Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.
A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning—and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.
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HBO has a history of tackling important American healthcare crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer’s to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: Obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.
As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) rates are soaring among kids. And this is a generation that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.
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Many of us today think about what we may be wasting, an awareness that leads us to recycling, composting and other such activities. But from the beginning, Bill and Karla Chambers operated their Stahlbush Island Farms—located in Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley—with the idea that waste was intolerable. This thinking has guided virtually every aspect of their operations since the farms’ founding in 1985.
The doctrine of waste aversion has taken them in a unique direction: that of exclusively marketing their produce either frozen or canned. “Produce comes in and out of ripeness in a very short period of time,” Karla Chambers told Organic Connections. “For example, our Super Sweet Corn comes in and out of prime in three days. If you follow the fresh market, if corn or blueberries are coming out of Chile, it’s probably 15 days by the time the crop is picked. It goes to the packinghouse and gets loaded on a container for a shipment north. Then it goes into distribution, to the grocery store, and then sits in your home. Of course, we don’t eat it on day one; it can be many more days before we consume that fresh produce.
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Guest post by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit
This week, the nation’s top public health experts gathered at a much-trumpeted obesity conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Weight of the Nation. (A quick glance at the agenda reveals nothing that would even begin to challenge the food industry.)
Released at this bland event was an equally uninspired report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM, an advisory arm of Congress) called, Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation. The irony of the report’s title gets lost among the 478 pages that aim to solve “this complex, stubborn problem” with “a comprehensive set of solutions.”
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by Katherine Gustafson, via Yes! Magazine
It isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.
Only local farms can deliver the very freshest produce. But while the common methods of providing this bounty to consumers—community supported agriculture (CSA) plans and farmers’ markets—are essential components of a revitalizing fresh-food sector, they don’t always provide a sufficiently flexible or robust shopping experience.
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Guest post by Courtney Pineau, Communications Manager of the Non-GMO Project
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In our household, spring cleaning is often inspired by those first days of springtime sun when I discover the cobwebs and dust bunnies that have been hiding in the shadows all winter. It’s amazing what a little light can expose. Spring cleaning our diets is the same way–when you look a little closer you often find that your food contains unwanted GMO ingredients. I hope these spring cleaning tips help you find new ways to nourish your family with healthy non-GMO foods.
by Cookson Beecher, via Food Safety News
Does this food contain genetically modified organisms?
That's what many consumers, including overseas trading partners, want to know about the food they're buying.
A prime example of that is the recent initiative in California, dubbed the "Right to Know" campaign, which calls for food manufacturers in the Golden State to identify genetically engineered ingredients on the labels of food products sold in that state.
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by David Katz, MD, via The Huffington Post
There was an expression, once commonly used, to describe a situation in which it was easy to exploit people: "like taking candy from a baby." As with all such similes, the illustration itself was meant to be the extreme, self-evident case. Stealing a baby's candy is something so outrageously objectionable that all decent people must oppose it. It would concern anyone, and everyone. It would be everybody's business.
We don't hear that expression much any more for fairly obvious reasons. There is, if anything, far too much "candy"—and variations on the theme of candy, such as soda, sugary cereals, and so on—to go around; and too much of it in particular heads right into the mouths of our babes. The new-age problem is selling far too much candy to babies (well, children, really). That, too, is objectionable!
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by Caren Baginski, via NewHope 360
After a whirlwind of a week for Kellogg-owned Kashi Company, the natural cereal and granola giant has announced its intent to ditch GMOs in two existing product lines by 2014. And by 2015, all new Kashi foods will contain 70 percent organic ingredients and also be Non-GMO Project Verified. While the company was already moving toward non-GMO, what prompted this sudden announcement?
Perhaps it was consumer outrage to an anti-GMO viral photo circulated on Facebook created a PR nightmare for Kashi—one that the company tried to curb with a video response that didn't satisfy consumers. On April 30, 2012, the brand offered a more satisfying response to its customers, and one that's surely capturing the attention of natural retailers as they evaluate their role in effecting healthy change in the market.
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SAN FRANCISCO, May 2, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — In victory rallies across state today, supporters celebrated as the California Right to Know campaign filed 971,126 signaturesfor the state's first-ever ballot initiative to require labeling of genetically engineered foods. The huge signature haul, gathered in a 10-week period, is nearly double the 555,236 signatures the campaign needs to qualify for the November ballot.
If passed this November, Californians will join citizens of over 40 countries including all of Europe, Japan and even China who have the right to know whether they are eating genetically engineered food.
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by Bruce Boyers
Joel Salatin—farmer, author, featured speaker, and the subject of several documentaries—has spent his life learning from nature how a food system is supposed to function, and putting it into practice at his Polyface Farm. Then, raising his eyes up from his tractor, he has wondered how average citizens, having no connection to the sources of their food and possessing no food security whatsoever, could possibly think they could go on this way.
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by Anna Soref
It’s not everybody who could turn down a request from the late Paul Newman to open a restaurant, especially if that someone were a passionate chef. But for Michel Nischan, when that offer was made, the time wasn’t right; he was too busy helping nonprofits and socially responsible businesses make the world a better place. Yup, he turned down what most would see as a dream job with a dream partner to continue doing the right thing.
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Jenna Spevack is an artist and designer and an art professor at City University of New York. She is also an environmental advocate, with an art exhibition titled 8 Extraordinary Greens.
The gallery show consists of a series of furniture objects converted into what Spevack calls domestic microfarms. “My art studio landlord collects objects from junkyards,” Spevack explained to Organic Connections. “I’ve taken these salvaged objects and turned them into little microfarms—outfitting them with lights and a sub-irrigated planter that I developed.” The objects include bookcases, tables and other items, neatly fitted with planters sprouting the likes of beets, chard, arugula, cress and kale.
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Guest post by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit
Interview with Rod Morrison of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats
Rod Morrison is president of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats, a Wyoming company that produces 100% Certified Organic, pasture raised and finished meats. As a sustainable farmer who understands the realities of meat production, he has an opinion or two about the recent uproar over pink slime.
MS: What do you make of the whole pink slime debacle?
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Vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements have a tremendously safe track record, yet they are often singled out as being potentially dangerous by government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This – the notion that dietary supplements are unsafe -- is the premise behind the FDA's Draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients, which would require the supplement industry to prove the safety of natural ingredients that, in many cases, have been on the market and used safely for decades.
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by Daniel Klein, via The Perennial Plate
The backyard chicken trend is becoming more and more prevalent these days. But in many North American cities, keeping a flock of hens is still illegal. We met up with some unlikely outlaws while traveling through Tennessee who are breaking the law by producing fresh farm eggs, right in their back yard.
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North Carolina is a state known for its agricultural production—tobacco, corn and soy. It is also the number two pork-producing state in the nation. Yet since 1994, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS)—a joint effort between two of the state’s leading universities and its Department of Agriculture—has been heavily researching and promoting organic, sustainable and local agriculture. Today, CEFS’s impact is being felt statewide, creating highest-ever demand for local and sustainable production and setting a remarkable example for many other states in
the nation.
Foraging for food — whether it’s ferreting rare mushrooms in the woods, picking abundant lemons from an overlooked tree, or gathering berries from an abandoned lot — is all the rage among the culinary crowd and the DIY set, who share their finds with fellow food lovers in fancy restaurant meals or humble home suppers.
But an old-fashioned concept — gleaning for the greater good by harvesting unwanted or leftover produce from farms or family gardens — is also making a comeback during these continued lean economic times.
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Sofia Gatica of Argentina is the 2012 winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for South America.
Argentina is the world’s third largest exporter of soybeans. Every year, the industry spreads over 50 million gallons of agro-toxins—namely glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s widely-used herbicide Roundup, and endosulfan—through aerial spraying over farmland.
While Monsanto claims there is no risk to humans, a 2008 scientific study found that even at low concentrations, glyphosate causes the death of human embryonic, placental and umbilical cells. Endosulfan is a highly toxic pesticide that has been banned in 80 countries because of its threats to human health and the environment. In May 2011, it was added to the UN list of persistent organic pollutants to be eliminated worldwide.
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Guest post by Dr. Opiyo Oloya
Dr. Opiyo Oloya is a teacher, writer and broadcaster, living in Toronto, Canada. He was born in Pamin-Yai, west of Gulu town in northern Uganda. Twitter: @OpiyoOloya
Now, I may not be smart enough to understand the argument, but why hide from the consumers how the food product you are peddling is really made, refusing to name precisely what is in it? So far, as I understand it, that is the logic of US-based agriculture giant Monsanto which has threatened to sue the State of Vermont for crafting a law that would require all foods to be clearly labelled.
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by Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms
The recent editorial by James McWilliams titled "The Myth of Sustainable Meat" contains enough factual errors and skewed assumptions to fill a book and normally I would dismiss this out of hand as too much nonsense to merit a response. But since it specifically mentioned Polyface, a rebuttal is appropriate. For a more comprehensive rebuttal, read the book Folks, This Ain't Normal.
Let's go point by point. First, that grass grazing cows emit more methane than grain-fed. This is factually false. Actually, the amount of methane emitted by fermentation is the same whether it occurs in the cow or outside. Whether the feed is eaten by an herbivore or left to rot on its own, the methane generated is identical.
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Legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.” One of those rare people who not only see but act on what was has clearly been invisible to most of us is Gary Oppenheimer. Since he founded AmpleHarvest.org, he has been named CNN Hero, has received major media coverage, has spoken at TEDx Manhattan, has been praised by First Lady Michelle Obama, and was even invited to the White House to meet the President.
What’s it all about? AmpleHarvest.org matches the food pantries used by more than 50 million Americans living in food-insecure homes with the over 40 million people who grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts in home gardens—and who often have an excess. Prior to the site, the problem was that gardeners could not find local food pantries (also called food shelves, food closets, food cupboards or food banks in some areas) to donate to, as many were not online. AmpleHarvest.org provides a central repository for these pantries so that gardeners can easily locate those nearest them.
by Katie Rojas-Jahn and Renee Dufault, FIHRI, via Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The epidemic of autism in children in the United States may be linked to the typical American diet according to a new study published online in Clinical Epigenetics by Renee Dufault, et. al. The study explores how mineral deficiencies—affected by dietary factors like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—could impact how the human body rids itself of common toxic chemicals like mercury and pesticides.
The release comes on the heels of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimates the average rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among eight year olds is now 1 in 88, representing a 78 percent increase between 2002 and 2008. Among boys, the rate is nearly five times the prevalence found in girls.
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The recent FDA petition drive from JustLabelIt.org found that over 90 percent of American's favor labeling of GMOs. As you will hear in the video below, the BioTech giants are going to go into dis-information overdrive attempting counter this sentiment. (But the same survey also found that people aren't inclined to "swallow" the BioTech party line!)
The next GMO labeling battle ground is in California. The California Committee for the Right to Know is pushing hard to make a deadline of April 22, 2012 to gather 800,000 physical signatures to qualify a landmark initiative for the 2012 California Ballot. If it gets on the ballot and passes in November, this initiative would make GMO labeling a fact in the most populous state in the US.
Because this is a California Ballot Initiative, the campaign needs in-person, physical signatures. These signatures cannot be gathered online.
Visit LabelGMOs.org and find where you can go to sign the petition and find out what you can do to help. It's time to show BioTech that the citizen's pen is mightier than the corporate dollar
by Frances Moore Lappé, via AlterNet.org
Eighteen months ago I read a book that changed my life. Yeah, yeah, I know... sounds corny. But it's not what you think. This book changed my life not because of what it said but because of what it didn't say.
On a nothing-special summer afternoon in 2010, I sat in the Cambridge Public Library preparing a speech on something I'd been studying for decades. I plugged "world hunger" into the library's computer. Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know popped up.
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