Sustainable Food for Your Health and Wallet
At the same time we are becoming increasingly aware about the numerous diseases and adverse health effects that can all be attributed to the food produced by the industrial agriculture system. From the fruits and vegetables drenched in chemicals and pesticides to the animal protein products that are built using DNA altering growth hormones and chemical doused feed grains, the supply chain of chemicals all have a final resting place in our stomachs and never truly leave our bodies.
As Americans, we need to invest in our health (the government doesn't seem to want to!). This blog intends to be an information portal into the global agriculture systems and how our health depends on it.
I have been an agricultural commodity analyst, trader, and strategist at global macro hedge funds and investment firms for my entire career and grew up on a farm just 30 miles north of Boston. My passion for food and sustainability began growing up on the farm, and later by assessing the global agriculture markets where the more I learned, the more I realized the importance of the earth's agricultural systems in our society. More importantly, I learned the direct link between the health of the land that grows our food and the health of the human population that relies on it.
Reuters reports that some farmers in the Midwest are adapting to climate change. Pretty good news! Early adapters will come out ahead, me thinks.
Some scientists and agronomists are becoming increasingly concerned about the real effects they see now on growing conditions in the…
SEATTLE (AP) — A healthy diet is expensive and could make it difficult for Americans to meet new U.S. nutritional guidelines, according to a study published Thursday that says the government should do more to help consumers eat healthier. An update of what used to be known as a food pyramid in 2010 had called on Americans to eat morefoods containing potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium. But if they did that, the journal Health Affairs said, they would add hundreds more dollars to their annual grocery bill. Inexpensive ways to add these nutrients to a person’s diet include potatoes and beans for potassium and dietary fiber. But the study found introducing more potassium in a diet is likely to add $380 per year to the average consumer’s food costs, said lead researcher Pablo Monsivais, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. “We know more than ever about the science of nutrition, and yet we have not yet been able to move the needle on healthful eating,” he said. The government should provide help for meeting the nutritional guidelines in an affordable way. He criticized some of the marketing for a healthy diet — for example, the image of a plate of salmon, leafy greens and maybe some rice pilaf — and said a meal like that is not affordable for many Americans. Food-assistance programs are helping people make healthier choices by providing coupons to buy fruits and vegetables, Monsivais said, but some also put stumbling blocks in front of the poor. He mentioned, as an example, a Washington state policy making it difficult to buy potatoes with food assistance coupons for women with children, even though potatoes are one of the least expensive ways to add potassium to a diet. The study was based on a random telephone survey of about 2,000 adults in King County, Wash., followed by a printed questionnaire that was returned by about 1,300 people. They note what food they ate, which was analyzed for nutrient content and estimated cost. People who spend the most on food tend to get the closest to meeting the federal guidelines for potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium, the study found. Those who spend the least have the lowest intakes of the four recommended nutrients and the highest consumption of saturated fat and added sugar. Hilary Seligman, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Monsivais’ research is an interesting addition to the debate about healthy eating and food insecurity, her area of expertise. A lot of people assume the poor eat cheap food because it tastes good, but they would make better choices if they could afford to, said Seligman, who was not involved in the Health Affairs study. “Almost 15 percent of households in America say they don’t have enough money to eat the way they want to eat,” Seligman said. Recent estimates show 49 million Americans make food decisions based on cost, she added. “Right now, a huge chunk of America just isn’t able to adhere to these guidelines,” she said. But Monsivais may have oversimplified the problem, according to another professor who does research in this area. Parke Wilde, associated professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said it’s not expensive to get all the nutrients a body needs to meet the federal guidelines. What is expensive, in Wilde’s opinion, are the choices Americans make while getting those nutrients. He said diets get more and more expensive depending on how many rules a person applies to himself, such as eating organic or seeking local sources for food or eating vegetables out of season. “The longer your list gets, the more expensive your list will be,” he said. Seligman said her list can get longer than Wilde’s, but not everything is a choice. Adding to the cost of buying healthful food could be how far away from home a person needs to travel to get to a grocery store that sells a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. The government also affects food prices through the subsidies offered to farmers growing certain crops, she added.
Americans drink more soda than anyone else on the planet — well over 700 eight-ounce servings each year, on average, and an increasing amount of it is diet soda. They might be more reluctant to do so if they knew about the safety questions still surrounding aspartame. A number of scientists responding expressed major concerns about aspartame’s safety at the time of its approval, and even more indicated areas where they believed more research is needed on aspartame to resolve their concerns — research on areas such as neurological functions, brain tumors, seizures, headaches, and adverse effects on children and pregnant women. Grist reports: “In a 1996 survey, Ralph G. Walton … looked at 166 peer-reviewed studies on aspartame undertaken between 1980 and 1985. He found that all 74 of the studies funded by the industry found no adverse effects from aspartame, while 84 of the 92 independently funded articles did find bad effects.” Aspartame is the ingredient found in NutraSweet, It is also found in Equal, Spoonful, Equal Measure, AminoSweet, Benevia, NutraTaste, Canderel, and many popular “diet” sodas. This chemical is currently on the ingredient list of nearly 6,000 products worldwide. But since it was approved for use as a food additive in 1981, it has been dogged by complaints about its safety. Was aspartame ever proven safe for human consumption before it gained FDA approval as a food additive? Not according to Dr. John Olney, a researcher at Washington University in Saint Louis who first began studying aspartame in 1970. Dr. Olhney believes aspartame should not be on the market today “because it hasn’t been demonstrated to be safe.” Also in agreement with Dr. Olney are the FDA’s own investigations into the chemical from 1975 to 1980. When the FDA was presented with Dr. Olney’s research, they assigned an outside public board of inquiry the task of deciding if aspartame should be allowed for human consumption. In 1980, the doctors on that board unanimously ruled that aspartame should not go on the market. An internal FDA panel concluded the same thing in 1980. According to the FDA Chairman at that time, Dr. Gere Goyan, his next recommendation was to set up another FDA committee to study aspartame, composed people who played no previous part in the former studies of aspartame. Dr. Gere Goyan never saw the results of that 1980 FDA internal study, because he was forced to step down as FDA Chairman the day Ronald Reagan took office on January 21, 1981. His replacement? Dr. Arthur Hill Hayes. Dr. Hayes is notable for two reasons. First, he had no previous history of dealing with the science of food additives. Second, he was apparently hand picked to head the FDA by a prominent member of Ronald Reagan’s political transition team, Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, the same Donald Rumsfeld who led the United States into the multi trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as Secretary of Defense during the Bush presidency. But in 1981, Rumsfeld had a different title: CEO of the G.D Searle company, the company that owned the patent on aspartame. One of Dr. Arthur Hill Hayes first acts as FDA Chairman was granting aspartame approval for use in dry goods. Incidentally, one of Hayes’ last acts in office as FDA Chairman was to approve aspartame for use in beverages. So was aspartame approved because studies ever showed it was safe for human consumption? Or was it approved thanks to the political influence of Donald Rumsfeld? According to former Sentator Howard Metzenbaum, who reviewed the FDA’s approval process of aspartame in the Senate in 1987, “I think there were a lot of politics involved in its being approved.” Research scientist Dr. Olney is even more blunt, “the issue (aspartame) is really not an issue of science, it’s an issue of politics.”
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has just completed a detailed review of more than 7,000 clinical studies covering links between diet and cancer. Its conclusion is rocking the health world with startling bluntness: Processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption. Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives. Processed meats include bacon, sausage, hot dogs, sandwich meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, salami and virtually all red meat used in frozen prepared meals. They are usually manufactured with a carcinogenic ingredient known as sodium nitrite. This is used as a color fixer by meat companies to turn packaged meats a bright red color so they look fresh. Unfortunately, sodium nitrite also results in the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the human body. And this leads to a sharp increase in cancer risk for those who eat them. A 2005 University of Hawaii study found that processed meats increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 67 percent. Another study revealed that every 50 grams of processed meat consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 50 percent. These are alarming numbers. Note that these cancer risks do not come from eating fresh, non-processed meats. They only appear in people who regularly consume processed meat products containing sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite appears predominantly in red meat products (you won’t find it in chicken or fish products). Here’s a short list of food items to check carefully for sodium nitrite and monosodium glutamate (MSG), another dangerous additive: If sodium nitrite is so dangerous to humans, why do the FDA and USDA continue to allow this cancer-causing chemical to be used? The answer, of course, is that food industry interests now dominate the actions by U.S. government regulators. The USDA, for example, tried to ban sodium nitrite in the late 1970’s but was overridden by the meat industry. It insisted the chemical was safe and accused the USDA of trying to “ban bacon.” Today, the corporations that dominate American food and agricultural interests hold tremendous influence over the FDA and USDA. Consumers are offered no real protection from dangerous chemicals intentionally added to foods, medicines and personal care products. You can protect yourself and your family from the dangers of processed meats by following a few simple rules: And finally, eat more fresh produce with every meal. There is evidence that natural vitamin C found in citrus fruits and exotic berries (like camu camu) helps prevent the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines, protecting you from the devastating health effects of sodium nitrite in processed meats. The best defense, of course, is to avoid eating processed meats altogether.
Daily chart: where the world’s livestock lives. There are three times as many chickens as humans, according to new statistics from the UN. China has more chickens than any other country, yet tiny Brunei boasts 40 birds per citizen.
In a surprise move, the agency green-lights Roundup Ready lawn grass—and perhaps much, much more.
While increasing the prices of bad foods makes kids skinnier, a more effective solution might be finding ways to decrease the price of foods that are good for you.
Short answer: YES.
Good, quick read.
A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily we still have the seeds and breeds to ensure our future food supply—but we must take steps to save them.
Monsanto Co. spent $1.4 million in the first quarter to lobby the federal government, according to a recent disclosure report. That’s much less than the $2.5 million Monsanto spent a year earlier but down just slightly from the $1.5 million it spent during the last three months of 2010. The world’s largest seed company lobbied Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over regulations that would affect the distribution of genetically engineered crops like the company’s Roundup Ready soybeans and alfalfa. The company also lobbied Congress and USDA on issues surrounding consolidation and antitrust law in agriculture. Last year, the USDA launched a joint effort with the U.S. Department of Justice to examine antitrust laws over food companies, and Monsanto was a key focus of a public workshop on the seed industry. The company also lobbied the U.S. Trade Representative and Department of State on issues surrounding foreign regulation and trade of biotech seeds.
