how modern-day baseball is much like the food industry

i'm reading this awesome book called "what to eat", in which this nutritionist breaks down where food comes from, what's pumped into it, what is organic, what's best for us, what happens if we eat toxic food and so on. it's a primer to educate a food idiot like me to make better choices in a supermarket - or a whole foods, which is now where i need to do all my shopping (more on this eye-opening book later).

anyways, the biggest shocker in the book is how the government food agencies that we rely upon for health regulations - the FDA and the USDA - actually don't give a crap about health. i mean, okay, they do, but it's tertiary, because their most important responsibility is to promote growth within the industry of food. and that means, simply, to make money, shortcuts are needed, and when those shortcuts are put into effect (additives, hormones, farming conditions, etc), the consumers suffer with a weaker and more dangerous product.

but they obviously can't say that. so they manipulate the nutritional labels to tell us basically a fourth of the story. "20% lean" sounds healthy until you realize that it really means "80% saturated fat". "natural food" sounds healthy, but that means it only follows a couple of organic guidelines. "farmed fresh seafood" sounds healthy because of the words "farmed" and "fresh", but those words take completely different meanings with fish.

the onus is on the consumer to eat healthy food, and not on the producer to make it or sell it. get them to buy it, and all bets are off.

what am i getting at? you can't trust the people who are sell you shit. their only intent is to make money and protect themselves.

that's kinda how i'm looking at the mitchell commission's study about steroids in baseball. i can't help but believe that a study authored by a co-owner of the red sox would implicate his fellow co-owners, who if they didn't sign off on it, they encouraged. and i can't help but believe that they're not going to implicate those who can't help themselves - the trainers and the general managers - who also knew but were powerless. and i can't help but believe that it's not gonna try to take a chunk out of the ballplayers who did it - but more importantly, the ballplayers whose salaries take a big bite out of their bottom lines. it's going to be worded that way. it's just impossible to trust and, to be honest, i don't know exactly what it's going to change.

although things are different for steroids, you can't test for HGH, and it wasn't illegal when ballplayers took it - and there doesn't seem to be any side effects found yet.

but it's something else to blame.

it's just the way big business works.