Month: September 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

http://grist.org/food/why-vermont-is-doing-maple-syrup-right/

This is yet another one of Grist’s United States of Sustainable Food highlights and it is on a Vermont maple syrup and dairy farm called Ledganear farm. This farm works with a forester to make sure that his grove maintains biodiversity and ecosystem health. They also uses harvested wood from the forest surrounding him to make fuel to process his maple syrup instead of oil. Lastly, they take advantage of the waste produced by their cows and make fertilizer.

It is great to see yet another farm that works with the culture of their area as well as the land that they use. More farmers should work with scientists and foresters to understand how they can conserve the land that they use to make their product.

http://grist.org/food/why-rhode-island-is-doing-oysters-right/

As one of the many great food articles in grist.org’s new series of states who do particular foods “right,” this article gives a quick blurb about an oyster farm in Rhode Island called Walrus and Carpenter Oysters. They harvest their oysters only by hand and only sell them to local areas and New York City. By doing this, they are allowing the oysters to replenish their habitats by having the time to do their natural process of filtering water before they are caught.

I especially like that Walrus and Carpenter have summer dinners at their oyster farm where community members can come, learn about their sustainable aquaculture, and enjoy one of the most culturally significant Rhode Island foods. As an oyster lover, myself, I am glad to know that there is a sustainable way to harvest oysters and people who are passionate enough to feed and educate their community.

Everyone must watch this TED talk! A little 11 year old boys explains and comments on all of the detailed aspects of the current agricultural world that we have been discussing thus far. It is incredible to hear someone so young speak about such an important topic. This boy is extremely bright for his young age and truly provides a beacon of hope for future generations!

As an important side note, this video truly got me thinking about how human beings can initiate change in the world. In my personal opinion, the most powerful mechanism for change is through education–specifically in the younger generations of children. If students begin to learn about issues in the agricultural world from a young age, many principals and opinions will be ingrained with these young children as they age. The children of today are the politicians, scientists, farmers, USDA/ FDA/EPA/corporation workers of the future. Therefore, one of the main movements regarding the issues with the modern-day agribusiness should be education and awareness, as comprehension and understanding are necessary to initiate change.

TED TALK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvVZwJbs54c

A new food labeling system has been established in certain cafeterias, called “Green Light, Red Light, Eat Right”; they are putting green, yellow, and red stickers on foods to encourage healthier eating. Foods with green stickers are deemed healthy, foods with yellow stickers are less healthy, and food with red stickers are unhealthy. While I like the idea of this system, I am skeptical of certain aspects. How do they determine which foods they put each sticker on? There is an inevitable risk in this design. Consumers won’t have to make healthy eating decisions; it is likely they will rely solely on what the cafeteria labels as healthy when selecting food, allowing for bias to be made by the cafeteria. If this system ever becomes well-established in our society, it could be easily tainted by producers buying the “rights” to green stickers.

I follow a lot of health/environmental pages on Facebook (my favorite definitely being March Against Monsanto, it’s wonderful) and today I was scrolling and found this recipe for sustainable deodorant. While it’s a short article and I have a few weeks until I can try it (I have quite the supply of coconut oil at home, so I’m pretty pumped, it’s a wonderful butter substitute) it definitely made me think.

When we think about animal products, it’s typically in the form of food. Yet many of our day to day products especially beauty products originate from animals. This combined with the fact that people still use animal testing leads to a lot of harm towards our very own ecosystem. Using plant based materials rather than animal ones even in something as simple as deodorant allows us to solve human problems without ruining other lives.

Learn to Make Non-Toxic, Long-Lasting, Organic Deodorant

In the Science section of the New York Times, I found an interesting article, “Testing Future Conditions for the Food Chain”(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/testing-future-conditions-for-the-food-chain.html). Scientists have been looking more closely at corn plants, and it’s clear that they have suffered some damage. This comes in the form of streaked, yellowing leaves, which represents not only current possible crop failures, but long-term issues relating to food supply during global warming. Researchers have begun mimicking expected growing conditions in the upcoming decades, using pipes to release pollutants & lamps to mimic droughts/heat waves. They have come up with the alarming conclusion that due to these changed conditions, the crops will be seriously nutrient-deficient. How is it possible to make crops more resilient? Yes, there will be regions of the world that benefit from global warming (in terms of growing crops), but we have failed to consider the effects of the increase in carbon dioxide. In general, it must be realized that the negative effects of climate change will completely outweigh the positive effects. There is no way around that.  Researchers are now focusing more on ozone because they believe it will be easier to control. But it’s impossible to completely predict damage to agriculture on a warming planet. The ultimate goal now is to figure out how to make these crops stand up to the changing climate, and that is clearly not an easy task.

Over the past two days, I watched the documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”. It starts out with Joe Cross, a man who is 100 pounds overweight and struggling with an autoimmune disease. He notices how dependent he has become on medications and how poorly he eats, and realizes that a healthier diet could aid him with both his weight and disease. This jumpstarts his sixty day fast, whee he consumes nothing but juice made from natural fruits and vegetables. Not only does he lose over eighty pounds in that time, but he feels more energy and does not need to take his medications. This inspires him to spread the word of juicing, which leads into the story of Phil Staples.

Cross is traveling around the country sharing his success when he runs into Phil Staples. Staples is a 429 pound truck driver who has been living on fast food and living with the same rare disease as Cross. After years of knowing no one with this condition, it was incredible how the paths of these two men met. Staples tries some of Cross’s juice, and the two men exchange numbers with Cross offering to help Staples at any time. Months later, Cross is home in Australia when he receives a terrifying phone call from Staples, who is “one cheeseburger away from death”. Cross shows Staples the way in terms of regaining his health, and for the first time in years Staples is able to enjoy time with his son and have a regulated healthy diet.

This documentary was striking to me for several reasons. On a personal note, I have also used fruits and vegetables in order to “cure” a disease typically cared for by medications. For the last few years, I have suffered from asthma-like symptoms, which has made my athletic career rather difficult. After going on an inhaler and seeing improvement in my breathing, I wasn’t paticularlly worried about my health. Then my dad happened to hear over the radio that many people are misdiagnosed with asthma when truly they are suffering from too much acid in their diet. This forced me to reevaluate what I was eating and gave me the opportunity to cut out processed food and focus more on fruits and vegetables with some grains mixed in. This plus exercise led me to lose 15 pounds and feel healthier than I have in years. I also had mild stomach problems when I was very young, and I noticed that the foods I was supposed to eat were the same regardless of what health issue I was dealing with. This just shows how important fruits and vegetables are to the human diet and how much healthier and better off the human race would be if we all cut out the bad stuff and focused on foods made by the sun.

Gastropod is a series of podcasts that examines food through the lens of science and history. In Episode 1: The Golden Spoon, they discuss the effects the shape and material of our silverware have on our eating habits: affecting how we eat, what we eat, and what our food tastes like. The evolution of silverware has impacted our lives in significant ways, through the development of new appliances, to transitions in eating customs, to eating fads. Of particular interest to me was the research done on different metals, examining which metals produced the best tactile and aural sensations when reacted with saliva, as well as how they affect the taste of food.

The purpose of this series is to examine food and agriculture, and environmental issues stemming from the two, through questions such as what’s scalable, what’s sustainable, and what’s scientifically reasonable.

Professor Megan Rothenberger is the conservation biologist we have on campus here at Lafayette College. After reading the articles we were assigned for the “Environmental Impacts of Plant Cultivation” section, I immidiately thought of Professor Rothenberger’s primary research focus and how it relates directly to some of what we will be discussing in class. Professor Rothenberger studies the fluctuations of algal blooms within the Raritan Bay. To write this scientific study, Professor Rothenberger and her team have been monitoring water quality and comparing the abundances of different species of microorganisms. The paper is very interesting to read as it shows how some of the same problems that have happened in Ohio and other various areas around the country could ultimately occur in New York–affecting hundreds of thousands of New York City inhabitants. Professor Rothenberger also explains how these fluctuations in microorganisms affect ecosystems as a whole. The article is very scientific, so reading the experimental methods may be a bit confusing; however, if you read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion sections, you will undoubtedly understand Professor Rothenberger’s work and its modern-day significance!

Rothenberger et al. JPR September 2014

First, PBS Newshour investigates China’s purchase of Smithfield foods in 2013, the largest Chinese takeover of an American company.  Interestingly, the Chinese company that bought Smithfield paid 30% more for the company than its market value.  Some speculate that the Chinese government had a hand in the deal, seeking to acquire overseas meat suppliers to keep pace with the meat consumption of its growing population.  Smithfield constitutes 25% of the pork industry in the U.S., 25% which is now controlled by Shuanghui Foods.  This raises concerns of American food security if major food processors are owned by foreign companies.

Second, why does the U.S. chill its eggs?  Many countries around the world do not.  Eggs do not need to be refrigerated unless they are washed right after coming out of the chicken, which is standard practice in the U.S.  We like our eggs clean and this means that they must be refrigerated all the way through the supply chain.