SNO.M.G

Here we go again... more snow...

"Whattaya you guys think about plastic bottles now?!"

Fantastic Article

We here at JustSaying have keep meaning to recommend this superb article from the September 2009 issue of NatGeo, Love and Lies: How do you spread your genes around when you're stuck in one place? By tricking animals, including us, into falling in love so perhaps now that Valentine's Day is just around the corner, it will be some fun seasonal prose for our readers.

(Masdevallia Orchid photo by Christian Ziegler for National Geographic)

Let's get ready tooo pupppppy boooowl!!

Been so busy with "Snowmageddon" I almost forgot about the big game tomorrow!

Heintz unveils (apparently long awaited) ketchup packet redesign

AP Reports: The new design has a base that's more like a cup for dipping and also a tear-off end for squeezing, plus it holds three times as much ketchup than a traditional packet. "The packet has long been the bane of our consumers," said Dave Ciesinski, vice president of Heinz Ketchup. "The biggest complaint is there is no way to dip and eat it on-the-go."

I don't even know what to say about this. Disposable ketchup packets, like single serving yogurt containers, apparently haven't been convenient enough for the on-the-go crowd and Hientz has "finally" revamped the way they package ketchup.

I suppose Matt Kurtz, the founder of  "Prop 57" - a facebook group started by  to "draw awareness" to the packets' shortcomings - hasn't driven and Gogurted yet??

(thnx Bec)

Fantastic summary of MP's message

Jane Brody wrote an excellent article about "Food Rules," why we all need to follow them, and the bullet points of MP's crusade thus far. I highly recommend reading it. Find the article here. It's short and sweet. It's everything I try to say in dinner conversations. And it highlights the S rule, which is pretty great.

Some bad news from Captain Obvious

A recent study on the "nutritional" contents of movie theater popcorn has revealed "an alarming amount of fat, salt and calories in even the smallest sizes." These shocking findings actually come from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. You can read all about the study in this post up on the NY Times Well blog or face the reality (that you already know deep down in your arteries) by way of the following highlights/factoids:

REGAL CINEMAS: A large bucket holds 20 cups of popcorn and has 1,200 calories, 980 milligrams of sodium and 60 grams of saturated fat. The medium size, which comes in a bag, contains the same amount as the large. And the small, at 11 cups, delivers 670 calories, 550 milligrams of sodium and 24 grams of saturated fat. Adding a tablespoon of butter adds 130 calories.

AMC: A small size from AMC containing 6 cups of popcorn, had 370 calories, "enough to justify sharing with a friend and eating one kernel at a time to make it last the length of a movie."

CINEMARK: Fares slightly better than its competitors because it pops its popcorn in nonhydrogenated canola oil instead of coconut oil (which is 90 percent saturated fat). Their large tub contains 17 cups of popcorn with 910 calories and 4 grams of saturated fat, as well as 1,500 milligrams of sodium.

Green Themes in LOST??

I admire the concept of this Treehugger post placing green themes in LOST, but sorry Mairi Beautiman from Berlin, Germany. LOST isn't Avatar. I understand the desire to bring these two wonderful things together, LOST and Environmental Conservation that is, but it seems like a bit of a stretch, don't you think? To me the show has always been about all the real things in this world that we can't actually see but can only see expressions of. The human condition. The greenest theme this blogger has pulled from LOST is that the force of nature is far stronger than humans and will undoubtedly win out in the end.

Sure the island sits on some sort of energy source, there is some sort of science going on, and the survivors' relationships with the jungle and world around them evolve but just saying... the seven green themes in Beautiman's post haven't exactly left any footprint on the fan forums.

But then again, maybe there is something in store in these last 18 episodes that will make me eat these words. Thoughts?

GM tomato boasts 45 days of freshness

This is being presented as a good thing but I'm not so sure. The Daily Mail reports that researchers at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in New Dehli have discovered that surpressing two enzymes, known as A-Man and B-Hex, in tomatoes can extend their shelf-life to upwards of 45 days. I suppose this is good news for farmers who lose chunks of their harvest due to rotting but on the other hand, these genetically modified seeds/organisms will undoubtedly be controlled by some corporation (we hate), will be expensive for farmers, fuel the industrialized food market, and their use could lead to tougher tomatoes with further diminished taste and nutritional value. Ugh.

Joel Salatin interviewed by The Guardian

Since being highlighted in Eric Schlosser's film Food, Inc, local food movement hero Joel Salatin is bringing much needed attention to horrors and human arrogance of industrial farming and then to the chemical-free farming methods Michael Pollan praised him for in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

The Guardian recently interviewed Salatin and oublished an incredible article. Find it here. Here are some highlights:

From The Guardian's Gaby Wood:

"...in the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled 25% of the market; now the top four control more than 80% – meaning that if ever meat is tainted by bacteria or chemicals it has the potential to reach vast numbers of people; in 1972, 50,000 food safety inspections were conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration, and three decades later that number had gone down to 9,164; 70% of all processed foods have some genetically modified ingredient; in 2007, E coli from food affected 73,000 Americans – something the film correlates directly with the increase in consumption of processed foods and the scale and cleanliness of the country's huge industrial slaughterhouses."

And from Salatin:

[Quotes Joel Arthur Barker on paradigms] "...every paradigm, he says, exceeds its point of efficiency. Agriculture is always the last sector to join the new economy, because farmers are very conservative. So only now has the industrial paradigm in agriculture come to the end of its workability, Salatin explains. "What happens is all these things we're seeing – campylobacter, E coli, mad cow, listeria, salmonella, that weren't even in the lexicon 30 years ago – that is the industrial paradigm exceeding its efficiency. So these Latin squiggly words that we're learning to say – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are nature's language screaming to us: ENOUGH! And the question then is: what will it take for us to listen? And my contention is that Wall Street is still wearing conquistador mentality and uniforms, and nobody is listening to the pleadings of nature saying: 'Enough.'"

And Salatin's five reasons why we should eat his meat:

1.) "...it's safer from a bio-security standpoint. If you eat our stuff, it's gonna be only sold real close right here. There's a short chain between field and fork, and the shorter that chain is – the fresher, the more transparent that system is – the less chance there is of anything from bio-terrorism to pathogenicity to spoilage. You wanna get diarrhoea? Eat industrial food." 2.) "Number two is what I would call your own personal immune system." The more antibiotics are given to the animals we eat, he explains, the less responsive we become to antibiotics when we need them for medical reasons. "You've been drugging yourself at dinner every day." 3.) "Thirdly, he goes on, they've had their meats checked, and they are unequalled in their nutritional density and power, however you want to measure it – "Omega 3, omega 6 ratios, riboflavin, polyunsaturated fats, vitamin A…" 4.) "It tastes better." 5.) "It's better for the environment. It's a very landscape-therapeutic production model."

(Thnx MP)