Are Natural Foods Natural?

Most US packaged foods labeled ‘natural’ have GM ingredients – report

Non-profit finds that while ‘organic’ products lack GM ingredients, many cereals, chips and infant formula contain them

Three tomatoes grown from genetically modified seeds. Photograph: Alamy

A majority of US packaged foods labeled as “natural” and tested by Consumer Reports actually contained a substantial level of genetically modified ingredients, according to a report issued Tuesday by the non-profit product testing group.

Consumers are being misled by the “natural” label, said Urvashi Rangan, executive director of Consumer Reports Food Safety and Sustainability.

Consumer Reports said it had conducted a survey of more than 80 different processed foods containing corn or soy, the two most widely grown genetically engineered crops in the United States, to determine whether labeling claims for GMO presence were accurate.

While foods labeled as “non-GMO”, or “organic” were found to be free of genetically modified corn and soy, virtually all of the foods labeled as “natural” or not labeled with any claim related to GMO content contained substantial amounts of GMO ingredients, Consumer Reports said.

GMOs were present in breakfast cereals, chips and infant formula, the group said.

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Make you Fink on Friday

Creepy crawlies

There have been suggestions recently that we may have to look for other food sources like insect and creepy crawlies.

The idea doesn’t appeal to me one little bit.

But, the Chinese and other Asian countries do.

Grub’s up: maggots and crickets on menu at Britain’s first ‘pestaurant’

Rentokil crawls into street food arena with cheesy worms, insect lollipops and pigeon burgers, specially farmed for intrepid diners

An insect pick’n’mix bag at Rentokil’s Pestaurant, in London. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex

David Cross started out studying the behaviour of the American cockroach, moved on to managing the population of the great spruce bark beetle, before finally settling on a career exterminating flies, cockroaches, spiders, wasps, ants, moths, fleas and woodworm. Ask him his least favourite pest and he looks blank.

He’ll admit, however, to a particular affection for the flour beetle (“it’s something that you develop a bit of respect for”), and “rats and mice will always be posing some interesting and quite complex challenge for you”.

Everything has its limits though, and for the head of Rentokil’s technical training academy, the plain roasted buffalo worms were proving a step too far. “Yeah, I’m not so keen on them. If you are just eating the dry insects you can get a bit of exoskeleton stuck in the back of the throat. You need a drink of water after that.”

Lunchtime in the City, and a pop-up with a difference: Pestaurant, run by Britain’s best-known extermination brand, which aims to interpret the popularity of street food in its most literal sense. On the menu: salt & vinegar crickets, plain roasted locusts, crispy BBQ mealworms and something called an “early bird breakfast pie”, featuring six sausages, eight rashers of smoky bacon and “30g bamboo or buffalo worms”.

A Pestaurant chef shows off their sweet chilli pigeon burgers, garnished with cheddar cheese mealworms. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex

The stall may have been temporary, but several of the key ingredients, it turned out, are Rentokil regulars. Mealworms, favourites of pet reptiles and fish, can also cause serious infestation problems for flour mills and grain producers, and even for those unfortunate homes that already have a bird population. Crickets can also be a domestic problem, though happily, said Cross, only certain types will occupy a building in numbers.

The company also finds itself regularly engaged in a battle against pigeons which, minced in a burger with venison, bacon and sweet chilli, were proving a particularly hot draw at the city centre stall. (One of the weapons open to pest controllers, if nets and spikes prove ineffective, is to coat surfaces with a “chilli-based gel” which sticks to their feet, and sounds barely less appealing than any number of local chicken takeaways.)

But the dishes on offer were “absolutely not” the fruits of the company’s labours, said Cross quickly — the burgers were of finest wood pigeon, while the bugs had all been farmed specifically for human consumption.

By 1pm, a small crowd of lunch-hour diners was hovering, some giggling nervously, some ostentatiously picking fingerfuls of tiny bugs with the texture of puffed rice and gulping them down, many simply heading for the free pigeon burgers, which didn’t sound too scary, surely?

“Mmm, how nice does that look?” said Alex Campbell, picking up a plain roasted cricket, just big enough for its legs and wings to be clearly discernible. Did he think so? “No, it looks absolutely disgusting.” He gulped it down confidently. The verdict? “Tastes like nuts to be honest.”

Insect lollipops at Pestaurant. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex

“I like the buffalo worms,” said Peter Hannah, judging them “kind of crispy, a little salty, not a lot of flavour”

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Opinion:

Thanks, but no thanks.

Change the World Wednesday – 11th Jun

Got coffee, raring to go!

Can’t eat a football – image: BBC News

Tomorrow is the kick off for the FIFA World Cup. Half of Brazil is excited, the other half complaining/protesting about the costs of a one month sports event while social services are left to starve.

Dilma Rousseff was on TV last night with a damage control presidential message.

I love the world cup, but the thing that disappoints me is there is no effort in promoting awareness nor solutions to the world’s chaotic environmental issues when you have the largest TV audience in the world as a captive audience. I consider this to be a major failing of FIFA.

Lots of big fat juicy worms

As a part of last week’s CTWW, I turned over the compost heap. I didn’t find anything to transplant, but I do have a wonderful crop of worms, big fat juicy ones.

I was happy to see that I have two out of three pretty plants in my yard. My chillies and passionfruit; they do make wonderful displays.

I must take issue with Small on a comment in her ‘Final Thoughts’, “made me wonder, not for the first time, why we (society) choose ornamental plants and trees over varieties which provide food.” I think we have to look beyond pretty/ornamental, and look at what these non-food bearing plants do. While they may sap the ground of nutrients, do they also not provide composting material? Thus, returning to the ground what they have used. Think about all those leaves you rake up every autumn, wonderful for the compost heap; and then you grow veges. Do they not pander to the bees to make honey and feed birds like humming birds? I think that ornamental plants and trees do have their place in the scheme of things, maybe not direct food, but in the long run.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

Reuse!

This week, before placing items in either the recycle or trash bin, see if you can find new uses for them. For example, an empty ketchup bottle could be used to dispense pancake batter onto the griddle. An old cooking pot or tea kettle could become your newest planter. Got some empty medicine bottles? Fill them with coins and keep in your car for toll booths or times when you need a few pennies. The idea, this week, is to find a use for things which might otherwise be thrown away.

I do that, I try to find a use/repurpose for everything. It is the core of my life; and not only at home.

Even as I walk along the streets, I scour for something that I can reuse or repurpose.

Here’s some examples:

Two sewer pipe off cuts found near a construction site make a bench

 

What’s holding up my tomatoes? An old broom handle

 

My old stove is now my work bench and garden storage

 

Repurposed bricks and small jar in the kitchen

So I do, I do it all the time, it’s an addiction, I’m incorrigible.

…maybe I should go to meetings 🙂

 

 

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Just wondering…

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Deeply Disturbed by this

Free vitamins for all under-fives advised by chief medical officer

Dame Sally Davies says rise in rickets points to need for vitamin handouts to curb illnesses linked to vitamin D deficiency

Vitamin pills. Up to 40% of children in Britain are reported to be lacking sufficient vitamin D, obtained naturally from the sun and oily fish. Photograph: Tony Stone

All under-fives may be offered free vitamins on the NHS in an effort to curb the rising tide of illness, such as rickets, linked to them getting too little vitamin D.

Dame Sally Davies, the government’s chief medical officer, wants ministers to consider extending the offer from low-income families to all children under the age of five.

She has asked the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to investigate whether giving all children in that age group vitamins A, C and D, in the form of drops or tablets, would be cost effective.

Davies said the return of rickets, and the implication of vitamin D in other ill-health, meant that offering every family with under-fives free vitamins was necessary.

Read more

Opinion:

I am deeply disturbed by this attitude to fix all with pills.

How about forcing parents to feed their children correctly, forcing parents to get their kids outside in the sun?

Society should be weaning itself off medication, not making sure that more is taken.

To me this suggested programme has all the hallmarks of ‘more pills – more profit for the drug companies’.

It’s disgusting that we are turning our kids into ‘vitamin junkies’ for the sake of bigger companies getting bigger. This is criminal!

 

Change the World Wednesday – 16th Oct

Courtesy of: http://www.blogactionday.org

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This weeks challenge is a little difference from Small’s normal CTWW challenges, but nevertheless an important one.

This week please consider human rights as it relates to the environment. A good place to start is by reading The Human Right to A Safe and Healthy Environment.

 

THEN …

Leave a comment below or write a post discussing our environmental rights, whether or not they are being realized and how we, as individuals, can help maintain or realize them.

Generally, our human rights are being stiffled by governments and corporations.

My immediate thought on reading the challenge was health and the right to know what we are eating, drinking and putting on our bodies.

Many countries have laws relating to product labelling, just as many countries don’t.

We have the right to know.

To know if:

The food products we buy are made with GMOs so that we can make an informed decision as to whether that product will be a part of our diet, or not

The product contains some form of additive, preservative, sweetener that may or may not be prejudicial to our health.

The product contains some agent or chemical that is considered to be cancer causing or harmful in any other way.

Advertising about products is the truth, and not just something the companies would like us to believe.

Frankly, there is so much bullshit out there that people are confused, and as a result cannot make informed decisions.

The public are bombarded with dubious evidence from company sources, that are seriously at odds with independent assessments.

Governments should be mandating that companies cannot use in-house, biased information for their products, but must be, by law, compelled use to independent testing and reports by specialists that are not chosen by the company.

The use of professionals, doctors, veterinarians, dentists, nutritionists, etc to endorse products needs to be banned. These people will tell you that black is white for money. It’s bullshit! Professionals making claims about any product should be held accountable, struck off, if their views are contrary to independent evidence.

Lobbying should be banned, as it contravenes the basic human right to know the truth.

Companies need to be banned from political donations because some of the biggest are the worst; for example the First World is up in arms over the rate of the morbidly obese, yet one of the greatest culprits is the soda industry, but because they collectively donate billions, governments aren’t interested in the problem and fob it off elsewhere.

Governments have lost sight of the fact that they represent THE PEOPLE, they have become self-serving entities whose only interest is the next election. The people themselves have lost sight and keep putting the same fools into government.

If we want to claim our human rights, we have to change the paradigm, because the current one IS NOT WORKING!

Until we take back control we will continue to be abused by the very people that we have elected to ensure our human rights.

It is our right to know!

Monday Moaning

The world seems to be treading a fine line between need and want.

The world needs food.

The world wants to drive for fun.

It seems that we can’t have both.

Biofuel crops: food security must come first

Even so-called ‘good’ biofuels need safeguards to ensure that they don’t damage biodiversity or displace other crops

Biofuel crops increase emissions through land clearance, fertiliser use, and by displacing other crops. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Since 2003, the UK and other EU countries have effectively poured billions of euros into biofuels, on the premise that they reduce emissions from transport. But it has been an expensive case of the Emperor’s new clothes: we now know that many biofuel crops actually increase overall emissions. At the same time, they damage biodiversity, hurt some of the world’s poorest people by pushing up food prices, and cost us an estimated £460m each year.

Early in September, the European Parliament will have its first opportunity to put the brakes on. MEPs will vote on whether to amend biofuels policy to take account of the critical issue of indirect land use change (iLUC) and at what level to cap biofuels made from food crops.

Biofuel crops increase emissions through land clearance, fertiliser use, and by displacing other crops. When millions of hectares of land are switched from food to biofuel crops, food prices rise and food production is displaced, triggering a domino-like chain of events ending in cropland expansion elsewhere, including into the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and the savannas of South America and Africa. This is iLUC.

We can’t point to the precise hectare of rainforest that’s felled because a particular farmer now grows fuel rather than food. But the evidence is clear that burning millions of tonnes of food as biofuel on top of what we eat leads to more land clearance and more fertiliser use (even accounting for useful biofuel co-products fed to animals). UK biofuel use in the first year of monitoring required around 1.4 million hectares of farmland, most of it overseas. That’s an area the size of Northern Ireland, just to provide 3% of our transport fuel. By ignoring iLUC, the EU overlooks a large share of the emissions triggered by its biofuel targets.

ILUC is not just about carbon. Agricultural expansion and intensification are among the greatest of all threats to wild nature. Each year, millions of hectares of new cropland threaten tropical forests, wetlands and other biodiversity-rich habitats. Fertiliser run-off from the US corn belt, which supplies us with bioethanol, helps create an oxygen-depleted ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive has laudable ‘sustainability criteria’, but unsustainable biofuels can still be imported; they just don’t count towards the targets. Furthermore, the criteria don’t address iLUC, so biofuel demand continues to cause deforestation and biodiversity loss. If a domino falls in the forest, apparently no-one can hear it.

Read more

Opinion:

Maybe we are the tail trying to wag the dog. We’ve got the whole issue wrong.

Maybe we should be curtailing non-essential motoring instead of trying to find more ways to provide fuel for it.

Cars should be banned from Sunday outings, travelling across the country for that holiday, used to get to work where there are public transport services.

Things like hoons driving aimlessly in search of a bonk on a Friday evening, the whole concept of motor racing should be banned, pleasure boating and fun jet skis.

We should instead be looking at more ways people can work from home. Groceries can be delivered by one truck, instead of 40 cars being used for a household shopping trip.

I must admit that I am not a fan of on-line shopping, but my ilk are at the tail end of life, we’ll be dead soon. On-line shopping must be used more and more. Each trip saved prevents a car being used, or provides one more space on public transport for someone who needs it.

Every kilometre travelled on public transport means less tyres being produced, less cars and parts being manufactured.

Walking should be considered as a health benefit as well, less obesity; obesity costs every country millions in healthcare costs.

The world is all but doomed already, but if we change the paradigm now, maybe that eventual doom can be forestalled.

The first priority is to feed the world, to hell with that trip to the beach on Sunday.

 

Change the World Wednesday – 19th Jun

Guilt, angst, anguish this week. I had to break one of my rules; I threw three lots of food out.

Syrian bread makes great sandwiches, tacos and rollups

I rarely do this, I try to use everything, although sometimes I throw one thing away, but three things in one week made me think seriously.

A strange smell, not nice, in the fridge and I discovered a big pork chop hidden by a bowl, it was well past being used. A pack of pre-made pancakes that I had bought on the advice of an assistant in the supermarket who recommended them instead of the Syrian bread that I wanted, they were nothing like bread, in fact they were ghastly. A half sachet of pizza paste, it had been unused for two weeks, and while it didn’t smell bad, and hadn’t started growing lurghies or a miniature rainforest, I didn’t trust it.

I am going to throw out another item this week. I am beefless this week, and yesterday I bought some chicken hamburger patties instead of my regular beef ones.

Yuck!

I had some last night. There is nothing good I can say about them. I made two double hamburgers, it was like eating tasteless cardboard; in fact cardboard would have been tastier. There is no fat in chicken patties, so they don’t cook like beef patties. I gave a raw one to Lixo, and even he wouldn’t eat it (he will eat the beef ones). So it is not only my opinion.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

This week go for a walk and pick up litter.

 

OR …

If your area is litter-free, join a group to help clean up a river or public space.

This is something I used to do regularly. Along with my Sunday morning coffee I would pick up all the rubbish in the part of the praça (park) in front of my house. I was a 20 minute exercise. But the bending down became too much for me and I haven’t done it for more than a year.

O peste, the pest from nextdoor

On Saturday, rubbish day, I did a clean up. People put their rubbish out during the day for collection at night.

My neighbour’s fox terrier has this habit of getting a bag (plastic supermarket bags) and taking it into the middle of the park to tear apart. On Saturday, it wasn’t one or two bags, it was four. He had made a terrible mess in the kids’ play area.

I cleaned it up. It was taxing, but I loved the result. I felt good.

I have now spoken to my neighbour about his dog’s habit, and he promises to keep better control… we’ll see.

Make you Fink on Friday

This video is in Portguese, I will translate below:

From 7 seconds

“Oh Mom, the chicken. This chicken isn’t real, is it?”

Mom, agrees.

“Where’s the head?”

Mom: “It hasn’t got a head, it’s diced.”

“So the head is in the sea?”

Mom: “No, the head is in the shop.”

“So you cut it like this”

Mom: “Yes, I cut it so you could eat it.”

“But why?

“Mom: “So you can eat it honey. I cut the beef, I cut the chicken.”

“I’m  not eating it. Not animals.”

Mom: “Don’t eat chicken. Just eat the gnocchi, the potato, then.”

“Just the potato and rice. I’m not going to eat the animals. They are all animals.”

Singing.

“Why eat animals, they die, why?.”

Mom: “So we can eat, honey.”

“Why do they die? I don’t like this Mom. I like them standing up.”

Mom: “Okay, you won’t eat them any more, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We need to look after the animals; not eat them.”

Mom: “Okay, you’re right, eat the potatoes and rice.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you crying?

Mom: “I’m not crying, I’m just proud of you. Just eat the potatoes and rice.”

“Okay. I’m not eating the chicken.”

It’s not the best translation in the world, some of the words were unintelligible, but you get the picture.

Errata!

One of the problems with being multilingual is confusion. In this video, I heard pollo, which is Spanish for chicken; in fact the kid is saying polvo in Portuguese, which is octopus. This is why he asks if the head is in the sea. Octopus is quite a common food here in Brazil.