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I’ve been a fan of Ginnifer Goodwin since her appearances back on “Ed” in 2001. She’s really come into her own, with several feature films and major roles in TV shows.
And she’s no longer a vegan.
I love this interview because I love her laugh, but also because she is honest. She had health problems as a vegan, added humanely raised animal products to her diet and loves bacon!
I want to link you to a fascinating post I read. It’s very detailed, very thoroughly researched and quite disturbing. The upshot is that the “wax” we have come to expect on produce hasn’t been “wax” for many years, but is now an edible (?) plastic applied to both organic and conventional produce to protect it from damage during shipping and microbial contamination.
Here is the post: Dude, That Isn’t Wax On Your Apple!
You might not be up to reading the entire thing, it is long and contains numerous links, especially to FDA articles which can be a real nightmare to decipher.
But the upshot is this: If you don’t grow it yourself, and you can’t get face-to-face with the farmer who grew it, you don’t know what is being applied to “protect you.” It might or might not wash off in veggie wash and it might or might not prove to be safe and health-supporting.
The number one goal of Local Nourishment is to encourage you to grow what you can, to source your food as close to your front door as possible, and to personally acquaint yourself with your food producers for what you purchase. I challenge you to take a list of the names of the films listed in realityblogger’s outstanding post to the produce manager of the stores you frequent and try to find out what is applied to your food. It may be he or she has no idea and has to do some research for him or herself. Take the same list to your farmers market (and by that I mean enforced producers market) and ask your farmer. I’ll bet he knows what he applies to your food, and I’ll double down that he or she will be happy to discuss it with you!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday.
mouse by Brian_Kellett, on Flickr
Ah, bless CNN Health. They published a blog post today about a recent study done and reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation which states, quite frighteningly that “in both humans and rodent models, obesity is associated with injury to a key brain area for energy homeostasis.” In other words, a high fat diet is implicated in making and keeping you fat.
Whew! I’m not at risk because I’m sure no model! (Ha, little joke there.)
But seriously. First of all, I don’t know about you, but I am not a rodent. Secondly, I have read the entire study and at no point do the authors discuss what constitutes a high fat diet for humans. My guess is that like most other scientific studies examining “fat”, the major constituent of the diet was actually vegetable oil, not animal fat.
The rodents were provided “either standard laboratory chow (3.34 kcal/g; PMI Nutrition International) or a diet containing 60% kcal fat (HFD, 5.24 kcal/g, D12492; Research Diets) for periods ranging from 1 day to 8 months.”
High fat D12492 chow consists of:
Protein 26.2%
Carbohydrate 26.3%
Fat 34.9%
The major source of fat is lard, but soybean oil (an oil, not a fat) is a major portion of the calories as well. Protein is provided almost exclusively by casein, the protein in milk; carbohydrates come almost totally from cellulose; it is sweetened with maltodextrose and sucrose.
We don’t know exactly what the “standard laboratory chow” is because that specific product is not listed among their offerings, but PMI’s “mouse chow” is listed with this breakdown:
Protein 19.8%
Fat 25.3%
Carbohydrates 54.8%
The main sources of protein are soybean meal, brewer’s yeast, whey and casein. Fat comes from “porcine animal fat preserved with BHA” (aka lard) and soybean oil. Carbohydrates are from ground wheat and corn and wheat germ. I’m seeing some pretty significant differences in the source of protein and carbs there, are you? Wheat and corn, for example, are (ahem) FOOD, and cellulose is…well, it’s hard to say what the source of this particular cellulose is. It could be from algae, or wood, or cotton, we aren’t told.
The Mayo Clinic calls a diet that high (55-60%) in carbohydrates carb-loading and warns that it may lead to weight gain and blood sugar regulation issues. But it’s apparently the “standard” of mouse chow.
If mice really do well 55% carbs, then I can see where bumping their fat intake 10% might give them an issue. The USDA food pyramid numbers work out to about 63% carbs, and we all know the road that has led us down.
The brain is made of fat. It runs on fat. Restricting healthy saturated dietary fat causes memory loss, depression, anxiety and a whole host of other issues. Vegetable oils don’t work the same way.
But my main gripes are the same as it always is in studies of this kind:
- Humans are not rodents.
- Oil is not fat.
- If we were to restrict our diet the way these animals have been restricted, it would not surprise me to find all kinds of odd problems popping up.
Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made. We have an entire planet of food to enjoy which, when grown organically and biodynamically, prepared traditionally and lovingly, and eaten joyfully and thankfully, provide us the nutrition we require for properly functioning brains, kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, and everything else. So, let me ask you: are you a man or a mouse?
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
Salmonella typhimurium invading cultured human cells. by Microbe World, on Flickr
Or, at least that’s the spin.
Government officials say that even contaminated ground turkey is safe to eat if it is cooked to 165 degrees and handled properly before cooking.
Yum, yum!
Even the respected “Food and Water Watch” is getting in on the blame-the-victim mentality:
Um, no, it’s not. The BEST thing you can do, yourself, is to walk right past the meat counter at the grocery store (and just about every other counter there as well) and purchase your meat from farmers you know personally and trust who grassfeed their animals, house them responsibly and harvest them appropriately. That combined with a properly functioning gut, fed with good bacteria, not torn up with excessive roughage and fiber, not drowned in sugar and not stripped of life by the Standard American Diet will do your health greater good than eating a “properly cooked” salmonella burger.
The recent fiscal insanity leads many to believe that our food safety will suffer if any spending cuts take place in Washington. We don’t need spending cuts to already have a terrible track record. Our food supply is becoming more consolidated and inspectors are becoming as rare as debeaked hen’s teeth. Food, Inc. is three years old now, but still has valuable insights into how we got to this sorry state of affairs.
Meanwhile, health-promoting raw foods, properly and carefully prepared, are being seized, contaminated prior to testing, and the purveyors of same are being rounded up, arrested and tried on specious charges. That both the recall and the raid of Rawsome Foods happened on the same week as the Cargill recall is a fine example of irony. I wonder how many involved in the deaths and illnesses of the antibiotic-resistant tainted meat will be arrested.
Here’s the word from Cargill about the recall.
F_01 by Mouse, on Flickr
I was reading “F as in Fat” today, a report released last month by Trust for America’s Health. It says, among other things:
Since 1995, diabetes rates have doubled in eight states. Then, only four states had diabetes rates above 6 percent. Now, 43 states have diabetes rates over 7 percent, and 32 have rates above 8 percent. Twenty years ago, 37 states had hypertension rates over 20 percent. Now, every state is over 20 percent, with nine over 30 percent.
Are we cooking significantly less than 1995? Are parents home less than in 1995? Has fast food had that much of a surge? Are video games that new? Is soda and junk food more available now than just 16 years ago? Have people started stuffing themselves suddenly…more so than then?
According to “The away-from-home market by outlet type” chart in this publication by the USDA, fast food meals away from home have leveled off since 1995, even dropping slightly. According to the CDC, “the proportion of students attending PE class daily declined significantly during 1991–1995 and did not change during 1995–2003″.
So, what’s different? Some have said that humans are evolving toward obesity. Hogwash, I say. The sudden change in our physical makeup wouldn’t change on an evolutionary scale over 16 years!
So…what’s changed? A myriad of changes in food policy have occurred since the birth of my daughter Kate. But I can point directly to two things that have changed, one that might affect our health, and one that would absolutely impact our weight:
Government Subsidies
Yes, that’s right. The same people who preach “Eat less! Exercise more! It’s all about personal responsibility and it’s easy!” are spending your tax dollars to subsidize foods that are ruinous to our health. For example, since 1995…
Sunflower Oil
> Commodity: Sunflowers
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $880 million
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): 540%
> Biggest Producers: Cargill, Dow AgroChemical
Peanut Butter
> Commodity: Peanuts
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $3.4 billion
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): +675%
> Biggest Producers: The J.M. Smucker Co., Unilever
Ground Beef
> Commodity: Livestock
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $3.6 billion
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): +258%
> Biggest Producers: Fairbank Farms, Cargill
Soybean Oil
> Commodity: Soybeans
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $24.3 billion
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): +1,047%
> Biggest Producers: Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland
Bread
> Commodity: Wheat
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $32.4 billion
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): +141%
> Biggest Producers: Entenmann’s, Pepperidge Farm, Sara Lee
Corn Syrup
> Commodity:
> Total Subsidies (1995-2010): $77.1 billion
> % Change in Annual Subsidies (1995-2010): +24%
> Biggest Producers: Archer Daniels Midland
Okay, I am surprised that there was only a 24% increase in corn syrup subsidies, but at $77.1 billion, that is almost more than the others combined!
Genetic Modification
Between 1997 and 2009, the total surface area of land cultivated with GMOs had increased by a factor of 80, from 17,000 km2 (4.2 million acres) to 1,340,000 km2 (331 million acres).
We don’t know if genetically modified foods affect obesity. As Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception says,
Might it play in role in our national epidemic of obesity or the rise in diabetes or lymphatic cancers? We have no way of knowing if there is a connection because no one has looked for one.
Sixteen years is a very long, and very short time. It’s a very long time for a person to make an association between what they put in their mouth today and ailments developed a decade and a half from now. It’s a very short time for such a major impact on our society’s health.
These are just two of my suspects. There are many entities “of interest” in this ongoing investigation. Who and what do you suspect?
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
I had to laugh when these news stories hit my inbox this morning:
Why diet sodas are not good for ANYONE, especially diabetics and the overweight
Kids who eat candy are not as overweight as kids who don’t
Coca-Cola billboard helps the environment
And then I skipped over to read Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s blog entry of this morning:
How Our Government is Making or Keeping Us Sick
So, the people who are in charge of protecting us aren’t, the “diet” drinks that have been pushed on us for decades make us fat, kids who eat candy are less overweight and one of the worst consumables (no I won’t call it a food) on the planet saves it?
Excuse me, please, I think I see a flower growing in my weedbed and I need to rip that thing out before it spreads! What an insane world!
Weeds took over the garden. by _Dekan_, on Flickr
Green Festival: GMO Freak Show by elizaIO, on Flickr
I must confess. When I first heard anti-GMO forces speaking out strongly, calling genetically modified food “experimenting on the human race,” I was put off. After all, there was no proof of harm, and the scientists say any unusual organisms would be broken down during the course of our digestion and would not persist in our bodies. And isn’t the promise of “feeding the world” worth it? Aren’t we being rich, spoiled elitists by denying a technology that could miraculously put an end to world hunger?
My own conversion wasn’t gradual. One read through of the works of Jeffrey M. Smith and I was thoroughly convinced that we were rushing headlong into territory we ought not tread.
But there is new evidence that makes me really angry. Really, really, seriously ticked off. And somewhat frightened for our children. A peer-reviewed study has found genetically modified materials in the bloodstream of pregnant women. (Note: Cry1Ab is the protein in Bacillus thuringiensis, the bacteria which gives GMO plants their pesticide resistance.)
Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women.
They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. The study covered 30 pregnant women and 39 women who had come for tubectomy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) in Quebec.
None of them had worked or lived with a spouse working in contact with pesticides.
They were all consuming typical Canadian diet that included GM foods such as soybeans, corn and potatoes. Blood samples were taken before delivery for pregnant women and at tubal ligation for non-pregnant women. Umbilical cord blood sampling was done after birth.
Cry1Ab toxin was detected in 93 per cent and 80 per cent of maternal and fetal blood samples, respectively and in 69 per cent of tested blood samples from non-pregnant women. Earlier studies had found trace amounts of the Cry1Ab toxin in gastrointestinal contents of livestock fed on GM corn. This gave rise to fears that the toxins may not be effectively eliminated in humans and there may be a high risk of exposure through consumption of contaminated meat.
To all the “loonies” out there, I get it now. I apologize for rolling my eyes and thinking you all must be Luddites to want to stand in the way of progress. You were right all along.
The issue is not that we know for certain that turning a human into a breathing pesticide factory is dangerous to a person’s life or health. The issue is that we don’t know what the consequences will be. Cancer? Sterility? Immune dysfunction? The most truthful answer could be a non-committal shrug. We don’t know because testing isn’t allowed. Safety hasn’t been proven. And clearly, we are being lied to about the persistence of these organisms once we consume them.
If you avoid organic food (your only option for avoiding GMO at this time) because of its price tag; if you refuse to support organics because some have called it “elitist”; if you don’t have the time or motivation to seek out organically grown produce and organically fed meat, now is the time to revisit your decision. If you are a woman of any age, if you have young children, if you are a young man who might one day have children, please reconsider.
Because right now, your choice at the checkout is your only defense.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade.
Arthritis Relief by Timothy Valentine, on Flickr
NPR ran a story yesterday, the headline of which was “Can Diets Fight Chronic Pain? The Science Isn’t There“. The upshot of the article? Doctors say diet might help, but the studies attempting to prove their findings are poorly designed. In reviewing several popular anti-inflammatory diets, the article says…
Each diet emphasizes slightly different things, but they all have plenty of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables, fish or small amounts of lean meat, whole grains, little to no processed or refined foods, and an emphasis on omega-3 fatty acids like those found in fish oil.
Sounds like a traditional diet to me. Now, there may be some argument about the soaking of the grains, and the lack of emphasis of healthy fats and raw foods in this definition, but I really like the “little to no processed or refined foods” part.
I have a chronic pain issue, and inflammation is a major bugaboo I deal with. I absolutely can say for certain that food affects my pain level, and not just what I don’t eat, but what I do eat. For example, I can link a bad knee/back/arthritis day to sugar intake about 80% of the time. Do I need scientific studies to “prove” the association to me? No, my food and pain diary does that quite well. Will cutting back on processed and refined foods and sugar hurt me? No.
So why not take the plunge and try it? Spend a week with a small notebook jotting down what you eat and how you feel. Then go a week eating a traditional diet, keeping track of how you feel. Want more improvement? Spend another week on your good diet taking a good antioxidant and see if that makes a difference. Try a fermented cod liver oil supplement one week, too. Identify and avoid what you are sensitive or allergic to. But keep track because the changes might be too subtle to notice unless you are really paying attention. By noting what really helps and what seems to worsen your own pain or inflammation level, you will be taking charge of your own health instead of waiting for the next “miracle drug” to come down the pike (and be recalled in six months for its side effects!)
HRH Prince of Wales by Amplified2010, on Flickr
The Prince of Wales gave a wonderful speech yesterday at the Future of Food conference at Georgetown University. I wish I had heard it in person, but it’s probably a good thing I wasn’t there as I doubt I’d be able to maintain proper decorum. Here are some highlights and a comment or two:
“Remember that when we talk about agriculture and food production, we are talking about a complex and interrelated system and it is simply not possible to single out just one objective, like maximising production, without also ensuring that the system which delivers those increased yields meets society’s other needs. As Eric [Schlosser] has highlighted, these should include the maintenance of public health, the safeguarding of rural employment, the protection of the environment and contributing to overall quality of life.”
The Prince of Wales might well be addressing genetically modified foods in this portion of the speech. The promise of increased yield has not been realized, but more and more the danger to public health, the consolidation of the food supply and the degredation of the environment are being realized.
“Here in the U.S., I am told, four out of every ten bushels of corn are now grown to fuel motor vehicles.”
This is not praise he offers, but condemnation that we are using food—at a time when food shortages are on the increase—to fuel our cars, and indeed, even to bring food from afar to our grocery stores.
“Again, in the U.S., soil is being washed away ten times faster than the Earth can replenish it, and it is happening forty times faster in China and India. Twenty-two thousand square miles of arable land is turning into desert every year, and all tole, it appears a quarter of the world’s farmland, two billion acres, is degraded.”
These are facts and figures you won’t hear from the USDA. Our practices of pouring oil (in the form of fertilizer) and poison on the land (herbicide and pesticide) and monocropping is destroying what land is available for food production.
“Over a billion people—one seventh of the world’s population—are hungry and another billion suffer from what is called ‘hidden hunger,’ which is the lack of essential vitamins and nutrients in their diet. And on the reverse side of the coin, let us not forget the other tragic fact—that over a billion people in the world are considered overweight or obese. It is an increasingly insane picture. In one way or another, half the world finds itself on the wrong side of the food equation.”
I think His Royal Highness is mistaking the obesity crisis for a food glut and I would respectfully disagree. I see obesity as a symptom, albeit not a certainty, of what he calls “hidden hunger.” When a low-income family can afford to eat McDonalds three times a day but can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables, it is clear our system of subsidies is so out of whack that we are funding illness and penalizing health.
“And yet we are told ceaselessly that sustainable or organic agriculture cannot feed the world. I find this claim very hard to understand…This report drew on evidence from more than 400 scientists worldwide and concluded that small-scale, family-based farming systems, adopting so-called agro-ecological approaches, were among the most productive systems in developing countries. This was a very major study and a very explicit statement. And yet, for some strange reason, the conclusions of this exhaustive report seem to have vanished without a trace.”
Indeed. Again, something the USDA (with its industrial agriculture leadership and funding) won’t be telling you.
“[My International Sustainability unit] looked at five case studies and discovered two things: firstly that the system of farm subsidies is geared in such a way that it favours overwhelmingly those kinds of agricultural techniques that are responsible for the many problems I have just outlines. And secondly, that the cost of that damage is not factored into the price of food production.”
Neither is the cost to our health of the rising sugar and vegetable oil content of our food, the increased pesticide load from managing the superweed invasion that genetically modified crops has wrought, nor the loss in nutrition of food trucked for thousands of miles.
“There are, after all, already precedents for these kinds of measures, particularly, for instance, in the way that governments around the world have stimulated the growth of the renewable energy market by the provision of market mechanisms and feed-in tariffs. Could what has been done for energy production be applied to food? Is this worth considering? After all, it could have a very powerful, transformative effect on the market for sustainably produced food, with benefits all around.”
Oh, I hate to think that the way to fix government subsidies is to just move them. As long as there are subsidies, there will be graft and politicians tweaking the rules to placate the industries receiving them. But Prince Charles does have a point. If we are to advocate wholesale change, the carrot must be larger than the stick.
“As far as I can see, responding to the problems we have with a ‘business as usual’ approach towards the way in which we measure G.D.P. offers us only short-term relief.”
I hope and pray that the president of “change” is listening. There have been multiple opportunities for serious and profound change in the way our food system is handled and so far, this administration has been 100% on board with “business as usual.”
“In essence what I am suggesting here is something very simple. We need to include in the bottom line the true costs of food production—the true financial costs and the true costs to the Earth.”
Imagine a world in which an organic apple costs $ .20 and a Big Mac costs $17. That kind of economy would speak truthfully about the long-term cost of unsustainable vs. sustainable food production.
“The new food movement could be…acting as an agent for truly transformational change; not just by addressing the challenges of making our food systems more sustainable and secure, but also because, as far as I am concerned, agriculture—not agri-industry—holds the key to the improvement of public health, the expansion of rural employment, the enrichment of education and enhancement of quality of life.”
As far as I am concerned, he hits it out of the park with this single statement.
Thank you, Tim Carman, for posting the transcript of the speech from which this post was taken.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
Unregulated strawberries, nothing better!
By now you have probably read the story about the school that won’t let parents pack their own children’s lunch.
You might have even seen the FDA’s statement that you have no right to any particular food unless they say it’s okay for you to eat.
Heard about the homeowner who is up against a $100 a day fine by her homeowner’s association if she doesn’t remove the vegetables and fruits growing on her own land?
Do you know what became of SB510, the Food Safety Modernization Act? You gotta read this article, it will REALLY steam your cookies!
I wonder if you’ve heard this quote from Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura:
“You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit…we are bleeding…but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution! “
-Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, April 12, 2011
And are you aware of the growing Food Sovereignty movement? You should be. Food Sovereignty is defined as:
the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
It seems obvious, but we have fallen far from this model. Interested in supporting food sovereignty in your state? This article has some great suggestions, not just for Tennessee, but for anyone who wants to eat clean, healthy, fairly-traded food without costly and unnecessary government impedance. Here is a model letter you can send to your legislators. On Twitter, follow Slow Food USA for updates.
It’s time to get involved and fight back before we find even the simplest method of feeding ourselves—the backyard garden—taxed or legislated out of existence.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
