Tag: food

Mamdani admin. denies that shoppers will need state photo ID or face mandatory door checks to buy food at upcoming city-run grocery stores

A national political firestorm erupted on Monday following viral social media claims that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would require shoppers to present identification to purchase food at proposed municipal grocery stores, prompting sharp criticism from conservative leaders, left-wing New Yorkers and a subsequent clarification from City Hall.

The controversy stems from comments made during a press conference addressing the Mamdani (D-N.Y.) administration’s new flagship “food affordability program.” Last week, Mamdani announced a $70 million initiative to open five city-owned, publicly subsidized grocery stores — one in each borough — offering a 30% discount on essential kitchen staples like meat, produce, and pantry goods.

During the press conference, which transpired in late July, a reporter asked the mayor, “How are you going to keep people from taking advantage of that deal, basically? And is there going to be a limit on the number of items that someone can take that are discounted at that level from that essential basket?”

“So our RFP (Request for Proposal) makes very clear this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling,” Mamdani responded.

Jeanny Pak, the CFO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, then floated the idea of a residency verification mechanism, mentioning a potential “library card-esque thing” or looking into state IDs to manage buyer eligibility and target local New Yorkers.

However, following the social media buzz, Mamdani’s office later issued a statement denying that shoppers will need to present a state photo ID or undergo door checks to enter or buy food at the proposed city-owned grocery stores.

Regarding the current official status, the Mamdani administration has not formally enacted a mandatory ID policy. They stated they are “still exploring options” to verify local residence, but no final decision has been made ahead of the planned 2027 opening in the Bronx, New York officials emphasized.

Nonetheless, prior to the clarification, video clips of the exchange circulated rapidly across political circles online, sparking immediate accusations of political hypocrisy. Prominent Republican figures seized on the clip to draw comparisons between food access policies and federal election laws.

Billionaire Elon Musk posted to X calling the situation ironic, while Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) labeled it hypocritical, arguing that advocating for residency verification at city grocery stores while opposing mandatory voter ID bills was inconsistent.

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War With Iran: A Double-Edged Sword for the US Economy and Agriculture

The sharp swings in oil prices following the latest round of attacks and negotiations over safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that wars do not always reveal themselves first on the battlefield. Sometimes, their earliest signs appear on gas-station price boards, in transportation bills, and on the balance sheets of farmers standing thousands of miles from the front lines. Now that the confrontation between the United States and Iran has moved beyond pressure and deterrence and turned into direct military conflict, the issue is no longer limited to security calculations. It is about the real costs of war – costs increasingly borne by American farmers, truck drivers, and consumers.

The economic effects of this war are being transmitted through channels that are highly sensitive for Washington politically: energy markets, inflation, supply chains, and, above all, agriculture. A war that Trump justifies in the language of national security and displays of strength could, in practice, become a self-inflicted shock to the U.S. economy. That is the central contradiction: the most direct pressure is falling on the very social and economic constituency Trump has repeatedly claimed to defend – the American farm belt.

The Energy Shock, From Hormuz to American Farms

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption passes, now lies at the center of the conflict. Repeated surges and declines in oil prices show that even news of a temporary pause – or the possibility of renewed escalation – can shake the energy market. Higher fuel prices feed directly into transportation, production, and consumer-goods costs, adding to inflationary pressure. This also leaves monetary policymakers caught between controlling inflation and preventing a further slowdown in economic growth.

Market instability and direct military expenditures are rising as well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that the true cost of military conflict often extends far beyond initial estimates. Brown University’s Costs of War Project has placed the cost of the post-9/11 wars at approximately $8 trillion. A war with Iran, particularly if it becomes prolonged or expands geographically, could generate new and uncertain financial commitments. Yet one of its deepest and least visible consequences may be felt not on Wall Street, but on American farms.

Modern American agriculture is intensely dependent on energy. Diesel powers farm machinery; natural gas is a primary input in the production of nitrogen fertilizers; and gasoline and transportation fuels move crops from farms to markets. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeatedly shown that higher energy prices increase production costs and reduce farm income, ultimately affecting food prices.

The pressure is even more severe in the fertilizer market. The production of ammonia and urea is directly dependent on natural gas, while disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has constrained global supplies of raw materials and fertilizer. During the first weeks of the war, urea prices nearly doubled, leaving American farmers to confront fuel-price increases and supply shortages at the same time. Under such conditions, corn production, which requires more nitrogen fertilizer, becomes especially vulnerable. Farmers may be forced to choose among reducing planted acreage, switching crops, or accepting substantially higher costs.

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Scamdani and the Truth About City-Owned Grocery Stores

Some of my earliest memories are from a grocery store.

My mother, and later her sister, worked at a locally owned Key Market running the deli department. Baked goods, hot meals, sliced meats and fresh salads, and the best donuts you ever tasted made from scratch every day — it was a kid’s paradise. She would sometimes take me to work on Saturdays, and I’d help, doing everything but slicing the meat (age-restricted because it’s dangerous). It was fun for me, and I learned things I would not have learned watching cartoons.

Later, just before I married and became a military wife, I worked at my local Kroger regional office supporting loyalty card and marketing issues for, gosh, I guess it was about 200 stores. I learned a lot about the grocery business.

All this is to say: I know the difference between grocery economics and political theater.

Scamdani’s ever-evolving store plans

Zohran Mamdani, New York’s newest Hizzoner, ran largely on a pledge to create city-owned grocery stores, and today he’s working to fulfill that promise. Sort of. The idea was to decrease prices for consumers by removing the “gouging” profit model.

Some of his campaign promises included:

  • “Grocery prices are out of control. The cost of eggs and milk has skyrocketed. Some stores are even using dynamic pricing, jacking up the cost over the course of the day depending on what they can get away with. It doesn’t need to be this way. I’m Zohran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores. It’s like a public option for produce. We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.”
  • “I’m Zohran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores. It’s like a public option for produce.”
  • “We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.” (This one is especially rich, as you’ll see.)
  • “Last month, we announced that we would fulfill a campaign promise: that we would lower prices by creating a network of city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough. In these stores, prices will be cheaper.”

Sounds great. So last month, he announced the reality: a limited core basket including produce, meat, seafood, milk, bread, yogurt, and a few other things to be priced 30% below “typical retail,” whatever that really means, in city-owned and subsidized stores run by private for-profit operators. Operators are entitled to price everything outside the core basket at whatever they like. The discounted “basket” will be subsidized by the city. The city covers capital, rent, and property tax. And users, as announced today, will be required to prove residency with a “library card” style identification.

As Darth Vader said, the deal has been altered. Pray he does not alter it further.

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Zohran Mamdani Won’t Let You Buy His Food Without Government ID

If you want to purchase food from one of communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s government-run supermarkets, you must… present some form of ID.

And not just any ID… government ID.

But-but-but how will married women eat?

“So, our RFP [Request for Proposals] makes very clear that this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling,” explains Mamdani. “I’m going [to] pass it over to our EDC head, Jeanny Pak, to add some additional details.”

Pak is the Interim President & CEO of NYC Economic Development Corporation.

“Yes, if you look at our RFP for the operator, we are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be [through] a sort of a library card-esque [system], and also, we manage who’s buying and that it’s focused on everyday New Yorkers,” Pak said. “So, we are mindful of that, and we’re going to make sure that we have all the things in place to ensure that that does not happen.”

Libraries are run by the government; therefore, “library-esque” identification is by definition government identification.

And this is what always happens when leftism meets reality.

Mamdani wants government to take over the means of production, which is the very definition of communism. He’s starting with food because, hey, who doesn’t support cheap food? Food is necessary to life. No one wants anyone to go hungry. It’s a pretty smart first move on his part. Ah, but what about reality…? Such as…

The reality of how this will undercut privately-owned grocery stores. Yeah, well, that’s the plan, dumbass. If people can buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, they are going to buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, and this will (by design) decimate privately-owned grocery stores that operate on profit margins below five percent.

These privately-owned stores will go out of business. Then Mamdani will replace them with more government-run stores, which will push even more privately-owned stores out of business, which means even more government-run stores, and so on and so on and so on, until the government is in charge of feeding the people and if the people defy the government, those people don’t eat.

Then there’s the reality brought up by the reporter’s question, which is what to do about people who will take advantage of a system so easily taken advantage of by purchasing groceries at 30 percent below retail, turning around, and reselling those items?

See, that could ruin Mamdani’s Communist plot, so suddenly a government ID is necessary to avoid fraud, to avoid people taking advantage.

Sound familiar?

Democrats like Mamdani tell us they oppose voter ID because “voting is a human right.” But-but-but isn’t eating even more of a human right?

They tell us government ID is too difficult for some people to obtain, especially poor people. But-but-but don’t the poor need to eat even more than they need to vote?

They tell us voter ID is racist. But-but-but by that standard, Mamdani is starving black people. They tell us married women will be denied government ID. But-but-but… You get the point.

Mamdani proves here that he knows that not requiring an ID invites fraud, and like all Democrats, he wants to invite voter fraud because Democrats benefit from voter fraud.

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How Demographics are Driving America’s Long-Term Fiscal Illness

Stomach Bugs and Systemic Debt

If it’s not a bizarre new geopolitical crisis, it’s a terrifying headline about the safety of our  food supply. 

This, no doubt, is an age of constant, low-grade dread. Every time you open your phone, there’s a fresh, steaming pile of bad news waiting to greet you.

But while the mainstream media loves to keep your anxiety levels on a gentle simmer, we prefer to look at the bigger picture. The absurdity of modern life is what we’re after.

Lately, two seemingly unrelated outbreaks have been competing for the spotlight. There’s a microscopic parasite making its way through America’s salad bowls. A healthy lunch has suddenly turned into poison.

At the same time, there’s a massive, systemic failure quietly brewing in Washington. One that’s growing so rapidly it makes a stomach bug look like a walk in the park. While one threatens to disrupt your digestive tract for a week, the other quietly promises to derail the economic security of several generations.

In truth, both of these crises suffer from the exact same fundamental problem. A complete failure of basic hygiene. Whether we’re talking about food safety or fiscal responsibility, ignoring the fundamentals eventually catches up to you. And when it does, the results are always messy, painful, and incredibly hard to clean up.

How is it that a nation seemingly obsessed with clean living managed to let both its fresh produce and its national checkbook rot from the inside out?

Today, we are diving headfirst into two of the most uncomfortable, stomach-churning epidemics sweeping across the nation. One of them is currently lingering on your unwashed spinach. The other is eating away at the very foundations of your financial future.

Explosive Diarrhea

Many strange and unpleasant things are being reported these days. We don’t know if they are really new. But the way they are reported makes them sound new and nasty.

Without question, explosive diarrhea has been around since Adam bit the apple. However, this new description for a stomach bug, like using polar vortex or heat dome to describe winter or summer weather, makes it sound especially alarming.

If you’ve somehow missed the many headlines, there’s a disease spreading across the USA that’s being reported to cause explosive diarrhea. This disease stems from a stomach parasite that is hiding in contaminated food.

Cyclospora cayetanensis is the microscopic parasite behind the outbreak. The infection it causes is formally called cyclosporiasis, and nasty is an understatement. We’ll spare you the ghastly details. From what we gather, unlike your standard 24-hour stomach bug, this uninvited guest can hijack your gut for weeks, sometimes teasing you by fading away only to make a miserable, unexpected comeback. 

Right now, the epicenter of this outbreak is the Midwest, with Michigan getting hit the hardest by a massive surge that has shattered its typical caseload. Major spikes are also popping up in Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Texas. In total, health officials have tracked cases across more than 30 states. They’re all tied to people eating contaminated food without ever leaving the country.

The parasite hitches a ride on fresh, raw produce – things like raspberries, basil, cilantro, and spinach. Because it is incredibly sticky, it thrives in the tiny cervices of your favorite summer greens, making it tough to spot and even tougher to dislodge.

Certainly, this sounds awful. But we’re confident it’s controllable and will soon disappear from the reporting cycle. Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said for explosive debt…

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Adding Hemp To Dog Food Improves Digestive Health, New Study Shows

A new study found that adding hemp oil or hempseed byproduct to dog food can improve digestive health without negatively impacting the overall microbial system.

The study, published in the journal Veterinary Sciences, suggests that certain types of hemp derivatives could be safely incorporated into canine food as ingredients. However, the effects appear to be partly dependent on whether the cannabis is added as an oil or fiber supplement.

For the study, researchers at Kasetsart University in Thailand put 24 mixed-breed dogs into three groups: One had food containing an 11 percent concentration of a fiber-rich hempseed byproduct, another received food with 2 percent hempseed oil and a third got a control diet with no hemp.

The dogs were fed the diets for 90 days. Researchers compared fecal samples from before the experiment with those from after 30 and 90 days. Genetic sequencing was used to track changes in the composition and diversity of intestinal bacteria.

Dogs that were fed a diet with hempseed oil-infused food showed a larger increase in microbial species richness.

The diet was also associated with increased levels of “beneficial” bacteria from the Lactobacillaceae family, whereas the fiber-rich hempseed byproduct was linked with Actinobacteriota.

“Hempseed derivatives altered microbial composition by promoting certain beneficial bacteria, supporting canine gut health in a formulation-dependent manner,” the authors wrote, adding that the results “provide evidence for their safe inclusion as functional ingredients in dog food.”

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Chicago Residents Fume as Seven Grocery Stores Close Despite the City Spending Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Save Them

The people of Chicago received hard lessons that crime and socialism have catastrophic consequences, as grocery stores are shuttering across the city.

As FOX 32 Chicago reported, seven Save-A-Lot stores on the Windy City’s South and West sides closed today. This news comes despite the stores receiving $13.5 million in city grant (taxpayer) money to stay open.

But Save A Lot previously cut ties with Yellow Banana, which operates the stores, leaving the operator with no choice.

Forget Constipation! Drink This And Empty Your Bowels Instantly!

In addition, Yellow Banana suffered a blow when CEO Joe Canfield died of a stroke at the age of 54 back in April.

Block Club Chicago also notes that Yellow Banana had a hard enough time opening the stores to begin with due to missed deadlines, protests, legal disputes, sudden closures, and scathing national headlines.

The closure of these stores will make it far harder for residents of the South and West to find fresh groceries. These are impoverished, crime-ridden areas that are already struggling with food insecurity.

Communist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, of course, was quick to blame the federal government for the closures, citing ‘cuts’ to SNAP benefits, for example.

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UK government’s policy of adding folic acid to flour is not safe; studies show an increase in cancer

Why Cancer Is The Question

Folic acid forms the building blocks of DNA and drives cell division. Early embryos have cells dividing at enormous speed and they need a ready supply. Anything that helps cell division presents a hypothetical risk for people with cancer and also for the initiation of cancer in healthy people. Consequently, studies have been carried out to try and measure where that hypothetical concern is present in reality.

Measuring the Harm

The strongest test for harm is a randomised controlled trial, in which people are assigned by the toss of a coin to receive either the treatment or a placebo and are then followed up to see what happens. In 2013, researchers pooled every large folic acid trial, involving around fifty thousand people, into one analysis in The Lancet. They reported no significant effect on cancer. That result became the basis of the official safety verdict.

A year earlier, a separate, more careful review split the same trials by dose given. It found an increase in cancer in the trials using lower doses, close to the amount fortification delivers, but none in the trials using much higher doses.

That headline, a six per cent increase reported as no significant effect, is an average across every dose the trials used. Split the trials into three dose groups, on both the published figures and the patient-level data behind the 2013 analysis, and the average comes apart.

The increase is seen at the exact range that fortifying flour will deliver. That is the reverse of how a drug normally behaves, since a larger dose would usually carry more risk, not less. The result below 1 milligram is the same even if the single polyp-prevention trial that critics single out is excluded and it is seen in ordinary adults rather than just in high-risk groups. 

Prostate cancer in particular is a concern. In one trial, men given 1 milligram of folic acid a day were diagnosed with prostate cancer at 2.6 times the rate of those on a placebo, a ten-year risk of 9.7 per cent against 3.3 per cent. The trial had been designed to study bowel polyps rather than the prostate. Sixteen years later, there have still been no further trials to measure this properly. Instead, researchers re-examined the data from the other folic acid trials already run. Pooled together, six trials covering around 25,000 men showed a 24 per cent increase in prostate cancer among the men given folic acid (relative risk 1.24, 95 per cent confidence interval 1.03 to 1.49). A reanalysis at a case level claimed there was no signal but they specifically excluded dosages within the fortification range. Folate obtained from food carried no such risk, which points to the synthetic form rather than the vitamin as it occurs in the diet.

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American Farmers Shouldn’t Need Permission from the US Army to Grow Crops

For nearly a decade, California farmer Jack LaPant was the target of an investigation and prosecution by the United States Army, who alleged that LaPant violated the Clean Water Act by growing a wheat crop to feed his cattle. Earlier this year, LaPant was able to settle the case to get the Army out of his hair, but the settlement required him to give the Army more than $1 million in money and land value. This, despite the fact that the government never proved a single allegation in court.

Most of us today take for granted that we’ll be able to get the food we want when we go to the grocery store or our favorite restaurant. But the reality is that a safe, plentiful, and affordable food supply depends on people like Jack LaPant—a fact we should never forget.

Fewer Americans make their living in agriculture these days, which means more workers can devote their time and energy to other productive pursuits.

Modern farming produces substantial food surplus, which is an essential condition for an economy to diversify and grow. Less than 2 percent of the American population is now engaged in producing the food that nourishes the rest of us, thanks in large part to mechanization, technological advances, improved land and crop management practices, and other welcome innovations.

But let’s be clear: despite those advances, farming is still demanding, difficult work, and we should be thankful for those who make it their mission to feed the rest of us. Further, it is no coincidence that free economies produce the greatest food surplus. Centrally planned economies tend to produce famine. It is necessary that those few who do farm have their property and economic rights protected. If they aren’t safeguarded, we will all pay the price alongside them.

Jack LaPant decided 45 years ago to leave his steady power company job and take up farming. Since LaPant had no personal or family background in agriculture, this was an unusual career move, to say the least.

He moved his family from Oakland to a remote valley in the Sierras and learned to work the land. Over the decades, he built a living for himself and his children, while contributing to the food supply that sustains the rest of us. Then he found himself at odds with the US government.

The concern in LaPant’s case goes beyond the effects on the farm operations themselves. Heavy-handed and ruinous regulation at the hands of our nation’s military is a threat to the food surplus that we depend upon as part of the foundation of our modern life.

Remember that more than 98 percent of us have the freedom to do whatever our talents and opportunities allow because of the less than 2 percent of Americans who produce the food that the rest of us need. That imbalance marks a radical difference from the rest of the world—globally, about 60 percent of the population is dedicated to farming. In many less-developed countries, that’s not because farming is the path people choose—it’s because they have no choice at all if they don’t want to starve.

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Ultraprocessed Foods Linked to Measurable Drops in Human Attention Span

More than half of the calories on the average American or British plate now come from foods built in factories rather than grown on farms. That’s a problem your brain pays for in ways many people never connect back to their plate.

Research published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring adds another piece to a growing body of evidence: the industrially processed foods filling modern diets are eroding cognitive performance in midlife adults, long before any formal diagnosis appears.1

Unlike obvious memory loss, declining cognitive function often hides in plain sight. You notice it as brain fog, distractibility, slower thinking, mental fatigue, or trouble concentrating during conversations and work tasks. Many people blame stress, aging, or lack of sleep. Meanwhile, their daily diet floods their body with industrially processed snacks, sweetened drinks, packaged meals, and refined oils that disrupt how their cells produce energy.

What makes the findings especially striking is that the cognitive effects appeared independent of overall diet quality. Someone could still eat fruits and vegetables, yet experience measurable harm if ultraprocessed products remained a major part of their routine. The processing itself appears to matter, not just the nutrients displaced by it.

If processing itself is the problem, not just sugar, not just fat, then the standard advice to “eat more vegetables” isn’t enough. What you remove from your diet matters as much as what you add. Many people consume ultraprocessed foods several times a day without realizing how deeply these foods affect brain function, metabolic health, and long-term dementia risk. The next section breaks down exactly what the researchers found and why one specific aspect of cognition appeared especially vulnerable.

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