Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, I...:

The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.

The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.

One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat fish on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have.  It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).

Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays.  It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose.  This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound. 

It only applies to members of individual Churches.  I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches.  Moral laws bind everyone.  Church laws bind the members of the church.

Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now.  It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches.  In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week.  So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.

That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world.  If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night.  The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable.  And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one.  Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.

For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds.  Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere.  But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much.  If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow.  There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority.  Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches).  They can't be expected to know Canon Law.

When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious.  "Here's your entrée". . will come the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries.

Oh, well.

That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp.  "You can skip it this time".  No, you can't.  Violation of the rule is a mortal sin.  That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexually and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants.  If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time.  Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different.  They both involve appetites and excuses. 

This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe.  In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more.  And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world.  It sets us apart, and it should.  Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.

This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."

Eh?

Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family.  My side of the family is all Catholic.  LSS's is all non-Catholic.

I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow.  And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.

Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal.  We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.

Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me.  As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow.  I never eat big breakfasts or lunch.  I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be.  Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective.  "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".  

You can't really do that.

Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can.  He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world.  Another reason that they've had to hide his head.

Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do.  I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks".  The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.

That would be weird.

Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments.  Most law offices are closed on Good Friday.  But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founds in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture.  Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day.  And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.

I'm going to have to handle this today.  In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed".  But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".

I'll let the Puritans ponder it.

Lex Anteinternet: The worst immigration argument

Lex Anteinternet: The worst immigration argument: 

The worst immigration argument

Victory Farm Volunteers registering in Lane County. Oregon.  Lovina Wilson, farm labor assistant, routes the first three children, and that is what they are, to register during the Mobilization Day program at the Frances Willard School in Eugene. The enrollees in the photo are, left to right, facing table front row: Glenn Cash,13; Howard Cash, 11; and Don Mickelwait, 13.  This photo was taken in 1946, right after World War Two, demonstrating that wartime manpower shortages were ongoing.  This would be, quite frankly, more than a bit much today, as these individuals are way to young to seriously work on a farm, unless they are working on their family farm, and they were frankly way too young then.  Note the boys are wearing white t-shirts, with nothing emblazoned on them, and that girls are in the crowd as well.

There are a lot of varieties of this argument I keep seeing:

If you’re out here talking sht about immigrants but still going to the grocery store to feed yourself, that’s clown sht of the highest order. 

Stop being lazy & get your hands in the dirt or shut the fck up.

From, of course, Twitter.

This is baloney.

To distill the argument, it is that the US must dare not get control of its border with Mexico, or at least not a fair degree of control, as the US is dependent upon those illegally crossiong for food production.

That argument is first and foremost baloney, as it somehow makes the assumption that the huge number of immigrants arriving from Central and South America are in fact arriving in order to work on farms. That isn't happening.  They want to work, no doubt, but the migrant farm system is well established, and they aren't seeking to get jobs in cabbage fields this summer and then go back home.

In reality, most are economic migrants or migrants from Central and South American failed states.  The US is racing towards becoming a failed state itself right now.  Our government isn't working, and we're about to elect an imagined Caudillo who will have to turn on migrants like a health inspector turns on expired milk.  

But economically, the farm sector isn't employing them.

Lots of other things are, such as the construction industry, local small businesses, and back door employment, which explains who we got in this mess.  Democrats imagined, wrongly, that all future migrants are Democratic voters.*  Republicans imagined them all as somebody who was going to mow their lawn for cheap.  Turns out that they are none of those things.**

In reality, they take entry level manual labor jobs which, frankly, would go to Americans who need them, but for the price depression impact this has.

Which gets to the next thing.

The "agriculture depends on migrants" argument is, really, that American agriculture is habituated to cheap farm labor because the Federal Government, with apocalyptic visions of the future after World War Two, created a cheap food policy.

Frightened that Depression Era conditions would return after World War Two, and then frightened that conditions were going to go into the waste bin due to the Cold War, from 1945 on the government has done everything it can to keep foods as cheap as possible.  Americans bitch about food prices, but they spend about 9% of their budget on food, and it generally keeps going down.  The U.S. Government has tracked food prices since 1929, and it's the lowest ever, generally.  From 1929 to 1952 Americans spending on food consumed generally above 20% of a family's income.  In 1932, it was 22%.  In 2008, in contrast, it was 5.6%.

That's great, for family budgets, and it has ancillary impacts on a lot of industries.  Cheap food means that people can go to good restaurants (where you are actually a lot more likely to run into an illegal alien than in a cabbage patch) and have a really good dinner for pretty cheap, and then sit there over dinner and bitch about food prices.  This hasn't always been the case.  When Americans "ate out" well into the 1970s, they probably meant that they went to a diner for lunch.  Growing up, trips to restaurants for dinner were so rare that they only occured, normally, when it was some sort of special occasion, like a birthday or anniversary.  To take a date to a restaurant was a big deal, even when I was a college student.  You were trying to really impress a girl if you took her out for a meal, and later you assessed the damage to your finances that had ensued.

Even fast food joints to some extent expressed this.  We would often hit the burger joints on the weekends, but not daily.  By the time my son was in high school, however, high schoolers hit the nearby fast food joints every day.  Indeed, when I was in high school I ate in the cafeteria, the first time I'd eaten routinely at school.  I didn't particularly like it, but that's what there was.  When our high school cafeteria was condemned during my first year of high school, and prior to their building a new one, I briefly ate downtown, but it was too expensive, and I took up just brining a bad sandwich I'd made myself at home and sitting in the football stadium to eat it.

Glory Days indeed.

Now, fast food fare is absurdly cheap.  Quite a few people I know hit Dirty Ron's Steakhouse every morning for a couple of Egg McMuffins and a cup of Joe on the way in to work, and frankly, they're not bad (and no, that nickname aside, that establishment is not dirty at all).  And I've met working adults, including professionals, who go to Subway, or whatever, every day for lunch.  "Value Meals" and the like are incredibly cheap.  All of this because of a "cheap food" policy.  Part of that policy is related to legal farm migrants, but they are not flooding across the Rio Grande or the desert and claiming asylum.

Nor, frankly, is an ongoing "cheap food" policy a good thing.

The cheap food policy has helped make Americans increasingly fat while driving smaller agricultural entities out of business.  It's contributed to the concentration of everything, and not in a good way.  It's made food prices unrealistically low, while divorcing Americans from the reality of the actual cost of things.  It should end.

Part of that would be, quite frankly, to end the modern version of the Bracero program that has depressed the value of farm labor.  When it came in, in 1943, it made a little bit of sense, maybe, perhaps.  But eighty years later, it doesn't.  Americans will work any job, contrary to what is claimed about them, but at wages that are realistic.  Immigrant farm labor wages won't attract them, as the wages are too low.

In an era in which thousands of Americans are out on the streets without jobs, and in which there are rural areas that are basically depopulated save for the injured and left behind in smaller towns, lying between the consolidated farms, and in which we have urban areas and reservations that are hardcore reservoirs of poverty, if people were paid real wages, there's a ready-made source of labor.  Sure, they aren't the best jobs in the world in some ways, but they are jobs.  And they're also jobs for middle class younger people, who have a demonstrated interest in topics of the soil.

The numbers involved are not small. The US takes in 3,000,000 migrant farmworkers per year.  Ending a program such as this would result in a big impact to farm production, and it'd jump food prices for sure as the positions were, and they ultimately would be, filled with American residents.  It'd frankly also spur mechanization, which I'm not particularly keen on, as right now there are very expensive agricultural implements that are not employed as migrant farm labor is cheaper.

But ultimately, the principal of subsidiarity should come into play here for lots of reasons.

None of the reasons involve the thousands crossing the US Southern border, who are people facing an existential crisis that must be addressed.  They aren't the migrant farmworkers however.  That's a completely different topic.

Footnotes:

*Democrats have long assumed that Hispanic immigrants are natural Democratic voters, without learning the lessons of demographics or history.  

Immigrants tend to be Democratic voters early in their demographic's migration history.  Irish immigrants were.  Italian immigrants were.  This frankly had a lot to do with patronage.  But as they became established, this became much less the case.  To declare yourself "Irish" today doesn't mean that somebody should automatically assume you are a Democrat.

And that's true even if you have 100% Hibernian heritage, or to take the Italian example, if you can trace your lineage back to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus' third cousin, once removed.  Truth be known, in a species in which Joe Cro Magnon pretty quickly asked Lucy Neanderthal out on a date, those straight lines of lineage don't last very long.  To declare yourself "Irish" today, in the US, might merely mean that you think the Irish drink green Budweiser with corned beef sandwiches on St. Patrick's Day.

Moreover, Hispanics in the US have and retain (although they are rapidly losing it) a very distinct culture which is existentially Catholic and conservative.  This is so much the case that the radicals of the Mexican Revolution, in the form of the Constitutionalist, sought to stamp it out, much like their semi fellow travelers the Bolsheviks went after Orthodoxy in Russia after 1917.  And they had a similar success rate, which means lots of Mexican Hispanics, which is what most Hispanics in the US are often only semi observant, but culturally Catholic still.  Given that, the darling issues of the Democratic Greenwich Village set, which forms the central corps of Democratic thought, are deeply at odds with what most Hispanics believe. And this only becomes more the case when Hispanics from outside of Northern Mexican ancestry are considered.  So, not too surprisingly, they're turning Republican.

They are also due to the border crisis itself.  Hispanics along the border whose ancestors settled there two hundred years ago, or in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, or even in earlier recent migrant waves, are not really of the same culture, no matter how dimwitted Americans are about it, as those now crossing and the flood is wrecking their communities.  Americans may see Hondurans and Guatemalans, as well as Venezuelans, as being the same as people from Chihuahua, but people from Chihuahua who live in Eagle Pass do not.

**And they are people, which oddly seems forgotten, except as an argument over the crisis.  Democrats thinking they were mindless sheep who could be herded into the voting booths and Republicans thinking they were something akin to slaves is inexcusible.

Wild and Backyard Food Use During COVID-19 in Upstate New York

 

Wild and Backyard Food Use During COVID-19 in Upstate New York

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fish...: 

Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

For those who follow dietary trends, the current in vogue diet is the "Paley\o Diet".  And for those who take the National Geographic, you are aware that they've been running a semi scary series of articles on food in the 21st Century.

Elk hunter in northwest Wyoming, first decade of the 20th Century. For many in this region, this scene could have been taken any October.

The National Geographic articles have been inspired by the scare that's existed since at least the early 1970s that the planet is about to run out of food, although that particular article isn't really on that topic.  Quite frankly, and as well explored by an earlier National Geographic article, there's small chance of this indeed.  If anything, production agriculture has so vastly increased the global food supply that there's an overabundance of food and most fears of this type are very poorly placed.  Production agriculture, in fact, has hardly touched Africa and there's vast potential there, although not without vast cultural cost at the same time.

That's not what this article addresses, however. Rather, it addresses something that has been so obvious to me for decades that it not fits into one of those "geez, I wish I'd thought of marketing that way back when. . . " categories.

That is, human beings are evolved to eat a diet that we ate in our aboriginal state, for the most part, which we could still largely do.  Failing to do so has all sorts of negative health impacts.

Now, I am very well aware that this idea, which is an obvious truth, runs counter to the whole peak of the vegan trend, but that entire trend is one that is basically neopaganistic and hateful of nature.  We are part of nature, are evolved to eat a natural diet, and that diet was a wild one.

 Deer hunters with camp, early 20th Century.

So, hence the paleo diet trend, which I've largely ignored  A better study of this was presented by the National Geographic.

And what did the National Geographic discover? Well, people in their native states are hunter gatherers, with the emphasis on hunters. They eat a lot of vegetative material, but mostly because they're left with little choice.  When they don't have meat, it's because they can't find it, and they crave it.  If meat is abundant, their diet is heavy in it.  If it isn't, they feel deprived and make do with what they can find.

 Don't have the time, or perhaps energy to pursue deer or elk, or whatever.  Well, poultry lovers, perhaps you should try something a little more wild. Women hunters with pheasants.  Pheasant taste better than chicken any day.  For those who worry, moreover, about mass poultry production and how chickens are killed and raised, these pheasants enjoyed a wild bird life and generally when they're culled, they go from that to processed, so to speak, instantly.

And, as we now are increasing learning (and which I've known for decades) a natural diet of that type, with what you could locally hunt, is the best thing for you.

Now, as folks around here know I'm a fan of agriculture, and indeed I own beef cattle (although I'd live off of deer, elk and antelope if my wife, who is more of a beef fan, would allow).  And agriculture does have a peculiar role here.  

 Female pheasant hunter, 1960s, Colorado.

Agriculture is, or can be, the enemy of the wild in that it's allowed, as has long been known, civilization to rise.  Only the production of surplus foods can sustain urban development and our type of civilization, even though farmers and ranchers are often shunned by the people who depend upon them 100% in cities.  This has long been known, and some cultural anthropologist in fact make a big deal out of it and sort of smugly argue that all production agriculture is the enemy of the wild.

But in fact, as the National Geographic explores, agriculture can exist and does exist in a blurry line with hunting and gathering in those societies.  Nearly all, but not all, hunter gather societies are actually small farm, hunting, and gathering societies.  That's been obvious for millennia, but is generally ignored.

 Rabbit hunter, early 20th Century.  Rabbit taste nearly identical to chicken, and is the leanest meat on the planet.  It's so lean, in fact, you can't survive on a diet of it alone.  In many nations, domestic rabbit is a common table item.  It oddly isn't in the U.S., but there's no good reason for that. Wild rabbit taste like chicken and can be used anywhere chicken is.

Okay, so what's all this have to do with diet?

Just this.  While it puts me in the category of food campaigners, a wild diet is the best diet, and some direct relationship with your food is vastly superior to none.  People who sit around extolling vegetarianism or veganism are largely allowed to do that on the backs of farmers who are supporting their pagainistic anti natural dietary beliefs.  People who have a direct relationship with consumption and understand it (the two not necessarily being the same) tend to feel differently.

 Trout fishing in the Catskills.  Fishing is really fish hunting, and I've always thought that people who try to make a distinction between hunting and fishing are fooling themselves.  For that matter, anyone who eats fish, poultry or meat and doesn't think that they'd personally hunt or fish is really fooling themselves anyhow.  While on this, I'll also note that I truly find the modern emphasis on "catch and release" a bit bizarre.

Even now, in the 21st Century, many of us could have that direct relationship.  Most urbanites have the room to plant a garden (and yes, I've done so in the past but haven't the past several years, so I'm being a bit hypocritical).  And hunting is on the rise in the United States.  Taking some of your food in the field, either by hunting or fishing, is to be encouraged, and not only has the benefit of giving you a diet that somewhat replicates the one you are evolved to actually eat, but it gives you a lot of exercise as well.  Indeed, something non hunters don't appreciate is that the actual work in hunting involved can be quite intensive, and usually really dedicated hunters in the west try to stay in shape for that reason.  For those who can't do that, a direct relationship with your beef supplier, or pork supplier, or poultry supplier, is nearly always possible.  The cow in our freezer has always been the trendy "grass fed" beef just because of that sort of, but of course it's one of our own that's a "volunteer" having determined to retire from calf raising.

 World War One vintage poster campaigning for War Gardens, which the U.S. encouraged to be planted in towns and cities.

 World War Two photograph of a Victory Garden being planted.  This fellow had such a big yard (its in a town) that he's acquired a tractor to do it.

 School Gardens probably passed away about the time this poster was made during World War One, but there's plenty of space in most urban areas for yard gardening.

There's no down side to any of this, and we can only hope that this trend continues in the future, with more hunting, gathering and planting, on their own.  Shoot, most urban areas are so darned boring in real terms, the benefits can hardly cease.

Deer hunter bringing in a deer on skies. The uninitiated will think, "oh surely, that's the far distant past". Well, not always.  I haven't hunted deer on skies, but I have hunted snowshoe hares on skies many times.

Lex Anteinternet: Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part VIII. Sugary things.

Lex Anteinternet: Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part VIII. The high..

Truly, this is absurd:

September 6, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine has designates PepsiCo and the Mars candy company as :international war sponsors" due to their continued operations, and continued tax payments in and to Russia since the start of the Russo Ukrainian War.

PepiCo has operated in Russia, if you consider the USSR its predecessor, since 1974, as opposed to Coca-Cola which did not until 1985.  It has nineteen plants in the company and employs 20,000 people directly, and 40,000 agricultural employees indirectly.  It's Russia' fourth largest food and beverage company.  Since the war started, it's net profits have increased by 333%.

Mars profits have increased 59% since the start of the war.

To give an illustration of the absurd nature of consolidation and market domination in corporate capitalism, PepsiCo trademarks (brands) include the following (list courtesy of Wikipedia):

• Agousha (Russia)
• Alvalle (Spain)[3]
• AMP Energy
• Aquafina
• Aquafina Flavorsplash
• Aunt Jemima/Pearl Milling Company
• Baconzitos (Brazil)
• Cap'n Crunch
• Cheetos
• Chester's
• Chipsy (Egypt, Serbia)
• Chudo
• Cracker Jack
• Crunchy
• Diet Mountain Dew
• Diet Mug
• Diet Pepsi
• Diet 7UP (only outside of the United States)
• Diet Sierra Mist
• Domik v Derevne (Russia)
• Doritos
• Duyvis (Netherlands)
• Elma Chips (Brazil)
• Emperador (Mexico)
• Evervess (Russia)
• Fandangos (Brazil)
• Frito-Lay
• Fritos
• Fruktoviy Sad (Russia)
• Frustyle (Russia)
• G2
• Gatorade
• Gatorade Zero
• Grandma's
• Imunele (Russia)
• Izze
• Ivi (Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia)
• Kas
• KhrusTeam (Russia)
• Kurkure (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan)
• Lay's
• Life
• Lifewater
• Lubimy (Russia)
• Manzanita Sol
• Marias Gamesa
• Matutano (Spain, Portugal)
• Marbo (Serbia)
• Mirinda
• Miss Vickie's
• Mountain Dew
• Mountain Dew Code Red
• Mountain Dew Game Fuel
• Mountain Dew Kickstart
• Mug
• Munchies
• Naked (naked?)
• Near East
• O.N.E.
• Paso de los Toros (Uruguay)
• Pasta Roni
• Pepsi
• Pepsi Max
• Pepsi Next
• Pepsi Zero Sugar
• Pioneer Foods
• Propel
• Quaker
• Quaker Chewy
• Rice-A-Roni
• Rold Gold
• Rosquinhas Mabel (Brazil)
• Ruffles
• Russkiy Dar (Russia)
• Sabritas
• Sakata (Australia)
• Saladitas
• Sandora (Ukraine)
• Santitas
• 7UP (only outside of the United States)
• 7UP Free (only outside of the United States)
• Sierra Mist
• Simba (Southern Africa)
• Smartfood
• Smith's (Australia)
• Snack a Jacks
• SoBe
• SoBe Lifewater
• SoBe V Water
• Sonric’s
• Stacy’s
• Star
• Starry
• Stiksy (Brazil)
• Sting
• SunChips
• Tonus
• Tostitos
• Trop 50
• Tropicana
• Tropicana Farmstand
• Tropicana Pure Premium
• Tropicana Twister
• Twisties (Oceania Region)
• Vesely Molochnik
• Walkers (United Kingdom)
• Ya (Russia)
• Yedigün (Turkey)

Hopefully that list will help reduce their profits.

Mars, which also owns Wrigley, is also gigantic, and its brands are:

• 3 Musketeers
• Ben's Original
• Bounty
• Celebrations
• Cirku
• CocoaVia
• Combos
• Dolmio
• Dove
• Ebly
• Ethel M
• FLAVIA
• Fling
• Flyte
• Forever Yours
• Galaxy
• Galaxy Bubbles
• Galaxy Minstrels
• A Twix bar
• M-Azing
• M&M's
• Maltesers
• Marathon
• Mars
• Masterfoods
• Milky Way
• Munch
• Promite
• Revels
• Seeds of Change
• Snickers
• Topic
• Tracker
• Treets
• Twix
• 5 gum cobalt packaging
• 5 (gum)
• Airwaves
• Alpine
• Altoids
• Big Red
• Bubble Tape
• Doublemint
• Eclipse
• Eclipse Ice
• Excel
• Extra
• Freedent
• Hubba Bubba
• Juicy Fruit
• Life Savers
• Lockets
• Orbit
• Ouch!
• Rondo
• Skittles
• Spearmint
• Starburst
• Surpass
• Tunes
• Winterfresh
• Wrigley's

Mars also manufactures products for pets, including:

• Pedigree dry dog food
• ADVANCE (Australia and New Zealand only)
• Aquarium Pharmaceuticals
• Buckeye Nutrition
• Cesar
• Chappi
• Crave
• Dreamies/Catisfactions
• Dine (Australia and New Zealand version of Sheba)
• Exelcat
• Eukanuba
• Exelpet
• Frolic
• The Goodlife Recipe
• Good-o
• Greenies
• Iams
• James Wellbeloved
• Kit-e-Kat
• My Dog
• Natura
• Natusan
• Nutro Products
• Optimum
• Pedigree
• Pill Pockets
• Royal Canin
• Schmackos
• Sheba
• Teasers
• Techni-Cal
• Temptations
• Trill
• Whiskas
• Winergy

Obviously, the two companies are hard to avoid, and people can make their own judgements, but even from an economic social justice standpoint, this is absurd.

Lex Anteinternet: Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat missing the point.

Lex Anteinternet: Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat mis...:

Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat missing the point.

Here's an odd item that I found through a British newspaper:

Catholic Church can reduce carbon emissions by returning to meat-free Fridays, study suggests

Eh?

This found:

In 2011, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales called on congregations to return to foregoing meat on Fridays. Only around a quarter of Catholics changed their dietary habits—yet this has still saved over 55,000 tons of carbon a year, according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge.

FWIW, 10% of the British population remains or has returned to Catholicism (more Catholics go to services on Sunday than any other religion in Britain).  England in particular was noted for its strong attachment to the Faith before King Henry VIII, and even after that, as it was not at first clear to people at the pew level that he'd severed ties with it.  This gets into our recent discussion on the end of the Reformation.

Indeed, Great Britain's Catholic roots never really completed faded at any one time.  Peasants rose up in 1549 over the Prayer Book, a good 30 years after Henry has severed from Rome.  Catholic hold outs continued on, on the island, under various penalties of the law, some extremely severe.  And the illogical position of the Church of England that it wasn't really Protestant, while not being able to rationally explain why then it wasn't that, or wasn't, if it wasn't that, schismatic, lead High Church Anglicans to continually flirt with returning to Rome. King Charles I was so High Church his position in regard to not joining the Church didn't make sense, something that his son, Charles II, ultimately did, in spite of his libertine lifestyle.The Oxford movement by Anglican churchmen in reaction to Catholic assertions that their Apostolic Succession was severed lead at least one famous Anglican cleric, John Henry Newman, into the Catholic Church, where he ultimately became a Cardinal.  In recent years, notable British figures have converted to the Church, along with many regular people.

Abstaining from meat on all the Fridays in the year, which in Catholic terms doesn't include fish, was a long held Latin Rite tradition that fell in the wake, in some places, but not all, following the reforms of Vatican II.  It was not part of Vatican II, as some improperly assume, but something that occurred in the spirit of that age.  It was a penitential act, not an environmental one.

For a variety of reasons, I'm pretty skeptical of the "blame it on cows" part of the climate change discussion.  But as a localist and killetarian, I am game with grow or capture it on your own. That isn't really what this is about, but it's worth noting that anything you buy at the grocery store, or wherever, has had a fair amount of fossil fuels associated with it.  The Carbon reduction here would be because fish don't burp much, if at all, or fart much, if at all.  But for that matter, neither do deer or rabbits, ducks or geese, or for that matter grass fed cattle.

Go out there, in other words, and get your own if you really want to save on the carbon.

For that matter, I might note, for those who are vegan, production agriculture is the huge killer of animal life.  I always laugh to myself when vegans think they're saving animals, they're slaughtering them in droves.  Anyone who is familiar with the agricultural logistical chain or how production agriculture works knows that.

I'm for growing it yourself as well, of course, although I've now been a hypocrite on that for years.  I need to get back to it.

Anyhow, the "this would be a good thing for the Catholic Church to do globally in the name of the environment" might be true, or might not be, but it misses the overall point.

Related threads:

The secular left's perpetual surprise at arriving at the Catholic past.

Secular suffering for nothing

Pancake Day.

Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

Lex Anteinternet: But, um. . . cereal is grain.

Lex Anteinternet: But, um. . . cereal is grain.: 

But, um. . . cereal is grain.

Grain free cereal?

Is that really possible?

Cereal is a world that literally means grain.

What is this stuff?

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing com...: 

Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.

On this day in 1943, rationing in the US of meats, fat and cheese commenced, with Americans limited to two pounds per week of meat.

Poultry was not affected by the order.

This must have been a matter of interest in my family, engaged in the meat packing industry as they then were.

Contrary to popular memory, not everything the US did during the war met with universal approval back home, and this was one such example.  Cheating and black marketing was pretty common, and there were very widespread efforts to avoid rationing.  Farmers and ranchers helped people to avoid the system by direct sales to consumers, something the government intervened to stop and only recently has seen a large-scale return.

While wholesale inclusion of a prior item in a new one is bad form, here's something we earlier ran which is a topic that needs repeating here:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...

 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.

So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.

Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well

Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.

People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

New Zealanders entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.

Hitler rejected the recommendations of the German Army to place V-2 rockets on mobile launchers and opted instead for them to have permanent launching installations at Peenemünde.

Life issued a special issue on the USSR.

Nevada joined those states, such as Wyoming, which would no longer recognize Common Law Marriage.

Chapter 122 - Marriage

NRS 122.010 - What constitutes marriage; no common-law marriages after March 29, 1943.

1. Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of contracting is essential. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by solemnization as authorized and provided by this chapter.

2. The provisions of subsection 1 requiring solemnization shall not invalidate any marriage contract in effect prior to March 29, 1943, to which the consent only of the parties capable in law of contracting the contract was essential.

John Major, British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, was born, as was English comedian Eric Idle.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The Staff of Life: Bread

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The Staff of Life: Bread: 

Lex Anteinternet: The Staff of Life: Bread

Lex Anteinternet: The Staff of Life: Bread:      

The Staff of Life: Bread

 The preparation of loaves of bread.

Bread is the staff of life; in which is contained, inclusive, the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding and custard: and to render all complete, there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities are also corrected by yeast or barm, through which it means it becomes a wholesome fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of bread.

Jonathan Swift, to whom I'd related on my mother's side.

Recently I heard a homily delivered referencing the Lord's Prayer and bread.

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

The Lord's Prayer in contemporary English.

The Priest, an African native, noted that for a time he'd served as a Priest in Rome, and during that time he was thrown into a bit of crisis due to the massive  variety of Italian breads (twenty kinds, he related) and that so much of it was thrown away in a location that was just across from him.  At home, in Zambia, bread was consumed still just once a month, when his father was paid.  How, he wondered, could he relate the scarcity of bread in his native land, with the over abundance of it in his new location, and the scarcity of it referenced in the Lord's Prayer (my summation, not quite the way he put it)?  He figured that very few Americans or westerners thought of it in terms of scarcity.

Pater Noster, qui es in caelis:

sanctificétur nomen tuum;

advéniat regnum tuum;

fiat volúntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.

Panem nostrum cotidiánum da nobis hódie;

et dimítte nobis débita nostra,

sicut et nos dimíttimus debitóribus nostris;

et ne nos indúcas in temptatiónem,

sed líbera nos a malo.

The Lord's Prayer in Latin.

Well, it might be just me, or perhaps more the family I come from, but that thought, the scarcity of bread and what it means in the context of the prayer, is something that I have thought of before.  Perhaps because I can recall my father mentioning, in reference itself to the prayer, that in the ancient world "bread was truly the staff of life."

Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,

sia santificato il tuo Nome,

venga il tuo Regno,

sia fatta la tua Volontà

come in cielo così in terra.

Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,

e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti

come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,

e non ci indurre in tentazione,

ma liberaci dal Male.

The Lord's Prayer in contemporary Italian.

And indeed it was.

Bread was the basic foodstuff that fed great masses of humanity all around the world for centuries.  The diet we have today, with lots of variety, didn't exist in many localities, particularly after civilization, i.e., the construction of towns and cities, started in ancient times.  Not that any ancient society really had the variety of foods we have today, but hunter gatherer societies can have a more varied one than we suppose, with a fairly balanced diet.  In many ancient societies, however, once towns were built and crop agriculture set in, and indeed many societies right up until relatively modern times, bread was one of the basic if not the basic stable food item.  A person might have meat often, but they could hope to get by on bread.

Notre Père qui es aux cieux,

que ton Nom soit sanctifié,

que ton règne vienne,

que ta volonté soit faite

sur la terre comme au ciel.

Donne-nous aujourd’hui notre pain de ce jour.

Pardonne-nous nos offenses,

comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés.

Et ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,

mais délivre-nous du mal. 

The Lord's Prayer in French.

That's quite a change, indeed, from what we experience now.  I suppose there may be exceptions, but by and large I don't know of any society that depends upon bread the same way that all peoples once did.

Πατερ ημων ο εν τοις ουρανοις·
     Pater hēmon ho en tois uranois;
αγιασθητω το ονομα σου·
     hagiasthēto to onoma su;
ελθετω η βασιλεια σου·
     elteto hē basileia su;
γενηθητω το θελημα σου, ως εν ουρανω και επι γης·
     genēthēto to thelēma su, hos en urano kai epi gēs;
τον αρτον ημων τον επιουσιον δος ημιν σημερον·
     ton arton hēmon to etiusion dos hēmin sēmeron;
και αφες ημιν τα οφειληματα ημον,
     kai aphes hemin ta opheilēmata hēmon,
ως και ημεις αφηκαμεν τοις οφειλεταις ημων·
     hos kai hēmeis aphēkamen tois opheiletais hēmon;
και μη εισενεγκης ημας εις πειρασμον,
     kai mē eisenegkēs hēmas eis peirasmon,
αλλα ρυσαι ημας απο του πονηρου.
     alla rhusai hēmas apo tu ponēru.

The Lord's Prayer in Greek.

Which is, I suppose, why ever culture around the world seems to have its own variety of it, with some societies in the wheat growing regions of the globe having multiple vareities of it.  Indeed, Italy and France seem to have a profusion of bread types, and good ones too, which we've only recently caught up with after basically importing their types.

Unser Vater in dem Himmel!
Dein Name werde geheiliget.
Dein Reich komme.
Dein Wille geschehe auf Erden wie im Himmel.
Unser täglich Brot gib uns heute.
Und vergib uns unsere Schulden,
wie wir unsern Schuldigern vergeben.
Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung,
sondern erlöse uns von dem Übel.

The Lord's Prayer in German.

And thank goodness for that, I'd note.  American breads of my youth were lousy, in my opinion. So packed with sugar that they are basically a really bland cake, the left a lot to be desired.  Those industrial breads are still around I'd note, but I don't have to buy them and I don't.

Отче наш, Иже еси на небесех!

Да святится имя Твое,

да приидет Царствие Твое,

да будет воля Твоя,

яко на небеси и на земли.

Хлеб наш насущный даждь нам днесь;

и остави нам долги наша,

якоже и мы оставляем должником нашим;

и не введи нас во искушение,

но избави нас от лукаваго. 

The Lord's Prayer in Russian.

Ironically, some of the really fancy breads of today started off, oddly enough, as poverty foods.  Italian walnut based breads and pastas (basically a species of bread, really) were the food of the really poor, who gleaned walnets.  Irish soda bread, which I really like and which I used to make on occasion, is a "short" bread with no or little sugar and no yeast.  Easy to make with only flour, just as the Irish poor were likely to not have.

Ranch cook making what is probably soda, or sheepherder's, bread in a cast iron pan, the way it is made at camps, and the way I even make it 

 

Оч͠е нашь ижє ѥси на н͠бсєхъ . да с͠титьсѧ имѧ

твоѥ да придєть ц͠рствиѥ твоѥ · да бѫдєть воля

твоя · яка на н͠бси и на земли хлѣбъ нашь насѫщьиыи ·

даждь намъ дьньсь · и остави намъ · длъгы

нашѧ · яко и мы оставляємъ длъжникомъ нашимъ

и нє въвєди насъ въ напасть · иъ избави ны отъ

нєприязни

The Lord's Prayer in Old Church Slavonic.

But I can see how many would have never considered this.

أبانا الذي في السّماوات

ليتقدَّسِ اسمُك

ليأتِ ملكوتُك

لتكُنْ مشيئتُكَ

كما في السَّماءِ كذلكَ على الأرض

خبزَنَا الجوهريَّ أعطِنا اليوم

واترُكْ لنا ما علينا

كما نتركُ نحنُ لِمَنْ لنا عليه

ولا تُدخِلْنا في تجربة

لكن نجِّنا مِن الشرير

آمين

The Lord's Prayer in Arabic.

Although I suspect that quite a few still do, even in spite of a modern condition in which foods supplies are so vast in the Western World that bread is sometimes regarded by some as a dietary enemy.

我們在天上的父，

願人都尊祢的名為聖，

願祢的國降臨，

願祢的旨意行在地上，

如同行在天上。

我們日用的飲食，

今日賜給我們，

免我們的債，

如同我們免了人的債，

不叫我們遇見試探，

救我們脫離兇惡，

因為國度、權柄、榮耀，全是祢的，

直到永遠。阿們！

The Lord's Prayer in Chinese.

And, in the context of the Lord's Prayer, if a person does, the deeper meaning of the prayer on that line is quite evident.

E ko mākou Makua i loko o ka lani,

e ho‘āno ‘ia Kou inoa.

E hiki mai Kou aupuni.

E mālama ‘ia Kou makemake ma ka honua nei,

e like me ia i mālama ‘ia ma ka lani lā.

E hā‘awi mai iā mākou i kēia lā i ‘ai na mākou no nēia lā;

a e kala mai ho‘i iā mākou i kā mākou lawehala ‘ana,

me mākou e kala nei i ka po‘e i lawehala i kā mākou;

a mai ho‘oku‘u ‘Oe iā mākou i ka ho‘owalewale ‘ia mai,

akā e ho‘opakele nō na‘e iā mākou i ka ino. 

Hawaiian.

Vår Far i himmelen!
La navnet ditt helliges.
La riket ditt komme.
La viljen din skje på jorden
slik som i himmelen.
Gi oss i dag vårt daglige brød,
og tilgi oss vår skyld,
slik også vi tilgir våre skyldnere.
Og la oss ikke komme i fristelse, men frels oss fra det onde.
For riket er ditt,
og makten og æren i evighet.

Norwegian

Faþer vár es ert í himenríki, verði nafn þitt hæilagt.

Til kome ríke þitt, værði vili þin

sva a iarðu sem í himnum.

Gef oss í dag brauð vort dagligt,

Ok fyr gefþu oss synþer órar,

sem vér fyr gefom þeim er viþ oss hafa misgert

Leiðd oss eigi í freistni, heldr leys þv oss frá öllu illu.

Old Norse

Faðir vor, þú sem ert á himnum.

Helgist þitt nafn,

til komi þitt ríki,

verði þinn vilji, svo á jörðu sem á himni.

Gef oss í dag vort daglegt brauð.

Fyrirgef oss vorar skuldir,

svo sem vér og fyrirgefum vorum skuldunautum.

Eigi leið þú oss í freistni, heldur frelsa oss frá illu.

[Því að þitt er ríkið, mátturinn og dýrðin að eilífu, amen.]

Icelandic

Ár nAthair, atá ar neamh: go naofar d'ainm.

Go dtaga do ríocht.

Go ndéantar do thoil ar talamh

mar a dhéantar ar neamh.

Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniu,

agus maith dúinn ár bhfiacha,

mar a mhaithimid dár bhféichiúnaithe féin.

Agus ná lig sinn i gcathú,

ach saor sinn ó olc.

[Óir is leatsa an Ríocht agus an Chumhacht

agus an Ghlóir, trí shaol na saol.]

Áiméan.

Irish

Isä meidän, joka olet taivaissa,

Pyhitetty olkoon sinun nimesi.

Tulkoon sinun valtakuntasi.

Tapahtukoon sinun tahtosi,

myös maan päällä niin kuin taivaassa.

Anna meille tänä päivänä

meidän jokapäiväinen leipämme.

Ja anna meille meidän syntimme anteeksi,

niin kuin mekin anteeksi annamme niille,

jotka ovat meitä vastaan rikkoneet.

Äläkä saata meitä kiusaukseen,

vaan päästä meidät pahasta.

[Sillä sinun on valtakunta

ja voima ja kunnia iankaikkisesti.]

Aamen.\

Finnish