ColumnWe know fast food is bad for us, yet we keep eating it. It’s time to stop.

Is it possible to live without fast food?

The answer to that question is simple. You don’t need burgers, fries and milkshakes on a regular basis. But in today’s economy with easy accessibility to fast food chains almost no matter where you are, the question becomes more complex than that: are we willing to choose to live without fast food?

Unfortunately, many of us are not. We are addicted. And even if we choose not to eat fast food, large chains are so commonplace around the world that it’s no surprise that hamburgers and the like are just a part of our subconscious. For example, in France, McDonald’s recently launched an “unbranded” advertising campaign; no text, no logos, just photos of McDonald’s menu items that are so iconic that they are recognizable just by looking at them. Even if you are not a regular McDonald’s consumer, the photos are identifiable, proof that the fast food chain has made its way into our everyday lives, whether we want it or not.

Fortunately, while McDonald’s makes two-thirds of their revenue outside of the U.S., there are 105 countries around the world that don’t have a McDonald’s.  Those countries may have their own homegrown fast food chains, but at least there are still places in the world where you can get away from the Golden Arches.

But if it’s not McDonald’s, it’s something else. In the United States, it’s not strange to live within closer proximity to a fast food restaurant than to a grocery store; consuming fast food is most often the easy and economical choice. Why drive five miles to buy a head of broccoli that you will then have to cook than going one and getting an entire meal for under $5?

In my bubble, I am always shocked to find that people are still eating fast food. “Didn’t you read “Fast Food Nation” or watch “Supersize Me”??” “Fast Food Nation” may have been published more than decade ago, and we may have come a long way in terms of talking about food and what we eat, but if you think we’re doing well in regards to what we eat on average as a society, you are living in a Happy Meal.

We know all the harm that fast food does. We know it makes us sick, we know it’s bad for the environment, we know that it’s addictive and we know that it’s a major contributor to the global problem of obesity. And yet, we sit back and watch it take over. We let it happen.

Example? Breakfast. Nowadays, the average American eats a takeout breakfast in their car about eight times a year. That may not sound like a lot. But it’s eight times more than necessary. The business response is of course to tackle the breakfast market. Taco Bell just launched new breakfast offerings, which include a waffle that resembles a taco and a “breakfast drink” that consists of 5 percent orange juice and 95 percent Mountain Dew. Eat that for breakfast every day for a week and let me know how you feel.

Seriously, no one in their right mind would ever tell you that a waffle taco and a sweetened drink that’s mostly soda is part of a complete breakfast. But people will eat it anyway. Because we’re seduced by marketing and we’ll gladly take the easy choice. Bowl of oatmeal that needs to be prepared at home or drive-thru breakfast that we can eat in the peaceful solitude of our cars? At some point we made a very wrong turn, and unless we stand up for real food we’re about to drive society off the proverbial cliff.

But until we as a society say no to fast food, we’ll continue to live in a system that’s dictated by the food that they serve. And don’t even think about playing the “some people can only afford fast food” card. The richer you are, the more likely you are to consume fast food. A Gallup poll regarding fast food consumption shows that more than half of people earning $75,000 annually or more eat fast food at least weekly, whereas only 39 percent of those earning under $20,000 do. What’s worse? Only 22 percent of Americans think that fast food has some nutritional value to it, but eight out of Americans admit to eating fast food at least once a month.

Time for a reality check people. Living without fast food is perfectly doable; and it’s not just healthy, but a necessity. It’s easy: you say no. Every single time. Even when you have a craving. There’s always a good veggie burger to be made at home after all.

Most importantly, there’s simply no excuse for eating industrialized fast food, because there’s no replacement for real food, and a waffle taco will never constitute breakfast. Ever.

Related on EcoSalon:

15 Reasons Never to Let Anyone You Love Near a McDonald’s

10 Fast Food Chains to Steer Clear Of

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: ebruli 

The post Why We Have to Live Without Fast Food: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the absence of government action, citizens take on GMO labeling themselves.

You know the saying: “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” That’s especially true when change moves at the speed of politics and we need something done now.

Label It Yourself is a decentralized, grassroots movement that lets consumers label foods containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. It’s an idea that combines elements of DIY,  culture jamming, and a even a bit of the Occupy movement to basically give a big, fat middle finger to policy makers who refuse to regulate the spread of genetically engineered organisms, and the global corporations that lobby against such regulations.

You can start now. Download the artwork, print up a bunch on label sheets, head out to the grocery store, and slap labels on packaged foods that likely contain GE ingredients.

They won’t be hard to find. It’s estimated that up to 70% of packaged foods contain some GE material.

Tips for identification:

1. Start with any non-certified organic packaged food containing any of the top genetically modified food crops—corn, soy, canola (rapeseed), and sugar beets.

2. Don’t stop there. Read ingredient labels to look for derivatives of those crops commonly found in packaged foods. These include corn flour, corn oil, corn starch, corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, and glucose, modified food starch, soy flour, lecithin, soy protein, soy protein isolate, and isoflavone. Also look for cottonseed oil (as much as 93% of US-grown cotton is genetically modified). Vegetable oil and vegetable protein are suspect since they could easily be derived from GE soy, corn, canola, or cotton.

3. Identify sweeteners: After the approval of GE sugar beets, acreage in production exploded, making any non-organic product that lists sugar, but doesn’t designate it as 100% cane sugar, suspect.

Kellogg is already feeling the pain of the Label it Yourself movement. Activists began posting photos of the label on Kellogg’s corn flakes on Kellogg’s Facebook Page, although Kellogg’s keeps taking it down.

For all you rule followers, there’s positive news regarding the various political efforts to label GE foods: The Just Label it Campaign, which is gathering signatures to ask the FDA to initiate Federal labeling has 1 million signatures and counting. California’s Right to Know campaign garnered enough support among voters to qualify for November’s ballot. None of these efforts are mutually exclusive. Polls consistently show that 90% of American consumers want GE food labeled, so they can decide on their own.

Now, if we could just take on global warming ourselves.

The post Label It Yourself Movement Raises Awareness About GMOs appeared first on EcoSalon.

A look at food intolerances, food sensitivities and how we need to look closer at our daily diet.

When it comes to American food culture, perhaps the very embodiment of our cuisine – Burger King – sums it up it best: have it your way. We can have Italian for lunch, Thai for dinner, super-sized, low fat, deep-fried or no onions. As a nation, our taste-buds are accustomed to choice.

However for an increasing number of individuals, having it their way means forgoing certain food groups altogether. According to various studies, the reported number of people with food allergies and intolerances to various food groups is on the rise.

Simultaneously, the growing popularity of elimination diets – such as those which cut out dairy, wheat, soy, corn, and/or sugar – is demonstrated by the appearance of gluten-free aisles in grocery stores and the ever-growing variety of Tetra-Pak cartons offering lactose-free milk substitutes.

It seems that only in a country with such an abundance of food, could people start forgoing certain food groups altogether. But is the popularity of elimination diets a function of marketing and a national obsession with weight loss? And why do food intolerances seem to be far more prevalent in the Western, developed nations where there is unlimited access to a wide array of food?

Roughly 30 percent of Americans believe they have a food allergy. According to registered dietician Tracy Stoker, this could be due to the fact that the difference between a food allergy and food intolerance or sensitivity is commonly misunderstood.

“I think elimination diets, if done carefully, are a good way to get an idea of a food sensitivity, intolerance and maybe even an allergy,” Stoker says. “A food allergy spells out a radical [and immediate] reaction like hives, swelling, even anaphylactic shock while intolerance means they don’t have the ability to break down the food so they may get something like diarrhea [if they eat it].”

Nowhere is the phenomenon of elimination diets manifested more than in the widespread avoidance of gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. In 2011, sales of gluten-free products reached more than $6.2 billion.

Many skeptics say that intolerance to gluten is a fad or trend motivated by a false hope of weight-loss. However, some experts estimate that in addition to the three million Americans who have the severe autoimmune disorder known as celiac disease, 18 million people in the U.S. are sensitive to gluten, a number that continues to grow.

Suzzanne Myer, a registered dietician who specializes in elimination diets, helps patients identify and eliminate the foods that she says cause a range of problems including anxiety, eczema, acne, sinus problems, IBS, asthma, and insomnia. She says her approach, which is somewhat at odds with the tenets of western medicine, is often overlooked.

“Western medicine did this thing where we now think, ‘Oh I’ll just take a pill to solve my problems,’” Myer says. “There needs to be more awareness [because] one in three people have a problem with gluten. We used to believe you either had celiac disease or you didn’t, but now we know it can be more like a threshold – you can just have a sensitivity.”

While a severe allergy or disease like celiac can show up in an allergen blood test, a minor insensitivity often does not. Angie Spinelli is a musician and blogger who has maintained a blog about her diet – which excludes most gluten, dairy, and sugar – since 2008.

After struggling with various health problems including acne and allergies, in 2005 Spinelli decided to try an elimination diet after doing her own research.

“When I was in my twenties, my diet was really awful – the ‘standard American diet’ – whatever was fast and cheap,” Spinelli says. “I went to so many dermatologists for my acne and none of them could do anything for me. None of them suggested cutting out dairy or wheat, which are the major triggers for me.”

After seeing major initial results from changing her diet, a subsequent blood allergy test showed that Spinelli did indeed have mild insensitivities. However, she says there are still skeptics who would reduce her dietary limitations as unnecessary.

“There are a number of people out there that believe that [gluten sensitivity] is a fad because it’s difficult to prove,” Spinelli says. “My blood antibody test did show mild level sensitivity but some allergists don’t even agree that that’s a true allergy.”

Despite the lack of research on the issue, elimination expert Myer believes it’s possible that people like Spinelli are more prone to have food insensitivities due to the nature of the Standard American Diet (SAD) and the high levels of stress that are so common in American society.

“Stress can cause problems just as much as food can, so can eating on the run and not eating whole foods,” Myer says. “The SAD may exacerbate our sensitivity to these foods. When you’re not giving your body enough nutrition to support all the things it needs to do, the gut – which is the largest active immune organ in the body – becomes more permeable, it allows more [unwanted] things to pass through into the blood stream.”

Myer says the effects of this phenomenon are seen more and more as people around the world begin to trade traditional, locally sourced diets for processed convenience foods.

“A lot of indigenous cultures’ diets had a lot of naturally occurring pre-biotics and pro-biotics and things that were healthy for them,” Myer says. “Then with the [exportation of the SAD], they are eating less of these things, and more things like white bread and soda pop, and we’re seeing more incidences of food intolerances or sensitivities.”

The fact that eliminating foods that contain gluten, sugar, and corn usually results in a diet that is less processed is perhaps why so many people connect elimination diets and weight loss. Spinelli, whose blog features recipes and advice on how to maintain her diet, doesn’t seem to feel limited by her new way of eating.

“In other parts of the world they eat real food and make their own food from scratch they don’t buy the kind of junk we do,” Spinelli says. “When I started the blog, I couldn’t find a lot of info out there from people that were avoiding gluten, dairy, and sugar so I just decided to do my own thing and tweak recipes myself. Now I cook from scratch as much as possible.”

Flickr: HealthAliciousNess

The post Elimination Diets: Good Marketing or a Real Phenomenon? appeared first on EcoSalon.

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1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

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2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

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3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

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4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

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5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

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6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

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8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

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10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

Images: little blue hen, FotoosVanRobin, St0rmz, Taras Kalapun, avlkyz, R’eyes, lucianvenutian, Karl Palutke, Emily Carlin, blgrssby

The post 10 Foods You Didn’t Know Were Processed appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the wake of Unprocessed October, you may have developed a taste for more simply-prepared fare. Problem is, you can’t trust your senses. Think that rolled oats are as untouched as food gets? Think again – and check out the rest of this list of 10 surprisingly processed foods!

1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

Images: little blue hen, FotoosVanRobin, St0rmz, Taras Kalapun, avlkyz, R’eyes, lucianvenutian, Karl Palutke, Emily Carlin, blgrssby

The post 10 Foods You Didn’t Know Were Processed appeared first on EcoSalon.

Every month it seems that there’s a different blog-driven food challenge. This month, it’s Unprocessed October. Just like the challenge of defining local for September’s Eat Local Challenge, one of the challenges (besides restricting your diet) is defining unprocessed.

Whole, single ingredient foods like fresh fruits and vegetables are obviously unprocessed. Eggs are a pretty clear-cut unprocessed food. As are meats that haven’t been smoked or cured in any way. The tomatoes in the photo above – though technically “processed” to can them safely – would be unprocessed in my book, because they are sold by a vendor I know, at a reputable farmers’ market, and don’t contain anything but whole ingredients. (Extra points if you canned your own tomatoes!) But once you venture outside of those parameters, it gets a little trickier to define “processed food.”

For example, what about grains and flour? Are steel cut oats processed? What about rolled oats? Probably not, because the outer hull is removed. Let’s say you decide that flour is unprocessed as long as it’s ground from whole grains, and butter is okay because you could certainly make it at home with fresh cream”¦

So you set out to make a fabulous dessert with fresh fruit, flour, butter, and eggs. But if you put sugar in it, you’re on shakier ground because both white and brown sugar are highly processed and sometimes bleached with chemicals. You might decide to use honey, or maple syrup, or even turbinado sugar, but for some people those foods might be considered processed.

As another example, what about dairy products? Is pasteurization considered processing? What if you remove some of their fat? Or take those dairy products and make them into cheese, or yogurt?

And what about the other stuff in the bulk bins at the supermarket besides the whole grains? Dried fruit, for instance. Or trail mix? Depends on what’s in it. If dried fruit has sulfur added to it to keep it soft and brightly colored, you might want to take a pass, while unsulphured fruit might be ok.

The trouble with defining processing is that humans have been processing foods forever. Originally, the purpose of processing was to enhance the food’s flavor, nutrition, longevity, or all three. Long ago humans figured out how to turn milk into cheese and other dairy products, grind whole grains into flour, or ferment them to make alcoholic beverages, preserve vegetables through pickling or fermentation, and smoke or dry meats to make them last until the next hunt.

But modern, industrial processing of food is a different story. This type of processing may be done to enhance shelf life but rarely does it enhance the actual food or its health-giving properties. (Don’t get me started on so-called “functional foods.”) It’s these modern processed foods we want to stay away from during Unprocessed October.

But even with those seemingly whole foods, there’s some gray area. For example, would you consider an energy bar processed? It depends on the method and ingredients. One helpful blog resource, Gastronicity, written by Nishanga Bliss L.A.c. says that a Clif Bar would definitely be processed while an 18 Rabbits Granola bar would not, due to its short list of real ingredients. Andrew Wilder’s blog, Eating Rules (where Unprocessed October originated) holds every food up to the DIY test before making the call.

According to Eating Rules, if the food is something you could conceivably make at home, even if it requires specialized equipment, it’s okay. Therefore cheese is fine, beer is all right, cooking oils, and even distilled alcoholic beverages get a passing grade. Likewise coffee and chocolate. These are eating rules I could live with.

But the Eating Rules blog also cautions readers to check labels. If the chocolate has emulsifiers, consider it processed. If the grains are refined, better skip them. There are a number of other cautionary ingredients. Yogurt is another good example. Yogurt at its simplest is easy to make at home by simply heating milk, adding some starter yogurt and then keeping the mixture at the proper temperature until it cultures and thickens. But store-bought yogurt can contain high fructose corn syrup and other added ingredients that would certainly make it processed. Nishanga Bliss of Gastronicity told me that Yoplait lemon yogurt has more sugar and more ingredients than Häagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. Read the labels!

I can’t decide for you what to consider processed or not, but for my own unprocessed October pantry, I’d say that if the food product specialized mechanical equipment or a temperature controlled room, it’s processed.

If you want to participate in Unprocessed October, don’t worry that we’re well into the month. Start with a week and extend your month into November if you’re having too much fun to stop!

There is a sea of packaged foods on a typical grocer’s shelf that you can tell at a glance are processed, but here’s a list of 10 foods to watch out for that you might normally consider whole, healthy foods.

1. Almost any type of commercial cereal, including rolled oats – because they are not made from whole grains, and are produced through a laborious process requiring special rollers and driers

2. Dried Pasta – unless you know the flour used to make it was made with whole grains

3. Ice Cream – commercial brands contain undisclosed stabilizers to keep it soft in your freezer

4. Olive oil and nut oils – laborious process for a home cook, so use butter or home-rendered lard

5. Tofu – unless you make it at home using whole organic soybeans and not commercial soy milk

6. Low Fat or Non fat dairy products – usually have processed milk solids added back into them to preserve mouth feel

7. Corn tortillas – unless you know that they were made from masa that was prepared from field corn, and don’t contain additives to keep them soft. (Store bought flour tortillas are definitely out.)

8. Many commercial cheeses and yogurts – check the labels for unfamiliar ingredients

9. Almost any commercial bread – yup! Even the ones that say “whole wheat” Read the labels!

10. Herbal Teas – some brands (even natural ones) add artificial flavors

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Vanessa Barrington

The post It’s Unprocessed October: What’s in Your Cupboard? appeared first on EcoSalon.

1. Highways

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When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.

2. SUVs

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In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.

You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.

3. Paper Mills

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Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.

But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)

4. Commercial Fishing

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About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.

Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.

5. Nuclear Power

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The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.  Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.

6. Factory Farming

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American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.

The government heavily subsidizes factory farms so they can provide über-cheap meat and dairy, raising as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of care. And why should they care about finding better ways to manage manure when the government hands them $125 million annually to “deal” with the consequences, and then doesn’t bother to check up on them?

Despite the backwards funding given to clean them up, gaping lagoons of livestock waste packed with pollutants continue to be one of the biggest environmental problems in America, fouling our water and causing those depressing dead zones in our oceans.

7.  Corn Ethanol

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In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.

Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.

This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.

8. Processed Foods

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Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?

It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.

9. Coal

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You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.

Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under “˜fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.

10. Oil

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Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.

But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.

As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).

Photo credits: The following photos are from Flickr and licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons: “Freeway” by Payton Chung; “SUV” by The Car Spy; “Paper mill in Washington State” by Jan Tik; “Fish face” by Andy Welsh; “Nuclear reactor” by Intamin10; “Factory farm protest sign” by johnnyalive; “Corn” by normanack;  “Coal” by Duncan Harris; “Oil rig” by kenhodge13.

The post The 10 Least Green Government Subsidies appeared first on EcoSalon.

As soon as I learned that I could buy unbleached flour, I stopped buying bleached. Why would anyone want to bleach flour anyway? The word “bleach” used in association with food alone just intuitively seemed wrong. Then the other day a friend of mine asked me the difference, and I realized I couldn’t exactly say.

Clearly, I’m not an avid baker. (I mostly fall into the savory camp.) Any dedicated baker knows that different flours produce different results in baking. The methods used in processing (and the types of wheat used) affect the chemical and structural properties of the flour, which in turn affect the volume and texture of whatever you’re baking.

In a nutshell? Bleached flour works better for cakes, pancakes, waffles, cookies and pie crust. Unbleached flour works best for yeast breads, cream puffs and popovers. For a foodie or passionate cook looking to bake cake with the perfect texture and crumb, bleached flour (also cake flour which is bleached) could be imperative.

How exactly does flour get bleached, I wondered? Apparently, it’s gassed with chlorine oxide during processing. Egads! That’s an appetite buzz-kill! Yet, after doing a bit more research, it seems there aren’t any conclusive studies that prove that eating bleached flour is actually harmful or at least not in the quantities that can be reasonably consumed by any human being.

Still, science has its limits. And most of us know that wheat bread is healthier than white bread, for example, as the nutrients in flour are mostly removed through the refining process to make bleached flour. As the old, Italian saying goes, “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.” Anyone focused on a healthy lifestyle knows to avoid as much processed food as possible.

Yet I have a feeling that if you’re planning on baking a cake, health may not be first and foremost on your mind.

Image: isabel*la

The post Bye Bye, Bleached: Healthier Cooking with Unbleached Flour appeared first on EcoSalon.

Americans are eating 50 percent more salt than they were in the 1970s, and eating too much salt is related to heart disease. The culprit? Yet again, processed food.

First it was trans-fats and now it’s salt. I mentioned the need to retrain your palette to keep from craving junk food in the Junk Food Jones. Turns out we all need to retrain our palettes to enjoy food with less salt.

The amount of salt contained in processed food has gradually increased over time and our palettes have adjusted accordingly. Apparently, three quarters of the salt we eat comes from processed food as people have become accustomed to eating such “food” as the bulk of their diet. What’s the result? We’re all eating too much salt.

The focus on salt is yet another indication that we need to start cooking again. Changing our habits isn’t easy. But it can be done. The trick is to continue educating ourselves (reading books like Food Matters) and learning how to cook and appreciate home cooked food. Instead of watching Top Chef while eating take-out, spend that hour cooking a meal with your friends and create your own drama.

Image: Daniel Y. Go

The post The Verdict Is in: We’re Salt-aholics appeared first on EcoSalon.

This is Part 1 of 2 posts of in-depth analysis into the breakthrough work on high-fructose corn syrup and weight gain by Princeton researchers.

I have to admit that I was fascinated to watch the fallout over the Princeton HFCS study. What I thought would generate a “oh, look, another great reason to avoid HFCS!” reaction swiftly turned into “that study doesn’t prove a thing!” – a sentiment that nutritionists, food business columnists and the Corn Refiners Association all, remarkably, shared.

Still, several questions raised by critics are worth addressing. We contacted the lead author of the Princeton study, Bart Hoebel, to see if he could shed some light on general questions surrounding the work as well as particular objections raised by physiologist Karen Teff, Ph.D, of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in a blog post by Nicci Micco on Eating Well‘s website.

The full email transcript appears below. One clarification in particular that I found interesting has to do with claims that the researchers didn’t directly compare HFCS consumption to table sugar consumption in a key experiment and thus are not able to conclude that HFCS causes more and worse weight gain over table sugar. In the experiment in question, researchers gave rats access to a 10% HFCS “drink” in addition to their normal feed. The rats gained excess weight in their abdomens (which is associated with metabolic disorders) and their triglyceride levels increased (also a symptom of metabolic disorders).

Dr. Hoebel points out that previous research has firmly established that if you give rats access to a 10% table sugar “drink” in addition to their normal feed, they do not gain additional fat. In other words, their bodies are able to metabolize the extra calories without creating more weight. This previous research is referenced in the study–but was apparently overlooked by critics. In other words, while the researchers didn’t compare HFCS to sugar directly in that particular experiment, we already know what happens to rats when you feed them small amounts of additional table sugar.

I understand that his answers to this and other criticisms won’t convince everyone, but I hope people will read the commentary below and think about just what level of “proof” we need before questioning the wisdom of making HFCS ubiquitous in our food system. For more thoughts on why the debate over HFCS has become so contentious, see Part 2 of this analysis.

The first two questions we had for Dr. Hoebel came from Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott:

Q: Do you have any particular comments on the issue of “statistical significance”? Is it true that the results in experiments 1 and 3 both lacked statistical significance, as some have claimed?

Hoebel: No, this is not true as a general statement. We reported results that are statistically significant as stated in the article. In Experiment 1, rats with 12-or 24-hour access to HFCS gained significantly more weight than the group with 12-hour access to sucrose. In Experiment 3, the main finding is that females rats with 24-hour access to HFCS weighed the most after 7 months , and this was overall (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) statistically different than the sucrose and chow fed controls.

This is important and meaningful because the 24-hour HFCS females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat.

Q: Why did “Experiment 2” in your study, which compared rats’ access to HFCS over 12 and 24 hour time periods, not include sucrose? What are the clearest conclusions that can be drawn from its results as constructed? [Note to reader: this question is also addressed above–the bit about access to table sugar solution not seeming to show weight gain in rats.]

Hoebel: The goal of this paper was not exclusively to compare HFCS to sucrose. Rather, we were interested in assessing 1) limited vs. continuous access to HFCS, as our previous research has focused on binge eating of sugars, 2) differences in body weight gain as a results of access to HFCS that might result in males vs. females, and 3) the effects of long term access to HFCS on parameters such as triglyceride levels and fat accrual.

The vision of the paper was to study the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesity, not just to pit it against sucrose. The clearest conclusions that can be drawn from Experiment 2 are that, in male rats, long term consumption of HFCS increases triglyceride levels and fat accrual. To us, this is an important finding. It shows that not only will HFCS increase body fat, but it will also increase these obesogenic parameters

Next, we asked Dr. Hoebel to respond to criticisms of his work leveled by Dr. Karen Teff of the Monell Chemical Senses Center:

Comment #1: The solutions of HFCS and sucrose used in all the studies-there were a few-in the Princeton report provided different levels of calories. (The HFCS, in fact, was lower in calories.)

Hoebel: It is true that the solutions of HFCS and sucrose were not offered as calorically equivalent. We note this in the Methods section of the paper. However, it is important to note that the HFCS consuming rats in Experiment 1, the short-term (2-month) study, showed greater gains in body weight while taking in fewer calories of sugar compared to the groups consuming sucrose. This led us to hypothesize that there might be something different about the way HFCS affects the body. Thus, we conducted Experiment 2, the long-term (6 month) study, and measurements showed that increased triglyceride levels and increased body fat were seen in the rats will access to HCFS, but not sucrose.

Comment #2: In one of the studies, the authors reported that male rats had a higher body weight after being exposed to 12 hours of access to the HFCS plus their typical rat chow compared to 1) standard chow alone, 2) 12 hours of access to sucrose with chow, and 3) 24 hours of access to sucrose with chow. However, they did not report or do the statistics on the change in weight. Thus, this is meaningless and poorly controlled.

Hoebel: One of the groups listed above is cited incorrectly; group 3 had 24 hours of HFCS and chow access (no sucrose access). As stated in the Methods section, the males in the three groups of Experiment 1 were “weight-matched”. That means the average (mean) weight of the rats in each group started out the same. Therefore the end-point body weights reported are in fact accurate representations of the mean body weight change. Ergo, the statistics were done on the appropriate measure. The result is meaningful and well controlled, given the use of not one but three comparison groups.

Comment #3: In a second experiment, they compared chow to chow-plus-HFCS for 24 hours and chow-plus-HFCS for 12 hours and found that access to the HFCS increased body weight. So what? Again, meaningless. This is like taking two groups of people, giving them the same diet but allowing one group to drink sweetened soda whenever they liked. Of course, they will gain weight because they are ingesting more calories. These findings have nothing to do with the controversy between sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup.

Hoebel: The result is, in fact, meaningful. As cited in the Discussion section, we have previously shown that the rats are able to compensate for the excess calories obtained when drinking 10% sucrose by taking fewer calories of chow and thereby maintaining a normal body weight. Therefore, we thought it was interesting and important to report that long-term access to HFCS causes rats to become overweight, whereas access to 10% sucrose does not. While comparisons were made to sucrose in some of the studies, this was not the sole focus of the paper. Rather, we were interested in seeing the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesogenic characteristics, and there were other variables of interest that were studied (as described in the response to the next comment).

Comment #4: Finally, in a third study, they show body weight as a percent of baseline (this is appropriate) and show that rats who had free access to both chow and HFCS gained a tiny bit more weight than chow alone, 12 hours of HFCS or 12 hours of sucrose. They did not compare it to the control of 24 hours of access to sucrose.

Hoebel: The statistical test (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) did show an overall significant difference between female rats with HFCS to drink 24-hr per day and the groups with chow alone or 12-hr access to sucrose, as described in the Results section. We did not compare 24-hr HFCS vs. 24-hr sucrose in this study because 1) in our previous studies (with both male and female rats) we have noted that rats with 24-hr access to 10% sucrose do not gain significantly more weight than chow-fed controls, and 2) in addition to comparing HFCS to sucrose, we were interested in the effects of limited (12-h) access to HFCS to see if it would cause binging that might enhance HFCS intake or body weight. Further, we chose to focus on assessing 12-h access as a variable because we did not know the effect of 12-hr vs. 24-hr HFCS access in female rats. This was of interest to us in light of the findings in Experiment 1 in males where we made that comparison, and because our laboratory has a long-standing interest in the effects of binge eating of palatable food. We explain and give the rationale for the choice of these variables in the Methods section.

So yes, the females drinking 24-hr HFCS showed a statistically significant increase in body weight. It is important and meaningful because these females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat characteristics of obesity.

Our study in laboratory rats complements the growing body of literature suggesting that HFCS affects body weight and some obesogenic parameters. We cite in our paper additional evidence reported by other groups that supports our findings, and also acknowledge studies that suggest that HFCS does not affect body weight in ways different than that of sucrose. We acknowledge in the paper that at higher concentrations (e.g. 32%) sucrose has been shown to increase body weight. We are claiming, however, that at the concentrations we compared in this study, HFCS causes characteristics of obesity. The data show that both male and female rats are (1) overweight, (2) have heavier fat pads, particularly in the abdominal area and (3) have elevated circulating triglyceride levels.

For more information and references on this topic, as studied in both animals and humans, see a review published this year by George Bray, Curr Opin Lipidol. 2010 Feb; 21(1):51-7. “Soft drink consumption and obesity: it is all about fructose”.

Editor’s note: Article by Tom Laskawy. Originally published by our friends at Grist.org. Grist is a media organization that has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a humorous twist since 1999. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Grist on Twitter, too!

Image: JonathanCohen

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