from them aren’t.

One reason grains are so cheap in the USA, of course, is gigantic subsidies for commodity agriculture that, while advertised as helping farmers, go mostly to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland ($62 billion in sales), Cargill ($108 billion), ConAgra ($12 billion), and Monsanto ($11 billion)...

I often shop at grocery stores adjacent or in the poorer neighborhoods of Hawaii. I see the shambling mounds of obesity with shopping carts brimming with processed foods, candy, junk food, cakes, chips, crackers, and cases of soda....all paid for with their EBT cards. Many also buy fresh produce and meat to take home and cook...but neraly all buy Big Ag junk food products with their 'benefit tranfers."

I also see many of these EBT recipients put the grocery divider on the conveyor belt to differentiate between all the food and feed they are acquiring, and the prohibited alcohol, tobacco, pet foods, etc. In other words, although the EBT program expressly forbids using the "benefits" to buy drugs and alcohol, because they don't have to spend their money on food, they have the extra income to pay for their vices...an indirect subsidy.



Another unique aspect to this program found here in Hawaii has to do with our love of eating mercury.

Because the Federal guidelines encourage recipients to buy raw meat and seafood to take home and cook, the ubiquitous poke and sashimi stations in every grocery store in the State accepts EBT cards for raw fish.

What a farce.

Raw fish is the primo luxury food item in the State. Prepared poke is never taken home and cooked for family meals.

It is eaten raw, and is the staple food for parties and get togethers.

It's usually $16-$20 a lb.

I've gone to my local grocery store to buy some poke, and stood in a long line that took me half an hour to get up to the counter for my turn to order my fish. The majority of the people in line were literally buying hundreds of dollars of raw fish with their EBT cards...of course, many of them also used the divider so as to ring up the beer and cigarette purchases!

Poke, sashimi, clams, oysters, tako (octopus)...a veritable cornucopia of premium sea food, for which people who are not enrolled in SNAP eat only on occasion, while our "poor" underclass literally feast on it regularly.

I've talked to the workers and they acknowledge that their manager finds out asap when the next EBT disbursements are handed out, so they can get ready for the rush of EBT poke sales. They have to literally make three times the normal daily amount of poke to handle all the benefit transfer purchases.

It's one helluva "benefits transfer" racket we got going on here.

So, let's take a step back and look at the big picture...

The Federal Government borrows the money from the Federal Reserve System to fund the entitlement spending programs like SNAP.

The BTBTF get their share for administering the EBT program.

The sheeple then use their benefits on all of the feed products produced by Big Ag.

Then, of course, after years of eating such crap, the sickness and obesity requires treatment by Big HealthCare, and renewable. lifetime maintenance prescription drugs that profit Big Pharma.

All of this money that goes to the BTBTF and Big Ag corporations are all interest bearing fiat dollars from the Federal Reserve System, continually adding to our exponentially expanding debt.

SNAP is not a direct transfer from the productive class to the non-productive welfare class as conservatives like to point out, nor is it simply a transfer from working men's tax dollars to fund single mothers and their out-of-wedlock entitlement claims.

In the long run, it's a total transfer from the 99% to the 1%. All the "BIG" entities in our "FREE MARKET" make all the profit while sticking us with the future debt burden, ill health and miserable deaths.

Deliberate Obesity Pandemic

Time to don the tin-foil constructed, conspiritard food magic cap once again, and point out that there are conspiracy theories and then there are conspiracy facts.

Here's one conspiracy fact - we are in the midst of an obesity pandemic, and it is in fact a pandemic that is deliberately instigated through subsidization by the federal government of USA Inc.

By annually borrowing more money from the Fiat Usury Cartel to exponentially and perpetually increase the compound interest due to further cast the increasingly expanding American serfs into irreconcilable debt bondage, THEY subsidize the Farm Bills for Big Ag Corps to manufacture and distribute the poisonous feed that drives the rise in the numbers of shambling mounds of the malnourished and morbidly sick, lumbering about from sea to shining sea, all across the bloated plains.

The sightings of such specimens are becoming increasingly more common everywhere in our brave new world order. You can find them at almost anytime, any day if you care to go looking for examples of what I'm describing here. They can be found parking there autos in handicap stalls with their State sanctioned placards of parking privilege, to then laboriously waddle over to the motorized shopping carts near the store entrances, so they can then scoot around their local global-corporate cartel distribution center, to load up on more of the processed feed that made them this way in the first place.

But there's far more to this equation than just simply considering the annual Federal Farm Bills passed by the stooges in congress, duly compensated for continuing the subsidizing of the RoundUpReady soy-corn-wheat industrial complex.

No sirree, it is now a virtually enshrined right, an entitlement benefit to ensure the average citizen has the subsidized means to acquire and consume these manufactured products that cause exponential corporeal expansion at an alarming rate.

The frequently condemned subsidized Big Ag farm bills (rightly so!) are only one part of this equation. We have to also consider the EBT/SNAP program and it's junk food "loophole." As one lady wrote into the letters department of the Augusta Chronicle last year, Why does EBT fund junk?

I am totally confused! The government is now regulating the type of food and fat content in schools. If the government is so concerned about obesity in young people, then why don’t they place restrictions on food bought and paid for by government EBT cards?

When I go grocery shopping, I see people in front of me in the checkout line with carts full of cookies, candy, chips and soft drinks, and they pull out their EBT cards to pay. All over supermarkets, you see junk food labeled “EBT-approved.” Why can’t EBT cards be restricted to nourishing staple foods such as chicken, beans, vegetables, milk, juice and healthy foods?

I regularly see the same thing here in Hawaii that a flummoxed taxpayer in Georgia notices as well. A commenter on the letter makes the same point I've made many times before:

Why junk food? Higher profit margins and large corporate lobbies. The individual receiving EBT assistance is only the middleman in the spending chain -- ultimately EBT money ends up largely in the pockets of the processed food industry, which has huge lobbying influence and deep pockets. They buy Congress, Congress makes sure spending continues to flow to their coffers. Excluding junk food from EBT would withhold money from heavyweights like Kraft, General Mills, Pepsi/Coke, FritoLay, etc.

Of course, if the likes of Kraft, GM, Pepsi/Coke, FritoLay, Nestle, Nabisco, Sarah Lee, et al are the heavyweights, let's not forget the 30000000 lbs. Godzilla in the room.... but I digress.

Michael Pollan is one guy who's been at the forefront of pointing out the key role the Federal Farm Bill plays in fomenting our deliberately subsidized obesity pandemic for the profits of Big Ag:

It’s an old story: the “hunger lobby” gets its food stamps so long as the farm lobby can have its subsidies. Similar, if less lavish, terms are now being offered to the public health and environmental “interests” to get them on board. That’s why there’s more money in this farm bill for nutrition programs and, for the first time, about $2 billion to support “specialty crops” –farm-bill-speak for the kind of food people actually eat. (Since California grows most of the nation’s specialty crops, this was the price for the state delegation’s support. Cheap indeed!)

There’s also money for the environment: an additional $4 billion in the Senate bill to protect wetlands and grasslands and reward farmers for environmental stewardship, and billions in the House bill for environmental cleanup. There’s an important provision in both bills that will make it easier for schools to buy food from local farmers. And there’s money to promote farmers’ markets and otherwise support the local food movement.

But as important as these programs are, they are just programs–mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket.

....and of course, let us also not forget to include the other profiteers of this great porking-up pandemic, the Banksters 2B2F.

JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money.

 In short, there's a lot of money to be made in the fattening up of the American sheeple, and there is just too much momemtum, too much profits, and too much vested interest by too many entities to ever hope for any meaningful change to ever come about in our current political system based on balanced bullshit and perpetual peonage of We the Sheeple to the Fiat Usury Cartel.



In the mid-90's, Wal Mart first came to Hawaii in a town called Mililani, a small suburban community in the center of the island of O'ahu. For a short while, it was the number one Wal Mart in terms of sales in the entire country. (I only know this because an old high school friend worked there when they first opened).

People from all over the island would drive one to two hours just to go there to save a few bucks on toiletries, cleaning supplies and textiles made in China, that no other stores or chains anywhere else on the island could hope to compete with...not to mention it was the first store to remain open for business 24 hours a day here. The people of Hawaii went Wal Mart crazy the first few years they opened their doors here.

I remember one incident fairly well. I was at a different shopping center in the same town, and a car of local people pulled up to me as I was walking along the sidewalk, and asked me if I knew where the new Wal Mart was. They told me they were from Waimanalo - the far Eastern end of the island, a good 2 hours drive away at that time - and that they had never been to Mililani before.

To most folks in the USA Inc., 2 hours drive is literally nothing to ya'all. But on a small, densely populated island like O'ahu, two hours of driving through our winding, crowded and often gridlocked freeways and streets just to go to shopping at a store is not normal behavior.

I was amazed at how far these folks would drive just to shop at Wal Mart.

20 years later, we have Wal Marts, KMarts, Target, and Walgreens, and all sorts of National Chain super store/big box retailers all over, and nobody has to drive more than 15-20 minutes to get to one.

Prior to the arrival of these big National chain stores, Hawaii had a number of small, locally owned retail stores, some even family owned for several generations. Most of these are all gone now, and the one drug/sundries/retail chain that has been in business in Hawaii for a really long time and has a loyal following of locals that have kept it profitable in the face of big box competition, Longs Drugs, has been bought out by CVS.

Now Longs Drugs also had stores in California and a few other West Coast States, but in Hawaii, Longs has such a loyal customer base, it is the only place for which CVS opted to keep the name Longs Drugs for all it's stores, while all the Mainland stores have been changed to CVS.

This may seem like I'm going off on a tangent here, but stick with me for a bit more and you'll see what I'm getting at here with regards to this topic...

...anyhow, back when Wal Mart first opened, I remember shopping there pretty frequently, as I lived in a neighboring town at that time, about 10 minutes drive away. After a few years, I remember going into the store one day and noticed that they had started selling fresh produce. Not much, just a few crates of fruits and vegetables, and a single aisle of refrigerators selling a token amount of dairy and some processed meat products. At that time, I had also been to stores like Wal Mart, Target, Walgreens and other big box retailers on my trips to the mainland, and none of them carried fresh produce that I could remember.

Shortly thereafter, Longs Drugs followed suit, installing a very small "produce" section in the store. Like really small. A single, open air, refrigerated shelf, with a few heads of lettuce, apples, some processed American cheese slices, a few cartons of factory farmed eggs and some gallons of milk. I was always puzzled at why a store like Longs and Wal Mart, would have those dinky little produce sections...especially since that Wal Mart and nearly all Longs stores all over the island, were mostly located to prominent grocery store chains in their respective shopping centers.

I also noted that most of the time, this produce was of marginal quality and it usually looked like no one ever bought any of it, and it was almost never on sale and usually priced more expensive than the same produce brands and products found in any other Hawaiian grocery store. In fact, I even remember on a few occasions seeing Longs Drugs store employees loading up an entire cart of produce that had not sold and spoiled, and re-stocking the meager shelf with a new batch of most likely never-to-be-purchased produce.

I often wondered about the business decisions of a company like Longs Drugs and Wal Mart to waste floor space for a rinky-dink produce section, when they are immediately adjacent to popular grocery stores. Why would anyone buy there produce from a drug store or a Wal Mart? Why do these stores even bother trying to sell such meager offerings when customers need only walk 20 yards next door to a grocery store with much better selection and variety of produce at better bargain prices?

Several months ago, it finally dawned on me when I was buying some batteries from Longs, and I was in line at the register, observing another victim of the American Obesity Pandemic, unloading her shopping cart of cases of soda, snack cakes, chips and twinkies... then I watched her pay for it with her EBT card.

Stores like Longs Drugs could care less if they had entire cases of lettuce, tomatoes, apples and bananas rot and get thrown away every few days, never selling a single bit of it.

As long as they offer a minimum amount of fresh produce, they can then accept EBT payments for the copious amounts of obesity-generating feed on sale in the profit aisle. Prior to the addition of a single small "produce aisle" I'm positive the old food stamps where not allowed to be used to purchase all the junk food stores like Longs Drugs had always sold. I now believe the switch over from the old food stamps to the electronically controlled EBT/SNAP system happened at around the exact same time all these stores started getting into the fresh produce business. It's positively diabolical, and most certainly deliberate.


Yes, my fellow food magic conspiritards, I am blaming the American deliberate obesity pandemic on the USDA-Big Ag-Junk Feed-EBT-Big-Box-Store Industrial complex. Then again, we need not try and create a long acronym or such a large hyphenated label for this dastardly and malevolent conspiracy. Just understand that it is all just various facets of the one big Company Store that rules our globalized, "fair-trade" world.