Good riddance, pig McCrates
McDonald’s just announced that they’re asking all suppliers to plan to phase out gestation crates, starting in June. Now, let’s face it, despite the popular (and somewhat disturbing) McRib, which seems to come and go from the restaurant’s menus in line with commodity pig prices, McD’s is not known for its pork products the way it’s known for its beef burgers and chicken-like McNuggets. It goes through a lot of bacon and sausage in it breakfast products, however (as much as one percent of the U.S. pork supply), and its main supplier, Smithfield Farms (not...
Read MoreOn food and love
In the 1920s, an advertising campaign of the struggling U.S. avocado industry proclaimed indignantly, “There is absolutely NO conclusive evidence that avocados are an aphrodisiac!” Sales skyrocketed. Obviously we don’t need evidence to feed the human love affair with aphrodisiacs. Admittedly, the U.S. avocado industry didn’t invent that tale entirely: the Aztecs had said the same thing five centuries before. The Nahuatl term for the avocado tree, on which the fruits dangle in suggestive pairs, is the “ahuacahuatl,” or testicle tree. Aztec custom went so...
Read MoreSmall farmers, Monsanto, and recent trends in transgenic crops
Manhattan seems an odd place for a protest by North America’s small farmers. But they were up in arms earlier this week, silently protesting in Foley Square that they’re unable to keep genetically modified, or “transgenic,” crops from their fields. The big issue is pollen drift from other farms. Wind carries pollen from crops like alfalfa, corn, and grass into neighboring fields, where it fertilizes the next generation of seed with the modified genes. Organic farmers and small farmers who don’t trust transgenic seed (which has been linked to herbicide resistance...
Read MoreSugar cravings
On Thursday, the journal Nature published a brief comment about sugar by three faculty from UC San Francisco, who argue that sugar should be regulated by governments worldwide and severely limited in the foods we eat. They’re not crazy. There’s increasing evidence linking sugar consumption to diseases that we always thought were related to fat consumption–diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, and fatty liver disease, all components of what we now call “metabolic syndrome.” We’ve recently begun to understand that sugar may be even...
Read MoreHigh fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
Disclaimer: I lifted all this straight from Wikipedia. I thought it was actually a really great scientific summary of what the heck we’ve been eating all these years, and I expect my scientist brother to tell me if any of it is wrong. I especially appreciate how much effort we put into turning the syrup into fructose, considering how harmful we now know that it is… HFCS was first introduced by Richard O. Marshall and Earl R. Kooi in 1957. They were, however, unsuccessful in making it viable for mass production. The industrial production process and creation was made by Dr. Y....
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