The Great HFCS Debate

Slate's Green Lantern has been examining the impacts of sugar and HFCS and most recently responded to a question regarding the environmental effects of each in May Cause Earth Decay. The bottom line is that while a large percentage of farm acreage in our country is devoted to corn, and "According to anti-corn crusader Michael Pollan, modern corn hybrids require more pesticides and more fertilizers than any other food crop [which] this not only requires major inputs of fossil fuels but also causes significant groundwater pollution," - only 5%-7% of America's total grain corn production ends up as corn sweetener. The largest percentage (around 50%) ends up as animal feed. No surprise there.

So as always, moderation is the key for any sweetener and according to the Lantern's research: sugar cane seems to be the most efficient producer although there is a heavy water usage component there.

Is it just me, or do most of my posts here on justsaying end in a suggestion to cut back on soda and red meat consumption? Hmmm... "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"

Almost there!

Calories Per Dollar

During his talk on Saturday night, Michael Pollan addressed the frustrating reality that folks in lower income areas are often lured into Fast Food chains not only by those toys in the kids meals, but for their incredibly low cost "meal" deals. Specifically: The Dollar Menu.

Ever wonder how many calories you're getting for that dollar? Or avoiding the painful truth about how many calories you're getting for that dollar? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you may want to check out what finance writer Mark Gimein and the TBM staff have put together:

"The overall winner in our survey in the Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Personal Pan Pizza, at a price of $4.09 for 890 calories. Prices do vary somewhat: We sighted the same pizza at $4.59 at a second Pizza Hut, which would put it only in the middle of the pack. A number of choices cluster below that in the 200-calories-per-dollar range. Burger King's (BKC) Double Whopper stands out. It's basically tied for the No. 2 spot with Taco Bell's Fiesta Taco Salad but clobbers it in the protein count with 53 grams.

The good old Big Mac is a mediocre deal. It's got what by contemporary standards is a very modest 540 calories, putting it closer to Subway's Footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich from the chain's low-cal menu than to many other options. In fact, you can have a sit-down meal with IHOP's 1,535-calorie chicken fried steak and eggs and do about as well as with the Big Mac."

Full article and larger image can be found here.

Nature vs Nurture

This past weekend, along with lots of conversations about the environment we live in both socioeconomically and physically, I was fortunate to engage in a great conversation about the role of our environment in cancer cases as well as genetics and wouldn't you know... I serendipitously came across this article in Nat Geo. From the article:

Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases.

So says a new study that tracked DNA damage in 63 steel-foundry workers in Brescia, Italy, who, under their normal factory conditions, were exposed to particulate matter.

The same damage may occur in city dwellers exposed to normal air, the researchers say.

Revolutionary

First off, special thanks to Baltimore Greenworks, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Lorenz Inc, the Living Classrooms Foundation and the Enoch Pratt Library for hosting Michael Pollan at the Sustainable Speaker Series last night. It was incredible. Secondly, I have so much to blog about this upcoming week!!

MP discussed the sustainability of grass-finished beef (which is seasonal, by the way), progress but not perfection in school lunch programs, the absolutely awesome Slow Food movement, new urban agriculture projects underway nationwide, and most importantly, the need to continue this great momentum and collectively reform the American food system not just for moral and ethical reasons, but for the environment as well. Stay tuned to JustSaying this week for more on these topics, details about the event, the latest book, and some great MP quotes. And check 'em out on The Colbert Report (promoting In Defense of Food):

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Cirque de Squirreleil

B'more welcomes MP!!

As you may suspect, I have known about Michael Pollan's upcoming lecture at the Enoch Pratt Library for weeks and have been, well, over the moon about it. Now, as the exciting day approaches, The Baltimore Sun's Rob Kasper has had the pleasure of a phone interview with Mr. Pollan and reports on the event and Pollan's research, writing, and advice like "meatless Monday's" in today's article found here. For those of you who have not already heard about the teachings of Michael Pollan over the course of meals with yours truly, here is an excerpt from Kasper's article highlighting some key Pollan principles:

A sampling of Michael Pollan's rules of how to eat well:

• Avoid food products that contain ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number or include high-fructose corn syrup.

• Avoid products that make health claims.

• Shop in the peripheries of the supermarket, where the fresh food is; avoid the middle, where processed food resides.

• Eat meals, not snacks.

• Eat plants, especially leaves.

• Don't get your fuel from the same place as your car gets its gas.

• Eat slowly, at a table, and try not to eat alone.

Bringin' Biking Back

I really wish I made that guy down the street a better offer on the adult tricycle. And moved to Europe with it. Because folks in Germany appear to be motivated not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but to improve their quality of life as they move towards "car free," sustainable communities (like Piney Orchard surely would have become if I had shelled out the extra $100 for those wheels). The NY Times reports:

Vauban, [Germany] home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life. But its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in attempts to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public transportation, with less space for parking. In this new approach, stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.

What the what?!

The NY Times reports on a new study pinpointing a counteractive effect antioxidants may have on the body’s natural defenses to oxidative damage, specifically among those who exercise for health.

The reason, they suggest, is that the reactive oxygen compounds, inevitable byproducts of exercise, are a natural trigger for both of these responses. The vitamins, by efficiently destroying the reactive oxygen, short-circuit the body’s natural response to exercise.

“If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn’t take large amounts of antioxidants,” Dr. Ristow said. A second message of the study, he said, “is that antioxidants in general cause certain effects that inhibit otherwise positive effects of exercise, dieting and other interventions.” The findings appear in this week’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The effect of vitamins on exercise and glucose metabolism “is really quite significant,” said Dr. C. Ronald Kahn of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, a co-author of the report. “If people are trying to exercise, this is blocking the effects of insulin on the metabolic response.”

So I guess I should cut back on my daily green tea consumption. Ugh. Just as Andrew Shao of the Council for Responsible Nutrition says, this is only one study but I'm certain I've heard similar claims before and will be following up on this as I learn more about it.

Electronic Field Guides

The other night, I noticed that Apple found a way to tap into a market of, well, folks who I would consider to be less interested in technology and consumption: nature lovers and hikers. Here's the commercial showing the latest and greatest iPhone app:



Pretty cool, huh? You know what is even cooler? The hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves that a team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation have been working on. The NY Times reports:

...The tree guide, and other electronic guides to nature being developed, may be used one day not only by backyard botanists, hikers and children on field trips, but also by scientists and volunteers to compile data for environmental inventories, or as part of species discovery... Computer applications that automatically identify, for example, a particular bird call or tree species or even an individual dolphin may prove popular with the public, said P. Bryan Heidorn, a program manager at the National Science Foundation who tried a prototype of the tree program at the Smithsonian... The computer tree guide is good at narrowing down and finding the right species near the top of the list of possibilities, he said. “Instead of flipping through a field guide with 1,000 images, you are given 5 or 10 choices,” he said. The right choice may be second instead of first sometimes, “but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “You can always use the English language — a description of the bark, for instance — to do the final identification.”