Column Do our favorite healthy foods come at a social cost?

We live in a world where we care less about what’s good for us and more about what’s trendy and supposedly good for us. Instead of seeking out foods and ingredients that make us feel good, we just do what the latest food trend du jour tells us to do. Which is why you have way more people sipping on kale smoothies than chard smoothies. Poor little chard.

If that kind of decision making only lead to problems related to overdosing on almond milk cappuccinos (for the love of god: please just order black coffee) and discoloration from consumption of too many açai berries (I mean, that has to happen, right?) that would be one thing. But our taste for these sought after healthy foods, the foods that will solve all of our problems if only we add them to every single meal and snack in between, has an impact, far beyond our plates.

When society decides that a certain food is good for it, big business flocks immediately. And when big business is involved, you can be sure that something or someone is suffering.

Let’s take a look at coconuts for a minute. There’s no denying coconut in all of its forms – oil, milk, water – has been incredibly popular in the healthy food and lifestyle circles. In fact, as journalist Maddie Oatman recently pointed out in an article on the coconut craze on Mother Jones, between 2008 and 2012, the number of coconut oil products, both for cooking and for beauty, grew by 800 percent. But that all comes at a cost, and I am not talking about the cost of your $90 coconut oil facial moisturizer.

“In the Philippines, the world’s second-largest coconut producer after Indonesia, nearly two-thirds of small-scale coconut farmers live in poverty. Though harvesting the fruit requires a perilous climb, often up trees treated with harsh pesticides, they make just $3 a day at the height of the harvest,” writes Oatman. “Each coconut yields around 500 mL of liquid; a 12-ounce bottle uses about two-thirds of a nut. Of the $2 that you pay for a bottle of the stuff, the farmer makes between 7 and 14 cents. And don’t forget that all that coconut water must be shipped across the planet, adding considerably to the product’s greenhouse gas footprint.”

Standing in front of the grocery shelf, with only our personal interests in mind (I want something that’s good for me!), it’s easy to push these other costs out of sight and out of mind. But coconuts aren’t the only culprit.

According to the Almond Board of California, in 2013, almond product introductions were so big, that they outpaced overall food and nut introductions around the world, growing 35 percent compared with only 10 percent the previous year. Sales of almond milk alone come out at $700 million a year. Almond milk, almond flour, almond butter: all things that we choose to buy because we want to replace something else, often for the best intentions, but those intentions still have an impact. Almonds is one of many thirsty crops that despite being in the midst of a staggering drought, California farmers managed to have an all-time record year, selling $54 billion worth of crops. How? Because they’re reaching far down in to the groundwater, which is having consequences like sinking farmland. According to the New York Times, “scientists have no real idea if the groundwater supplies can last until the 2040s.”

Gluten-free is another healthy food trend that has boosted big business. Sales of gluten-free products are projected to grow upwards of $2 billion in the coming years. But has access to more gluten-free products made us feel any better? While cutting out conventional flour, stripped of its nutritional value, certainly has its benefit, switching out one processed product for another certainly doesn’t. Turn that gluten-free package around and if you see a questionably long list of ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce, put it right back from where it came from. Many of those products don’t benefit your health in the slightest, but they definitely help the businesses behind them prosper.

Which all brings us back to the question of our taste for healthy foods. As I wrote recently, when it comes to thinking about healthy foods, we can’t just think about me. Inevitably, we have to branch out and think about the us, about the good of not just our immediate community but our global one as well. If our healthy habits depend on externalized environmental and social costs, then they’re not really so healthy after all.

Kick your coconut water habit and get back to real water instead, from the tap, not bottled. Don’t want to eat gluten? Don’t buy the processed gluten-free cookies. Want to go on a plant-based diet? Find options that are locally sourced, and not imported all the way from across the planet. And when there’s an ingredient that you just can’t live without? Use it in moderation, not in every single meal, every single day.

There’s a solution to most of our problems, and that solution is real food. Food which doesn’t have a marketing campaign behind it, doesn’t have the word “product” in it, doesn’t come in sexy packaging and doesn’t make a whole lot of money for big business. If we really want to eat healthy, for us, for our community, for our planet, then that’s the route that we need to go.

Related on EcoSalon

Do You Have any Business in the Business of Health Coaching? Foodie Underground

Should You Care About the Water Footprint of Your Food? Foodie Underground

Are Big Food Companies Pushing an Exercise and Obesity Myth? Foodie Underground

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: Mike Mozart

The post Are Healthy Foods Good for Us or Just Big Business? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Carrageenan is a common food additive that’s recently come under increased scrutiny because of possible health risks.

As a new Paleo eater, I no longer consume much dairy. To cream my coffee or make a nice soup, I turn to non-dairy substitutes like almond and coconut milk. But as I’ve recently discovered, these foods aren’t as safe as they seem. Investigate the label on popular dairy and non-dairy products, and you’re likely to see “carrageenan” listed among the ingredients. This food additive is causing a stir because of possible side effects.

What is carrageenan?

At first glance, carrageenan sounds benign: it’s extracted from edible seaweeds, usually red seaweed (pictured above). Although carrageenan has no flavor or nutritional value, it can be used to substitute fat and to create thickness in non-fat or non-dairy foods. As such, you’re likely to find it on the label of your favorite milk, milk-substitute, cottage cheese, yogurt, ice cream, and many prepared foods.

Why should carrageenan be avoided?

Since carrageenan is derived from seaweed, you might be wondering why it’s to be avoided. After all, isn’t a seaweed-based food additive better than a chemical one? Unfortunately, four decades of research suggests the use of carrageenan in common food products could be putting your health at risk.

“The chemical structure of carrageenan–unique chemical bonds not found in other seaweeds or gums–affects the body in several ways. Most notably, it triggers an immune reaction, which leads to inflammation in the gastrointestinal system. Prolonged inflammation is a precursor to more serious diseases, including cancer,” explains the Cornucopia Institute in “Carrageenan: How a “Natural” Food Additive Is Making Us Sick.”

For ethical reasons, most carrageenan research has been carried out with animal test subjects. Consumption has produced intestinal damage, epithelial cell loss, increased intestinal permeability, diarrhea, and ulcers in the colon. Results varied between species of animal however, which makes it even more difficult to isolate the effect on humans. However, as this detailed article from health and nutrition specialist Chris Kresser explains, in vitro studies of carrageenan carried out using human cells support the idea that the food additive creates unnecessary inflammation in the body.

Are you at risk?

The good news is that in most cases, food-grade carrageenan is used in such low concentrations that it probably won’t affect most people. The bad news is that if you follow a vegan or Paleo diet, in which non-dairy substitutes are used more often, you might be increasing your carrageenan intake, and with it, your risk. If you’ve been experiencing chronic digestive issues and can’t figure out why, carrageenan could be the culprit.

“[A]nyone suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms (irritable bowel syndrome/IBS, spastic colon, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic diarrhea, etc.) to consider completely eliminating carrageenan from the diet to determine if carrageenan was a factor in causing the symptoms,” advises the Cornucopia Institute.

Consult this handy shopping guide to avoid organic foods with carrageenan.

Related on EcoSalon

13 Tips to Avoid Exposure to Toxins in Common Foods

10 Foods You Didn’t Know Were Processed

Fabulous Fat: 15 Benefits of Coconut Milk

Images: JohnnyMrNinja and Peter Southwood

The post Carrageenan: What’s the Big Deal About this Food Additive? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnChoosing simplicity in what we eat.

Last week, I wrote an article about what ingredients may or may not be regulars in your shopping cart. You know, beetle shells and all that. As often happens on the internet, it did illicit quite a few comments, many of them defensive. I had worded it carefully, and ultimately, in my mind, the point of the piece was not to say “if you eat X you are also consuming Y and Z,” but to be a reminder of all the potential things that may or may not be in our food, good or bad.

We could argue all day long on the science of whether or not certain things are “bad” for you, how many visits to fast food restaurants every month are reasonable, or at what percentage rodent hair really will make its way into your peanut butter (the FDA allows one hair per 100 grams by the way), but what should be more disconcerting to all of us is the fact that we even have to ask these questions in the first place.

Should we really need to wonder what the mention of “natural flavors” in the list of ice cream ingredients really means?

I will be the first one to admit that I am no full-time food journalist with a budget to do quantitative analysis on the ins and outs of the food industry (although I do as much reading, thinking and talking about food as I can in an effort to better inform myself). Authors who write excellent works like Fast Food Nation, Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Salt Sugar Fat can take years of research to get their findings, and thank god they do. I am no scientist or chemist or nutritionist either. In fact, most of us aren’t.

Most of us are just people who (hopefully) want to eat well and be healthy and make sure our families do the same. But instead of listening to reason and our gut, we come to believe that processed foods are the answer. That science and technology have to be used in a certain way in order to make the products that we have come to love.

It doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that eating fresh, whole food, made by people that you know, is the best way to avoid a whole laundry list of bad things.

Apple from your neighbor’s tree or all natural apple juice in a plastic bottle? Apple.

Bread baked by your local independent bakery or artisan labeled bread at the chain grocery store? Bakery.

Fresh basil that you grow in your kitchen window or pesto sauce from a jar? Basil.

These are not complicated ideas, and yet we live in a processed, desensitized world where we become disconnected from rationality, and we make excuses for our bad eating behaviors. Does Yellow #5 really cause allergic reactions or affect ADHD? Who cares? Why do you need to be eating anything that needs to use a synthetic dye to make it look better in the first place? Cut out Yellow #5 and cut out the discussion entirely.

It’s simple really. Deep down we know that a short list of ingredients for a basic product is better than a long one, and yet, we look the other way.

It’s like the salt thing. ABC says it’s bad and then the New York Times says it’s good. We’re all on a quest to eat better and yet trying to find an answer can be befuddling. But as Michael Ruhlman wrote, “Does fat make you fat? Yes, if you eat enough of it, you moron. Is salt bad for you? If you live on KFC and Dunkin’ Donuts you’ve got a helluva bigger problem than salt intake.”

We have to think when it comes to food. No, we have to really think.

If we think hard enough, even if we’re not scientists, or researchers or academics, we’ll realize that our society has an eating problem. The only way to deal with that problem in our own homes, is to go back to the basics. Cook your own food. Use whole ingredients. Buy fresh produce. Skip the processed stuff.

It doesn’t take big thinking, but it takes doing. You don’t need a scientific study to tell you that.

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: qmnonic

The post Foodie Underground: Why Care What’s In Your Shopping Cart? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnHow processed is it?

While sleepily shaking your cereal flakes into a bowl, and absently pouring the milk over them, have you ever stopped to think, just before taking a big, slurpy bite, “How is this stuff made?”

If you went ahead and took the time to find out, you’d be surprised to learn that no matter how healthy and natural the advertising on the packages makes those crunchy bits of wheat, oats, and corn seem, they are actually a highly processed food whose nutrient value is questionable.

But that wasn’t how it was supposed to be at all.

First marketed in the late 1800s by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith as a health food, the original breakfast cereal consisted of unsweetened flakes made from wheat that had been baked, ground and then mixed into a dough. The dough was then pressed between giant rollers and flaked off before being cooked again.

Kellogg was a Seventh Day Adventist who ran a church-affiliated sanitarium. His religion informed his rigid ideas about lifestyle and diet. He was an early advocate of vegetarianism, believing a high fiber, plant based diet was healthiest, and also that eating meat contributed to sexual desire—which was to be avoided at all costs. He’s well known for his cruel attempts to cure adolescents of their propensity to masturbate, and also for being an enthusiastic early advocate of enemas. But that’s another story.

Though early cereals didn’t contain the artificial colors, flavors, added vitamins, preservatives, sodium, and sugar of most of today’s cereals, the actual manufacturing process hasn’t changed that much. Cereals have always been highly processed. Maybe Dr. Kellogg’s ideas about health were as questionable as his ideas about sexuality.

From Field to Flake

Whole grains are crushed, ground, and put into a giant vat where they may or may not be mixed with flavorings and vitamins and then cooked for several hours over high heat. The resulting porridge can then take one of two journeys:

1. It may be dried slightly and then conveyed to giant rollers that flatten the grains into flakes that are then moved to a super-heated drum that sprays sugar, vitamins, and other additives onto the flakes and then dries them.

2. The slurry of cooked grains may be moved to a cooker-extruder where it is mixed with water, sugar, additives like food coloring, vitamins, minerals, preservatives, and salt, and cooked and agitated over high heat with a giant screw. It is then extruded out, and cut into any number of shapes, before being dried and packaged. For a narrated visual, check out this video showing how flakes are made.

Leaving aside the long list of added sugars and additives that appear in the ingredient list of your daily Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes, the actual process of making the cereal robs the grains of their inherent nutrients. With most of the outer layers of the grain removed during processing and with cooking temperatures as high as 250 to 300 degrees F, it’s hard to imagine that much nutrition remains in this food so many of us eat as “our most important meal of the day.”

What does the industry have to say?

In response to criticism that breakfast cereal is a highly processed food devoid of good nutrition, the Kellogg company produced this video to clear up “misunderstandings” about breakfast cereals. Chock full of meaningless statements like, “Consumption of sweetened cereal and other nutrient dense foods is positively associated with children’s and adolescent’s nutrient intake,” and “Sugar in ready to eat cereals is a small percentage of overall sugar consumption,” it’s a laughable piece of marketing. Speaking of marketing, to address criticisms that cereal companies irresponsibly market unhealthy foods to children, Kellogg assures us that the company is “an active participant in expanding and improving marketing self regulatory programs around the world.”

So what should you eat instead of breakfast cereal?

-Steel cut oats or whole grains cooked in a big batch overnight in the crock-pot and then portioned into individual, microwavable jars for the office. Stock your desk drawers with toppings of your choice.

-Spend 40 minutes on the weekend making a batch of your own granola and eat it throughout the week with unsweetened yogurt and honey.

-Hard-boil eggs the night before and eat with whole grain bread and avocado.

-Bake bran muffins ahead on the weekend and freeze individually to take on the go.

-Whole grain toast with nut butter and a side of seasonal fresh fruit.

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.

Images: Sanbeiji, butkaj, the impulsive buy

The post Field to Flake: How Breakfast Cereal is Made 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.

Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.

10. Highways

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.

9. SUVs

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.

8. Paper Mills

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.)

7. Commercial Fishing

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.

6. Nuclear Power

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.

5. Factory Farming

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.

4.  Corn Ethanol

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.

3. Processed Foods

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.

2. Coal

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.

1. Oil

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.

You’ve heard it before: a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If people are fat, it’s their own fault for eating too much.

These words are usually spouted by PR hacks for the corn refiner’s association – or the dietitians paid by them. They may not, as it turns out, be true.

We finally have the smoking corn cob, as it were: the study processed-food foes have been waiting for, indicating that high fructose corn syrup may be the cause of the huge upswing in childhood obesity and diabetes.

American consumption of all sugars is much higher than it should be for our health, but high fructose corn syrup has become a larger share of our sugar consumption due to the fact that much of our ingestion of this super cheap, highly processed sugar is involuntary. That’s because it’s not just used as a sweetener in cookies and sodas but as a food additive in things like bread, ketchup and other condiments, pasta sauce and coatings for frozen fried foods.

Why is it used so liberally? It increases shelf life and has other characteristics that food processors like. The reason it’s really cheap is because the government subsidizes corn so heavily (and if you’ve read your Michael Pollan you already know this so I’ll shut up now).

The rise in childhood diabetes and obesity roughly corresponds to the period of time in which food processors started using high fructose corn syrup with such prevalence. That’s why so many scientists have been trying to determine if there’s a link between the two.

Depending on whom you ask, Americans consume anywhere from 45 to 60 pounds of the syrup a year. Scientists and food activists have long thought that the body metabolizes the high fructose corn syrup differently than regular sugar and that it is therefore a big problem for our health.

But the corn refiner industry has been spending a lot of money debunking this hypothesis. Over the past few years, ads have flooded the web, print and TV. Consumers were encouraged to get “the truth” at Sweetsurprise.com.

The ads make assertions that directly address the many criticisms of high fructose corn syrup:

“Many dietitians agree that high fructose corn syrup, like any sugar, can be part of a balanced diet. Doctors have concluded that high fructose corn syrup doesn’t appear to contribute to obesity any more than other sweeteners.”

But this new finding is the first involving humans, and its results point to a different truth: high fructose corn syrup can actually damage human metabolism.

In a study conducted by University of California researchers, 16 volunteers were given a strictly controlled diet including very high levels of fructose. Another group was given the same diet but with high levels of glucose (regular sugar) replacing the fructose. Over 10 weeks, the volunteers that were given fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. The control group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

People in both groups did put on a similar amount of weight, but researchers thought the levels of weight gain among the fructose consumers would be greater over the long term.

Here’s what happens: Fructose seems to bypass the digestive process that breaks down other forms of sugar. It arrives intact in the liver where it causes a variety of reactions. One of the results is a metabolic change that keeps the body from burning fat normally.

This was a small study and it was the first one done on humans, but 10 weeks? That’s some pretty fast acting syrup, if you ask me.

I look forward to seeing how this plays out, but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with this rather gruesome video done by New York City’s anti-soda campaign.

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: RogueSun Media

UPDATE 1/6/10 FROM THE EDITOR: We received the following statement from a representative of Corn.org wishing to address statements in this post:

Dr. Kimber Stanhope of UC Davis posted comments in which she discredits the information from the Sunday Times article that was used as the source of information for the story by Vanessa Barrington [at EcoSalon] (http://www.grist.org/article/draft-new-research-links-high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-diabetes-heart-diseas/#c279652). Dr. Stanhope begins her post with the following statement:

“The information about the UC Davis study came from a Sunday Times article in which almost every sentence in the article contained at least one inaccurate statement.”

The statement continues:

The Ecosalon.com article confuses scientific research about distinctly different sweeteners, treating a study involving abnormally high levels of pure fructose as if it involved high fructose corn syrup, which it does not.  Peer reviewed research has shown that high fructose corn syrup and sugar are handled the same by the body and have similar metabolic effects.

We sincerely regret that we relied on the Times as a source of information for this post. If you have further questions, you may contact us at editor at ecosalon dot com.

The post How Sweet It Isn’t: High Fructose Corn Syrup Proven to Cause Human Obesity CORRECTION: STUDY DISPUTED appeared first on EcoSalon.

It may have been published a couple of years ago, but Americans are now catching up to the message of Steve and Annette Economides and are eagerly plunking down their pennies for the hot home economics crash course.

The authors of America’s Cheapest Family have done remarkably well feeding their family of seven on just $350 per month, paying off their first house in nine years and purchasing a second, larger home, buying cars with cash, taking nice vacations, and yes, even socking away money in savings.

They’ve done so well, they are hitting the television news circuit including Inside Edition and receiving praised on numerous green websites to teach a fairly clueless nation the ABC’s of creating a comfortable, debt-free life. Forget the Joneses! It’s time to keep up with the Economides.

The couple, who live in Scottsdale, Arizona (a money-driven, rapidly built-up, energy-sucking environ), launched their popular bimonthly newsletter, The Home Economiser, in 2003 and have appeared in Good Housekeeping as well as on National Public Radio and Good Morning America.

Perhaps their message has been somewhat lost until the proverbial s–t hit the fan, sending many of us seeking advice from the successfully frugal among us, the ones who arrogantly yet wisely uttered I told you so as we maxed out our credit cards.

According to publishers marketing this new debtors’ bible:

“You don’t need to be a CPA or a math wizard to learn their revolutionary system, which will teach you:

– hundreds of ways to save money on everyday household expenses, including groceries, clothing, and health care
– how to save in advance for major purchases such as homes, cars, and vacations
– how to stop living paycheck to paycheck
– how to eliminate debt . . . forever!”

Oooh, that sounds good, real good to the masses choosing between lesser evils of selling their homes, getting night jobs that will take them away from their kids, and selling what they can from cars to gold and furniture – anything to stay afloat.

While the Economides’ disciplined road to penny pinching offers a way to avoid those evils, Nature Moms points out some of the methods may not sit well with the green among us, namely buying processed foods in bulk while forgoing more costly fresh fruits and veggies for the last two weeks of the month.

” I think families that eat lots of fresh, raw, whole foods would have a lot of adapting to do but the basic plan is a good one,” says the author of the site. “I would probably feel more comfortable doing bi-monthly shopping expeditions with weekly trips to farmers’ markets for fruits and veggies.”

One of the best chapters deals with clothes shopping and how buying stylish second-hand finds can help you stay within your budget and then some. And in terms of housing costs, they advise paying off your mortgage in less than 10 years.

For some of us the lessons have come a bit late, but not too late to try a new tack.

Images: Pink Sherbet, Amazon, Inside Edition

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