Month: March 2010

To Go Organic or to Not Go Organic?

jkwami / / mbrown

organic_food

Organic is the newest fad in being green and healthy. It is available in most every supermarket and we see the USDA green seal almost everywhere. Many people believe that organic food is healthier for you, when in fact, many people question its overall nutritional value compared to other food grown in conventional methods. So what is the real deal with organic food?

We see the green seal and hear all the talk about organic products, but what actually does it mean to be organically grown?

  • no pesticides
  • no insecticides
  • no fertilizers
  • no ionizing radiation
  • Animals are not given growth hormones
  • Approved by certified USDA employees

Aka organic food is natural. Do you really want all those things on your apple and in your salad?

The debate about organic vs. Non organic is ongoing in the media daily. According to an article in the Sunday Times and Redbook Magazine there are many arguments for and against buying organic products.


Go Organic!

  • Organic farms pollute less
  • Pesticides can be cancer causing
  • Farmers can become sick from chemicals used in conventional farming methods
  • May have higher nutritional value because of the absence of certain pesticides

Don’t Go Organic!

  • Organic food is more expensive up to 50% more expensive than conventionally grown crops
  • Organic food cannot feed the world
  • Better technology does allow conventional farmers to be more green and use less land for growing food
  • Organic food is not necessarily better for you

Organic products have grown to become quite popular all around the country. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, consumer demand for organically grown food has shown significant growth for over a decade. Here are some recent trends concerning organic food sales in the U.S.

  • Organic is now available in over 20,000 natural food stores
  • Organic products are available in 3 out of 4 conventional grocery stores
  • Organic sales account for about 3% of food sales
  • About 70% of people buy organic food occasionally

The choice to go organic is yours alone. If you can afford to buy organic food, experts recommend doing so. If not the Environmental Working Group recommends buying the “dirty dozen:” peaches, strawberries, cherries, potatoes, lettuce, imported grapes, along with other assorted fruits and veggies. Look for the USDA green seal when shopping for organic products. Happy Eating!

Vegetarians vs. Meat Eaters

jkwami / / scaldwell

Whether or not to be a vegetarian has always been a widely debated issue.  There seem to be a wide range of pros and cons on both sides of the spectrum. Today will discuss the positives of vegetarianism.

In an article in the Vegetarian Times, titled “22 Reasons to Go Vegetarian Right Now- benefits of vegetarian diet,” Norine Dworkin discusses the positives of living the vegetarian lifestyle:

  • Vegetarians usually live about 7 years longer
  • a British study that tracked 6,000 vegetarians and 5,000 meat eaters for 12 years found that vegetarians were 40 percent less likely to die from cancer during that time and 20 percent less likely to die from other diseases.
  • The average bone loss for a vegetarian woman at age 65 is 18 percent; for non-vegetarian women, it’s double that.
  • The EPA estimates that nearly 95 percent of pesticide residue in our diet comes from meat, fish and dairy products.
  • Vegetarians have a more regular digestion cycle. Eating a lot of vegetables necessarily means consuming fiber, which pushes waste out of the body.

Jonathan Safran Foer was interviewed about his book, “Eating Animals” by  Elizabeth Weise who writes for USA Today.  He says, “My book is not a case for vegetarianism. It’s a case against factory-farmed meat. Basically, that’s meat where animals are raised in enclosures, where they don’t get to see the sun, don’t get to touch the Earth, and they’re almost always fed drugs to keep them from getting sick or make them grow faster.”

Factory farmed meat has been an ever-growing issue in the United States.  As people have become more aware of where their food is coming from, there has been a stronger resistance to the ample amounts of “cheap meat” on the supermarket shelves.

http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2001/06/images/farm1.jpg

The Big Food Chain

jkwami / / tflemming

What is the industrial food chain?harvesting

It is the cycle of food production and distribution that follows the assembly line method first made famous during the industrial revolution. It’s when a farmer in California grows oranges and ships them to a regional plant to be processed and packaged. From there, the oranges go to the far reaches of the country, and possibly the globe. This manner of food production is the prominent method in the United States and it is becoming more and more prevalent as industrialization of the world continues. The trend began with the Green Revolution in the 1960’s when fertilizer and pesticides became readily available, and it has continued to this day, allowing for unprecedented levels of food to be available for consumption. While this revolution in agriculture has been largely accepted as a good thing by the masses, there are some very negative effects that have been described in the media of late.

Matson et al. 1997 describes many of the negative environmental effects of this type of food production.

  • Degradation of soil due to farming practices such as tilling, heavy fertilizer and pesticide load, heavy farming equipment
  • Decrease in pest resistance of plants as a result of mono-cropping (decreased biodiversity) – genetic diversity allows for plants to evolve pest defenses
  • Increased pollution of water bodies and the atmosphere as a result of increased pesticide/fertilizer use and the Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s)

Along with these environmental effects, there are many societal costs to this type of food production. Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma lays out many of the negative social effects of industrial food including:

  • Increase in obesity as a result of a high corn diet from processed foods and meat which has more fat
  • Increased outbreak of diseases (ex. E. coli) as a result of the decreased pest resistance of food, dirty industrial factories, and non-natural diet feed to cattle and chickens
  • Increased dependency on oil – it takes 208 gallons of oil to raise a feedlot steer to slaughter Not to mention the gas used for the large agricultural machinery and the global transportation of both food.

FoxNews.com reports that this type of food production is needed to support the growing world population and that scientific advances in technology can reduce the harmful environmental effects (2008). However, the fact that the number of obese people in the world rivals the number of individuals stricken with hunger shows that it is more a matter of food distribution, not production (WorldWatch Institute 2000).

In another Pollan book, The Botany of Desire, farmer Mike Heath prescribes a very different process, a system of farming that helps the land. A system that combines new advances in scientific understanding to old agricultural practices. What results is a farm that:

  1. Creates biodiversity through poly-culture instead of destroying it
  2. Reduces pesticide and chemical use to almost none
  3. Produces the equivalent amount of food per area as an industrial farm but on a smaller scale
  4. Adds to the overall health of both the environment and society

Could/should this be face of the future for agriculture?

When in Doubt, Throw it Out!

jkwami / / mrosmarin

         food-waste

            How many times have you put your nose to a gallon of milk to see if it smells sour one day after the expiration date? Have you ever picked up an apple at the grocery store and put it down because it had a tiny brown spot? Well, you are not alone. More than one-third of the food in the U.S. that is produced for consumption will not be eaten. To put it in perspective, if every American showed up to the Rose Bowl Stadium with a pound of food, not only will the stadium be filled to the top with wasted food, it will represent how much is actually wasted a day.

            Now these are not just the table scraps that I am talking about here. Grocery stores throw away fruits and vegetables due to minor cosmetic blemishes, while leftover dinners get thrown out daily in our own kitchens. It is not about the 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food that gets chucked in the trash, or the $150 billion a year spent on food that never reaches our mouths. It is about what our country is not doing to help prevent such incredible waste in such a crucial time.

            The Nation’s Food Bank Network reported that donations of food are down 9 percent, while the number of people showing up for food has increased by 20 percent. Due to the economic crisis, money is tight for advertising, and publicizing the need for donations has been increasingly difficult. The media occasionally reports on hunger struggles around the U.S., however, not much is exposed on how much food gets wasted. In order to help eliminate wasted food, small steps are being taken by major influences including:

  • College campuses eliminating trays
    • How does this help? Students now have to carry individual plates instead of filling up a tray with food they might not eat.
  • Restaurants are offering smaller portions.
    • How does this help? Restaurants like T.G.I. Fridays are offering smaller portions for those who know they will not be able to eat as much to limit the amount of food that goes into the trash.
  • Restaurants are donating their leftovers.
    • How does this help? From lasagna to apple pie, whatever was not served but is still good can be donated to a food bank, the donation is tax deductible, and less goes in the trash, which means the cost for taking out the trash is less.

So how can we, as individuals, help prevent the obscene amount of wasted food? Here are a few steps to follow:

  • Plan your meals before you grocery shop
  • Make a detailed shopping list and stick to it
  • Serve reasonable size portions
  • Save leftovers
  • Eat leftovers

Oh How Your Food Travels!

jkwami / / klattimore
Fresh produce at a local farmer's market
Fresh produce at a local farmer’s market

 Many people when eating a banana or a carrot do not think about what it takes for their food to make it to the grocery store for them to buy and eat. However, this should be of great concern to all of us because the more our food travels the more it affects our environment.

The transportation of produce and the processing and packaging of produce puts large amounts of stress on the environment and it is entirely dependent on fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

What is the solution to this? Local foods have been proven as one of the best ways to solve this problem. What are local foods? Local foods can range from buying your produce from a local Farmer’s Market or growing them in your own back yard.  The idea is that buying local foods that are grown closer to home is more sustainable and better for the environment than industrial food production.

Facts Supporting Local Foods

  • A typical carrot has to travel 1,838 miles to reach your dinner table
  • Farmers’ market enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cent of each dollar spent by the consumer
  • Communities reap more economically from the presence of small farms than they do large ones.

However, there are some that say the local food push is not all it’s cracked up to be. For instance some say that if long distance items were transported by rail the energy cost would be lower. Also they state that individuals driving back and forth for one food item is as detrimental to the environment industrial production.

Yet these critics do highlight the social benefits of local foods stating that it is important to build a relationship between producer and consumer and know more about the food you are eating.