http://www.alternet.org/story/149392/

The television series Mad Men, set in the early 1960s, shocks young parents today with scenes of children riding in station wagons without seat belts and putting dry cleaning bags over their heads for fun. Thank goodness we know so much more about keeping our kids healthy, we chuckle.

But as any one of the smooth advertising executives from the show would tell you, don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted sales pitch.

Today, one of the most troubling and fastest growing threats to our children’s health is their diet. Pediatricians have seen an astounding jump for their patients in dangerous, diet-related ailments, such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and asthma.

The best-documented cause is the increased consumption of fast food. It’s a trend propelled in large part by sophisticated and pervasive advertising aimed at children too young to understand the difference between marketing and facts. Don Draper would be proud.

The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that “advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under eight years of age.” This past June, a study published in the journal Pediatrics reported that children significantly preferred the taste of food when it was packaged with cartoon characters, and that effect was magnified for calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods.

Food and beverage corporations certainly know that advertising works. That’s why these corporations spend more than a half billion dollars each year on advertisements for fast food and toy giveaways targeting teens and children. Despite the attention paid to the childhood epidemic of diet-related disease, they aren’t slowing down their marketing.

In November, Yale University researchers found that preschoolers were exposed to 21 percent more fast food advertisements in 2009 than in 2003. The study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity also concluded that large fast food chains only offer parents healthy alternatives for their children 15 percent of the time. Experts consider it the most comprehensive study of fast food nutrition and marketing ever conducted.

Five years before the Yale Rudd Study, the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, concluded that television ads sponsored by food and beverage corporations succeed in getting children to consume large amounts of unhealthy food, leading to a dramatic increase in childhood obesity and diabetes.

The Institute recommended that Congress should step in if the food and beverage industry doesn’t change its ways. Advertising Age said the report could be “a watershed on the scale of the 1964 surgeon general’s report on tobacco.”

It certainly feels like societal attitudes have made a clear shift from viewing the marketing of junk food to kids as an accepted practice to something to be shunned, or even resisted.

By adopting voluntary codes to reduce it, the industry tacitly acknowledges that marketing junk food to kids is wrong. But these steps have proved less than half-hearted and, predictably, ineffective.

For our part, my organization launched a campaign in March to convince McDonald’s to retire Ronald McDonald, its iconic advertising character, and the suite of predatory marketing practices of which the clown is at the heart. A study we commissioned by Lake Research Partners found that more than half of those polled say they “favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children’s characters to sell harmful products to children.”

Local elected officials are joining the cause, too. Los Angeles recently voted to make permanent a ban on the construction of new fast food restaurants in parts of the city. San Francisco has limited toy giveaway promotions to children’s meals that meet basic health criteria. The idea is spreading to other cities.

Elected leaders will find growing support for taking action. People now realize that protecting our children from diet-related disease requires protecting them from junk food advertising. There’s nothing mad about that.

Kelle Louaillier is executive director of Corporate Accountability International.

Until very recently, food was invisible as a political issue. Something is stirring. Pollan reviews five books that address the heart of the food movement.

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin, Polyface

All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America? by Joel Berg, Seven Stories

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Little, Brown

Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities by Carlo Petrini, with a foreword by Alice Waters — Chelsea Green


The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society by Janet A. Flammang — University of Illinois Press

1. Food Made Visible

It might sound odd to say this about something people deal with at least three times a day, but food in America has been more or less invisible, politically speaking, until very recently. At least until the early 1970s, when a bout of food price inflation and the appearance of books critical of industrial agriculture (by Wendell Berry, Francis Moore Lappé, and Barry Commoner, among others) threatened to propel the subject to the top of the national agenda, Americans have not had to think very hard about where their food comes from, or what it is doing to the planet, their bodies, and their society.

Most people count this a blessing. Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any people in history—slightly less than 10 percent—and a smaller amount of their time preparing it: a mere thirty-one minutes a day on average, including clean-up. The supermarkets brim with produce summoned from every corner of the globe, a steady stream of novel food products (17,000 new ones each year) crowds the middle aisles, and in the freezer case you can find “home meal replacements” in every conceivable ethnic stripe, demanding nothing more of the eater than opening the package and waiting for the microwave to chirp. Considered in the long sweep of human history, in which getting food dominated not just daily life but economic and political life as well, having to worry about food as little as we do, or did, seems almost a kind of dream.

The dream that the age-old “food problem” had been largely solved for most Americans was sustained by the tremendous postwar increases in the productivity of American farmers, made possible by cheap fossil fuel (the key ingredient in both chemical fertilizers and pesticides) and changes in agricultural policies. Asked by President Nixon to try to drive down the cost of food after it had spiked in the early 1970s, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz shifted the historical focus of federal farm policy from supporting prices for farmers to boosting yields of a small handful of commodity crops (corn and soy especially) at any cost.

The administration’s cheap food policy worked almost too well: crop prices fell, forcing farmers to produce still more simply to break even. This led to a deep depression in the farm belt in the 1980s followed by a brutal wave of consolidation. Most importantly, the price of food came down, or at least the price of the kinds of foods that could be made from corn and soy: processed foods and sweetened beverages and feedlot meat. (Prices for fresh produce have increased since the 1980s.) Washington had succeeded in eliminating food as a political issue—an objective dear to most governments at least since the time of the French Revolution. But although cheap food is good politics, it turns out there are significant costs—to the environment, to public health, to the public purse, even to the culture—and as these became impossible to ignore in recent years, food has come back into view. Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of food safety scandals opened people’s eyes to the way their food was being produced, each one drawing the curtain back a little further on a food system that had changed beyond recognition. When BSE, or mad cow disease, surfaced in England in 1986, Americans learned that cattle, which are herbivores, were routinely being fed the flesh of other cattle; the practice helped keep meat cheap but at the risk of a hideous brain-wasting disease.

The 1993 deaths of four children in Washington State who had eaten hamburgers from Jack in the Box were traced to meat contaminated with E.coli 0157:H7, a mutant strain of the common intestinal bacteria first identified in feedlot cattle in 1982. Since then, repeated outbreaks of food-borne illness linked to new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria (campylobacter, salmonella, MRSA) have turned a bright light on the shortsighted practice of routinely administering antibiotics to food animals, not to treat disease but simply to speed their growth and allow them to withstand the filthy and stressful conditions in which they live.

In the wake of these food safety scandals, the conversation about food politics that briefly flourished in the 1970s was picked up again in a series of books, articles, and movies about the consequences of industrial food production.Beginning in 2001 with the publication of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, a surprise best-seller, and, the following year, Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, the food journalism of the last decade has succeeded in making clear and telling connections between the methods of industrial food production, agricultural policy, food-borne illness, childhood obesity, the decline of the family meal as an institution, and, notably, the decline of family income beginning in the 1970s.

Besides drawing women into the work force, falling wages made fast food both cheap to produce and a welcome, if not indispensible, option for pinched and harried families. The picture of the food economy Schlosser painted resembles an upside-down version of the social compact sometimes referred to as “Fordism”: instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as Henry Ford proposed to do, companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food. The advent of fast food (and cheap food in general) has, in effect, subsidized the decline of family incomes in America.

2. Food Politics

Cheap food has become an indispensable pillar of the modern economy. But it is no longer an invisible or uncontested one. One of the most interesting social movements to emerge in the last few years is the “food movement,” or perhaps I should say “movements,” since it is unified as yet by little more than the recognition that industrial food production is in need of reform because its social/environmental/public health/animal welfare/gastronomic costs are too high.

As that list suggests, the critics are coming at the issue from a great many different directions. Where many social movements tend to splinter as time goes on, breaking into various factions representing divergent concerns or tactics, the food movement starts out splintered. Among the many threads of advocacy that can be lumped together under that rubric we can include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” (the principle that nations should be allowed to decide their agricultural policies rather than submit to free trade regimes); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; student organizing around food issues on campus; efforts to promote urban agriculture and ensure that communities have access to healthy food; initiatives to create gardens and cooking classes in schools; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing, especially to kids.

It’s a big, lumpy tent, and sometimes the various factions beneath it work at cross-purposes. For example, activists working to strengthen federal food safety regulations have recently run afoul of local food advocates, who fear that the burden of new regulation will cripple the current revival of small-farm agriculture. Joel Salatin, the Virginia meat producer and writer who has become a hero to the food movement, fulminates against food safety regulation on libertarian grounds in his Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front. Hunger activists like Joel Berg, in All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?, criticize supporters of “sustainable” agriculture—i.e., producing food in ways that do not harm the environment—for advocating reforms that threaten to raise the cost of food to the poor. Animal rights advocates occasionally pick fights with sustainable meat producers (such as Joel Salatin), as Jonathan Safran Foer does in his recent vegetarian polemic, Eating Animals.

But there are indications that these various voices may be coming together in something that looks more and more like a coherent movement. Many in the animal welfare movement, from PETA to Peter Singer, have come to see that a smaller-scale, more humane animal agriculture is a goal worth fighting for, and surely more attainable than the abolition of meat eating. Stung by charges of elitism, activists for sustainable farming are starting to take seriously the problem of hunger and poverty. They’re promoting schemes and policies to make fresh local food more accessible to the poor, through programs that give vouchers redeemable at farmers’ markets to participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and food stamp recipients. Yet a few underlying tensions remain: the “hunger lobby” has traditionally supported farm subsidies in exchange for the farm lobby’s support of nutrition programs, a marriage of convenience dating to the 1960s that vastly complicates reform of the farm bill—a top priority for the food movement.

The sociologist Troy Duster reminds us of an all-important axiom about social movements: “No movement is as coherent and integrated as it seems from afar,” he says, “and no movement is as incoherent and fractured as it seems from up close.” Viewed from a middle distance, then, the food movement coalesces around the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is “unsustainable”—that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both.

For some in the movement, the more urgent problem is environmental: the food system consumes more fossil fuel energy than we can count on in the future (about a fifth of the total American use of such energy) and emits more greenhouse gas than we can afford to emit, particularly since agriculture is the one human system that should be able to substantially rely on photosynthesis: solar energy. It will be difficult if not impossible to address the issue of climate change without reforming the food system. This is a conclusion that has only recently been embraced by the environmental movement, which historically has disdained all agriculture as a lapse from wilderness and a source of pollution.1 But in the last few years, several of the major environmental groups have come to appreciate that a diversified, sustainable agriculture—which can sequester large amounts of carbon in the soil—holds the potential not just to mitigate but actually to help solve environmental problems, including climate change. Today, environmental organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group are taking up the cause of food system reform, lending their expertise and clout to the movement.

But perhaps the food movement’s strongest claim on public attention today is the fact that the American diet of highly processed food laced with added fats and sugars is responsible for the epidemic of chronic diseases that threatens to bankrupt the health care system. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that fully three quarters of US health care spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers. The health care crisis probably cannot be addressed without addressing the catastrophe of the American diet, and that diet is the direct (even if unintended) result of the way that our agriculture and food industries have been organized.

Michelle Obama’s recent foray into food politics, beginning with the organic garden she planted on the White House lawn last spring, suggests that the administration has made these connections. Her new “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity might at first blush seem fairly anodyne, but in announcing the initiative in February, and in a surprisingly tough speech to the Grocery Manufacturers Association in March,2 the First Lady has effectively shifted the conversation about diet from the industry’s preferred ground of “personal responsibility” and exercise to a frank discussion of the way food is produced and marketed. “We need you not just to tweak around the edges,” she told the assembled food makers, “but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children.”

Mrs. Obama explicitly rejected the conventional argument that the food industry is merely giving people the sugary, fatty, and salty foods they want, contending that the industry “doesn’t just respond to people’s natural inclinations—it also actually helps to shape them,” through the ways it creates products and markets them.

So far at least, Michelle Obama is the food movement’s most important ally in the administration, but there are signs of interest elsewhere. Under Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the FDA has cracked down on deceptive food marketing and is said to be weighing a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in factory farming. Attorney General Eric Holder recently avowed the Justice Department’s intention to pursue antitrust enforcement in agribusiness, one of the most highly concentrated sectors in the economy.3 At his side was Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, who has planted his own organic vegetable garden at the department and launched a new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative aimed at promoting local food systems as a way to both rebuild rural economies and improve access to healthy food.

Though Vilsack has so far left mostly undisturbed his department’s traditional deference to industrial agriculture, the new tone in Washington and the appointment of a handful of respected reformers (such as Tufts professor Kathleen Merrigan as deputy secretary of agriculture) has elicited a somewhat defensive, if not panicky, reaction from agribusiness. The Farm Bureau recently urged its members to go on the offensive against “food activists,” and a trade association representing pesticide makers called CropLife America wrote to Michelle Obama suggesting that her organic garden had unfairly maligned chemical agriculture and encouraging her to use “crop protection technologies”—i.e., pesticides.

The First Lady’s response is not known; however, the President subsequently rewarded CropLife by appointing one of its executives to a high-level trade post. This and other industry-friendly appointments suggest that while the administration may be sympathetic to elements of the food movement’s agenda, it isn’t about to take on agribusiness, at least not directly, at least until it senses at its back a much larger constituency for reform.

One way to interpret Michelle Obama’s deepening involvement in food issues is as an effort to build such a constituency, and in this she may well succeed. It’s a mistake to underestimate what a determined First Lady can accomplish. Lady Bird Johnson’s “highway beautification” campaign also seemed benign, but in the end it helped raise public consciousness about “the environment” (as it would soon come to be known) and put an end to the public’s tolerance for littering. And while Michelle Obama has explicitly limited her efforts to exhortation (“we can’t solve this problem by passing a bunch of laws in Washington,” she told the Grocery Manufacturers, no doubt much to their relief), her work is already creating a climate in which just such a “bunch of laws” might flourish: a handful of state legislatures, including California’s, are seriously considering levying new taxes on sugar in soft drinks, proposals considered hopelessly extreme less than a year ago.

The political ground is shifting, and the passage of health care reform may accelerate that movement. The bill itself contains a few provisions long promoted by the food movement (like calorie labeling on fast food menus), but more important could be the new political tendencies it sets in motion. If health insurers can no longer keep people with chronic diseases out of their patient pools, it stands to reason that the companies will develop a keener interest in preventing those diseases. They will then discover that they have a large stake in things like soda taxes and in precisely which kinds of calories the farm bill is subsidizing. As the insurance industry and the government take on more responsibility for the cost of treating expensive and largely preventable problems like obesity and type 2 diabetes, pressure for reform of the food system, and the American diet, can be expected to increase.

3. Beyond the Barcode

It would be a mistake to conclude that the food movement’s agenda can be reduced to a set of laws, policies, and regulations, important as these may be. What is attracting so many people to the movement today (and young people in particular) is a much less conventional kind of politics, one that is about something more than food. The food movement is also about community, identity, pleasure, and, most notably, about carving out a new social and economic space removed from the influence of big corporations on the one side and government on the other. As the Diggers used to say during their San Francisco be-ins during the 1960s, food can serve as “an edible dynamic”—a means to a political end that is only nominally about food itself.

One can get a taste of this social space simply by hanging around a farmers’ market, an activity that a great many people enjoy today regardless of whether they’re in the market for a bunch of carrots or a head of lettuce. Farmers’ markets are thriving, more than five thousand strong, and there is a lot more going on in them than the exchange of money for food. Someone is collecting signatures on a petition. Someone else is playing music. Children are everywhere, sampling fresh produce, talking to farmers. Friends and acquaintances stop to chat. One sociologist calculated that people have ten times as many conversations at the farmers’ market than they do in the supermarket. Socially as well as sensually, the farmers’ market offers a remarkably rich and appealing environment. Someone buying food here may be acting not just as a consumer but also as a neighbor, a citizen, a parent, a cook. In many cities and towns, farmers’ markets have taken on (and not for the first time) the function of a lively new public square.

Though seldom articulated as such, the attempt to redefine, or escape, the traditional role of consumer has become an important aspiration of the food movement. In various ways it seeks to put the relationship between consumers and producers on a new, more neighborly footing, enriching the kinds of information exchanged in the transaction, and encouraging us to regard our food dollars as “votes” for a different kind of agriculture and, by implication, economy. The modern marketplace would have us decide what to buy strictly on the basis of price and self-interest; the food movement implicitly proposes that we enlarge our understanding of both those terms, suggesting that not just “good value” but ethical and political values should inform our buying decisions, and that we’ll get more satisfaction from our eating when they do.

That satisfaction helps to explain why many in the movement don’t greet the spectacle of large corporations adopting its goals, as some of them have begun to do, with unalloyed enthusiasm. Already Wal-Mart sells organic and local food, but this doesn’t greatly warm the hearts of food movement activists. One important impetus for the movement, or at least its locavore wing—those who are committed to eating as much locally produced food as possible—is the desire to get “beyond the barcode”—to create new economic and social structures outside of the mainstream consumer economy. Though not always articulated in these terms, the local food movement wants to decentralize the global economy, if not secede from it altogether, which is why in some communities, such as Great Barrington, Massachusetts, local currencies (the “BerkShare”) have popped up.

In fact it’s hard to say which comes first: the desire to promote local agriculture or the desire to promote local economies more generally by cutting ties, to whatever degree possible, to the national economic grid.4 This is at bottom a communitarian impulse, and it is one that is drawing support from the right as well as the left. Though the food movement has deep roots in the counterculture of the 1960s, its critique of corporate food and federal farm subsidies, as well as its emphasis on building community around food, has won it friends on the right. In his 2006 book Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher identifies a strain of libertarian conservatism, often evangelical, that regards fast food as anathema to family values, and has seized on local food as a kind of culinary counterpart to home schooling.

It makes sense that food and farming should become a locus of attention for Americans disenchanted with consumer capitalism. Food is the place in daily life where corporatization can be most vividly felt: think about the homogenization of taste and experience represented by fast food. By the same token, food offers us one of the shortest, most appealing paths out of the corporate labyrinth, and into the sheer diversity of local flavors, varieties, and characters on offer at the farmers’ market.

Put another way, the food movement has set out to foster new forms of civil society. But instead of proposing that space as a counterweight to an overbearing state, as is usually the case, the food movement poses it against the dominance of corporations and their tendency to insinuate themselves into any aspect of our lives from which they can profit. As Wendell Berry writes, the corporationswill grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into your mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so.

The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.

The Italian-born organization Slow Food, founded in 1986 as a protest against the arrival of McDonald’s in Rome, represents perhaps the purest expression of these politics. The organization, which now has 100,000 members in 132 countries, began by dedicating itself to “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure” but has lately waded into deeper political and economic waters. Slow Food’s founder and president, Carlo Petrini, a former leftist journalist, has much to say about how people’s daily food choices can rehabilitate the act of consumption, making it something more creative and progressive. In his new book Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities, Petrini urges eaters and food producers to join together in “food communities” outside of the usual distribution channels, which typically communicate little information beyond price and often exploit food producers. A farmers’ market is one manifestation of such a community, but Petrini is no mere locavore. Rather, he would have us practice on a global scale something like “local” economics, with its stress on neighborliness, as when, to cite one of his examples, eaters in the affluent West support nomad fisher folk in Mauritania by creating a market for their bottarga, or dried mullet roe. In helping to keep alive such a food tradition and way of life, the eater becomes something more than a consumer; she becomes what Petrini likes to call a “coproducer.”

Ever the Italian, Petrini puts pleasure at the center of his politics, which might explain why Slow Food is not always taken as seriously as it deserves to be. For why shouldn’t pleasure figure in the politics of the food movement? Good food is potentially one of the most democratic pleasures a society can offer, and is one of those subjects, like sports, that people can talk about across lines of class, ethnicity, and race.

The fact that the most humane and most environmentally sustainable choices frequently turn out to be the most delicious choices (as chefs such as Alice Waters and Dan Barber have pointed out) is fortuitous to say the least; it is also a welcome challenge to the more dismal choices typically posed by environmentalism, which most of the time is asking us to give up things we like. As Alice Waters has often said, it was not politics or ecology that brought her to organic agriculture, but rather the desire to recover a certain taste—one she had experienced as an exchange student in France. Of course democratizing such tastes, which under current policies tend to be more expensive, is the hard part, and must eventually lead the movement back to more conventional politics lest it be tagged as elitist.

But the movement’s interest in such seemingly mundane matters as taste and the other textures of everyday life is also one of its great strengths. Part of the movement’s critique of industrial food is that, with the rise of fast food and the collapse of everyday cooking, it has damaged family life and community by undermining the institution of the shared meal. Sad as it may be to bowl alone, eating alone can be sadder still, not least because it is eroding the civility on which our political culture depends.

That is the argument made by Janet Flammang, a political scientist, in a provocative new book called The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society. “Significant social and political costs have resulted from fast food and convenience foods,” she writes, “grazing and snacking instead of sitting down for leisurely meals, watching television during mealtimes instead of conversing”—40 percent of Americans watch television during meals—”viewing food as fuel rather than sustenance, discarding family recipes and foodways, and denying that eating has social and political dimensions.” The cultural contradictions of capitalism—its tendency to undermine the stabilizing social forms it depends on—are on vivid display at the modern American dinner table.

In a challenge to second-wave feminists who urged women to get out of the kitchen, Flammang suggests that by denigrating “foodwork”—everything involved in putting meals on the family table—we have unthinkingly wrecked one of the nurseries of democracy: the family meal. It is at “the temporary democracy of the table” that children learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civility—sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating differences, arguing without offending—and it is these habits that are lost when we eat alone and on the run. “Civility is not needed when one is by oneself.”5

These arguments resonated during the Senate debate over health care reform, when The New York Times reported that the private Senate dining room, where senators of both parties used to break bread together, stood empty. Flammang attributes some of the loss of civility in Washington to the aftermatch of the 1994 Republican Revolution, when Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House, urged his freshman legislators not to move their families to Washington. Members now returned to their districts every weekend, sacrificing opportunities for socializing across party lines and, in the process, the “reservoirs of good will replenished at dinner parties.” It is much harder to vilify someone with whom you have shared a meal.

Flammang makes a convincing case for the centrality of food work and shared meals, much along the lines laid down by Carlo Petrini and Alice Waters, but with more historical perspective and theoretical rigor. A scholar of the women’s movement, she suggests that “American women are having second thoughts” about having left the kitchen.6 However, the answer is not for them simply to return to it, at least not alone, but rather “for everyone—men, women, and children—to go back to the kitchen, as in preindustrial days, and for the workplace to lessen its time demands on people.” Flammang points out that the historical priority of the American labor movement has been to fight for money, while the European labor movement has fought for time, which she suggests may have been the wiser choice.

At the very least this is a debate worth having, and it begins by taking food issues much more seriously than we have taken them. Flammang suggests that the invisibility of these issues until recently owes to the identification of food work with women and the (related) fact that eating, by its very nature, falls on the wrong side of the mind–body dualism. “Food is apprehended through the senses of touch, smell and taste,” she points out,

which rank lower on the hierarchy of senses than sight and hearing, which are typically thought to give rise to knowledge. In most of philosophy, religion, and literature, food is associated with body, animal, female, and appetite—things civilized men have sought to overcome with reason and knowledge.

Much to our loss. But food is invisible no longer and, in light of the mounting costs we’ve incurred by ignoring it, it is likely to demand much more of our attention in the future, as eaters, parents, and citizens. It is only a matter of time before politicians seize on the power of the food issue, which besides being increasingly urgent is also almost primal, indeed is in some deep sense proto- political. For where do all politics begin if not in the high chair?—at that fateful moment when mother, or father, raises a spoonful of food to the lips of the baby who clamps shut her mouth, shakes her head no, and for the very first time in life awakens to and asserts her sovereign power.

1. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth made scant mention of food or agriculture, but in his recent follow-up book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (2009), he devotes a long chapter to the subject of our food choices and their bearing on climate. ↩

2. Ms. Obama’s speech can be read at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-first-lady-a-grocery-manufacturers-association-conference. ↩

3. Speaking in March at an Iowa “listening session” about agribusiness concentration, Holder said, “long periods of reckless deregulation have restricted competition” in agriculture. Indeed: four companies (JBS/Swift, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef Packers) slaughter 85 percent of US beef cattle; two companies (Monsanto and DuPont) sell more than 50 percent of US corn seed; one company (Dean Foods) controls 40 percent of the US milk supply. ↩

4. For an interesting case study about a depressed Vermont mining town that turned to local food and agriculture to revitalize itself, see Ben Hewitt, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food (Rodale, 2009). ↩

5. See David M. Herszenhorn, “In Senate Health Care Vote, New Partisan Vitriol,” The New York Times, December 23, 2009: “Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said the political—and often personal—divisions that now characterize the Senate were epitomized by the empty tables in the senators’ private dining room, a place where members of both parties used to break bread. ‘Nobody goes there anymore,’ Mr. Baucus said. ‘When I was here 10, 15, 30 years ago, that the place you would go to talk to senators, let your hair down, just kind of compare notes, no spouses allowed, no staff, nobody. It is now empty.’”↩

6. The stirrings of a new “radical homemakers” movement lends some support to the assertion. See Shannon Hayes’s Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture (Left to Write Press, 2010).↩

Essay originally published in the The New York Review of Books.

Countercurrents.org

Ideologically it believes governments must provide for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It opposes concentrated wealth, demagogy, and despotism, and supports democracy, human and civil rights, and social justice – an ideology the 19th century People’s Party and 20th century Progressive Party endorsed without majorities.

Until recently, faint echoes remained, sadly silenced after Senator Bernie Sanders and sole House populist capitulated.

Former Kucinich for president consultant, David Swanson, said “he gave in to the power of a false narrative, and that he ought to have said so….I think the corporate media has instilled in people the idea that presidents should make laws and the current president is trying to make a law that can reasonably be called ‘healthcare reform’ or at least ‘health insurance reform.’ ” I don’t excuse Kucinich flipping….I just want to find the right explanation for it.”

The web site singlepayeraction.org, (“everybody in. nobody out.”) called the Democrats (like Republicans) “a corporate party, rotting from the core.”

SPA called Kucinich’s “flameout….spectacular” in support of a bill he and progressive Democrats strongly opposed until they flipped, including Congressman Danny Davis, representing this writer’s 7th Illinois District.

Kucinich said “I’ve taken a detour supporting this bill.” For SPA, it’s one “that will condemn millions of Americans to ongoing suffering and death” because insurers make money by denying care, why real reform requires their removal and assuring everyone of universal single-payer coverage. Everyone in. Nobody out. What your senator and House representative get, you get. What congressional Democrats won’t enact.

On March 17, Rep. Dennis Kucinich announced the following:

“I have carried the banner of national health care in two presidential campaigns, in party platform meeting, and as co-author of HR 676, Medicare for All. I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer.”

On November 7, 2009, despite enormous pressure, he voted against HR 3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act,” asking “Is this the best we can do” in a prepared text titled, “Why I Voted No,” saying:

“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care.” Passing “legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry (exacerbates) the very source of the problem….Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.”

On March 17, he reversed himself, saying:

“….after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Elizabeth my wife and close friends, I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.

As this bill passes, I will renew my effort to help those state organizations which are aimed at stirring a single payer movement….I have taken a detour through supporting this bill, but I know the destination I will continue to lead, for as long as it takes, whatever it takes to an America where health care will be firmly established as a civil right.”

He later said that not supporting the bill “would destroy Obama’s presidency,” a nonsensical view given Bill Clinton’s success despite his health care program failure and efforts to impeach him. He survived, served two terms, and left office with a 68% approval rating, matching Franklin Roosevelt at the end of his presidency.

On Democracy Now (March 18), Ralph Nader referred to “the latest chapter of corporate Democrats crushing progressive forces both inside their party and against third parties.” It’s nothing new. It happens every time reform is proposed.

Current legislation doesn’t “provide universal, comprehensive or affordable care to the American people. It shovels hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money (to predators that) created the problem: the Aetnas, CIGNAs” and other insurers. It requires no contractual accountability or other benefits for people denied coverage under a “pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world.”

For the drug cartel, “it’s a bonanza” heading right to their bottom line, including no government negotiated discounts, lengthy new drug patent protection periods to impede cheaper generic competition, and no reimportation of lower-priced foreign drugs to keep prices high and affordability low.

Further, there’s no public option, and the legislation mostly doesn’t kick in until 2014. It means “180,000 Americans….will die between now and (then) and hundreds of thousands of injuries and illnesses” will go untreated. “There’s (also) no free choice of doctor and hospital under this. There’s all kinds of exploit(ive provisions to let) health insurance (and drug) companies continue their ravenous ways over people who are (the) most vulnerable….when they’re sick or injured.” Who in Washington represents them when the few progressives side with the others.

It’s a sad moment when liberal Democrats caved. “They’ve all caved. They’ve all been put into line by the (House) majority rulers.” It’s a shameless, but predictable climb-down. They want to perpetuate a system that costs double per capita (about $7,600) of other Western states and provides worse coverage. In America, about 800 people die weekly because they can’t afford insurance, enough of it, or insurers deny or delay their claims.

Will new legislation fix this? Not at all because providers, especially insurers, are notorious for gaming the system, and 2,500 pages of legislation contain loopholes, ambiguities, and legal interpretations that experts can easily manipulate to their advantage or create a process so onerous to contest that it amounts to the same thing.

Former CIGNA vice president, Wendell Potter, explained, saying Obamacare lets insurers shift costs to consumers, offer inadequate or unaffordable access, force Americans to pay higher deductibles for less coverage, and even scam subsidized consumers.

“What worries me,” he said, “is that people who are forced to buy coverage and all they can afford to buy is a high deductible. (So) if they get really sick, they have to pay so much out of their own pockets that they’re going to be filing for bankruptcy or (lose) their homes.”

Potter especially dislikes the Senate bill that will force many people to buy insurance only covering about 60% of costs if they’re sick. Many people have no insurance because it’s unaffordable. “They certainly couldn’t afford premiums plus the out-of-pocket expenses in today’s market” that keeps hiking costs higher.

At best, Potter believes Obamacare will move millions of uninsured to underinsured, making them vulnerable to serious illness costs, the main cause of personal bankruptcies. When it happens, no Obamacare provision protects them from losing their homes.

As for prohibiting pre-existing conditions, the Senate bill especially gives insurers “all the flexibility they need” to prevent people from accessing coverage. Health history and age will determine premiums, so the chronically ill and aged will pay far more than the already unaffordable high rates.

The so-called medical-loss ratio is another problem. It determines what percent of premiums cover medical costs. The less restricted, the more profits (in the billions of dollars), and less care for policyholders.

Nader points out that even with more people covered, prices aren’t regulated, “junk insurance policies” will be offered, and there’s nothing to stop insurers “from taking this papier-mache bill and lighting a fire to it and making a mockery of it.” They’re unhindered by controls, and no facility will “create a national consumer health organization” to give people “their own non-profit consumer lobby (in) Washington. This is really a disaster.”

Obamacare forces coverage on consumers, assesses penalties for noncompliance, empowers the IRS to collect them, protects corporate profits, rations care, and dumps millions of Americans (insured and millions left uninsured) in the scrap heap to fend for themselves. It’s not a step forward. It’s a full-scale retreat.

Obama is like Bush. He froze out dissenters, single-payer advocates, and surrounded himself with corporate hacks and warmongers. It’s the same old, same old, the people getting scammed and harmed because no one in Washington represents them. Unless they act on their own, they’ll get no help from politicians delivering the best reform money can buy, with no restrictions on spending amounts for it.

In June 2009 on a visit to Gaza, Jimmy Carter said “the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings.” So will millions of Americans under Obamacare, a sellout scheme to provide less than they now have and charge more for it.

Kucinich said his constituents urged him to do something, rather than nothing even if it meant passing a bad bill. Unfortunately, most people don’t know the tawdry fine print, that insurance giant Wellpoint wrote the Baucus bill, that corporations write virtually all legislation, that Obamacare gives America’s healthcare system to predatory insurers and Big PhRMA, something Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, other progressive Democrats understand, but capitulated anyway. Why so?

Despite his stated reasons, only Kucinich knows for sure, but here’s a guess. Washington is notorious for pressuring, intimidating, and/or bribing members of Congress for support. Kucinich may have been told, either vote yes or face a well-funded fall primary challenge that could succeed given the power of deep pockets and deceptive ads. It’s a prospect no member of Congress relishes. They could also take away his Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.

Whatever the reason, he may have tipped the balance with House, then Senate votes, imminent, perhaps as early as Sunday, March 21. Going first, it’s believed the House will use a controversial “self-executing rule” for a package of Senate bill fixes to “deem and pass” the entire bill that would otherwise fail. The Senate will then consider the revised bill through “reconciliation,” requiring a simple majority to pass. Self-executing has been used many times before, but never for a bill impacting health care for everyone, amounting to one-sixth of the economy.

It also bypasses the 1985 Byrd Rule that restricts reconciliation to budget revisions according to provisions under Section 313(b)(1) of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act.

What’s at stake? Plenty!

House and Senate bills will ration care, enrich providers, and make a dysfunctional system worse. Hundreds of billions of Medicare cuts will harm seniors. Most others will pay more, get less, and millions will remain uninsured. According to an earlier AMA estimate, those covered “will face higher premiums, deductibles, copayments and coinsurance, effectively reducing the scope of their coverage,” what Wendell Potter explained above.

Business Week magazine acknowledged it last August saying, “No matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall (or now), the insurance industry (and drug cartel) will emerge more profitable.” Quoting an unnamed Senate Finance Committee staffer, “The bottom line is that health reform (will) lead to increased revenues and profits,” and for doubters, check current insurance and drug company stock prices for confirmation.

Relevant International Law

Adequate health care is a human right, not a commodity for those who can afford it.

Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care….”

Article 12 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (ICESCR) states:

“The State Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (including universally ensuring) medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness…. government(s) must ensure all citizens have (affordable) access to basic health services.”

Under international law, UDHR and ICESCR form the backbone of the right to health for everyone. The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) developed guidelines to implement it, including a “minimum floor” below which no country may fall, that for health ensures it, in terms of availability, accessibility, acceptability, quality, and universality without discrimination.

America’s Low Healthcare Delivery Ranking among Industrialized Nations

Of all industrialized countries, America is the only one that doesn’t recognize the right to health and a way to provide it. In fact, in Maher v. Roe (1977), the Supreme Court declared it unnecessary for Congress to require minimum health care standards. The closest to it are Medicare and Medicaid.

Removing middleman insurers would save over $400 billion annually, enough to cover all the uninsured and provide quality care at lower overall cost. Letting corporate predators game the system ensures the opposite, a problem Obamacare exacerbates.

In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights, declaring “freedom from want” an essential liberty necessary for security, including “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve good health.” Predatory insurers deny it. Focusing on outcomes consistent with internationally-recognized standards is vital, not the right of business to commodify a human right, charge what they want, and deny access for those who can’t afford it.

Obamacare will worsen the current system. It’s about profits, not people, especially the nation’s poor, most vulnerable, and disadvantaged on society’s fringes, most hurt by all congressional measures, including one this vital.

What the 1913 Federal Reserve Act did for bankers, Obamacare may do for the insurance and drug cartels.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/

http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/

Americans love their shrimp. It’s the most popular seafood in the country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the world’s productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some kind of “sustainable shrimp” are so far nonexistent.

In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda.

Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics. And yet, as of 2008, Americans are eating 4.1 pounds of shrimp apiece each year — significantly more than the 2.8 pounds per year we each ate of the second most popular seafood, canned tuna. But what are we actually eating without knowing it? And is it worth the price — both to our health and the environment?

Understanding the shrimp that supplies our nation’s voracious appetite is quite complex. Overall, the shrimp industry represents a dismantling of the marine ecosystem, piece by piece. Farming methods range from those described above to some that are more benign. Problems with irresponsible methods of farming don’t end at the “yuck,” factor as shrimp farming is credited with destroying 38 percent of the world’s mangroves, some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on earth. Mangroves sequester vast amounts of carbon and serve as valuable buffers against hurricanes and tsunamis. Some compare shrimp farming methods that demolish mangroves to slash-and-burn agriculture. A shrimp farmer will clear a section of mangroves and close it off to ensure that the shrimp cannot escape. Then the farmer relies on the tides to refresh the water, carrying shrimp excrement and disease out to sea. In this scenario, the entire mangrove ecosystem is destroyed and turned into a small dead zone for short-term gain. Even after the shrimp farm leaves, the mangroves do not come back.

A more responsible farming system involves closed, inland ponds that use their wastewater for agricultural irrigation instead of allowing it to pollute oceans or other waterways. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, when a farm has good disease management protocols, it does not need to use so many antibiotics or other chemicals.

One more consideration, even in these cleaner systems, is the wild fish used to feed farmed shrimp. An estimated average of 1.4 pounds of wild fish are used to produce every pound of farmed shrimp. Sometimes the wild fish used is bycatch — fish that would be dumped into the ocean to rot if they weren’t fed to shrimp — but other times farmed shrimp dine on species like anchovies, herring, sardines and menhaden. These fish are important foods for seabirds, big commercial fish and whales, so removing them from the ecosystem to feed farmed shrimp is problematic.

Additionally, some shrimp are wild-caught, and while they aren’t raised in a chemical cocktail, the vast majority is caught using trawling, a highly destructive fishing method. Football field-sized nets are dragged along the ocean floor, scooping up and killing several pounds of marine life for every pound of shrimp they catch and demolishing the ocean floor ecosystem as they go. Where they don’t clear-cut coral reefs or other rich ocean floor habitats, they drag their nets through the mud, leaving plumes of sediment so large they are visible from outer space.

After trawling destroys an ocean floor, the ecosystem often cannot recover for decades, if not centuries or millennia. This is particularly significant because 98 percent of ocean life lives on or around the seabed. Depending on the fishery, the amount of bycatch (the term used for unwanted species scooped up and killed by trawlers) ranges from five to 20 pounds per pound of shrimp. These include sharks, rays, starfish, juvenile red snapper, sea turtles and more. While shrimp trawl fisheries only represent 2 percent of the global fish catch, they are responsible for over one-third of the world’s bycatch. Trawling is comparable to bulldozing an entire section of rainforest in order to catch one species of bird.

Given this disturbing picture, how can an American know how to find responsibly farmed or fished shrimp? Currently, it’s near impossible. Only 15 percent of our total shrimp consumption comes from the U.S. (both farmed and wild sources). The U.S. has good regulations on shrimp farming, so purchasing shrimp farmed in the U.S. is not a bad way to go. Wild shrimp, with a few exceptions, is typically obtained via trawling and should be avoided. The notable exceptions are spot prawns from British Columbia, caught in traps similar to those used for catching lobster, and the small salad shrimp like the Northern shrimp from the East Coast or pink shrimp from Oregon, both of which are certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. However, neither are true substitutes for the large white and tiger shrimp American consumers are used to.

The remaining 85 percent came from other countries and about two-thirds of our imports are farmed with the balance caught in the wild, mostly via trawling. China is the world’s top shrimp producer — both farmed and wild — but only 2 percent of China’s shrimp are imported to the U.S. The world’s number two producer, Thailand, is our top foreign source of shrimp. Fully one third of the shrimp the U.S. imports comes from Thailand, and over 80 percent of those shrimp are farmed.

The next biggest sources of U.S. shrimp are Ecuador, Indonesia, China, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia and India. Together, those countries provide nearly 90 percent of America’s imported shrimp. Interestingly, Ecuador’s shrimp industry exists almost entirely to supply U.S. demand, with over 93 percent of its shrimp coming up north to the U.S. The vast majority of those shrimp (almost 90 percent) are farmed. Sadly, shrimp production is responsible for the destruction of 70 percent of Ecuador’s mangroves. Farming practices in other countries range from decent to awful, but there’s currently no real way for a consumer to tell whether shrimp from any particular country was farmed sustainably or not.

Geoff Shester, senior science manager of Monterey Bay’s Seafood Watch, says that ethical shrimp consumption is a chicken and egg problem. On one hand, the solution is for consumers to show demand for responsibly farmed and wild shrimp by eating it but on the other hand, ethical shrimp choices are not yet widely available. Seafood Watch is working with some of the largest seafood buyers in the U.S. to help them buy better shrimp, but it’s currently a major challenge.

The first challenge is that labeling and certification programs do not yet exist to identify which farmed shrimp meet sustainable production standards. The second challenge is that even when such programs are in place, the U.S. demand will likely greatly exceed their supply.

Shester’s advice to consumers right now is “only buy shrimp that you know comes from a sustainable source. If you can’t tell for sure, try something else from the Seafood Watch yellow or green lists.” Knowing that many will be unwilling to give up America’s favorite seafood, he advocates simply eating less of it and keeping an eye on future updates to the Seafood Watch guide to eating sustainable seafood.

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..

Republished from AlterNet.

Taxes can do a lot of good. They pay for schools, parks, police and the military. But that’s not all they can do. High taxes on cigarettes have saved many lives – not only the lives of people who are discouraged from smoking as much as they would if cigarettes were cheap, but also the lives of others who spend less time passively inhaling smoke.

No reasonable person would want to abolish the tax on cigarettes. Unless, perhaps, they were proposing banning cigarettes altogether – as New York City is doing with transfats served by restaurants.

A tax on sodas containing sugar has also been under consideration, by Governor Paterson among others. In view of our obesity epidemic, and the extra burden it places on our health care system – not to mention the problems it causes on a crowded New York subway when your neighbor can’t fit into a single seat – it’s a reasonable proposal.

But in all these moves against tobacco, transfats and sodas, we’ve been ignoring the cow in the room.

That’s right, cow. We don’t eat elephants. But the reasons for a tax on beef and other meats are stronger than those for discouraging consumption of cigarettes, transfats or sugary drinks. 

First, eating red meat is likely to kill you. Large studies have shown that the daily consumption of red meat increases the risk that you will die prematurely of heart disease or bowel cancer. This is now beyond serious scientific dispute. When the beef industry tries to deny the evidence, it is just repeating what the tobacco industry did 30 years ago.

Second, we have laws that ban cruelty to animals. Unfortunately in the states in which most animals are raised for meat, the agribusiness lobby is so powerful that it has carved out exemptions to the usual laws against cruelty.

The exemptions allow producers to crowd chickens, pigs and calves in stinking sheds, never letting them go outside in fresh air and sunlight, often confining them so closely that they can’t even stretch their limbs or turn around. Debeaking – cutting through the sensitive beak of a young chick with a hot blade – is standard in the egg industry.

Undercover investigations repeatedly turn up new scandals – downed cows being dragged to slaughter, workers hitting pigs with steel pipes or playing football with live chickens. We may not be able to improve the laws in those farming states, but taxes on meat would discourage people from supporting these cruel practices.

Third, industrial meat production wastes food – we feed the animals vast quantities of grains and soybeans, and they burn up most of the nutritional value of these crops just living and breathing and developing bones and other unpalatable body parts. We get back only a fraction of the food value we put into them.

That puts unnecessary pressure on our croplands and causes food prices to rise all over the world. Converting corn to biofuel has been criticized because it raises food prices for the world’s poor, but seven times as much grain gets fed to animals as is made into biofuel.

Fourth, agricultural runoff — much of it from livestock production, or from the fertilizers used to grow the grain fed to the livestock — is the biggest single source of pollution of the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the EPA. A meat tax would be an important step towards cleaner rivers. By reducing the amount of nitrogen that runs off fields in the Midwest into the Mississippi, it would also stop the vast ?dead zone? that forms in the Gulf of Mexico each year.

The clincher is that taxing meat would be a highly effective way of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding catastrophic climate change.

Here’s just how bad eating meat is for global warming.

Many people think that buying locally produced food is a good way to reduce their carbon footprint. But the average American would do more for the planet by going vegetarian just one day per week than by switching to a totally local diet.

In 2006 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization surprised many people when it produced a report showing that livestock are responsible for more emissions than all forms of transportation combined. It’s now clear that that report seriously underestimated the contribution that livestock — especially ruminant animals like cattle and sheep – are making to global warming.

As a more recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown, over the critical next 20 years, the methane these animals produce will be almost three times as potent in warming the planet as the FAO report assumed.

Meat-eaters impose costs on others, and the more meat they eat, the greater the costs.

They push up our health insurance premiums, increase Medicare and Medicaid costs for taxpayers, pollute our rivers, threaten the survival of fishing communities in the Gulf of Mexico, push up food prices for the world’s poor, and accelerate climate change.

Red meat is the worst for global warming, but a tax on red meat alone would merely push meat-eaters to chicken, and British animal welfare expert Professor John Webster has described the intensive chicken industry as “the single most severe, systematic example of man’s inhumanity to another sentient animal.?

So let’s start with a 50% tax on the retail value of all meat, and see what difference that makes to present consumption habits. If it is not enough to bring about the change we need, then, like cigarette taxes, it will need to go higher.

Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University, the author of “Animal Liberation” and the author, with Jim Masion, of “The Ethics of What We Eat.”

In addition to vitamins, minerals and fiber, fruits and vegetables contain phytonutrients, believed to come from the com-pounds that give these foods their vibrant colors. These phytonutrients provide a wide range of health benefits, includ-ing supporting a healthy immune system.

A new study, America’s Phytonutrient Report, found eight in 10 Americans are missing out on the health benefits of a diet rich in colorful fruits and veggies, resulting in a phytonutrient gap. The report looked at fruit and vegetable consumption in five color categories, specifically green, red, white, blue/purple and yellow/orange, and the phytonutrients found in each color category.

Eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables is one way to help keep you and your family healthy. Foods in the red category are especially helpful to our immune systems, in addition to supporting heart health. Tomatoes, pomegranate, red cabbage, cranberries, even pink grapefruit provide the phytonutrients lycopene and ellagic acid.

The health benefits of foods in the yellow/orange category support a health immune function too…along with vision and heart health. And they help maintain skin hydration—important as we head into these cold, dry months. These foods pro-vide beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, lutein, quercetin and other phytonutrients that can be converted into Vitamin A. Deli-cious and nutritious yellow/orange fruits and vegetables available now include: carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and pi-neapple.

For optimal health, aim to eat two foods from each of the 5 color categories – green, red, white, blue/purple and orange/yellow – for a total of 10 servings each day. A few of Amy Hendel’s favorite tips to help fill phytonutrient gaps:

1. Instead of tossing out fruits or veggies that look a bit wilted or bruised, use them. Add chopped vegetables to canned soup. Bake cored apples with a bit of cinnamon, a sprinkle of raisins and lemon zest. Or, perk up a muf-fin recipe with by adding an over-riped banana.
2. When baking omega-3 rich fish, top with tomatoes, onions and other veggies, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with oregano, red pepper flakes and rosemary. Herbs and spices are packed with antioxidants too.
3. Pureed fruit added to baking recipes gives moisture AND phytonutrients, while cutting fat. Try pureed plums in brownies and mashed cherries in meatloaf or hamburgers.
4. Finally, while eating whole fruits and vegetables is the goal, a natural, plant-based supplement like those made by Nutrilite can help fill phytonutrient gaps in your diet.

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More information about phytonutrients and the phytonutrient gap , including America’s Phytonutrient Report and simple tips for coloring up your diet, can be found at http://www.pwrnewmedia.com/2009/nutrilite90921nmr/index.html

ATHENS, GA—Air quality in homes, offices, and other indoor spaces is becoming a major health concern, particularly in developed countries where people often spend more than 90% of their time indoors. Surprisingly, indoor air has been reported to be as much as 12 times more polluted than outdoor air in some areas. Indoor air pollutants emanate from paints, varnishes, adhesives, furnishings, clothing, solvents, building materials, and even tap water. A long list of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs [including benzene, xylene, hexane, heptane, octane, decane, trichloroethylene (TCE), and methylene chloride], have been shown to cause illnesses in people who are exposed to the compounds in indoor spaces. Acute illnesses like asthma and nausea and chronic diseases including cancer, neurologic, reproductive, developmental, and respiratory disorders are all linked to exposure to VOCs. Harmful indoor pollutants represent a serious health problem that is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths each year, according to a 2002 World Health Organization report. 

Stanley J. Kays, Department of Horticulture, University of Georgia, was the lead researcher of a study published in HortScience that tested ornamental indoor plants for their ability to remove harmful VOCs from indoor air. According to Kays, some indoor plants have the ability to effectively remove harmful VOCs from the air, and not only have the ability to improve our physical health, but also have been shown to enhance our psychological health. Adding these plants to indoor spaces can reduce stress, increase task performance, and reduce symptoms of ill health. 

The ability of plants to remove VOCs is called “phytoremediation”. To better understand the phytoremediation capacity of ornamental plants, the research team tested 28 common indoor ornamentals for their ability to remove five volatile indoor pollutants. “The VOCs tested in this study can adversely affect indoor air quality and have a potential to seriously compromise the health of exposed individuals,” Kays explained. “Benzene and toluene are known to originate from petroleum-based indoor coatings, cleaning solutions, plastics, environmental tobacco smoke, and exterior exhaust fumes emanating into the building; octane from paint, adhesives, and building materials; TCE from tap water, cleaning agents, insecticides, and plastic products; and alpha-pinene from synthetic paints and odorants.” 

During the research study, plants were grown in a shade house for eight weeks followed be acclimatization for twelve weeks under indoor conditions before being placed in gas-tight glass jars. The plants were exposed to benzene, TCE, toluene, octane, and alpha-pinene, and air samples were analyzed. The plants were then classified as superior, intermediate, and poor, according to their ability to remove VOCs. 

Of the 28 species tested, Hemigraphis alternata (purple waffle plant), Hedera helix (English ivy), Hoya carnosa (variegated wax plant), and Asparagus densiflorus (Asparagus fern) had the highest removal rates for all of the VOCs introduced. Tradescantia pallida (Purple heart plant) was rated superior for its ability to remove four of the VOCs. 

The study concluded that simply introducing common ornamental plants into indoor spaces has the potential to significantly improve the quality of indoor air. In addition to the obvious health benefits for consumers, the increased use of indoor plants in both ”green” and traditional buildings could have a tremendous positive impact on the ornamental plant industry by increasing customer demand and sales. 

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The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/44/5/1377

Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. More information at ashs.org

What could be more American than a glass of milk? Cow’s milk, that is. In light of this common perception, the time is long overdue to add the milk mustache to that ever-growing list of American myths. Human beings are not designed to drink any milk except human milk (only during infancy, of course). As you’ll see below, consuming dairy products — milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, etc. — is not green and it’s not healthy.

It’s also a nightmare for the cows themselves. Here’s a little of how the folks at GoVeg describe it: “The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.”

*Living dairy-free has never been easier…so here’s a little motivation to get you on the greener, cruelty-free, not-milk track.

Environmental Reasons to Avoid Milk

1. Dairy cows produce waste.

Lots of waste. In fact, your average dairy cow produces 120 pounds of waste every day — equal to that of more than two dozen people, but without toilets, sewers, or treatment plants.

2. Let me repeat: Dairy cows produce lots and lots of waste (and greenhouse gases).

California produces one-fifth of the country’s total milk supply. According to MilkSucks.com, “in the Central Valley of California, the cows produce as much excrement as a city of 21 million people, and even a smallish farm of 200 cows will produce as much nitrogen as in the sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people, according to a U.S. Senate report on animal waste.”

3. Milk production ultimately leads to climate change.

The dairy industry is an extension of the beef industry (used-up dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse after an average of four years, one-fifth their normal life expectancy) which means it plays a major role in creating climate change. Here’s the equation: The dairy industry uses cows before passing them on to be slaughtered by the beef industry which is now recognized as an environmental nightmare. “According to a UN report,” writes Brian Merchant, “cows are leading contributors to climate change … Accounting for putting out 18% of the world’s carbon dioxide, cows emit more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation combined.” That means the industry of exploiting all cows — including dairy cows — involves destructive practices like deforestation and polluting offshoots like runoff.

4. Milk often contains unwanted ingredients.

Under current industrial methods, cow’s milk is often a toxic bovine brew of man-made ingredients like bio-engineered hormones, antibiotics (55% of U.S. antibiotics are fed to livestock), and pesticides — all of which are bad for us and the environment. For example, unintentional pesticide poisonings kill an estimated 355,000 people globally each year. In addition the drugs pumped into livestock often re-visit us in our water supply.

Which brings us to…

Health Reasons to Avoid Milk

5. Cow’s milk is for cows.

The biochemical make-up of cow’s milk is perfectly suited to turn a 65-pound newborn calf into a 400-pound cow in one year. It contains, for example, three times more protein and seven times more mineral content while human milk has 10 times as much essential fatty acids, three times as much selenium, and half the calcium. Some may like cow’s milk but drinking it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful.

6. Milk is actually a poor source for dietary calcium.

Humans, like cows, get all the calcium they need from a plant-based diet.

7. Contrary to popular belief, milk may increase the likelihood of osteoporosis.

It is still widely accepted that the calcium in dairy products will strengthen our bones and help prevent osteoporosis, but studies show that foods originating from animal sources (like milk) make the blood acidic. When this occurs, the blood leeches calcium from the bones to increase alkalinity. While this works wonders for the pH balance of your blood, it sets your calcium-depleted bones up for osteoporosis. As explained by John Robbins, “The only research that even begins to suggest that the consumption of dairy products might be helpful [in preventing osteoporosis] has been paid for by the National Dairy Council itself.”

8. Milk makes you fat.

In 2005, the Harvard School of Public Health had this to say on the consumption of dairy products: “Three glasses of low-fat milk add more than 300 calories a day. This is a real issue for the millions of Americans who are trying to control their weight. What’s more, millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, and even small amounts of milk or dairy products give them stomach aches, gas, or other problems.”

It’s easy to go dairy-free. Here are 7 easy vegan recipes to set you off on the right path.

Reposted from AlterNet.

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us – ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair’s landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can’t even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming – our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year – including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 – has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system – from seed to 7‑Eleven – that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America’s obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. “The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us,” says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). (See pictures of what the world eats.)

Some Americans are heeding such warnings and working to transform the way the country eats – ranchers and farmers who are raising sustainable food in ways that don’t bankrupt the earth. Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair’s work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat. Change is also coming from the very top. First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden has so far yielded more than 225 lb. of organic produce – and tons of powerful symbolism. But hers is still a losing battle. Despite increasing public awareness, sustainable agriculture, while the fastest-growing sector of the food industry, remains a tiny enterprise: according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than 1% of American cropland is farmed organically. Sustainable food is also pricier than conventional food and harder to find. And while large companies like General Mills have opened organic divisions, purists worry that the very definition of sustainability will be co-opted as a result. (See pictures of urban farming around the world.)

But we don’t have the luxury of philosophizing about food. With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil – which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills – our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy – demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 – but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs – and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants – and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.

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The Downside of Cheap
For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn. Corn is king on the American farm, with production passing 12 billion bu. annually, up from 4 billion bu. as recently as 1970. When we eat a cheeseburger, a Chicken McNugget, or drink soda, we’re eating the corn that grows on vast, monocrop fields in Midwestern states like Iowa.

But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs. The crop is heavily fertilized – both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop – at least until corn ethanol skewed the market – artificially low. That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 – a bargain, given that the meal contains nearly 1,200 calories, more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults. “Taxpayer subsidies basically underwrite cheap grain, and that’s what the factory-farming system for meat is entirely dependent on,” says Gurian-Sherman. (See the 10 worst fast food meals.)

So what’s wrong with cheap food and cheap meat – especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don’t receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories – some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s – but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it’s no surprise we’re so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin.

Our expanding girth is just one consequence of mainstream farming. Another is chemicals. No one doubts the power of chemical fertilizer to pull more crop from a field. American farmers now produce an astounding 153 bu. of corn per acre, up from 118 as recently as 1990. But the quantity of that fertilizer is flat-out scary: more than 10 million tons for corn alone – and nearly 23 million for all crops. When runoff from the fields of the Midwest reaches the Gulf of Mexico, it contributes to what’s known as a dead zone, a seasonal, approximately 6,000-sq.-mi. area that has almost no oxygen and therefore almost no sea life. Because of the dead zone, the $2.8 billion Gulf of Mexico fishing industry loses 212,000 metric tons of seafood a year, and around the world, there are nearly 400 similar dead zones. Even as we produce more high-fat, high-calorie foods, we destroy one of our leanest and healthiest sources of protein. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

The food industry’s degradation of animal life, of course, isn’t limited to fish. Though we might still like to imagine our food being raised by Old MacDonald, chances are your burger or your sausage came from what are called concentrated-animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are every bit as industrial as they sound. In CAFOs, large numbers of animals – 1,000 or more in the case of cattle and tens of thousands for chicken and pigs – are kept in close, concentrated conditions and fattened up for slaughter as fast as possible, contributing to efficiencies of scale and thus lower prices. But animals aren’t widgets with legs. They’re living creatures, and there are consequences to packing them in prison-like conditions. For instance: Where does all that manure go?

Pound for pound, a pig produces approximately four times the amount of waste a human does, and what factory farms do with that mess gets comparatively little oversight. Most hog waste is disposed of in open-air lagoons, which can overflow in heavy rain and contaminate nearby streams and rivers. “This creek that we used to wade in, that creek that our parents could drink out of, our kids can’t even play in anymore,” says Jayne Clampitt, a farmer in Independence, Iowa, who lives near a number of hog farms.

To stay alive and grow in such conditions, farm animals need pharmaceutical help, which can have further damaging consequences for humans. Overuse of antibiotics on farm animals leads, inevitably, to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the same bugs that infect animals can infect us too. The UCS estimates that about 70% of antimicrobial drugs used in America are given not to people but to animals, which means we’re breeding more of those deadly organisms every day. The Institute of Medicine estimated in 1998 that antibiotic resistance cost the public-health system $4 billion to $5 billion a year – a figure that’s almost certainly higher now. “I don’t think CAFOs would be able to function as they do now without the widespread use of antibiotics,” says Robert Martin, who was the executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

See more pictures of what the world eats.

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The livestock industry argues that estimates of antibiotics in food production are significantly overblown. Resistance “is the result of human use and not related to veterinary use,” according to Kristina Butts, the manager of legislative affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. But with wonder drugs losing their effectiveness, it makes sense to preserve them for as long as we can, and that means limiting them to human use as much as possible. “These antibiotics are not given to sick animals,” says Representative Louise Slaughter, who is sponsoring a bill to limit antibiotic use on farms. “It’s a preventive measure because they are kept in pretty unspeakable conditions.”

Such a measure would get at a symptom of the problem but not at the source. Just as the burning of fossil fuels that is causing global warming requires more than a tweaking of mileage standards, the manifold problems of our food system require a comprehensive solution. “There should be a recognition that what we are doing is unsustainable,” says Martin. And yet, still we must eat. So what can we do? (See pictures of an apartment outfitted for goat-milking.)

Getting It Right
If a factory farm is hell for an animal, then Bill Niman’s seaside ranch in Bolinas, Calif., an hour north of San Francisco, must be heaven. The property’s cliffside view over the Pacific Ocean is worth millions, but the black Angus cattle that Niman and his wife Nicolette Hahn Niman raise keep their eyes on the ground, chewing contentedly on the pasture. Grass – and a trail of hay that Niman spreads from his truck periodically – is all the animals will eat during the nearly three years they’ll spend on the ranch. That all-natural, noncorn diet – along with the intensive, individual care that the Nimans provide their animals – produces beef that many connoisseurs consider to be among the best in the world. But for Niman, there is more at stake than just a good steak. He believes that his way of raising farm animals – in the open air, with no chemicals or drugs and with maximum care – is the only truly sustainable method and could be a model for a better food system. “What we need in this country is a completely different way of raising animals for food,” says Hahn Niman, a former attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. “This needs to be done in the right way.”

The Nimans like to call what they do “beyond organic,” and there are some signs that consumers are beginning to catch up. This November, California voters approved a ballot proposition that guarantees farm animals enough space to lie down, stand up and turn around. Worldwide, organic food – a sometimes slippery term but on the whole a practice more sustainable than conventional food – is worth more than $46 billion. That’s still a small slice of the overall food pie, but it’s growing, even in a global recession. “There is more pent-up demand for organic than there is production,” says Bill Wolf, a co-founder of the organic-food consultancy Wolf DiMatteo and Associates. (Watch TIME’s video “The New Frugality: The Organic Gardener.”)

So what will it take for sustainable food production to spread? It’s clear that scaling up must begin with a sort of scaling down – a distributed system of many local or regional food producers as opposed to just a few massive ones. Since 1935, consolidation and industrialization have seen the number of U.S. farms decline from 6.8 million to fewer than 2 million – with the average farmer now feeding 129 Americans, compared with 19 people in 1940.

It’s that very efficiency that’s led to the problems and is in turn spurring a backlash, reflected not just in the growth of farmers’ markets or the growing involvement of big corporations in organics but also in the local-food movement, in which restaurants and large catering services buy from suppliers in their areas, thereby improving freshness, supporting small-scale agriculture and reducing the so-called food miles between field and plate. That in turn slashes transportation costs and reduces the industry’s carbon footprint.

A transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could even be possible without a loss in overall yield, as one survey from the University of Michigan suggested, but it would require far more farmworkers than we have today. With unemployment approaching double digits – and things especially grim in impoverished rural areas that have seen populations collapse over the past several decades – that’s hardly a bad thing. Work in a CAFO is monotonous and soul-killing, while too many ordinary farmers struggle to make ends meet even as the rest of us pay less for food. Farmers aren’t the enemy – and they deserve real help. We’ve transformed the essential human profession – growing food – into an industry like any other. “We’re hurting for job creation, and industrial food has pushed people off the farm,” says Hahn Niman. “We need to make farming real employment, because if you do it right, it’s enjoyable work.”

See pictures of the global food crisis.

See pictures of the world’s most polluted places.

One model for how the new paradigm could work is Niman Ranch, a larger operation that Bill Niman founded in the 1990s, before he left in 2007. (By his own admission, he’s a better farmer than he is a businessman.) The company has knitted together hundreds of small-scale farmers into a network that sells all-natural pork, beef and lamb to retailers and restaurants. In doing so, it leverages economies of scale while letting the farmers take proper care of their land and animals. “We like to think of ourselves as a force for a local-farming community, not as a large corporation,” says Jeff Swain, Niman Ranch’s CEO.

Other examples include the Mexican-fast-food chain Chipotle, which now sources its pork from Niman Ranch and gets its other meats and much of its beans from natural and organic sources. It’s part of a commitment that Chipotle founder Steve Ells made years ago, not just because sustainable ingredients were better for the planet but because they tasted better too – a philosophy he calls Food with Integrity. It’s not cheap for Chipotle – food makes up more than 32% of its costs, the highest in the fast-food industry. But to Ells, the taste more than compensates, and Chipotle’s higher prices haven’t stopped the company’s rapid growth, from 16 stores in 1998 to over 900 today. “We put a lot of energy into finding farmers who are committed to raising better food,” says Ells. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)

Bon Appétit Management Company, a caterer based in Palo Alto, Calif., takes that commitment even further. The company sources as much of its produce as possible from within 150 miles of its kitchens and gets its meat from farmers who eschew antibiotics. Bon Appétit also tries to influence its customers’ habits by nudging them toward greener choices. That includes campaigns to reduce food waste, in part by encouraging servers at its kitchens to offer smaller, more manageable portions. (The USDA estimates that Americans throw out 14% of the food we buy, which means that much of our record-breaking harvests ends up in the garbage.) And Bon Appétit supports a low-carbon diet, one that uses less meat and dairy, since both have a greater carbon footprint than fruit, vegetables and grain. The success of the overall operation demonstrates that sustainable food can work at an institutional scale bigger than an élite restaurant, a small market or a gourmet’s kitchen – provided customers support it. “Ultimately it’s going to be consumer demand that will cause change, not Washington,” says Fedele Bauccio, Bon Appétit’s co-founder. (See pictures of two farms in Nebraska.)

How willing are consumers to rethink the way they shop for – and eat – food? For most people, price will remain the biggest obstacle. Organic food continues to cost on average several times more than its conventional counterparts, and no one goes to farmers’ markets for bargains. But not all costs can be measured by a price tag. Once you factor in crop subsidies, ecological damage and what we pay in health-care bills after our fatty, sugary diet makes us sick, conventionally produced food looks a lot pricier.

What we really need to do is something Americans have never done well, and that’s to quit thinking big. We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world, and there’s not a nutritionist on the planet who would argue that 24‑oz. steaks and mounds of buttery mashed potatoes are what any person needs to stay alive. “The idea is that healthy and good-tasting food should be available to everyone,” says Hahn Niman. “The food system should be geared toward that.”

Whether that happens will ultimately come down to all of us, since we have the chance to choose better food three times a day (or more often, if we’re particularly hungry). It’s true that most of us would prefer not to think too much about where our food comes from or what it’s doing to the planet – after all, as Chipotle’s Ells points out, eating is not exactly a “heady intellectual event.” But if there’s one difference between industrial agriculture and the emerging alternative, it’s that very thing: consciousness. Niman takes care with each of his cattle, just as an organic farmer takes care of his produce and smart shoppers take care with what they put in their shopping cart and on the family dinner table. The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty – it’s based on selective forgetting. But what we eat – how it’s raised and how it gets to us – has consequences that can’t be ignored any longer.

- With reporting by Rebecca Kaplan / New York

The original version of this article mistakenly referred to the Bon Appétit Management Company as the Bon Appétit Food Management Company

See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.

See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.

The Tale of Two Cattle
How did your hamburger get to your plate – and what did it eat along the way? The journey of beef illustrates the great American food chain

ORGANIC (1% of all cattle)
This is the way all beef used to be raised – and how some people still imagine it is. Bill Niman tends a small herd with one of the lightest hands in the business and produces what Bay Area chefs swear is unparalleled beef

Diet: Grass
Niman’s cows eat only grass, along with a smattering of hay. That’s the normal diet for cattle. Their rumen, a digestive organ, can break down grasses we’d find inedible

Supplements: None
Niman gives no supplements whatsoever to his cattle – no drugs, no hormones, no additives. That’s not ironclad for organic beef – some companies might use antimicrobials – but generally the animals are supplement-free

Environmental Impact: Living with the Land
To prevent his ranch from becoming overgrazed, Niman shifts his cattle around the land, ensuring that the grass has time to recover between feedings. The result is a surprisingly low-impact hamburger, since grass doesn’t need chemical fertilizer to grow and its presence helps prevent soil erosion. There’s no need to clean up manure – with Niman’s low cattle density, the waste just fertilizes the land

Human Impact: The Omega Effect
Beef has a bad rep among nutritionists, but that might be partly unfair for grass-fed steaks. According to research from the University of California, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids than conventional beef

CONVENTIONAL (99% of all cattle)
The vast majority of all American cattle start off on open ranges, but that’s where the similarity to their organic cousins ends. They’re shifted after a few months to the tight quarters of an industrial feedlot, to be fattened up as fast as possible

Diet: Grass and corn
Conventional cattle feed off grass pasture for the first several months, but at the feedlot, they’re switched to a heavily corn-based diet, which makes them gain weight faster but also makes them get sick more easily

Supplements: Chemicals
In part to help them survive the crowded conditions of feedlots, where infections can spread fast, conventional cattle are given antibiotics in their feed, and sometimes growth hormones, bloods and fats

Environmental Impact: Waste
A 1,000-head feedlot produces up to 280 tons of manure a week, and the smell can be powerful. All that feed corn requires millions of tons of fertilizer and, ultimately, a lot of petroleum

Human Impact: Fat Attack
Feeding corn to cattle for the last several months of their lives doesn’t just get them fatter faster; it also changes the quality of the beef. Corn helps produce that marbled taste many of us love, but it can result in beef that is higher in fat – helping to fuel the obesity epidemic

Reprinted from TIME.

(NaturalNews) If the Hippocrates maxim that “food should be considered as our first medicine” is right, we are on the brink of some really bad medicine. Recently, Obama selected as his “Food Czar”, a former Monsanto executive and FDA manipulator, Michael Taylor. More recently, the Orwellian labeled Food Safety Enhancement Bill (HR 2749) was passed easily by the House of Representatives.

The bill is on a fast track for Senate and Presidential approval. If it becomes law as written, this combination of a corrupt Food Czar and misleadingly named Food Safety Bill threatens to take out the food that is medicine and leave us with the food that is poison.

The Food Safety Bill Threatens Safe Food

Before you consider most of this bill as benign or even helpful, as many main stream outlets are promoting, read on and do your own research on the ambiguity of the bill, of which interpretation and enforcement will be left to the discretion of The Food Czar.

The Food Safety Bill does next to nothing to protect consumers from the industrial foods of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto and their ilk. It has the potential to be an instrument of legal oppression for small farmers, organic farming, even farmers’ markets and food co-ops. Some indicate the Bill’s language is broad enough to even include home vegetable gardens!

Setting a uniform fee of $500 annual, regardless of company or farm size, for the privilege of being policed by the FDA is a relatively minor inequity. This bill, when passed into law, gives the FDA the power to have random inspections on any food producing or storage group without probable cause. There have already been raids on food co-ops, such as the Ohio Department of Agriculture La Grange co-op raid in December of 2008, where all the food was seized without testing.

According to Gunny G Online: “This astounding control will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.”

HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation. Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of “crimes”? Not even. The so called Food Safety Bill hands carte blanch enforcement to the whims of Obama’s Food Czar.

Introducing Obama’s Food Czar

“The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US Food Safety Czar. This is no joke”, says Jeffrey Smith about Michael Taylor’s appointment in a recent Huffington Post article. Jeffrey Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. Perhaps that is exaggerated, but Michael Taylor’s history with Monsanto and the FDA through the corporate/government revolving door is scary enough to provoke such an assertion.

In the early 1990′s, Michael Taylor was an attorney for Monsanto. He was parsing legalese and loopholes for the wonderful group that has brought the world DDT, PCB’s, Agent Orange, NutraSweet (aspartame), bovine growth hormone, GMO foods, toxic pesticides and weed killers (Round Up), and terminator seeds.

Michael passed through the revolving door connecting the corporate world and government more than once to ensure Monsanto’s unabated success with pushing profitable poisons into the world’s food supply.

After functioning as a lead attorney with Monsanto, he managed to be appointed as the FDA Policy Chief. From that position he wrote a “white paper” (an authoritative official declaration) on the safety of bovine growth hormones. He ensured that dairy farmers using Monsanto’s rbGH would not be required to label its milk products with the bovine growth hormone, which passes puss and toxins into the cow’s milk.

This white paper also gave Monsanto the ability to sue dairy farmers who labeled their products rbGH or growth hormone free, which Monsanto zealously pursued to financially destroy small dairy farmers. Monsanto Mike also oversaw the FDA ruling that dairy farmers who labeled their products as non rbGH needed to include that the FDA has determined there is no difference between milk from rbGH cows and non rbGH cows, which is a complete lie.

Author/journalist Jeffrey Smith was tipped from a former Monsanto scientist that three colleagues at Monsanto, upon discovering the hazards of milk from rbGH injected cows, switched to organic dairy products. Some FDA scientists also knew of the dangers and the improper testing by Monsanto. But they don’t make the final decisions. That’s a function of the FDA Policy Chief, and that was Michael Taylor.

The revolving door swooshed around and Michael Taylor landed back in Monsanto as vice president and chief lobbyist. Only months ago the door spun around once again and Michael Taylor became the senior advisor to the FDA commissioner. Good timing. From that position he could easily be promoted into Obama’s cabinet as the Food Safety Czar.

In case you may still doubt USA government collusion with Monsanto, here’s an interesting item from “Monsanto Buys Terminator Seeds Company” by F. William Engdahl. “In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta & Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, by D&PL and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.”

The title “Control of Plant Gene Expression” refers to terminator seeds. These seeds make it impossible to save seeds from a harvest for replanting the next crop, an age old tradition for most farmers. This is a nail in the coffin of independent farming world wide, as once farmers begin using GMO seeds, they have to come back to buy again and again. Monsanto bought Delta & Pine Land (D & PL) in 2008, and now the USDA shares the terminator seed patent rights for royalties with Monsanto.

When Big Business owns Government, it is called fascism. When Government owns Big Business, it is called communism. Does this mean we will now have both for our food supply?

What This Means to Consumers

It means this bill will have the FDA, along with the USDA, to act as minions directly instead of indirectly for Monsanto and other literally unhealthy corporations. The FDA would be linking up with other World Trade Organization (WTO) efforts to control farming world wide, while catering to the greedy ambitions of International Agribusiness, its related industries, and Processed Food Manufacturers. FDA, USDA, and WTO bureaucrats are sponsored and headed by the enemies of organic and wholesome food farming.

The WTO is capable of legally levying ridiculous fines or mandating trade sanctions, including food sanctions, on regions that don’t comply with WTO governed organizations, such as WHO (World Health Organization), the organization that is ushering in dangerous forced vaccinations for 195 member nations. The WTO is planning severe farming regulations that are expected to be world wide.

Setting up a Food Czar from Monsanto with FDA connections via his revolving door career means that rbGH dairy, GMO’s, terminator seeds and pesticides for crops will dominate in our food supply and prosper as “safe” while organic and wholesome foods will be declared dangerous and become a threatened species. The main stream media is already publicizing propaganda against organic food.

You may want to start your own organic garden by yourself or with others soon. This is what the Cubans did in defense of all the trade sanctions imposed on them. And most of Cuba’s crops are now organic!

Activists don’t seem to feel confident about the bill losing steam on its fast track to becoming law. They have decided the best that can be done is petitioning for rewording of key passages with the Senate to soften HR 2749 before it gets to the president for ratification.

They need your help. Perhaps you may be able to start with the first three sources in bold below.

Sources:

Organic Consumers Association action page
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18709.cfm

Communist Takeover Of All Food Production From Farm To Fork Almost Complete!
http://www.healthtruthrevealed.com/articles/10443121107/article

The Farm Blog – GMO Real Story
http://polyfaceyum.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmo-real-story.html

Monsanto Buys Terminator Seed Company by F. William Engdahl
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3082

HR 2479: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/

Jeffrey Smith article on Obama’s Food Czar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html
and http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

NSSM 200 “Food as a weapon”
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html

List of Obama Czars (before most recent selections)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_czars_of_the_Obama_administration

Ohio ODA raid on organic food co-op
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/02/Unconscionable-Police-Raid-on-Familys-Home-and-Organic-Food-CoOp.aspx

Reposted from NaturalNews.

Every chef is said to have a secret junk food craving. For Thomas Keller, chef-owner of Per Se and The French Laundry, two of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country, it’s Krispy Kreme Donuts and In-N-Out cheeseburgers. For David Bouley, New York’s reigning chef in the ’90s, it’s “high-quality potato chips.”

“Father of American cuisine” James Beard “loved McDonald’s fries,” while Paul Bocuse, an originator of nouvelle cuisine, once declared McDonald’s “are the best French fries I have ever eaten.” Masaharu Morimoto is partial to “Philly cheese steaks,” and Jean-Georges Vongerichten confesses a weakness for Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich. Other accomplished but less-famous chefs admit to craving everything from Peanut M&Ms, Pringles and Combos to Kettle Chips and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Having attended culinary school and cooked professionally, I can wax rhapsodic about epicurean delights such as squab, Beluga caviar, black truffles, porcini mushrooms, Iberico Ham, langoustines, and acres of exceptional vegetables and fruits. But I also have an unabashed junk food craving: Nacho Cheese Doritos. Sure, there are plenty of other junk foods I enjoy, whether it’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream or Entenmann’s baked goods, but Doritos are the one thing I desire and seek out regularly. (Not that I ever have to look that hard; I’ve encountered them everywhere from rural villages in Guatemala to tiny towns in the Canadian Arctic.)

For years I wondered why I craved Doritos. I knew the Nacho Cheese powder, which coats your fingers in day-glo orange deliciousness, was one component, as were the fatty, salty chips that crackle and melt into a pleasing mass as you crunch them. I figured there was a dollop of nostalgia in the mix, but an ingredient was still missing in my understanding. Then I read a spate of articles about “umami,” designated the fifth taste, along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, means “deliciousness” in Japanese and is described as “a meaty, savory, satisfying taste.”

I knew some foods — parmesan cheese, seaweed, shellfish, tomatoes, mushrooms and meats — were high in umami-rich compounds such as glutamate, inosinate and guanylate. (Most people know umami from the much-maligned MSG, or mono sodium glutamate.) And I knew combining various sources of umami — such as the bonito-flake and kombu-seaweed broth known as dashi, the foundational stock of Japanese cuisine — magnified the effect and delivered a uniquely satisfying wallop of flavor. 

What I didn’t know was that “Nacho-cheese-flavor Doritos, which contain five separate forms of glutamate, may be even richer in umami than the finest kombu dashi (kelp stock) in Japan,” according to a New York Times article from last year.

Mystery solved. Now I knew that whenever the Doritos bug bit me, I was jonesing for umami. I had to admit it: I am a junk food junkie and Frito-Lay is my pusher-man.

I am hardly alone. Frito-Lay is the snack-food peddler to the world, with over $43 billion in revenue in 2008. The 43-year-old cheesy chip is a “category killer,” dominating the tortilla chip market with a 32 percent share in 2006, and number two in the entire U.S. “sweet and savory snacks category,” just behind Lay’s potato chips. 

$1.7 billion in annual sales in the U.S, is big business. Behind the enigma of Doritos’ dominance, and the lure of junk food to even the most refined palettes in the world, are the wonders of food science. That science, in the service of industrial capitalism, has hooked on us a food system that is destroying our health with obesity-related diseases. And that food system is based on a system of factory farming at one end, which churns out cheap, taxpayer-subsidized commodities like corn, vegetable oil and sweeteners, and the giant food processors at the other, like Frito-Lay, that take these commodities and concoct them into endless forms of addictive junk foods.

Steven Witherly begins his book, Why Humans Like Junk Food, by noting in studying the “psychobiology” of Doritos he consumed the “food intake and chemical senses literature — over five hundred research reports and four thousand abstracts — in order to discern the popularity of Doritos.” Witherly coined the term “Doritos Effect” to explain its popularity and in his book outlines 14 separate ways in which Doritos appeals to us.

There’s the “taste-active components,” sugar, salt and umami; ingredients like buttermilk solids, lactic acid, and citric acid that stimulate saliva, creating a “mouth-watering” sensation; the “high dynamic contrast” of powder-coated thin, hard chips that melt in the mouth; a complex flavor aroma; a high level of fat that activates “fat recognition receptors in the mouth … increases levels of gut hormones linked to reduction in anxiety … activates brains systems for reward, and enhances ingestion for more fat”; toasted, fried corn that triggers our evolutionary predilection for cooked foods; starches that break down quickly, boosting blood levels of insulin and glucose; and so on. 

Witherly explains that some umami sources like MSG don’t have much taste by themselves, but when you add salt,”the hedonic flavors just explode!” And Doritos has plenty of both. The tiny 2-oz. bag of Doritos I’m holding, which in the past would be a warm-up to a Nacho Cheesier dinner, lists MSG near the top, before “buttermilk solids,” along with nearly one-sixth of my recommended daily intake of sodium. 

One aspect of Doritos that whet my curiosity was, how much does Frito-Lay spend on goods like corn, oil and cheese? Not surprisingly, this data was nowhere to be found in the annual report of Pepsico, Frito-Lay’s parent company. But I gleaned a clue from a 1991 New York Times article. In it, a Wall Street analyst stated that Frito-Lay’s profit margin, around 19 percent in those days (which is close to its margin of late), approached that of Kellogg’s. The analyst, an expert on the food industry, said: “Kellogg buys corn for 4 cents a pound and sells it for $2 a box.” That’s a markup of nearly 5,000 percent over the base ingredient. 

I’ll save you the math, but Frito-Lay may do even better than Kellogg’s. If it uses two ounces of cornmeal in my 99 cents bag of Doritos, it apparently costs the snack-food giant less than one measly penny. And here’s a critical point about the food industry. The more they can process basic food commodities, the more profits they can gobble up at the expense of farmers. In The End of Food, Paul Roberts writes that in the 1950s, farmers received about half the retail price for the finished food product. By 2000, “this farm share had fallen below 20 percent.”

This is the result of the global food system constructed by the U.S. and other Western powers under the World Trade Organization. Countries that once strived for food security by supporting their domestic farmers are now forced — in the name of free trade — to open their agricultural sectors to competition from heavily subsidized Western agribusinesses. By the mid-1990s, according to rural sociologist Philip McMichael, 80 percent of farm subsidies in Western countries went to “the largest 20 percent of (corporate) farms, rendering small farmers increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a deregulated (and increasingly privately managed) global market for agricultural products.”

The WTO-enforced system and government subsidies enables food giants — such as Pepsico, Kraft, Mars, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Burger King and Wal-Mart — to source their ingredients globally, giving them the power to force down prices, which drives more and more farmers off the land in the global North and South alike. Then the food companies turn around and manufacture high-profit products that seem like an unbelievable bargain to us. In fact, they make this a selling point, and not just with “Dollar Menus.”

Last year, in the wake of the economic meltdown, KFC launched the “10 Dollar Challenge,” inviting families to try to recreate a meal of seven pieces of fried chicken, four biscuits and a side for less than its asking price of 10 bucks. Of course this is a virtually impossible feat, apart from dumpster diving. But KFC isn’t hawking alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast at that price. Witherly, in Why Humans Like Junk Food, writes that “high energy density food is associated with high food pleasure.” The corporate food’s revenue model is based on designing products oozing with fat, salt, sugar, umami and chemical flavors to turn us into addicts. 

While food companies can trot willing doctors, dieticians and nutritionists who claim that eating their brand of poison in moderation can be part of a balanced diet, the companies are like drug dealers who prey on junkies. As Morgan Spurlock explained about McDonald’s in Supersize Me, the targets are “heavy users,” who visit the Golden Arches at least once a week and “super heavy users,” who visit ten times a month or more. In fact, according to one study, super heavy users “make up approximately 75 percent of McDonald’s sales.”

Fast-food Addiction

Perhaps no company better exemplifies the intersection of factory farming, fast food and food addiction than McDonald’s. It pioneered many of the practices of standardized, industrial food production that made it into a global behemoth. In 1966 McDonald’s switched from about 175 different suppliers for fresh potatoes to J.R. Simplot Company’s frozen French fry. A few years later, McDonald’s switched from a similar number of beef suppliers to just five. Within a decade, notes Eric Schlosser, McDonald’s had gone from 725 outlets nationwide to more than 3,000. 

Tyson did the same with chicken, which was seen as a healthy alternative to red meat. It teamed up with McDonald’s to launch the Chicken McNugget nationwide in 1983. Within one month McDonald’s became the number two chicken buyer in the country, behind KFC. The McNugget also transformed chicken processing. Today, Tyson makes most of its money from processed chicken, selling its products to 90 of the 100 largest restaurant chains. As for the health benefits, Chicken McNuggets have twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger.

The entire food industry, perhaps best described as “eatertainment,” has refined the science of taking the cheap commodities pumped out by agribusiness and processing them into foodstuffs that are downright addictive. But food is far more than mere fuel. It is marketed as a salve for our emotional and psychological ills, as a social activity, a cultural outlet and entertainment.

Faced with little time to cook, bland industrial meat and drawn to exciting and addictive processed foods, most Americans gorge on convenience food. In 1900, the typical American woman spent six hours a day in food prep and cleanup. By last year, Americans on average took 31 minutes a day. For many, “cooking time” consists of opening up takeout containers, dumping the contents on a plate and throwing away the trash.

To get us in the door (or to pick up their product at the supermarket), food companies stoke our gustatory senses. The food has to be visually appealing, have the right feel, texture and smell. And most of all, it has to taste good. To that end, writes David Kessler in The End of Overeating, the food industry has honed in on the “three points of the compass” — fat, salt and sugar.

One anonymous food-industry executive told Kessler, “Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more.” The executive admitted food is designed to be “highly hedonic,” and that the food industry is “the manipulator of the consumers’ minds and desires.”

This food is even designed to be pre-digested. Factory-farmed meats are ground up, injected with salt, water, a multitude of flavorings and chemicals, reconstituted and often processed with extra fat (like the McNugget). Speaking to an expert in “sensory stimulation and food,” Kessler explains how food is engineered to deliver pleasing flavors, aromatic and textural sensations and dissolve easily in the mouth. He writes: “in the past Americans typically chewed a mouthful of food 25 times before it was ready to be swallowed; now the average American chews only ten times.” Even the bolus — the wad of chewed food — is designed to be smooth and even. It’s “adult baby food.”

Referencing studies with either humans or lab animals, Kessler shows how varying concentrations and combinations of fat and sugar intensify neurochemicals, much the same way cocaine does. One professor of psychiatry explains that people self-administer food in search of “different stimulating and sedating effects,” just as is done with a “speedball” — which combines cocaine and heroin.

Kessler deconstructs numerous restaurant chain foods to show they are nothing more than layers of fat, salt and sugar. A reoccurring item is “bacon-cheese fries,” a coronary event on a plate that displays dazzling engineering precision. One food consultant calls it “cheap filler” in which “20 cents’ worth of product gets me $5 worth of wow.” The expert in sensory stimulation explains, “Adding more fat gives me more flavor. It gives me more salt. And that bacon gives me a lot more lubricity.” A food scientist for Frito-Lay describes the textural appeal: “You’ve got some pieces that are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. It’s warm. It’s probably gooey, stringy, so you have to use your fingers a lot to eat it, and you have to lick your fingers. It’s all multisensory.”

Or take the McGriddle, which can be deconstructed along the “three points of the compass.” It starts with a “cake” made of refined wheat flour, essentially a sugar, pumped with vegetable shortening, three kinds of sugar and salt. This cradles an egg, cheese and bacon topped by another cake. Thus, the McGriddle, from the bottom up, is fat, salt, sugar, fat, then fat and salt in the cheese, fat and salt in the bacon, finished off with fat, salt and sugar. And this doesn’t indicate how highly processed the sandwich is. McDonald’s bacon, a presumably simple product, lists 18 separate ingredients, including what appears to be six separate sources of umami.

The success of the McGriddle and sandwiches like Wendy’s Baconator, which mounds six strips of bacon atop a half-pound cheeseburger and sold 25 million in its first eight weeks, has inspired an arms-race-like escalation among chain restaurants. Burger King has a near-identical imitation with the French Toast Sandwich. In 2004 Hardee’s went thermonuclear with its 1,420-calorie, 107-grams-of-fat-laden “Monster Thickburger.” And people are gobbling them up.

Perhaps you feel smug (and nauseated) by all this because you are a vegetarian, a vegan or a locavore, or you only eat organic and artisanal foods. Don’t. Americans are under the thrall of the food industry. More than half the population eats fast food at least once a week; 92 percent eat fast food every month; and “Every month about 90 percent of American children between the ages of three and nine visit a McDonald’s,” states Schlosser.

We know this food is killing us slowly with diabetes, heart disease and cancer. But we can’t stop because we are addicts, and the food industry is the pusher. Even if can completely opt out (which is almost impossible), it’s still our land that is being ravaged, our water and air that is being poisoned, our dollars that are subsidizing the destruction, our public health that is at risk from bacterial and viral plagues.

Changing our perilous food system means making choices — not to shop for a greener planet, but to collectively dismantle the nexus of factory farming, food corporations and the political system that enables them. It’s a tall order, but it’s the only option left on the menu.

Arun Gupta is a founding editor of The Indypendent newspaper. He is writing a book on the decline of American Empire for Haymarket Books.

Reposted from  AlterNet.

(NaturalNews) A drive towards reducing obesity could have important consequences for the environment and the long-term future of the planet, according to new study published by the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK investigated the link between Body Mass Index levels by nation in order to estimate the impact of being overweight on the levels of greenhouse gases emitted by a given population.

Results revealed that, compared with countries showing normal BMI averages, a population with 40% obesity requires a huge 19% more food energy for its total energy expenditure. A country with a slim population and low overweight level such as Vietnam will produce nearly one fifth less greenhouse gas emissions than countries such as the US or the UK, according to the findings.

Consequently, the current research suggests a population of one billion with high obesity levels could produce as much as 1 extra gigatonne of carbon dioxide emissions every year, approximately one sixth of the level produced yearly by humanity according to the European Environment Agency. [1]

Co-researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts from the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at LSHTM have called on governments to help create policies more conducive to a healthy lifestyle that encourages sustainability and a reduction in obesity.

“Policymakers can promote this by making active transports like walking and cycling safer, as well as making healthy food options available at schools and workplaces”, wrote Dr Edwards.

Being overweight should be recommended as an “environmental problem”, said the researchers.

However, the co-authors warned that all countries would need to consider the issue due to the fact that obesity levels are currently rising in every country in the world, with the average adult nearly 3kg heavier than s/he was fifteen years ago.

“Staying slim is good for health and for the environment. We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change”, Dr Edwards concluded. [2]

The current study follows on from similar research published in the Lancet in 2007 focusing on the impact of meat consumption for the environment. Australian scientists produced findings suggesting that many of aspects of the ‘meat chain’ significantly exacerbated climate change [3], conclusions echoed by Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an individual considered by many to be the world’s leading expert on climate change, who urged consumers to begin with one meat-free day each week.

[1] http://www.eea.europa.eu/green-tips/human-activity-generates-six-gigatonnes-of-carbon-dioxide-per-year
[2] Edwards et al. Population adiposity and climate change. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2009; 1-5.
[3] McMichael et al. Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. Lancet 2007 Oct;370(9594):1253-63.

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

(NaturalNews) Organic foods can be considered to be better and healthier not only for the consumer but also for the environment. Organic foods are considered to be more nutrient dense than their counterparts produced via modern farming practices.

Dr. David Thomas, a physician and researcher, has studied and compared the United States government guidelines and tables for the nutritional content of various foods. These tables have been published by the government first in 1940 and again in 2002. Dr. Thomas has noticed a trend that supports the decline in the nutritional quality of fruits and vegetables produced via modern farming practices in recent decades. Because of his research Dr. Thomas has posed the following question, “Why is it that you have to eat four carrots to get the same amount of magnesium as you would have done in 1940?”

A study published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition lists many nutrients that appear to be altered based on how they are farmed. The study looked at organic apples, pear, potatoes, wheat, and sweet corn and compared the levels of certain nutrients in relation to the commercially available counterparts produced via modern farming practices. The study lists the macronutrient chromium as being found at levels 78% higher in organic foods. The study also showed that Calcium is found at a level 63% higher in organic foods and Magnesium is found at a level 138% higher in organic foods. Other studies have shown that the use of pesticides can also alter the levels of certain vitamins including B vitamins, vitamin C, and beta-carotene in fruits and vegetables.

In 2003 a study was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry which found that organic corn had 52% more vitamin C than the commercially available counterpart which was grown utilizing modern farming practices. This study also found that polyphenol levels were significantly higher in the organic corn.

While many studies have been done looking into the benefits of organic produce there still is much to be learned. Dr. Marion Nestle the chair of New York University’s department of nutrition, food studies and public health has said, “I don’t think there is any question that as more research is done, it is going to become increasingly apparent that organic food is healthier.”

Many studies including a study recently published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) have done much to reinforce the perception of many American consumers that organic foods are both better for the consumer and the environment.

http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Study-supports-benefits-of-organic-food
http://lookwayup.com/free/organic.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/organic_nutrition.cfm

Reprinted from Natural News.

(NaturalNews) The evidence is in. Eating a plant based diet is the key to health and longevity. The only question left is how to get the best value for each dollar you have to spend on fruits and vegetables. The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization devoted to human and environmental health, has come up with some guidelines that may help you decide. In a recently published listing, they pointed out those fruits and vegetables with the highest levels of pesticides that should be avoided unless they are available from known local growers, grown at home, or labeled as organic. They also identified which conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have low levels of pesticides and can be bought without too much compromise.

EWG, as the group is often known, analyzed results from 87,000 tests on 47 fruits and vegetables conducted by the USDA and FDA between 2000 and 2007. Nearly all the studies used to create their list tested produce after it had been rinsed or peeled. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.

Their Dirty Dozen showed the highest levels of contamination. Fruits topped this list, taking 7 of the 12 top slots in this dubious distinction. Nectarines had the highest percentage of samples testing positively for pesticides (97.3 percent), followed by peaches (96.7 percent) and apples (94.1 percent).

Peaches had the highest likelihood of multiple pesticides on a single sample, with 87.0 percent tested having two or more pesticide residues. They were followed by nectarines (85.3 percent) and apples (82.3 percent). Peaches and apples had the most pesticides detected on a single sample, with nine residues, followed by strawberries and imported grapes in which eight pesticides were found on a single sample of each. Peaches had the most pesticides overall, with some combination of up to 53 pesticides found on the samples tested, followed by apples with 50 pesticides and strawberries with 38.

Among the dishonored vegetables, sweet bell peppers, celery, kale, lettuce, and carrots topped the list for exposing consumers to pesticides. Celery had the highest percentage of samples test positively for pesticides (94.1 percent), followed by sweet bell peppers (81.5 percent) and carrots (82.3 percent). Celery was also the most likely to have multiple pesticides on a single sample (79.8 percent), followed by sweet bell peppers (62.2 percent) and kale (53.1 percent).

Sweet bell peppers had the most pesticides detected on a single sample (11 detected), followed by kale (10 detected), and lettuce and celery which both had nine detected. Sweet bell peppers had the most pesticides overall (a jaw dropping 64), followed by lettuce (57) and carrots (40).

Although they escaped classification in the Dirty Dozen, note should also be given to spinach, potatoes, and domestic grapes because of their popularity in certain segments of the population. Spinach, which ranked number 14 in highest pesticide load, is thought of as a healthy food. Health minded shoppers have loaded their carts and salad bar servings with spinach thinking they were getting a vegetable that would support their health. Yet spinach was found to have a pesticide load of 58 (with 100 being the worst). Potatoes, one of the favorites of men and children, had a pesticide load of 56 and was ranked right behind spinach at number 15. Children love to eat their way through the summer with a fist full of grapes. But domestic grapes had a pesticide load of 44. By comparison, the pesticide loads for onion, avocado and sweet corn were numbered 2 or less.

EWG also identified the Clean 15, a list of produce least likely to have pesticide residues. Vegetables on this list were onions, sweet corn, asparagus, sweet peas, cabbage, eggplant, broccoli, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.

Over half of the tomatoes (53.1 percent), broccoli (65.2 percent), eggplant (75.4 percent), sweet pea (77.1 percent), and cabbage (82.1 percent) had no detectable pesticides in the samples. Among onions, sweet corn and asparagus, there were no detectable residues on 90 percent or more of the samples.

Multiple pesticide residues were extremely rare on any of these Clean 15 vegetables. Tomatoes had the highest likelihood of having multiple pesticide residues, with a 13.5 percent chance of having more than one pesticide. None of the samples of onions or sweet corn contained more than one pesticide.

The greatest number of pesticides detected on a single sample of any of the Clean 15 was five, compared to 11 found on sweet bell peppers, the vegetable with the most residues on a single sample.

Fruits making the Clean 15 list were avocados, pineapples, mangoes, kiwi, papayas, watermelon and grapefruit. Fewer than 10 percent of pineapple, mango, and avocado samples had detectable pesticides, and fewer than one percent of samples had more than one pesticide residue. Although 54.5 percent of grapefruit had detectable pesticides, multiple residues were less common, with only 17.5 percent of samples containing more than one residue. Watermelon had residues on 28.1 percent of samples, and just 9.6 percent had multiple residues.

Pesticides are designed to kill

There is an endless parade of research demonstrating the toxicity of pesticides to human health and to the environment, even at doses considered “safe” by the industry and government. This research has linked pesticides to many toxic effects including nervous system disorders, cancer, hormone disruption, liver and thyroid dysfunction, and skin, eye and lung irritation.

According to EWG, “Even in the face of a growing body of evidence, pesticide manufacturers continue to defend their products, claiming that the amounts of pesticides on produce are not sufficient to elicit safety concerns. Yet, such statements are often made in the absence of actual data, since most safety tests done for regulatory agencies are not designed to discover whether low dose exposures to mixtures of pesticides and other toxic chemicals are safe, particularly during critical periods of development.” Most studies are done using high doses and are designed to find only the gross, obvious toxic effects. In the absence of low dose studies, pesticide and chemical manufacturers claim safety where none has been demonstrated or proven.

Children bear the highest risk

Pesticides pose a risk to vital organ systems from conception to maturity. Exposure to pesticides during critical periods of development often has lasting negative effects that manifest throughout the lifetime. Because the metabolism, physiology and biochemistry of a child differ from those of adults, a child is often less able to metabolize and inactivate toxic chemicals and can be particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects. Pesticides that may have no harmful effect on the mother can damage the nervous system, brain, reproductive organs, and endocrine system of a fetus.

Without public outcry, the government will continue to cave to big agribusiness

The fact that the government is allowing the use of pesticides on produce does not mean it is safe to eat that produce. A look back in history shows that the government once approved the use of such damaging and deadly pesticides as DDT, chordane, dursban and others. Without public outcry these chemicals might still be in use. Despite this threat to the population, the government moves very slowly, and only when the mountain of evidence against a pesticide can no longer be ignored. Pesticide manufacturers and agribusiness groups are some of the most powerful people. They have fought the government every step of the way to overrule the pesticide laws now in place.

However, the U.S. has stringent governance of pesticides and their use compared to many other countries likely to export produce. Produce from other countries often contains higher levels of pesticides, and these pesticides are more deadly. The EWG study tested only grapes from both domestic and foreign sources. Yet, the results of that testing revealed the glaring difference in magnitude. Grapes from foreign countries carried a pesticide load of 66, compared with grapes grown in the U.S. with a pesticide load of 44. This difference exists across the range of fruits and vegetables grown in foreign countries compared to those grown domestically. Included in this difference is produce that is canned and frozen as well as produce sold fresh. It also includes produce used in processed or prepared foods from foreign countries.

Pesticide is systemic

Many people are still operating under the myth that pesticide can be washed off. It is a myth that even health oriented grocers like to exploit by selling special vegetable washes for the uninformed. This research is a clear revelation that is not the case, as the studies were done after the produce was washed and in many cases peeled.

Pesticide is taken into the plant as it photosynthesizes, and it becomes contained in every cell of the plant. No amount of soaking, scrubbing, or washing with special compounds can get it out. Once pesticide is applied, the plant and the pesticide become one.

Corporate farming methods have increased the need for pesticides

Pesticide is expensive. Growers only use pesticide when they absolutely must. The need for pesticide is so great because crops produced by the large corporate farms are grown with very little regard for soil conditions, although it is the quality of the soil that determines the quality of the plant. Poor quality plants are weak and unable to fend off pests. When one pest has attacked a crop, it is weakened even further and is less able to fight off the next pest assault. This snowball effect is why some crops have so many different pesticides used on them.

A weakened plant riddled with pests is only able to produce a poor quality fruit or vegetable. This is why most conventionally grown produce is so lacking in taste and appeal compared to organically grown produce. The hidden factor is that most conventionally grown produce is lacking in nutritional quality as well.

The best choice: Say “no” to conventionally grown produce

There is much value in this research. People on budgets can look at it and tell instantly what conventional produce can be bought without taking a big chance with their health, and they can also see which produce should be bought only when it has been grown organically, by a local grower who can be trusted or grown in one’s own garden. It also underscores the need to buy only domestically grown produce or to grow your own. And it is a reminder that the consumer is ultimately king, because produce will only be grown conventionally as long as people are willing to buy it.

Yet this research is also a sad commentary on the state of the food supply. All that conventionally grown produce sitting in the stores will be eaten by someone. Out of all the produce tested, only onions and avocado showed to be truly safe. Buying any of the others when grown conventionally involves some kind of trade off between money and health, a trade off that should not have to be made.

For more information and complete list of pesticides on produce:
http://www.foodnews.org/
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/pesticides.htm

Reprinted from Natural News.