tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37837542719598968792024-02-19T00:14:53.210-08:00An Omnivore's DecisionMy journey toward an ethical food lifestyle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger84125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-68688273877687748732016-05-25T09:00:00.000-07:002016-05-25T10:05:03.176-07:00Waste not, want not.<div class="MsoNormal">
Since moving to Arizona, I’ve been wondering what to do with
my food scraps. <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/02/wiggly-way-to-wipe-out-waste.html">As I’ve written about before</a>, food scraps don’t biodegrade in
landfills because that process requires airflow. Instead, food scraps petrify.
Between <a href="http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm">30% and 40%</a> of the food we grow is wasted somewhere between farms and
our bellies. And all the food waste that ends up in landfills generates a
considerable amount of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste is currently
a hot topic within the food, energy, and environment sector. In fact, last
fall, the USDA and EPA committed to <a href="http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/index.htm">halving the food waste in the US by 2030</a>,
and food waste was a talking point during last year’s <a href="http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts">World Food Day</a>, held by
the United Nations.<br />
<br />
The first step in curbing food waste in my house is to deal
with food scraps. Long ago, we tried worm composting. It is supposed to be
easy, but like all things to do with food – deciding what to eat, grocery
shopping, cooking, packing healthy snacks – easy can still be time-consuming. We
never really got into the groove of working with the worms, and that was before
we had two kids to keep track of! In addition, the climate in Arizona is not
particularly hospitable to worms. For about six months out of the year, we’re
in the triple digits (that’s over 38°C). We’re not keeping a worm bin in the
house where it’s air conditioned, but it’s really too hot to keep them outside.
And while many cities are starting food scrap recycling programs, we don’t have
a program available yet.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, some clever people have solved this problem
for me. There are now dozens of companies that will pick up food scraps from
your home or business and compost them for you. The one in our area is <a href="http://www.recycledcity.com/">Recycled City</a>. Once a week, a guy named Stan drops off a large plastic bucket (like a
painter’s bucket) and a little bag of something called bokashi – it looks a bit
like sand and helps break down food waste while eliminating odors. All week
long, we throw our food scraps into a bowl on the counter, as needed. At the
end of each day, we toss them into the bin in the garage with a little sprinkle
of bokashi and snap on the lid so nothing gets out (or in!). At the end of the
week, we set our bucket out in our driveway, and Stan replaces it with a clean,
fresh one. It’s that simple.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMQpYNAIZ5V3dGxNVW9UQ4bX2tZn5L34lpwE-Qdl1gYEHs_RfdHAHLesJThET_XN2tWqWkGNabQTa1DTwT7JkHUGfXnTBhgoXIsR0XxuAeuhuTlz03Q1VfM16LCl7hStQhjGFQs9zSB7y/s1600/IMG_7624.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMQpYNAIZ5V3dGxNVW9UQ4bX2tZn5L34lpwE-Qdl1gYEHs_RfdHAHLesJThET_XN2tWqWkGNabQTa1DTwT7JkHUGfXnTBhgoXIsR0XxuAeuhuTlz03Q1VfM16LCl7hStQhjGFQs9zSB7y/s400/IMG_7624.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stan, from Recycled City, takes our food scraps and leaves us a fresh bucket.</td></tr>
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<br />
Recycled City composts the food scraps it picks up from
homes, businesses, and even restaurants. The nutrient-rich soil that results is
used for urban gardens in downtown Phoenix, which is classified as a food
desert by the USDA. They even offer CSA boxes from their partner farms, and we have
the opportunity to get free soil back as part of the service. For the price of
a few lattes, we get all of the perks of composting with very little work.
Finally, a food system solution that really is both easy and quick!<br />
<br />
There is likely some variability among different service
providers, but the general idea is pretty universal. You can find a service in
your area by doing a web search for “food scrap recycling service” or check out
the interactive map by <a href="https://compostnow.org/compost-services/">Compost Now</a>.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJiRMjeWakjYQ5r7K299as6SwK1wGgmRNZcWDJU2Qc4sCXzS5eDj-dXtOXHReKo-osYqZhAoZBu_yxFhpFlqSsWlur4btbtffoUjB38clbpOZ8VPkklzxjYov2w4R-DiO17QzLuAFthEcB/s1600/1F75A355-74D5-4917-B5EC-6208910C119E.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJiRMjeWakjYQ5r7K299as6SwK1wGgmRNZcWDJU2Qc4sCXzS5eDj-dXtOXHReKo-osYqZhAoZBu_yxFhpFlqSsWlur4btbtffoUjB38clbpOZ8VPkklzxjYov2w4R-DiO17QzLuAFthEcB/s400/1F75A355-74D5-4917-B5EC-6208910C119E.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moldy veggies, egg shells, coffee grounds, and even bones can all go in the compost bin!</td></tr>
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<br />
Finding an alternative destination for my food scraps won’t
technically help the food waste problem, but it can help keep food out of
landfills. And dealing with my food scraps keeps this issue more present in my
mind than just dumping stuff in the trash. When I see how much of our produce
or leftovers go to waste, I see patterns in what doesn’t get used – like that
little bit of extra pasta or the baby onions from the CSA box that I wasn’t
sure how to use. All that waste is FOOD, in a world of people who are starving.
It’s also money – my money that I consciously devote to getting better food for
my family. And it’s all of the water and soil and energy and farm workers and
truck drivers and resources both human and mechanical that WE ARE WASTING.
Seeing it on a daily basis makes me want to find a solution.</div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because food waste is such a hot topic, there
are several websites devoted to how you can limit your food waste (like <a href="http://www.thinkeatsave.org/index.php/top-tips-on-reducing-food-waste">this one</a> and <a href="https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-wasted-food-home">this one</a>). The
things that are key for us are making weekly menus and buying only what we need
for the week. One issue we’re having right now is that we typically do our meal
planning and shopping over the weekend but our CSA box comes mid-week. Some of
our CSA produce doesn’t make it to the weekend or we end up doubling up on
certain items that we purchased before the box arrived. Rather than letting all
that food go to waste, we need to start building some flexibility into our
menus – like incorporating a stir fry, curry, or veggie sauté into our menu
later in the week. That way, at least some of the produce that arrives in our
CSA box can be used right away. Another option is to make salads for lunch,
which generally means more nutritious food for less money than going out to
eat. Raw, steamed, or roasted veggies (all pretty quick options) make for great
salad toppings. There are probably other options, too. Being aware of the
problem – how and why food goes to waste in my household – is the first step
toward a solution. Next time you clean out the fridge or scrape your plate into
the trash, think about how you might solve the food waste problem in your home.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-71725047683094851902015-12-24T11:16:00.003-08:002015-12-24T11:17:14.875-08:00Necessary StepsSince my last post, I have moved across the country, started a new job, and had a baby. With all of that going on, perhaps it’s no surprise that I have yet to find a new farm from which to buy ethical, sustainably-raised meat. Instead, we’ve been relying on <a href="http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/">Whole Foods</a>. Through their signs and labels, Whole Foods provides its customers with information about the farming and production practices involved with their meat and, supposedly, has a higher standard than most grocery stores. Up until now, I’ve been mostly taking it on faith, and the word of the employees at the meat counter, that buying meat at Whole Foods is a better choice for the animals, environment, and workers than shopping elsewhere. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper.<br />
<br />
Animal welfare is one of my main concerns when it comes to meat. I’d like to think that the animals I eat have only one bad day. That’s far from the case in conventional meat production. Efficiency seems to be the hallmark of the conventional approach. Part of upping efficiency is increasing the number of animals that can be kept in any given operation and strictly controlling the environment in which the animals live.<br />
<br />
Because chicken, pigs, and cows do not typically live indoors in highly-concentrated groups, conventional farmers have to take many extra measures to keep the animals alive until they make slaughter weight. For example, when chickens are kept in crowded pens, they peck at each other, which can lead to injury and reduce their value. The solution in conventional farming is to remove the beaks of the chickens. Similarly, when pigs are confined and crowded, they express their natural desire to chew on things by nipping at their neighbors’ tails. To discourage this behavior, farmers routinely cut off the pigs’ tails, leaving only a sensitive nub. That makes it much more painful to be chewed on, causing the pigs to fight back and dissuading the pigs from chewing on each other. <b>The idea that causing animals more pain is a better solution that simply enabling animals to behave naturally highlights the unfortunate priorities of our food system.</b><br />
<br />
Similar to the animals, our environment suffers from conventional farming practices both from the monoculture cropping systems that generate animal feed and the animal operations themselves. When animals are raised in more natural conditions, where they are able to express their natural behaviors, eat the foods they evolved to consume, and contribute to the farm ecosystem, the animals and the environment benefit. A wholly integrated farm is the ideal, but there are many ways in which the lives of farm animals can be improved and are worth supporting.<br />
<br />
<b>The Whole Story</b> <br />
<br />
Whole Foods uses a <a href="http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/quality-standards/animal-welfare-standards">tiered rating system</a> for its chicken, pork, and beef. The ratings actually come from the <a href="http://www.globalanimalpartnership.org/">Global Animal Partnership</a> (GAP), which evaluates farms based on long lists of animal-specific metrics. The ratings go from 1 to 5+, and they are color-coded from orange to yellow to green. Higher ratings represent farms that are more animal-centered, meaning that animals are more able to express their natural behaviors. In general, Steps 1 – 3 apply to farms that are more conventional in nature (i.e. animals in enclosed, controlled environments) with many enhancements for the well-being of the animals. Steps 4 – 5+ are for farms that are pasture-centered, meaning that the animals live mostly outdoors in more appropriate environments. <b>All of the chicken, pork, and beef sold at Whole Foods has received at least a Step 1 rating. </b><br />
<br />
Even farms with the lowest rating, Step 1, have taken significant steps to improve the welfare of their animals over conventional practice. Many common physical modifications, including tail docking (pigs) and debeaking (chickens), are not allowed even in Step 1 farms. By Step 5, no physical alterations are allowed.<br />
<br />
Another major consideration when evaluating farms is the concentration of animals. Crowded pens and crammed cages are not allowed. At Step 1, all animals must be able to move about. Chickens must have enough space to flap their wings without touching one another, while pigs and cows must have enough space to exercise, lie down, and move freely. Cows must also spend at least 2/3 of their lives on pasture.<br />
<br />
Antibiotics and growth hormones are also disallowed at any step, and animals can never be fed by-products of other animals. Antibiotics, particularly medications that are intended to cure diseases in humans, are frequently used in conventional animal production. In fact, their use is on the rise despite the FDA advising a ramp down. Such pervasive usage is leading to drug-resistant strains of diseases that we used to be able to treat with antibiotics. For more on this important topic, read these recent articles from <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/12/meat-industry-still-cant-get-enough-antibiotics">Mother Jones</a> and <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antibiotic-use-in-food-animals-continues-to-rise/">Scientific American</a>. <b>Because Whole Foods only carries GAP-rated chicken, pork, or beef, it all comes from animals raised without hormones or antibiotics. </b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS3RkNLr2KxDKABTDy3_9nrz_WWt3piSjFLQcPgaxDzSM_JVx8niXJThUXzB4G0_zy5S2jxcmYQUqhhQHJsvIcnaXCb4VBd2SMFYONM80lCwGdH4jhXT3XHio8lDy7H9mz1kKUi2039Qm/s1600/Meat1.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS3RkNLr2KxDKABTDy3_9nrz_WWt3piSjFLQcPgaxDzSM_JVx8niXJThUXzB4G0_zy5S2jxcmYQUqhhQHJsvIcnaXCb4VBd2SMFYONM80lCwGdH4jhXT3XHio8lDy7H9mz1kKUi2039Qm/s320/Meat1.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
There are many other factors that go into the ratings evaluation, which can be found on the Global Animal Partnership <a href="http://www.globalanimalpartnership.org/">website</a> as well as in pamphlets available at Whole Foods. Meat that carries a GAP rating is clearly better in terms of animal welfare than that found at most grocery stores. I definitely feel better about buying even a Step 1 product than buying conventional meat, but I would much prefer to buy Step 3 through 5+ meat whenever possible. At the Whole Foods where I shop, there are a lot of beef products with ratings of 4 and 5. Much of it comes from <a href="http://certified-organic-beef.com/">Eel River Ranch</a> in California, a Step 4 organic* farm that raises cows on pasture. There is also Step 3 and 4 chicken from <a href="http://www.maryschickens.com/organicchicken.htm">Mary’s Chickens</a>. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen over the past few months, the selection of pig products is currently limited to Step 1. While we still purchase these products, we now eat a bit more chicken and beef than pork. Some packaged products at Whole Foods are also GAP-rated, including some deli meats from Applegate Farms, evol frozen meals, and Krave jerky. You can see the full list of GAP-rated products on their <a href="http://www.globalanimalpartnership.org/partners">website</a>.<br />
<br />
Although we still plan to join a farm CSA for our meat, if one is available in our new hometown, it is still good to know that we can pick up meat from our local Whole Foods without abandoning our commitment to ethical animal products. Plus, we are using our food dollars to support the GAP ratings program, which promotes better industry practices, and to show Whole Foods that we value ethically-sourced meat and the information that enables us to identify it. All that adds up to a whole lot of piece of mind.<br />
<br />
* - A farm’s designation as certified organic is not evaluated as part of the Global Animal Partnership rating system. They are complimentary but quite different sets of metrics.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-47364890287955738922015-06-15T14:46:00.000-07:002015-06-15T14:46:11.818-07:00The Future Frontier of Agricultural ScienceLast December, I was honored to attend the Japanese-American Frontiers of Science symposium in Tokyo, Japan. <a href="http://www.nasonline.org/programs/kavli-frontiers-of-science/">Frontiers of Science symposia</a> (FoS) are organized by the U.S. National Academies of Science, the Kavli Institute, and leading science organizations from around the world – in my case, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The symposia are designed to bring together young researchers from a wide variety of fields, which offers scientists the opportunity to learn the state of the art work being done in other areas and network across the typical boundaries of expertise. In my case, I was the only planetary scientist at a symposium of about 70 participants, and the range of topics included the mathematics and applications of origami, development of a new standard by which we define the kilogram, and the human microbiome. Although jam packed, the sessions were very stimulating and generated great discussions both during and outside of the sessions.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiwel8aNnOF9pJjpElK4aaRKEjhVdpCWd9wWriKTaNfThwR0K9t9MAqX-MhYCDVMMEGMe-Xb2nprz6Os5KiXdoRW7o3VbJJ3dOhtnFdgTCCN0XFF3Gj0pUwo-yy2Iii2tQKVv0whf8JQDc/s1600/IMG_4385.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiwel8aNnOF9pJjpElK4aaRKEjhVdpCWd9wWriKTaNfThwR0K9t9MAqX-MhYCDVMMEGMe-Xb2nprz6Os5KiXdoRW7o3VbJJ3dOhtnFdgTCCN0XFF3Gj0pUwo-yy2Iii2tQKVv0whf8JQDc/s320/IMG_4385.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Any time you do something new in origami, you have to make a bunny."</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaA8GuNj2BWtd9x9NRTWwf4GpTn3p341kY2v0q9OIJJYppkVM-c1ZiAxC8D_jTfzMRkoKI6uaXImh-oPenUvpkaXamEnUeRppX-YZsejFKMT_KdGtFZNnokdROYomm2EMr6uzvIbXvQK30/s1600/IMG_4398.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaA8GuNj2BWtd9x9NRTWwf4GpTn3p341kY2v0q9OIJJYppkVM-c1ZiAxC8D_jTfzMRkoKI6uaXImh-oPenUvpkaXamEnUeRppX-YZsejFKMT_KdGtFZNnokdROYomm2EMr6uzvIbXvQK30/s320/IMG_4398.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A little microbiome humor to lighten the mood.</td></tr>
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The session I was most looking forward to was Climate Change and Food Security. I hoped the session would focus on agricultural methods that enhance crop resiliency and require fewer resources. The talks began with an overview of the many ways climate change will continue to challenge our abilities to grow food, as well as the growing concern over so-called “hidden hunger”, the widespread lack of nutritious food so severe that it impairs normal growth and function of human beings. An estimated 2 billion people suffer from malnutrition, and poor nutrition is responsible for 45% of deaths of children under 5 [<a href="http://www.gainhealth.org/knowledge-centre/fast-facts-malnutrition/">1</a>][<a href="http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats">2</a>]. The speakers all acknowledged that it is lack of nutrition that will be the next big problem facing humanity. However (and somewhat inexplicably), they then focused on methods of producing “a bigger pile of corn”. That’s right, the session was all about the successes of biotechnology at developing more productive crop varieties.<br />
<br />
<b>Quantity vs. Quality</b><br />
<br />
After the talks, the participants asked many critical questions about the biotech approach to food security such as its economic viability in poor countries and issues with soil degradation and water usage. What bothered me the most was that the speakers said nutrition is, and will continue to be, our biggest challenge, but the biotech advances they described do not address nutrition at all. In fact, in the US, most genetically-modified crops (especially corn and soy) are made into <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2013/10/ahs13-cavemans-guide-to-world-hunger.html">food additives and sweeteners</a>, like corn syrup and soy lecithin, rather than actual food. In poorer parts of the world, as one of the speakers pointed out, even industrial-grade corn is used as a food – served as something like porridge. While still largely devoid of nutrition, at least corn does supply edible calories for the very poor.<br />
<br />
After the session, I approached two of the speakers* to ask more about the challenges of nourishing the world. The first person I talked to often works in Africa and knew a lot about the particular hardships for poor farmers. She agreed that a good approach to creating nutrition security (rather than caloric security) would be to focus on crops that are inherently nutritious. Whether through changes in agricultural methods, selective breeding, or gene splicing between species, creating more resilient nutritious crops – think lentils and kale rather than corn and soy - must be part of the solution. Unfortunately, the speaker could not think of any researchers currently working on enhancing the yields or the sustainability of nutritious food.<br />
<br />
She also pointed out a potential flaw in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/09/paleo-for-planet.html">my analysis of the caloric needs</a> of different countries, which was based on population studies by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In that study, the caloric needs of a population are determined by age and sex demographics. However, occupation is not taken into account. Farmers, day laborers, or women who trek tens of miles a day for clean drinking water are afforded the same caloric requirement as a typical person, but their actual needs are much higher. Even a person getting 1800 calories a day may be nearly starving because of the exertion required for their daily life.
One of the findings of my study was that almost all countries, even those with 30-50% of their populations being classified as food insecure, actually had enough calories to feed everyone. However, based on this new information, it seems likely that income inequality means the poor not only have less access to those calories, they also need more than the FAO has estimated because of the hardships of poverty. In that case, having more available calories could, hypothetically, reduce food insecurity, but only if the impoverished people within the country can actually get more food. And, of course, none of this addresses the availability of nutritious food.<br />
<br />
<b>A Culture of Condescension</b><br />
<br />
My discussions with the next speaker were much more troubling. When I broached the subject of growing or breeding more nutritious crop varieties for use in poor countries, he said it wouldn’t be effective because the people in those countries wouldn’t eat the food. They have a culture of non-nutritious foods, he said, using rice as an example. Better to engineer staple crops like corn and rice to have more nutrients and let the poor eat what they like.<br />
<br />
I found this attitude, frankly, appalling. The idea that poor people can’t recognize the value of a diverse, nutritious diet is insulting. Assuming that impoverished people in southeast Asia eat a diet of mostly rice because that is their culture neglects the role that poverty has played in restricting diet diversity over time. While the diversity of traditional diets is something I will need to learn more about, it seems unlikely that the nutrient deficiencies currently causing widespread blindness and stunted growth throughout poor populations have been present throughout their histories. In any case, people living in extreme poverty deserve better than to have their nutrition slipped into their rice like parents of a stubborn toddler hiding vegetables in their kid’s pasta sauce.<br />
<br />
<b>Another Seat at the Table</b><br />
<br />
The issue of population growth came up many times throughout the session and side conversations throughout the symposium. Because population is increasing, proponents of biotechnology will say that we need to produce more calories even if they are not nutritious. Otherwise, people will starve. There are two problems with this approach. First, as long as the population continues to increase, food production will always have to increase to keep pace. Maybe we can keep squeezing our resources and reducing the nutritional quality of our food to produce more calories, but this seems like a race to the bottom. The other problem is that people need more than calories. It sounds unconscionable to let people starve, but is it any more ethical to give people just enough calories to survive knowing that the lack of vitamin A, for example, will lead to blindness and death? In my opinion, there is no point in creating more calories if we cannot produce nutritious calories because lack of either is too often a death sentence.<br />
<br />
In addition to researching nutrition-based approaches to food insecurity, slowing population growth is critical to a sustainable food future. As one speaker pointed out, the advances of biotechnology are not expected to outpace the pressures of population growth on the food supply – not by a long shot. Luckily, the methods for slowing population growth are known. Lift people out of poverty, and they have far fewer children. This is especially true for women because impoverished women have so few opportunities. Becoming a wife and mother is their only value within a society. When women are educated and have access to jobs and careers outside the home, they have a source of economic stability that gives them more freedom to choose when and whether to have children, and they usually choose to have fewer children overall.<br />
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Nourishing the world is a harder and more critical long-term problem then feeding the world, but that is the actual problem facing humanity. Producing more calories that are not nutritious or raising crops in ways that degrade or deplete vital resources are false solutions. We need to focus on developing sustainable agricultural practices that produce more nutritious food. We also need to empower the poor, especially women, to both slow population growth and reduce the extra caloric burdens of poverty. This is the true frontier of science, a worldwide humanitarian effort, and a moral imperative.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Although the names of the speakers are available on the internet, I’m withholding them here because some of what I describe stemmed from side conversations rather than their talks. It’s possible that I misunderstood their comments or that they would have provided more context in a different setting. In any case, I have tried to describe our interactions as best as I can remember them.
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
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[1] http://www.gainhealth.org/knowledge-centre/fast-facts-malnutrition/<o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[2] http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats</span></span><!--EndFragment-->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-54882545479055431952014-08-29T20:29:00.000-07:002014-08-29T20:29:03.228-07:00The Polyculture Project.Conventional meat production has been (justly) criticized for the strain it puts on the environment and the deplorable conditions in which animals are kept. However, there is an alternative to conventional farming. Diversified, pasture-based farms, also called polycultures, work with the land such that the farm becomes integrated into the natural ecosystem. Multiple species of animals are raised together along with crops that can be used for animal feed and for human consumption. Overall, this type of farming provides many environmental benefits and a higher quality of life for the animals than conventional farms.<br />
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A criticism of polyculture farming is that it isn’t productive enough to meet the needs of our population, and thus, meat could only ever be a small part of a sustainable food system. Although often repeated, I have rarely seen this statement quantified, which has led me to ask the following question.<br />
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<b>How much polyculture farmland would it take to produce enough meat to feed the US population?</b><br />
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Answering this question requires two types of data: the amount of meat we need for everyone in the US and the amount of meat, per acre, produced on polyculture farms. The USDA and FDA collect and distribute vast amounts of data on the productivity of US farms, but I couldn’t find anything on the productivity of pasture-based, diversified farms. So I set out to collect the data myself.<br />
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I first reached out to the farm where I currently get my meat: <a href="http://www.northmountainpastures.com/">North Mountain Pastures</a> (NMP), a polyculture farm in Pennsylvania. My family has been part of their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for several years now. Every month, we get a box of meat with a variety of cuts from a variety of animals. The farm is run by Brooks and Anna Miller, who graciously contributed to this project.<br />
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Brooks and Anna put together this table of their farm’s output in 2013, which includes all of the animals they raised and the edible pounds of meat typically provided by each animal. The total weight they compute is consistent with a rough estimate based on the amount of meat supplied through their CSA. Brooks and Anna also calculated the acreage of their farm and the land required to produce some additional grains they feed their chickens and pigs. Dividing the total number of pounds (49,855) by the total acreage used (114), gives an annual output of 437.33 pounds of meat per acre.<br />
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The other key piece of data is the amount of meat required for the entire US. The USDA recommends that typical adults get about 6 oz of protein each day, which is 0.375 pounds (see <a href="http://www.nutrition.gov/smart-nutrition-101/myplate-food-pyramid-resources">MyPlate</a> for more info). For this analysis, let’s assume that all of the protein comes from meat. Throughout a whole year, we would need to produce 42 billion pounds of meat to feed all 308 million Americans their recommended 6 oz. of meat every day. Americans actually consume about 52 billion pounds of meat each year (<a href="http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2012/highlights25">Earth Policy Institute</a>).<br />
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Assuming the productivity of North Mountain Pastures farm, we would need just under 100 million acres of land to produce 42 billion pounds of meat each year and 119 million acres to match current demand for meat.<br />
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Those are such big numbers that it’s hard to interpret them without some context. So, let’s compare them to the amount of land we currently use for grazing. According to the USDA (<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/landuse.html">as cited by the EPA</a>), the US devoted about 600 million acres to animal grazing in 2007.<br />
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<b>That means we could produce enough meat for the entire US population by converting 16% of our current grazing land to polyculture farming. We would need to convert 20% to match current meat demand.</b><br />
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That doesn’t seem like a lot of land at all. In fact, it seems like diversified farms could actually reduce the amount of land we devote to meat production without reducing the amount of meat people eat. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that meat is totally sustainable. There are other environmental impacts we should consider, such as water usage and carbon emission. From the perspective of land use though, diversified, pasture-based farms can provide more than enough meat without requiring any additional land.<br />
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If people choose to get less of their protein from meat, it would further lessen the land burden of raising animals. For example, North Mountain Pastures also produces eggs, which we did not include in their meat production numbers. Fish, nuts, seeds, and legumes are also high in protein and can serve as alternatives to meat. However, if sustainability is the goal, we would need to consider the relative environmental impact and scalability of obtaining these other foods to that of meat raised on polyculture farms.<br />
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Another benefit of diversified, pasture-based farming is that it hasn’t yet been fully optimized. Farmers and scientists around the world are working on advances that can boost efficiency and lessen the environmental impact of raising animals for food. At North Mountain Pastures, they are working with grain farmers who use no-till agriculture and other ecofriendly methods, exploring ways of reducing off-site feed, and adding an orchard. In a much broader effort, the <a href="http://www.savoryinstitute.com/">Savory Institute</a> is devoted to restoring badly managed grazing land and promoting ecologically-sound land management. If we actually wanted to convert current grazing land to polyculture farms, the Savory Institute’s research could help bring the productivity of marginal land closer to a farm like North Mountain Pastures. Additional improvements, as well as more widespread adoption, are also likely to lower the cost of producing meat in this way, a savings that can be passed on to the consumer. Currently, members of the NMP CSA pay about $8 per pound for their meat.<br />
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One other potential barrier to producing all our meat on polyculture farms is that we would have to change the way we eat meat. North Mountain Pastures raised 7 different animal species with a wide range in the number of animals of each species. For example, they raised only 12 cows and 10 goats but 240 turkeys and 5200 chickens. To take advantage of a diversified farm requires that we diversify both the types of animals and the cuts of meat we that we regularly eat.<br />
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For this analysis, I’ve assumed that any diversified farm could be as productive as North Mountain Pastures. Without any additional data, it’s hard to know if this assumption is reasonable. I will say that I didn’t know how productive NMP would be when I approached them about this project, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that their productivity is typical. And productivity can vary a lot depending on the location of the farm. That’s why I would like to expand upon this study to include as many polyculture farms as I can find. That way, I can better quantify the productivity and scalability of polyculture farms, assess additional environmental concerns, and help develop a pathway to a food system that produces meat without destroying the environment or abusing animals.<br />
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It’s a lofty goal and one that I can’t achieve on my own. If you, or someone you know, has data on the productivity of a polyculture farm, please consider sharing it with me. Together, we can turn the polyculture project into a polyculture solution.
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<i>Note: This material was originally presented at the 2014 <a href="http://www.ancestralhealth.org/symposium">Ancestral Health Symposium</a>. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in this terrific event and for all of the interest and feedback I received from my fellow attendees.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-66280428888512303442014-04-13T19:36:00.000-07:002014-04-13T19:36:14.443-07:00From farm to table.It seems that spring has finally arrived in Maryland. We’ve had a whole weekend filled with sunshine and crisp, fresh air. There are daffodils popping up along the creek, little green buds on all of the trees, and a constant buzz of little creatures (human and otherwise) venturing back outside. To celebrate this lovely change of events, we are dusting off the grill and making the one food we have rarely had the chance to eat over the past few years: hamburgers.<br />
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It may sound strange – hamburgers are one of the most popular foods in the United States – but eating only ethically-sourced meat means avoiding hamburgers almost everywhere. I recall eating them quite regularly back in college, though, both at restaurants and grilled in my backyard. Hamburgers were the mainstay of nearly all get-togethers: the Superbowl, July 4th, or even just a weekend poker party. I remember those times fondly because, above all, they were celebrations of friendships. They certainly weren’t celebrations of food, however. I bought my burger patties frozen, in a big tan box from Costco. I never thought much about how the meat had come to be in its mechanically-pressed, totally uniform state, and I had no idea how the cows were treated in the process.<br />
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Today’s event will be quite different. It will be just me and my little family, celebrating life, hard work, and of course, food.<br />
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After the <a href="http://www.ancestralhealth.org/post/2013-ancestral-health-symposium-ahs13">2013 Ancestral Health Symposium</a>, a fellow attendee who lives nearby contacted me about joining a cowpool. I’d never participated in a cowpool before, but I jumped at the chance. Here’s how it works: A group of people pool money to purchase a half or whole steer from a farmer. Typically, the price per pound is lower than if you bought comparable meat at a store or farmers market, and you can find a farmer who uses practices you are comfortable supporting. Depending on the farmer, you may even be able to visit the farm and your particular cow while it is being raised.<br />
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Our cow was grass-fed, raised on pasture at <a href="http://legacymanorfarm.com/">Legacy Manor Farm</a> in northwest Maryland. Although the farm isn’t run with quite the level of management of Polyface Farms (i.e. maximizing integration between the different animals and the land), the animals are raised in a natural, low-stress environment without hormones or antibiotics. Our cowpool, which was broken down into 8 shares, purchased a half-steer. A few months later, our intrepid cowpool leader, Steve, met up with our farmer, Kathy, at the midway point between Silver Spring and the farm to pick up our half steer.<br />
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Buying a whole or half animal is quite a different experience than buying cuts of meat at the deli counter. Our meat came, quite literally, as a side of beef, which weighed in at 347 lbs. Although we could have had it broken down before delivery), we instead turned to the experts at <a href="http://www.urbanbutcher.com/">The Urban Butcher</a>, an artisan butcher shop located in downtown Silver Spring. These guys were amazing. They allowed Steve to attend and photograph the butchering process. Rather than issuing them a list of cuts, Steve simply let the butchers make the decisions about how best to break down our half steer. Due to their diligence and expertise, only 10 of the 347 lbs were unused, and we got some rather uncommon steaks and roasts in addition to T-bones, ribs, ground beef, and the like.<br />
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In early February, all the members of our cowpool met up in order to distribute our shares of meat. It was a lovely day, and our hosts greeted us with wine, a warm fire in their backyard pit, and over 300 lbs of vacuum-sealed and labeled beef. Before we started divvying up the meat, Steve gave a toast. He spoke of the gratitude he felt for this food, which was enhanced by his participation and the awareness it gave him of all the time and effort that goes into raising and butchering a steer. We were able to acknowledge and appreciate the life lost in bringing this food to our table, and the efforts of our farmer and butchers to honor that life.<br />
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We then picked numbers out of a hat, and took turns selecting cuts of meat until each share-holder had their allotted amount. My family took home about 40 lbs of grass-fed beef, bones, and tallow. The cuts we selected included: neck roasts, oso bucco, ground beef, kabob, “man” steak, top sirloin roast, short ribs, sirloin tip roast, T-bone steak, picanha steak, clod, and flank steak. We paid $210 for our share, which comes out to about $5 per pound, although excluding the fat and bones brings it up to about $7 per pound.<br />
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Over the ensuing months, we’ve been slowly working our way through the meat. Everything we’ve tried has been delicious, in part because we treat each of these meals as a special occasion. Even today, grilling hamburgers on the patio for no one but ourselves, it is a celebration. The ground beef has a heftier consistency, with larger chunks of bright red meat and bright white fat, than you would find in a grocery store. We prepare it simply, alongside grilled portabellas, asparagus, and romaine hearts. We pour some wine. Even our toddler can sense that this is a special meal. It’s not just the amazing taste of the food, it’s also the fact that this meal took effort, that makes it so satisfying. This is a hamburger I will remember.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-48363665893384182262013-10-16T19:50:00.001-07:002013-10-16T19:50:44.817-07:00AHS13: A caveman's guide to world hunger.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In August, I had the privilege of speaking at the third annual <a href="http://ahs.shdlr.com/grid">Ancestral Health Symposium</a>, which focused on an evolutionary approach to nutrition and health. The title of my talk, “Give them grains? Analyzing approached to world hunger”, was intentionally provocative as this group has pretty negative views of the role of grains in human nutrition. I wanted to get people’s attention because, quite often, the response I get from this community is that they care about making healthy choices for themselves, whether or not those choices are sustainable or widely accessible. While I understand this view, opting out of the conversation about our global food future means that we are less likely to develop a food system that meets the demands of health-conscious people. As it happens, I also care about the accessibility of food, especially for the poor. What follows is the content of my presentation at AHS13. </div>
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According to the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization, there are more than 850 million starving people in the world. Moreover, there are a staggering 2 billion malnourished people. In fact, malnutrition kills 2.6 million children each year, and 1 in 4 children experience irreversible stunted growth. Vitamin A deficiency alone affects 250 million preschool-aged children; many become blind as a result, and half of the children who become blind die within a year.<br />
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Clearly, when we think about how to feed the world, we need to be considering the nutritional value of food as well as its caloric yield. Calories may keep a starving person alive for a day or a week, but to have someone survive for months, years, or decades, nutrition is key.<br />
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The most common proposed solution to world hunger is based on the premise that we can use grains to increase the total number of available calories, worldwide. We can do this by growing more grains, increasing grain productivity, and eating more of the grains we currently grow rather than using them for animal feed or fuel. This last point is especially relevant for industrial corn. Several studies have analyzed precisely how many more calories could be consumed if they were eaten “directly” rather than eating animals fed with corn.<br />
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To really determine whether eating more corn can help feed the world, we need to consider the type of food produced in this system and the trade-offs between corn and other crops.<br />
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In 2011, the US harvested 83 million acres of industrial corn, which does not include sweet corn that you would eat on the cob or out of a can. The same amount of land comprises the entire National Parks system. According to the USDA, 52% of the 2011 corn crop was used for fuel and exports, thereby contributing zero calories to the US food supply. Another 37% of the corn was used as animal feed, leaving only 11% of the crop for food. It seems pretty clear that using more corn for food would produce more calories, but how much more? <br />
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The above chart shows my estimate of the caloric yield of the corn crop based on the current usage distribution. If 37% of the corn crop was eaten indirectly through corn-fed animals and 11% was eaten directly as “food”, I estimate a yield of 1.8 million calories from the 2011 corn harvest. If, however, we had eaten the animal feed ourselves (for a total of 48% in the food category), it could have delivered 2.5 million calories. And, if the entire crop were used for food, it would yield 5.3 million calories. That means we could just about triple the number of corn calories in the food system simply by devoting it all to food. Let’s take this one step further, though. What kind of food do we actually produce from industrial corn?<br />
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Before humans can consume industrial corn, it has to be heavily processed. Again, based on USDA statistics, the 2011 corn calories were delivered in the form of high fructose corn syrup, glucose and dextrose, corn starch, alcohol, and corn oil (which makes up the majority of the "Cereals, other" category). Despite the calories, no one can survive on a diet made of these foods. More importantly, consuming calories in these forms does little to reduce the total number of calories a person needs. For example, studies have shown that drinking a soda, which delivers a few hundred calories, will not cause someone to eat fewer calories throughout the day. That means, regardless of how many additional corn syrup calories we can deliver to the food system, we will still need to produce the same number of calories from other foods to meet everyone’s caloric needs. To borrow a term from economics, corn-based calories have diminishing marginal utility.<br />
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But let’s forget about calories for a moment. Given that billions of people in the world are malnourished, what are the relative amount of micronutrients that corn would deliver in each of these systems? I chose two micronutrients, vitamin A and folate, for this analysis because deficiencies are known to cause serious, life-threatening health problems.<br />
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It turns out that the best source of corn-based micronutrients (based on efficiency and content) actually comes from chicken liver. A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that, based on our current corn usage, an acre of industrial corn could provide 141 people with their recommended daily amount of vitamin A and 66 people their RDA of folate through the consumption of corn-fed chicken livers. On the other hand, if we stopped feeding corn to animals, and used it instead to make corn syrup, corn oil, and the like, we would produce zero RDAs of these micronutrients. Finally, if we used all of our corn in such a way as to maximize vitamin A and folate production, we would feed all of our corn to chickens, which would enable us to feed 385 people their RDA of vitamin A and 180 people their RDA of folate with one acre of corn.<br />
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Eating our corn directly would provide an increase in available calories, but it would also reduce the already minimal micronutrients delivered by corn. The standard American diet is already rich in the types of food that corn can produce. As a nation, we already generate 3770 calories per person per day, and 70% of the average American’s calories come from refined grain, added sugar, and refined vegetable oil. We also have a nation of very sick people. Over 35% of adults are obese, more than 23 million have Type 2 diabetes, and another 79 million have pre-diabetes. Is this really the diet we want to use to end world hunger?<br />
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Given that corn is such an abysmal source of vital micronutrients, it’s worth asking if there is anything better we could grow. Organic produce is more sustainable than conventional agriculture and typically more diverse. The USDA’s organic production survey compiled statistics for the 22 highest yielding fruits and vegetables, which were grow on a tiny 118,000 acres – that’s 0.14% of the land devoted to industrial corn.<br />
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Using nutrition data from self.nutritiondata.com, I calculated that the 22 highest yielding organic crops generated 3 million calories per acre. That’s more than corn delivers even if we stopped feeding corn to animals but less than if we devoted the entire crop to food. Nutritionally, however, the organic crops clearly dominate.<br />
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To simplify the calculations, I selected two organic crops and used the USDA data to determine the per acre yield of each one. I then calculated the RDAs of both vitamin A and folate. If we grew an acre of organic carrots, we could deliver ¾ of a million people their RDA of vitamin A and more than 1600 people their RDA of folate. From an acre of organic spinach, we would supply almost 61,000 people their RDA of vitamin A and 14,000 people their RDA of folate. <br />
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To summarize, we could produce more calories by eating more corn products, but it would reduce the amount of available micronutrients and not do much to reduce the caloric needs of our population. Sustaining a healthy population is even more problematic as corn provides either micronutrients or calories, but not both. Corn agriculture also requires a great deal of inputs with many negative outputs. In contrast, organic agriculture can provide about 50% of the maximum caloric yield of corn, while also providing prodigious micronutrients. In marginal environments, which are more common in the developing world, organic agriculture can actually produce more calories than conventional, input-intensive agriculture. However, developing truly sustainable agricultural systems, worldwide, will require dedication, creativity, and investments in research and labor.<br />
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Overall, growing nutritious crops will likely produce fewer calories. However, globally, we already grow more than 2700 calories per person per day. Even in the countries with the highest rates of hunger, only two actually have too few calories available, and even those are within 100 calories of their daily per capita needs. Chronic hunger and malnutrition are caused by poverty, political instability, and lack of infrastructure. Simply producing more calories, in any form, is unlikely to end world hunger if issues of access are not addressed. Hence, the lower caloric yield of organic crops seems worth the trade-off given their delivery of vital micronutrients, promising yields in places where the poor actually live, and the potential for sustainability.<br />
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I think I have made the case that eating more corn products, rather than eating corn-fed animals, is not a good solution to world hunger. In fact, eating corn-fed animal products is the only way to get micronutrients from corn. However, I do not, in any way, support feeding corn to ruminants or raising animals in confinement. Rather, I think we should stop growing industrial corn and go back to raising animals in traditional pasture-based systems. This would likely reduce the amount of meat available in the food system, although I have yet to see a detailed study of the potential yields of polyculture, pasture-based farming systems. Regardless, limiting our consumption of animal products to the level that can be produced sustainably seems like the right approach. <br />
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Overall, this analysis has revealed the importance of considering nutrition, in addition to caloric yield, when making decisions about what we should grow and eat. This above slide lists several ways we can support real solutions to world hunger and organizations who appear, to me, to be taking the right approach. Whether you base your eating habits on what is healthy for you or healthy for the world, I encourage you to get involved and make the food system work for everyone.<br />
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<i>I want to thank Eric Huff and Tess McEnulty for their assistance with this project and the Ancestral Health Society for creating a forum for this type of work. Additional citations and background for the calculation of the caloric yield of corn can be found in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2013/07/scientists-for-sustainability.html">my previous post</a>. Supporting materials for the hunger assessment by country and specific inputs and outputs of the conventional food system can be found in my 2012 AHS talk, which is described in detail <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/09/paleo-for-planet.html">here</a>.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-83852577977128260462013-07-15T19:10:00.000-07:002013-09-05T11:21:54.463-07:00Scientists for sustainability.As a planetary scientist, I spend most of my time thinking about the moons of Jupiter and the formation of the Solar System. It’s an exciting line of work, but it doesn’t give me much opportunity to help solve the problems currently facing humanity. That’s why I got involved with the <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/">Union of Concerned Scientists</a> (UCS), a group of scientists and technical experts who help critically analyze proposed solutions to environmental problems. The UCS produces policy briefs and public outreach materials based on quantitative study in the areas of clean energy, climate change, and food systems (just to name a few).<br />
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One criticism of our current food system <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/09/paleo-for-planet.html">that I’ve highlighted before</a> is that we devote a huge amount of land and resources to growing industrial grain. Because these grains are not directly edible by humans, the grains we grow are used mainly for ethanol fuel, animal feed, and heavily processed food and additives. While many researchers have investigated how we could use grains differently to produce more calories, I have found very little information on what we could grow instead of grains that might produce either more calories or more nutritious food. Recently, the UCS’ <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/">Food and Agriculture</a> group produced a really interesting <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/expand-healthy-food-access/plant-the-plate.html">infographic</a> that begins to address this important question.<br />
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<b>Plant the plate.</b><br />
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The <a href="http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/dietary-guidance/myplatefood-pyramid-resources/usda-myplate-food-pyramid-resources">USDA</a> and the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/">CDC</a> provide recommendations for the servings of fruits and vegetables that each of us needs to eat in order to stay healthy. Vegetables are particularly important because they provide so many micronutrients. According to the new <a href="http://www.choosemyplate.gov/">MyPlate</a> recommendations, fruits and vegetables should make up 50% of our daily food intake. The USDA’s <a href="http://www.choosemyplate.gov/myplate/index.aspx">food plan calculator</a> offers more specific recommendations. It says I ought to eat 2.5 cups of vegetables a day, varying the kinds of vegetables I eat throughout the week, and 1.5 cups of fruit each day. My husband should get 3 cups of veggies and 2 cups of fruit per day. We actually aim for about 8 cups of veggies a day because that’s the best way to meet the recommended allotments of micronutrients, but 2.5 cups is a good minimum.<br />
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Interestingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists determined that we do not actually grow enough fruits and vegetables for every American to consume the recommended daily intakes. Currently, only 2% of the farm acreage in the US is used to grow produce. We would need to more than double that number in order to provide enough food for everyone to eat a healthy amount of produce. Even with these adjustments, the total acreage devoted to fruits and vegetables would only be 5.28% of our total farm acreage.<br />
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It’s unclear why we grow so little food that we know is essential for good health. Certainly, the government subsidies for grains play a role – driving down the price of grain, which then becomes an extremely profitable raw material for food companies. Demand also plays an important role, though. Have we become so accustomed to processed food and sugary beverages that we no longer demand produce, or is the price difference between fresh and processed foods turning people away?<br />
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<b>Counting calories.</b><br />
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Pro-grain groups often cite world hunger as a justification for using any means necessary to produce more calories. However, in the United States, we have over 3700 available calories per person per day [1] – far more than any of us needs to consume. However, if we followed the UCS’ suggestion and switched 23 million acres of grain-producing cropland to the growing of fruits and vegetables, we probably would reduce the total number of calories we produce.<br />
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Grains go through so many changes before they are consumed that it’s hard to say how many calories would be produced on 23 million acres. Here’s my first attempt to estimate how much of an impact such a change would have on the caloric yield of our food. For simplicity, I’ll just focus on corn for this analysis.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx7j9rTPbncIN3uoxmY29rxfRMiT5myix_5LTG71Drb0WS996e99xVFqFCnm9UUoSOZa1wffkJbaIpEMPWStsD1N6H5zLHlG4PrdhoIbTj9zE4BEr0Wwl9XgAoY667LOuGt7D1EiXi09xY/s1600/CornCropUses.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx7j9rTPbncIN3uoxmY29rxfRMiT5myix_5LTG71Drb0WS996e99xVFqFCnm9UUoSOZa1wffkJbaIpEMPWStsD1N6H5zLHlG4PrdhoIbTj9zE4BEr0Wwl9XgAoY667LOuGt7D1EiXi09xY/s400/CornCropUses.png" width="400" /></a>According to the <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/feed-grains-database/feed-grains-custom-query.aspx#.UeSc4xYbk0M">USDA’s crop statistics</a>, the 2011 corn harvest was used for a variety of purposes: 40% went to ethanol fuel, 12% was exported, and 9% went to food sweeteners and additives, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), glucose, dextrose, food starch, and alcohol. Only 2% of the corn harvest was used to make corn-based foods (e.g. corn chips), while 37% went to animal feed, an indirect source of edible calories. That means 52% of the corn harvest did not contribute to the available calories in the US, and another 37% entered indirectly through consumption of meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from corn-fed animals.<br />
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The whole point of switching from grains to fruits and vegetables is to enable people to eat the daily recommended values of these foods. So, presumably, 100% of the harvest from the additional 23 million acres would be consumed by humans. Because 52% of the corn crop does not contribute to edible calories, the new fruits and veggies could provide only 48% of the calories from the corn they replaced without changing the number of edible calories in the food system.<br />
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Of the corn that directly delivers calories, the largest portion becomes HFCS, which contains about 80 calories per ounce*. About 32 pounds – or 512 ounces - of HFCS can be produced per bushel of corn [2]. In 2011, about 25 bushels per acre were used for HFCS, yielding about a million calories over the year. The next largest portion went to glucose and dextrose. If these sugars have similar conversion rates (a big assumption), then the 6% of the corn crop used to make HFCS, glucose, and dextrose produced about 1.7 million calories. I was unable to find enough information to deduce the caloric yields per acre of food starch or alcohol, but these are likely negligible.<br />
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<i><span style="color: #45818e;">Edit (09/05/13): In the above analysis, I incorrectly calculated the number of bushels per acre that were devoted to each type of food product. The numbers should be about 6 bushels per acre for HFCS, 3 for glucose and dextrose, 3 for starch, and 1.5 for alcohol. I have also found the information for the corn starch conversion; one bushel of corn can be used to make 32 pounds of corn starch, which contains 107 calories per ounce. Hence, the total caloric yield of these "food uses" was only 531,000. I am still neglecting calories from corn-based alcohol in this analysis.</span></i><br />
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Jonathon Foley, of the <a href="http://environment.umn.edu/">Institute on the Environment</a> at the University of Minnesota, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=time-to-rethink-corn">stated</a> that the caloric efficiency of converting corn to edible animal products ranges from 3% to 40%, depending on the product (e.g. steak vs. eggs). So the 37% of corn that is used for animal feed contributes far fewer calories than were initially grown. How many calories would the corn deliver if it wasn’t used for animal feed? Well, if it’s made into HFCS, as most of the corn is, the 50.5 bushels per acre devoted to feeding animals would produce approximately 62,000 to 825,000 calories depending on which conversion rate is assumed.<br />
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The 2% of the corn crop that is used for food goes into a wide variety of products, from corn chips to polenta. That makes it virtually impossible to determine the precise caloric yield per acre. However, according to the <a href="http://www.corn.org/products/">Corn Refiners Association</a>, corn oil is the major food item produced with corn. One bushel of corn produces 0.7 pounds of corn oil [3], which contains about 240 calories per ounce. Making the simplifying assumption that all 11 bushels per acre that were used for food were delivered in the form of corn oil yields just under 30,000 calories.<br />
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<i><span style="color: #45818e;">Edit (09/05/13): As above, the bushels per acre is an over-estimate. The correct number is about 2, which yields about 13,500 calories.</span></i><br />
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Based on these assumptions, I estimate that the 2011 corn crop supplied between 1.792 and 2.555 million edible calories per acre to the US food system, depending on the relative amounts of different animal products produced.<br />
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<i><span style="color: #45818e;">Edit (09/05/13): My revised estimate is 600,000 to 1.8 million calories. In the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=time-to-rethink-corn">Foley article</a>, he states that the US corn supply delivers about 3 million calories per acre per year, but there is no reference or data provided. I can only guess that my calculation includes some oversimplifications that account for the discrepancy. However, he also states that the corn crop is used to make polenta, which is actually made from sweet corn. The crop data from the USDA, upon which I have based my analysis, does not include sweet corn. So, perhaps we are using different data as well as different assumptions.</span></i><br />
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Also in 2011, the <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/vegetables-and-pulses-data.aspx#.UeSkvxYbk0M">USDA</a> reports that 1.76 million acres were devoted to the growing of vegetables and melons, which resulted in 43.2 billion pounds of food [4]. That’s ~24,500 pounds per acre. The top three crops were onions, head lettuce, and watermelon. Onions have about 12 calories per ounce, lettuce has 4, and watermelon has 9. Using the average of these three as representative of the caloric yield per pound of vegetables results in 3.14 million edible calories per acre.<br />
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It’s pretty surprising to think that vegetables and melons produce more calories per acre than corn. The reason is the way we use corn. If we instead used the 40% of the corn crop currently devoted to ethanol production to make corn oil or high fructose corn syrup, the corn crop would deliver significantly more calories than the vegetable crop. Of course, having more corn oil or corn sweetener may not have a significant benefit to human health.<br />
<br />
We could also produce more edible calories if we did not use corn as animal feed. However, as long as we are growing corn, perhaps using it to create foods like eggs and pork is a nutritionally superior choice. Feeding corn to animals, especially cows, has many other drawbacks, though. Overall, the lack of an efficient pathway from the corn crop to nutritious food reinforces the idea that we ought to grow less corn, and use the land to cultivate nutritious foods instead.<br />
<br />
The recommendation from the Union of Concerned Scientists is to convert 23 million acres of land from grain to fruits and vegetables in order to provide all Americans with their daily recommended intake of these foods. My analysis, which necessarily required a lot of simplifying assumptions, shows that this switch would actually deliver more edible calories to the food system, in addition to more micronutrients. It also shows how inefficient the corn-based system is at producing actual food. This makes me wonder just how much we could change the food system without a significant drop in calories. Could we switch to all organic production? Diversified farms? Farms that combine plants and animals? Given that we currently produce a surplus of calories, can more extreme changes in production practices (e.g. devoting more land to pasture for animals) still provide enough calories to feed our population? And would those calories provide superior nutrition to what we currently produce? Hopefully, with more research into sustainable farming practices, we can begin to answer these questions and design a food system that can sustainably produce nutritious, delicious food.<br />
<br />
<i>I think our food system should produce more fruits and vegetables instead of crops that are not used primarily for food. The Union of Concerned Scientists is doing a great job of showing how to make these changes and informing food policy decisions. You can learn more about their vision for the future of the food system in their recent policy brief, <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/advance-sustainable-agriculture/healthy-farm-vision.html">The Healthy Farm</a>. You can also follow their blog, <a href="http://blog.ucsusa.org/">The Equation</a>. If you like what you see, consider joining and taking action. Together, we can “plant the plate” and get on a better path to a sustainable food future.</i><br />
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=========================================================<br />
<br />
Caveat to my analysis:
More of the wheat crop is devoted to food products than the corn crop. Hence, switching from wheat to fruits and vegetables could result in a net drop in edible calories in the food system. Most farms cycle between wheat, corn, and soy, so it’s not quite as simple as switching out inefficient corn for produce. Although, perhaps fruits and vegetables could be added to the rotation instead of corn. This type of analysis is necessarily complicated, especially by the diversity of end products from corn, wheat, and soy. If you have ideas as to how it could be improved, or if you know of similar analyses elsewhere, please leave a comment!<br />
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=========================================================<br />
<br />
References:<br />
[1] Data from FAO statistics <a href="http://www.fao.org/statistics/en/">website</a><br />
[2] <a href="http://blog.fooducate.com/2012/10/09/the-secrets-of-manufacturing-high-fructose-corn-syrup/">Fooducate article</a> (32 pounds) and 2008 Iowa State Extension Service <a href="http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/pm2061.pdf">publication</a> (33 pounds)<br />
[3] North Dakota State University Extension Service <a href="http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/procrop/crn/cornus03.htm">website</a><br />
[4] Data from USDA Economic Research Service <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/vegetables-pulses.aspx#.UeQHmRYbk0O">website</a><br />
<br />
* All calories determined from <a href="http://www.calorieking.com/">Calorie King</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-64127353289880192962013-05-05T08:04:00.000-07:002013-05-05T08:04:05.184-07:00A Farmroots Effort.Between my full-time job as a planetary scientist and caring for my one-year-old, it’s pretty tough to keep up with current events. However, a few recent headlines caught my attention and got me thinking about the best way to approach food system change.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Kid-tested, MOM-approved.</b><br />
<br />
I’ve seen a few signs for <a href="http://www.momsorganicmarket.com/retailer/store_templates/shell_id_1.asp?storeID=A6B40AE98C7842A98FC8DE4784880288">MOM's Organic Market</a>, a local grocery chain here in Maryland, but didn’t know much about them. MOM's is now <a href="http://civileats.com/2013/03/06/retailer-just-says-no-to-exploiting-children/">making headlines</a> because its founder and CEO, Scott Nash, has instituted a policy banning products that market to children. Anything with a cartoon character on the package, regardless of how wholesome it may appear to be, is being replaced. After his own toddler insisted they purchase a cereal she had never eaten solely because Clifford was on the box, he decided to make a change. According to <a href="http://scottscompostpile.com/2012/08/02/low-blow/">Scott’s blog</a>:
<br />
<blockquote>
“Advertising in and of itself is a rather shady game. I think most of it is deliberately misleading and, at best, beside the point - focusing more on creating shallow emotional attachments to a product rather than pointing out the merits of the product. And unfortunately, it works.
This manipulation process begins early when corporations target children. It’s irresponsible and, in my opinion, unethical. Let children be children and at least wait until they’re earning their own money before engaging them in the age of consumerism.”</blockquote>
Marketing to children is an especially contentious issue because scientific studies have shown that kids younger than 7 or 8 lack the capacity to tell truth from fiction [1]. They can’t critically analyze a health claim or see a marketing ploy for what it is. And while, in the end, the responsibility lies with the parent, using cartoon characters in advertising seems like a purposeful attempt to sabotage a parent’s good intentions. Unfortunately, regulating marketing to children has met with a lot of push-back, both from the food industry and from people who are concerned about their personal choices being further restricted. In contrast, MOM's approach offers shoppers a choice. If you would prefer to avoid marketing gimmicks and the potential for meltdowns in the cereal aisle, you can shop at MOM's.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Genetically-modified ordinances.</b><br />
<br />
Recently, <a href="http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/environmental-stewardship/genetically-engineered-foods">Whole Foods grocery stores announced</a> that, by 2018, all of their suppliers will be required to label any genetically modified ingredients in products sold at Whole Foods. According to their website, the decision to require GMO labeling was based on widespread customer demand.<br />
<br />
This is not a shocking choice; Whole Foods is all about organic food and sustainable agriculture. Or, at least, that is the niche in which they operate. Regardless, it’s a step in the right direction. Despite widespread popularity, it’s been incredibly difficult to pass labeling laws and other restrictions on GMOs at the state and federal level. But, as with MOM's, it seems like change at the retail level is much more feasible.<br />
<br />
This new policy builds upon Whole Foods’ existing relationship with the <a href="http://www.nongmoproject.org/">Non-GMO Project</a>, an organization that verifies whether food products contain any genetically modified ingredients. You can easily avoid GMOs by buying organic, but the Non-GMO Project labels provide extra certainty when it comes to processed or packaged foods. And Whole Foods’ new labeling rules will make it even easier to identify GM ingredients. Labeling is important because it allows consumers to show their preferences and exert market pressure.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Fair Food with Integrity.</b><br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> (CIW) has successfully convinced <a href="http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/Default.aspx?type=default">Chipotle</a> to sign their Fair Food Initiative, assuring that the farm workers who picked the tomatoes served at Chipotle were treated humanely. Until this change, Chipotle’s <a href="http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/fwi/fwi.aspx">Food With Integrity</a> program had included concern for the growing conditions of their produce and the treatment of their animals, but issues of farmworker exploitation were notably absent.<br />
<br />
The CIW has blazed a trail in improving the conditions for America’s farm workers. And they did so by targeting retailers at the top of the food chain, who can afford to pay a little extra (1 penny per pound) for their tomatoes. Chipotle now joins Burger King, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s in helping make sure farm workers have some basic protections, like access to shade during their workday. Their “Food With Integrity” message means a lot more when it includes the people who keep the food system running.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Customers making change.</b><br />
<br />
In the past, I’ve pointed out the increasing concentration within the food industry. Through mergers and acquisitions, from production to distribution, most food products are owned and sold by only a few companies. Smaller, independent companies are free to make their own policies and offer consumers a meaningful choice. It may take a bit more effort or money to shop at these retailers (although Chipotle has become quite prolific!), but it really is critical that we support diversity in the marketplace.<br />
<br />
In all three of these cases, retailers made changes that have been nearly impossible to achieve through governmental regulation, and they did so mainly in response to the desires of their customers. Perhaps this sort of “farmroots effort” is a better approach to changing to the food system than regulation at the state or federal level. Or, at least, it’s an approach we should take in tandem.<br />
<br />
With this in mind, I tried to think of some other retailer initiatives that consumers could get behind. One idea is to push Trader Joe’s to institute a similar GMO labeling requirement. TJs already rebrands the majority of their products, so they have ultimate control over what goes on the package. And Trader Joe’s recently signed the Fair Food Initiative, which shows that they are willing to consider policy changes when their customer base is vocal and persistent.<br />
<br />
Along the lines of marketing, I would definitely like to see retailers pull products with dubious health claims. I recently came across several sugar-laden cereals that claimed to be healthy because they included whole grains and were high in Calcium and Vitamin D. Careful label-reading revealed that those nutrients actually came from the milk that they expect you to eat along with the cereal. Dubious health claims are often purposefully misleading and set people up to make poor decisions. Somehow these claims do not fall under the category of false advertising, but they are clearly intended to be misinterpreted.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Are these things you would fight for? What else could we do?</i><br />
<br />
There are many ways we can advocate for change within the food system. The simplest is to change what we eat. We can also vote for change, both at the polls and through regular communication with our elected officials. These recent events have revealed an additional option – working with retailers to promote change at the point of purchase. From GMO labeling to food marketing to farm worker rights, we can make a difference.
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Related posts:</b><br />
On the CIW - <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/12/people-for-ethical-treatment-of-people.html">People for the Ethical Treatment of People</a><br />
On Chipotle's Food With Integrity program - <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/01/eat-at-steves.html">Eat at Steve's</a><br />
On concentration in the food industry - <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/10/to-organic-and-beyond.html">To organic and beyond!</a><br />
<br />
[1] I've heard this factoid several times, such as in <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/how-advertising-targets-our-children/">this NYT article</a> that gave an overview of recent studies on marketing to children. Unfortunately, I have been unable to identify the actual study. More information about marketing to children can be found via <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/phlp/winnable/advertising_children.html">the CDC</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-35046415643653965402013-02-18T08:16:00.000-08:002013-02-18T08:16:27.680-08:00What's cooking: Week 1.Being an ethical eater requires both cooking and planning. It has become a hobby in my household, one that is fun, cooperative, and can be done with a glass of red wine in one hand. But things weren't always easy. It can take some time to get into the groove of meal-planning. So, to help those of you who are just getting started, or merely looking for some fresh ideas, I'll be posting our weekly menus whenever I have the chance. Each meal is intended to serve two people for 2-3 nights, and they are all gluten and dairy free. As always, your feedback is appreciated. If you'd like to contribute recipes and menus from your household, let me know.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Slow-cooker beef with roasted red and sweet potatoes and a fresh spinach salad.</b><br />
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The cook time on this dish is long, between 4 and 8 hours, but you will only need to prepare things at the beginning and again near the end. Makes about 4 servings.<br />
<br />
Ingredients:<br />
2.5-3 lb. beef roast<br />
1.5 cups stock (or water)<br />
3-4 carrots<br />
2-3 stalks celery<br />
1 onion<br />
2 tsp thyme<br />
1 bay leaf<br />
Pepper and salt, to taste<br />
<br />
3-5 red potatoes<br />
2 small sweet potatoes<br />
Olive oil<br />
Pepper and salt, to taste<br />
Paprika, rosemary, and thyme, to taste<br />
<br />
4 cups raw baby spinach<br />
Raisins, apple, or pear<br />
Sesame seeds or slivered almonds<br />
Balsamic vinegar, to taste<br />
<br />
1. Chop the carrots and celery into roughly inch-long pieces. Quarter the onion.<br />
<br />
2. Add the carrots, celery, and onion to the slow cooker. Add meat and spices. Pour the broth around the meat so as to avoid washing off the spices. Cook on low for 8 hours or on high for 4 hours (depending on your particular slow cooker).<br />
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3. When the beef is about 45 min. from done, starting heating the oven to 400°.<br />
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4. Wash the red and sweet potatoes and pat dry. Chop into bite-sized pieces, discarding any ugly spots or poky bits.<br />
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5. Toss the pieces in olive oil (just enough to lightly coat them), and then spread them out on a lined baking pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, paprika, rosemary, and thyme, to taste (probably less than ½ tsp each). Place them in the oven for 35 minutes, “stirring” them after about 25 min.<br />
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6. Plate roughly a handful of spinach, top with some raisins and sesame seeds (or slivered almonds), and add a little balsamic vinegar as dressing.<br />
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7. Add potatoes to the plate. Slice the beef and serve, topped with veggies and drippings from the slow cooker.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Miso-glazed salmon over rice noodles and sesame broccoli.</b><br />
<br />
A quick and tasty dish, based on two recipes from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moosewood-Restaurant-Simple-Suppers-Weeknight/dp/0609609122/ref=bxgy_cc_b_text_a">Simple Suppers</a>. Makes 4 servings.<br />
<br />
Ingredients:<br />
4 portions of salmon (4-6 oz. each)<br />
2 Tbsp light miso<br />
1.5 Tbsp mirin<br />
1.5 tsp brown sugar<br />
2 Tbsp rice or cider vinegar<br />
2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds<br />
Scallion<br />
<br />
Pad Thai style rice noodles<br />
Gluten-free soy sauce (look for Tamari soy sauce)<br />
<br />
~1 lb. broccoli<br />
1 tsp rice or cider vinegar<br />
2 tsp dark sesame oil<br />
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes<br />
1/4 tsp salt<br />
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1. Begin boiling water for the noodles. Heat the oven to 450°.<br />
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2. Rinse and coarsely chop broccoli and place in a covered, microwave-safe dish with a few drops of water.<br />
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3. Rinse the salmon, pat dry, and place skin-side down on a lined baking sheet. Make several slashes through each fillet, but don’t cut all the way through.<br />
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4. Bake the salmon for 5 min. While it cooks, combine the miso, mirin, sugar, and vinegar. Slice the scallions. Remember to keep an eye on your pasta water; when it reaches a boil, add the noodles, and begin cooking according to the package directions.<br />
<br />
5. After 5 minutes, remove the salmon from the oven. Spoon the miso-mirin sauce over the fillets, and then return it to the oven for another 3-5 minutes, until it flakes easily with a fork.<br />
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6. During the final stage of cooking the salmon, cook the broccoli in the microwave on high for 3-4 min, until you reach your desired state of mushiness. Mix with the rice vinegar, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, and salt.<br />
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7. Spoon some broccoli into bowls, add rice noodles and a little soy sauce, and top with the salmon. Then, sprinkle the salmon with toasted sesame seeds and sliced scallions. Enjoy!<br />
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<b>Thai butternut squash soup with tofu over jasmine rice.</b><br />
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This is another great recipe from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moosewood-Restaurant-Simple-Suppers-Weeknight/dp/0609609122/ref=bxgy_cc_b_text_a">Simple Suppers</a>, although slightly modified. Use frozen squash and rice for a quick weeknight meal or cook them from scratch when you have more time. Cooking squash is pretty easy. You can even do it in the microwave*. Makes 4 servings.<br />
<br />
Ingredients:<br />
1 cup coconut milk<br />
1/2 tsp red curry paste<br />
1 tsp sugar<br />
1/2 tsp salt<br />
2 cups vegetable broth<br />
4 cups fresh or 24-oz frozen cooked winter squash (e.g. butternut or acorn)<br />
2 cups baby spinach or other leafy green<br />
Juice of 1 lime and 1 tsp lime zest<br />
Optional: 1 Keiffer lime leaf, chopped cilantro<br />
<br />
1/2 cake firm tofu (about 8oz)<br />
1 Tbsp gluten-free soy sauce<br />
1/2 tsp red curry paste<br />
1 tsp coconut oil<br />
<br />
0. If you are making rice on the stovetop or rice cooker, start it now.<br />
<br />
1. In a soup pot, combine coconut milk, curry paste, sugar, salt, and veggie broth, and mix well. Add the squash and the (optional) lime leaf, cover, and bring to a simmer. Cook about 15 min, or until the squash is thawed.<br />
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2. While the soup is cooking, dice the tofu and toss it in a bowl with the soy sauce and curry paste. Heat the coconut oil over medium-high heat in a small skillet. Add the tofu and cook for about 5 min, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and set aside.<br />
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3. Chop some cilantro. Grate the lime peel (avoid the bitter white pith underneath) and then juice the lime. Add the lime zest and juice to the soup. Stir in the spinach and tofu. Cook until the spinach wilts. If you are making frozen rice, cook it while the soup finishes up.
4. Spoon some rice into bowls. Top with the soup, and garnish with fresh chopped cilantro, if desired.<br />
<br />
* - You can learn how to microwave butternut squash <a href="http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1131037">here</a> and <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_5818256_cook-butternut-squash-microwave.html">here</a>. We typically cut ours in half before cooking it, most like the first recipe. Also, microwaving is best for squash that will be used in soups, sauces, etc. If you are going to eat your squash straight, oven roasting is the way to go.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-54151182440627703562012-12-27T07:46:00.001-08:002012-12-27T07:47:12.641-08:00Taking stock: What to do with a whole chicken.We’ve really enjoyed being a part of the meat <a href="http://www.northmountainpastures.com/content/12071">CSA program at North Mountain Pastures</a> over the past year. We receive one box each month, with a variety of beef, pork, and chicken. We’ve had the chance to try several kinds of steaks, roasts, and ribs that we’d never had before. We also had a traditional Oktoberfest sausage that was especially delicious with their homemade <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi">kimchi</a>.
Although the selection is mostly a surprise, one thing we always get is a whole chicken. At first, we were really intimidated. But, over time, we have learned just how easy it can be to cook a whole chicken, and how much food we can get from this one bird. For about $30, we can make dinner for two people for three nights and almost 2 quarts of chicken stock to freeze for later. Here’s how we do it.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Slow-cooker chicken.</b><br />
<br />
Our first task is to cook the whole chicken. We use a slow-cooker, one of the world's greatest inventions for busy people who still want to eat well. We typically eat the legs and thighs one night and the breasts the other night, along with a couple of vegetable side dishes. There is usually enough meat left over to incorporate into a third meal as well. A little leftover chicken makes a great addition to a veggie-laden salad or even a stir-fry.<br />
<br />
Ingredients:<br />
<ul>
<li>A whole chicken (4-5 pounds)</li>
<li>Approx. 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock</li>
<li>To taste – pepper, salt, rosemary, sage, and thyme</li>
</ul>
<br />
1. Place chicken in slow cooker.<br />
2. Add left-over chicken stock or vegetable stock, enough to cover about ½ the bird (at least enough to enter the cavity of the bird).<br />
3. Salt and pepper the outside of the chicken. You can also add about a teaspoon each of rosemary, sage, and/or thyme.<br />
4. Cook for 4 hours on high or 6-7 hours on low.<br />
5. Remove chicken from slow cooker, and cut off the meat to use for dinner. Place the carcass in a large sealable bag or container, and store it in the refrigerator for a few days or freeze it until you are ready to make the stock.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Vaguely Mediterranean chicken.</b> </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX2EftsxmFmZR2Z8UDLA7icbkif-obnpYjywSoFWvgauEv9bzXibvPFslzRz-1NKCUnGxKXXBKjr_MnhItXhwu2Dzuy8rG2vgwcIY_vJjFa-lqoW6rDG3DCJ8p_wq_zzyTphklbUcxkjIa/s1600/IMG_0459.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX2EftsxmFmZR2Z8UDLA7icbkif-obnpYjywSoFWvgauEv9bzXibvPFslzRz-1NKCUnGxKXXBKjr_MnhItXhwu2Dzuy8rG2vgwcIY_vJjFa-lqoW6rDG3DCJ8p_wq_zzyTphklbUcxkjIa/s320/IMG_0459.jpg" width="240" /></a>Last time we made a whole chicken, I raided the pantry and fridge to make up this easy third dinner. This recipe can be easily modified to include any other veggies you may have lying around.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ingredients:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Olive oil, if needed</li>
<li>Leftover chicken</li>
<li>1 can of diced tomatoes or 2 large tomatoes, chopped</li>
<li>1 bunch lacinato kale</li>
<li>1/2 tsp each, Italian seasoning and garlic powder</li>
<li>Rice</li>
</ul>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZkGNq8dhLZfcPFbKldhrrYBT5AK_YdRUtodiuysslspHVCrb83wYJ9R7cab62LqqQjxBH6Z1WlKPW3vNohRDukcsAvqCnwEMlTgZQEEi3MZit2NLNKMHotRzj7iYccE1SR4QNE84S7wo/s1600/IMG_0460.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZkGNq8dhLZfcPFbKldhrrYBT5AK_YdRUtodiuysslspHVCrb83wYJ9R7cab62LqqQjxBH6Z1WlKPW3vNohRDukcsAvqCnwEMlTgZQEEi3MZit2NLNKMHotRzj7iYccE1SR4QNE84S7wo/s320/IMG_0460.jpg" width="240" /></a>1. Rinse and coarsely chop kale. Cut chicken into bite-size pieces and dice tomatoes, if necessary. If you are making rice on the stovetop, start it now.<br />
2. Add oil to the pan, and warm over medium-high heat. The amount of oil will depend on the kind of pan you have; you shouldn’t need more than a tablespoon.<br />
3. Give the oil a minute or so to heat up, and then add the kale. Saute the kale for several minutes, stirring occasionally.<br />
4. Add the tomatoes, chicken, and spices. Reduce the heat to low and heat through. If you are making instant/frozen rice, start it now.<br />
5. Once the chicken is nice and warm (about 10-15 min.), serve over rice.<br />
<b>Stocking up.</b><br />
<div style="font-weight: bold;">
<br /></div>
We mostly follow the chicken stock recipe in Deborah Krasner’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Meat-Complete-Sourcing-Sustainable/dp/1584798637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356562267&sr=8-1&keywords=good+meat">Good Meat</a>, which is a wonderful resource for the ethical meat eater. We store our stock in the freezer in food-grade mason jars (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Mason-Jars-Wide-Mouth-Freeze/dp/B001DIZ1NO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356621276&sr=8-2&keywords=mason+jars+wide+mouth+pint">like these</a>) that we purchased at a local hardware store. When we're ready to use the stock, we place a jar in a bowl of water in the fridge overnight. Also, we add salt only when cooking with the stock, not in its preparation.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0fOYafBM5By5agWzFQ8hB-mi4uY3WkUIaGCzXS4x7eclatv661bwsAWfKHefvUZ8b94PtKjYfd7jtmK0NK7C87cKu6G3jiB_79DfgXj7_n8HprZP5D-4zXTt_PoUOIsUklk3nUG7Uj-ak/s1600/IMG_0480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0fOYafBM5By5agWzFQ8hB-mi4uY3WkUIaGCzXS4x7eclatv661bwsAWfKHefvUZ8b94PtKjYfd7jtmK0NK7C87cKu6G3jiB_79DfgXj7_n8HprZP5D-4zXTt_PoUOIsUklk3nUG7Uj-ak/s320/IMG_0480.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
Ingredients:<br />
<ul>
<li>A whole chicken carcass</li>
<li>1 carrot, cut into chunks</li>
<li>1 stalk of celery, cut in half</li>
<li>1 onion</li>
<li>1 whole clove or 1/4 tsp ground cloves</li>
<li>5 whole peppercorns</li>
<li>1 bay leaf</li>
</ul>
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1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Add enough water to cover the ingredients (Krasner suggests at least 5 inches over the top).<br />
2. Heat on medium-high heat, uncovered, until the stock begins to boil.<br />
3. Reduce heat to the lowest setting at which you can maintain a simmer.<br />
4. Let the stock simmer for 3-4 hours, until it is golden and fragrant. As it cooks, skim any foam the forms on the surface.<br />
5. Use a strainer or large slotted spoon to collect all the solids; smoosh any veggies to get a bit more flavor and then discard.<br />
6. Place the pot in the sink, surrounded by ice, for about half an hour (or just put in the fridge).<br />
7. When cool, pour the stock into jars or other freezer-safe containers. Chill the stock in the fridge overnight. Then, if you plan to store it for more than a few days, move it to the freezer.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-20468681787908102522012-11-04T18:44:00.000-08:002012-11-04T18:44:31.199-08:00Will vote for food.With election day almost upon us, we have heard the candidates express their views on the economy, abortion, and foreign policy. They have described how skyrocketing health care costs, and our future health care needs, will impact our society and the national debt. And yet, at no point has either candidate discussed the cost of subsidizing grain production or the impact of cheap processed food on our worsening health. Clearly, these important food issues are still not part of the national political conversation. Although the food movement has made great strides in expanding access to sustainable, nutritious, ethical food, it is equally important to have a political voice.<br />
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According to <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Portal:Ballot_measures">Ballotpedia</a>, there is only one food-related ballot measure being considered in this election: California’s <a href="http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/37/">Prop 37</a>, which requires that foods containing genetically-modified ingredients be labeled as such. The biotech companies have poured millions of dollars into defeating this important piece of legislation. They have filled the airwaves of California with negative and misleading ads that paint label advocates as ignorant fear-mongers. A label, they say, will give the impression that there is something to fear about GMOs and may turn away consumers.<br />
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In my opinion, there <i>is</i> reason for concern when it comes to GMOs. They are somehow considered different enough from their unmodified counterparts to warrant patents, yet similar enough to not require any additional testing or regulation. GMOs are banned in over 60 countries throughout the world, and even some countries accepting US food aid have declined our donations when the food is genetically-modified.<br />
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It is often argued that genetically modifying foods like corn and soybeans is no different from selective breeding of animals to promote certain traits. But GMOs are fundamentally different from anything we have created in the past. They incorporate genetic material from completely different species and deliver this material by encasing it in the cells of viruses (because viruses are so good at bypassing the natural defenses of the original genetic material). Furthermore, GM seeds are not developed in order to create food with more desirable traits. Rather, it enables companies to patent seeds, requiring farmers to buy new seed each season, and to create a better market for their chemicals. For example, the most prolific GMOs are designed to survive application of Round-Up, which is conveniently sold by the same company that owns the rights to the GM seed: Monsanto.<br />
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Genetically modified foods are different, both in form and function, but are they dangerous? Frankly, we don’t know because testing is not required by the FDA and the fact that the seeds are patented raises legal issues when it comes to studying them. Adding more regulation or oversight has also proved challenging because the GM seed companies (like Monsanto) are able to exert so much power over the regulatory process. The Citizens United decision, which protects the rights of corporations to make campaign contributions, has only exacerbated the problem.<br />
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Another (and perhaps better) way to force biotech companies to prove the safety of their product, both for consumers and the environment, is for consumers to demand it by choosing not to buy GMOs without further study. And really, isn’t that how the free market system is supposed to work? If consumers are afraid of GMOs, it should be the responsibility of the company selling them to prove that GMOs are safe, effective, and better than the competition.<br />
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Consumers cannot exert market pressure if they have no way to assess the differences between products. Give people information about what is in their food, and let them decide whether or not to buy it. Empowering consumers in this way allows us more freedom of choice, requires fewer regulations, and gives us the ability to control our food future.<br />
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I hope that, come Tuesday, Californian’s will vote yes on Prop 37 and that this fight will inspire similar legislation in other states. Moreover, I hope it will spur those of us in the food movement to take more political action. We need to call our senators and representatives to show our support for food-related legislation. We need to vote in the primaries for our elected officials so we can get more candidates with an interest in food issues onto the ballot. We must take every opportunity to ask candidates and elected officials about their views on farming, nutrition, and the environment so they know they have both the obligation and the support to fight for a better food future. We have to speak up and speak out, and eventually, we will win.<br />
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<i>Want more information? Check out these organizations and articles:</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.carighttoknow.org/">Right to Know</a><br />
<a href="http://justlabelit.org/">Just Label It</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/why-californias-proposition-37-should-matter-to-anyone-who-cares-about-food.html?pagewanted=all">Michael Pollan in The New York Times</a><br />
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe-and-anna-lappe/gmos-facts_b_2009917.html">Frances Moore-Lappe in the Huffington Post</a><br />
<a href="http://cuesa.org/article/farmers-truth-labeling">Farmers for truth in labeling</a><br />
<a href="https://civileats.com/2012/10/24/yes-on-california%E2%80%99s-proposition-37-a-vote-to-bring-food-to-the-national-agenda/">Civil Eats post on the fight for Prop 37</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-89959076100812004842012-09-30T13:31:00.000-07:002012-09-30T13:31:24.981-07:00Paleo for the planet.Back in August, I had the opportunity to attend the <a href="http://ancestralhealthsymposium2012.weebly.com/index.html">Ancestral Health Symposium 2012</a>. Last year, I attended the inaugural event as part of the interview team, and it was a fantastic experience (<a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/08/woodstock-of-evolutionary-medicine-part.html">read my recap</a>). This year, I worked with my good friend and collaborator, Tess McEnulty, to submit an abstract to speak at the symposium. We were honored when the AHS organizers selected our abstract! All of the presentations at AHS12 were recorded, but they won’t be online for a while, so I thought I would give you all a preview of our presentation: <i>Sustainability and world hunger from a Paleo perspective</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu7FsfqLv7dNGdH53I7EHrIVVKY8TKWXTyU8AqdgS9tHRtSoh-mq2wETH4VSczPPVGpQeUX05L-ihp0ZThSFxbGBR60GKhY3A2Dqb0Q8hHX6psWBLCQ9oQ_kJjg3mwgAcPrR2VhTR8Lzqe/s1600/Slide02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu7FsfqLv7dNGdH53I7EHrIVVKY8TKWXTyU8AqdgS9tHRtSoh-mq2wETH4VSczPPVGpQeUX05L-ihp0ZThSFxbGBR60GKhY3A2Dqb0Q8hHX6psWBLCQ9oQ_kJjg3mwgAcPrR2VhTR8Lzqe/s400/Slide02.png" width="400" /></a></div>
In the year 2000, we devoted an area larger than the state of California to the growing of industrial corn, wheat, and soy. I say “industrial” because these are crops that have been developed for yield and are not directly edible by human beings. Instead, they have to be processed. In fact, 70% of the wheat and 12% of the corn we grow goes into processed food products like cereal, pasta, soda, and candy; 80% of the corn and 22% of the wheat is fed to animals.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuXx1nw-XSQp89isT8TVaBZEU_qNVh-qfmyv4hWHUFz_gfWCS_Z2slC6MYLq61ttsDTrwKglKNe8AQ8UqNh_Ee5yoVfzAbu_e394JrCg-D9ksR19MPEpMYqUC21GuPAj02b2QCFiUx_1sX/s1600/Slide03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuXx1nw-XSQp89isT8TVaBZEU_qNVh-qfmyv4hWHUFz_gfWCS_Z2slC6MYLq61ttsDTrwKglKNe8AQ8UqNh_Ee5yoVfzAbu_e394JrCg-D9ksR19MPEpMYqUC21GuPAj02b2QCFiUx_1sX/s400/Slide03.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This system of food production requires a lot of inputs in order to function. According to the <a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/">USGS</a>, conventional agriculture uses 128 billion gallons of water each day for crop irrigation, whereas domestic usage (i.e. water for showering and washing dishes) totals 2 billion gallons per day. Heavy machinery and chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers rely on fossil fuels and other natural resources that cannot be replenished nearly as quickly as they are being depleted. The beef industry, which relies on corn and wheat for cheap animal feed, also relies on large quantities of antibiotics to keep the cows from dying from acidosis (caused by eating grain rather than grass) and hormones to increase weight given the shortened life span of grain-fed feedlot cows. And this entire system is kept solvent by federal subsidies, which make corn and wheat incredibly cheap.<br />
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For all of these inputs, what do we get in return? Feedlots produce lagoons of chemical-laden animal waste that pollute the air and nearby water resources. They are also major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Growing the grains that feedlots depend on has led to increased environmental degradation – loss of species diversity, soil erosion, and depletion of soil nutrients. The processed food we produce in this system makes us sick. The process by which we raise animals makes <i>them</i> sick, and agricultural antibiotic usage has led to drug-resistant strains of disease to which <i>we</i> are susceptible. In the bigger picture, our food supply is quite vulnerable because it is so reliant upon very few crops. Drought, disease, or pests that affect any of these few species could have disastrous consequences for our nation’s food supply. And sadly, we as consumers have very little control over our food. Despite all of these negative outputs, the conventional food system does provide a surplus of (apparently) cheap calories on grocery store shelves. This outcome is often suggested as an end that justifies the means in the face of an expanding population that too often goes hungry.<br />
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According to the <a href="http://www.fao.org/index_en.htm">Food and Agriculture Organization</a> of the United Nations, there were 850 million starving people in the world in 2008. However, global food production provides over 2700 calories per person per day (estimate from 2002, with similar rates of malnourishment to 2008). Of course, neither the calories nor the malnourishment are distributed evenly throughout the world. The above table, using data from <a href="http://faostat3.fao.org/home/index.html">FAOSTAT</a>, shows statistics for the ten countries with the highest percentage of undernourished people (38% to 65% of the total population of each country). It also shows the number of calories in the country each day and the estimated average caloric need per person per day, which is based on the age and sex break-down within the country. Of these ten countries, only two actually have fewer calories than the population should require, and even in those cases, the deficit is less than 100 calories per person per day. These numbers tell us that global hunger is not solely a matter of producing too few calories.<br />
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In the developing world, hunger is caused mainly by inequality and poverty; people are simply too poor to buy food. Political instability and lack of infrastructure also impair people’s ability to access food. In addition to the hunger problem, 2 billion people do not get enough iron or iodine, and more than 200 million children are deficient in protein and vitamin A to the point that they are developmentally impaired. The situation seems grim given that the world population is expected to rise and global climate change may make resources even more scarce.<br />
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In the United States, there are over 3700 calories available per person per day. About 5% of the population reports having to reduce their food intake for financial reasons, although this reduction doesn’t necessarily mean they are getting too few calories. Unlike the developing world, in which starvation is a major problem, Americans have skyrocketing rates of obesity and diet-related diseases. <b>Even the country’s homeless have similar rates of obesity and Type-2 diabetes as the rest of the population.</b><br />
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Americans, on average, consume 70% of their calories in the form of refined grains, vegetable oils, and added sugars – calories created from the three crops we devote so many resources to growing. Calories are not a problem in the US, but it seems like the type of calories we consume are making us very sick.
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Worldwide, people are not getting enough nutritious food. In the developing world, distribution limits access to sufficient calories. In the US, nutritionally-poor foods and hidden calories have led to a population that is overfed but nutrient-deficient. At the same time, conventional agriculture is too resource-dependent to be sustainable, is ruining our environment, and provides nutritionally-poor calories.<br />
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Big Agriculture has offered their solution to feeding the world sustainably. We should continue to purchase their technology and chemicals in order to increase grain production and, subsequently, add more calories to the world’s supply. This is not actually a solution. We don’t need more calories to feed the world, and this approach will neither produce more healthy food nor improve food access to the world’s poor. And while biotech companies have long promised that genetically-modified seeds will offer enhanced food production in the face of climate change, they have yet to deliver on such promises. Also, poor farmers who adopt these growing practices will not be producing food they can eat, and the additional costs of proprietary seeds and chemicals make it harder to turn a profit and thus afford to buy food.<br />
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What if we tried to improve conventional agriculture by increasing efficiency? In a research paper by a group from the <a href="http://environment.umn.edu/">Institute on the Environment</a> at the University of Minnesota (<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html">Foley et al., 2011</a>), smarter use of irrigation and fertilizer could reduce resource usage without reducing food production. However, the crops that would thrive under this more-efficient system include several types of grains, sugarbeets and sugarcane, oil crops, and two kinds of starchy root vegetables. In other words, the same nutritionally-poor foods we currently produce. Improving efficiency may provide us with the same calories for fewer resources, but it will do nothing to improve access to food - so it won’t alleviate hunger - or to improve the healthfulness of the food that is available.<br />
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Another solution the group proposed was to consume calories more efficiently. They point out that the number of calories produced feeding grain to cows is far less than the number available from the grain itself. For the same resources, we could eat more calories in the form of processed grains, refined vegetable oils, and added sugars than we can get from eating grain-fed cows. A true statement, but would we be any better off adding these calories to our diets?<br />
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Which brings us to the question of diet...<br />
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Perhaps we could increase the sustainability of food production by eating the least resource-intensive foods. A study by <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010EI321.1">Eshel et al. (2010)</a> compared the land use and reactive nitrogen (i.e. chemical fertilizer) requirements of different foods. They found that plant foods demand far fewer of these resources than conventionally-grown animal foods, which is unsurprising given that we currently grow plants to feed to animals. More interesting, though, is the list of the ten least resource-intensive foods, which again consists of several types of grains and oils, grapes, and sweet potatoes. Based on these metrics, the best diet would consist of 55% of calories in the form of grains and more than 30% in the form of peanut, corn, and soybean oils. That means consuming even more grains and oils, as a fraction of total calories, than Americans currently eat.<br />
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It turns out that vegetables are actually quite resource intensive compared to grains, at least the way they are conventionally grown. In fact, vegetables can require as many resources as animal products. However, these are the most nutritious foods we can eat. This illustrates the importance of considering nutrition along with sustainability. Everything we do has an impact. Every choice we make requires resources. Shouldn’t we strive to make the best use of those resources rather than solely trying to limit our consumption?<br />
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Truly sustainable agriculture provides the healthiest food with the least environmental impact. On the other hand, grain agriculture wastes scarce resources because it does a poor job of producing calories that keep us healthy. If we want to feed the world sustainably, we need to (1) empower the poor to alleviate hunger, (2) defend healthy foods even if they come at a higher environmental cost, and (3) support sustainable agriculture to minimize the impact of healthy food production.</div>
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Human beings had millions of years to adapt to a diet that included meat, fish, and plants. Research within the ancestral health community has shown that our bodies function optimally when we eat the foods that have been a part of our diet for millennia. However, the exact proportions of meat, fish, and plants that we require to be healthy is not known and may even vary amongst the human population. The ancestral health community can provide an important voice in the sustainability conversation by addressing these issues in order to determine the best suite of diets for both health and environment.</div>
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The amount and variety of meat we need to eat to be healthy is still heavily debated. It is certainly possible that even the best polyculture farming systems would require a lot more resources to create meat than plant-based foods, which would make it harder to defend unchecked meat-eating. However, it is important that we focus this discussion on a real choice between healthy options - such as farming systems that incorporate only chickens when growing produce versus ones that focus on grass and cows. Arguing about how grains should be eaten, as junk food or as CAFO beef, will not lead us to an ethical and sustainable food system.</div>
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As the last few slides show, there are many ways to get involved - as a consumer, a citizen, and a member of the world community.</div>
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Educating yourself is the first step to action. Here is a list of resources.<br />
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<i>Acknowledgements: I first want to thank my collaborator, Tess McEnulty, for encouraging me to submit this abstract, helping me seek out all of the data and sources for the material we presented, and being patient when I had to run off to take care of the baby in the middle of our work sessions! I also want to thank Gidon Eshel for useful discussions about the sustainability of different diets. And, of course, I want to thank the Ancestral Health Society and the AHS2012 organizers for giving us the opportunity to present this material and for putting together another stellar symposium!</i></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-30253532078470095142012-07-31T16:45:00.001-07:002012-07-31T16:47:26.864-07:00Mid-atlantic munching.Six months after our move to Maryland, and 11 weeks after the birth of our baby, we are finally getting settled in to our new home! Coming from Berkeley, we were concerned about the sustainable food options that would be available to us on the East Coast. We were pleasantly surprised to find a multitude of options that have fit into our less-flexible lifestyle.<br />
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<b>The meat of the matter.</b><br />
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There are two farmers markets near our home – one on Saturday and another on Sunday. Both offer meat and eggs from ethical farms. After a few visits and a little background research, we decided to join the CSA at <a href="http://www.northmountainpastures.com/">North Mountain Pastures</a>. We get a selection of meats that is conveniently delivered to the farmers market once a month. Participation in a CSA typically requires an up-front investment, but we figured out that we are spending about $8 per pound of meat. And wow – is it tasty!<br />
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<b>Veggie tales.</b><br />
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We were a bit overwhelmed with our newborn around the time that produce CSAs were getting started, so we didn’t end up joining one. Instead, we’ve been buying some produce at the farmers market and a lot from Whole Foods. There is a large selection of organic produce at WF, but not much of it is local, even during the summer growing season. In fact, I have seen a lot of produce from the same organic farms I used to buy from in California!
The main source of local (or at least East Coast) produce is from <a href="http://www.ladymoonfarms.com/">Lady Moon Farms</a>. I started buying their produce without knowing much about the farm – other than that it is organic. According to their website, Lady Moon was the first farm to join the <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> and commit to humane conditions for their farm workers. This is an effort that is dear to my heart (read my post on the topic <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/12/people-for-ethical-treatment-of-people.html">here</a>), and I am thrilled to be supporting it with my food dollars!<br />
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<b>Summer sausage skillet.</b><br />
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This past week, I decided to highlight some of the awesome food from Lady Moon Farms and North Mountain Pastures. However, my husband has been out of town, so it also needed to be something easy!<br />
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<ul>
<li>1 lb sausage</li>
<li>2 medium zucchini</li>
<li>2 medium summer (yellow) squash</li>
<li>2 large tomatoes</li>
<li>1 bunch green onions</li>
<li>3 cloves garlic (or garlic powder, to taste)</li>
<li>4 tsp Worcestershire sauce</li>
<li>1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)</li>
<li>Olive oil, as needed</li>
</ul>
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1. Chop the sausage, zucchini, squash, and tomatoes into bite-sized pieces. Slice the green onions. Mince the garlic. I like to put the zucchini, squash, onions, and garlic into one bowl and the tomatoes in a second bowl. Then I cut up the sausage so I can keep the raw meat away from everything else.<br />
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2. In a skillet, cook the sausage over medium heat. If you are using cooked sausage or very lean sausage (like chicken or turkey), you’ll want to add some olive oil to the pat and let it warm up before adding the meat. I use spicy pork sausage and a Teflon pan, so I don’t use any extra oil.<br />
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3. Once the sausage is no longer pink (if it started raw) or after a few minutes (if it was cooked), add the zucchini, squash, onions, and garlic. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.<br />
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4. Stir in the tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper. Heat through.<br />
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5. Enjoy!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-71313462344813093612012-06-09T14:11:00.001-07:002012-06-09T14:11:37.484-07:00Your top 20, America!In honor of surpassing 100 likes on this blog’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/An-Omnivores-Decision/103925949672057">Facebook page</a>, I decided to make a list of 100 things we could each do to become more ethical eaters or support a more sustainable food system. Then, my son was born. And so, I present you with this list of 20!<br />
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As always, I’d be happy to hear your ideas. Perhaps we can get to 100 after all!<br />
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<b>1. Change where you shop.</b><br />
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Buying direct from a farm through a consumer-supported agriculture program enables you to support the practices that matter most to you. It also gives you access to local, seasonal, whole foods. Both produce and meat CSAs are available in many areas; use <a href="http://www.localharvest.org/">Local Harvest</a> for ones near you. The variety of produce and cuts of meat that make their way to your doorstep through a CSA can be both challenging and thrilling. And the best part, the prices are often cheaper than at the grocery store!<br />
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Not ready to commit to a CSA or investing in part of a whole animal? Farmers markets and food co-ops might be a better choice for you. Similar to a CSA, farmers markets typically offer lower prices on seasonal produce and ethical animal products as well as access to vendors with a variety of farming practices. There is no commitment to purchase, and you have more control over what products you end up with. However, deducing on the fly which vendors meet your standards can be challenging. Food co-ops often focus on offering sustainable and/or healthier options, and a little research can help you identify a co-op that fits your priorities. Members typically get a discount, and some offer an even deeper discount if you volunteer.<br />
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<b>2. Opt for organic, especially when buying the Dirty Dozen.</b><br />
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Conventional, resource-intensive, chemical-laden agriculture is unsustainable. Not only does it reduce the growing power of the land, it also pollutes water resources that people rely on. Plus, the pesticides used in conventional agriculture have been shown to make it all the way to your plate. The Environmental Working Group's <a href="http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/">Dirty Dozen</a> are the foods that carry the most amount of pesticide. Buying all organic produce is a great choice for the environment and your personal health, but you should really buy these 12 from organic growers or opt for produce on the <a href="http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/">Clean 15</a> list.<br />
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<b>3. Don’t eat meat you didn’t source yourself.</b><br />
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Factory meat is gross. The animals are treated terribly, and their waste is a major pollutant. Animal feed is produced through wasteful conventional agriculture, and all of the antibiotics used to keep the animals from dying under such dire conditions are making them less useful to us. Polyculture and pasture-based farming systems, on the other hand, can produce meat in a way that actually enriches the land. Allowing the animals to wander freely, expressing their natural behaviors, is not just a kindness; the animals are actually part of the mechanics of the farm. Sourcing your own meat allows you to steer clear of antibiotics and hormones and to support farms that use ethical practices. You can still enjoy a nice pork chop and a glass of wine by purchasing meat from a farm you trust, or by seeking out a restaurant that coordinates with ethical farms.<br />
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<b>4. Stop drinking soda.</b><br />
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I’ve discussed this at length in posts on <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-sweet-it-is.html">sugar</a>, <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/07/fizzy-failures.html">soda</a>, and my <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/11/life-unsweetened.html">Food Day challenge</a>. The average American consumes an unhealthy amount of sugars, and soda is a key contributor. Even diet soda is correlated with health problems, although the exact pathways are still uncertain. Soda doesn’t provide your body with anything it needs, is likely harmful in many ways, and uses a LOT of resources – the water used to make the soda, the resources that go into growing corn for soda’s corn-based sweeteners and additives, the fuel used to transport it all over the world, and the resources that go into making and disposing of bottles and cans. Sustainability is a trade-off. Everything we do has an impact; everything requires resources. Couldn’t our resources go to something better than soda?<br />
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<b>5. Eat at a farm-to-table restaurant.</b><br />
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Restaurants that use local ingredients and work with local, small-scale farms are becoming more prevalent these days. Not everything you find in a farm-to-table restaurant will be ethical; even small farms can use some sub-optimal practices. However, the ingredients are almost certainly better than at restaurants that don’t make any effort. Plus, frequenting these restaurants is a way of exerting market pressure. If more people demand better quality, and are willing to pay a little extra for it, ingredient sourcing at restaurants is likely to improve. Find your new favorite restaurant at <a href="http://www.localharvest.org/">Local Harvest</a> or <a href="http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/product-search/">Animal Welfare Approved</a>.<br />
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<b>6. Don’t trash your food scraps.</b><br />
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In a landfill, even things that we would consider biodegradable have trouble breaking down due to a lack of airflow and other necessities. Food scraps, for example, petrify in landfills. Luckily, there are many other options for disposing of food scraps. Many areas now offer food scrap recycling programs. Worm compositing is a great way to turn your trash into nutrient-dense fertilizer, and it lacks a lot of the attention that a regular compost pile requires (read about my experience <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/02/wiggly-way-to-wipe-out-waste.html">here</a>). Raising backyard chickens not only gives you a way of disposing of food scraps, it also provides you with a hyper-local source of ethical eggs. Polyculture farmer, Joel Salatin, has stated that we would not have a commercial egg industry in this country if everyone raised just enough backyard chickens to eat their food scraps. Chickens are a major commitment, though. You will need to make arrangements for them when you travel and keep them safe from predators. Also, many areas have laws that restrict the kinds of animals that can be kept on a residential property. So be sure to check the rules in your area before getting started.<br />
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<b>7. Spread the word.</b><br />
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Most people know very little about where their food comes from. As you learn more about the ethical dilemmas associated with the modern food industry, share what you’ve learned with others. Get involved in the food conversation by commenting on blogs and news articles. And be sure to share what you learn elsewhere with readers here! You can post links to interesting articles on this blog’s <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/An-Omnivores-Decision/103925949672057">Facebook page</a> or leave comments with links on related posts.<br />
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<b>8. Do-it-yourself.</b><br />
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Urban homesteading is the practice of self-sufficient living. Homesteading can extend beyond producing your own food to include things like greywater capture, using solar energy, and restoring or repurposing old items. The bottom line is to take control of your own needs and to do so in a sustainable way. Plant a garden. Cook your own meals. Save the bones from your ethical chicken or beef to create a homemade stock. Save your bacon grease. Jar produce for use during the off-season. All of these practices can reduce waste, enable you to eat well with less environmental impact, and put you in more control of your food. You can learn more about urban homesteading on websites like <a href="http://Homegrown.org/">Homegrown.org</a> and <a href="http://makeprojects.com/">Make Magazine’s projects site</a>.<br />
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<b>9. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.</b><br />
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I’ve been hearing this waste management mantra since I was a kid, and it still makes a lot of sense. Simple things like bringing a reusable water bottle with you when you leave the house or holding onto grocery bags to use on your next shopping trip reduce the number of new products we need to manufacture. Before you toss something into the trash, see if you can think of a creative alternative use, such as using empty coffee cans to protect fledgling plants in your garden. Most neighborhoods offer recycling bins that get emptied along with regular trash pick-up.<br />
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<b>10. Participate in politics, especially the 2012 Farm Bill.</b><br />
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Our food system is governed by laws that we can help shape. Voting every four years is important, but being active citizens in the interim can have a much greater impact. Keep up with food-related legislation such as the 2012 Farm Bill, and contact your congressmen to make sure your voice is heard (read about my experience <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/11/vote-early-vote-often.html">here</a>). And don’t forget about local politics. Zoning restrictions and other city council policies can restrict the establishment of community gardens, the sharing or sale of produce grown on residential property, and more. It’s up to you to advocate for more food-friendly policies. Many communities are establishing food policy councils for just this purpose. Get involved with one in your area or consider creating one.<br />
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<b>11. Adopt a nutrient-rich whole foods diet.</b><br />
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Refined grains, vegetable oils, and added sugars make up more than half the calories in the average American’s diet. And yet, these foods have almost no nutritional value. Eating a diet rich in fresh produce, clean meat and seafood, and other minimally-processed foods is far better for your health. Growing foods that keep us vibrant and healthy is a much better use of our limited natural resources!<br />
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<b>12. Eat less beef.</b><br />
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Compared to other animal products, raising beef cattle requires much more land and contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions. Producing beef using the feedlot system has many additional downsides, but even in the most sustainable systems, beef comes at a higher cost in terms of resources than eggs, chicken, or pork. So, rather than relying on beef, try substituting some other animal products or opt for a vegetarian meal. Beef can still be a part of an environmentally-conscious diet, but perhaps not a major part. Trying different cuts of beef or purchasing a share of a whole cow will help utilize more of the animal, which means fewer cows are needed overall.<br />
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<b>13. Buy ethical eggs.</b><br />
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In a <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/04/incredible-ethical-egg.html">previous post</a>, I went into detail about the convention egg industry, and why I work so hard to avoid consuming conventional eggs. Cage free, free range, and organic labels don’t mean much when it comes to the living conditions of the chickens. It’s pretty much impossible to buy truly ethical eggs from a regular grocery store, but natural groceries, food co-ops, and farmers markets often have a selection of eggs from fully pasture-raised chickens. Some CSAs also offer eggs. However you can find them, ethical eggs are worth the search and the heftier price tag. Ethical eggs are nutritious, delicious, and require far fewer resources than other animal products.<br />
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<b>14. Be skeptical of health claims.</b><br />
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Health claims are a big trend amongst food advertisers, but truly healthy foods – like broccoli or cashews – rarely have flashy packaging and health claims. So how do you know what is truly healthy? The best approach is to use plain old common sense. Chocolate-flavored cereal that claims to be healthy because it has whole grains is probably not something you should eat. Gummy candies with a huge “Fat Free” label aren’t healthy either. Still unsure? Opt for foods with the smallest number of steps between the farm and you. Also, consider what the food is offering your body. Sweetened beverages, artificially flavored and colored snack chips, candy, and heavily processed packaged meals are all unlikely to offer much nutrition and, therefore, cannot be truly healthy.<br />
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<b>15. Don’t stop at the headlines.</b><br />
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Similar to health claims, results of food and nutrition studies can be difficult to interpret. It seems like every day there is a news report claiming that a certain food is correlated with health problems or that a tasty treat is actually beneficial. In reality, the results are rarely as straightforward as the news media would make them seem. All of these studies require some critical thinking to understand, and none of them should be considered a license to over-consume (or completely give up) a particular food. To learn how to better interpret health claims and the results of food studies, check out this humorous and informative video, by the creator of the documentary Fat Head.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y1RXvBveht0" width="560"></iframe>
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<b>16. Buy from retailers that have signed the Fair Food Agreement.</b><br />
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Would you pay a penny more for a pound of tomatoes if it meant that the farm workers who picked those tomatoes were not beaten, locked in crates, or made to work an entire day without breaks or shade? The <a href="http://ciw-online.org/index.html">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> is negotiating with food retailers, like grocery stores and fast food restaurants, to improve the conditions for farm workers. Retailers who commit to the Fair Food Agreement source ingredients from farms that follow a basic list of standards for their workers. You can support this important effort by shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Find a complete list of retailers who have signed the agreement of the CIW <a href="http://ciw-online.org/highlights.html">website</a>.<br />
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<b>17. Get informed; stay informed.</b><br />
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The documentaries King Corn, Food Inc., and Fresh provide excellent background on the food system. For someone really new to the corn-to-beef monoculture system and its history, I’d recommend King Corn, whereas Fresh and Food, Inc. both cover a wider breath of food system issues. There are also several great blogs that report on current happenings related to food and environmental sustainability, such as <a href="http://grist.org/">Grist</a>, <a href="http://civileats.com/">Civil Eats</a>, and the <a href="http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/">National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition</a>.<br />
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<b>18. Invest in a sustainable food future.</b><br />
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From CSA participation and farmers markets to farm loan programs and eco-conscious retirement accounts, there are many ways to put your dollars to work! I recently went into detail on the options for investing in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/03/investing-in-our-food-future-part-two.html">sustainable farms directly</a> and on the options for <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/02/investing-in-our-food-future-part-one.html">green retirement accounts</a>.<br />
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<b>19. Fight for better food at work or at school.</b><br />
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Although the experts may disagree on what constitutes an optimally healthy diet, pretty much everyone recognizes the importance of eating more vegetables, especially leafy greens. Unfortunately, the food offerings in many workplace cafeterias and public schools are sorely lacking in fresh vegetables. You can help by advocating for better options. Healthier foods can help reduce healthcare costs, which may get your employer’s attention. As for school lunches, farm-to-school programs and school gardens have shown that kids who are involved in growing and preparing vegetables are much more willing to eat them. Perhaps you could even volunteer to start a campus garden that would supply fresh produce.<br />
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<b>20. Eat sustainable seafood.</b><br />
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Seafood is very healthy, providing lots of omega-3 and other brain-building fats. However, overfishing is harming our oceans, and many fish farms are not ecologically sound (although the number of sustainable farms are increasing). Monterey Bay Aquarium’s <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx">Seafood Watch</a> offers guides and information as to the most sustainable seafood choices. They even have downloadable pocket guides and an app for both iPhone and Android. Also, check out their <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_health.aspx">Super Green list</a> to find seafood options that contains few contaminants (like Mercury) and have a low environmental footprint.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-17202838616528136542012-05-05T08:05:00.000-07:002012-05-05T08:05:00.779-07:00Dude, TMI. (Part Two)After years of worsening GI problems (described in gory detail in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2012/04/dude-tmi-part-one.html">Part One</a>), I finally got back to normal by eliminating all forms of dairy and heavily restricting my intake of gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. Alleviating my symptoms required me to go outside of conventional medicine, leaving their diagnosis of IBS behind. Actually fixing the problem and healing my body took an even larger leap out of the box and introduced me to the amazing field of naturopathic medicine.<br />
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<b>From TMI to TIM.</b></div>
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I attended the <a href="http://ancestryfoundation.org/">Ancestral Health Symposium 2011</a> as a volunteer interviewer. I was assigned several speakers to work with, which meant that I sat in on talks I might not have otherwise. One such talk was entitled, “The Rainforest in Your Gut” by <a href="http://www.aspirenaturalhealth.com/bios_aspire_natural_health.html">Tim Gerstmar</a>, naturopathic doctor, and “Dr. BG”, pharmacist, <a href="http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/">blogger</a>, and author. I honestly had no idea what this talk would be about. I certainly never thought it could change my life!<br />
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<b>The rainforest in your gut.</b><br />
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<strong style="display: block; margin: 12px 0 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ancestralhealth/drbg" target="_blank" title="AHS Slides_DrBG and Tim Gerstmar">AHS Slides_DrBG and Tim Gerstmar</a></strong> <iframe frameborder="0" height="355" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/8802363" width="425"></iframe> <br />
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View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint" target="_blank">PowerPoint</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ancestralhealth" target="_blank">Ancestry</a> </div>
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It turns out that we have a whole biome of critters living in our digestive systems. In fact, there are more bacteria in your gut than there are cells in your body! And that’s a good thing because these bacteria keep your gut in good working order. Poor diet, especially one rich in foods that irritate the gut, can disrupt the gut biome leading to all kinds of GI symptoms, nutrient malabsorption, food intolerance, and even a condition called leaky gut. That’s when the lining of your gut is perforated, allowing toxins to enter the bloodstream and wreak havoc throughout your body.<br />
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In the first half of the talk, Dr. BG described in detail the inner workings of the gut and the different pathways by which an unhealthy gut can cause a whole host of problems. Some specific health problems she mentioned, that aren’t necessarily ones you would associate with diet, included fibromyalgia, rosacea, congestive heart failure, hypothyroidism, asthma, infant colic, and autism. These conditions are very highly correlated with intestinal permeability (leaky gut). In addition, IBS, obesity, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and fatty liver disease can be caused by diet and treated through diet and gut rehab.<br />
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Dr. BG also described her own experiences with both her daughter and her niece. Her daughter had chronic constipation since birth and constantly complained of stomach pain. Her niece, Jillian, was born with mild autism. Both kids saw tremendous improvement by switching to a less-irritating Paleo diet (Dr. BG and her sister are writing a book on their experience with Jillian's autism and diet, but as of this writing, it has not been released.). However, as Dr. BG explained, not everyone can be cured by simply adopting a more ancestral diet. Some people require more aggressive treatment, which can include an even stricter diet, adding fermented foods, or taking probiotic supplements to help restore the gut. As she said, to rehab the gut, we need to “seal it, heal it, and deal with the consequences”.<br />
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After Dr. BG's part of the presentation, Tim Gerstmar took over (~29 minutes into the video; slide 21). Tim is a naturopathic doctor at <a href="http://www.aspirenaturalhealth.com/">Aspire Natural Health</a> in Washington State. His specialty is GI health, and he blew my mind with his description of basically all of my symptoms and all the tests and treatments he routinely performs, which I’d never heard of before.<br />
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Gut dysbiosis, as Tim explained, is caused by either pathogens or imbalance in the gut and is connected to food intolerance, malabsorption, inflammation, and gut permeability. He listed 5 symptoms that suggest a person might have gut dysbiosis: significant health problems that may or may not be obviously related to diet, chronic gas or bloating, chronic heartburn, chronic constipation or diarrhea, and poo that contains blood, mucus, or undigested food. This list definitely got my attention as it contains pretty much every symptom I had been suffering from! Even the undigested food that hadn’t set off any red flags with my regular doctor. Sadly, as Tim said, many of these ailments are common, but <i>common is not the same as normal</i>.<br />
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Tim described the types of tests he runs and how they can both diagnose the specific problems in someone’s gut and also show how well the person would respond to certain treatments. There are five treatment categories, which are often used together depending on how sick a person is and in what ways: diet, herbal medications, prescription medications, gut healing formulas, probiotics, and “brain support”.<br />
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When it comes to diet, the recommendations are stricter depending on how much healing your gut needs. Bacteria and pathogens that cause gut dysbiosis feed on carbs, so sugars, grains, and most fruit are the first things to go. Then, because the gut is already messed up, other irritants should also be avoided, including dairy, soy, alcohol, and even legumes and nightshades (like tomatoes). In time, as the gut becomes better able to process these foods, they may be worked back into the diet.<br />
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Now, this may sound like a lot of restrictions, but there is still a whole world of food out there that you can eat on a gut-healing diet. Vegetables (other than nightshades), meat, fish, nuts, coconut, perhaps some fruit, and fermented foods are all great. The diet recommendations for gut-healing are very similar to those of the Paleo, Primal, and other ancestral diets, although you may need to be more restrictive. There are many resources available online if you want to test out a gut-healing diet on your own (like <a href="http://robbwolf.com/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com//welcome-to-marks-daily-apple/#axzz1u0VNQlJe">here</a>). The length of the diet (weeks to months) and how restrictive you would need to be would depend on the level of gut dysbiosis and permeability that you have.<br />
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Herbal or prescription medications and gut-healing formulas can really help bring the gut back into working order, but for these, you should be working with a doctor. For example, Tim uses cultures (i.e. poo) to identify the ways in which a person’s gut is malfunctioning, and that helps him decide which types of medications to use.<br />
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<b>The long and winding road… to recovery.</b><br />
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For me, cutting out dairy improved my daily GI health the most. Cutting out gluten also helped. At that point, I found that I didn’t have problems with nightshades or fruit. However, foods with anti-nutrients akin to gluten did give me problems. Some legumes, like kidney beans, split peas, and certain kinds of lentils cause me a good deal of irritation, and the supposed super-food quinoa is virtually indigestible!
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Tim also helped me start on a daily regiment of probiotics. I took a ¼ teaspoon of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Klaire-Labs-Ther-Biotic-Complete-Powder/dp/B001PYZDLG">Ther-biotic Complete powder</a> each day, mixed in with my morning nut butter. Because I saw such a vast improvement from changing my diet, and because I got pregnant shortly after the symposium, I decided not to pursue further treatment aside from the probiotics.
Even though I am feeling so much better, I still plan to continue taking probiotics in addition to my reformed diet. Our bodies used to get these important bacteria from traditionally-prepared fermented foods and even from dirt! However, our modern sterilization and pasteurization techniques (which are definitely good for keeping us safe from some life-threatening pathogens) kill off a lot of the beneficial bacteria that our bodies need. That makes it much harder in a modern diet to keep up a healthy gut biome. Incorporating traditionally-prepared fermented foods like kim chee, sauerkraut, and (unpasteurized) yogurt into your daily menu is a great way to keep yourself healthy. For me, though, the probiotics offer a more practical solution.<br />
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Over the past nine months, I have had a remarkable recovery. I now know the real meaning of “regular”. And, I can even eat dairy again! I keep my intake low – some organic pastured butter on our homemade popcorn or some yogurt with nuts and berries – but I don’t have to panic if I find a little cheese on my salad or if there is butter baked into a treat. I don’t know what would happen if I ate a slice of pizza or a plate of lasagna. I’m guessing I would feel pretty crappy, but I doubt I would have the painful cramps, bleeding, or week-long diarrhea that had become commonplace in my life. The interesting thing is, I don’t really miss those foods. I didn’t change my diet solely to rehabilitate my gut. I also did it because I realized how little actual nutrition was getting on my plate and in my body. Focusing on vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods has helped me gain energy, feel happier, lose weight, and cure my gut dysbiosis. There is simply nothing a slice of pizza, a giant soda, or a bowl of cereal can offer me that can compete with that!<br />
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Unfortunately, our industrial food system and the vast marketing machine that goes along with it makes it seem like cheaper and faster is the way to go when it comes to food. They highlight the use of whole grains or antioxidants as though they can magically transform any food into something healthy. But true health comes from fresh produce, clean eggs, meat, and fish, nuts, coconut, traditionally-prepared legumes, and fermented foods. These foods are more expensive and harder to market, but they are the nutritional winners and the best foods for us humans to eat. A truly ethical food system would provide more of these foods and less of the processed foods that our bodies are simply not able to handle. You, the consumer, can help by demanding the types of foods that keep us healthy and rejecting nutritionally-poor, potentially irritating foods. If we want to be healthy, we have to fight for it.<br />
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<b>A full belly; a happy body.</b><br />
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When I was told I had IBS, it was like being told I was a flawed human being. My digestive system simply didn’t work properly, and it never would. When I removed dairy and gluten, I improved my health and my life, but I still thought of my body as broken. I could reduce my symptoms with certain behaviors, but I would never be cured. Now, I know otherwise. I do have to make smart choices – focusing on healthy foods rather than irritating ones – but I can feel good every day and still indulge in a treat now and then. And most of the foods I restrict really don’t have much to offer me anyway.<br />
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If you are struggling with GI symptoms, autoimmune problems, metabolic disorder, or depression, please consider changing your diet and seeking out a gut-specialist. Most importantly, do not give up! Do not go on suffering in silence because you are embarrassed or because a doctor has told you nothing can be done. Even if you do have a condition that can’t be “fixed”, such as Celiac disease, you <i>can</i> feel better. <i>You deserve to be healthy</i>.<br />
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<u>A few more notes:</u><br />
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- Think you might have gut dysbiosis? Tim explains an easy, do-it-yourself test on slide 33: take ¼ to 1 teaspoon of inulin, a natural soluble fiber found in chicory root and other foods. If it gives you a lot of gas and bloating, you have tested positive.<br />
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- Probiotics are especially important when taking antibiotics, another useful tool of modern medicine that can unfortunately cause gut dysbiosis. Birth control pills and a daily aspirin regiment can also mess with the bacteria in your gut, so both speakers highly recommended taking probiotics if you are also taking either of these medications.<br />
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- If you are in the hunt for a gut-specialist, Tim Gerstmar at <a href="http://www.aspirenaturalhealth.com/">Aspire Natural Health</a> may be just the person you are looking for!<br />
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- Pregnant or trying to conceive? Gut dysbiosis in mom can lead to greater sensitivity and even autoimmune problems in baby. If you have GI problems before/during pregnancy, seriously consider a change of diet and incorporating fermented foods or probiotics. If you already have kids, and they are experiencing GI issues or suffering from autism or other developmental problems, they may need a diet change. This isn’t intended to place blame or make anyone feel guilty; there isn’t a lot of focus in prenatal care on these issues. We all know to take folic acid to prevent spinal problems, but no one mentions the dangers of gut irritants. So don’t waste time feeling bad, just get the help you and your baby need!<br />
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- I had the opportunity to interview Tim and Dr. BG at the symposium, but the video of the interview has still yet to become available. Should it surface, I'll be sure to add a link!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-10559444153488937902012-04-01T19:52:00.002-07:002012-04-01T19:56:38.992-07:00Dude, TMI. (Part One)I don’t like talking about poop. In fact, there was a whole decade of my life during which I staunchly insisted that I do not poop. Because it’s gross. And smelly. And, really, no one needs to know what I do in my bathroom. Unfortunately, my desire to avoid the poopy talk had a severe unintended consequence. Over the course of about five years, I became so sick that I didn’t want to leave the house. And almost no one knew.<br /><br />Now, before I get started, I will warn you that I am holding nothing back. Should you continue reading, you are going to learn a LOT about me and poop and other gross things. Trust me when I say that I am a whole lot more embarrassed to write this than you will be to read it. Also, you <span style="font-style:italic;">should</span> read it, because finally opening up about my problems is what gave me the courage and fortitude to fix them, and it just might help you too. Okay, warning issued. Here we go.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Too Much Information.</span><br /><br />It started back in 2004. I had been out of college for a little over a year. In that time, I had traveled to Europe, got a great job, and was finally enjoying life after a very difficult time dealing with the loss of my mother and trying to get through school with a ton of very adult problems on my rather petite shoulders. I was putting my life together, and it felt really good. Until that night… <br /><br />I woke up in a panic with just about the worst pain in my abdomen that I had ever felt. Just for reference, I had migraines throughout my life, and I’d been hospitalized and prescribed codeine for my insanely terrible menstrual cramps, so I know a thing or two about pain. But this… <br /><br />It was so bad that I couldn’t help but cry. I crawled to the bathroom because it hurt so much that I really thought I was going to throw up. I laid on the cold floor, shaking and crying, trying to figure out how I could wake my roommate down the hall so I could go to the hospital. After what felt like hours, but was probably only 10 minutes or so, I suddenly knew that I wasn’t going to throw up. Rather, I had better get my tush onto that toilet or things were about to get very messy. I won’t go into detail here (did I mention I don’t like to talk about poop), but believe me, some very nasty stuff came out of me. Afterward, the pain began to subside, and eventually, I was even able to crawl back into bed and get some much-needed rest.<br /><br />What the heck happened to me? Food poisoning was my best guess. An isolated incident that need not ever repeat itself. I mentioned my cramps to my roommate, but that was where things ended. Or, at least, I hoped that’s where they would end.<br /><br />Later that year, my new boyfriend (now husband) brought me home for the holidays to meet his family. His dad and step-mom lived in a quaint little house that had only one bathroom, which was attached to their bedroom. The first night we stayed there, the Pain struck again. I was afraid to go into the bathroom because I didn’t want to wake my boyfriend’s parents with my whimpering, or worse, the mortifying sounds of my impeding gnarly bowel movement. So instead, I laid on the floor in the living room, shaking and crying, sweating and shivering. It took longer to pass this time, maybe because of the lack of bathroom, but it did eventually go away. Once again, I went back to bed with no one the wiser.<br /><br />Although I didn’t have another bout of cramps for a long time after that, I noticed, through the ensuing years of graduate school, that I was having more and more GI problems. The changes were slow, though, so it was easy to discount them or ascribe them to some minor issue. Looking back now, it’s amazing to me how many warning signs and symptoms I was able to rationalize away.<br /><br />For years, going all the way back to my college days, I had heart burn every morning. I thought it was just hunger. I also started having more and more gas. It seemed like I was bloated all the time. I told myself that I probably just had acid reflux disease and perhaps some of my troubles with dairy as an infant were returning. And, as migraines and lightheadedness became more frequent, I tried to drink more water and lighten my backpack. My husband began complaining that I had bad breath. I was mortified and would cry any time he mentioned it. I tried brushing my teeth more often, using more mouthwash, chewing gum incessantly, and even taking breath pills. Unfortunately, nothing worked because, as my husband told me, it wasn’t coming from my mouth but from somewhere inside of me. I felt ugly and repulsive and totally helpless.<br /><br />By the time I was half way through grad school, I would go for about three days without a bowel movement, feeling cramped and bloated and sluggish. I would go sit on the toilet and literally pray for something to come out and give me some relief. On day four or so, all of a sudden, everything that had been building up inside of me would come out, all at once, in the most noisy and embarrassing way possible. I hated those days. I worked over an hour away from home, so all of this was happening at work, in the same bathroom used by my professors, colleagues, and even students. When these urges started, I was often in class or otherwise unable to run to the bathroom. Waiting induced the baby version of the cramps I had felt on the cold bathroom floor all those years before. Despite this obvious indication that something was very wrong with me, I actually tried to convince myself that this was normal. Don’t people always say you ought to be “regular”? Well, my three days off, one day on, BM schedule was pretty regular!<br /><br />Eventually, I decided to ask my doctor about my digestive issues. It did not go well. I was so embarrassed by the things I was going to have to talk about, and overwhelmed by the anxiety my illness was causing me, that I was in tears before she even walked into the room. I tried to explain my “cycle” and the weird things that were coming out of me. You see, most people would describe their poo as a log or snake or tube, but mine (when I had any at all) looked like a pile of deer droppings. And, it was orange. The doctor took one look at me, emotionally distraught and freaking out, and gave me a referral to speak with a counselor. In her eyes, my distress over talking about poop was more concerning than my actual poopy problems. Eventually, she also offered to run some tests on a “sample” to make sure I didn’t have a parasite or infection.<br /><br />I went home and, after several days of trying, was finally able to collect my sample. I remember being totally embarrassed about it because you could actually see the bits of tomato and little avocado strings from the guacamole I had eaten a couple of days beforehand. It turns out that I didn’t have a parasite or an infection. My test results came out totally normal. Forgetting, of course, the fact that you could SEE my FOOD in my poo! You know, the stuff your body is supposed to DIGEST. But since they didn’t comment on it, I again assumed that this was okay. Perhaps I was just blowing things out of proportion.<br /><br />It was at about this time that a good friend of mine began having worsening symptoms from some mysterious illness that had plagued her for years. She started opening up to me about some of her more embarrassing symptoms, and that’s when things finally started to change. We compared notes and shared what information we’d been able to find online. Hearing her describe her GI problems, I realized just how crazy and wrong all of it sounded. I started to believe that I was also sick and deserved to get better.<br /><br />Luckily for my friend, she was able to figure out that she has Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes your body to attack a protein called gluten that is found in wheat, barley, and rye. Unfortunately, the body attacks itself along with the gluten. This can lead to a myriad of problems, GI and otherwise. When my friend cut out gluten, she had an almost miraculous recovery. It took all of four days, and her life was totally changed. Decades of symptoms disappeared, and she was like a new person – vibrant, healthy, and happy. Watching her journey made me eager to find my cure as well.<br /><br />I went to a second doctor, this time with more confidence. I described all my symptoms and even suggested taking a Celiac test. The doctor responded with the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. He told me I had a condition called IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He said I should try eating more fiber but not to expect things to change. This was just a condition I had to learn to live with.<br /><br />My friend had also been diagnosed with IBS before finding out she had Celiac, so I didn’t put much stock in that as a “diagnosis”. I went home, feeling alone and unsure how to proceed. But my body was quick to remind me that this was NOT all in my head. I went to the bathroom one day, and after doing my business, I looked down into a bowl full of blood. That was the last straw.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">It's not IBS.</span><br /><br />I decided it was time to leave the medical establishment behind and find my own path back to health. I started on a strict elimination diet. First, I tried getting rid of gluten. I quickly felt better, but I still had GI problems now and then. In fact, while attending a conference, I had a week-long bout of diarrhea, with painful cramps, and a whole lot of embarrassment. But clearing my body of gluten made it easier to pinpoint the other foods that were giving me problems. I quickly identified dairy as the main culprit. Once I eliminated any and all dairy, all my symptoms went away. All the GI distress, bad breath, cramps, bloating, gas, irregularity, and even that damn heartburn! When I found out there were dairy derivatives in my allergy medicine, I switched to a different brand, and my dizzy spells disappeared too. I found I could even tolerate some gluten in my diet as long as there was no dairy. <br /><br />Eliminating dairy and most gluten meant changing my whole approach to food. I could no longer eat at restaurants with ease or buy processed packaged foods. In a way, though, this was a blessing in disguise. Changing my diet to include more fresh produce, whole unprocessed foods, and almost exclusively meals I cooked myself, flooded my body with the nutrient-dense foods we all need to be truly healthy. The migraines I’d suffered through since elementary school went away, probably because my new diet helped me get more vitamin D. Over the ensuing months and years, my condition continued to improve. And, as my body returned to normal, I finally remembered what normal actually felt like.<br /><br />It saddens me to think about how long I suffered in silence. It frustrates me that, when I finally did speak up, I was told to seek counseling and that my body was simply defective – nothing could be done. That wasn’t true. There was something I could do, and it gave me my life back. The one thing I was not able to understand was how I ended up so sensitive to dairy. I had trouble with milk as a baby, but that seemed to pass with time. All the way through high school and college, I had enjoyed pizza and cheese and all other manner of dairy. What changed? And could it ever change back?<br /><br />These were the questions taking up space in the back of my mind when I attended the Ancestral Health Symposium last August. There, I met so many people with similar stories – long illnesses caused by food intolerance, usually misdiagnosed by doctors. That is also where I met Tim, who finally had some answers for me about why I got sick, and what I could do to not only manage my symptoms by avoiding certain foods, but to actual heal my body.<br /><br />(The rest of the story will appear in Part Two.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-38407940806312806502012-03-04T11:38:00.004-08:002012-03-05T17:14:38.363-08:00Investing in our food future (Part Two)The <a href="http://www.slowmoney.org/">Slow Money Alliance</a> is an organization that promotes investment in local economies and a longer-term outlook on investment and growth. Investment should not only generate financial profit for the individual but societal profit as well. The overarching principles of Slow Money are as follows.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">In order to enhance food security, food safety and food access; improve nutrition and health; promote cultural, ecological and economic diversity; and accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration, we do hereby affirm the following Slow Money Principles:</span><br /><br />I. We must bring money back down to earth.<br /><br />II. There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. Therefore, we must slow our money down -- not all of it, of course, but enough to matter. <br /><br />III. The 20th Century was the era of Buy Low/Sell High and Wealth Now/Philanthropy Later—what one venture capitalist called “the largest legal accumulation of wealth in history.” The 21st Century will be the era of nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place and non-violence. <br /><br />IV. We must learn to invest as if food, farms and fertility mattered. We must connect investors to the places where they live, creating vital relationships and new sources of capital for small food enterprises.<br /><br />V. Let us celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs, consumers and investors who are showing the way from Making A Killing to Making a Living.<br /><br />VI. Paul Newman said, "I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." Recognizing the wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up, asking: <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">* What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?<br /><br /> * What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits? <br /><br />* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?</span></blockquote><br />In furtherance of their cause, the Slow Money Alliance has compiled a list of funds and organizations that it supports due to their impact and approach. There are a dozen such listings on their <a href="http://www.slowmoney.org/invest">Invest page</a>, which are available to individual (non-accredited) investors.<br /><br />These investments are quite different from the ones I described in my last post in that they are not really appropriate for retirement savings and other savings plans with tax benefits. Some of the funds can be used in a self-directed IRA, which is a type of retirement account with tax benefits. In this type of IRA, there is a middle-man who runs your investment account and, generally, charges a fee. If you already have a self-directed IRA, then adding one of these funds might work for you.<br /><br />My initial research suggests that, based on my level of investment and expected return, the fees for a self-directed IRA are likely to exceed my profits from investing. For me, then, the investments I’ll describe throughout the rest of this post are more like savings accounts or CDs, with the important distinction that they do carry risk of loss. The upside, of course, is that my money is empowering small farmers, supporting sustainable agriculture, and helping to develop and strengthen communities rather than contributing to the bank’s bottom line.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Show me the money.</span><br /><br />I read through the websites of all of the funds and organizations on the Slow Money Alliance’s list of “Funds for everyone”. Most of these investments work the same way. An investor essentially loans money to the fund for an agreed upon period of time. The fund then uses the money, along with other means of funding such as grants and donations, to loan money to people or companies that align with the fund’s principles. These loans are made at a higher rate than the investor receives, but a lower rate (or with more favorable terms) than borrowers are able to receive through banks or other conventional means. The interest paid by borrowers supplies investors with interest and helps run the fund.<br /><br />This is basically the same strategy employed by banks. However, banks are federally insured. If too many borrowers default on their loans, and the bank can no longer repay investors (i.e. people with bank accounts), the government supplies the money. That makes a bank account, CD, or any other FDIC-insured holding, essentially zero risk. The following funds are not insured and do carry risk of loss.<br /><br /><a href="http://rsfsocialfinance.org/services/investing/social/">RSF Social Finance</a> supports people and companies that align with their <a href="http://rsfsocialfinance.org/values/focus/">principles</a> in the areas of food and agriculture, ecologic stewardship, and education and the arts. Their Social Investment fund requires a minimum investment of $1,000 and has an investment term of 90 days, the lowest of any of the funds I read about. The interest rate changes quarterly; the rate averaged 1% in 2010 but 2.45% over the past 5 years. Investments in RSF Social Financial can be used as part of a self-directed IRA.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.trfund.com/investors/funds.html">The Reinvestment Fund</a> (TRF) supports community-development loans, food access, and sustainable energy through their loan program. TRF requires a commitment of 3 years to 30 years but offers a high rate of return. Currently, the annual interest rate on the minimum investment of $1,000 for 3 years is 2.25%. The highest rate, for investments greater than $15,000 for at least 15 years, is 4.5%. From what I have found, these rates greatly exceed those offered by banks, even internet banks, for the same time and capital terms.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.equitytrust.org/Invest.html">Equity Trust, Inc.</a> makes loans to CSA and co-op farms, land trusts, and non-profit organizations that protect land access for communities and/or promote affordable housing. Equity Trust has a $1,000/1-year minimum. Investors specify the interest rate they would like to receive up to the maximum rate set by the fund. I couldn’t find the actual value, but they say the rate is similar to a money market account. One unique option with Equity Trust is that you can make requests as to the type of borrowers you would like your money to fund.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.equalexchange.coop/eecd">Equal Exchange CD</a> offers a 0.40% APY for a minimum 1-year investment of at least $500. The Equal Exchange program promotes fair global trade for products such as coffee and chocolate.<br /><br /><a href="http://thecarrotproject.org/for_investors">The Carrot Project</a> and the <a href="http://newspiritfp.com/?q=content/investor-opportunities">New Spirit Farmland Partnership</a> focus on food, but I wasn’t able to get detailed information on investment terms through their websites. If you are seriously considering investing in our food future, you may want to contact these organizations for more information. I emailed the folks at The Carrot Project and will update this post if/when I hear back. The New Spirit Farmland Partnership posts information about specific people and projects in need of support rather than a general loan fund, so again, you have to contact them to get involved.<br /><br /><a href="http://cooperativefund.org/investor_info">The Cooperative Fund of New England</a> and the <a href="http://www.mtcdc.org/invest.html">Montana CDC</a> offer community development loans for specific regions, without a particular emphasis on food or environmental sustainability. However, if you live in one of these regions, you may want to check them out. The other investments listed on the Slow Money site either did not contain any information on investing (only donating), do not allow individual investors, or did not offer a return on the investment. If you are interested in making a donation, definitely check out these well-deserving groups!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Risky business.</span><br /><br />As I’ve mentioned already, there is risk involved with all of these investments. RSF Social Financial reported its loan loss rate as 1.4% over the past 27 years. I’m not an expert in these things, but I think that means 1.4% of the money the fund loans out never gets repaid. Because the fund amortizes loss over all investors and maintains a buffer of money from donations and other sources, this loss isn’t necessarily passed on to investors. I couldn’t find the loan loss rate for The Reinvestment Fund, but their prospectus states that they could cover losses up to 6.5%. Because TRF invests in a lot of real estate as part of its community development interests, they report that the fund has seen an increase in defaults and late payments through the economic downturn. It’s hard to say if this investment is higher risk than any of the others, but it’s definitely something to consider carefully before investing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Will work for food.</span><br /><br />Based on everything I read, I am really excited to invest in some of these groups. Although there is risk, I think it is easily balanced by diversification. I can keep some money in the bank, earning low interest with no risk, and some money in these investments, which earn as much or more in interest, carry some risk, and help develop the food future I would like to see.<br /><br /><br />Edit: The folks at The Carrot Project got back to me today. They have a minimum investment of $25,000 for a 5 year term, and they offer interest rates of up to 2%. However, The Carrot Project is not currently seeking investors. That's fine for me because this is definitely out of my range.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Disclaimer: These are my opinions based on my own research. I am not a trained financial planner; I cannot tell you what you should do with your money. I do hope you will find this information valuable, but you should carefully consider your own situation before deciding to invest.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-30966907323537225532012-02-12T18:56:00.000-08:002012-02-12T19:08:50.538-08:00Investing in our food future (Part One)Now that I finally have a “real job”, and my husband and I are expecting our first child, I have begun to think more about long-term investing and retirement income. Money is a tricky thing though. I know I will need to grow my savings now if I ever want to retire or have a safety net for later in life. But how can I grow my savings in a way that aligns with my morals?<br /><br />Retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401Ks, allow you to invest money for the long-term with certain tax benefits. Contributions to these accounts can even been matched by your employer. As the owner of a retirement account, you can choose from a number of investment vehicles like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. For those of us with limited time to research companies and track the stock market, mutual funds seem like an easy choice. An investment firm tracks, buys, and sells interests in many different companies while you simply invest in the single mutual fund. The downside of a mutual fund, from my perspective, is that it’s less transparent than purchasing individual stocks.<br /><br />As a graduate student, the university opened a retirement account for me and invested my money in a mutual fund. I have no idea what companies that fund includes. I’m sure I could do some research and find out, but that somewhat diminishes the convenience of having a mutual fund to begin with. And what if there is one company, out of all of the companies they have invested in, that I would not want to support? Do I go through the holdings of every mutual fund available to find one without any offending holdings? What if the holdings change with time?<br /><br />What I really want is a mutual fund that I know reflects my values so I don’t have to spend a lot of extra time checking up on the fund. Apparently, there are a lot of people seeking the same thing because socially responsible investments (SRI) are becoming more prevalent these days. These are funds that make investment choices based on a set of principles adopted by the fund. Some funds focus on fair business practices. Others will simply reject sectors they consider bad for society such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. <br /><br />Unfortunately, I have yet to find a food sustainability mutual fund, which would exclude companies that genetically modify foods, develop chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or manufacture sugary drinks and snacks. However, there are some SRIs that come close and many more that consider other factors such as worker compensation and environmental sustainability. So there may be a convenient mutual fund that at least gets me closer to a clear conscience. There are also ways of investing in sustainable food systems directly (more on this in Part Two), but there are additional constraints on using these investment vehicles for retirement savings.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Mutually beneficial funds.</span><br /><br />The website, <a href="http://www.socialfunds.com/">Social Funds</a>, maintains a database of socially responsible mutual funds, which you can search based on different social issues (go to the Mutual Funds tab, select Mutual Fund Center from the drop-down menu; then select Social Issues from the SRI Fund Charts drop-down menu). There isn’t an option for sustainable agriculture, but there are options for environment, animal rights, community investment, and human rights. There’s no way I could do an in-depth analysis of every fund on this list, so I picked out a handful to see what’s available.<br /><br />I found <a href="http://www.parnassus.com/how-we-invest/ResponsibleInvestmentApproach.aspx">Parnassus Funds</a>, <a href="http://www.portfolio21.com/fund/philosophy/">Portfolio 21</a>, and <a href="http://www.calvert.com/NRC/Literature/Documents/TL10036.pdf">Calvert</a> a bit too vague about their qualifications for investment, but they do consider more than just financial gains. <a href="http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/sustainable-investing">Sentinel Investments</a> and <a href="http://www.domini.com/GlobInvStd/How-We-App/index.htm">Domini Social Investments</a> did provide detailed information on how they assess companies, but neither made specific statements about agriculture. Looking through their holdings, I didn’t find any GM seed companies or pesticide manufacturers. However, the funds do invest in companies that produce unhealthy foods and beverages like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Kraft Foods. Coca-Cola, in particular, has also come under fire for their water usage practices.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.greencentury.com/funds/">Green Century Funds</a> were the only ones I found that made specific statements about the food and farming sectors. According to their <a href="http://www.greencentury.com/greeninvesting/Screening-Policies">website</a>, the fund looks for companies involved in organic and natural foods, water solutions, alternative energy, sustainable development, and the like. They avoid companies involved in factory farming, genetically-modified organisms, and agricultural pesticides. However, McDonald’s and PepsiCo are both in the top 10 holdings of Green Century’s Equity Fund. Technically, these companies do not engage in bad agricultural practices, but they do benefit from the low cost of factory-farmed beef and chicken, corn-based sweeteners, and other products of industrial agriculture. The Green Century Balanced Fund, on the other hand, does not have any food or beverage companies in its top 10.<br /><br />Based solely on my concerns about ethical food, I would probably opt for a Green Century Fund because they make the most specific statements about food and farming. However, none of the funds I looked into were without faults. And none of them made me feel like my money would be building a more sustainable food future. <br /><br />The plethora of socially-responsible mutual funds makes me hopeful that I will be able to invest with my morals in mind. It may take some more investigation to find exactly what I want, or I may simply have to become a vocal investor. Depending on your priorities, you may be able to find a fund that allows you to invest in the future you envision. And it just might help you make some money too.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In Part Two, I will discuss additional investment options in the sustainable farming sector that may not be right for retirement savings.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-52356931100389214662012-01-20T15:13:00.000-08:002012-01-20T16:49:50.455-08:00Food fixer-uppers.Over the past few weeks, I’ve packed up my family and moved 2600 miles to Maryland. Although things have gone fairly smoothly, eating well is always an issue when I’m on the go. Between packing, moving, and unpacking, I’ve had to get creative in order to put together nutritious and at least marginally ethical meals. I hope these food fixes will come in handy anytime you lack access to a complete kitchen!<br /><br />My first fixer-upper was canned soup I found at <a href="http://www.traderjoes.com/">Trader Joe’s</a>. To give it a nutritional boost, I added chopped kale and sardines. Sardines are very mild; we hardly noticed they were there! Sardines are a great source of protein and omega-3 fats and are not a mercury concern for pregnant ladies like me. The kale was conventionally grown, but that’s the only kind TJs carries. The soup took less than 10 minutes to cook and made a hearty lunch for two people.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Black bean soup with a boost</span><br /><br />Cooking implements required:<br />- Can opener<br />- Medium pot, preferably non-stick<br />- Spoon<br /><br />Ingredients:<br />- 2 cans of Trader Joe’s organic black bean soup (vegan)<br />- 1 can of Trader Joe’s skinless and boneless sardines in olive oil<br />- ½ bag of Trader Joe’s chopped kale<br /><br />Directions:<br />1. Drip oil from the sardines into the pot and warm over medium-high heat.<br />2. Add the kale and saute for several minutes.<br />2. Add black bean soup and mix well.<br />3. Break up the sardines with a fork and stir into the soup.<br />4. Heat through and enjoy!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Frozen, fixed-up</span><br /><br />When we actually got to Maryland, eating got even harder because all our stuff was with the movers! Our first night, it was off to <a href="http://www.safeway.com/IFL/Grocery/Home">Safeway</a> to see what we could find. Lucky for us, a microwave was all we needed to have a fairly healthy dinner. We each picked out an <a href="http://www.amys.com/">Amy’s Organic</a> frozen entrée, which come in many meat, dairy, and gluten free varieties. We also picked up a frozen steamer bag of (conventional) Brussels spouts. We didn’t even have to cut the bag; it cooked up perfectly in the microwave. Fresh, homemade food is better than processed frozen dinners, but this meal was a much better choice for us than picking up a pizza or other fast food.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nuked nutrients</span><br /><br />Later, we found a <a href="http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/">Whole Foods</a> only a short drive from our new place. I’d never shopped at Whole Foods before although I’d heard many good things. In fact, Whole Foods is the only grocery store that has committed to working with the <a href="http://ciw-online.org/101.html#cff">Campaign for Fair Food</a> that I discussed in my <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/12/people-for-ethical-treatment-of-people.html">post on farm worker treatment</a>. As an ethical eater, I was most impressed by the amount of information that Whole Foods provides. In the produce section, each product is marked with its state of origin (or country if it’s imported) and whether it was grown organically or conventionally. Local produce even has the name of the farm and the miles the food traveled. Local and organic produce was scarce, which may simply be due to the cold temperatures. I would always prefer to purchase seasonal, organic produce from a local farm via a farmers market or CSA, but it’s nice to have a good back-up, available 7 days a week! The more I learn about nutrition, the more clear it becomes that eating lots vegetables is the key to good health. Sustainability is important, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the nutrition I get from veggies if seasonal, organic produce is unavailable.<br /><br />We were able to get a good variety of organic fresh produce at Whole Foods. But again, with few cooking implements available to us, we had to get creative. Luckily, many fresh veggies can be steamed or baked in the microwave. Adding steamed veggies is a great way to add vitamins to any meal.<br /><br />Microwaving broccoli requires a knife, unless you can find a bag of chopped broccoli (Whole Foods and TJs offer organic versions). You will also need a small casserole dish with a lid or, in a pinch, a small bowl and a plate large enough to cover it.<br /><br />Instructions:<br />1. Chop broccoli into bite-sized pieces.<br />2. Place broccoli into microwave-safe casserole dish or bowl. Add about a teaspoon of water. Cover with lid or plate.<br />3. Microwave on high for 3 minutes for a regular-sized bowl.<br /><br />Microwaving sweet potatoes is even easier. All you need is a fork!<br /><br />Instructions:<br />1. Pierce two potatoes several times each with a fork.<br />2. Cover with a paper towel (not strictly necessary).<br />3. Microwave for 5-6 minutes for medium-sized potatoes (about 6 inches long). You may have to experiment a bit with your microwave to get it just right. They are done when you can easily slide the fork in and out of the potato.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Single-skillet tacos.</span><br /><br />Over the weekend, some awesome friends lent us a few kitchen essentials so we were finally able to cook a real meal. They also gave us grass-fed ground beef from a nearby farm (seriously awesome friends!). We had only one skillet, one knife, and a mixing bowl, but we were able to put together skillet tacos from some more ingredients we bought at Whole Foods. We were able to find organic refried black beans without any added vegetable oil, and we opted for pre-cut (conventional) veggies. We also added organic curly (also called dino) kale for extra nutrients.<br /><br />Cooking implements required:<br />- Can opener<br />- Skillet<br />- Spatula or spoon<br />- Knife (if using avocado)<br /><br />Ingredients:<br />- 1.5 lbs grass-fed, pasture-raised, happy cow ground beef<br />- Organic black beans (refried or whole)<br />- 2-3 cups sliced veggies (such as bell pepper, onions, squash, or zucchini)<br />- ½ bunch of curly kale<br />- Organic corn taco shells or corn chips (optional)<br />- Amy’s organic salsa<br />- Taco seasoning mix<br /><br />Instructions:<br />1. Rinse kale. I especially like using curly kale because you don’t even need a knife to work with it. Pull the leaves off the stems, and rip any large leaves into smaller pieces.<br />2. In large skillet over medium-high heat, break up ground beef and begin to sauté. When the meat has cooked to pinkish, add the taco seasoning mix and stir well.<br />3. Add kale and sliced veggies. If you have a smaller skillet, add the veggies slowly allowing them to cook down to preserve space before adding more.<br />4. When the meat is fully cooked (no pink) and the veggies are crisp-tender, remove from heat.<br />5. Microwave the beans, if you prefer them hot. The easiest way to do this is to spoon the beans into the bowls you will be eating from and nuke those.<br />6. Break up the taco shells or chips over the beans (if desired). Add the meat and veggie mixture. Top with salsa and avocado, to taste.<br /><br />These tacos were a big hit. We had more meat and kale than we actually needed for 4 dinner servings, so we added the mixture to take-out veggie bowls from Chipotle. We also added the leftover kale to various meals throughout the week. It’s pretty tasty raw and goes well in scrambled eggs or with lentils. Just one cup of chopped kale has over 200% of your RDA of Vitamin A, 134% of your Vitamin C, 684% of you Vitamin K, and is high in folate, B-vitamins, manganese, copper, potassium, and calcium. It also has 2g of protein and 1g of fiber. (Read more about this awesome vegetable <a href="http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2461/2">here</a>.)<br /><br />Moving, traveling, a busted pipe, or a broken stove… Many things can take you out of your normal cooking routine. Even so, there are easy ways of preparing healthy nutritious food. I hope this post helps you navigate these tricky situations in the future. Get creative, and get cooking!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-16556935967612085462011-12-31T18:01:00.000-08:002011-12-31T18:17:31.967-08:00People for the Ethical Treatment of People.The semester has come to a close, which means (1) I am now Dr. Ethical Eats and (2) my Tuesdays no longer include amazing lectures from prominent scientists, authors, and activists. Edible Education 101 provided a great overview of food system issues, and I’m glad I got to be a part of it (you can view some of the lectures <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/edible-education-101-a-complete-course-on-modern-food-production/249691/">here</a>). Although I’d seen much of the material before, there were some issues that were new to me.<br /><br />In comparison to the environmental, ethical, and health effects of our food system, the welfare of farm workers had seemed, to me, a background issue. Partly, it was because there is so much overlap in the problems of environmental impact, sustainability, and animal welfare – the food system becomes a vast and compelling problem almost regardless of which issue you care about. In addition, there are straightforward ways of being part of the solution – change where you eat and what you buy. Alternative farming systems can solve all of these problems at once, and they are gaining momentum. I also naively thought that, while conditions for farm workers might not be as good as they could be, they were perhaps good enough for now while we work to improve other aspects of the food system. As demand for more ethical food increases and becomes more economically viable, advancing farm worker rights would be a natural next step.<br /><br />Perhaps that is true. However, when Eric Schlosser (author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0060838582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325200524&sr=8-1">Fast Food Nation</a>) and several members of the <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> (CIW) came to speak at Edible Education 101, I learned that farm workers are far worse off than I ever imagined and that there is no such thing as ethical food if it comes out of a system that exploits people at every turn.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tortured tomatoes.</span><br /><br />The town of Immokalee, Florida basically exists for one reason: to grow tomatoes. It’s not an ideal spot for growing tomatoes, and yet, almost every big chain grocery store or fast food restaurant gets their tomatoes from Immokalee. As I learned from Eric and the CIW representatives, farm workers in America are not protected by the same labor laws that apply to other employed people. Many farm workers, such as the tomato pickers in Immokalee, are not paid the minimum hourly wage as set by the federal government. Instead, they are paid corresponding to how much they pick. Technically, the price paid is supposed to be high enough that a farm worker could make at least minimum wage.<br /><br />According to the <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/101.html#facts">CIW website</a>, Immokalee tomato pickers make only 50 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they pick. Thus, to make the minimum wage, an Immokalee worker would have to pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes in a typical 10-hour workday. That’s 4500 pounds of tomatoes in 10 hours of back-breaking outdoor labor, just to make minimum wage. It’s safe to assume, therefore, that Immokalee’s workers are not making minimum wage. In fact, the average annual salary of a tomato-picker in Immokalee is less than $9000 (<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/the-true-cost-of-tomatoes/">Bittman, 2011</a>).<br /><br />Farm workers rarely receive benefits such as sick days or health insurance. Children as young as 12 years old can hold agricultural jobs with many fewer protections than in other industries. Also, the tomato pickers in Immokalee are not regular employees with contracts; they show up each day with no idea as to whether there will be work for them to do or the hours they are likely to be needed.<br /><br />Even the protections our government does provide are often ignored, and farm owners have found many ways to exploit their workers even after they’ve left the field. In Immokalee, the workers aren’t simply impoverished. They are also routinely beaten, locked in shipping containers, forced to live in squalor, and punished or even killed if they attempt to leave. Sexual harassment and assault of female workers is also routine. Over the past 10 years, dozens of people have been convicted of slavery charges for their unlawful confinement and treatment of thousands of workers in Immokalee. You can read about specific cases <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/slavery.html">here</a> and in detail in the articles linked to at the end of this post. The CIW doesn’t use the word slavery simply to be provocative. There are slaves in Florida, and they picked pretty much every tomato you have ever purchased.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Silent screams.</span><br /><br />Now, it’s obvious why the planet or the farm animals do not speak out against the abuses of the modern food system. But why would these people allow themselves to be exploited? Obviously, if you are being watched by armed guards while on the farm and locked in a crate the rest of the time, you aren’t going to have much opportunity to speak up. But many of the workers in Immokalee and elsewhere are simply powerless to advocate for themselves. Farm workers do not have collective bargaining rights, and most farm workers (70% of those in Immokalee) are immigrants with few resources. They often lack the skills, connections, or documentation to obtain better work. It is estimated that half of all our agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants, so speaking out against their abusers is especially risky.<br /><br />Now, some of you may be wondering if we should care about illegal immigrants. Wouldn’t the problem just go away if the people who aren’t supposed to be here just went home? The answer is no. Legal immigrants and people participating in guest worker programs are just as exploited and mistreated as farm workers of questionable immigration status. As one of the CIW speakers commented, the agriculture industry is very fair – they exploit everyone equally. More importantly, breaking the law doesn’t strip you of your right not to be tortured, robbed, raped, or killed. The crime of entering our country illegally carries the penalty of potentially being forced to leave it. While I recognize that remaining hidden may expose a person to harm, it doesn’t make harm that befalls them any more legal. The situation in Immokalee and elsewhere is not a violation of immigrant rights but a violation of human rights.<br /><br />But what if we did suddenly expel all undocumented workers from our borders? Would that improve conditions? Not likely. Instead, I would guess that another group of vulnerable citizens would start taking those jobs. Maybe, with a larger proportion of citizens, they could fight for slightly better conditions, but it would still be extremely difficult without collective bargaining and with the extreme pressure to produce the cheapest possible goods.<br /><br />And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Farm workers are exploited not because they are immigrants but because they can be exploited. If one farmer can produce a cheaper product by exploiting his workers, the other farmers must follow suit or lose their competitive advantage. Or at least, that is the excuse given by the farmers when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was finally able to voice their grievances. This sounds like a lame excuse, but there is at least an element of truth here. Most people choose what and where they eat based on price. Unless it is obvious why we should pay more, we don’t. This creates a race to the bottom, in which every producer and every retailer through the entire food chain must reduce costs in order to beat out the competition. Unless we enforce and enhance the laws governing farm workers, the people who produce our food will continue to be exploited in order to provide us with the cheapest possible product.<br /><br />Upon hearing these excuses, the CIW did something very smart. Rather than dealing with the folks at the bottom – farmers, for example, they went to the top of the food chain. The CIW appealed to fast food restaurants and grocery chains to commit to paying more for their tomatoes and to work with the group to make sure the extra money went to workers in Immokalee. How much more did they have to pay? One penny per pound of tomatoes. That’s it. A penny. And yet, this meager increase in price translates to thousands of dollars more each year for the tomato pickers out in the fields.<br /><br />Through communication, negotiation, and even some boycotting, the Coalition has now received commitments from Taco Bell, Burger King, and Whole Foods. In addition to paying slightly more for tomatoes, these companies agree to buy only those tomatoes from farms that have committed to better treatment for their workers such as providing a shaded area for breaks. It’s sort of shocking to think that is took years of hard work just to have a place to stand out of the sun for 15 minutes during a 10-hour day. It’s a victory for the workers in Immokalee, but still only a tiny step towards truly fair food.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ethical eating in America.</span><br /><br />Now is the point at which I’d normally tell you all the ways you can help improve the conditions of farm workers and eat truly ethical food. Sadly, despite the successes of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, exploitation is still commonplace in our agricultural system. A student in Edible Education 101 asked where she could buy produce that has been grown without such atrocities, if there was a label or certification to look for. Unfortunately, as our speakers explained, there is no such store and no such label. Even the tomatoes sold at Whole Foods, one of the companies that buys better tomatoes through the Campaign for Fair Food, are not truly ethical. The standards for human treatment are so low that it would be irresponsible to call even the CIW approved tomatoes ethical.<br /><br />Small farms don’t necessarily treat their workers any better than large farms. Organic farmers have long resisted including treatment standards in the government’s organic certification. Because organic farming is more expensive, they say, it would be crippling to also pay higher wages, offer benefits, or improve working conditions. I suppose that’s why it is so much harder to motivate people to fight for higher standards of human welfare in the food system. You can’t simply buy different food or shop at a different store. So what can you do?<br /><br />First, you can care. Rather than dismissing farm worker rights as I used to, you can educate yourself about the issues involved and be ready to take action when you can. Being aware of and supporting legislation concerning the rights of agricultural workers is an important way to get involved. Immigration reform is also a large factor.<br /><br />You can support CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food directly by patronizing businesses that have signed their agreement. You can also take part in their letter-writing campaigns and protests of companies that stubbornly refuse to take part – companies like my old favorite, Trader Joe’s. You can find more ways to help on the CIW’s <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/action.html">Take Action page</a>.<br /><br />Another way you can help farm workers is by buying direct from farmers. As I mentioned already, local, organic, or small doesn’t necessarily translate to better working conditions. However, if you can develop relationships with farmers, you can probably get a better idea of their perspective and treatment of their workers. Communicating with your farmer may also allow you to ask some probing questions, such as how much it would cost to improve conditions for the workers in the field. What if all it took was a dollar more for your CSA box? Would you pay it?<br /><br />Lastly, we need to get the word out about the way we treat our farm workers in this country. When I found out how poorly we treat animals on factory farms, I knew I had to make a change. And now we are talking about people. People who work hard every day so we can eat. People who are, even now, being exploited and enslaved. The more aware people are, the better. You can be a part of the solution by being witness to the moral failings of our food system and speaking out against them. To get you started, here is a list of resources that I hope you will use to push our country to change, to make sure everyone who puts in a hard day’s work gets their fair share.<br /><br />Organizations:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html">The Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.farmworkerjustice.org/">Farmworker Justice</a></li></ul>Articles on Immokalee:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/the-true-cost-of-tomatoes/">The True Cost of Tomatoes</a> by Mark Bittman (2011)</li><li><a href="http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes">Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes</a> by Barry Estabrook (2009)</li></ul>Books:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0060838582/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325383959&sr=1-1">Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal</a> by Eric Schlosser</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Destroyed-Alluring/dp/1449401090">Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit</a> by Barry Estabrook</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-11812667348757960842011-11-25T15:41:00.000-08:002011-11-25T15:49:42.724-08:00Life, unsweetened.A month ago, <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/10/food-day-throw-down.html">I issued a Food Day challenge</a> – to go without added sweeteners of any kind for a whole month. Frankly, I didn’t think it would be very hard for me because I already cook most of my food and don’t add sweeteners very often. I was wrong. Three things made it difficult for me to live up to this challenge: not checking labels as avidly as I should have, an increase in stress and deadlines in my life, and the surprises and necessities of my first pregnancy. I also “cheated” a couple of times so I could take part in traditions and festivities although I tried to make the best choices I could in those situations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why would there be sugar in that?</span><br /><br />I ran into my first problem on Day One of the unsweetened challenge. My husband had just bought a huge package of smoked salmon to put on salads and mix in with scrambled eggs. It’s an easy source of fat and protein, and luckily, we have access to wild Pacific varieties, which are recommended by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?gid=17">Seafood Watch</a>. Unfortunately, the particular smoked salmon we purchased had an extra ingredient: brown sugar. We weren’t going to let the fish go to waste, so I grudgingly ate the sweetened salmon throughout the week.<br /><br />After the fish incident, I started looking more closely at the foods I was buying and using. I’ve been reducing my intake of sweetened products over the past year - getting rid of sweetened nut butter, fruit and nut bars, and other processed foods that were high in added sugars - so I was surprised by how many sweetened products were still lingering in my pantry. <a href="http://www.leaperrins.com/products/the-original-worcestershire-sauce/nutrition.aspx">Lea and Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce</a>, the green variety of <a href="http://www.tabasco.com/tabasco_tent/pepper_sauce/green_pepper_sauce.cfm">Tabasco</a> sauce, gluten-free granola, and my one real vice, Trader Joe’s <a href="http://www.mytraderjoeslist.com/2010/11/baked-lentil-chips.html">Lentil Chips</a>, all had added sweeteners. Now, of course, the amount of sugar from a few drops of Tabasco isn’t really a health hazard, but it is a reminder of how easy it is to consume more sugar than you realize.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">When life gets in the way.</span><br /><br />I advocate a cooking-centric, whole-foods-dominated food lifestyle. This lifestyle requires time and effort, but I’ve always claimed that planning ahead and prioritizing your nutritional needs can make this lifestyle feasible for most people. Over the past month, I have not been one of those people. I’m wrapping up my PhD, with a hard deadline for dissertation submission on Dec. 16th, we’re selling our home, and we’re planning a move across the country. The combination has put me in a major time crunch and has also cut off regular access to my kitchen. Potential buyers can come by at any time to view our home, and they expect to be greeted by a clean kitchen.<br /><br />The main result of these complications was that I stopped making my own lunch. Instead, I ate out. There are incredibly few restaurant options for a person who doesn’t eat conventional meat or dairy of any kind, and tries to avoid grains, especially those containing gluten. I’ve gotten used to asking servers, cooks, and managers about the ingredients in their food. It’s a bit unnerving to realize how few people involved with getting you your food actually have any clue as to what is in it. Even basic food knowledge is often lacking; I actually argued with a waitress over whether or not butter is dairy (yes, it really is). Places like Chipotle and most casual dining restaurants make their allergy information available online or on special menus, which helps me know for sure what I’m eating. However, sugar isn’t an allergen. And, as I mentioned already, added sweeteners can be in all kinds of foods that one wouldn’t even realize.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Oh, baby.</span><br /><br />That’s right – I’m pregnant! I’m just about four months along and feeling what is apparently very normal maternal guilt over just about everything I do. Getting proper nutrition is important for everyone, but it can be truly essential for pregnant women. With all the other stresses in my life, making sacrifices when it came to eating was a difficult choice because I knew it would affect my baby. However, as important as getting the right calories, I needed to be getting enough calories.<br /><br />Back when I was eating for one, I could skimp on lunch or skip an afternoon snack if I didn’t have the best food options available. Now, however, I know the baby needs calories as much as I do. Plus, I’ve found that hunger is no longer a nagging sensation but a compulsion that must be addressed whether it is convenient or not. Given my cooking limitations, that meant eating out even when there wasn’t a great option for me. Another side effect of pregnancy is that I have to limit my intake of many types of seafood. Gone are the days of sushi and tuna salad. Seafood has often been my go-to restaurant food, but now I can only have a few servings a week.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">What to eat.</span><br /><br />The first time I walked into a restaurant after taking the unsweetened challenge, I realized that, especially with my other restrictions, asking about added sugars was just not going to work. So, I had to make some choices. First, I tried to pick foods that seemed less likely to have added sugars: salad with oil and vinegar dressing, grilled fish or shrimp (within limits), Mediterranean foods, Thai curries, Indian food, and Chipotle burrito bowls. My nutrition intake definitely suffered from eating out because I ate far fewer fresh vegetables or sautéed greens. And I’m sure there were added sugars in my food; I just can’t say how much.<br /><br />It was a difficult choice: quality calories or enough calories. I compromised by eating some more marginal foods like rice, potatoes, and black beans that kept me feeling full and assured that I was getting enough calories. If I were cooking as much as I used to, I could instead eat a little more avocado, add nuts to my salad, or simply eat larger portions. Another way in which I cut corners was to eat a little more marginal meat, such as beef from cows that were grass-fed but not necessarily pastured. However, I still refused to eat any animal products that included hormones or antibiotics or were from companies that are known to use unethical practices. Again, if I were cooking all my meals, this wouldn’t be a problem. <br /><br />Overall, I think this was a good experiment. I was able to eliminate added sweeteners from nearly all my breakfasts and dinners throughout the month. For dessert, I ate unsweetened applesauce with cinnamon. I snacked on fruit, nuts, or tahini sauce. I drank water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee (half –caff, no worries!). I never felt like I was making much of a sacrifice. The only hard part was making sure I had unsweetened options, which was a problem any time I ate out.<br /><br />Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t perfect. A couple of times, I ate a little dark chocolate when I really wanted it. I had sorbet at a fancy dinner with friends in celebration of my impeding graduation. And I kept with my 6-year tradition of meeting a good friend for bubble (boba) tea once a week. Last night, I finished out my month-long challenge with (gluten-free) pumpkin pie and a bit of pecan tart.<br /><br />I don’t think I’ll ever go totally unsweetened. Completely eliminating a food or substance, as I have had to do with dairy, is stressful and frustrating. Plus, eliminating every drop of added sugars is not really necessary. However, I am even more aware now of where sugars may be hiding in my diet, and I notice the sweetness in my food much more because I eat so few sweet things. Over the next month, the stress in my life should start to decrease, and I’ll be able to get back to cooking. I look forward to being more in control of what I am eating, and what I am feeding that little person growing inside of me. Life will be sweet, with no sugar added.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-14830309836458226962011-10-31T21:05:00.000-07:002011-10-31T21:29:49.092-07:00Feeding the world, a scary proposition.This semester, I am taking a course at UC Berkeley called <a href="http://www.chezpanissefoundation.org/edible-education-101">Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement</a> – organized by <a href="http://www.chezpanisse.com/about/alice-waters/">Alice Waters</a>, <a href="http://michaelpollan.com/">Michael Pollan</a>, and <a href="http://www.peoplesgrocery.org/article.php/people">Nikki Henderson</a> (who I gushed over in a <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/12/stimulating-dinner-conversation-three.html">previous post</a>). Each week, at least one speaker addresses the class of nearly 400 students and members of the general public on a topic related to food, including sustainability, world poverty and hunger, the rights of farm and food workers, and health. Although I have spent a lot of time learning about our food system, this class has helped me put things into a global context.<br /><br />Hunger and poverty throughout the world are seemingly insurmountable problems that are likely to worsen as the world population grows. In fact, as of today, the population is estimated to exceed 7 billion. In 2010, there were 925 million starving people in world, so how can we possibly hope to feed everyone in the future?<br /><br />I have often heard proponents of agribusiness, and especially the biotech industry, argue that feeding the world will only happen if we make agricultural technologies – such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides – more accessible and continue to develop and introduce genetically modified seeds. The idea they present is essentially this: to reduce hunger, we need to increase crop yields. <br /><br />The opposing viewpoint, as presented by <a href="http://rajpatel.org/">Raj Patel</a> during a recent lecture, is that we already produce enough calories to feed the world. People are hungry because food is too expensive or simply inaccessible. To reduce hunger, we need to empower the poor.<br /><br />So which is it? Do we have a production problem, or a distribution problem? Most importantly, how can we reduce the number of hungry people in the world?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A numbers game.</span><br /><br />The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (<a href="http://www.fao.org/">FAO</a>) calculates and tracks hunger statistics throughout the world. Chronic hunger and undernurishment are words the FAO uses to describe people who are consistently unable to consume their minimum caloric needs – 1800 kCal for the average person. People who live under these conditions are classified as food insecure.<br /><br />Determining the number of people who are food insecure takes several steps. First, the FAO calculates the number of calories available for consumption in every country in which they can obtain data. The number of available calories includes sources, like domestic production and imports, and sinks, such as exports and the amount of calories wasted or put to uses other than human consumption. The FAO compiles statistics over a period of 1-2 years, and then converts that into the number of calories available per day. Lastly, they divide the total number of available calories by the population of the country to get the “food supply” in kilocalories per person per day.<br /><br />The FAO then tries to estimate the number of calories that the population needs, which is based on the proportion of men versus women and the age breakdown of the population. According to the USDA, men aged 19-30 need at least 2400 calories per day. Women of the same age require at least 1800. Children under 3 require only about 1000 calories per day. Based on the population statistics, the FAO calculates a number of calories needed for everyone in the country to get the food they need.<br /><br />The last step is to estimate the amount of food that actually makes it into the mouths of the people. First, the FAO assumes that caloric intake within a country follows a log-normal distribution. A log-normal distribution looks a bit like the profile of a baseball cap. It implies that most of the population consumes a range of calories corresponding to the width of the cap, but there are still some people in the bill who consume a lot more than average. There can also be a small tail at the low end, which would indicate that a small portion of the population get many fewer calories than average. A log-normal distribution can come in different proportions. To tailor the distribution to a given country, the FAO uses information provided in household surveys to determine the width and location of the distribution’s peak and the extent of the tails.<br /><br />By comparing the available calories with the calories required to feed the population and the way in which food is distributed in a country, the FAO finally arrives at an estimate of the number of people who are food insecure. The FAO hunger map is shown below; there is also a nifty interactive version on their <a href="http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/">hunger website</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPhw0njEa53VDNw2U5DTIHdKKO0VmOJeJb2zF7MKASKvT74Zhrnip-pPrgUY3-zk0LA0ghIpyfFSdT73PZm5i_AOqwYZmH010B_4M-pGlAoUKGc5WU25dneInJRudKAde1rFYvPCtF7hyA/s1600/FAO_HungerMap.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPhw0njEa53VDNw2U5DTIHdKKO0VmOJeJb2zF7MKASKvT74Zhrnip-pPrgUY3-zk0LA0ghIpyfFSdT73PZm5i_AOqwYZmH010B_4M-pGlAoUKGc5WU25dneInJRudKAde1rFYvPCtF7hyA/s400/FAO_HungerMap.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669876688820370034" /></a><br /><br />The map is interesting (and depressing), but what does it really tell us about the reasons for hunger? The FAO makes informed assumptions about distribution, but how can we know for sure the effect of distribution? To get around these issues, I decided to look up the statistics for only the first two steps of the FAO’s process: the available calories in a country and the calorie requirements based on the population statistics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Food for thought.</span><br /><br />Below is a table I created using FAO data that is available from a searchable database called <a href="http://faostat.fao.org/">FAOSTAT</a>. I have listed statistics for the 10 countries with the highest percentages of undernourished people as a percent of the population. I then show the same statistics for the Unites States and some groups of countries: the FAO’s group of least developed countries, South-east Asia, Europe, and the world.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtOzdI7YZorPb_7gZ5Vvf0RkqFhAwgzNkiw3IWdiQ1g9sVifRlVK1vptnZTI6Qqy6zLnrGlGV6I05a94p1UxL11OD3uXSkAg6v8fwOjcfWnwz_4OJPQEit5e1oMYsxNzHXGGxVXcVhztL/s1600/CalsByCountry.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 184px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtOzdI7YZorPb_7gZ5Vvf0RkqFhAwgzNkiw3IWdiQ1g9sVifRlVK1vptnZTI6Qqy6zLnrGlGV6I05a94p1UxL11OD3uXSkAg6v8fwOjcfWnwz_4OJPQEit5e1oMYsxNzHXGGxVXcVhztL/s400/CalsByCountry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669878213532745954" /></a><br /><br />I included some extra information because I thought it was interesting, but the most relevant columns are the average caloric requirement, which has been weighted by the age and sex distribution of the given population, and the food supply. A country that literally does not have enough calories for all of its citizens to consume their minimum requirement would be one in which the food supply is smaller than the average caloric requirement. Of the 10 countries with the highest percentage of hunger, only two actually have too few calories: Eritrea and Burundi, each by less than 100 calories. In Mozambique, in which 39% of the population suffers from a chronic lack of calories, there are over 2000 calories available each day, compared to a requirement of only 1800.<br /><br />The bottom line is this: there is enough food in all of these countries for just about everyone to get the calories they need. However, even if the FAO’s assumptions about distribution are not completely accurate, there certainly are starving people in these countries.<br /><br />How can there be more calories than the population needs and still be starving people? In more economic terms, how can there be too much supply and unmet demand? What is happening to the extra calories?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We are the 99%.</span><br /><br />The FAO suggests that inequality and food insecurity rise together. That would suggest that richer people either eat more calories than they really need (because they can afford to) or are able to control the calories in some other way. Perhaps poor people also have a harder time getting food because of transportation issues. Certainly, the political stability within a country has some bearing on food access as well. As the FAO points out, violent conflict can reduce or cut off the food supply to some people. Even economic interventions aimed at helping developing countries have been criticized, by Raj Patel and others, when it comes to food markets (read more <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2010/12/stimulating-dinner-conversation-three.html">here</a> or <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/can_the_world_feed_10_billion_people?page=full">here</a>). I’m not well-versed enough in economics and global trade to really assess these arguments. However, one thing is clear to me. We cannot solve world hunger by simply increasing crop yields.<br /><br />It’s one thing to say that the world produces enough calories to feed everyone. But even in the countries with the highest rates of undernurishment, there are enough calories to feed nearly everyone. As the population grows, perhaps we really will need to increase production to make sure everyone can eat, but I doubt it will matter much unless people can access those calories. Otherwise, the only number that changes is the number of available calories, not the number of hungry people. And that’s a scary thought.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-54746467912015904162011-10-24T23:03:00.000-07:002011-10-24T23:11:15.411-07:00A food day throw-down.Today is <a href="http://foodday.org/">Food Day</a> – an event put together by the <a href="http://www.cspinet.org/">Center for Science in the Public Interest</a>. According to the website, Food Day is about six principles:<br /><br />1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods<br />2. Support sustainable farms and limit subsidies to big agribusiness<br />3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger<br />4. Protect the environment and animals by reforming factory farms<br />5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids<br />6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers.<br /><br />This is a great list that encompasses all my reasons for changing my eating habits and fighting for food system reform. You can follow the links on the site to get more information about the problems and proposed solutions in each area. While you can get a good overview of the food system from this site, I found that a lot of the material glossed over the details and made assertions that I’m not sure would hold up to scrutiny. <br /><br />My biggest disagreements with the Food Day message are in regards to what they consider safe, healthy food – especially their promotion of whole grains. I’ve talked about these issues in detail in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/08/get-real-chance-for-real-progress.html">a previous post</a>, so I won’t belabor the points. Promoting fresh fruits and vegetables, supporting sustainable farming practices, and reforming the food system are all extremely important, so I’m glad the Food Day folks are working to get the message out. Instead of arguing over the details, I’d like to issue a Food Day challenge that I think really will promote better health and environmental sustainability.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Life, unsweetened.</span><br /><br />My challenge is to go unsweetened – period. For the next 30 days, I will not eat anything with added sweetener of any kind. That includes sugar, high fructose corn syrup, honey, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar, fruit juice, etc. It also includes non-caloric/artificial sweeteners like Stevia. Luckily, fruit contains no added sweetener, so I can have as much as I want!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why go unsweetened?</span><br /><br />We consume more sugar than we ever have in all of human history. As I reported in <a href="http://ethicaleats.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-sweet-it-is.html">a previous post about sugar</a>, the average American consumes 440 calories each day in the form of caloric sweeteners. The average teen in America consumes 72 grams of sugar a day. Overconsumption of sugar, especially in the form of fructose, can reduce the body’s sensitivity to insulin leading to Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and even liver failure.<br /><br />Another benefit of avoiding added sweetener is that it forces you to read labels and know what is in your food. You may be surprised by how many foods contain sweeteners, including things like bread and tomato sauce. Fat free products are notoriously bad about substituting sugar for fat. Avoiding added sweetener will likely mean buying more whole foods, like fresh produce and meat, and staying away from processed food. It will also mean a little more preparation and time in the kitchen. But trust me, cooking is fun!<br /><br />The reason sweeteners are in so many things is twofold. First, we are hard-wired to crave sweets because they exist so rarely in nature. Making food sweeter will generally keep people coming back for more. The other reason for all the added sweetness is that corn sweeteners are really, really cheap. Farm subsidies promote resource-intensive monoculture cropping systems that damage the environment but are very good at producing vast quantities of industrial-grade grains. Corn produced in this manner is processed into many kinds of food additives including sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup. By eliminating added sugars and sweeteners from your diet, you are saying no to these damaging farming practices.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But I just can’t live without my…</span><br /><br />Of course, we all have sweet things that we love so much, they don’t seem worth going without. It’s only for one month, though. And you may find that, after a month without added sugars dominating your palette, sweet things may lose some of their appeal. Still don’t think you could go without? Make yourself a deal. If you love ice cream, buy a pint and make it last the whole month. <br /><br />Still don’t think you could take the challenge? Flip it around. Pick the one sweetened thing you consume the most - soda, diet soda, donuts, whatever - and eliminate that for one month. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Take the challenge!</span><br /><br />Food Day is a chance for all of us to rethink our food choices. Whether you do it for your health, the environment, or just to try something new, going unsweetened is a great way to spend a month. So, leave a comment and commit to a month without sweets!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-8866626169840311592011-10-18T14:08:00.000-07:002011-10-18T14:27:33.348-07:00Three cheers for salad!Given that I avoid meat in restaurants and have made a commitment to eating at least 8 cups of veggies a day, you might be surprised to know that I hate salad bar restaurants. Or at least, I used to. Generally, I have found these places overpriced and more focused on pizza and pasta options than on actual salads. Recently, however, a friend dragged me to <a href="http://www.freshchoice.com/">Fresh Choice</a>, an all-you-can-eat salad bar restaurant.<br /><br />Although they do serve soups, pasta, pizza, and other non-salad options, the actual salad bar is pretty extensive. And, more strikingly, they make an effort to offer local and organic produce. The labeling system is also quite impressive. Every house-made salad, like the Sesame Kale Toss offered for fall, includes a list of ingredients and icons for every common allergy, as do all the salad dressings and soups. It was easy to deduce the vegan items, vegetarian items that were still dairy free, and the gluten-free offerings. In total, they have labels for foods containing eggs, sesame seeds, sulfites, milk, honey, shellfish, pork, fish, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, and wheat.<br /><br />At the start of the Fresh Choice salad bar, there is a sign stating what percentage of the day’s produce is locally-grown. I recognized a lot of produce that I’ve been seeing at the farm stand. After all, that’s what grows here! Because of their commitment to local produce, the Fresh Choice <a href="http://www.freshchoice.com/menu-october-2011">menu</a> changes with the seasons. As a child, I remember the excitement when peaches were finally in season, or cherries, or pumpkins. And now, as an adult, I know that eating seasonally is also better for the environment and provides access to cheaper, fresher food.<br /><br />In addition to the extensive salad bar, some of my favorite Fresh Choice offerings were the baked yams, the broccoli obsession salad, and the spicy curry lentil soup. The only thing they are missing is avocado! After my awesome meal, I had to wonder whether all salad bar restaurants are as progressive as Fresh Choice. So, I checked out the websites for <a href="http://www.souplantation.com/">Sweet Tomatoes</a> and <a href="http://www.soupersalad.com/">Souper Salad</a>.<br /><br />Sweet Tomatoes lists items that are vegetarian (or not) and gluten-free foods. According to <a href="http://glutenfreeaz.com/2011/06/29/gluten-free-restaurant-chain-comparison/">a review on GlutenFreeAZ</a>, however, Sweet Tomatoes does not label the foods within the store. Rather, they have a binder with nutritional information that customers can browse before eating. Sweet Tomatoes also makes a big deal about being a sustainable business. In fact, they have received a <a href="https://dinegreen.com/">Green Restaurant Association Certification</a>. Having never heard of this program, I decided to investigate. According to the <a href="http://blog.souplantation.com/green/">press release</a> on the Sweet Tomatoes blog, they received a two-star certification, which is based on seven areas including sustainable food.<br /><br />Two stars is the lowest certification level, and to achieve that, a restaurant has to be awarded at least 10 points in six of the categories plus an additional 40 points from any or all categories. Even a 4-star certification requires a minimum of only 10 points in the sustainable food category. The points are assigned by calculating the percentage of food costs that meet <a href="https://dinegreen.com/standards/Food.html">certain criteria</a>. Buying certified organic food or sustainable seafood is worth 40 points; if a restaurant spent 100% of its food budget on organic food, it would get 40 points. A small number of points are also available for purchasing grass-fed, cage-free, or hormone and antibiotic-free animal products. Vegetarian and vegan fare are rewarded with 30 and 45 points, respectively. Buying regionally can get another 20 points, while buying within 100 miles of the restaurant is worth 40 points. So, if a restaurant served 100% organic vegan food sourced from within 100 miles, it would receive 130 points. Recall that certification requires only 10.<br /><br />I couldn’t find a break-down of Sweet Tomatoes’ points, but without any mention of commitment to local organic food, on their website I’m not convinced that they are doing anything special in terms of sustainable food. It’s great that they are making a commitment to reduce water usage and waste – some of the other categories within the certification, but I wouldn’t get too excited about their food.<br /><br />As for Souper Salad, the salad toppings listed on their <a href="http://www.soupersalad.com/store/arcadia/menu">menu</a> are rather meager. There is no mention of local or organic produce; their cheddar cheese even says it is imitation cheese. They do have icons for vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free items, and the folks at <a href="http://glutenfreeaz.com/2011/06/29/gluten-free-restaurant-chain-comparison/">GlutenFreeAZ</a> were pleased with their experience at Souper Salad. So perhaps this is a good option for people with food allergies, but it doesn’t offer much beyond that.<br /><br />All in all, it seems that Fresh Choice is doing something novel by really committing to nutritious, environmentally-friendly food. Their practice of listing ingredients and their extensive suite of allergy icons puts the customer in control. Of course, you can still eat badly at Fresh Choice. I saw several people skipping the salad bar all together in favor of pizza, and I saw one kid with only noodles. You can also eat a healthy and wholesome meal, though, and that’s not so easy to do at most restaurants. Next time I have to chose a place to eat, I’m glad to know there is a fresh, and progressive, choice.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3783754271959896879.post-13057762104986322712011-09-30T20:39:00.000-07:002011-09-30T20:53:15.516-07:00John Durant: Zoos and the importance of natural habitats.Most of the time, a talk about zoos is going to focus either on the plight of captive animals or how we human animals are trapped in societal zoos. Either way, they are generally pretty depressing. But <a href="http://hunter-gatherer.com/">John Durant</a> is not most people; he's a self-proclaimed modern caveman and a somewhat reluctant champion of the caveman lifestyle, despite his <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/263270/february-03-2010/john-durant">appearance on The Colbert Report</a>.<br /><br />John's talk at the <a href="http://ancestryfoundation.org/">Ancestral Health Symposium</a> began with the history of zoos and with the story of Jumbo, one of the most famous circus elephants ever. And yes, this part was a bit depressing. The first zoos treated animals like statues, separating them into stark, cement cages and removing them completely from the natural world. The animals did not thrive. Zoos became more sophisticated over time, but the priorities of the zoo designers were off. Habitats incorporated more elements of nature, but they were designed to be visually appealing to people rather than animals. As John put it, the purpose of zoos has changed from status symbols to entertainment to education to, finally, conservation. We have now learned that the key to keeping zoo animals healthy is to replicate as much of their natural environment as possible. The present state of zoos and attitudes toward zoo design follow this paradigm. For example, the depth of water features in penguin habitats are now determined based on the diving behavior of penguins observed in the wild. Studies of wild animals also inform the diets of animals in captivity.<br /><br />It seems obvious, doesn't it? Any given species, from lions to turtles, evolved in a specific region under specific conditions. Each species found its own way to adapt to its environment and create a niche that would allow it to survive. Hence, animals have the best chance to live and reproduce in those natural environments to which they adapted throughout time. Even human animals.<br /><br />We, too, perform best under the conditions to which our bodies and minds adapted over the whole of human history. To be clear, John is not advocating that we all go back to living in caves. There are quite a number of novel aspects of our habitat that are positive (flush toilets and antibiotics are two that come to mind). Rather, the idea is the same as with zoos – to the extent possible, replicate your natural environment to enable yourself to reach your full potential. John elaborated on this idea in our interview. Even in a modern world, we can get back in touch with our past by taking walks, eating a prehistoric diet, and sleeping in a dark quiet place, undisturbed by modern “advances” such as alarm clocks, nightlights, honking horns, or that red indicator light on the fire alarm. Visiting zoos, John pointed out, is a great way for us to reconnect with animals and nature in a way that is reminiscent of our paleolithic past. When it comes to exercise, be outside whenever possible. Preferably barefoot.<br /><br />Barefoot? Yes, John is a big supporter of the barefoot and minimalist shoe movement. In fact, at the interview, he was wearing what looked like a flat piece of wood with a rope cord woven through it, wrapping around his toe and ankle. My flip flops would look like orthopedic support shoes next to these things. As John explained, our feet are designed for walking and running. Up until the very recent invention of shoes, our feet got us everywhere we needed to go, without arch support or motion control or custom orthotics. Our feet are incredibly sophisticated and instantly responsive. They are already the best running shoes we could ever have.<br /><br />I think what makes people like John Durant is that he is genuine and humble. He lives like a caveman because it makes him healthy and happy, not so he can be famous or rich or sell you something. John practices what he preaches, and I think he's a lot more interested in living than preaching. Despite having been interviewed by Stephen Colbert, John actually seemed nervous to speak with me and worried about how he would do in the interview. John, if you are reading this, it was a pleasure.<br /><br />But what does all this teach me about ethical eating? When I started this journey, I was most focused on the corn industry, especially the ways in which it contributes to environmental damage and the link between cheap corn feed and the development of confined animal feeding operations. CAFOs do a great deal of environmental damage in their own right. Plus, the animal waste has proven harmful to people in neighboring communities. And, for me, the absolutely appalling conditions these animals have to endure make any food produced in this way totally unpalatable.<br /><br />As I have learned more about the important links between health and ancestral diets – both for humans and animals – our system looks more and more broken. Grain subsidies (corn, wheat, and soy) make novel, refined foods the cheapest and most abundant calories on the market. Combined with refined sugars, these foods appear to the be basis for Western diseases like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, Alzheimer's, and many autoimmune disorders. We are sick, and the animals we eat are sick.<br /><br />I consider an ethical food system to be one that provides healthy food over many generations. To achieve this, we must reject diets based on refined grains, added sugars, and meat from unhealthy animals. One of the things I learned from John is that both animals and humans achieve healthfulness in the same way - by embracing our nature. We depend on animals as a food source; for us to be healthy, we need to keep them healthy too.<br /><br />Below, you can watch John's interview and follow along with his slides. Eventually, the slides will be embedded, and I'll provide an updated link.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/27935632?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/27935632">"Wild animals, zoos, and you: The influence of habitat on health" by John Durant</a></p><br /><br /><div style="width:425px" id="__ss_8802550"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ancestralhealth/ahs-slidesjohn-durant" title="Wild Animals, Zoos, and You: The Influence of Habitat on Health (John Durant)" target="_blank">Wild Animals, Zoos, and You: The Influence of Habitat on Health (John Durant)</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/8802550" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"></div> </div><br /><br />You can also listen to John's answers to my questions in this video (which may also be updated soon):<br /><br /><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/29288014?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/29288014">John Durant Interview at #AHS11</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/ancestralhealthsymposium">Ancestry</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0