Got Vegetables?

The days of eating 200 pounds of meat a year may be on the way out. This article in Sunday's NY Times does a nice job of spelling out why from a sustainability perspective.

$$$ Quote: "If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals."

*As always, click on graphics for a closer look.

Whole Foods Makes A Great Move

The Whole Foods Market chain said Tuesday that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags as of Earth Day (April 22), giving customers instead a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags. Whole Foods was given a test run of sorts when San Francisco banned plastic bags last year. The number of paper bags used in the San Francisco stores increased a mere 10 percent, he said, suggesting that some customers switched to reusable bags. Whole Foods officials estimate that its 270 outlets currently distribute 150 million plastic bags a year. Americans use 50 billion to 80 billion plastic bags a year. More here.

Blowback from the Biofuel Debacle

From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food. The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter. In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs. According to the F.A.O., food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Cooking oil may seem a trifling expense in the West. But in the developing world, cooking oil is an important source of calories and represents one of the biggest cash outlays for poor families, which grow much of their own food but have to buy oil in which to cook it. Read more here, or view a slideshow.

Frankenfood At Last!

A long-awaited final report from the Food and Drug Administration concludes that foods from healthy cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as those from ordinary animals, effectively removing the last U.S. regulatory barrier to the marketing of meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats. More here. Ps. This time it looks like Europe will be in the same boat (no pun intended) more here.

AllergyKids.com

Just wanted to promote AllergyKids.com

They're doing some great (non-food-industry-funded) research into the links between GMO foods and food allergies in children.

A few tidbits that caught my eye -->

*In the last twenty years, we have seen an epidemic increase in allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, including: a 400% increase in food allergies, a 300% increase in asthma, with a 56% increase in asthma deaths, a 400% increase in ADHD and between a 1,500 and 6,000% increase in autism.
*75% of processed foods now contain unlabeled genetically engineered, chemical toxins; 91% of all soy contains these toxins. Almost 60% of all corn contains these toxins. By law, a product labeled "USDA Organic" is not allowed to contain these chemically and genetically engineered toxins.
*Ten years ago, in 1996, soy was genetically engineered with chemical toxins to make it a more profitable crop. That same year, there was a 50% increase in the soy allergy (source: York Nutritional Labs), making soy allergy one of the top ten allergies. Within the first five years of the introduction of this genetically engineered soy and the new proteins, allergens and toxins that this soy now contains, there was a doubling of the peanut allergy (from 1997-2002). According to previously undisclosed research and the Peanut Genome Initiative, it appears that in the genetic engineering of soy, a soy allergen was created that is 41% identical to a known peanut allergen, ara h 3. This new allergen, now found in soy, is recognized by 44% of peanut allergic individuals.