Powered By Produce now has a Facebook page! To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be posting there, but be sure to “like” it to find out! Like the Powered By Produce Facebook page *** The marathon was great! Not only did I set a PR (personal record… a mere 2 minutes faster …
Nov
09
Scandal: The USDA’s Conflict Over Cheese
This front-page New York Times expose on how the government is pushing dairy (while at the same time supposedly shunning saturated fat and obesity) is causing quite a stir. Dairy Management, a marketing and promotion agency created by the USDA to push more dairy down our throats, is doing an excellent job. According to the …
Aug
24
8 Reasons to Beware of Eggs
Half a Billion Eggs Recalled, And Counting… Over 500 million eggs have been recalled due to an outbreak of Salmonella that sickened thousands of people across the country (and many cases go unreported because Salmonella infections, which cause diarrhea and stomach cramps, often go undiagnosed). This is one of the country’s worst food safety recalls, …
Jun
30
Frankenfish
The FDA is eerily close to approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption. These “AquAdvantage” fish, as the company that created them calls them, are Atlantic salmon that are genetically altered to contain a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic “on-switch” from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the …
May
26
This Is Your Milk On Drugs
I thought that by now nearly everyone had heard about hormones in milk. Yet, people continue to buy conventional milk! I’m baffled. Maybe more explanation will finally wake people up about this?! Bovine Growth Hormone Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), or Bovine Somatotropin (BST), is a protein hormone that cattle naturally produce. Back in 1937, it …
May
11
The NEW Four Food Groups
Most of us grew up with the USDA’s old “basic four” food groups, first introduced in 1956: 1) Protein: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, beans, nuts 2) Dairy: milk, cheese, yogurt 3) Grains: bread, cereal, rice, pasta 4) Fruits & Vegetables In 1992, the USDA created the Food Pyramid Guide as a visual aid: The Food …
May
06
Lies
This article is from CNN.com, by Jonathan Safran Foer Beyond the unhealthy influence that our demand for factory-farmed meat has in the area of food-borne illness and communicable diseases, we could cite many other influences on public health, most obviously the now-widely recognized relationship between the nation’s major killers — heart disease, No. 1; cancer, …
Apr
29
A Brief History Lesson
At the end of WWII, our munitions plants were morphed into plowshare factories and began turning our ammonium nitrate surplus into chemical fertilizers (if you follow that link, start reading about half-way down, at the paragraph that starts with “Unfortunately…”). But fertilizers and machinery are not the only things linked to war. Most chemical warfare …
Jan
28
Movie Review: Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. is a fantastic summary of all the food-related issues in the US today. Marketing The way we eat has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 200. But we still use the same images of agarian America to sell food. Hillshire Farms, owned by Sarah Lee, a $12.8 billion …
Jan
13
Carbon Footprint Of Food
A Swedish fast-food chain, called Max Burger, is trying to discourage people from eating too much meat by publishing the carbon footprint of each item on its menu. From the methane produced by the cows, to the machinery used on the farm, through to the emissions produced by the slaughterhouses and the trucks that deliver the …
