Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

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Dietitians’ trade group partners with junk food industry

In Food Politics, Good News,
  • Posted on March 23, 2013
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dietitians for prof integrity

Uh oh, food politics again. Here is more proof that we, individual citizens, need to become our own food safeguards. We knew that the FDA and USDA are heavily influenced by meat, dairy, and grain lobbies (and that’s putting it politely), but it’s sad to learn that organizations that we thought were on our side may not be so innocent.

My friend Michele Simon, who runs the watchdog organization Eat Drink Politics, has found that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is way too friendly with major food industries. According to her report, the Academy accepts money from ConAgra (which makes ReddiWip cream in a can, the heavily salted Marie Callender’s products, etc), the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (which sued Oprah Winfrey for daring to say she wouldn’t eat another hamburger), Kellogg’s, Mars, and the National Dairy Council.

If you’re a dietitian or nutritionist, you can get continuing education credits by taking a course from Coca Cola (where you will learn that sugar is not a threat to children), Kraft (which makes a cereal that is 55% sugar), Nestle, and others.

Maybe we should not be surprised, then, that the Academy has not yet endorsed important public health measures, such as taxing sodas and labeling genetically modified foods.

But as always, there’s good news just around the corner. Disgusted by this unhealthy partnership, a group of dietitians has recently formed Dietitians for Professional Integrity.

I’m happy to report that, according to food activist Ocean Robbins, over 500 dietitians joined the group – within two days of its launch.


Eat your package, with gusto

In Food to Try, Good News,
  • Posted on March 15, 2013
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sqrlcone lg

Nature gives us some foods that come in their own packaging – apples, walnuts, bananas, coconuts. You can probably think of some more. Humans have also created some edible packaging, most memorably the ice cream cone. Filmy cling wrap made out of vegetables has been in development for years (I wrote about it in 2002 and again in this space last year), though I haven’t seen any in the market yet.

In another twist, edible plants are being turned into packaging to cushion electronics for shipping.  Let’s just hope we don’t reverse that trend and start eating iphones….

A neat website called fastcoexist.com, a goldmine of interesting ideas, highlighted a coffee cup that is a cookie you can eat after you’ve finished your beverage. It’s not in production yet, but go here for a photo.

OR you could make your own edible cup. An unnamed culinary genius turned muffin tins over, draped bread or cookie dough over the protruding bulge, and voila! Remove from your oven a set of concave cookies, all ready to be filled with ice cream or quiche or whatever is your personal indulgence. See a neat photo here. 


Eat your package, with gusto

In Food to Try, Good News,
  • Posted on March 15, 2013
  • Author: ,
  • Comments: Comments Off on Eat your package, with gusto


sqrlcone lg

Nature gives us some foods that come in their own packaging – apples, walnuts, bananas, coconuts. You can probably think of some more. Humans have also created some edible packaging, most memorably the ice cream cone. Filmy cling wrap made out of vegetables has been in development for years (I wrote about it in 2002 and again in this space last year), though I haven’t seen any in the market yet.

In another twist, edible plants are being turned into packaging to cushion electronics for shipping.  Let’s just hope we don’t reverse that trend and start eating iphones….

A neat website called fastcoexist.com, a goldmine of interesting ideas, highlighted a coffee cup that is a cookie you can eat after you’ve finished your beverage. It’s not in production yet, but go here for a photo.

OR you could make your own edible cup. An unnamed culinary genius turned muffin tins over, draped bread or cookie dough over the protruding bulge, and voila! Remove from your oven a set of concave cookies, all ready to be filled with ice cream or quiche or whatever is your personal indulgence. See a neat photo here. 


Surprising place for progress in food sustainability

In Excerpt from Book, Good News, In the News,
  • Posted on March 12, 2013
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fast food lg

I’ve long supported an inclusive and incremental approach to environmental change, which I would summarize this way: Applaud positive steps made by individuals and businesses, while being wary of greenwash and false advertising. Look to like-minded people for support and ideas, but make the effort to seek, evaluate, and support progress made by people and companies you otherwise suspect. Imagine a world that is clean, safe, and sustainable, but accept that it will take decades to undo the destruction that the industrial revolution began three centuries ago. Be willing to look beyond stereotypes, seek common ground, and praise small steps. Don’t expect perfection, but strive for improvement. Relinquish the temptation to cast ourselves as heroes and everyone else as villains or sloths. Keep hoping.

This philosophy comes into sharp focus when one contemplates a recent E Magazine article which summarized environmental progress being made by the poster child of corporate evil, the food chain McDonalds.

Wait! Keep reading! The corporate fast-food giant has initiatives on energy, packaging, waste reduction, recycling, and more. You can investigate more here.

And get this: last year McDonald’s partnered with well-known genuine environmental groups to identify “Planet Champions” within the corporation’s worldwide reach. “The selection committee voted for projects and included representatives from McDonald’s as well as Business for Social Responsibility, Ceres, Conservation International, and World Wildlife Fund.” The highlighted parties did things in their local region like improving waste management, calculating ways to reduce carbon use, building the first LEED gold building in the country, and more.

As I wrote in The Green Foodprint, “There is hope for our food system. Determined groups and individuals have stopped some of industry’s worst tactics and even turned some businesses around. It’s not good to have a giant against you, but if you can get the giant on your side, you’re in luck.”


Good news for fish and other living things

In Food to Avoid, In the News, Take Action,
  • Posted on March 11, 2013
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bycatch lg

Overfishing means taking more individuals of a species than is sustainable – there aren’t enough left to produce future generations. Bycatch means catching sea creatures you don’t even want, but they die anyway, choked in nets, dead or dying on trawler decks, or dumped back into the ocean.

“The Tragedy of the Commons” is a famous essay from 1968, in which Garrett Hardin pointed out that if each person acts only in his or her own self-interest with common goods such as public land, eventually the common good is used up. Destroyed. This is what has happened with fishing. Each fisher, or more likely trawling corporation, grabs as much as possible, heedless that they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

BUT far-sighted scientists, agencies, non-profits (especially Environmental Defense Fund) and some fishers themselves have been working for years to balance present needs with future ones. I’ve written about this before. More good news came out last month, when the European Union’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to restore fish stocks in the next 7 years. That’s restore, not merely slow down the overfishing. Restore, with a date to end overfishing and rewards for fishers who work more sustainably.

“An overwhelming number of members of the European Parliament from all political groups made history today, by voting to reverse decades of overfishing by the EU and by setting ambitious targets for the restoration of fish stocks,” said Uta Bellion of The Pew Charitable Trusts in a press release.

What you can do: Eat less seafood, or if you do, make sure it’s sustainably procured.  Support your elected and appointed representatives who stand behind environmental regulations.  And remember to heave a sigh of relief and gratitude when steps in the right direction are made.


Mushrooms are beautiful in these videos

In Good News, Toxins and Pesticides,
  • Posted on March 8, 2013
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compost

Time-lapse photography is a wonderful device, letting us humans escape our own time-bound world to perceive life as experienced by slow-moving creatures, and to marvel at the stars wheeling above us.  I’ve found some remarkable videos of mushrooms going through their growth period. Click here, here, and here, and enjoy!

Paul Stamets is a world-renowned mushroom expert (or mycologist, to use the scientific term). He has spent decades researching ways mushrooms can (in his term) “save the world.” Sound like an exaggeration? He works in numerous areas that should interest all of us, First, medicinal mushrooms that create antibiotics and fight flu viruses. Second, bioremediation (using living organisms to clean up our chemical and radiation messes). In six weeks, a mushroom-inoculated pile of diesel and petroleum waste turned into hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms. Third, repelling pests such as termites. There’s even more, and you can see it here.

The most memorable thing he says in this talk is this: “The Earth invented the computer Internet for its own benefit.” (That is, to make it possible for people to communicate to save the earth. As you and I are doing right now!). Isn’t it mind-blowingly fun to look at ourselves not as the top creatures, but as partners?

I’m no mushroom expert, and I started this article to show you the magical videos. But if even part of what Stamets has found about the power of mushrooms is true, maybe there’s hope for people and planet.


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