The question of who is and who is not on the government’s Strategic Council for Nutrition is not even all that important. It does not matter who its members are because, in the end, the decisions the Council adopts will be political and ideological, and they will follow guidelines and recommendations adopted far from Ljubljana.
This is about a desire for paternalistic control; this time, they want to control what people eat. And it will not be long before the government’s ‘benevolent’ idea of helping the people to choose good (and healthy) food turns into the intention and realisation of taxing people if they do not eat what the authorities say they should. Everything else is just staffing and technicalities that will not affect anything the Comrades have in mind.
Meat and dairy products are now being targeted in Slovenia (which is no exception in global terms). We need to put an end to livestock farming, which is killing our planet, because that is what Prime Minister Robert Golob believes. Cattle farts and cattle burps release methane, and methane is the most evil greenhouse gas, is it not? That is why people have to get used to eating insects and worms as a meat substitute or switch to a vegan (vegetarian) diet. Avocados, for example, are very popular; avocado toast is the fashion staple of the young generation, who are becoming herbivores. It doesn’t get any better, they say. The fruit, which comes from South America and Mexico, is healthy because it is a source of healthy fats. And above all, it does not burp, and it does not fart. It is a plant, after all. And some of the more prominent members of the Strategic Council for Nutrition also swear by it.
However, what they forget to mention is that it takes 2,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of avocados. That means that eating one avocado is like leaving the water running in the shower for an hour. But when it comes to avocados, this is not just about food but about the wasted resources (water) that have gone into this fruit. Not to mention transport, deforestation for plantations, and the use of pesticides (to ensure that the avocado arrives in Ljubljana in as normal of a state as possible). To turn this around: the production and transport of a kilo of avocados is more ‘damaging’ to the climate than the burps and farts of a random cow called Liza in a pasture above Bovec, which produces milk and whose meat can be used for delicious beef soup. It is the same with a random pig called Pep in Ihan. In any case, locally produced food, even if it is meat, is much more environmentally friendly than soy products produced on the other side of the world.
So, leave Liza the cow and Pep the pig alone, and let us eat what we want and what we feel like eating. And please, do not tell us that we have to take care of our health. As long as we have a compulsory (forced) healthcare payment scheme in place for everyone through the state insurance company, the state healthcare system must unconditionally provide treatment, even if you deliberately consume poison. Once we have private insurance companies offering different packages and insurance is more expensive for someone who smokes or eats unhealthily, everyone will probably rethink how they live. I think that instead of a Strategic Council for Nutrition, which places great emphasis on ‘people’s health’, what we need more urgently is a strategic council for health insurance and a healthcare system reform. Let us sort that out first, and then we will move on to ‘saving’ the world.
A similar situation happened with electric cars, which have environmentally harmful batteries and run on electricity generated from coal. So, when we talk about what is healthy and environmentally friendly, we need to look at how we get there, otherwise, all the efforts are in vain. If, of course, the intention really is to achieve “the smallest possible negative impact on human health, the environment and the climate.” But clearly, that is not the real intention here. Everything is moving in the direction of controlling people and curtailing freedoms through the glamorisation of the “nanny state.” Add to this the ideas of central-bank digital money, and the intention is clear. We are not far from the day when you will no longer be able to buy ‘unhealthy’ food with a digital currency because a payment authorised and approved through a central bank will be rejected. And the state will know exactly what you eat. And it will assess you. A social credit system will follow soon after, just like in China. And if you eat ‘unhealthy’ food, rather than the ‘healthy’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ food prescribed by a government decree, you will become unreliable and a dissident in the eyes of your comrades in government. And the authorities don’t like such people.
Vegans and vegetarians (as a carnivore, I don’t really know what the distinction is, and I don’t care) should be consistent and stick to (if they preach about healthy food and the environmental and climate damage caused by certain foods) oats, mushrooms, seasonal fruit (apples and pears), root vegetables and hazelnuts from the nearby hazelnut trees, and certainly not avocados, soy, peanut butter or almond milk. These are all modern, fashionable guidelines, but they are harmful to what these people claim they would like to preserve. And if they are recommending that we find a substitute for cow’s milk, saying that potato milk is now very popular and very healthy, I will say – go ahead. Drink it if you want, but do not force me to do it. I like potatoes in all sorts of ways, but I will not drink potato milk for as long as I am alive; I will not even try it, because I can see from a mile away that it would certainly not go down my throat without any problems.
It is difficult to say how much longer we will be able to enjoy the food we like. The Strategic Council for Nutrition will start its work at the beginning of next year. You can be sure that beef, cow’s milk, pork chops, chocolate, crisps, and more will quickly find their way onto the Government’s list of ‘evil’. The people who like these foods will be branded evil people, enemies of the planet, and destroyers of the universe. What seems like a dystopian thriller today will be our reality tomorrow.
Kavarna Hayek
