A Letter

Dear Mr. USDA,

You sure do have a lot of recommendations! That Food Guide Pyramid is real cute but you forgot to add a daily check-off list so we can recall if it was 6 or 11 servings of grains that we had.

I also noticed that there are 6 different sections now. Man, it was definitely easier when there were only 4. It's hard to get "3 squares" a day in with a contraption like that pyramid. The separate vegetable and fruit sections are interesting; up to 9 servings EACH DAY! Wow. I bet our American farmers are sure happy about that!

I'm not sure who is buying that much produce from local farmers though-it's a bit expensive. I do notice that quite a bit of the produce sold at my store comes from somewhere else in the U.S. Heck, some of it comes from other countries!

Well, I have a few recommendations myself. Mr. USDA, if you want us all to eat up to 9 servings of produce a day, why don't you make it possible for us to do that? Give some land back to our farmers and let them produce as they should WITHOUT ALL THE EXCESSIVE TAXES. Make sure the equipment they need is affordable too. Cut the gas prices so we are able to ship within our own borders. And stop taking produce away from other countries, I bet THEY need 9 servings a day also!

Maybe after we can all afford that produce that you so highly recommend we will be able to fit into that equally cute BMI chart you have. I guess it doesn't matter that people really DO come in all shapes and sizes and that not all of those sizes are unhealthy. Why not try to fit us all into some silly little mold so we can all look alike.
(Don't get me started on how your cousin Mr. Department of Education wants us all to think the same whether or not our brains work the same). Gee, Hitler would be proud.

No wonder teen girls are anorexic and bulimic. I even had a Dr. (yeah, your brother Mr. American Medical ASSociation) try to tell my daughter that she needed to lose weight since she was at the high end of that BMI scale. As soon as those two words "lose weight" escaped that Doctor's lips I stopped her short and told her "NO, we don't discuss weight loss with a 16 year old girl who is simply on the high end of normal on a chart that I consider ridiculous and WRONG since not everybody has a tiny frame and a size 2 shoe. Pay attention to my daughter's structure and not just a bunch of numbers."

Well, before I get off on another topic and make you feel smaller Mr. USDA, as I started with, if you'll make food affordable to ALL Americans, we may one day aspire to be your Healthy-BMI-Mold-Americans.

Signed,


John Q. Public