Canopy Roads of South Georgia

11 year old is onto Monsanto and how to fix the food system

The "dark side of the industrialized food system." as related (accurately) by Birke Baehr at TED^xNextGeneration Asheville.

Conventional farmers use chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. Then they mess with the dirt to make the plants grow. They do this because they've stripped the soil from all nutrients from growing the same crop over and over again. Next more harmful chemicals are sprayed on fruits and vegetables. Like pesticides and herbicides to kill weeds and bugs. When it rains, these chemicals seep into the ground, or rise into our waterways, poisoning our water, too.

His personal goal:

A while back, I wanted to be an NFL footall player.
I decided I'd rather be an organic farmer instead.
[applause]
That way I can have a greater impact on the world.

He's got a turn of phrase:

We can either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital.

-jsq

What can you do now about food?

This item horrified a lot of people: Animal miscarriages from new fungus or virus in Roundup-read crops? A reader asked:

What would you say to someone like myself who wants to make a difference but has no clue where to start? I think that is a big question with my generation.

Well, there's the pumpkin dance. But you don't have to start with that.

HFCS may be the easiest thing to start with, because it's labelled. Don't buy any product that has High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in it. You'll be surprised how many do. At restaurants, check the condiments, don't use them if they have HFCS, and inform the wait staff why you're not. When people ask why you're doing all this tell them. Here's some background on High Fructose Corn Syrup and Obesity.

This kind of thing is working: Hunts removes HFCS from all its Ketchups.

About pesticides, buy local and organic food, like at Whisk. Ask for local food at other stores. Help with a community garden. Join a CSA. Write a letter to the editor.

You don't have to do all of these things; these are some ideas. Start small and just do something. Every little bit helps, and you'll get more ideas as you go along. Your example will help others start.

Also, don't feel bad about it seeming intimidating. On the one hand we have the most sophisticated marketing methods the world has ever known, fueled by megabucks from transnational corporations. On the other hand we have, er, a few college professors like Michael Pollan, a few farmers who observe and analyze like Joel Sallatin, a few poets like south Georgia's own Janisse Ray, and so on. Even so, local and organic food is one of the few industries that has kept booming right through the economic downturn. People actually want food that's good for them and tastes good!

Fortunately, around here we also have Georgia Organics! More about that later.

-jsq

Healthy Moe's?

Moe's to get new, fresher menu By Jeremiah McWilliams, AJC, 13 Jan 2011:

The Atlanta-based burrito chain will roll out a new nationwide menu on Jan. 24, top executives told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Coming soon to 420-plus restaurants will be grass-fed sirloin steak with no added hormones. The pork will be hormone-free, steroid-free and grain-fed. Moe's says its chicken will be hormone-free and not raised in cages, and the tofu will be organic.

Sounds good to me. Why are they doing this?

"The Moe's consumers have told us this is something they want," said Paul Damico, president of the brand. "We take that information seriously. They tell us they want fresh, they want sustainable."

Voting at the checkout counter works!

They have three locations in Valdosta:

1525 Baytree Rd.
Valdosta, GA 31602
(229) 293-0663

3145 North Ashley Street
Valdosta, GA 31602
(229) 333-0649

1500 Patterson Street
Valdosta, GA 31698
229-259-2506

-jsq

PS: And I learned that Moe's is based in Atlanta.

The Biotech Bully of St. Louis is having a Bad Year

Ronnie Cummins writes in Counterpunch, Coexistence With Monsanto? Hell No!

Monsanto’s Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of acres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets, is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4, D and paraquat. Moreover, patented “Roundup Ready” crops require massive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer. Compounding Monsanto’s damage to the environment and climate, rampant Roundup use is literally killing the soil, destroying essential soil microorganisms, degrading the living soil’s ability to capture and sequester CO2, and spreading deadly plant diseases.

In just one year, Monsanto has moved from being Forbes’ “Company of the Year” to the Worst Stock of the Year. The Biotech Bully of St. Louis has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.

All that and paraquat doesn't work on mutant pigweed, either. The whole "no-till" fable is unravelling.

The article mentions scientific studies about bad health effects of genetically modified foods, and goes on to warn of Monsanto maneuverings through the EPA and the Gates Foundation. Then he points to the European Union as leading the way:

Hunt's removes HFCS from all its ketchups

A couple of weeks ago Melanie Warner predicted this, and now it's happened: Less is More: Hunt's Ketchup Removes High Fructose Corn Syrup From Entire Retail Line

OMAHA, Neb., May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hunt's®, a ConAgra Foods brand, is pleased to announce that it has removed the high fructose corn syrup from every bottle of its ketchup products. Hunt's 100% Natural Ketchup brings forth the naturally rich tomato flavor of Hunt's tomatoes and contains only five simple ingredients: tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, salt and other seasonings, with no high fructose corn syrup, artificial ingredients or preservatives.

"In direct response to consumer demand(1), Hunt's is pleased to offer ketchup sweetened with sugar and containing only five simple ingredients," said Ryan Toreson, Hunt's Ketchup brand manager. "Parents are looking for wholesome meals and ingredients they recognize—and the taste of Hunt's ketchup is something both kids and adults love. Even with the new recipe, we have maintained the same great tangy, sweet taste that Hunt's has always had and that consumers tell us they prefer."

This is the same ConAgra that said:

“Our focus is on consumer preference, not the science.”

That would be the science that said:

"When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

So a corporation that doesn't care about science that says a key ingredient in their product makes rats fat, every one of them, in ways that produce the same risk factors that in humans contribute to high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer, and diabetes, that same corporation does care when its customers say they don't want that ingredient.

As ConAgra says in the press release:

(1) The 2009 HealthFocus® Trend Report indicated consumer concern over high fructose corn syrup has risen from 27% of shoppers being extremely or very concerned in 2004 to 45% of shoppers in 2008.

Voting at the supermarket checkout works.

Act the way I want to feel

Gretchen Rubin recommends "Act the way I want to feel:"

...often we feel because of the way we act. So by acting the way we wish we felt, we can change our emotions – a strategy that is uncannily effective.

Second, the world’s reaction to us is quite influenced by the way we act toward the world. For example, in situation evocation, we spark a response from people that reinforces a tendency we already have — for example, if I act irritable all the time, the people around me are going to treat me with less patience and helpfulness, which will, in turn, stoke my irritability. If I can manage to joke around, I’ll evoke a situation in which the people around me were more likely to joke around, too.

This is also the light side of the obesity network. If we are influenced by our friends to become obese or not, we also influence our friends.

Which leads, as always, to the same conclusion: that even though it’s tempting sometimes to think that I’d be much happier if other people would behave differently toward me, the only person whose behavior I can change is myself. If I want people to be friendlier to me, I must be friendlier. If I want my husband to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic. If I want our household atmosphere to be light-hearted, I must be light-hearted.

And if we want our spouses, friends, neighbors, community to be health weight, we can help them become so by doing it ourselves first. And invite our friends to exercise, to pass up the donut for an orange, to go outside instead of watch TV.

Beyond the immediate personal effects, try to persuade the local supermarket to stock High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)-free cereals or grass-fed beef or local fresh vegetables. And if they won't, start a farmer's market or a CSA or a you-pick-em. If enough of us do it, eventually we get successes like Gatorade, Hunt's ketchup, Wheat Thins, and many other products having HFCS removed by their vendors.

Gretchen Rubin was writing about happiness, but it's the same principle. If you want people to be happy or healthy, start with yourself, find like-minded people, and eventually maybe it becomes the way things are.

HFCS downfall?

Let's hope Melanie Warner, writing in bnet, is right about The Death of High Fructose Corn Syrup:

The back-to-back, double whammy announcements that PepsiCo (PEP) is ditching high fructose corn syrup in Gatorade along with the results of a scathing new study from researchers at Princeton make it official — allies of the controversial sweetener have lost the war.

What the Princeton researchers found was A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain, as we noted here a while back. And, as we noted last year, there's also an eerie correlation of the spread of HFCS into the food supply with the rise of obesity in the U.S.

Here's Melanie Warner again, this time in the New York Times:

Hunt’s ketchup is among the latest in a string of major-brand products that have replaced the vilified sweetener. Gatorade, several Kraft salad dressings, Wheat Thins, Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Pepsi Throwback, Mountain Dew Throwback and the baked goods at Starbucks, to name a few, are all now made with regular sugar.

Why is Big Food buckling about bogus sugar?

What started as a narrow movement by proponents of natural and organic foods has morphed into a swell of mainstream opposition, thanks in large part to tools of modern activism like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and movies like “Food, Inc.” and “King Corn.”

Well, well. Voting at supermarket checkout seems to be working after all!

Fat Rats on HFCS

Hilary Parker writes about research at Princeton:

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Every single rat got fat on HFCS.

And the researchers are not talking about a little extra weight:

Jamie Oliver on Food Education

Jamie Oliver is a cook from England. He's trying to organize an intervention into the food system that's killing us.

We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide, you name it, it's on the front page of every paper, CNN.... Look at homicide at the bottom, for God's sake!

Every single one of those ones in the red is a diet-related disease. Any doctor, any specialist, will tell you that.

The top three are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Number 6 is diabetes. Those are the ones in red on Jamie Oliver's graph. Homicide is number 15. See CDC for numbers. ( In 2006 72,449 people died of diabetes and 18,573 of homicide. You're almost 4 times as likely to die of diabetes. And about 40 times more likely to die of heart disease.)

I want to show a picture of my friend Brittney. She's sixteen years old. She's got six years to live. Because of the food that she's eaten. She's the third generation of Americans that hasn't grown up within a food environment where they've been taught to cook at home or in school. Or her mum. Or her mum's mum. She has six years to live!

More pictures of people with very round faces and rounder bodies:

This is a normal family, guys!.

We need to change normal. That's what Jamie Oliver wants to do.

Obesity leads to diabetes and heart disease. And what leads to obesity? Lack of exercise combined with food stuffed with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), salt, and fat in massive portions.

Fast food has taken over the whole country, we know that.

Time to take it back.

I wish I could come up here today and hang up a cure for AIDS or cancer, you'd be fighting and scrambling to get to me. This, all this bad news, is preventable. That's the good news. It's very preventable.

How? Vote with your food purchases. Demand a food ambassador in every supermarket. Demand big food businesses back food education. Get the government to work with the fast food purveyors to wean us off the fat, sugar, and salt. Schools, ages 4-whenever: proper fresh food cooked from local sources on site. Every child should leave school knowing how to cook ten recipes that will save their life. Corporate American should feed their staff properly. You can care and be commercial.

That's his prescription. Doesn't sound so hard, does it?

Graphs: HCFS and Obesity

Update 2012-08-30: old graph links decayed; replaced with other graphs of same data.
Almost as many obese as healthy weight adults in the U.S., and the rest are overweight. Something changed starting about 1980. Data source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2005) Health, United States, 2005. Graph source: Wikipedia Blue Cross Blue Shield, with this accompanying text:

While the percentage of the U.S. population considered overweight has been stable since 1960-62, the percentage considered obese has more than doubled.

What happened?