Food, Cosmetic Labels to Note Bug Dyes Carmine and Cochineal Extract

Food, Cosmetic Labels to Note Bug Dyes Carmine and Cochineal Extract

• One more reason to focus on raw ingredients and home cooking instead of industrially prepared food, drink and semi-prepared ingredients.
• You never know when the red dye in your fruit drink might come from drying a bunch of bugs, grinding up their carcasses and extracting the pigment from their decomposing shells. Yum, yum yum!
• Not to put too fine a point on it.

School dinners debate: Junk food may harm toddlers’ ability to learn

School dinners debate: Junk food may harm toddlers’ ability to learn

• This is not news, but we might as well do our part to keep the meme alive.
• So, I wonder what long-term effects junk food has on adults’ intellectual abilities.

A Guide to Making the Transition Away From Oil

A Guide to Making the Transition Away From Oil

• I wonder what it will take for the Transition movement to gain any kind of footing in the US. $200 oil would help, I guess. Let’s give that a try.

Malthus, Anybody?

So, every time I see the name of Thomas Malthus mentioned these days, it’s all about how wrong he was and how, contrary to his predictions, food production has actually been able to keep pace with population growth.

Oh, really?

Nano-foods: The next consumer scare?

Nano-foods: The next consumer scare?

• There are tens of thousands of industrial processes for the manufacture of food, and almost none of them are declared on packaging.
• Nanotechnology is no different from other food processing technology except that it’s newer, and we therefore know even less about possible risks.
• Instead of sensationalist, content-free journalism about scary-sounding, science-fictiony food products, how about a systematic examination of the potential risks of all food processing technology.
• Oh, wait. Never mind. That’s not “newsworthy”, is it.

Sustainable Food

“Learning about sustainable food and the problems with factory farming can be daunting at first, but, with a little effort, you can quickly learn enough to make the safest and wisest food choices for you and your family.” (from the introduction at the link below).

Sustainable Table

Salmonellosis Outbreak

Although the recent outbreak of salmonellosis identified as the “Saint Paul” serotype is not being widely covered in the general media, both the FDA and the CDC are involved in tracking down the source and getting it off the market. I was able to find these agency pages on the subject:

• Salmonella Saintpaul Outbreak (FDA)
• Investigation of Outbreak of Infections caused by Salmonella Saintpaul (CDC)

The longer-term lesson here is that we should be consuming local produce instead of making ourselves dependent on single sources. Single sources mean single points of failure. As we’re seeing with this salmonella outbreak and with a recent, smaller, E. coli outbreak possibly from ground beef, “failure” doesn’t just refer to market-induced interruption of supply but to epidemiological taints as well.