February 03, 2010 06:05 PM EST
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Most consumers don't consider alfalfa when drinking organic milk and eating organic foodstuffs. Organic alfalfa is a cornerstone of organic farming, both as animal feed and a nitrogen-fixing soil enhancer for organic farming. The sanctity of the organic food supply is in danger according to those in the organic and natural food industry. Organic Standards require that livestock feed for animals used for meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products is 100 percent organic. Protecting organic alfalfa, the main source of feed for the organic dairy industry, is crucial to the health of that important sector of U.S. agriculture. You don't have to be a "greenie" to understand the safety and nutrition of the nation's food supply. In 2006, the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for an illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa. USDA neglected to conduct an environmental impact statement before deregulating the crop. An environmental impact statement is a detailed analysis of the potential significant impacts of a federal decision. The federal courts banned genetically-engineered alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impact, which was recently released in December 2009. The USDA intends to give Monsanto full authority to profit without protections for farmers, the organic industry, consumers or the environment. Why? The USDA claims that there is no evidence that consumers care about genetically-engineered contamination of organic products. A 60-day comment period is now open through February 16, 2010. Since a genetically-engineered crop has never been analyzed before, this decision is likely to have a major impact on the future including the legality of altering the food supply because of what we know as legal precedence. Submit comments via the Center for Food Safety Action Center. To write an original response, you can also submit your comments directly to the USDA or write: Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044
Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8
4700 River Road Unit 118
Riverdale, MD 20737-1238 In your letter comments, you can let the USDA know that you care about genetically engineered contamination of organic crops and food. Americans have a right to eat and enjoy the benefits of organic food. Other writing points: Tell USDA that you will reject GE-contaminated alfalfa and alfalfa-derived foods If genetically-engineered alfalfa is deregulated, widespread contamination of non-GM and organic alfalfa is inevitable. Organic alfalfa is a critical component for organic farming and feed. Remind USDA it's their job to protect Organic farmers, a safe organic industry and consumer interests. Request that the USDA should extend the comment period. You still have time to make a difference for the health of millions of Americans that care. The American population has a right to decent food, including organic standards that promote health and good nutrition.
February 02, 2010 12:50 PM EST
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Feb 2, 2010 fetching data... | Okay, So President Obamatemporarily wants to stop NASA's back-to-the-moon program which has already spent $9 billion on development. The President has other plans that would encourage the private sector to develop ways to take over the so-called routine flights into space. Predictably, states like Florida that employ over 7,000 jobs in the space industry aren't happy with the news. The President wants to wisely shelve the Constellation program which Bush fully encouraged, even though it was outdated during Bush's terms in the White House. The 2011 budget for NASA will be increased, emphasizing technological innovation to reduce the expense of space travel. All that will be argued ad nauseum by our partisan politicians. In my opinion a much larger concern is the garbage dump we've managed to turn space into since our first foray into space. The moon is littered with earth's trash; it's like picknickers who bring all the fixings and a couple cases of beer to the park. They can carry it in but don't have the strength, brains, common sense, love of nature, what-the-hell-ever--to carry the used up garbage out again. It sits there, blows into the ocean or the lakes, plastic and beer tops are eaten by critters and trap birds who die on the grass.
NASA is currently monitoring over 2,000 objects larger than a small pocket knife circling space in a giant asteroid of debris. This is junk that we, noble humans in search of going where no man has gone before, tossed out of our little space ships into the void. There are things like pieces of old shuttles, jettisoned stages, gloves, connectors, paint chips, urine, feces, you name it. NASA says that something as small as a paint chip can act like a bazooka if it hits a shuttle.
Did you know that NASA has to track all of this junk prior to launching a shuttle? We've created a garbage dump in space that makes it dangerous each time a new shuttle goes up.
What does this say about mankind? We're running out of space to bury our garbage--much of it unrecyclable--on earth. So let's trash space. What gives man the right to keep repeating the same mistakes at nature's consequence. Einstein said that insanity is repeating the same action over again and expecting a different outcome. Are we nuts?
We're in a big mess right here on mother earth. Let's clean it up and think about how we can reduce the danger, i.e., stop dumping garbage in space until it will be impossible to ever reach the moon again. |
January 19, 2010 09:42 AM EST
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comments: 6
From: Orthomolecular Medicine News Service <omns@cihfimediaservices.org>
Subject: NLM Censors Nutritional Research
To: CraigEdwinOlson1@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 8:22 PM
This article may be reprinted free of charge provided 1) that there is clear attribution to the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, and 2) that both the OMNS free subscription link http://orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html and also the OMNS archive link http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml are included. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 15, 2010
NLM Censors Nutritional Research Medline is Biased, and Taxpayers Pay for It Comment by Andrew W. Saul
Editor-In-Chief, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (OMNS, January 15, 2010) Did you know that there are "good" medical journals, and that there are "naughty" medical journals? No kidding. The good journals are easy to access on the internet through a huge electronic database called Medline ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed ) This wonderful, free service is brought to you by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. In other words, by you. By your tax dollars. Generally it is money well spent, until you go searching for megavitamin therapy research papers. Then you will find that you can't find all of them. That is because of selective indexing. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) proudly describes itself as "the largest medical library in the world. The goal of the NLM is to collect, organize and make available biomedical literature to advance medical science and improve public health." Hmm. Collect. Organize. Make available. Improve public health. So, after over 40 continuous years of publication, why is the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine NOT indexed by Medline? And what are the consequences of such exclusion? In a nutshell, it stops the public from using their computers to learn about all of the scientific research and clinical reports demonstrating the effectiveness of megavitamin (orthomolecular) therapy. It also greatly hampers professionals from seeing pro-vitamin studies. Have you ever wondered why your doctor simply does not know about vitamin therapy? Well, wonder no longer. He or she can't read what isn't "collected," electronically indexed, or otherwise "made available" to them. If the vast majority of journals indexed by Medline are pharmaceutical-friendly, and yet nutritional research is censored, what can you expect? Your taxes should not be used to fund censorship in a public library, especially the largest medical library on the planet. It is un-American. Of course, Medline doesn't censor everything nutritional. Here is a current example of some research that Medline does in fact choose to index: PIZZA PREVENTS HEART ATTACKS Gallus S, Tavani A, La Vecchia C. Pizza and risk of acute myocardial infarction. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004 Nov;58(11):1543-6. "Some of the ingredients of pizza have been shown to have a favourable influence on the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, there is no single explanation for the present findings." PIZZA PREVENTS CANCER Gallus S, Bosetti C, Negri E, Talamini R, Montella M, Conti E, Franceschi S, La Vecchia C. Does pizza protect against cancer? Int J Cancer. 2003 Nov 1;107(2):283-4. "We analyzed the potential role of pizza on cancer risk, using data from an integrated network of case-control studies. . . Pizza appears therefore to be a favorable indicator of risk for digestive tract neoplasms in this population." But be careful of that olive oil: Wong GA, King CM. Occupational allergic contact dermatitis from olive oil in pizza making. Contact Dermatitis. 2004 Feb;50(2):102-3. MORE PIZZA Here is my all-time favorite: yet another article that Medline actually is indexing. It is not even from a medical journal. I am not making its mile-long title up, either. It is there at Medline, right now, just a few clicks away from you: Simon HB. "My husband subscribes to Harvard Men's Health Watch, but I read it even more than he does. I hope you can help us resolve a disagreement. He wants to have pizza two to three times a week for his prostate, but I don't think it's a healthy food. Who is right?" (Harvard Men's Health Watch. 2003 Jun;7(11):8.) Evidently the very name "Harvard" is enough to get your foot inside the Medline door. That, or "everything but anchovies." Oddly enough, the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has not published a single article on pizza. At least not so far. Maybe if it did, it would make the cut at Medline. On the other hand, the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has a review board including medical doctors, university faculty, and hospital-based researchers. Since 1967, it has published over 600 papers by renowned authors including Roger J. Williams, Emanuel Cheraskin, Carl C. Pfeiffer, Bernard Rimland, Abram Hoffer, and Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling. You should be able to access abstracts (concise summaries) of these papers, instantly and for free, via Medline. Well, you can't. To contact the US National Library of Medicine/Medline and tell them what you think: custserv@nlm.nih.gov"The National Library of Medicine refuses to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, though it is peer-reviewed and seems to meet their criteria." (Psychology Today, Nov-Dec 2006) NOTE: Four decades of papers from the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine are now online for you to read, Medline or no Medline, at http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/ The JOM Archive is a free service with no advertising. (Andrew W. Saul taught nutrition, health science and cell biology at the college level. He is the author of Doctor Yourself and Fire Your Doctor! and, with Dr. Abram Hoffer, co-author of Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone and The Vitamin Cure for Alcoholism. Saul is featured in the documentary film Food Matters. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.) Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource. Editorial Review Board: Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D. |
January 17, 2010 01:09 PM EST
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This Op-Ed first appeared @ CivilEats.org In the latest edition of The Atlantic magazine, Caitlin Flanagan has written a surprisingly harsh critique of the popular and growing movement to include gardens in our public schools. In a nutshell, she states that pursuing this activity over and above the three R’s will turn our children into illiterate sharecroppers. Right from the start, though, she gets it wrong. She has the reader picture the son of undocumented migrant workers entering his first day at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, home of the well-known Edible Schoolyard project, “where he stoops under the hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.” Her callous disrespect for labor only begins there, but the real problem with her argument lies in her stubborn refusal to accept that a good idea may have sprouted from an ideology other than her own. She goes so far as to describe it as: …A vacuous if well-meaning ideology that is responsible for robbing an increasing number of American schoolchildren of hours they might other wise have spent reading important books or learning higher math (attaining the cultural achievements, in other words, that have lifted uncounted generations of human beings out of the desperate daily scrabble to wrest sustenance from dirt) Ms. Flanagan has chosen to ignore the core purposes of these gardens, only one of which happens to be cultivating a respect for hard work, and only one other of which is a healthy respect for real food. While she notes that the work of the garden has migrated into each of the classrooms, she ignores the obvious point that this demonstrates: There is nothing taught in schools that cannot be learned in a garden. Math and science to be sure, but also history, civics, logic, art, literature, music, and the birds and the bees both literally and figuratively. Beyond that though, in a garden a student learns responsibility, teamwork, citizenship, sustainability, and respect for nature, for others, and for themselves. The disdain for the left-of-center viewpoints of those who started the Edible Schoolyard is evidenced in her description of Chez Panisse, the restaurant of Edible Schoolyard’s founder Alice Waters, as “an eatery where the right-on, ‘yes we can,’ ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting man or woman of the people can tuck into a nice table d’hôte menu of scallops, guinea hen, and tarte tatin for a modest 95 clams—wine, tax, and oppressively sanctimonious and relentlessly conversation-busting service not included.” Flanagan’s attempt at snob-bashing populism and appeal toward the sensitivities of those on the right is misplaced, however, because these school garden ideas, while begun in this particular case by those with left-leaning tendencies, actually hold appeal across the political spectrum. They not only encompass a love of nature and the kind of touchy-feely sensitivities that give conservatives the willies, but also the bedrock principles of tradition and ownership and self-reliance that would be equally at home at a hippie commune or a tea party rally. While it is rightly noted that the grades at the school quickly improved, the contention that “a recipe is much easier to write than a coherent paragraph on The Crucible” is not only insulting to professional chefs and food writers (like, well, me), but also is patently false. There is a world of difference between writing a recipe and writing one well, as anyone who as ever come across the words “but first” in a recipe will attest. The more important point though is the one that Flanagan glosses over: that the passion for learning developed in a garden, driven home by the lightening-bolt of awareness when a kid bites into a vine-ripened tomato she grew herself, is worth essays on ten plays even if Arthur Miller or Shakespeare wrote them all. Where the argument really goes off the rails though is when Ms Flanagan posits: Does the immigrant farm worker dream that his child will learn to enjoy manual labor, or that his child will be freed from it? What is the goal of an education, of what we once called “book learning”? These are questions best left unasked when it comes to the gardens. Not “enjoy,” Ms, Flanagan, respect. This, as I mentioned, is where her disdain for manual labor, something that everyone on the planet (beneath the upper 2% or so of income earners) contends with every day, becomes instructive. It is predicated on the idea that labor is something to be freed from, ostensibly through strict adherence to “book learning.” Worse, it perpetuates the misguided dogma of the last several decades that distances us from our food and insists that cooking is a chore, like washing laundry or windows, which should be avoided at all costs as if it were beneath us. This in turn not only makes her seem elitist herself, but also leaves Ms. Flanagan’s ideas of education as merely a means to create consumers, rather than citizens. What follows in the essay is a misuse of statistics that boggles the mind, where she blames a decline in math and English among Latinos at MLK on the gardens. In legal-ese (and Latin) this is referred to as a Post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, “It follows therefore was caused by.” Another example of this would be that since all addicts were once babies, then mother’s milk leads to heroin addiction. This is followed up by an argument that the rampant increase in childhood obesity and early-onset diabetes is not caused by a lack of access to healthy food nor the prevalence of sugary, fat laden food in schools. Rather she cites, ironically, George Orwell, to argue that it’s because poor people prefer that food. Please. And for the record, her research into two grocery stores in Compton as proof that poverty and food deserts do not go hand-in-hand is blindingly shortsighted. There are more errors of reason, but let me cut to the chase. Ms. Flanagan sums up by saying this: (W)e become complicit— through our best intentions—in an act of theft that will not only contribute to the creation of a permanent, uneducated underclass but will rob that group of the very force necessary to change its fate. The state, which failed these students as children and adolescents, will have to shoulder them in adulthood, for it will have created not a generation of gentleman farmers but one of intellectual sharecroppers, whose fortunes depend on the largesse or political whim of their educated peers. The belief that we will create better citizens by teaching to the test (an idea she advocates for repeatedly and vociferously) is one that will lead to a generation of closed-minded automatons incapable of learning, thinking, or fending for themselves. We are far better off with a generation of Citizens who understand that sustenance comes not from factories or laboratories but from the soil and from hard working hands, both of which deserve the respect garnered from experience. We need Citizens who are healthier than the generation before them; throughout most of human history the rich were fat and the poor were skinny, yet today in America it is quite the opposite. Fixing that requires direct experience and interaction with our food, something no schoolroom lecture can provide. This is not advocacy for some weird Maoist Great Leap Forward where everyone must leave the cities and go farm. It is knowledge of one of the truest clichés known: You are what you eat. And as one of Ms. Flanagan’s carefully-book-taught computer programmers would point out, Garbage In – Garbage Out.
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Vegan Traditional Thanksgiving Pageantry. For years I've listened to the T-day hotline on NPR and have wanted to share my own ideas on how to have a traditional T-day if you don't want or can't do turkey. I originally submitted the following to the Organic Consumers Association's on-line forum under the "Hot Topic" of "Thanksgiving Turkeys", which also contains a recipe for Tofu Turkey and Vegan gravy for those trying to replicate the textures and flavor of the meat. I'm after reclaiming the family traditions and pageantry for those who don't want to do turkey on that day, so I've not included actual recipes, as my point is to use your family's recipes as a starting place and adapt them so that it is as similar as possible except healthier. Before you flame me for not telling off the meat eaters, know that I believe most everyone and the planet would be a lot healthier is we all ate far less meat, but I've found that such statements turn people off. I want to open minds to the possibility of eating less meat, not cause folks to slam the door tight closed., and I was inserting a vegan viewpoint into an almost entirely carnivorous conversation when I first wrote the paragraphs below.
"I'm glad for all the carnivores that care enough to choose meats that are healthier for themselves and the planet, but for those who are looking to do a Thanksgiving or Christmas without the main meat dish for any of a multitude of good reasons, yet find the tiny, outrageously expensive Tofurkey to be lacking in an adequate sense of abundance and pagentry, I'd like to share my Meatless Turkey solution. I grew up helping to prepare the traditional turkey dinner featuring a stuffed bird that filled the whole oven and was carved in ceremony and fed an entire extended family, with leftovers that lasted days. Lots of warm fuzzy family togetherness memories that a Tofurky just can't touch - get out the big carving implements to work on a "roast" that is smaller than a chicken and the whole family will just laugh at you.
But the meat version of Thanksgiving did have its downsides, too - prepping the bird was absolutely gross - slimed both you and the sink in a heavy film of grease that took more than one washing with detergent to get off, and the clean up afterwards was just as bad. And stuffing ourselves w/ meat made us feel sleepy and bloated, which wasn't good for socializing, not to mention our weight. And then there was the minor problem of dad dying from heart-disease after only a little more than a half-century, which woke the rest of us up for good. Granted these were agribusiness butterball birds, and the lean range-fed birds discussed by the other members of this list above would likely not have these problems, at least not in the same magnitude.
When my vegan spouse and I joined a CSA organic farm a few years ago, one of our late summer distributions included a monstrous Hubbard squash, which in form and size looks remarkably like a store-bought Thanksgiving turkey, if you ignore the beautiful light pale blueish cast to its skin. My husband had years of experience storing winter squash in a root cellar, so after a few days of hardening off in the heat of our garage attic, our winter squash all went to a cool dark basement room until such time as we could catch up on eating and canning the other huge portion's of our share of the farm's harvest that were far more perishable. Sure enough, as Thanksgiving rolled around that squash was still there, in the same fantastic shape as when we'd stored it away, and I got the bright idea to do the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but all vegan with the squash substituting for the bird.
So I prepped my mom's recipe for stuffing, using veggie bullion instead of chicken broth, but w/ far less water than normal, since the squash would be plenty juicy. Then I cut off the top 1/4 of the squash in an almost horizontal cut as one does for a pumpkin, removed the seeds, and stuffed the "bird",replaced the lid and put it in the oven to bake for the same temp and times as a real turkey. When it came out of the oven, I could put it on a platter and carve it at the table almost like a turkey, though you don't eat the tough squash skin, so there is no need to cut through that more than once to open the "bird". The firm orange squash flesh hangs together when carved in a slab almost like meat if you first separate it from the skin with the knife, and the savory stuffing and slightly sweet squash each enhanced the other's flavor.
I separated the seeds from the pulp and coated them with cinnamon and sugar and baked them at the same time as our tofu pumpkin pies, made using my grandma's traditional recipes with slight alterations for crusts 9substituting whole wheat for 2/3rds of flour and used only 1/3 the amount of fat called for and veggie shortening instead of butter) and filling (substituted blended silken-style tofu for sweetened condensed milk). We liked the pies even better than grandma's recipe because the crusts where crispier and the filling firmer, but the flavor was very similar otherwise. The mashed potatoes were very similar to what I remember, too, except I used olive oil and soymilk instead of butter and cow's milk to bring them to the right consistency, and since I used thin-skinned Yukon gold potatoes I didn't even bother to peel the potatoes, just pureed them with the other ingredients so they'd have all the nutrients in the skins in them, too. Green beans and other traditional veggie dishes were close to vegan anyways, cranberries were fixed as a sauce/puree instead of a jello, though one can use agar-agar to thicken instead of gelatin.
It all came out well enough that I did it again the following year at my vegan mom's household, and it has become our nuclear family's annual tradition now. We've also hosted the whole extended family of my childhood memories for Thanksgiving, though the rest of them are confirmed carnivores, so we also do a Tofurky for those that don't feel the meal complete without something that has the flavor and texture of turkey meat and gravy. While I don't think we made any converts of the carnivores (which wasn't our intention anyways), everyone was very gracious and there were a lot of folks who commented with surprise about how good everything tasted. They also noticed that they didn't feel stuffed after eating a huge quantity of food (one of my favorite reasons for being vegetarian). Thanksgiving goes in rotation in our extended family, so most years we are the guests at a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner, but at least now we all know that we can participate in the hosting rotation and everyone will still have a good time and satisfied stomachs.
I encourage folks to both research the web for vegetarian/vegan recipes, and to use those ideas to modify your family's traditional recipes, but always experiment on yourself first until you get something you are satisfied with, before you debut it to a larger group that is not used to vegetarian (much less vegan) meals. It will take some tweaking, but you can find new ways to realize old flavors and textures, and discover some new favorites in the process."
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exploring vegan-organic farming - discussing practices to grow food on farms, in gardens and greenhouses
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