Climate change: why the Guardian is using a new storyline to detail the threat

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Climate change: why the Guardian is using a new storyline to detail the threat

Alan Rusbridger – the guardian

As global warming argument moves on to politics and business, Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian explains the thinking behind our major series on the climate crisis.

Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity. Yet journalism has struggled for two decades to tell a story that doesn’t leave the public feeling disheartened and disengaged.

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Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden.

Famously, as a tribe, we are more interested in the man who bites a dog than the other way round. But even when a dog does plant its teeth in a man, there is at least something new to report, even if it is not very remarkable or important.

There may be other extraordinary and significant things happening – but they may be occurring too slowly or invisibly for the impatient tick-tock of the newsroom or to snatch the attention of a harassed reader on the way to work.

What is even more complex: there may be things that have yet to happen – stuff that cannot even be described as news on the grounds that news is stuff that has already happened. If it is not yet news – if it is in the realm of prediction, speculation and uncertainty – it is difficult for a news editor to cope with. Not her job.

For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.

These events that have yet to materialise may dwarf anything journalists have had to cover over the past troubled century. There may be untold catastrophes, famines, floods, droughts, wars, migrations and sufferings just around the corner. But that is futurology, not news, so it is not going to force itself on any front page any time soon.

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Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave abig red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?

The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.

One reason for this is personal. This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets once I no longer had the leadership of this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy.

Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.

So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as “incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community”.

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It is not that the Guardian has not ploughed considerable time, effort, knowledge, talent and money into reporting this story over many years. Four million unique visitors a month now come to the Guardian for our environmental coverage – provided, at its peak, by a team including seven environmental correspondents and editors as well as a team of 28 external specialists.

They, along with our science team, have done a wonderful job of writing about the changes to our atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, forests, food, coral reefs and species.

For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the sceptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.

The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet’s remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.

There are three really simple numbers which explain this (and if you have even more appetite for the subject, read the excellent July 2012 Rolling Stone piece by the author and campaigner Bill McKibben, which – building on the work of the Carbon Tracker Initiative – first spelled them out).

2C: There is overwhelming agreement – from governments, corporations, NGOs, banks, scientists, you name it – that a rise in temperatures of more than 2C by the end of the century would lead to disastrous consequences for any kind of recognised global order.

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565 gigatons: “Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below 2C,” is how McKibben crisply puts it. Few dispute that this idea of a global “carbon budget” is broadly right.

2,795 gigatons: This is the amount of carbon dioxide that if they were burned would be released from the proven reserves of fossil fuel – ie the fuel we are planning to extract and use.

You do not need much of a grasp of maths to work out the implications. There are trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels currently underground which, for our safety, simply cannot be extracted and burned. All else is up for debate: that much is not.

We need to keep it in the ground. This was the starting point for the group of journalists who met early in January to start considering how we would cover the issue.

Some will make the case for governmental action. Within nine months, the nations of the world will assemble in Paris, as they did previously in Copenhagen and Kyoto and numerous other summits now forgotten. Can they find the right actions and words, where they have failed before? It is certainly important that they feel the pressure to achieve real change.

Others will make the case for reducing the fossil fuel exposure of investment portfolios by decarbonisation. Or going further to full divestment from the most polluting fossil fuel extraction companies. Next week, McKibben will describe how the cause of divestment is moving rapidly from a fringe campaign to a mainstream concern for banks and fund managers.

It is now very much on the radar of the financial director rather than the social responsibility department. If most of these reserves are unburnable, they are asking, then what does that say about the true value of carbon-dependent companies? It is a question of fiduciary responsibility as much as a moral imperative.

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We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues.

In addition to words, images and films, we will be podcasting the series as we go along, to give some insight and transparency about our reporting and how we are framing and developing it.

We begin on Friday and on Monday with two extracts from the introduction to Naomi Klein’s recent book, This Changes Everything. This has been chosen because it combines sweep, science, politics, economics, urgency and humanity. Antony Gormley, who has taken a deep interest in the climate threat, has contributed two artworks from his collection that have not been exhibited before – the first of many artists with whom we hope to collaborate over coming weeks.

Where does this leave you? I hope not feeling impotent and fearful.

Some of you may be marching in London on Saturday 7 March. As McKibben will argue next week, the fight for change is also full of opportunity and optimism. And we hope that many readers will find inspiration in our series to make their own contribution by applying pressure on their workplace, or pension fund, to move.

But, most of all, please read what we write. Real change can only follow from citizens informing themselves and applying pressure. To quote McKibben: “This fight, as it took me too long to figure out, was never going to be settled on the grounds of justice or reason. We won the argument, but that didn’t matter: like most fights it was, and is, about power.”

Big food consolidates under Organic & commodity squeeze

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Big food consolidates under Organic & commodity squeeze

A deal to merge Kraft Foods with Heinz and create the third-largest food and beverage company in North America will likely lead to top products in the control of fewer companies, as rival businesses are expected to compete by purchasing more brands.

But with firms eyeing deals and acquisitions as a way to cut their costs, the consumer is unlikely to see changes in the prices of packaged foods.

The merger announced Wednesday, overseen by 3G Capital and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., aims to save $1.5 billion annually by the end of 2017 by making the combined Kraft Heinz Company more efficient. It would be the fifth-largest food and beverage firm in the world, with an expected annual revenue of $28 billion. The other top ranking global firms in that sector according to their annual revenue history are Nestle, Unilever Group, Pepsi and Mondelez International.

Rival U.S. food companies including General Mills, Con Agra, Campbell’s Soup Company and Kellogg’s will likely seek the same cost saving by partnering with or acquiring food industry brands to share warehouses, shipping routes and to gain leverage with retailers, says Virginia Lee, food market analyst for research group Euromonitor International.

Food companies like Kraft and Heinz want to become more efficient to help counter greater expenses for commodities they depend on, like milk and coffee. Those higher prices are created in part by the growth of middle class consumers in developing markets, she says.

“As China and other developing countries have grown their middle class, that has grown the demand for protein products like dairy and meat,” she says. “Supply has been unable to grow as swiftly as demand.”

Food companies have been working harder to appeal to retailers, which have been trimming underperforming brands from their shelves as they try to build a niche consumer base among bargain shoppers or higher income organic food connoisseurs. Heinz and Kraft may try to lower costs for retailers, but their ability to do so will depend on the prices of food ingredients and oil, Lee says.

“In nations like Japan and the U.S., supermarket firms have consolidated with their regional competitors to keep pace with supermarket corporations like Wal-Mart,” she says.

Food companies diversifying their brands to appeal to retailers like Whole Foods include General Mills, which will launch new organic soups this summer through the upscale Annie’s brand it purchased last year for approximately $900 million.

“The easy way to venture into the upmarket, organic space is to acquire those brands,” says Raphael Moreau, food analyst for Euromonitor.

Changing diets in the U.S. are also expected to spur brands to consolidate through new deals. Kellogg’s may seek new partnerships as U.S. breakfast cereal sales are projected to decline by 8 percent to $10.3 billion by 2018, according to Euromonitor. The research group also says soup sales in the U.S. are expected to fall 2 percent by 2018, damaging business for Campbell’s.

If some businesses fail to adapt, it will not mean the end of the road for classic snacks, however. Hostess went bankrupt in 2012, which ended production of its trademark Twinkies until 2013 when the firm was purchased out of bankruptcy.

“There is always a market for classic, established brands,” Moreau says. “Businesses may sell an underperforming brand to allow another firm to purchase it and to position it in a niche market.”

Drought-stricken California has only one year of water left!

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Drought-stricken California has only one year of water left!

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As California experiences the fourth year of one of the most severe droughts in its history, a senior NASA scientist has warned that the state has about one year of water left.

In an LA Times editorial published last week, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti called for a more “forward-looking process” to deal with the state’s dwindling water supply.

Famiglietti, who is also a professor at University of California at Irvine, said the state had about one year of water in reservoir storage and the backup supply, groundwater, was low.

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“California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain,” Famiglietti wrote. “In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.”

Nasa data shows that water storage has been in steady decline in California since at least 2002, before the drought began.

Famiglietti called for specific measures to combat the crisis, including accelerated implementation of a law that requires groundwater sustainability, a state taskforce focused on long-term solutions and immediate, mandatory rationing. He also said there was a need for the public to be more involved in the issue.

2015 California Snowpack – record low

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A Field poll released in February showed that 34% of California voters supported a mandatory rationing policy, though 94% agreed that the drought is “serious”. The majority of respondents – 61% – favored the voluntary reductions the state currently encourages.

On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board isscheduled to vote on a conservation measure that would limit landscape watering, the strictest mandate directed at such water use the state has considered.

“Our state’s water management is complex, but the technology and expertise exist to handle this harrowing future,” Famiglietti said. “It will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin.”

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Scientists are working to determine what role climate change has played in California’s drought. Earlier this month, a study by Stanford researchers showed that high temperatures increase the risk of drought conditions. Last year, two research teams said in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that they could not definitively pin the drought on climate change.

A third team, which includes a Stanford researcher from the previous study, said that rare atmospheric conditions are exacerbating the drought.

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Ogallala Aquifer’s dramatic drying sows deep concerns for agriculture

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The Ogallala Aquifer across the region has dropped about 325 billion gallons every year for at least the past four decades. To put that number into perspective, the roughly 1-foot annual drop in the aquifer is more than enough to supply all of Lubbock’s municipal water needs for 25 years.

And it has dropped about that amount every year since 1969, according to High Plains Underground Water District data analyzed by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which is owned by Morris Communications, the parent company for The Topeka Capital-Journal.

In all, across the district’s 16 counties, the aquifer has fallen about 40 feet, a decline of roughly 44.9 million acre-feet since 1969.

Primarily used for irrigation, the aquifer is critical to the region where agriculture represents about 30 percent of the economy. Agriculture’s direct economic impact for the High Plains is upward of $3 billion annually.

As vast as the High Plains aquifer is — it spans eight states and holds nearly 3 billion acre-feet of water — it could still run dry. A Kansas study last year estimated it could in less than 50 years. It likely will be sooner here.

OGALLALA STORAGE

■ The Ogallala Aquifer holds nearly 3 billion acre-feet of water.
■ That water isn’t distributed evenly, and the aquifer doesn’t recharge the same everywhere. The stretches in Nebraska, for example, recharge with rainfall the most quickly.
■ Overall, the Ogallala has had about an 8 percent decline over the past six decades. In Texas, the Ogallala has dropped 150 million acre-feet during that time, accounting for roughly 60 percent of the overall decline.
■ From 2009 to 2011, the water table in Texas alone dropped 4.5 million acre-feet while it dropped 2.8 million over eight states.
What the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Ogallala has in storage
■ Predevelopment in the 1950s — 3.20 billion acre-feet
   1980 – 3.25 billion acre-feet
   2000 – 2.98 billion acre-feet
   2010 – 2.96 billion acre-feet

“When anybody tells me it’s going to last for 50 years, I just laugh,” said Lucia Barbato, associate director at the Center for Geospatial Technology at Texas Tech. “How long the aquifer lasts depends on where you are.”

Across the district, the aquifer already has dropped below the minimum depth for large-scale irrigation in portions of six counties, including Lubbock. Four other counties have fewer than 15 years before running out of groundwater, according to the center’s projections.

“Certainly, the magnitude of the decline is greatest in Texas,” said Virginia “Ginny” McGuire, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Nebraska. “You’re still using water at a much faster rate than it’s being recharged.”

Rapidly declining

That nearly 45 million-acre-foot decline in the Ogallala Aquifer equates to about 14.6 trillion gallons of water over 45 years.

That is enough — if the average American uses, conservatively, about 69 gallons a day — to meet the Lone Star State’s entire municipal water needs for roughly 20 years.

An acre-foot of water is used to describe large water resources such as river flows and reservoirs. It is the equivalent of 1 acre of surface area covered by water 1 foot deep — 325,853 gallons. The aquifer decline is larger than Lake Mead, which filled to capacity is roughly 28.9 million acre-feet. Lake Mead is the man-made reservoir in Nevada that supplies Las Vegas.

As staggering as the decline is, what is actually used to irrigate roughly 1.7 million acres of farmland throughout the district is likely much more.

No one knows with certainty how much water has been mined from the Ogallala. Most agree, though, that groundwater irrigation has been extensive, particularly in the Texas High Plains.

The reason for the ambiguity is complicated. Part of the answer is in what is actually being measured — how much is in irrigation wells. The High Plains district isn’t yet measuring how much water is taken out of the Ogallala.

This distinction is important because of the second reason for the uncertainty. The Ogallala Aquifer moves — albeit slowly — about a foot a day from west to east, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

That means the district’s annual measurements could be the Ogallala settling and not a true level change but rather a redistribution of the water in the aquifer to areas that are being pumped.

In short, more water is used than is being measured, experts say.

“We just think there’s been more water pumped than they show as a decline,” said Bob Stewart, director of Dryland Agriculture Institute at West Texas A&M University in Canyon. “I actually think that there’s more water in the aquifer remaining than a lot of people say there is. The bad news is, we’re using it faster than we say we are.”

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‘Not sustainable’

The Ogallala Aquifer is among the largest aquifers.  It extends 174,000 square miles beneath portions of eight states from South Dakota to Texas in one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Growing concern over extensive irrigation has led to, among other things, a state-mandated regional approach to conservation that requires planners to craft strategies that include a desired future condition.

The goal for Lubbock and the region is 50 percent left in 50 years.  The board recently drafted rules that would require producers to track and limit their use to help meet the district’s 50-50 goal and stave off possible further regulation from Austin, if nothing were done.

The district held public hearings July 29 in Levelland and Aug. 5 in Canyon. A vote on the proposed rule change could come as early as this week. No one can say how much of a difference this will make.

“They will have no trouble meeting the 50-50 because as wells go off line the aquifer will rise, but that’s not because the aquifer is recharging,” said Robert DeOtte Jr., civil and environmental engineering professor at West Texas A&M University. “It won’t be a real 50-50. It’ll be an apparent 50-50.”

Maps projecting depletion rates in the district by the Center for Geospatial Technology at Texas Tech estimate large swaths of Parmer, Castro, Lamb and Hale counties have fewer than 15 years of usable life left.

The region was built on agriculture. Irrigation made it more profitable. “What most people in this city don’t understand is their livelihood is connected to agriculture,” said Darren Hudson, director of Cotton Economics Research Institute at Tech.

Economic researchers at the institute estimate a third of the ag revenue would be lost with a return to dryland farming, which typically has lower yields.

“We should care that it’s dropping,” Hudson said. “It’s an important resource that we need to figure out how to hang on to it as long as we can. We want to get the most that we can out of it and make it last as long as we can because the regional economy is so dependent on this resource and what we produce from it.”

Less than 30 percent of the cropland overlying the aquifer is irrigated. But more than half of the counties where depletion is a threat to irrigated agriculture are in Texas, according to a 2012 Texas Tech report on the future of the Great Plains.

And of those 19 Texas counties, nine are within the High Plains Underground Water District. The counties where depletion could mean the end of irrigated agriculture have also had some of the greatest water-level declines in the past four decades.

Curtis Griffith, a third-generation farmer who leases farmland in Cochran and Terry counties that has been in his family since his grandfather migrated here in the 1920s, has seen the pumping capacity decline by 90 percent.

Wells that once produced 500 gallons per minute now give up 50 gallons per minute. The way Griffith sees it, the land and the water beneath it aren’t just his.

“I just feel like I’ve still got some responsibility to future generations to pass the land on in as good a shape as I can,” Griffith said.

The counties where irrigated agriculture is threatened are Bailey, Castro, Cochran, Hale, Hockley, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn and Parmer.

“We know it’s a limited supply and we just have to manage it as best we possibly can,” said Steve Verett, executive vice president of Plains Cotton Growers. “Farming is not going to go away. It’s just going to be different.”

Urgent Need to Calculate Costs of Soil Erosion

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Urgent Need to Calculate Costs of Soil Erosion

Over the years, farmers are losing their reverence for the soil. The soil on the snow in a roadside ditch this winter is a stark reminder of the losing proposition confronting U.S. agriculture.  Water quality and nutrient management grab headlines. However, the crucial role of soil conservation in protecting our water is overlooked.

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“There’s a high correlation between water quality and soil erosion, especially phosphorus,” says Rick Cruse, Iowa State University agronomy professor and director of the Iowa Water Center and the Iowa Daily Erosion Project.

Cruse says sediment is Iowa’s number one water-quality problem. “Ephemeral [tillable] gullies are the greatest conductor of sediment from fields,” he says. “As much as 57% of phosphorus in rivers is from ephemeral gullies.”

USDA estimates for 17 states indicate that ephemeral gully erosion accounts for 18% to 73% of the total erosion. What is the true cost of erosion and its impact on yields?

USDA pegs average soil erosion (soil movement on slopes) at 5.4 tons per year.

In 2011, the Environmental Working Group conducted a study using Daily Erosion Project data that revealed some Iowa farms were losing topsoil up to 12 times faster than government estimates. “An average is a good barometer, but it isn’t a very precise indicator,” Cruse says.

Tom Buman, a former NRCS conservationist who launched Agren, Inc., in 1996 to help farmers with conservation, agrees. “Until we start using economic drivers instead of environmental drivers to sell conservation, we’ll make very little progress,” he says. He envisions a day when farmers can calculate the actual return on investment for each conservation practice.

The complexity of the challenge is enormous. Cruse’s team is using a new satellite system to track, by farm, the type of soil, a field’s slope, crop rotation, type of tillage, and conservation efforts. This will be merged with a Nexrad radar system that includes precipitation data.

Finally, soil depth measurements, as well as multiple years of crop yield data at about a dozen farms, will be added.

Aggressive tillage breaks up soil structure, promoting erosion and preventing water infiltration. Manure application also disturbs soil (knife injection reduces the risks). For more, see “Ways to Boost Soil Health.“

Weather extremes increase the urgency of stemming soil losses. “High-intensity, high-volume rainstorms have been smacking us,” Cruse says.

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Landowners also need to take the long view. I’m looking forward to the day when tenants can aggressively compete to market their conservation practices.

“If you own land for decades and plan to pass it on, you can realize the long-term profit of maintaining topsoil,” Cruse says.

Yet, it’s not hard to see the waste of filling ephemeral gullies with topsoil each year, only to watch Mother Nature auger it, along with the lime, herbicides, and fertilizer, out of fields and into the water.

I grew up in Iowa’s Loess hills. Loess soil is very vulnerable to erosion. The panoramic landscape once featured acres of steep pasture hillsides. Today, row crops are plastered across many hilltops. The area has one of the highest erosion rates in the U.S. (about 40 tons per acre per year).

Other marginal land has been pulled out of conservation programs in response to record prices.

However, federal funding cuts in EQIP and Conservation Stewardship, and state cuts in cover crop funds are detrimental. Landowners and farmers have signed up for soil conservation programs, only to be turned away due to a lack of funding.

No one argues that the status quo hasn’t improved since the 1975 Super Bowl Blizzard (also known as The Black Blizzard) in North Dakota.

Yet Cruse and his team’s new soil-erosion model could be what it takes to reverse shrinking conservation resources, or to apply a laser focus to damaged areas. The average rate of erosion regarded tolerable by conservation agencies is 20 times the rate at which topsoil regenerates.

Tolerable for how long? Depleted topsoil cripples income potential, requires more fertilizer, and worsens water quality. Unlike reality TV, when it’s about soil, the biggest loser won’t come out on top.

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VIDEO: 5 min of food fun with Jon Stewart – ‘Screw your health study’

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By this point, we all know that most people eat things that are terrible for them on a regular basis.

Americans consume an estimated 500 more calories per day (the equivalent of a McDonald’s Big Mac) than they did in 1970, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

But it’s not all our fault: Americans get help in their bad eating habits from the companies that rely on those habits for profit, Jon Stewart argued in a segment on Tuesday’s The Daily Show.

Stewart targeted “Big Agra and the food lobby” for feeding us what he called an “addictive, fattening, death menu of artificial chemicals, antibiotics, and cool ranch carcinogens,” and ridiculed the ways companies are responding to Americans’ increased dietary awareness.

“Screw your health study”

Rather than back off in the face of health concerns, some companies are doubling down.  Stewart highlighted a new deep dish pizza wrapped in three and a half feet of bacon from Little Caesar’s, plus advertisements for “endless” buffets and appetizers and Olive Garden’s “buy one, take one” entree special.  

He called this the “I don’t give a f*** approach,” by which fast food companies essentially say “screw your health study.”

Next, Stewart ridiculed “the making-food-slightly-less-bad-for-you craze.”

In this category, we see McDonald’s announcing plans to phase out chicken raised with antibiotics from its menu — “I’ll miss treating my ear infections with the buffalo ranch chicken,” Stewart jokes — and Dunkin’ Donuts planning to eliminate titanium dioxide from its powdered donuts. (The chemical, which makes food and also things like toothpaste appear bright white, is classified as safe by the FDA.)

Needless to say, however, chicken nuggets and donuts still don’t qualify as healthy food. Stewart reaches maximum scorn levels when he addresses companies that don’t actually change their products at all, but pretend to be better through crafty PR.

His case in point is Kraft, which got the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ “Kids Eat Right” label on its Kraft Singles after donating to the Academy to support the program. (To be fair, the label says in small type “supporter of” Kids Eat Right — not “approved by.”) Kraft Singles are labeled “pasteurized cheese product,” not even real cheese.

“It turns out the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is an academy in the same way this [Kraft Singles] is cheese,” Stewart quipped.

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Doctors Fight to Ban Fast Food From Hospitals – Good Reason.

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McDonald’s always seems to have its logo plastered where it doesn’t belong. Every four years, for example, millions watch in disgust as elite athletes smile into a camera, take a bite of a Big Mac, and swear their undying allegiance to the McFlag—all because the multibillion-dollar corporation shelled out a small fraction of its massive profits to become “The Official Restaurant of the Olympic Games.”

But while those high-profile ads are stealing the spotlight, the corporation has a more out-of-place, under-the-radar partnership: McDonald’s currently has contracts to serve food in 18 hospitals across the United States. The quick-serve mega chain doesn’t just serve burgers to guests in cafeterias—it also delivers meals right to sick patients’ beds, hosts birthday parties, and offers a snack menu with nachos and ice cream.

The medical profession is fighting back:

Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra of the Royal Free Hospital in London criticized these controversial marketing tactics in a June 2013 article published in the British Medical Journal. “The junk food industry’s aggressive and irresponsible marketing has even been allowed to hijack the very institutions that are supposed to set an example: our hospitals,” he wrote.

That view is echoed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes preventive medicine and alternatives to animal research, and encourages what it describes as “higher standards of ethics and effectiveness in research.”

The committee has been doing a series of hospital food reports to analyze just how dire the situation is. In their fifth and most recently published installment, experts surveyed more than 200 hospitals around the nation and discovered McDonald’s isn’t the only offender: Chick-Fil-A is in 20 hospitals, and Wendy’s is in five. Most of the hospitals are located in the South, where, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics, obesity rates are disproportionately high.

It’s one thing for the restaurants to be inside the hospitals, but it’s another for their finances to be inextricably linked. The committee analyzed five different contracts and found that the hospitals are actually incentivized to help the fast-food restaurants sell more processed junk food.

In one example, the McDonald’s inside Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston “can terminate its lease if yearly gross sales of Big Macs and other junk foods do not reach $1 million,” the committee’s report states. “Moreover, the monthly rent McDonald’s pays to the hospital increases based on food sales.”

For every Big Mac sold and for every McNugget dunked in corn syrup-y barbecue sauce, the hospital drops another dollar in its theoretical pockets.

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But, as the report states, there is hope, and conditions have been improving. Since the committee started issuing its food reports, two hospitals mentioned have removed the junk food: McDonald’s closed at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health, and St. Louis Children’s Hospital no longer carries Dairy Queen products. Several other fast-food restaurants have also recently closed in hospitals around the country.

The committee also mentions that more and more hospitals have been adding fresh fruits and vegetables to their cafeterias. But PCRM’s president, Neal Barnard, wants to take it one step further: “Just as cigarettes are banned from hospitals, why not do the same for meat, cheese, and other junk foods?”

REPORT:  earthworm vermicompost can replace destructive chemical fertilizers

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REPORT:  earthworm vermicompost can replace destructive chemical fertilizers

Earthworms and its excreta (vermicast) promises to usher in the ‘Second Green Revolution’ by completely replacing the destructive agrochemicals which did more harm than good to both the farmers and their farmland. Earthworms restore & improve soil fertility and significantly boost crop productivity. Earthworms excreta (vermicast) is a nutritive ‘organic fertilizer’ rich in humus, NKP, micronutrients, beneficial soil microbes—‘nitrogenfixing & phosphate solubilizing bacteria’ & ‘actinomycets’ and growth hormones ‘auxins’, ‘gibberlins’ & ‘cytokinins’. 

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Both earthworms and its vermicast & body liquid (vermiwash) are scientifically proving as both ‘growth promoters & protectors’ for crop plants. In our experiments with corn & wheat crops, tomato and eggplants it displayed excellent growth performances in terms of height of plants, color & texture of leaves, appearance of flowers & fruits, seed ears etc. as compared to chemical fertilizers and the conventional compost. There is also less incidences of ‘pest & disease attack’ and ‘reduced demand of water’ for irrigation in plants grown on vermicompost. Presence of live earthworms in soil also makes significant difference in flower and fruit formation in vegetable crops. Composts work as a ‘slowrelease fertilizer’ whereas chemical fertilizers release their nutrients rather quickly in soil and soon get depleted. 

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Significant amount of ‘chemical nitrogen’ is lost from soil due to oxidation in sunlight. However, with application of vermicompost the ‘organic nitrogen’ tends to be released much faster from the excreted ‘humus’ by worms and those mineralised by them and the net overall efficiency of nitrogen (N) is considerably greater than that of chemical fertilizers. Availability of phosphorus (P) is sometimes much greater. Our study shows that earthworms and vermicompost can promote growth from 50 to 100% over conventional compost & 30 to 40% over chemical fertilizers besides protecting the soil and the agro ecosystem while producing ‘nutritive and tasty food’ at a much economical cost (at least 50 75% less) as compared to the costly chemical fertilizers.

Don’t Be Fooled: Cheap Fast Food Still Isn’t Healthy

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Don’t Be Fooled: Cheap Fast Food Still Isn’t Healthy

Let’s be clear about a couple of things. First of all, these fast-food changes are business decisions, not public health ones. Second, the food still isn’t healthy.

It all does sound encouraging. Burger King is taking soft drinks off of the Kids Menu. McDonald’s, which has already added apples to Happy Meals, is not only switching to chicken raised without antibiotics, but is apparently planning on adding kale to the menu!

These are the latest in various changes fast food restaurants are making to improve the nutritional content of their foods–and they are absolutely welcome, given that 33 percent of children and 41 percent of teens eat fast food each day, according to Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

But let’s be clear about a couple of things. 

First of all, these changes are business decisions, not public health ones. This is about marketing: Of course each chain wants to be able to say that their food is healthier than everyone else’s.

Second, the food isn’t healthy. It’s cool that they are making changes to kids’ meals, but the reality is that most kids don’t eat them–only 44 percent of kids under 6 and 31 percent of older kids get kids’ meals at fast food restaurants. Even if they did buy them, less than 3 percent of kids’ meals meet nutritional standards for children.

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And while adding kale or apples to the menus is great, it doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of items on fast food menus aren’t healthy. They are highly processed and full of fat, sodium and sugar. Not to mention a whole lot of calories.

Now, I get the appeal of fast food. It is, well, fast–and for busy families, fast is good. It’s also cheap. And kids like it. I don’t think it dooms your child to obesity and poor health to zip through the drive-through lane occasionally.

But when occasionally becomes regularly, it really is bad for them–and you.

Here are some ideas for avoiding the dangers of fast food:

-Do some meal planning ahead of time. On weekends, put together a lasagna or a casserole. You can even cook it the night before and then heat up portions (I’ve done this a lot–it works fine).
-Use a slow-cooker. Throw stuff in before you leave for work, and serve it when you get home.
-Frozen french fries can actually taste nearly as good as the fast food kind–and be kid pleasers–and you can combine them with healthier foods for a better meal than you’d get at the drive-through.
-When you do go to a fast-food restaurant, make healthier choices: smaller size portions (check out the snack menu), salads with low-fat dressing, and water (not soda or shakes!) to drink.

I look forward to seeing where this who’s-the-healthiest competition will lead. 

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2015 Dietary Guidelines; will it crumble under infrastructure pressure?

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curator:  Some may find many of the ‘15 guidelines a bit comical (of course eggs and less sugar are good for you), others are concerned that these latest recommendations perpetuate the falsehood that all food is treated/created equal and sourcing matters less than food group or category (i.e grass-fed meat).  When I say some people, and others – I of course am included in those buckets… But, these are steps in the right direction and positive discussions to begin change that will eventually be defined by consumer awareness. 

6 Highlights of the 2015 guidelines:

1. You can eat eggs. And shrimp. – fast curator fact – the closer you are to the origin of life (i.e. eggs, sprouted grains, proteins) the healthier the outcome for higher trophic levels.  For years, we’ve been told to be mindful of—and limit—how much cholesterol we get from our food. That meant items like eggs and shrimp felt taboo. The logic went like this: dietary cholesterol would raise blood cholesterol. Turns out there isn’t enough science to support that line of thinking.

2. Steer clear of too much sugar. This might not be news to you. And, in fact, we’ve written about the harms of eating too much added sugar here andhere. So it’s just awesome that our national diet advice is following suit and warning all Americans to limit their added sugar intake.

3. Cut out refined carbs. Also known as white carbs. This too might not be groundbreaking to you. The health benefits of whole grains are well documented. So let’s give the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) a pat on the back for identifying refined grains as “detrimental” to our health.

4. One diet doesn’t fit all. This is my favorite takeaway. To lower your risk of heart disease and of becoming overweight or obese, the draft guidelines don’t point us to one narrow diet or a combination of single nutrients. Instead they encourage a general healthy diet pattern. How you achieve this diet is up to you!

5. Consider the environmental impact of foods. Critics have attacked the DGAC’s move on this one, saying they are nutrition experts, not environmental experts. And while that criticism is fair, you cannot separate the topics of what to eat for your health and what to eat for the health of the planet. They need to be considered in conjunction. It’s refreshing to see the advisory committee take this on and encourage Americans to eat more plant-based foods as well as provide guidance on seafood choices, among other suggestions.

6. Pump up the produce! That’s right, we still need to eat more fruits and vegetables. And the draft Dietary Guidelines are really hitting that message hard. But here’s the good news: adding more produce to your diet makes it pretty likely that you’ll be getting key nutrients—like vitamins A and C, folate, magnesium, fiber and potassium—that the guidelines say most Americans fall short on.

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more…   What should we eat to be healthy? That’s an important question, because, according to the recently releasedScientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, what we eat has a lot to do with how healthy we are. It’s as simple as that.

But on a national level, it becomes more challenging, especially when considering what the report refers to as the “two fundamental realities” that need to be kept in mind. 

The first is that about half of all American adults — 

117 million individuals — have one or more preventable, chronic diseases, and that about two-thirds of U.S. adults — nearly 155 million individuals — are overweight or obese.

No question about it, those are daunting numbers.  The report points out that these unhealthy conditions have been “highly prevalent” for more than 20 years. Also, according to the report, eating unhealthy foods and consuming too many calories, coupled with too little physical activity, directly contributes to these preventable health problems.

The second “fundamental reality” is people can improve their health —

By making changes in their lives, among them eating healthier foods and getting more physical exercise.

In other words, for the most part, we, the consumers, are in the driver’s seat, and the dietary guidelines are there to serve as a road map. It’s all about helping to prevent a culinary crash that could ruin our health  — or kill us.

And, yes, food safety is part of this, especially when considering the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which, like the report, takes a preventive approach to safeguarding people’s health.

As for the role consumers play in food safety, a section of the report states that individual behaviors, along with sound government policies and responsible private-sector practices, are needed to reduce foodborne illnesses.

A quick background

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was jointly established by the secretaries of the US. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The committee was asked to examine the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, to see if there is new scientific evidence that can be used in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.

The primary focus of these ongoing reports is to develop food-based recommendations for Americans 2 years old and older. Instead of being mere “dust collectors” to be put on a shelf and forgotten, the reports are used to help develop federal nutrition policy and a variety of programs, among them education, outreach, and food-assistance programs throughout the nation, including food stamps.

What we already know, or at least believe

For the most part, the evidence the committee examined reveals what many people already know, or at least believe to be true: A healthy diet is higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low- or non-fat dairy, seafood, poultry, legumes and nuts; lower in red and processed meat; and low in sugar-sweetened foods and drinks and refined grains (such as those used in cookies, snack crackers, cakes, and most breads).

But the report also shows “moderate to strong evidence” that higher intake of red and processed meats was identified as detrimental compared to lower intake, as is the case for higher consumption of sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, as well as refined grains. That’s where some of the nation’s favorite foods — burgers, pizza, tacos, sandwiches, mixed dishes, desserts and sugar-sweetened beverages, all of which are mentioned in the report — come into the picture.

The report suggests that the composition of many of these food items could be improved in ways to increase consumption of vegetables, whole grains and other under-consumed food groups as well as to lower intake of sodium, saturated fat, added sugar, and refined grains. The report also noted that no matter where people are buying their food — whether in supermarkets, convenience stores, schools, or at the workplace — overall, the needs of a healthy diet for the U.S. population do not meet recommendations for vegetables, fruit, dairy or whole grains and exceed recommended amounts of sodium, saturated fat, refined grains, solid fats and added sugars.

Reading between the lines: The typical American diet is fraught with health risks.