Despite his name, Trouble, Leona Helmsley must have adored her dog. She left him $12 million in her will. This ought to take care of whatever he needs for the next few years, including some terrific, melamine-free dog food. According to the Associated Press, she didn’t leave a dime to two of her four grandchildren. Hey, families are like that.
The Robert Wood Johnson report on climbing rates of obesity awards the prize to Mississippi as the first state to reach 30% of the population as overweight. The most distressing finding: rates are rising in one-fourth of the states, with the highest rates in the south. What to do? “Make healthy choices easy choices,” says the report. Good idea: make it easier for everyone to eat less or better and to move more.
And here’s what the New York Times had to say about this.
Today’s New York Times business section is worth reading for an article about advertisements run by PETA and the Humane Society stating that eating meat has a worse effect on climate change than cars do. The ads are based on a report from FAO (the Food and Agriculture of the United Nations) arguing that the “livestock sector” is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases and water pollution. This sector, says the report, accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. This seems like a lot but the report adds it up from three sources: deforestation, digestive gases, and manure. Livestock, the FAO report says, should be a leading focus for environmental policies.
Somehow, this report got by me and I’m glad to know about it. It links diets that are good for people with those that are good for the planet and gives more good reasons for the value of eating a largely plant-based diet.
Those clever film folks who make The Meatrix videos, have a new one out on the Farm Bill. Can’t understand the Farm Bill? Try this–it won’t take long–and see if it helps. It is also at this site.
I’m a long time subscriber to Advertising Age, which is just a great source of information about the amounts of money food companies spend on marketing in general and to kids in particular. Thanks to Michele Simon, author of Appetite for Profit, for sending me a link to an Advertising Age video on how food marketers are adapting to their recent promises to stop advertising junk foods directly to kids. Not to worry. They have ways.
A comment on the dried fruit post asks: ” in California, we now have warning labels on the shelves for balsamic and red wine vinegars for lead content…A lot of California grapes are grown close to highways, and as such, there’s residual lead in the soil from decades of leaded fuel. Do you have any sense about whether the lead is coming from the grapes being concentrated or if it’s coming from the barrels that they’re using to age the vinegar? …I wonder [if] white wine vinegars (or cider vinegar, or any other vinegar) aren’t equally implicated.
Anyone know anything about this? I’d like to learn more.
I had lunch today at one of Cornell’s brand-new undergraduate houses where 350 sophomores, juniors, and seniors have a meal plan that allows unlimited access to meals prepared in cafeteria as well as to snacks supplied at an all-night canteen. Unlimited access means that students do not pay for each item. Instead, they can eat as much as they want of three meals a day plus a late lunch four days a week, plus leftovers and snacks at night. For lunch (modest because it’s only the second day of classes), we had a choice of hamburgers, chicken burgers, fish burgers, or fish for sandwiches with lots of fixings; a salad bar; French fries (heavily salted); two soups; a fruit bar; and a bunch of baked desserts. In case that didn’t do, students could also do the bagel bar or make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cornell students have one healthy advantage; the campus is huge, these dorms are on the downhill side, and they have to hike uphill to get to class. And, of course, they are young. But I wonder how they figure out how to manage portions and calories in this kind of environment? Anyone have any idea?
The American Veterinary Medical Association has just announced two new recalls of pet foods, one Mars Petcare’s Krasdale Gravy dry dog food found contaminated with Salmonella, and the other some Wal-Mart chicken jerky products made in China found contamined with melamine. The Wal-Mart story is particularly interesting. According to Wal-Mart’s own statement, it heard reports about dogs getting sick from eating these products and took them off the shelves “proactively” on July 26. Translation: Wal-Mart did not issue a recall or warn customers who might still be feeding the products to their dogs. Instead, it did 17 tests and finally came up with melamine. That is the chemical which, when mixed with cyanuric acid, was shown to form crystals that caused kidney failure in cats a few months ago. Wal-Mart only announced a recall August 22. A month later? Wal-Mart must not have learned much from the Menu Foods recall. Pet owners do not appreciate having bought foods that make their pets sick. The take-home lessons: Until China cleans up its food safety act, I’d rather not buy foods made there. And the same goes for Wal-Mart.
As you may have heard, my current project is a book about pet food. I am most interested in hearing from pet owners about their experiences with foods, veterinarian recommendations, and other such issues, and will post specific questions in a few weeks. In the meantime, don’t buy any recalled food.
