What the food industry is selling us

Ready to be grossed out about our food supply?  Ok, here goes, thanks to this great article over at cracked.com (check it out for more juicy details…).

Do you like honey?  Do you think it’s *really* honey?  Think again.  The common practice is to buy honey from China, which, let’s face it, has a reputation for reducing cost at expense of quality.  When it comes to honey, that means stripping out the pollen (so its true source cannot be determined), and adding corn syrup and artificial sweeteners.  Buy local if possible, to avoid this.

Soy sauce?  Perhaps, but you’re just as likely to be eating flavored corn syrup and not even know it.

But hey, buying a whole, all natural chicken is ok, right?  I mean, it’s just a chicken, nothing added, right?  Yeah right, you wish.  Ever hear of plumping?  You probably don’t want to.  It’s a process whereby the raw chicken meat is injected with saltwater, chicken stock, seaweed extract, or other mystery ingredients to make the meat tastier and juicier.  We’re not talking about this being exclusive to ‘chicken nuggets’ and other processed mystery meat, no, this is done to whole chickens.  This also has the benefit (to the corporations) of increasing profits, as prices are typically per pound, and you’re paying for 15-30% saltwater instead of chicken.  Oh, and it still gets to wear its ‘all-natural’ label, because, even if it’s not all chicken, it’s all natural ingredients inside that wrapper.  Nice, huh.

Then of course there’s meat glue, where they take the little scraps of meat that don’t form big enough pieces for steak and, well, they glue them together to make a steak.

Ok, so skip the chicken and beef and get some fish, right?  How about some nice salmon?  That pink color comes from the shrimp and krill they eat.  Except the salmon you’re eating probably never had a single shrimp or krill in its life because most salmon consumed today (~95%) was raised on fish farms.  Its meat ends up a gray color, but that doesn’t sell well…so they dye it pink.  Hamburger and sausage is often dyed to a more pleasing red color as well (using a dye that causes cancer in mice…).

What about nice, yummy Kobe beef…is that any better?  Ha!  The rules that apply to Kobe beef production aren’t in compliance here…it’s basically illegal to produce Kobe beef.  Even worse, there’s no regulation on the use of the term “Kobe beef” outside of Japan, so as long as it’s beef, hey, Kobe it is then!  Chances are, unless you ate some in Japan, you’ve never, ever had Kobe beef.

How do you think olive oil is made?  From olives, right?  Yep!  Well, that and sunflowers!  While not legally accepted (people DO go to jail for this one), some extra virgin olive oils actually have been found to contain up to 80% sunflower oil (that’s only 20% olive oil!).  It’s an industry that’s at least trying to get it right, but corruption and greed are making it tough.  Your best bet is to get only ‘extra virgin’ oil, since others (like ‘light’) have been refined and are less natural.  Don’t shop based on the color of the oil, it’s meaningless.

These are just a few disturbing examples of what are thought of as natural, basic foods – not heavily processed items like cheetos (let’s not even go there…).  So, if you care about what you’re eating, what can you do?  As you see, not a lot.  However, you can start buy buying local…go direct to the source, where possible.  Get a quarter of a grass fed cow delivered (clean out your freezer first!).  Plant a garden.  Avoid ‘status’ foods like Kobe Beef that are carrying a heavy marketing message.

Good luck!

Catalytic-driven hydrogen generation

I’m seeing more and more reports of studies involving the use of catalysts to generate hydrogen.  This is a fascinating development, so I’ll be posting more of those here (follow this link for a description of the work CalTech is doing on this).  The basic premise is to heat water to a point where an added catalysts splits the water molecules into their oxygen and hydrogen components, the hydrogen is then used as fuel.  More importantly, the hydrogen can then be stored for later use.  For example, imagine a solar thermal collector used to generate the heat to drive this reaction, with excess hydrogen being stored for use during night.  It’s a sort of hydrogen battery, if you will.

This research is still in the laboratory stage, but is an interesting path to sustainable energy solutions which address the energy storage concerns.

NREL energy analysis

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a study that looks at the extent to which renewable energy can meet the demands of this country over the next few decades.  What they found was that existing technologies, that are commercially available today, are more than sufficient to provide 80% of total electricity generation by 2050.

No one wants to pay higher prices for electricity to fund this, but the reality is that the course we’re on is unsustainable and change is inevitable.  The sooner we begin that change, the smoother it will go.  So what are we waiting for?

Australasia’s cookin’

According to a new report, the last 60 years have been the hottest in Australaia…for the past thousand years!  Known natural causes can’t explain it entirely.  In Australia, since the 1950s, each decade has been warmer than the one before it.  Just another data point that supports the theory of human-caused climate change.

Read more over at the Guardian.

Over-consumption

No surprise here, but a recent article at phys.org talks about over-consumption on a global scale, how we’re consuming more than this planet can produce.  Think of it in terms of personal finance…we’re spending more than we’re making each money, and out savings account is going to run out (with no interstellar ‘banks’ to extend us credit!).

What I really found interesting though was the chart below, that illustrates how the carbon footprint of different food varies.  It’s amazing how bad cows are for our environment, especially compared to other meat options like pork or chicken!

Coal use climbing

Bad news for our atmosphere…at a time when we should be reducing carbon emissions, consumption of the most CO2-laden fossil fuel, coal, is increasing, up by 5.4% over last year.  Renewable energy solutions continue to make progress, but it’s a drop in bucket and doesn’t even offset these increases in fossil fuel usage.

While I continue to believe that we have developed the technology to afford-ably implement the type of massive change that’s needed to maintain atmospheric balance, it’s quite clear that we lack the social and political willpower to do so.  What a shame.

Read more about coal usage over at Treehugger if you’re interested.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of idiocy

Sometimes the level of stupidity in this country really surprises me.  First there was Virginia, which viewed the term ‘sea level rise’ as a ‘left-wing term’ and instead mandated that the scientifically-observed rise in sea levels instead be referred to as ‘recurrent flooding’.  Morons.  Sea level rise is only a ‘left-wing term’ in as much as the ‘right wing’ types deny science in favor of short term gain and profit.  Science is not political, it is factual, and those who deny science bring shame to this great country of ours.

The problem is not confined to Virginia though…neighboring state of North Carolina is trying to out-stupidify Virginia, with a recently passed bill that states that the state must ignore the science that is attempting to predict future sea levels based on our changing climate, and instead use only historical data to predict future sea levels.  Because, you know, the Earth is in a constant state of equilibrium with absolute no changes to its atmospheric composition, you know.  This means that rather than plan for a potential thirty nine inch rise in sea levels that scientists are predicting as a strong possibility by 2100, North Carolina will instead plan on a mere eight inch rise in sea levels.  Coastal developers worry that planning for a thirty nine inch sea level rise will harm the coastal economy, so rather than plan for what scientists think will happen, they’re instead focusing on how they can maximize profit in the short term, and leave future generations to deal with this.

Morons.

As Steven Colbert put it, “If science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”

 

Extreme winters likely to be the new norm

If you’ve thought the past few winters in the Northern Hemisphere were a bit unusual and inconsistent, well, get used to it, for it’s probably only going to get worse as our global climate continues to change.  Scientists expect more ‘unusual’ winters, and less ‘average’ winters. What scares me is that we’re already seeing this effect, when we’re so far away from the global temperatures predicted for the coming decades.

Read more over at Scientific American.

Threatened water supply

There are a couple interesting threats to the security of our future water supply.  The first involves depletion of groundwater for agricultural uses.  Already, we’re using it at an unsustainable rate, and the future viability of irrigated agriculture is, at this point, somewhat uncertain in some areas.  However, as this article points out, there’s more that can be done using existing technology to decrease water usage, like more efficient watering methods (drip irrigation, for example) and construction of more water storage systems.  That takes money though, either with higher food prices, and/or government infrastructure investment.  In the current political and economic climate, the later is unlikely, so expect higher food prices to hit first before public pressure creates the political will to improve the infrastructure.

The second development that is going to place increasing demands on our water supply is electricity, strangely enough.  As this article explains, most modern power plants require large amounts of water in order to cool them.  Well, the power plants that aren’t using renewable energy like solar or wind, that is.

Then of course, there’s fracking, which not only pollutes the groundwater, but uses a lot of water as a primary ingredient in the fracturing fluid that’s pumped underground.  Sort of a double-whammy there.

So what does this all mean?  It means that like many other things, we’re nearing Peak Water, where the supply of water will be less than the demand.  Or rather, the supply of clean, drinkable water.  We’ll likely be forced to turn to more expensive filtering methods to increase the drinking water supply, and for coastal communities, it’s hard to imagine a world without desalination being key.  Costs will increase.

Deaths by energy source

Forbes has an interesting article looking at the health effects of different energy sources, more specifically, the number of (human) deaths per unit of energy produced.  For all the publicity nuclear energy accidents get, it’s worth noting that the mortality rate from nuclear energy is about 90 deaths per tkWhr (trillion kilowatt hour of energy produced), while coal is 170,000 deaths per tkWhr!  To be fair, that coal rate is the global average and the US is much better than that (mainly because of existing pollution controls)…but even then, it’s a whopping 15,000 deaths per tkWhr.  The complete list:

Energy Source               Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)

Coal – global average         170,000    (50% global electricity)

Coal – China                         280,000   (75% China’s electricity)

Coal – U.S.                               15,000    (44% U.S. electricity)

Oil                                               36,000    (36% of energy, 8% of electricity)

Natural Gas                                4,000    (20% global electricity)

Biofuel/Biomass                    24,000    (21% global energy)

Solar (rooftop)                              440    (< 1% global electricity)

Wind                                                 150    (~ 1% global electricity)

Hydro – global average          1,400    (15% global electricity)

Nuclear – global average            90    (17%  global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

You can read more over at Forbes.com.

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