HeyJaredBetta World
Betta World is the narrative home for the Betta Food movement—a cooperative, member-owned force taking on Big Food and Big Ag. Here, we explore the pillars of our revolution: Health, Food, Community, and Society. This is where we learn, connect, and build
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 29, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
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Why I Wrote "Which Crowd Are We?" (opens the original)
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I didn’t want to write this song. I wrote it because I had to.Here’s how it happened. A few months ago I was sitting at my own kitchen table, here on our farm in Iowa. Our meal finished, out comes a deck of cards, frozen ground outside, and across from me a neighbor woman I’ve known for years.Her father was an old-style farmer — rotating crops, living sustainable before it had a name, working with the land instead of against it. She worked at the power company, a union job, moving coal to burn.
Why I Wrote "Grown Up Empty Inside" (opens the original)
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Here’s the thing about writing a song like this: you don’t sit down and decide to do it. It happens to you. Like a fever. Or like that feeling you get when you’ve been scrolling for two hours and you look up and realize you’ve forgotten what the sun looks like.I’d been watching it happen since I was in high school in New Hampshire and accelerate in the 1980’s under Ronald Reagan. First in America, then everywhere else. This weird switch where we stopped being people and started being consumers.
Why I Wrote the Song "Eating's a Crime in the School Lunch Line!” (opens the original)
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I grew up in a small New England town in the 1960s. School lunch was something I never missed. It wasn’t just food. It was an event. It was community. It was something to look forward to.Two of my best friends’ mothers made the food we ate. They came in early. They made it from scratch. Real mashed potatoes. Real gravy. Real vegetables that hadn’t been stripped of everything that made them worth eating. I often bought two lunches because one was never enough. It tasted like something a human bei
Why I wrote the song: We're Not the Same, Thank God! (opens the original)
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I live in Iowa. The reddest part of a red state. The kind of place where the corn and soybeans go to the horizon in straight, obedient lines, where the only thing more uniform than the agriculture is the politics. Drive through my county and you’ll see it. Field after field. Same green. Same height. Same direction when the wind blows. Efficient. Predictable. Profitable.It’s also a lie.Because if you stop the car, if you look past the highway, you’ll find the Loess Hills. They’re not flat. They n
Why I Wrote the Song "Don't You Want to Be Fat Like Me?" (opens the original)
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I have a confession to make.I wrote a song called “Don’t You Want to Be Fat Like Me?” and if you listen to it without paying attention, you might think it’s just a comedy routine. A patter song in the style of an old vaudeville number, with a narrator sarcastically inviting you to join him in the gloriously comfortable world of obesity. Come for the bacon, stay for the permanent couch dent.But here’s the thing. It’s not really about the fat guy in the recliner. It’s about why he’s there. And if
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