You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 7, 2010.
Soda Fountain at the T-Bone Tooter in Virginia by WoofTeacher, on Flickr
So by now you know not to order the “pink slimed” beef at the drive through. So you’re going to just get a salad and water, but not bottled water because you don’t want to contribute to the plastic waste disposal problem or because you want to avoid the chemicals in your water. So it’s just water from the fountain in your own cup.
Might want to rethink that fountain drink. Tom Laskawy over at Beyond Green Blog (he’s also a Grist.org writer) has quoted from a a paper in the International Journal of Food Microbiology by a team of microbiologists from Virginia’s Hollins University in which tested samples found many bacteria (including e. Coli, Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia) far in excess of drinking water standards.
The real kicker? Many of the pathogens were antibiotic-resistant.
As for “only one outbreak from about ten years ago was linked to a soda fountain,” I wonder if since we are all tuned to pathogens in the meat, disease tracking questionnaires are not designed to pick up on this particular threat.
Well, you wanted a reason to stop drinking soda, right?
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by FoodRenegade who knows better than to drink that nasty stuff!
jeopardy kid by tinrey, on Flickr
Jeopardy is one of the few television shows we watch regularly. We watch it twice a day, as a family. There was an organic farmer as a recent champion. Please forgive me if I can’t remember if the contestant was on the current or rerun episode we watched. During the interview portion of the show, Alex Trebek asked, “Are organics really more nutritious?” The contestant answered, “It depends on the study.”
I turned to hubby and said, “Conventional is SO much more nutritious! I can think of at least two things conventional has that organic doesn’t—pesticides and herbicides! Atrazine is edible, right? That’s why they put it on our food?”
Alex asked the wrong question.
Research is controlled like the fox watching the henhouse. Subsidies make sure the money flows toward the least nutritious foods. Monocropped GMOs guarantee the most inputs applied in the greatest quantity over the largest possible acreage. Nutrition may be a personal choice, but the rate at which we are losing topsoil and fouling our waterways is shocking.
I want to encourage you to become a personal activist this year. You don’t need to join a group, send money, hold a picket sign, or even write a single letter (although all those things are beneficial if you have the time, finances and passion.) Just make a personal choice.
Choose local. Choose organic. Choose biodynamic. Really think your way through your next shopping trip instead of tossing the same stuff as always in your cart. Leave the kids home just this once and read the labels. Find a blog to follow (like Civil Eats or La Vida Locovore) where you can get food news. Read a book, listen to a podcast. Do something to educate yourself about the issues, then decide on an action to take and take it. Change just one thing.
You might find change addicting in a good way!
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
