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  • The Truth About Organic Farming

    The Truth About Organic Farming

    When I reviewed FoodSmart, I made a quip about how organic food might not be as good for you as you might think. I promised I’d explain myself, so I am doing so.

    Just what does organic really mean?

    In the past year or two, certified organic sales have jumped around 30% to about $52 billion (2008 dollars) worldwide despite the fact that organic foods cost up to three times as much as those produced by conventional methods. More and more, people are shelling out their hard-earned cash for Certified Organic. Imagine, people say: you can improve your nutrition while helping save the planet from the evils of conventional agriculture – a complete win-win. And who wouldn’t buy organic, when it just sounds so good?

    Here’s the thing: here are a lot of myths out there about organic foods, and a lot of propaganda supporting methods that are rarely understood. It’s like your mother used to say: just because everyone is jumping off a bridge doesn’t mean you should do it, too. Now, before I get yelled at too much, let me state that I’m not trying to say that organic farming is bad – far from it. There are some definite upsides and benefits that come from many organic farming methods. For example, the efforts of organic farmers to move away from monocultures, where crops are farmed in single-species plots, are fantastic; crop rotations and mixed planting are much better for the soil and environment than conventional monocultures. Instead, I only want to point out that not everything is as it seems. So here are some of the myths of organic produce, and the realities behind them.

    Myth: Organic Foods Are Free From Pesticides And Harmful Chemicals

    The number one reason that I hear as to why to eat organic foods is that they have no pesticides or harmful compounds. I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s simply not true. Organic farming, just like other forms of agriculture, still uses pesticides and fungicides to prevent critters from destroying their crops. Confused?

    NCFAP shows ‘natural’ pesticide use is dramatically higher than conventional produce

    So was I, when I first learned this from my boyfriend. His family owns a farm in rural Ohio (a farm which isn’t organic simply because they use a non-organic herbicide once a year, though they use absolutely no pesticides). The local organic farms, he explained, spray their crops all the time with a variety of chemicals. I didn’t believe him at first, so I looked into it: turns out that there are over 20 chemicals commonly used in the growing and processing of organic crops that are approved by the US Organic Standards. And, shockingly, the actual volume usage of pesticides on organic farms is not recorded by the government. Why the government isn’t keeping watch on organic pesticide and fungicide use is a damn good question, especially considering that many organic pesticides that are also used by conventional farmers are used more intensively than synthetic ones due to their lower levels of effectiveness. According to the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, the top two organic fungicides, copper and sulfur, were used at a rate of 4 and 34 pounds per acre in 1971 [1]. In contrast, the synthetic fungicides only required a rate of 1.6 lbs per acre, less than half the amount of the organic alternatives.

    The sad truth is, factory farming is factory farming, whether its organic or conventional. Many large organic farms use pesticides liberally. They’re organic by certification, but you’d never know it if you saw their farming practices. As Michael Pollan, best-selling book author and organic supporter, said in an interview with Organic Gardening,

    “They’re organic by the letter, not organic in spirit… if most organic consumers went to those places, they would feel they were getting ripped off.”

    What makes organic farming different, then? It’s not the use of pesticides, it’s the origin of the pesticides used. Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use. This is different than the current pesticides used by conventional agriculture, which are generally synthetic. It has been assumed for years that pesticides that occur naturally (in certain plants, for example) are somehow better for us and the environment than those that have been created by man. As more research is done into their toxicity, however, this simply isn’t true, either. Many natural pesticides have been found to be as bad if not worse than synthetic ones 2.

    Rotenone, still for sale despite its health effects – its ‘natural’ though

    Take the example of Rotenone. Rotenone was widely used in the US as an organic pesticide for decades 3. Because it is natural in origin, occurring in the roots and stems of a small number of subtropical plants, it was considered “safe” as well as “organic“. However, research has shown that rotenone is highly dangerous because it kills by attacking the mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of all living cells. Research found that exposure to rotenone caused Parkinson’s Disease-like symptoms in rats 4, and killed many species, including humans. Rotenone’s use as a pesticide has already been discontinued in the US as of 2005 due to health concerns, but shockingly, it’s still poured into our waters every year because it is approved for fisheries management use as a piscicide to remove unwanted fish species. The point I’m driving home here is that just because something is natural doesn’t make it non-toxic or safe. Many bacteria, fungi and plants produce poisons, toxins and chemicals that you wouldn’t want sprayed on your food.

    Just this year, nearly half of the pesticides that are currently approved for use by organic farmers in Europe failed to pass the European Union’s safety evaluation that is required by law 5. Among the chemicals failing the test was rotenone, as it has yet to be banned in Europe. Furthermore, just over 1% of organic foods produced in 2007 that were tested by the European Food Safety Authority were found to contain pesticide levels above the legal maximum levels – and these are of pesticides that are not organic 6. Similarly, when Consumer Reports purchased a thousand pounds of tomatoes, peaches, green bell peppers, and apples in five cities and tested them for more than 300 synthetic pesticides, they found traces of them in 25% of the organically-labeled foods, but between all of the organic and non-organic foods tested, only one sample of each exceeded the federal limits 8. The scary truth is that you’re exposed to bad chemicals every day when you drink water out of a plastic bottle (see our series Plastic Troubles if you want to learn more).

    That said, those who do eat organic can take to heart that many smaller farms use few to no pesticides, and overall, organic foods do usually contain lower levels of pesticides than conventional foods. If, as time wears on, we find that the pesticides used by modern agriculture are more dangerous than we think, then it may be a good thing that so many of us are eating Certified Organic.

    But, there is another problem: even those organic farms which really do use less or no pesticides aren’t necessarily producing food that is free from harmful things. Between 1990 and 2001, over 10,000 people fell ill due to foods contaminated with pathogens like E. coli. One study found E. coli in produce from almost 10% of organic farms samples, but only 2% of conventional ones 9. The same study also found Salmonella only in samples from organic farms, though at a low prevalence rate. The reason for the higher pathogen prevalence is likely due to the use of manure instead of artificial fertilizers. Many pathogens are spread through fecal contamination. Conventional farms often use manure, too, but they use irradiation and a full array of anti-microbial agents, and without those, organic foods run a higher risk of containing something that will make a person sick.

    In the end, it really depends on exactly what methods are used by crop producers. Both organic and conventional farms vary widely in this respect. My boyfriend’s family farm, for example, is “conventional,” but they use absolutely no pesticides, synthetic or otherwise. Some organic farms spray their crops twice a month. Of course, some conventional farms spray just as frequently, if not more so, and some organic farms use no pesticides whatsoever. It’s best if you know your source, and a great way to do that is to buy locally. Talk to the person behind the crop stand, and actually ask them what their methods are if you want to be sure of what you’re eating.

    Myth: Organic Foods Are More Nutritious

    Some people believe that by not using manufactured chemicals or genetically modified organisms, organic farming produces more nutritious food. However, science simply cannot find any evidence that organic foods are in any way healthier than non-organic ones – and scientists have been comparing the two for 50 years now.

    Food Standards Agency (UK) said 50 years of science disprove organics are healthier than conventionals

    Just recently, an independent research project in the UK systematically reviewed the 162 articles on organic versus non-organic crops published in peer-reviewed journals between 1958 and 2008 10. These contained a total of 3558 comparisons of content of nutrients and other substances in organically and conventionally produced foods. They found absolutely no evidence for any differences in content of over 15 different nutrients including vitamin C, β-carotene, and calcium. There were some differences, though; conventional crops had higher nitrogen levels, while organic ones had higher phosphorus and acidity – none of which factor in much to nutritional quality. Further analysis of similar studies on livestock products like meat, dairy, and eggs also found few differences in nutritional content. Organic foods did, however, have higher levels of overall fats, particularly trans fats. So if anything, the organic livestock products were found to be worse for us (though, to be fair, barely).

    “This is great news for consumers. It proves that the 98% of food we consume, which is produced by technologically advanced agriculture, is equally nutritious to the less than 2% derived from what is commonly referred to as the ‘organic’ market,” said Fredhelm Schmider, the Director General of the European Crop Protection Association said in a press release about the findings11.

    Simply put by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority, “there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that organic food in general is more or less safe or nutritious than conventionally produced foods” 12.

    Furthermore, while up to 43% of organic consumers buy organic foods because they believe they “taste better” than conventionally produced crops, studies have found that people can’t tell the difference between the two in blind taste tests 13.

    So organics are not better for us and we can’t tell the difference between them and non-organic foods. There may be many things that are good about organic farming, from increased biodiversity on farms to movement away from monocultures, but producing foods that are healthier and tastier simply isn’t one of its pluses.

    Myth: Organic Farming Is Better For The Environment

    As an ecologist by training, this myth bothers me the most of all three. People seem to believe they’re doing the world a favor by eating organic. The simple fact is that they’re not – at least not necessarily.

    Vectobac – a BT containing pesticide used in organic agriculture

    True, organic farming practices use less synthetic pesticides which have been universally found to be ecologically damaging. But factory organic farms use their own barrage of chemicals that are still ecologically damaging, and refuse to endorse technologies that might reduce or eliminate the use of these all together. Take, for example, organic farming’s adamant stance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). GMOs have the potential to up crop yields, increase nutritious value, and generally improve farming practices while reducing synthetic chemical use – which is exactly what organic farming seeks to do.

    But then hypocrisy steps in. Organic farmers apply Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin (a small insecticidal protein from soil bacteria) unabashedly across their crops every year, as they have for decades. It’s one of the most widely used organic pesticides by organic farmers. Yet when genetic engineering is used to place the gene encoding the Bt toxin into a plant’s genome, the resulting GM plants are vilified by the very people willing to liberally spray the exact same toxin that the gene encodes for over the exact same species of plant. Ecologically, the GMO is a far better solution, as it reduces the amount of toxin being used and thus leeching into the surrounding landscape and waterways. Other GMOs have similar goals; making rice flood-tolerant so occasional flooding can replace herbicide use as a means of killing weeds, for example.

    But the real reason organic farming isn’t more green than conventional is that it’s far less productive. Organic farming yields only around 80% the amount of conventional methods (some studies place organic yields below 50% those of conventional farms!). Right now, roughly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and about 16 million of those will die from it. If we were to switch to entirely organic farming, the number of people suffering would jump by 1.3 billion, assuming we use the same amount of land that we’re using now. But what’s far more likely is that switches to organic farming will result in the creation of new farms via the destruction of untouched habitats. And organic farming has another spacial price – by relying on natural fertilizers, it requires more land for the animals that produce those fertilizers. Already, we have cleared more than 35% of the Earth’s ice-free land surface for agriculture, an area 60 times larger than the combined area of all the world’s cities and suburbs combined. Since the last ice age, nothing has been more disruptive to the planet’s ecosystem and its inhabitants than agriculture. What will happen to what’s left of our planet’s wildlife habitats if we need to mow down another 10% or more of the world’s ice-free land to accommodate for organic methods?

    The unfortunate truth is that until organic farming can rival the production output of conventional farming, its ecological cost due to the need for space is devastating. As bad as any of the pesticides and fertilizers polluting the world’s waterways from conventional agriculture are, it’s a far better ecological situation than destroying those key habitats all together. That’s not to say that there’s no hope for organic farming; better technology could overcome the production gap, allowing organic methods to produce on par with conventional agriculture. If that does occur, then organic agriculture becomes a lot more ecologically sustainable. And in the small scale, particularly in areas where food surpluses already occur, organic farming could be beneficial. But presuming it’s the end all be all of sustainable agriculture is a mistake.

    The Battle Rages On

    Mix it up to stay happy people!

    The point of this piece isn’t to vilify organic farming; it’s merely to point out that it’s not as black and white as it looks. Organic farming does have many potential upsides, and may indeed be the better way to go in the long run, but it really depends on technology and what we discover and learn in the future. Until organic farming can produce crops on par in terms of volume with conventional methods, it cannot be considered a viable option for the majority of the world. Nutritionally speaking, organic food is more like a brand name or luxury item. It’s great if you can afford the higher price and want to have it, but it’s not a panacea. You would improve your nutritional intake far more by eating a larger volume of fruits and vegetables than by eating organic ones instead of conventionally produced ones.

    What bothers me most, however, is that both sides on the organic debate spend millions in press and advertising to attack each other instead of looking for a resolution. Organic supporters tend to vilify new technologies, while conventional supporters insist that chemicals and massive production monocultures are the only way to go. This simply strikes me as absurd. Synthetic doesn’t necessarily mean bad for the environment. Just look at technological advances in creating biodegradable products; sometimes, we can use our knowledge and intelligence to create things that are both useful, cheap (enough) and ecologically responsible, as crazy as that idea may sound.

    But I also firmly believe that increasing the chemicals used in agriculture to support insanely over-harvested monocultures will never lead to ecological improvement. In my mind, the ideal future will merge conventional and organic methods, using GMOs and/or other new technologies to reduce pesticide use while increasing the bioavailability of soils, crop yield, nutritional quality and biodiversity in agricultural lands. New technology isn’t the enemy of organic farming; it should be its strongest ally. It continues to bother me that both sides refuse to discuss the idea of a middle ground.

    As it stands now, to be honest, if you want to eat the healthiest food for you that has the least environmental impact, buy local produce. Smaller farms, like the one owned by my boyfriend’s family, often use less pesticides and take better care of their land and crops. Also, one of the biggest environmental impacts of both conventional and organic farming is the transport of foodstuffs to the consumer. Even the most ecologically responsible farms have to ship their products to grocery stores. By buying foods produced locally instead, where we can talk to the growers and learn exactly what is in the food we’re buying, we can dramatically reduce the impact of agriculture on our environment and still get meals jam-packed with nutrition. See? There is a win-win solution after all!

    References

    . National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, National Pesticide Use Database. Available from http://www.ncfap.org (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009).
    . Gold, L., Slone, T., Stern, B., Manley, N., & Ames, B. (1992). Rodent carcinogens: setting priorities Science, 258 (5080), 261-265 DOI: 10.1126/science.1411524
    . Rotenone: Resource Guide for Organic and Disease Management. Cornell University. Available at www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/resourceguide/mfs/11rotenone.php (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009).
    . Caboni, P., Sherer, T., Zhang, N., Taylor, G., Na, H., Greenamyre, J., & Casida, J. (2004). Rotenone, Deguelin, Their Metabolites, and the Rat Model of Parkinson’s Disease Chemical Research in Toxicology, 17 (11), 1540-1548 DOI: 10.1021/tx049867r
    . EFSA 2009. Pesticides used in organic farming: some pass and some fail safety authorization. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Available from: www.ecpa.eu (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009).
    . Reasoned opinion of EFSA prepared by the Pesticides Unit (PRAPeR) on the 2007 Annual Report on Pesticide Residues. EFSA Scientific Report (2009) 305, 1-106
    . Consumer Reports 1998. Organic produce. Consumer Reports 63(1), 12-18.
    . FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (2000). Pesticide Program: Residue Monitoring 1999. Available at http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009)
    . Mukherjee A, Speh D, Dyck E, & Diez-Gonzalez F (2004). Preharvest evaluation of coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 in organic and conventional produce grown by Minnesota farmers. Journal of food protection, 67 (5), 894-900 PMID: 15151224
    . Dangour, A., Dodhia, S., Hayter, A., Aikenhead, A., Allen, E., Lock, K. & Uauy, R. 2009. Comparison of composition (nutrients and other substances) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs: a systematic review of the available literature. Food Standards Agency (UK).
    . EFSA 2009. Study finds no additional nutritional benefit in “organic” food. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Available from: www.ecpa.eu (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009)
    . NZFSA 2009. Safety of organic food. Food Focus February 2009. New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA). Available from: www.nzfsa.govt.nz (Viewed 19 Nov, 2009)
    . Fillion, L., & Arazi, S. (2002). Does organic food taste better? A claim substantiation approach Nutrition & Food Science, 32 (4), 153-157 DOI: 10.1108/00346650210436262

  • Deja Vu? FTC Sizes Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity

    Deja Vu? FTC Sizes Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity

    The breath of the obesity epidemic being witnessed in the United States is troubling.  Some states now show that over 30% of their respective populations are obese, with many of these metrics still growing.  Worse, the epidemic’s fastest acceleration has been in its youngest demographic: children (although that may finally be slowing).

    FTC Sizing Up Conference Logo

    Theories have been entertained to determine what is causing the obesity problem in children.  Sedentary activities like video games and television regularly are brought out to the whipping post as the cardinal reason for the rapid rise but another view, that of food marketing to youth, has received increasing attention.  That attention culminated in a summit put together by the FTC called Sizing Up.

    For older readers in our audience, this may seem to be a cruel reminder of the history behind this issue.  Back in 1978, the FTC made a move to ban just this type of advertising before it was stripped of that very ability by Congress later in 1980.  Fueled by the obesity epidemic, the FTC felt compelled to revisit the issue some 30 years later.  Nutrition Wonderland also felt compelled to attend the star-studded event (by government standards at least), with Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the US Health and Human Services department giving the keynote – and plenty of other notable attendees present.

    The View From Above

    Secretary Sebelius opened the conference with a keynote speech that was both informative and defensive.  She took her audience through some of the statistics about obesity, the most striking is that it will cost the US an estimated $350-400 billion dollars by 2020 to address the obesity epidemic if it continues to grow as it has in the past.  Remember those numbers are in 2005 dollars and inflation will likely raise that cost another 40-50%.

     

    A 2008 Map of Obesity Rates in US by State, note that red is +30%

    Her other thoughts were focused on what the FDA is doing to counteract the problem of advertising food to minors.  Namely, the FDA is doing a comprehensive review of what they term as ‘front of package labeling‘ (FOP).  This concept deals with all the eye candy food marketers use to indicate how healthy their products are – especially in the cereal industry.  The industry sponsored Smart Choices program, which the industry was doing to coordinate their nutritional packaging information (deemed a debacle by the agency), was the unspoken focus of much of the attention here.  FDA regulators are moving towards creating a new standard to be applied across the industry that will supersede the self-regulatory efforts of industry up until this point, welcome news to consumers – but this was about the point at which welcome news ended.

    Evidence is Beyond Compelling


    Major research presented at the conference following Sebelius did not really uncover anything new.     It reinforced findings that TV advertising is directly causing overeating with a variety of interesting approaches taken by the research teams around the world to prove this point.  Some looked at the ads themselves on TV and how that influenced behavior while other approaches studied the psychological effects of newer ‘advergames’ on the internet children play.  Whatever the method, the message was clear: all this advertising was having a major effect on children’s eating behaviors, pushing them to eat more often and lower quality foods then they would otherwise.

    Childhood Obesity Up Close

    Still, this part of the FTC conference actually had a good speed to it and they quickly went through all the research.  In many ways, the research phase of the conference felt like a warm-up and, if you think about it, this makes sense.  The whole premise of the FTC is to protect the consumer so the mere fact they are holding a conference on the subject assumes there is a serious problem with the way foods are being marketed to children.

    What was disappointing, however, was the way all this information was presented – in FTC’s own building! – with very little commitment to action.  We understand the desire to present the information but if the FTC, a consumer protection agency, calls a conference on a subject, there must a scientific consensus that action needs to be taken.  We found this portion of the conference incredibly counterproductive.  You just don’t get a many opportunities with the best minds in one room – why waste it presenting information everyone was already familiar with, especially with no commitment to action following those presentations?

    How Free is this Speech?

    The High Court, by laura padgett on flickr

    Getting more to the actual issues at hand was the second phase of the conference.  The FTC called together some very bright lawyers to interpret how the 1st amendment applies to childhood advertising by food companies. What may at first sound trivial – how free speech applies to advertisements – is, in fact, crucial to understanding what regulators can legally do in this situation to limit these destructive ads.  The short answer: very little.

    The core of the problem is that the Supreme Court views corporations as people, dating from a distant 1880s decision that created the idea of ‘corporate personhood’.  With that view, the Supreme Court has routinely held the view that corporations are fully entitled to the same free speech rights anyone of us would have.  This softened a bit as it crystallized into a set of legal standards to see if the corporate speech qualifies for protection via a case in 1980s called Central Hudson. The four part test looks like this (notice how each step is interconnected):

    • (1) whether the speech at issue concerns lawful activity and is not misleading;
    • (2) whether the asserted government interest is substantial; and, if so,
    • (3) whether the regulation directly advances the governmental interest asserted; and
    • (4) whether it is not more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest.

    The Balancing Act

    Applying these standards has proven difficult.  The FTC’s ability to make industry wide advertising bans was stripped in the 1980s so individual legal action against each TV spot, referencing the above Central Hudson test, would be required.  Obviously, that avenue is nearly impossible, which makes the Congressional decision to tie the FTC’s hands an invitation for more of this behavior.  The situation is compounded by separate corporate speech cases that have been challenged against Central Hudson, thereby strengthening the original decision and how it might be used to defend against childhood obesity.

    With the idea that food industry “advocacy is not fraud,” Martin Redish, a professor of law at Northwestern University that has written more than ten books on the first amendment, shows, convincingly, that there is a defense for industry here hidden away here inside the First Amendment.

    His view is that corporate speech is a slippery slope, even with the Central Hudson 4 step tango. He takes a strict constructionist view of the first amendment here: the second any type of agency from the government makes the choice that certain types of communication from a ‘person’ can be regulated you undermine the entire basis of the first amendment – which is the free expression of ideas.

    Using Redish as a crutch, the following speaker Dan Jaffe, executive Vice President of Government Relations (read: lobbyist) for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) threw his two cents into the mix, in a much less convincing package.  He presented his case on whether or not to ban childhood advertising and – surprise surprise! – he felt that the government should leave the whole thing alone because corporations are entitled to free speech, echoing Redish.

    Further, Jaffe reminded us, the prestigious Institute of Medicine evaluated the issue of obesity and “restricting free speech was not in their list of recommendations.”  The ANA itself has launched a bunch of initiatives to show they are trying to get their act together but the measure rang hollow, especially at conference that was specifically aimed at curtailing their very activities.  Jaffe immediately reminded us of an old saying from Mr. Upton Sinclair:  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”  Enough said.

    Yet another view of the first amendment was presented by David Yosifon of Santa Clara University and I found his argument the most compelling on this panel.  He focused on the concept of power economics and the efficiency of the market – basically arguing that information is so overwhelming and so sneaky that it is not truly information being communicated in a just manner, effectively failing the first point of the central hudson test.  In essence, the consumer does not have the ability to do decide on the efficacy of the argument being made, especially since they are so young.  “Puffery” is name he gave to the practice of corporations sliding messages into advertisements and it seems apt to apply that here.

    The Long and Winding Road

    We can tell you this much from these speeches (which were excellent): Dr. Redish presented the first amendment as so flexible in regards to corporate personhood that it would not make sense for the FTC to repeat their defeat in the 1980s of trying to get childhood advertising banned.  If you go further into the issues presented here today, you get the overriding sense that the Supreme Court is forcing consumers to act on their own behalf.  This idea really does speak to the ideal of what America is about but its blind to the reality facing our society.

    When our youngest people are being assaulted by subliminal messages to eat, embedded in a distribution model that is almost invisible to them, the first amendment can not – and should not – apply.  Free speech is limited in many ways.  You can’t scream ‘fire’ in a theatre full of adults, why should you be able to whisper ‘eat Froot Loops’ into a kid’s head ten times a day?

    Everyone on either side of the issue clearly understood the connection between the way these ads aimed at children are literally targeting their subconscious behaviors, training them into obese eating machines before they even possess the ability to make conscious decisions.  How this could not be construed as violating one tenet of the Hudson test is beyond us.

    Time to Walk that Walk

    The practice is simply gross, there are no others words to describe it.  But shame doesnt get very far with multinational companies – and the FTC of all organizations should know  this.  The real emphasis seems like it should be put into creating a legal framework from which the FTC can actually create binding regulations to limit the practice, or at least rules on how as to not harm consumers.  As so often is the case, the buck really stops with Congress as they write the laws and would have to directly address corporate personhood or give the FTC back the industry-wide banning abilities it took from them in 1980.  The history is especially interesting:

    Seeing as this is not a legal blog, the details of how this would be implemented are outside our areas of expertise, but the continued use of the first amendment as a way to turn America’s youth into obese zombies should be off the table.  Even industry, with their feigned attempts at creating self-regulatory mechanisms, seems aware of the contradiction here.

    So, we left this conference, like so many others, wondering what the goal was.  Networking is admirable inside any industry but the FTC is a special unit of the US government tasked with protecting consumers.  They herded the best minds in the world into one room, where everyone is keenly aware of how these junk food ads are creating obese kids, and did nothing.  It would seem a far better use of everyone’s time would to bring these experts together to a multi-day conference where the end goal is produce a concrete way to eliminate these ads – one that involved the appropriate Congressional subcommittees who could act on the issue.  Nothing at this conference brought us any closer to that reality.

  • Book Review: FoodSmart: Understanding Nutrition in the 21st Century

    Book Review: FoodSmart: Understanding Nutrition in the 21st Century

    FoodSmart Quickfacts

    FoodSmart: Understanding Nutrition in the 21st Century is a brand new book from award-winning author Diana Hunter that is designed to help navigate the complex world of nutrition. It explains basics like terminology and types of food with ease and, yet, is still able to present the various sides of much more complex topics like of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and what it means to be “organic” to a nutrition newbie. All and all, it’s not a bad book, especially if you’re just starting out in the world of nutrition and want a strong understanding of what is being talked about by everyone else. You will definitely learn a lot if you read this book, as it is jam packed with information that every nutritionally conscious consumer should know.

    Walk Before You Run

    For me though, this book had its ups and downs. On the positive side, it is chocked full of information, with as much knowledge on each page as an encyclopedia. But that’s also one of the book’s downfalls – it often reads like one, too, but lacks the handy tabs and user-friendly organizational format that encyclopedias have. It seems poorly organized at times (like explaining what “organic” is long after chapter upon chapter has already used the term), and over-structured at others (like pages and pages of pros and cons of different foods, which is just impossible to sit down and read through).

    The book does have many good qualities. For example, Hunter does an excellent job of going over the entire process of food production, from farm to store, explaining the different agencies involved, what they do, and why they do it. Her explanation of nutrition labeling, too, is excellent, and will make even those with no prior knowledge understand what phrases like “lite” actually mean. I wish some of these chapters were near the front instead of hidden at the end. Some of the best parts of this book were pushed to the back when they should have been up front. If you want my advice, read Chapters 1, 6, 7, 10, 12, 3 and 8 in that order first, then the rest of the chapters as you wish.

    The FoodSmart Cover

    Perhaps my biggest pet peeve was the attempt to give “good choices” while really not helping the casual nutritional consumer at all. The entire 30 page chapter on “conquering the confusion” which is supposed to provide guidelines for what to pick out in the grocery store could easily be replaced with the sentence “Always eat 100% organic or the closest you can get to it.”

    Let’s be honest – even the most basic nutritionally-minded consumer assumes that already, and either does eat all organic or can’t afford to. It’s not until much later that she even mentions which foods might be more important than others to eat organically (like those with more pesticide use) or what it really means to be “100% organic” versus “organic” versus “made from organic ingredients.” And that’s not even considering that organic may not always be the best option (I’ll promise to explain myself on that in another post).

    For me, the book shouldn’t have tried to act like a guide and just presented the facts. It would have been much better if Chapter 2 were completely removed. Leave out the “which to choose” (especially when there is no real advice given) and just present the detailed pros and cons of foods like in Chapter 4, though preferably much later in the book after explaining more of the basics (like what the different food types are, what “organic” is, and explaining nutritional labels). The addition of too much “what to pick” kind of thinking, especially early on, clouded the book’s goal of providing “clarity about the many aspects of food and bring to the table an understanding of nutritional research.”

    On the Upside…

    That’s not to say that it’s a bad book. One of the best parts of the book, in my opinion, was its clear and thorough explanation of why it’s not so easy to just say “this is good and this is bad” when it comes to nutrition. Diana Hunter explains exactly why there is so much variation in scientific studies on nutrition, why science doesn’t always give a clear answer even to a simple question, but yet why nutritional research is still very important. Sometimes it is just so hard to explain why two good scientists can get two different answers to nutritional questions, and she details the dilemma perfectly.

    The simple truth is that our bodies are complex and a lot of variables are in play, far too many for any experiment to control. As easy as it might sound to say “is X good for you,” the scientific answer is complicated and includes questions like ‘how often,’ ‘how much,’ ‘if produced by who,’ ‘if you eat Y with it,’ and so on, with each different permutation potentially giving a different answer. And, as I explained, she did do an excellent job of detailing the basics of nutrition and nutritional labeling.

    If your goal is to dive head first into the world of nutrition, this book has what you want. You will learn all the terminology you need to really start understanding some of the more complex nutritional articles out there as well as what all those symbols on packages in the store are really telling you. But if you just want to know what to buy when you go to the grocery store, you’re going to feel overwhelmed and still feel like you’re not sure what to get. It’s not a user-friendly nutritional guide for the masses, and it isn’t going to give you easy choices (except for ‘eat organic‘), nor should it be thought of as one. The book’s best quality is that it gives you the information to start making decisions for yourself, not just follow a step-by-step guide of what to eat.

  • Seafood Watch Super Green List

    Seafood Watch Super Green List

    Tuna, swimming – thanks to Flickr user Canales

    Seafood is such an important part of a nutritionally sound diet that it cannot be overstated. Countless studies and articles on this site attest to that fact, almost daily. There is, however, grave concerns over mercury bioaccumulation pollution in big fish in tuna and shark, PCB contamination in farmed salmon and generally just worry about overfishing to world fisheries.

     

    The Monterey Bay Aquarium steps into this murky world with answers. Their Seafood Watch Guide is the gold standard if you want to know which species are free from contaminants and overfishing worries.

    But recently the aquarium went above and beyond the ‘green’ rating they give good species, creating a super green list of the best seafood options. Below are their findings:

    Note: Both charts can be re-categorized by clicking on the column headings

    Seafood Watch List, Super Green List (as of October 2009)
    Fish Growing Method Source
    Albacore Tuna Troll or Pole-caught US or British Columbia
    Mussels Farmed Anywhere
    Oysters Farmed Anywhere
    Pacific Sardines Wild-caught Pacific Waters
    Pink Shrimp Wild-caught Oregon
    Rainbow Trout Farmed US, likely
    Salmon (any variety) Wild-Caught Alaskan
    Spot Prawns Wild-caught British Columbia

    Seafood Watch List, Other Best Choices (as of October 2009)
    Fish Growing Method Source
    Arctic Char Farmed Anywhere
    Bay Scallops Farmed Anywhere
    Crayfish Farmed USA
    Dungeness Crab Wild-caught NW USA – Washington, California, Oregon
    Longfin Squid Wild-caught USA Atlantic Waters
    Pacific Cod Longline-caught Alaska

    Additional Resources:

    -Download printable pocket guides (all .pdf) for each US region: Hawaii, West Coast, SW, Central, SE & the NE
    -Download Seafood Watch for your iPhone, free app (iTunes store direct link)

    Sources:

    Revisions

    Version 1.0 of this chart was released on 2009-11-17. All revisions will be noted here.

  • Making the Connection Between Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition

    Making the Connection Between Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition

    You have a lot of choices as a consumer. Those choices alter the marketplace. You influence what kind of movies Hollywood produces when you stand in line to buy tickets, debating between an action thriller and a romantic comedy. You alter what ends up in department stores when you decide to buy a blue dress instead of a yellow t-shirt. You pressure companies to be more green when you pick paper over plastic.

    Money can move sustainability

    And the choices you make when it comes to your dinner, particularly which fish you pick for the 16 pounds of seafood the average American eats every year, drive the fisheries hauling in over 11 billion pounds of fish annually. And that’s just for the US alone.

    Choices make a difference, not only from an economic perspective, but from a nutritional and ecological one. So, the short answer to logic of sustainable seafood is that your choice drives markets. The long answer is that it’s good for you and it’s good for the environment – a clear win-win. After all, you wouldn’t be on a nutrition site if you weren’t looking to eat and be healthier, right? So why not eat in a way that’s healthier for yourself and the rest of the ecosystem?

    Making the Smart Choice: Seafood and Nutrition

    You know that you’ve made a nutritional choice when you decide to buy that bag of apples instead of a bag of Doritos. But did you know that you made a nutritional choice when you picked salmon instead of tuna? A lot of nutrition talk just refers to “fish”, as if all fish are the same nutritionally.

    But, you say, that’s true. After all, fish is fish… right?

    Tuna, swimming – thanks to Flickr user Canales

    Well, it’s partially true. All fish, from anchovies to yellowtail, have a few key nutritional ingredients that are fantastic for you. The American Heart Association, for example, recommends that we eat fish at least two times per week for a healthy heart.

    For one, fish are a great source of protein that contain far less fats than other meats like beef and pork. They are a complete protein, which means that they contain all of the essential amino acids that we need to eat in our diet. Why is protein so great?

    As I’ve said before, protein and the amino acids it contains are key to making our bodies function properly. Protein calories also make us feel fuller, longer compared to calories from fat or carbohydrates, thus allowing us to eat less.

    Fish are also great sources of Omega-3 Fatty Acids, a group of unsaturated fatty acids that have been linked to all kinds of health benefits, from reduced cancer risk to increased intelligence. While we tend to demonize fats, the truth is that some are good for us, and Omega-3s are among the good guys. In fact, they’re so good for the brain that the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging claims that people who eat at least one meal of fish per week will be significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who never eat fish – a statement that, at least in part, is backed by science.

    When a Fish Isn’t Just a Fish

    But not all fish are the same – not even close. Just like lamb, beef, and venison all have differing amounts of protein, fat and calories, so, too, do different species of fish. Sockeye salmon will get you 3.8 grams of protein per ounce, while a nice tuna steak provides 9 grams per ounce. A skinless, 3 oz portion of Halibut will run you 110 calories, with 20 of them coming from fat, but the same portion of Mackerel will give you a whopping 210 calories with 120 of them from fat. That’s a difference of 100 calories from fat alone in a single piece of fish!

    A Cutthroat Trout – beautiful fish, courtesy of flickr user fool-on-the-hill

    Before you freak out about the high fat content, note that while Omega-3 fatty acids are found in every kind of fish, they are especially high in fatty fish. That Halibut only contains 0.7 grams of Omega-3s, while the fatty Mackerel has 2.6 grams. As with anything else, it’s all about balance, and getting the right amount of fat and protein into your diet, not aiming for the lowest-fat option.

    Not even all types of similar or even the same fish are created equal: take tuna for example. Buy canned light tuna, and you’re looking at about 33 calories and 7.2 grams of protein per ounce. Canned white albacore, however, contains roughly 37 calories and only 6.8 grams of protein per ounce, plus an extra 0.8 grams of fat. Opt for a cooked tuna steak and you end up with 40 calories, 9 grams of protein, and 0.5 grams of fat per ounce. Even your choice of tuna sashimi makes a difference: Bluefin will net you just over ten more calories and one gram of fat per ounce than Ahi. Though these might seem small, scientists have found that even a change of 100 calories a day can impact your weight dramatically. Subbing in Bluefin for Ahi at a ten-ounce tuna meal is enough to make a difference.

    Fish Toxicology

    There are issues far worse than protein and calorie counts to think of when choosing fish. That’s because, unfortunately, fish are the final resting places for many of the chemicals that we pollute our waters with everyday. Water treatment has lowered the levels of some of these, but the problem is that fish biaccumulate these toxins. Bioaccumulation occurs when a substance is absorbed or stored at a faster rate than it is lost, causing it to ‘accumulate’ in the body. Thus, smaller environmental levels can become higher ones in the body.

    The analogy I used before when explaining bioaccumulations is with drinking alcohol: normally, you can drink one beer in an hour and be fine. Drink twenty in an hour, and you probably will experience acute alcohol poisoning, but assuming you recover, you’ll again be fairly fine (minus some liver damage). But instead, imagine if every time you had a drink, your body simply couldn’t get rid of the alcohol, and it lingered in your tissues. You could have only one drink a week, but still within a few weeks, you’d be drunk all the time.

    Bioaccumulation up close

    That’s how bioaccumulation works. The fish’s body removes the toxins at such a slow rate (or not at all) that they build up to much higher concentrations than are found in the water around them. And it gets worst as you go up the food chain – those fish at the bottom get a certain level of toxin, but then they’re eaten by bigger fish. When that big fish eats 10 little fish, suddenly it has 10x the concentration of toxins that the little ones did, and so on and so forth to the top of the chain (here’s a hint – that’s where we fit into the food web).

    Toxins that are particularly dangerous in fish include many of the chemicals in plastics (see our previous details on the nutritional consequences of PBDEs, Phthalates and BPA) as well as many others caused by industrial and agricultural pollution, like DDT. One of the major toxins that fish bioaccumulate is mercury, which is released from the process we use to turn coal into energy. Mercury levels in fish can be so high that the FDA and EPA monitor the levels in common varieties of fish to set healthy safety standards.

    Already, there are a number of fish that have such high mercury levels that they are considered unsafe to be consumed by pregnant women. These include:

    • sharks
    • king mackerel
    • swordfish
    • tilefish.

    Tuna Sushi, be careful now

    But even those that are commonly found on our dinner plates can be high in mercury. Sushi tuna, for example, is one of the worst offenders; it can have up to 0.64 parts per million of mercury, which is only a hair under the 0.73 found in king mackerel. Mercury levels are high enough in fish to trouble even healthy, non-pregnant adults. Just ask Jeremy Piven – he was diagnosed with a blood mercury level six times above the upper limit of safety while working on a Broadway show after regularly consuming sushi with tuna in it.

    When thinking about the nutritional side of choosing fish, you have to weigh the good with the bad. While swordfish is high in Omega-3s, for example, its mercury level is enough to strike it off the ‘healthiest options’ list (although the EPA give the green light to anyone who isn’t pregnant, planning to become pregnant or nursing to eat up to 7 ounces of high-mercury fish per week, if you want to trust them). You want something that contains what’s good for you and as little of what’s bad for you as possible. It should be the same with sustainability. You can pick fish that are good for you and good for the environment – you just have to know which ones to choose.

    Making the Even Smarter Choice: Seafood and Sustainability

    Since you already have a lot to consider nutritionally when choosing seafood, why should you add sustainability into the mix? Well, the easy answer is you have to, if you want your children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy the same healthy choices you can now. The global catch of wild fish leveled off over 20 years ago and 70% percent of the world’s fisheries are being harvested at capacity or are in decline. It’s estimated that we’ve removed over 90% of the large predatory fish like sharks from the world’s oceans already, and some of the biggest fisheries are on the verge of complete collapse. But perhaps the simplest reason as to why you should factor sustainability into your seafood choices is that it’s easy to and, to boot, still good for you.

    Part of why nutrition and sustainability fit so well together is that those fish that tend to be high in toxins just happen to be those that we’ve overfished. You see, bioaccumulation is a time-consuming process. The older and larger a fish is, the more toxins it’s likely to have bioaccumulated. In general, this means that the biggest fish in the sea that are highest up on the food chain are the most likely to have the highest mercury levels.

    Maybe we should just leave the tiger sharks in the ocean?

    But the biggest predatory fish are also the slowest growing and least able to rebound from intense fishing pressure. They’re the ones that take years to develop into maturity and have fewer offspring than their smaller cousins. It’s like comparing rabbits to moose – if you have a population of rabbits and you take away half of them, you might not even notice that any were taken once they’re done breeding like, well, rabbits. But take away half of a population of moose and it may take years for them to replace their lost numbers.

    While most of what we hear about the fishing industry is doom and gloom when it comes to being eco-consious, there are fisheries being run in a sustainable way. The more we purchase from those fisheries, and not from the other ones, the more we will pressure the remaining industries to improve their practices and solve the most pressing issues, including overfishing, illegal and unregulated fishing, habitat damage, bycatch and poor management.

    So how do you know what fish to buy?

    Just ask the Monterrey Bay Aqauarium. Born out of a modest exhibition called “Fishing for Solutions,” the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program is one of the largest and most extensive sustainable seafood programs out there. They provide pocket guides for all over the United States that give a simple classification to the types of seafood you’re likely to see in your area. They break fish options into three categories: Green for Best Choices, Yellow for Good Alternatives, and Red for those to Avoid. At the grocery store in California and can’t decide between Rainbow Trout and Monkfish? Check the colors. Green means go on the trout!

    Turning the Tide, the Monterey Bay Aqaurium’s new publication about overfish – click to read

    These simple categories factor in all kinds of information, from stock status and vulnerability to fishing pressure to the nature and extent of the bycatch created by the fishing method. And they aren’t limited to rating just wild-caught species. Aquacultures and farmed fish are rated on their use of marine resources, risk of escapes, disease & pollution, and overall management. All this info is packed neatly into fresh pocket guides twice a year, giving you the most up to date information on which fish are environmentally friendly and which are not. With some fish, the method is really what counts (like Cod). If you’re not sure what method your fish is fished with, check the packaging or ask the guy behind the fish counter. If it isn’t listed, and they can’t tell you, then pick an option you’re sure is a good choice instead. Many stores, though, will have it right on the package if its wild-caught, farmed, or local.

    The one thing that doesn’t factor into the guides is the relative nutrition of the species from our perspective. While some do have health warnings, generally speaking, the guides are designed to talk about what choice is good for ocean health, not human health. This is, of course, until recently, when Seafood Watch announced its “Super Green” list. This group are the creme de la creme of seafood choices – they’re the most sustainable fish that also happen to be high in long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids and low in environmental contaminants like mercury. This effort draws from experts in human health, notably scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), to combine the best of both worlds: sustainability and good nutrition.

    Note: Both charts can be re-categorized by clicking on the column headings

    Seafood Watch List, Super Green List (as of October 2009)
    Fish Growing Method Source
    Albacore Tuna Troll or Pole-caught US or British Columbia
    Mussels Farmed Anywhere
    Oysters Farmed Anywhere
    Pacific Sardines Wild-caught Pacific Waters
    Pink Shrimp Wild-caught Oregon
    Rainbow Trout Farmed US, likely
    Salmon (any variety) Wild-Caught Alaskan
    Spot Prawns Wild-caught British Columbia

    Full list can be found on our website:

    Other groups have put out similar lists that highlight both nutrition and sustainability. One of the other great ones is produced by the Washington State Department of Health. Their “Healthy Fish Guide” lists the fish that are lowest in contamination, with special notes to those that are high in Omega-3s and warnings in orange that show a particular fish or method is unsustainable. In general, these user-friendly guides allow us to make smarter choices that improve our lives while decreasing the impact we have on our environment.

    As always when buying fish, be sure that it’s properly stored and/or fresh (for tips on how, check out the FDA’s page on seafood). If you’re buying frozen fish, here’s a tip I learned from my grandmother – try defrosting it in milk. The fish turns out much more tasty, flaky and moist (at least from my experience)! And if you’re looking for some great recipes for the Super Green options, check out the Seafood Watch’s recipe site. They’re adding new ones every month to promote people to eat their choices for the most sustainable healthy seafood. In turn, your smarter choices at the grocery store will hopefully convince the money-minded fisheries managers that sustainability is important, and they will stop over harvesting our oceans so that there’s plenty of fish for generations to come to enjoy.

    Read Turning the Tide – put out by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It will teach you about the current state of the oceans as they relate to seafood production and how we can move towards more sustainable solutions:

    Special thanks to Alison Barratt, Communications Associate Manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for giving me the full info on sustainable seafood!

  • Understanding Our Bodies: The Role of Antioxidants

    Understanding Our Bodies: The Role of Antioxidants

    It seems like every day there’s a new super-food that is chock full of antioxidants and ready to cure everything from the flu to cancer. Antioxidants are touted as a nutritional panacea, but I would bet that few people really understand what antioxidants are, how they function in the body, and how including them in their diet makes an impact.

    These are the antioxidants you want – from flickr user crabchick

    Are antioxidants good for you? The short answer is yes, but buyer beware. Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean you should start taking a giant mega-dose of it. Antioxidants are great when the come from natural sources as a part of a healthy diet. But like everything else, a closer look at their physiological action explains why you can get too much of a good thing.

    It’s All About The ROS

    What are antioxidants? To answer that question, you have to understand reactive oxygen species, or ROS. And to do that, you have to understand how your cells produce energy. So here we go: a very quick overview of cellular energy metabolism.

    In human cells, like other eukaryotes (everybody but the bacteria), energy is made in a specialized cellular structures called mitochondria. Mitochondria are these strange, double-membraned organelles that are highly specialized – they contain their own DNA, make their own proteins, and are tightly regulated by the cell. Essentially, mitochondria are energy powerhouses, or the cell’s equivalent of a power plant. Below is a 3D view of the structure (thanks to T. G. Frey of San Diego State University):

    watch : http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/TFrey/?MitoMovies/CrisMitoER.mov

    Using a complex process, mitochondria take our fats, carbohydrates, and excess proteins and turn them into a four-carbon molecule called Acetyl CoA. This molecule goes through a series of reactions in what is called the Kreb’s Cycle which results in the creation of high-energy electrons taken from the bonds.

    These electrons are then passed down a chain of enzymes which use the energy they possess to create a proton (H+) gradient between the center of the mitochondria and the between-membrane space, eventually reducing oxygen into water (O2 –> H2O).

    It’s this proton gradient that is used to drive an enzyme called ATP synthase, which creates ATP, the functional energy molecule used by our cells.

    But the system isn’t perfect. Every once in awhile, instead of making harmless water, the chain makes unstable oxygen molecules, which are referred to as free radicals. These molecules are dangerous to the cell because they are highly reactive – in other words, they attack chemical bonds – hence their other name, reactive oxygen species (ROS). They can cause damage to DNA, enzymes, proteins and many of the other vital components of a healthy cell.

    Luckily, our bodies have innate mechanisms to deal with ROS, like the enzyme catalase which converts hydrogen peroxide (a kind of ROS) into water and oxygen. But as we age, our mitochondria get less and less efficient, producing more and more ROS. If too many ROS are produced and they overwhelm our innate damage repair mechanisms, our cells suffer, and either become non-functional or even cancerous.

    That’s where antioxidants come in. Antioxidants are compounds which react with free radicals and neutralize them, thus protecting our bodies from oxidative damage by ROS. They vary widely and are found in all kinds of foods we eat every day. Perhaps the most famous antioxidant foods are the colored berries like blueberries and raspberries, which are chock full of a antioxidants like Vitamin C and Vitamin E.

    So ROS are bad?

    Well… like everything else, it’s not quite that simple. Yes, reactive oxygen species can be very damaging. Some scientists finger them as the direct cause of aging, and because of the damage they can cause, they are thought to play a pivotal role in many diseases from Alzheimer’s to cancer. ROS production is increased in people who are overweight or obese, and is considered one of the reasons why weight gain is so damaging to the body.

    But many ignore the fact that ROS are a normal and regular part of cell metabolism. Even when we’re healthy, we boost the production of ROS when we exercise and when we eat. As it turns out, we need them. They are important in a number of cellular pathways, including those related to programmed cell death (apoptosis), as they are a direct measure of how much energy is being created by a cell at a given time. Increases in ROS may actually be beneficial at the right times.

    For example, one study found that if you up the ROS in mice being fed a high fat diet, you actually prevent them from becoming insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is the first step towards diabetes – it occurs when our bodies stop responding effectively to the insulin we release to store glucose uptake.

    Over time, eating too much (especially too much sugar) leads to a constantly high insulin levels, and our bodies simply become less sensitive to insulin. ROS, as the researchers explain, are key in insulin signaling, and without them, our cells can’t respond efficiently to insulin.

    “In the case of early type 2 diabetes and the development of insulin resistance, our studies suggest that antioxidants would be bad for you,” explains Tony Tiganis of Monash University in Australia.

    Furthermore, increases in ROS are pivotal in the heart’s ability to prevent damage during a heart attack. If you boost ROS signals before a heart attack, it allows the cells to precondition and prevents later damage from oxygen deprivation. This pathway, including ROS, are being evaluated as targets for therapeutics and pharmaceuticals to reduce or prevent heart damage.

    As with anything, ROS are healthy for you when they’re kept balanced by the body’s defensive enzymes and antioxidants. Natural, low-ish levels of ROS signaling, like that produced when you eat a good diet and exercise, is good for you. But get too much of a good thing – like when your body’s natural oxidation defenses break down – and it becomes a bad thing. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, packed with antioxidants, has been shown to improve the body’s ability to deal with ROS properly, improving all kinds of physiological parameters and aiding in the prevention or treatment of a wide variety of diseases.

    Should I take extra antioxidants?

    Increases in overall fruit and vegetable intake have shown to be great for our bodies, but this is likely due to the interplay between many different compounds. The jury is still out on whether supplementing your diet with specific antioxidants improves your health.


    Clinical trials have had remarkable trouble finding actual benefits from supplementing diets with individual or even combined antioxidants.     A vegetable or fruit is better for you because doesn’t just contain one or two antioxidants; it also contains a balance of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are impossible to reproduce in pill form.

    And more importantly, you can over do it. The line between healthy and unhealthy blurs when it comes to dietary supplementation with excessive amounts of antioxidants. For example, you smokers out there might want to watch your beta-carotene intake. Beta-carotene is an antioxidant, found in many vegetables including kale and spinach, and researchers had hoped that supplementing the diets of smokers with it and another antioxidant, retinol, would help prevent lung cancer.

    But the reverse occurred – beta-carotene was found to actually increase the risk of lung cancer and death when taken as a supplement by those who were at high risk for the disease. Why it had this strong, negative effect is not fully understood, but it serves as a warning that over-supplementing isn’t a good idea.

    Similarly, a meta-analysis of clinical trials involving Vitamin E found that high doses – >400 IU a day – increased risk of mortality. It’s likely that in both these cases, the excessive levels of antioxidants actually prevented the ROS from doing their job as signaling molecules, screwing up cellular signaling pathways including those that lead to cell death. Cells that don’t die when they should are at high risk for becoming cancerous.

    You probably aren’t going to do yourself any damage by eating all the antioxidants you want – and, more likely, you’ll improve your diet. But don’t try and overdo it with pills. Cramming ten extra Vitamin C tablets isn’t going to do you any good. Antioxidants are better when they come straight from the source, as they exist in a form your body is prepared to use.

    Studies have shown supplements simply don’t cut it, and super pills don’t replace eating a healthy, balanced diet with at least five servings of fruits and veggies a day. And in some cases, antioxidant supplements increase the risk of cancers, like beta-carotene did for smokers, and can be particularly damaging for those already on certain drugs.

    If you really insist on taking supplement pills, be sure to talk to your doctor first and make sure what you’re taking is actually good for you and isn’t going to conflict with other medications. So-called nutritional supplements often tout amazing health benefits without any actual science to back them up.

    Previous posts in the Understanding Our Bodies series:

    References:

    1. Stadtman, E. (1992). Protein oxidation and aging Science, 257 (5074), 1220-1224 DOI: 10.1126/science.1355616
    2. Liu, J. (2002). Memory loss in old rats is associated with brain mitochondrial decay and RNA/DNA oxidation: Partial reversal by feeding acetyl-L-carnitine and/or R-alpha -lipoic acid Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99 (4), 2356-2361 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.261709299
    3. Zhang JW, Rubio V, Zheng S, & Shi ZZ (2009). Knockdown of OLA1, a regulator of oxidative stress response, inhibits motility and invasion of breast cancer cells. Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B, 10 (11), 796-804 PMID: 19882753
    4. Rhee SG (2006). Cell signaling. H2O2, a necessary evil for cell signaling. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312 (5782), 1882-3 PMID: 16809515
    5. Loh, K., Deng, H., Fukushima, A., Cai, X., Boivin, B., Galic, S., Bruce, C., Shields, B., Skiba, B., & Ooms, L. (2009). Reactive Oxygen Species Enhance Insulin Sensitivity Cell Metabolism, 10 (4), 260-272 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2009.08.009
    6. Vanden Hoek T, Becker LB, Shao ZH, Li CQ, & Schumacker PT (2000). Preconditioning in cardiomyocytes protects by attenuating oxidant stress at reperfusion. Circulation research, 86 (5), 541-8 PMID: 10720416
    7. Valko M, Leibfritz D, Moncol J, Cronin MT, Mazur M, & Telser J (2007). Free radicals and antioxidants in normal physiological functions and human disease. The international journal of biochemistry & cell biology, 39 (1), 44-84 PMID: 16978905
    8. Wallig MA, Heinz-Taheny KM, Epps DL, & Gossman T (2005). Synergy among phytochemicals within crucifers: does it translate into chemoprotection? The Journal of nutrition, 135 (12 Suppl) PMID: 16317157
    9. Goodman GE, Thornquist MD, Balmes J, Cullen MR, Meyskens FL Jr, Omenn GS, Valanis B, & Williams JH Jr (2004). The Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial: incidence of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality during 6-year follow-up after stopping beta-carotene and retinol supplements. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 96 (23), 1743-50 PMID: 15572756
    10. Miller ER 3rd, Pastor-Barriuso R, Dalal D, Riemersma RA, Appel LJ, & Guallar E (2005). Meta-analysis: high-dosage vitamin E supplementation may increase all-cause mortality. Annals of internal medicine, 142 (1), 37-46 PMID: 15537682
    11. Rodrigues MJ, Bouyon A, & Alexandre J (2009). [Role of antioxidant complements and supplements in oncology in addition to an equilibrate regimen: a systematic review] Bulletin du cancer, 96 (6), 677-84 PMID: 19493854
  • Food System 2.0: Can New Approaches Make Local Food Happen?

    Food System 2.0: Can New Approaches Make Local Food Happen?

    What is the price of food? $3.99 for a gallon of milk? $0.99 for an energy bar? Complex market and policy forces make those prices. Its a process that starts far from the point of sale.

    Centralizing our food into fast food chains and supermarkets causes the farms that feed the system to scale up into mega-sized operations. The idyllic, diverse farms of American lore were long ago converted into monocrop fields of staple grains, hog farms with hundreds of thousands of head and distribution centers bigger than football fields.

    A moment at the supermarket… thanks to flickr user Fazen

    In economic terms, food has simply migrated to areas with the a comparative advantage in production. California, for example, now grows over 50% of all the vegetables in the entire country – simply because they have a 12 month growing season. But how do you make food scale back to something more reasonable, a new system in which communities connect with the food being grown there? Is it even possible, nay desirable?

    We saw a couple examples of new approaches to these questions in the San Francisco area during our Tour of America recently. One deals with technology while the other with community. Both are necessary components in what should become Food System 2.0.

    From Ideals to Reality

    On a sunny afternoon in San Francisco, we sat down with Melanie Cheng, founder of Farmsreach.com. FarmsReach does what it says: it puts farms directly within reach of their marketplace. But don’t think of the service as a digital farmers market, as we made the mistake of doing. The genius of the system comes in their measured approach to tackling the economics of local food.

    Cheng started out as a technical writer, working with Silicon Valley giant Cisco. This technical background came in handy as she began to turn her attention to food. The environmental impact of agriculture was her first focus, which culminated in the non-profit OMorganics.

    She quickly realized the main obstacle in the sustainable agriculture world was a lack of information and marketplace – causing a shift from environmental issues into more broadly seeing food access as a uniting factor. This revelation began to shift Om Organics from information to technology, out of the non-profit sphere into what we know today as FarmsReach.com.

    Their first prototype was to connect restaurant chefs with farmers through farm co-ops and aggregators – a focus that proved too time consuming to be profitable. The core need to connect farms with commercial buyers still remained however, so with their first public release FarmsReach.com, the focus was helping farms sell directly to buyers. Cheng used an interesting approach to get these small farms to scale up to restaurant sizes: combine them.

    What Farms Reach Looks Like

    It was with larger restaurant accounts that could do multiple orders at once that Farmsreach.com was born. The service aggregates sellers – in this case farmers – so restauranteurs and institutional food buyers have an easier way to interface directly with sustainable and local growers.

    Cheng’s team has tested the current platform in seven different regions, trying to slowly build out new features the community requests, like ratings for participants and inventory management for restaurants. The platform is young having only formally launched earlier this year, but it was our impression that the combination of a great idea, a strong team and patient investors will eventually make FarmsReach a big commercial component of a burgeoning new food system.

    The Smaller Side of Food

    But what if you aren’t a large restaurant? How do you get access to better food? Sara Weihmann, co-founder and director of All Edibles sees edible landscaping as filling that important gap in the current food system. After completing a Green MBA in 2006, Weihmann looked at various environmental and social justice issues like green building and biodiesel production before the food world came calling.

    Weihmann and her co-workers at All Edibles add edible plants to existing homes in the form of pleasant looking landscaping mostly in the ‘East Bay’ area of the San Francisco region, Berkeley and Oakland. They help homeowners connect with their food by teaching seasonal eating, planting in cycles to ensure constant food production and generally educating their customers on how to grow food.

    An example of an All Edibles Installation in the Bay Area

    The real take home message with their services is turning consumers into producers, mostly through educating clients on the processes that make local food a superior choice to conventional supermarkets. Improved local environments, food quality and convenience become selling points over the predictability of supermarkets after the clients see their food coming out of their own yards, Weihmann explained. Her goal is to eventually transform her work into a curriculum for schools and nursing homes, educating those that usually have the least connection with food – and the most time on their hands to participate.

    The Economic Side of Food

    These diverse food system interventions are merely novel at this time, experiments into a new method of food distribution that aims beyond the bottom line. No new system will succeed without a profitable economic base.

    Food Income Chart – click for detail

    Our specialized system has driven the costs of food down to levels that are the envy of the world – which is hard to argue – or compete – against. Americans spend only about 10-12% of their income on food, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see this NYTimes infographic to better understand). That’s one of the lowest percentages in the world. The foods that make up that chunk of the economy are heavily influenced by subsidies from the Farm Bill, a sprawling piece of legislation that incentivizes certain crops. For example, corn farmers have received a staggering $56 billion in subsidies over the last 10 years.

    Farms Reach and All Edibles are attempts to change that paradigm. They are trying to circumvent the traditional food system by introducing market forces and genuine community elements to what has long been a faceless production. Remedying the larger policy apparatus around food will have to follow these trailblazing attempts to augment the system but there is another tangential issue at hand here which could change the debate – health care.

    From Reaction to Prevention

    As the US contemplates how to remake the health care system, the Congressional Budgeting Office reminds us that America already spends 16% of its GDP on healthcare, by far the highest percentage in the world.  Using nutrition and novel market attempts like Farms Reach and All Edible to get the right foods into the right hands could be an important part of getting Americans to put more money into the food side of the equation – and less into fixing preventable diseases later on. Preventative medicine interventions have long been ignored, said Patricia Lebensohn, Associate Professor of Clinical Family and Community Medicine at The University of Arizona’s Integrative Medicine in Residency Program.

    Mediterranean Watermelon Salad, by the Foodista Blog

    Our current food and health states in America are efficient monetarily but woefully inefficient in other less measurable ways. Lebensohn spoke to the ways in which the Tucson-based interactive program gets front line medical practitioners to consider the person on more holistic level – and a big component of that is nutrition intervention. University of Arizona preaches a Mediterranean diet – heavy in whole grains, vegetables and fish – as a good approach for most practitioners. Frequently, the same residents receive training in how to use diet as a tool to make the body heal itself, added Lebensohn.

    Connecting food to health is a major aim of the University’s program – but it goes hand in hand with other environmental, social and moral aspects of the food system that need updating. Approaching this problem from both the educational/government side like Lebensohn and the Weil Center while using new ventures from the likes of Cheng and Weihmann are just the kind of multi-faceted, entrepreneurial approaches to these large questions that are uniquely American.

    Remember, it was only about 10,000 short years ago that we even discovered farming in the first place. It shouldn’t take that long to integrate these methods into a food system that nourishes us into the next century – and the one after that.

  • Does Sugar Make You Violent?

    Does Sugar Make You Violent?

    If you read the nutrition science headlines, you might have seen these: “Giving in to pester power can make your child a thug” or “Daily sweets ‘linked to violence’“. They refer to a new paper that just came out which claims that eating sugary snacks every day as a child has an impact on your behavior as an adult. The idea seems impossible. I mean, sure, we all have thought about slugging that really slow guy in the line in front of us at the ice cream parlor when we’re craving a nice, double scoop of Death by Chocolate. But giving my child a piece of chocolate after dinner every night can’t make him into a violent person… Or can it?

    The researchers explain that it’s possible that giving children sweets and chocolate regularly may alter their adult behaviors directly, because of simply eating sugar, or indirectly, because it prevents kids from learning self control. The idea is that if they’re given what they want when they want, they lean towards impulsive behavior, which previous research has strongly associated with delinquency.

    Do these drive kids mad?

    But no one had ever looked at whether there are long term effects of childhood diet on adult behavior. So, researchers from Cardiff University decided to analyze at the relationship between adulthood violence and childhood diet using survey data of almost 17,500 people to see if eating sweets as a kid makes people more violent. They say it does, but critics of the research are not so sure. Julian Hunt, the director of communications for the British Food and Drink Federation, was quoted as saying:

    “This is either utter nonsense or a very bad April Fool’s Day joke… Anti-social behavior…is not linked to whether or not you ate sweeties as a kid.”

    Can a childhood sweet-tooth make you violent as an adult? Read how the study was conducted and its conclusions, and you be the judge:

    The Study

    Dr Simon Moore and his colleagues were able to use a previously-collected data set of 17,415 people which were surveyed at ages 5, 10 and 34. The participating people and their parents were questioned about health, education, and other life factors like whether they owned a car. When the study participants were 10, they were asked how often they ate sweets, and their answers were grouped into “every day” or “less often/never”. Later, at age 34, the participants self-reported convictions for violent offenses. The research team then statistically compared the likelihood that sweet-eating at a younger age affected a participant’s likelihood of being violent later on.

    The Results

    According to the study, you really should keep your kids away from sweets: those that ate them every day at age 10 were significantly more likely to have been convicted for violence at age 34, even when other factors like parenting behavior, the area where the child lived, not having educational qualifications after the age of 16 and whether they had access to a car. Sweets were eaten daily as a ten year old by 69% of the violent offenders but only 42% of the non-violent participants. Researchers indicate that this is a strong connection which can’t be ignored.

    But…What?

    While the study shows that sweets might have an impact on behavior, it does have many drawbacks.

    Firstly, the scientists had a very crude measure of sweets intake. It’s clear from the breakdown of “every day” and “not” that they aren’t nutritionists, they’re psychiatrists. A better study would have looked at the volume, weight and kind of sweets eaten over a number of childhood years to fully appreciate the children’s dietary habits. After all, one chocolate bar is very different from a bag of sour patch kids nutritionally. And they didn’t even include soda and sugary drinks… c’mon!

    Secondly, the number of violent offenders in the group was so small, statistically speaking, that it was harder to determine differences between population groups. Moreover, there were large numbers of sweet-eaters in both non-violent and violent subsets, so the causal link between the two is a little shaky.

    You would expect that if the sweets themselves or the constant pandering to a child’s demands had a marked impact on behavior, much less than 42% of the non-violent people would have had daily sweets.

    Thirdly, as it was taken from a general survey study, the questions themselves were not designed to examine the relationship between diet and behavior in detail. It didn’t include questions about aspects of life that may have been important, including big ones like family income. While this doesn’t mean that the results of the data are invalid, it does mean that they may be incomplete, and those missing pieces might contain pertinent information.

    Lastly, in general, there are a number of reasons why children who eat more sweets might have violent records later in life, most of which are not caused by sugar or giving in to kids demands. Leaving out certain measures of socioeconomic status is a huge mistake on the researchers part, because in general, many aspects of diet, especially including sugar intake, have been shown to be linked to social class and money situations – factors which also have an influence on crime. As well, the study didn’t overall account for whether violence-prone children happen to prefer sweets more than other kids, thus reversing the presumed causal relationship between eating sweets and being violent.

    Personally, I think that while this study is interesting, it’s weaknesses make it far from conclusive. I’d like to see a much more carefully designed experiment look at the relationship between childhood diet and adult aggression. But, at the same rate, it might not hurt to say no to your kids every once in a while when they ask for treats. After all, learning self control and discipline has never been linked to becoming a violent offender.

    Reference:

    Moore, S., Carter, L., & van Goozen, S. (2009). Confectionery consumption in childhood and adult violence The British Journal of Psychiatry, 195 (4), 366-367 DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.108.061820

  • Nutrition Wonderland Travels to the Intermountain West

    Nutrition Wonderland marches eastward towards Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado after an incredibly interesting time in California learning about development + agriculture in Oxnard, food safety in Monterey, sustainable farming in Watsonville, and a few other stories we are still putting together.

    As we enter the intermountain west of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, our topics shift a bit. This region is more focused on the complimentary health care movement, whereas California was more focused on advancing agriculture to a new place. Both movements are intertwined, as we have repeatedly been demonstrating for you, and it is important that you being to see them as one movement. Take a look at some of the areas we will be visiting in the next couple weeks:


    View Nutrition Wonderland Tour – The Intermountain West in a larger map

    Explore the interactive map above to learn where who we will be speaking with. Its an interesting list that spans universities, corporations, the Navajo Nation, and a little balloon festival thrown in there for good measure.

    Additionally, we also apologize to some of our fans for the downtime on the website this weekend. Our hosting provider unexpectedly moved us over to a new server and it caused a litany of problems for us. We are back and appreciate your patience with the matter.

    If you are interested in saying hello to us, use the contact form at the top of the page to ‘Suggest a Story’ to us.

  • Book Review: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

    Book Review: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

    Book Review: The Botany Of Desire

    Quick Facts on The Botany of Desire

    When looking for books about nutrition and eating, it’s hard not to stumble up Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. But this is not a review of those books. While both interesting and worth the a read by anyone nutrition-conscious, it is one of Michael Pollan’s other books that is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and simply I cannot bring myself to discuss In Defense of Food or Omnivore’s Dilemma when there is a more stunning work to be mentioned. Published in 2001, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is . It looks at the interplay between humans and plants. It’s not a nutritional guide, it’s an exploration of our own nature and, more importantly, the plants that exploit it.

    Yes, I said the plants that exploit us. Think about it this way. When we describe how a plant produces nectar so that a bumblebee will lands, drink the nectar from the flower, and in the process pollinates it, we look at is as a master manipulation of the plant. The plant has somehow taken advantage of the bee’s hunt for food to sexually reproduce. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan asks one simple question that leads to an incredible new world view of plants: “What existential difference is there between the human being’s role in this (or any) garden and the bumblebee’s?”

    Like Bees to a Flower

    The book centers around four plants that have excelled at exploiting our desires: Tulips, Potatoes, Apples and Cannibus. Each has succeeded spectacularly by appealing to a different desire of ours: tulips satisfy our desire for beauty, potatoes, for control, apples for sweetness, and cannibus for intoxication. By doing so, they have become four of the most widespread and readily recognizable plants in the world.

    Just think about the millions of tulips that travel around the world to end up a fixture of the suburban landscape, or the feeling of superiority we get from our complete domination of the potato in modern agriculture. Think of Johnny Appleseed, who spread a plant that evolved in Asia across the United States, leading to our current culture where 55 million tonnes of apples are grown worldwide every year, with a value of about $10 billion. Or, think of cannibus, better known as Marijuana: people literally risk their lives and kill for a weed. How can we look at these plants and think that they are anything but evolutionary masterminds?

    In general, we tend to give more credit to the wild species around us, as if they’ve achieved some feat that domesticated species have fallen short of by being unique, special and rare. But Pollan challenges this mental separation we make. What is truly the aim of a species in a broader sense – to be admired for its uniqueness, or to spread its habitat globally? The four plants he talks about have come to be grown on almost every continent in unbelievable quantities, and they have done it by producing compounds and characteristics that we find appealing. Is it really any different than producing nectar for a bee?

    The Book… and More!

    It’s a 304 page masterpiece clearly driven by Pollan’s own love for gardening and plants. Every chapter is packed with amazing information, hilarious anecdotes, and brilliant writing that makes it difficult to put down. It is sure to reshape the way you look at the plants around you, whether they be on our lawn or your plate.

    Botany of Desire Cover

    But, I’d be lying if I said I chose this moment to share this book with you randomly. In truth, there is another reason I wanted to tell you about this book today. I want to give you enough time to read the book before October 28th. Why then? Because PBS has decided to do a documentary centered around this book.

    The two hour feature will explore visually many of the amazing spectacles that Pollan talks about, from the potato fields Idaho to the apple forests of Kazakhstan. It will take us inside the bustling tulip markets in Amsterdam, which deal in the billion dollar flower industry, to the highly controversial medical marijuana plants in America. It follows the natural history of the four plants that have so exquisitely linked themselves in our cultures, and will compliment the book with fascinating images that you have probably never seen before.

    I highly recommend grabbing the book now, giving it a quick read, then catching the PBS documentary on October 28th! After all, the book is always better, but the movie is sure to be engrossing, entertaining, and eye-opening, too.