Category Archives: Health and Environment

The FDA is breeding superbacteria to kill us all.

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It’s true: FDA Turns Down Petitions to Withdraw Medically Important Antibiotics from Animal Agriculture

Why do we, as consumers, care about this? Because the overuse of antibiotics in our food supply leads to drug-resistant bacteria. We’re seeing that with the rise in MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, infections, which are not treatable by most antibiotics.

Antibiotics are regularly fed to healthy factory farmed animals to ward off any diseases that are likely to strike when large numbers of animals are confined together in a small, unsanitary space. This irresponsible use of antibiotics means that bacteria have more opportunity to evolve defense mechanisms against the antibiotics, making the drugs ineffective, and creating super bugs like MRSA.

The Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming has some scary statistics:

  • In 1998, the Institute of Medicine estimated that antibiotic resistance generated at least $4 billion to $5 billion per year in extra costs to the U.S. health care system, more recently estimated at $16.6 billion to $26 billion per year
  • Up to 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are given to healthy food animals
  • More than 25 million pounds of antibiotics a year are used as a non-therapeutic treatment to artificially speed up the growth of food animals and to compensate for the effects of unsanitary conditions on the farm

The World Health Organization has recommended that the FDA and USDA regulate the administering of antibiotics to food animals, and end this dangerous practice. But since they won’t, we consumers need to be responsible and only purchase animal products from animals that were not fed antibiotics. Check labels to be sure the animals’ diet was drug-free, or look for the Organic designation, which means no antibiotics, hormones, or steroids were fed to the animals. Even better, purchase your animal products from small, local farms, where you can visit and confirm that the animals are pasture-raised and happy. The future of humanity may depend on it!

Local snack: CCNO Bars

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I am embarrassed by, and sorry for the poor quality of this picture:

I walked around my office trying to find some decent lighting for my old iPhone’s camera, to no avail. Fortunately, this blog has a lovely photo of a CCNO Bar.

I needed an afternoon snack, and my favorite workday food shop doesn’t carry my usual quickie bite, Lara Bars. I like Lara Bars because they’re just fruit and nuts smashed together, without chemicals and additives and preservatives like Clif, etc. So I was very happy to find the box of CCNO Bars by the register. They’re along the same lines as Lara Bars, but made locally, and with an extra kick of flavor from cononut oil. They’re vegan, gluten free, and all-natural. And LOCAL. And REAL FOOD. Give them a try, if you can find them!

Eggs are eggcellent

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I eat a lot of eggs. One each morning in my breakfast slop and one in each lunch salad on weekdays, and around one to four on the weekends: between 11 and 14 a week. Conventional wisdom used to say to eat no more than 5 eggs a week. My doctor told me a similar number when I asked him for a guideline a year or so ago, but when told him my egg reality, and he said “okay, as long as your blood work stays clean, go for it.” So off I went, and so far, so good.

It seems the rules have loosened up a bit. The 2011 ChooseMyPlate.gov guidelines from the USDA (replacing the old Food Pyramid) are a little more generous:

One egg a day, on average, doesn’t increase risk for
heart disease, so make eggs part of your weekly
choices. Only the egg yolk contains cholesterol and
saturated fat, so have as many egg whites as you want.

But what about the studies that are cropping up all over the place claiming that dietary cholesterol doesn’t directly relate to blood cholesterol? Who to trust? Well, I trust Harvard:

A solid body of research shows that for most people, cholesterol in food has a much smaller effect on blood levels of total cholesterol and harmful LDL cholesterol than does the mix of fats in the diet.

For most people, the amount of cholesterol eaten has only a modest impact on the amount of cholesterol circulating in the blood.

World’s Healthiest Foods describes a couple studies from the University of Massachusetts which claim a daily egg can reduce your risk of developing age-related macular degeneration, while not raising blood cholesterol levels.

The UK’s Daily Mail reports on research from the European Journal of Nutrition showing that a two-egg-a-day diet can actually reduce one’s cholesterol.

This cholesterol article tells us that only some of the dietary cholesterol consumed actually ends up in your bloodstream, and if you consume excess cholesterol, your body can compensate by producing less cholesterol of its own.

Most studies seem to give the green light to eating an egg a day, but not much more than that. So enjoy your eggs in moderation, and be sure to choose eggs from pasture-raised, humanely treated chickens.

Pumping iron supplements

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As an active female pescatarian of child-bearing age, I possess several attributes that could put me at risk for iron deficiency. Looking for a explanation for recent low energy levels, I did some reading on iron supplements. Iron deficiency can cause fatigue, and an increasing iron intake may seem like an easy fix, but iron supplementing can be tricky: excess amounts of iron can cause gastrointestinal distress and even become toxic. It’s safest to get blood work and recommendations from your doctor, and take a daily multivitamin.

iron?

If you want to do some dietary tinkering of your own, though, there are good resources on the Interwebs. I found this National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements article and this Vegetarian Times article to give simple, basic overviews.

Non-meat eaters may consume the daily recommended amount of iron, but the iron is a type, called nonheme, that isn’t as readily absorbed by the body as iron from meat, called heme (as in, comes from hemoglobin, a component of red blood cells in animals). Nonheme iron isn’t as available for absorption by the digestive tract, and the NIH suggests that vegetarians consider consuming twice the recommended daily amount of iron in order for their bodies to store the appropriate amount. The Vegetarian Resource Group recommends an iron RDA of 14mg for vegetarian men and post-menopausal women, and 33mg for pre-menopausal women (the official RDA for those groups is 8mg and 18mg, respectively).

Iron supplements contain either ferric or ferrous salts, with ferrous being more easily absorbed. Look for ferrous fumarate, ferrous sulfate, or ferrous gluconate in your multivitamin. Mine gives me 18mg of iron from ferrous fumarate, which on top of the iron I get from a vegetable-rich diet, should be plenty.

iron?

The bottom line is that those who eat fewer animal products can keep iron stores up by eating plenty of greens and whole grains, and taking a daily multivitamin. It’s probably best not to take iron supplements without the oversight of a physician.

Good sources of nonheme iron:

  • iron-fortified cereals
  • beans
  • dark, leafy greens
  • soy (tofu, tempeh)
  • quinoa
  • blackstrap molasses (mentioned all over the place, but not a very versatile ingredient!)

Suggestions for improving absorption of nonheme iron:

  • Eat iron-rich food with vitamin C-rich foods (fruits and vegetables)
  • Avoid combining iron-rich foods with iron absorption blockers such as coffee, tea, cocoa, calcium, and fiber

Surprise Ally: The Paleo Diet

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What? How can a diet that encourages eating large quantities of meat be considered a friend to the anti-factory farming movement?

The Paleo Diet preaches the consumption of pasture raised, humanely treated meat and eggs. The emphasis is on the fact that these foods are more wholesome, and therefore better for humans than factory farmed meats and eggs, but the side effect of supporting humane farms is a welcome one.

Animals raised on pasture and slaughtered humanely produce healthier food: more vitamins, a better fat profile and fatty acid ratios, no unnecessary antibiotics, and less stress hormones.

In short: eat only happy, healthy animals (or products from those animals) and you will be a happy, healthy human! Remember: you are what what you eat eats!

Links:

http://paleodietnews.com/1264/%20usda-study-says-factory-farms-are-worse-for-the-environment-than/

http://paleodietlifestyle.com/paleo-101/

http://robbwolf.com/faq/

http://whole9life.com/category/conscientious-omnivore/

The Omnivore’s Dilemma QotD

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(From Big Organic chapter, p. 183)

The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do). Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate. And while it is true that organic farmers don’t spread fertilizers made from natural gas or spray pesticides made from petroleum, industrial organic farmers often wind up burning more diesel fuel than their conventional counterparts: in trucking bulky loads of compost across the countryside and weeding their fields, a particularly energy-intensive process involving extra irrigation (to germinate the weeds before planting) and extra cultivation. All told, growing food organically uses about a third less fossil fuel than growing it conventionally, according to David Pimentel, though that savings disappears if the compost is not produced on site or nearby.

Moral of the story: eat local foods! Another bonus–food that travels less distance will be fresher and tastier!

The Omnivore’s Dilemma QotD

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(from the Big Organic chapter, p157)

Along with the national list of permissible synthetics, “access to pasture,” and, for other organic animals, “access to the outdoors” indicate how the word “organic” has been stretched and twisted to admit the very sort of industrial practices for which it once offered a critique and an alternative. The final standards also demonstrate how, in Gene Kahn’s words, “everything eventually morphs into the way the world is.” And yet the pastoral values and imagery embodied in that word survive in the minds of many people, as the marketers of organic food well understand: Just look at a container of organic milk, with its happy cows and verdant pastures. Thus is a venerable ideal hollowed out, reduced to a sentimental conceit printed on the side of a milk carton: Supermarket Pastoral.

Was going to stop there, but an interesting counterpoint follows:

Get over it, Gene Kahn would say. The important thing, the real value of putting organic on an industrial scale, is the sheer amount of acreage it puts under organic management. Behind every organic TV dinner or chicken or carton of industrial organic milk stands a certain quantity of land that will no longer be doused with chemicals, an undeniable gain for the environment and the public health.

Defeat for Big Corn?

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News from the NRDC blog: Senate votes overwhelmingly to end corn ethanol subsidies —

  • The amendment will end three decades of subsidies to the corn ethanol industry and save taxpayers several billion dollars.
  • The VEETC (Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit) [cost] taxpayers $6 billion this year alone and [gave] almost nothing in return in domestic ethanol production or industry jobs above and beyond what is already mandated by the Renewable Fuel Standard
  • [The VEETC] comes at the expense of developing the new and cleaner advanced biofuels we need to create jobs, increase our energy security and address global warming.

We wanted to see if Michael Pollan had written anything recently about ethanol subsidies, and read this article from 2006:

http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/the-great-yellow-hope/

  • The way we grow corn in this country consumes tremendous quantities of fossil fuel: Every bushel of corn grown in America has consumed the equivalent of between a third and a half gallon of gasoline.
    • Corn receives more synthetic fertilizer than any other crop, and that fertilizer is made from fossil fuels — mostly natural gas.
    • Corn also receives more pesticide than any other crop, and most of that pesticide is made from petroleum.
    • To plow or disc the cornfields, plant the seed, spray the corn and harvest it takes large amounts of diesel fuel
    • To dry the corn after harvest requires natural gas.
  • Distill[ing] the corn into ethanol, an energy-intensive process that requires still more fossil fuel. Estimates vary, but they range from two-thirds to nine-tenths of a gallon of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol. (The more generous number does not count all the energy costs of growing the corn.) Some estimates are still more dismal, suggesting it may actually take more than a gallon of fossil fuel to produce a gallon of our putative alternative to fossil fuel.
  • According to the Wall Street Journal, it will cost U.S. taxpayers $120 for every barrel of oil saved by making ethanol.
  • The federal government offers a tax break of 54 cents for every gallon of ethanol produced
  • At the same time, the government protects domestic ethanol producers by imposing a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imported ethanol
  • Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950’s and, since 1980, high fructose corn syrup.

This all reminds us of a t-shirt we saw recently: http://www.goodjoe.com/Store/Product.aspx?id=66. It’s not clear from the creator’s description if she is making a statement about the large quantity of corn products found in the composition of the average American body…

 

 

Whole Foods Meat

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We braved the insanity at the shiny new Whole Foods in Charlottesville today. A security guard was directing traffic in the parking lot, and the place was a zoo, but it was beautiful. We have a couple posts planned around Whole Foods, but in the meantime, we’ll just say we were very impressed by the new store, and appreciated this sign: