The Food Issue - An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief - Michael Pollan - NYTimes.com
...Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change.
Tags: food, diet, meat, health, healthcare, agriculture, pollution, climate_crisis, energy, homeland_security, government, regulation, reform, technology, information, infrastructure on 2008-10-12 -All Annotations (17) -About
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several steps the government can take to nurture this market and make local foods more affordable. Here are a few:Add Sticky Note
- four season farmers' markets, agricultural enterprise zones, local meat-inspection corps, establish a strategic grain reserve, regionalize federal food procurement, create a federal definition of "food", benefit programs that provide incentive to support farmers' markets and CSAsposted by taryn930 on 2008-10-12
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the image of stewardship of the land, of self-reliance and of making the most of local sunlight to feed one’s family and community.
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When Eleanor Roosevelt did something similar in 1943, she helped start a Victory Garden movement that ended up making a substantial contribution to feeding the nation in wartime. (Less well known is the fact that Roosevelt planted this garden over the objections of the U.S.D.A., which feared home gardening would hurt the American food industry.)
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The F.D.A. should require that every packaged-food product include a second calorie count, indicating how many calories of fossil fuel went into its production. Oil is one of the most important ingredients in our food, and people ought to know just how much of it they’re eating. The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced: in the case of crops, images of the farm and lists of agrochemicals used in its production; in the case of meat and dairy, descriptions of the animals’ diet and drug regimen, as well as live video feeds of the CAFO where they live and, yes, the slaughterhouse where they die. The very length and complexity of the modern food chain breeds a culture of ignorance and indifference among eaters. Shortening the food chain is one way to create more conscious consumers, but deploying technology to pierce the veil is another.
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the bigger and more global the trade in food, the more vulnerable the system is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food system against such threats is obvious: decentralize it.
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The revival of farming in America, which of course draws on the abiding cultural power of our agrarian heritage, will pay many political and economic dividends. It will lead to robust economic renewal in the countryside. And it will generate tens of millions of new “green jobs,” which is precisely how we need to begin thinking of skilled solar farming: as a vital sector of the 21st-century post-fossil-fuel economy.
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in the same way we now need to learn how to run an industrial economy without cheap fossil fuel, we have no choice but to find out whether sustainable agriculture can produce enough food
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The U.S.D.A. estimates that Americans throw out 14 percent of the food they buy; much more is wasted by retailers, wholesalers and institutions.
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Argentina. There, in a geography roughly comparable to that of the American farm belt, farmers have traditionally employed an ingenious eight-year rotation of perennial pasture and annual crops: after five years grazing cattle on pasture (and producing the world’s best beef), farmers can then grow three years of grain without applying any fossil-fuel fertilizer.
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First, your administration’s food policy must strive to provide a healthful diet for all our people; this means focusing on the quality and diversity (and not merely the quantity) of the calories that American agriculture produces and American eaters consume. Second, your policies should aim to improve the resilience, safety and security of our food supply. Among other things, this means promoting regional food economies both in America and around the world. And lastly, your policies need to reconceive agriculture as part of the solution to environmental problems like climate change.
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ammonium nitrate being the main ingredient of both bombs and chemical fertilizer — and the conversion of nerve-gas research to pesticides.
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It is no small thing for an American to be able to go into a fast-food restaurant and to buy a double cheeseburger, fries and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage — indeed, in the long sweep of history, this represents a remarkable achievement.
It must be recognized that the current food system — characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table — is not simply the product of the free market. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of government policies that sponsored a shift from solar (and human) energy on the farm to fossil-fuel energy.
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Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor’s precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers
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While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet.
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Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
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chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food.
Adding Nutrients From One Food to Another
Tags: food, nutrition, diet, fortified_food, nutraceutical, chocolate, fish, science_is_a_method, public_health, audio on 2008-09-26 -All Annotations (2) -About
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“Whether a tomato is good for you, that’s one thing,” Dr. Kessler said. “Whether the lycopene in a tomato is good for you, that’s another. And then whether synthetic lycopene and microencapsulated lycopene are also good for you, that’s yet another thing.”
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“Maybe the true benefit of eating a lot of fish is that you are actually eating less of something else, like steak,” she said. “Maybe a subtraction model is the key. We have a long way to go to find out.”
Fitbit - Frequently Asked Questions
The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed.
Tags: human_body, sleep, exercise, diet, gadget on 2008-09-26 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Mediterranean Diet Declines, and Weights Rise - NYTimes.com
Tags: map, audio, food, diet, health, disease, italy, children on 2008-09-24 -All Annotations (1) -About
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The traditional diet, low in saturated fats and high in nutrients like flavonoids, was based on vegetables, fruit, unrefined grains, olive oil for cooking and for flavoring, and a bit of wine — all consumed on a daily basis.
Fish, nuts, poultry, eggs, cheese and sweets were weekly additions. Red meat, refined sugar or flour, butter and other oils or fats were consumed rarely, if at all.
6 Food Mistakes Parents Make - NYTimes.com
Tags: food, health, diet, parenting, children, women on 2008-09-16 -All Annotations (6) -About
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Sibling dynamics and friendships can also change a child’s eating habits.
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Adding a little butter, ranch dressing, cheese sauce or brown sugar to a vegetable dish can significantly improve its kid appeal. And adding a little fat to vegetables helps unlock their fat-soluble nutrients.
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Don’t bring foods that you feel the need to restrict into the house. Instead, buy healthful snacks and give children free access to the food cabinets.
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put the food on the table and encourage a child to try it. But don’t complain if she refuses, and don’t offer praise if she tastes it.
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When children are involved in meal preparation, “they come to at least try the food,”
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By exposing young children to erratic dieting habits, parents may be putting them at risk for eating disorders or a lifetime of chronic dieting. “Most mothers don’t think their kids are soaking up this information, but they are,” Dr. Birch said. “They’re teaching it to their daughters even though it doesn’t work for them.”
Less REM Sleep Associated With Being Overweight Among Children And Teens
Tags: obesity, sleep, diet, behavior on 2008-08-11 -All Annotations (0) -About
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"Although the precise mechanisms are currently under investigation, the association between short sleep duration and overweight may be attributed to the interaction of behavioral and biological changes as a result of sleep deprivation," the authors write. Sleep loss causes changes in hormone levels that may affect hunger, and also provides an individual with more waking hours in which to eat. In addition, sleep loss contributes to fatigue the following day, which may decrease physical activity and calorie expenditure.
Obesity and Food Culture
Tags: health, diet, food, genetics, obesity, agribusiness on 2008-08-05 -All Annotations (0) -About
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ne of the central problems with American eating habits is the absence of an indigenous food culture. Instead of relying on time-tested habits - modern Tuscans are still enjoying their 18th century peasant diet, full of legumes, durum wheat pasta and bitter greens - we've switched over to a diet based on Nabisco's bottom line and horribly misguided agricultural subsidies, which encourage farmers to grow high-fructose corn syrup. This shiny new diet, wrapped in the impressive vocabulary of nutrionism, has erased all the culinary wisdom accrued over the centuries:
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ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients
The Ultra-Extreme Calorie Restriction Diet Test -- New York Magazine
Tags: neuro, brain, diet, health, calorie_restriction, cult, aging on 2008-07-24 -All Annotations (0) -About
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“When you fast for seventeen hours at a low glucose rate, brain-derived neurotrophic factor is released, which is a chemical which creates optimism,” says Paul. “This brain-derived neurotrophic factor is actually a natural part of the chemical thing that happens to me every day … I feel pretty exhilarated right now.”
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Quorn, at last! For as long as I’ve been following the blogs and mailing lists of the greater Calorie Restriction community, I’ve been reading about this patented wonder morsel, perhaps the ultimate in CR-friendly foods. Grown in fermentation tanks from a cultured strain of the soil mold Fusarium venenatum, Quorn in its virgin state is almost pure protein and very low in calories. Processing adds various essential nutrients, including a generous helping of zinc, which is concentrated in almost no other food but oysters and which the calorie-restricted can never get enough of. The end product tastes and chews remarkably like an unbreaded Chicken McNugget and can substitute for meat with all the versatility of soy (Quorn dogs, Quorn cutlets, and Quorn roasts are just a few of the faux-flesh varieties on offer) yet with fewer saturated fats and none of the alleged dementia-and/or-male-aggression-causing properties.
Popular Fish, Tilapia, Contains Potentially Dangerous Fatty Acid Combination
probable gene-nutrient connection to coronary heart disease in a specific group of heart disease patients
Tags: health, diet, heart, PUFA, evolutionary_medicine on 2008-07-10 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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farm-raised tilapia, as well as farmed catfish, "have several fatty acid characteristics that would generally be considered by the scientific community as detrimental." Tilapia has higher levels of potentially detrimental long-chain omega-6 fatty acids than 80-percent-lean hamburger, doughnuts and even pork bacon, the article says.Add Sticky Note
- eat (disgusting) walnuts instead! organic walnuts.posted by taryn930 on 2008-07-10
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=84
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"The ratio of arachidonic acid (AA) to very long-chain n-3 PUFAs (EPA and DHA) in diets of human beings appears to be an important factor that dictates the anti-inflammatory effects of fish oils," the researchers write. They cite numerous studies, including a recent one that predicts "that changes in arachidonic acid to EPA or DHA ratios shift the balance from pro-inflammatory [agents] to protective chemical mediators ... which are proposed to play a pivotal role in resolving inflammatory response" in the body.
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tilapia had much higher amounts of omega-6 acids generally and AA specifically than both salmon and trout. Ratios of long-chain omega-6 to long-chain omega-3, AA to EPA respectively, in tilapia averaged about 11:1, compared to much less than 1:1 (indicating more EPA than AA) in both salmon and trout.
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probable gene-nutrient connection to coronary heart disease in a specific group of heart disease patients
Can Lifestyle Changes Bring Out the Best in Genes?
Tags: genetics, health, disease, cancer, evolutionary_medicine, exercise, diet on 2008-06-18 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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It is absolutely intriguing this lifestyle change can have as much effect as the most powerful drugs available to us now," U.C.S.F. geneticist Christopher Haqq said during the news conference.
New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging
Tags: sirtuin, resveratrol, wine, health, diet, aging, medicine on 2008-06-07 -All Annotations (0) -About
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the famine-induced switch to tissue preservation might be triggered by activating the body’s sirtuins. Dr. Sinclair, a former student of Dr. Guarente, then found in 2003 that sirtuins could be activated by some natural compounds, including resveratrol, previously known as just an ingredient of certain red wines.
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resveratrol could turn plain vanilla, couch-potato mice into champion athletes, making them run twice as far on a treadmill before collapsing.
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red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective
Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables
Tags: food, diet, health, nutrition, cooking, vegetable on 2008-05-23 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Water-soluble nutrients like vitamins C and B and a group of nutrients called polyphenolics are often lost in processing.
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Fat-soluble compounds like vitamins A, D, E and K and the antioxidant compounds called carotenoids are less likely to leach out in water.
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Cooking also breaks down the thick cell walls of plants, releasing the contents for the body to use.
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Steaming and boiling caused a 22 percent to 34 percent loss of vitamin C. Microwaved and pressure-cooked vegetables retained 90 percent of their vitamin C.
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What accompanies the vegetables can also be important.
The appeal of sugar goes beyond taste : Nature News
Tags: diet, food, health, obesity, sugar on 2008-03-27 -All Annotations (0) -About
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over time, the mutant mice learned to favour sugar water just as much as normal mice. They did not, however, favour water sweetened with sucralose, a low-calorie artificial sweetener. This suggests that the mouse body does not learn from the taste, but rather from the calories in sugar.
Cognitive Daily: Practicing self-control consumes real energy
Tags: brain, diet, glucose, performance, sugar on 2008-03-14 and saved by4 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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When blood glucose is depleted, we're less able to exert self-control. The researchers say that the brain has a limited reserve amount of glucose, which allows us to handle the initial task demanding self control, whether it be watching a movie without reading accompanying text, or avoiding fattening snacks. Once that glucose supply is depleted, self control becomes much more difficult, across an array of different tasks.
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