Nutrition

Eggs 101- What Do Those Confusing Labels Mean?

/ Ren

By Cooking Up a Story

eggs1[1]Many of the issues that those in the food movement feel are wrong with our dominant food system can be found in the poultry egg industry at large. Whether it’s examining our food production through the lens of animal welfare concerns, environmental impacts, worker’s health, deceptive consumer marketing practices, weak government oversight—the egg industry could serve as the poster child of much that is wrong with our industrial agriculture system.

Right off the bat, two things should concern those of us that enjoy eating fresh chicken eggs. First, does it really require almost a 15-minute video to explain what we are actually buying when we purchase a dozen eggs at the supermarket?

And second, ask yourself this question. If we were permitted to visit any egg production farm in the country without notice and without any on-site viewing restrictions, would we likely purchase those eggs if we saw how the chickens lived and what they were fed?

Why Ban Glyphosate?

/ Ren

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On March 20 2015 the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency IARC declared that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. IARC reached its decision based on the view of 17 top cancer experts from 11 countries, who met to assess the carcinogenicity of 5 pesticides.

Get informed, get tested, and protect yourself!

Over 80% of genetically modified (GM) crops grown worldwide are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with glyphosate herbicides. GM glyphosate-tolerant crops have led to a 239 million kilogram (527 million pound) increase in herbicide use in the US between 1996 and 2011, compared with the amount that would have been used if the same acres had been planted to non-GM crops. People and animals that eat GM glyphosate-tolerant crops are eating potentially high levels of Roundup residues.

Over 80% of genetically modified (GM) crops grown worldwide are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with glyphosate herbicides,1 the best known being Roundup. The herbicide kills all plant life in the field apart from the crop. These crops are known as glyphosate-tolerant or “Roundup Ready” (RR) crops.

The idea behind such crops was to simplify weed control for farmers. The farmer could douse the entire field with glyphosate herbicide, killing all weeds without killing the crop.

But this is not the way things turned out. Weeds have quickly become resistant to glyphosate herbicide through a process called selection pressure, in which only those weeds that tolerate the herbicide survive to pass on their genes. The resulting epidemic of glyphosate-resistant “superweeds” has caused huge problems for farmers in countries where glyphosate-tolerant crops are widely planted.

Get informed, get tested, and protect yourself!

America’s punitive approach to food

/ Ren

Yesterday, a US-government appointed scientific panel released a 600-page report that will inform America’s new dietary guidelines. These guidelines only come out every five years, and they matter because they truly set the tone for how Americans eat: they’re used by doctors and nutritionists to guide patient care, by schools to plan kids’ lunches, and to calculate nutrition information on every food package you pick up, to name just a few areas of impact.

But this panel and their guidelines too often over-complicate what we know about healthy eating. They take a rather punitive approach to food, reducing it to its nutrient parts and emphasizing its relationship to obesity. Food is removed from the context of family and society and taken into the lab or clinic.

Help Build a Community Food Processing Center

/ Ren

Virginia Food Enterprise Centers (VAFEC)

Let’s Bring Professional Food Processing to Virginia’s Northern Piedmont

Virginia Food Enterprise Centers (VAFEC), a project of the Carver-Piedmont Agricultural Institute, is working to bring value-added food processing to Virginia’s Northern Piedmont region.

We have an opportunity to build a regional food processing center at the historic George Washington Carver Regional High School in Culpeper County.  The center will help provide farmers, food-related businesses, and entrepreneurs with an opportunity to expand or begin creating and selling locally grown, value-added products.

Our Mission: To restore underutilized facilities and establish new food processing centers to create value-added products using Virginia’s diverse produce and agricultural products.

To better understand the feasability of a regional food processing center, we would like to hear from area producers and growers, individuals and organizations, as well as potentialbuyers and other clients that would welcome a food processing facility in this region.  Please contact us to learn more about this initiative and how you can become involved.

  • Strengthen Local Food Systems
  • Provide Fair Markets for Farmers
  • Address Food Insecurity
  • Encourage Healthier Food Choices
  • Create Jobs and Inspire Entrepreneurism
  • Spur Economic Development

The community’s input is vital to creating a sustainable center that will benefit our local foods economy!
 
 
Virginia Food Enterprise Centers
138 Willow Way Lane
Haywood, Virginia 22722
(540) 923-4124
[email protected]

The Big Fat Surprise

/ Ren

Listen to an intro by the author

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (January 6, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451624433
ISBN-13: 978-1451624434

 

The Big Fat SurpriseIn The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.

For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?

In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.

With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.