Lucid Nutrition

How to Save the World: One Man, One Cow, One World Trailer

In response to farmer suicides in India.

What does an environmentally friendly biodynamic food system capable of feeding everyone actually look like?

This film is a blueprint for a post-industrial future. It takes you into the heart of the world's most important renaissance.

The outcome of the battle for agricultural control in India may just dictate the future of the earth.

Our existence on this planet is precarious.

Modern industrial agriculture is destroying the earth:
Desertification, water scarcity, toxic cocktails of agricultural chemicals pervading our food chains, ocean ecosystem collapse, soil erosion and massive loss of soil fertility.

Our ecosystems ore overwhelmed. Humanity's increasing demands are exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity.

A simple recipe to save the world?

One old man and a bucket of cow-dung.

Why YOU should see this film

Modern agriculture causes topsoil to be eroded at 3 million tons per hour. (that’s 26 billion tons a year)

Human mass is replacing biomass and other species. The carrying capacity of the earth is almost spent.

To maintain our comfort zone lifestyles we will soon need five earths to sustain us in the style to which we have become accustomed.

The mantra of free trade has failed the world’s poor. There is a better way.

Human created climate change is destroying the Planet. Ecosystems collapse is not some sci-fi fantasy. It is real and it is happening. Right now.

Biodynamic agriculture may be the only answer we have left.

"When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands." Ralph Waldo Emerson

King Corn, A Conversation with the Filmmaker

"The following clips are from a conversation with filmmaker Curt Ellis brought to us by Cooking Up A Story. It is about his documentary "King Corn", the film that may open eyes across America. Surprisingly, corn is present in some form or another, in almost everything on the American plate. And, none more so, than through the food ingredient "high fructose corn syrup" (HFCS). Is it a good idea to have "HFCS" present in so many of our foods without prior public debate, or adequate science to measure its impact on the long-term health of adults, and especially our children? Should our standard meals be unnaturally skewed toward a corn based diet, in the first place? This interview, along with video clips from the documentary, may not provide the answers here, but it's a good beginning for further thought and reflection."

What do you think? Were you even aware that corn is in just about everything that is processed? That typically means all the food that comes out of a box or a bag or picked up from a drive thru. Everything from the Oreo's, to the spaghetti sauce, to most loaves of bread. You wouldn't pour sugar on spaghetti naturally, would you? So why have so many of our diets become so much sweeter than they used to be? How can we find solutions that make healthy food available to everyone and not just the wealthy?

If you're concerned about the amount of high-fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners in your diet, consider these tips:

• Limit processed foods.
• Avoid foods that contain added sugar.
• Choose fresh fruit rather than fruit juice or fruit-flavored drinks. Even 100 percent fruit juice has a high concentration of sugar.
• Go Raw.
• Go Vegan.
• Don't get your nourishment out of a box.
• Don't get your fix out of a bag.
• Don't expect healthy food from a drive-thru window.
• Do not drink soda.
• Don't allow sweetened beverages to replace milk, especially for children.

More Info:
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Not so Good for the Planet.
Double Danger of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

"We may have to learn again the mystery of the garden: how its external characteristics model the heart itself, and how the soul is a garden enclosed, our own perpetual paradise where we can be refreshed and restored." ~Thomas Moore

Michael Pollan Secretary of Agriculture

Press Release: Website Launched, Lobbyist and Publicist Appointed

PollanforSecretaryofAgriculture.org

WASHINGTON D.C.--President-elect Barack Obama’s selection for Secretary of Agriculture has a new twist, thanks to a burgeoning grass-roots petition campaign endorsing Washington outsider Michael Pollan for the post.

Pollan, author of runaway New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma, NYT journalist, and unofficial guru of the local, non-industrial food movement, framed his agenda most recently in his essay ‘Farmer In Chief’ published in the NYT Magazine, the Big Idea being:

“Most of the problems our food system faces today are because of its reliance on fossil fuels, and to the extent that our policies wring the oil out of the system and replace it with the energy of the sun, those policies will simultaneously improve the state of our health, our environment
and our security.”

Now boasting 8,000 signatures, the petition and a new website are the brainchild of lobbyist and media representative Blane Friest. Featured on WNYC, the nation’s largest public radio station and on Bill Moyers Journal, Pollan and the petition effort are gaining credible buzz among the nation’s media outlets. A Facebook Group now approaching 4000 members has also been formed independently by another Pollan devotee, Bryan Giglio.

Pollan’s reluctance to throw his hat in the ring has caused many in the blogosphere to question the validity of the campaign, but Friest remains resolute, “In the Moyers interview he begins by saying he knows his limitations and doesn’t consider himself a viable candidate for the position. He then spends the next 45 minutes eloquently proving precisely why he’s the right one for the job. It’s not necessary to have a politician or bureaucrat as Secretary, but someone who knows the players well enough to hire the right people to write policy while maintaining oversight of the direction of the agency. Pollan is that person.”

The petition reads in part:

“Mr. Pollan has a unique understanding of the history, development, and contemporary practices of U.S. Agriculture and its relationship to the health of the citizens of The United States. He is singularly qualified to identify inefficiencies and present improvements in production, nutrition, and our problematic reliance on petroleum and petro-chemical based fertilizers, for the benefit of food producers and consumers both.”

The complete petition and position statement are at ww.PollanforSecretaryofAgriculture.org.

If you think Michael Pollan would be great for this position and country, why not sign the petition? I don't think he would turn down the job if it was offered to him.

P.S. I still think Will Tuttle would do a better job.

Not the Tomatoes!!

The FDA is alerting consumers nationwide, a move that ups the alert from just Texas and New Mexico, that a salmonellosis outbreak appears to be linked to consumption of certain types of raw red tomatoes and products containing raw red tomatoes. The bacteria causing the illnesses are Salmonella serotype Saintpaul, an uncommon type of Salmonella.

The specific type and source of tomatoes are under investigation. However, preliminary data suggest that raw red plum, raw red Roma, or raw round red tomatoes are the cause. At this time, FDA is advising U.S. consumers to limit their tomato consumption to those that are not the likely source of this outbreak.

Still deemed safe for consumption are cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached, and tomatoes grown at home. (Yay! We have some growing in our garden)

Customers everywhere are advised to: Refrigerate within 2 hours or discard cut, peeled, or cooked tomatoes. Avoid purchasing bruised or damaged tomatoes and discard any that appear spoiled. Thoroughly wash all tomatoes under running water. Keep tomatoes that will be consumed raw separate from raw meats, raw seafood, and raw produce items. Wash cutting boards, dishes, utensils, and counter tops with hot water and soap when switching between types of food products.

Consumers should also be aware that raw tomatoes are often used in the preparation of fresh salsa, guacamole, and pico de gallo, are part of fillings for tortillas, and are used in other dishes.                                    

Restaurants, grocery stores, and food service operators have been advised by the FDA not to offer for sale or service raw red plum, Roma, or red tomatoes and products made from these types of tomatoes unless they are certainly NOT contaminated.

Since mid April, there have been 145 reported cases of salmonellosis nationwide caused by Salmonella Saintpaul, this uncommon form of Salmonella.  At least 23 hospitalizations have been reported. Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections particularly in young children, frail or elderly people, and those with weakened immune systems. Healthy people often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, the organism can get into the bloodstream and produce more severe illnesses.

Since mid-April, 145 persons infected with Salmonella
Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 16 states: Arizona (12 persons), California (1), Colorado (1), Connecticut (1), Idaho (2), Illinois (17), Indiana (1), Kansas (3), New Mexico (39), Oklahoma (3), Oregon (2), Texas (56 persons), Utah (1), Virginia (2), Washington (1), and Wisconsin (3). These were identified because clinical laboratories in all states send Salmonella strains from ill persons to their State public health laboratory for characterization. Among the 73 persons who have been interviewed, illnesses began between April 16 and May 27, 2008. Patients range in age from 1 to 82 years; 49% are female. At least 23 persons were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. Page last modified: June 7, 2008

Content Source: National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases (ZVED)

What is salmonella really?? Salmonella is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacteria, they are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals. Yuck. Scary. Careful Eating People.

 

Barack Obama on Food

Read the interview of Barack Obama by Ari LeVaux. Discussion includes why he voted for the Farm Bill, his thoughts on child obesity, the documentary film The Real Dirt on Farmer John (which Obama has yet to see), the farm-to-school program, switchgrass, and how he plans to direct the EPA when he is elected president. Plus, Obama's Family Chili Recipe. Yum.

Global Food Crisis; Reasons not to Over Eat

Ticker Tape Ain't Spaghetti
By Amy Goodman

Food riots are erupting around the world. Protests have occurred in Egypt, Cameroon, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. Sarata Guisse, a Senegalese demonstrator, told Reuters: “We are holding this demonstration because we are hungry. We need to eat, we need to work, we are hungry. That’s all. We are hungry.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has convened a task force to confront the problem, which threatens, he said, “the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale.” The World Food Program has called the food crisis the worst in 45 years, dubbing it a “silent tsunami” that will plunge 100 million more people into hunger. 

Behind the hunger, behind the riots, are so-called free-trade agreements, and the brutal emergency-loan agreements imposed on poor countries by financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Food riots in Haiti have killed six, injured hundreds and led to the ousting of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. The Rev. Jesse Jackson just returned from Haiti and writes that “hunger is on the march here. Garbage is carefully sifted for whatever food might be left. Young babies wail in frustration, seeking milk from a mother too anemic to produce it.” Jackson is calling for debt relief so that Haiti can direct the $70 million per year it spends on interest to the World Bank and other loans into schools, infrastructure and agriculture.

The rise in food prices is generally attributed to a perfect storm caused by increased food demand from India and China, diminished food supplies caused by drought and other climate-change-related problems, increased fuel costs to grow and transport the food, and the increased demand for biofuels, which has diverted food supplies like corn into ethanol production.

This week, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called for the suspension of biofuels production: “Burning food today so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries is a crime against humanity.” He’s asked the U.N. to impose a five-year ban on food-based biofuels production. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a group of 8,000 scientists globally, is also speaking out against biofuels. The scientists are pushing for a plant called switchgrass to be used as the source for biofuels, reserving corn and other food plants to be used solely as food.

In a news conference this week, President Bush defended food-based ethanol production: “The truth of the matter is it’s in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.” One part of the world that does like Bush and his policies are the multinational food corporations. International nonprofit group GRAIN has just published a report called “Making a killing from hunger.” In it, GRAIN points out that major multinational corporations are realizing vast, increasing profits amid the rising misery of world hunger. Profits are up for agribusiness giants Cargill (86 percent) and Bunge (77 percent), and Archer Daniels Midland (which dubs itself “the supermarket to the world") enjoyed a 67 percent increase in profits.

GRAIN writes: “Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal globalization. "We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining." The report states: “The amount of speculative money in commodities futures ... was less than $5 billion in 2000. Last year, it ballooned to roughly $175 billion.”

There was a global food crisis in 1946. Then, as now, the U.N. convened a working group to deal with it. At its meeting, the head of the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, said, “Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.” In other words, the stock market doesn’t feed the hungry. His words remain true today. We in the U.S. aren’t immune to the crisis. Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Costco have placed limits on bulk rice purchases. Record numbers of people are on food stamps, and food pantries are seeing an increase in needy people.

Current technology exists to feed the planet in an organic, locally based, sustainable manner. The large corporate food and energy interests, and the U.S. government, need to recognize this and change direction, or the food riots in distant lands will soon be coming to their doors.

Dennis Moynihan contributed research for this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.

Read More: 15+ Tips for Dealing w/ Rising Food Costs

"It is obviously contrary to the law of nature, however it may be defined for a child to command an old man, for an imbecile to lead a wise man, and for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities." Jean Jaques Rosseau