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The Cost of Clean Coal

by Myrna Posted on February 13, 2015

A Mississippi power plant promises to create clean energy from our dirtiest fuel. But it will come at a price. Sara Bernard/Grist On December 14, 2006, Barbara Correro was at home drinking tea, reading the paper. She had spent the past five years and most of her savings on a long-cherished retirement dream: a small mobile home on 24 acres of pine and hardwood forest, a large organic garden, and a pack of friendly dogs in rural Kemper County, Miss. The acres once belonged to her grandmother, who kept cows and chickens, sold the hand-churned butter and eggs, and grew a bale of cotton every year to pay the taxes on the land. “It was hard work, and she was a good woman,” says Correro, a former oncology nurse with bright, quizzical blue eyes, a shock of white hair, and an unflinching voice. By 2006, she’d built 27 raised beds, and was thinking about apple trees. And then, there it was, on the front page of the Kemper County Messenger: “Gasification plant would be ‘world’s largest’: Coal mine could be in future.” Mississippi Power, the largest utility in the state and a subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the largest electricity producers in the country, had announced its intentions to build a $1.8 billion power plant fueled by Mississippi lignite coal, dug out of the ground right next to Correro’s homestead. By converting coal into synthetic gas, the plant would be much safer and cleaner than traditional coal-burning power plants. It would also (although this came out later) be designed to capture 65 percent of its carbon emissions. Read the rest at Grist. Read more: The Cost of Clean Coal

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McDonald’s Just Recalled 1 Million Chicken McNuggets for a Super-Gross Reason

by CathernChippind Posted on January 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update 12/15/15: Cargill announced that “they are confident the blue, plastic foreign material recently reported in one McDonalds Chicken Nugget in Japan did not originate from Cargill’s production facilities.” The source of the plastic is unknown.

McDonald’s Japan is having a rough start to 2015. Last week, the company apologized after a customer found plastic fragments in an order of Chicken McNuggets, which were thought to have been produced at a Cargill factory in Thailand. McDonald’s pulled out nearly 1 million McNuggets from the factory in one day. The same week, a customer in Misawa found a piece of vinyl in an order of McNuggets.

In a statement about the plastic contamination, company spokesman Takashi Hasegasa said, “We deeply apologize for the trouble we have caused our customers and we are taking quick measures to analyze the cause of the contamination.”

Plastic and vinyl are, sadly, not the only gross items that customers have found in their McDonald’s meals over the past year. In August, the company received a complaint from a customer in Osaka who had found the shard of a human tooth in an order of french fries. It was unclear at press time if the customer was in fact “lovin’ it.“

In July, McDonald’s shut down its poultry supplier in China, Shanghai Husi Food Co, after allegations that the factory had deliberately mixed fresh chicken with expired produce. The meat had then allegedly been shipped to McDonald’s in Japan and Starbucks and Burger King in China.

The summer food scares led McDonald’s Japan sales to drop more than 10 percent every month compared to the previous year, according to CNN. This fiscal year, the golden arches are bracing themselves for the their first net loss in Japan in 11 years.

In an effort to bounce back, McDonald’s Japan launched a sales campaign with discounts, giveaways, and new nuggets made from tofu.

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Russian Sanctions Mostly Hitting Russian Consumers

by TandyChavers Posted on August 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The BBC reports on how those Russian sanctions against Western food have put the squeeze on European and American suppliers:

Moscow officials say frozen fish prices in the capital’s major supermarkets have risen by 6%, milk by 5.3% and an average cheese costs 4.4% more than it did before the 7 August ban took effect. Russia has banned imports of those basic foods, as well as meat and many other products, from Western countries, Australia and Japan. It is retaliation for the West’s sanctions on Russia over the revolt by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

And it is not just Moscow. On the island of Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east, officials say the price of chicken thighs has soared 60%. Before the sanctions these were among the cheapest and most popular meat products in Russia.

Oops. Sorry about that. It’s actually Russian consumers who are paying the price. And for now, that seems to be OK:

Polls show that the vast majority of Russians approve of the sanctions against Western food. They have been told by government officials and state-controlled TV that the embargo will not affect prices, and that it will actually allow Russia’s own agriculture to flourish. And that message is being believed.

At a guess, Russian consumers aren’t very different from American consumers. Nationalistic pride will work for a while, as people accept higher prices as the cost of victory against whoever they’re fighting at the moment. But that won’t last any longer in Russia than it does in America. Give it a few months and public opinion is likely to turn decidedly surly. Who really cares about those damn Ukrainians anyway? They’re just a bunch of malcontents and always have been, amirite?

This is why Vladimir Putin needs a quick victory. The fact that he’s not getting it will eventually prompt him to either (a) quietly give up, or (b) go all in. Unfortunately, there’s really no telling which it will be.

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Fearless teenage fish don’t run from climate change, death

by EduardoQ85 Posted on April 15, 2014

Smells like teen spirit

Fearless teenage fish don’t run from climate change, death

By

Geir Friestad

Watch out, these hooligans will win a game of chicken or literally die trying.

When we were teens, we rebelled by stealing printer paper from the school library and staying out 15 minutes past curfew. Damselfish, however, really take that burn-the-world attitude to the next level.

A new study out this week in Nature Climate Change suggests that instead of making the fish scared for their very lives, ocean acidification lulls the little buggers into a false sense of security. Rather than being frightened by the smell of predators, the juvenile damselfish subjects of the experiment were more likely to be attracted, leading researchers to say: Dang it, teenagers! Didn’t we warn you about the lionfish in the cool leather jacket?

Researchers gathered fish from sites near seafloor CO2 vents off of Papua New Guinea, where the water is already more acidic than the rest of the ocean — though the researchers predict that the rest of the ocean could hit similar levels by 2100. The four species studied, common varieties of reef-dwelling damselfish and cardinalfish, were placed in tanks that were filled with various streams of water, some straight seawater, others conditioned to smell like predators.

Instead of being damselfish in distress, the CO2-habituated fish spent up to 90 percent of their time in the predator-stinking stream. In contrast, the control fish pretty much only hung out in the undoctored water like little goody-two-shoes. Other experiments involved chasing the fish around with a pencil, then seeing how quickly they emerged from a safe hiding spot; again, most of the acid-head fish just rolled their eyes.

Klaus Stiefel

So moody. Thinking of getting its septum pierced.

Basically, scientists think the increased CO2 is messing with the fish neurotransmitters needed to make sound decisions. If the same effect is present in other juvenile fish, the problem could quickly compound: Increased fearlessness may lead to increased predation of different species, which could take a real toll on future fish populations throughout the ecosystem. From The Economist:

Experimental studies have previously shown that carbon dioxide-induced behavior increases mortality in fish newly settled at a reef by fivefold. As the three sites studied were small, Dr Munday and his team believe that fish who were casualties of their own rash behavior could have been easily replaced. … But as ocean acidification increases, reefs will not be able to recruit new inhabitants from unaffected areas so easily.

Great. Adding dumb teenage fish to the list of ways climate change and its evil twin ocean acidification are messing up the ocean: Fish anxiety, blindness, and bodily dissolution, plus possible total ecosystem collapse. Just no one give those fish a Twitter account, or they’ll probably start sending terrorist threats to airlines.


Source
Rebels without a cause?, The Economist
Ocean Acidification Could Make Fish Lose Their Fear Of Predators, Study Finds, ThinkProgress

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.

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The DASH Diet for Every Day: 4 Weeks of DASH Diet Recipes & Meal Plans to Lose Weight & Improve Health – Telamon Press

by Myrna Posted on March 3, 2014

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The DASH Diet for Every Day: 4 Weeks of DASH Diet Recipes & Meal Plans to Lose Weight & Improve Health

Telamon Press

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $0.99

Publish Date: January 16, 2014

Publisher: Callisto Media Inc.

Seller: Callisto Media, Inc.


There’s a reason why the DASH Diet is ranked “Best Overall Diet” by U.S. News &amp; World Report year after year. It works. Developed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to prevent and reverse high blood pressure, and approved by the Mayo Clinic and American Heart Association, the DASH Diet is a sensible low-sodium diet emphasizing fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The DASH Diet for Every Day will show you how to incorporate the DASH Diet your daily routine to help you get healthy and lose weight. With dozens of simple recipes, and an easy-to-follow meal plan, The DASH Diet for Every Day will guide you through the first month of the DASH Diet so you can see amazing results right away. The DASH Diet for Every Day will help you lower your risk for heart disease and lose weight, with: • More than 60 easy and delicious DASH Diet recipes, including favorites like Blueberry and Oat Pancakes, Chicken Quesadillas, Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Comforting Mac and Cheese, and Death by Chocolate Cupcakes • 4-week DASH Diet meal plan to successfully guide you through the first month of the DASH diet • DASH Diet cooking techniques, shopping lists, and planning tips that will save you time, money, and stress • A detailed DASH Diet food list and 30 DASH-approved snacks The DASH Diet for Every Day is your step-by-step guide to making sustainable changes for permanent better health.

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Stop Freaking Out About Lead in Backyard Chicken Eggs

by ClaudioFitzGibb Posted on December 16, 2013

Photo: Matt Green

The rise of foodies and of locavore cuisine has also brought the return of the backyard chicken coop. But this boom in popularity has also brought a surge of news stories fretting about the risks of raising food on contaminated city soils.

The worries are not unfounded, and, actually, they kind of make sense. Soil contamination from things like lead is prevalent in urban centers. According to a new study led by Henry Spliethoff, with the New York State Department of Health, “soils in urban yards, and in vacant lots and brownfields often considered as sites for urban community gardens and farms, may contain chemical contaminants.”

Lead, for example, which has a median background concentration of 23 mg/kg in New York State rural soils (NYSDEC 2006), can be found at concentrations of several hundred or even thousands of mg/kg in soil in NYC and other cities, due to historical sources such as lead-based paint, leaded gasoline combustion emissions, and point sources such as waste incinerators and metal smelters.

Last year the New York Times ran a story on Spliethoff’s preliminary research after he found elevated levels of lead in eggs from urban hens. The big question left by the Times is what those lead concentrations actually mean, health-wise.

A year later, Spliethoff’s results are ready, published recently in the journal Environmental Geochemistry and Health. The result? Everybody can calm down.

All but one of the eggs in our study had less than 100 μg/kg lead, suggesting that, in general, they contained lead at concentrations were not higher than those in foods considered acceptable for commercial distribution.

Lead at 100 micrograms per kilogram is the acceptable level given by the FDA for lead in candy.

The scientists did find detectable levels of lead in roughly half of the urban eggs they tested, while store-bought and rural-raised eggs had no detectable lead. They found that the amount of lead in chickens’ eggs depended on the amount of lead in the soil.

As a worst-case scenario, the scientists calculated lead exposure if a small child ate an egg from the highest measured concentration, “every day, all year.” At these extreme levels the lead exposure would top the recommended daily maximum intake, but just barely.

These evaluations implied that, overall, the lead concentrations we found in eggs from NYC community gardens were not likely to significantly increase lead exposure or to pose a significant health risk. However, frequent consumption of eggs with the highest lead concentration we found could significantly increase lead exposure, and chickens exposed to higher concentrations of lead in soil are likely to produce eggs with higher concentrations of lead. This exposure pathway could potentially be significant in some gardens, and it should not be ignored.

So, if you’re set on raising chickens in the city this is something to keep in mind and deal with, but it’s not really worth freaking out about.

If you do raise chickens in the city, Spliethoff has some tips on how you can help minimize the amount of lead flowing into your chicken’s eggs.

Add clean soil, mulch, or other clean cover material to existing chicken runs to help reduce chickens’ contact with and ingestion of contaminated soil. Use clean soil when constructing new chicken runs. Inspect the clean cover material regularly, and add or maintain material as needed to help keep chickens from coming in contact with underlying soil that may have higher concentrations of lead.
Provide chickens’ regular feed in feeders, and avoid scattering feed, including scratch grains and food scraps, on bare ground in areas where soil has higher concentrations of lead, or where lead concentrations are not well characterized.
Evaluate gardens for potential sources of lead. Do not allow chickens to forage near these sources. For example, keep chickens away from structures painted with lead-based paint and out of areas where the soil has higher concentrations of lead.
Avoid feeding chickens unwashed garden scraps from areas where the soil has higher concentrations of lead.
Consider providing a calcium supplement, which may help to reduce the amount of lead that gets into chickens’ eggs.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Love Chicken Nuggets? Thank Cornell Poultry Professor Robert C. Baker
Blame Your Chicken Dinner for That Persistant Urinary Tract Infection

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The Wheat Free Diet & Cookbook – Rockridge Press

by Myrna Posted on July 29, 2013

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The Wheat Free Diet & Cookbook
Lose Belly Fat, Lose Weight, and Improve Health with Delicious Wheat Free Recipes
Rockridge Press

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: May 13, 2013

Publisher: Callisto Media

Seller: Callisto Media, Inc.


Discover dramatic health results and lose your belly fat by eliminating just one ingredient from your diet. Have you tried numerous diets and exercise, yet your health, weight, and overall appearance never seem to reach your goals? It’s not your fault. For years, you’ve been told that including grains in your diet is essential for good health. The reality? Wheat is destructive to your health. Lose weight and lose your belly with The Wheat Free Diet &amp; Cookbook —a sustainable path to a longer, healthier, and leaner life. • Enjoy 50 wheat-free recipes for your favorite dishes, including Garlic and Herb Roasted Chicken, No-Flour Rich Chocolate Cake, and Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Bread. • Understand the dangerous impact of wheat on weight gain, diabetes, aging, and the immune system, and learn the myriad health benefits of living a wheat-free lifestyle. • The Wheat Free Diet and Cookbook offers healthy wheat alternatives, tips for a successful transition to a wheat-free diet, and a 7-Day Meal Plan to get you started. The Wheat Free Diet &amp; Cookbook dispels the myths surrounding wheat and provides 50 wheat-free recipes to help you lose your belly fat. The groundbreaking research in The Wheat Free Diet &amp; Cookbook provides a science-based approach to the benefits of a wheat-free lifestyle, from losing weight to improving skin health and brain function. Also provided are tips for achieving a healthier body and losing your belly fat without having to do hundreds of crunches. The Wheat Free Diet &amp; Cookbook: Lose Belly Fat, Lose Weight &amp; Improve Health with Delicious Wheat Free Recipes is an easy-to-follow health solution that achieves fast, visible, long-lasting results from the inside out.

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Mississippi poised to pass ‘Anti-Bloomberg’ bill banning healthy food regs

by nension Posted on March 12, 2013

Mississippi poised to pass ‘Anti-Bloomberg’ bill banning healthy food regs

By Susie Cagle

Shutterstock

Mississippi is just the kind of place one might expect to find a backlash against the “organic agenda.” Apparently spurred on by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (newly tossed out) pet ban on big sodas, Mississippi is currently on the verge of passing a bill that would bar every local government in the state from requiring that restaurants post calorie counts or cap portion sizes.

A far-reaching, big-government bill to counter other far-reaching, big-government bills? Uh, sure, Mississippi. NPR has the full scary deets:

“The Anti-Bloomberg Bill” garnered wide bipartisan support in both chambers of the legislature in a state where one in three adults is obese, the highest rate in the nation.

The bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican. It was the subject of intense lobbying by groups including the restaurant association, the small business and beverage group, and the chicken farmers’ lobby.

“The chicken farmers’ lobby” could be a caption for an unfunny New Yorker cartoon, but in Mississippi it’s also apparently a powerful business group — though hardly the only one with skin in this game.

Mike Cashion, executive director the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, says the bill is a direct reaction to Bloomberg-style government intervention in public health.

“If you look at how menus have changed, whether it be in fast food or family dining, you are seeing more and more healthy options,” Cashion says. “Not because of legislative mandates or regulatory mandates, but because of consumer demand. Our industry has always been one to respond to the marketplace.”

Cashion is on a real free-market trip! But free markets and consumer demands always seem to go hand in hand with business profits, and Cashion’s loyalties are with the restaurants, not with the people who eat at them. The Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association’s website proclaims that the “industry is represented by a team of government affairs experts that is dedicated to protecting you from harmful legislation while promoting legislation that will benefit the industry. We estimate that our Government Affairs victories have saved the average restaurant over $10,000 over the past 4 years.”

This isn’t a story about how Mississippians don’t want to know what they’re eating. It’s yet another example of business buying government — the food business has proven to be pretty good at that over the years. And in that way, it’s hardly news at all.

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Crying Fowl on the Chicken Council

by Posted on January 24, 2013

Crying Fowl on the Chicken Council

Posted 24 January 2013 in

National

Big Food is running in circles to rehash old – and incorrect – claims about renewable fuel.

This time, it’s the National Chicken Council trying to scare football fans about the supply of chicken wings, and it’s déjà vu all over again: the industry repeatedly ignores the true drivers of food costs.

Despite the Chicken Council’s claims, the poultry industry hardly seems to be cutting back on feed and animal production.

According to market analysts, USDA estimates show more corn going to livestock and poultry feed, implying “that livestock and poultry producers used up more corn than earlier expected.” And, the same analysts noted, producers “do not seem to be cutting back but rather are increasing animal numbers” and animal weights.

Perhaps one reason is that far less of the corn crop is used in creating renewable fuel than the Chicken Council claims. Ethanol is produced from a different type of corn than the crop that people eat. This field corn, fed to livestock, delivers two beneficial products – the ethanol itself from the starch portion of the kernel – and the remaining part of the plant, with nutritious fiber, protein and more, is turned into valuable livestock feed.

(That feed, a beneficial co-product of creating renewable fuel, is increasingly being used by the poultry industry itself, because it packs more energy and protein than other feed sources.) When you look at both products, only 17% of the net corn crop goes to ethanol.

And it’s important to remember, the majority of food costs, nearly 84%, come from non-farm costs like marketing and energy costs. In fact oil prices ultimately drive food prices.

Whether you are rooting for the Ravens or the 49ers, Americans can enjoy their favorite food and the benefits of renewable fuel. The chicken lobby, meanwhile, should keep its eye on the ball and leave fans to enjoy the game.

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Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

By Susie Cagle

Would you like to fry up pink slime all day, and still be on food stamps? Well, you’re not alone. (Shocking, right?)

New York City food service workers at some of the nation’s biggest, baddest chains walked off the job this morning for a super-rare one-day strike against low wages.

Workers are organizing around the Fast Food Forward campaign at dozens of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Domino’s, and Papa John’s locations city-wide, in an industry that has traditionally been devoid of if not outright hostile to union power. As Josh Eidelson at Salon reports, one 79-year-old McDonald’s worker has already been suspended this week for signing up coworkers to the campaign’s petition. From Salon:

New York Communities for Change organizing director Jonathan Westin told Salon the current effort is “the biggest organizing campaign that’s happened in the fast food industry.” A team of 40 NYCC organizers have been meeting with workers for months, spearheading efforts to form a new union, the Fast Food Workers Committee. NYCC organizers and fast food workers have been signing up employees on petitions demanding both the chance to organize a union without retaliation and a hefty raise, from near-minimum wages to $15 an hour.

Striking workers detailed strict working conditions and verbal abuse while on the job. Their current wages — $8.90/hour median in New York City, where the $7.25/hour federal minimum reigns supreme — don’t reflect the economic realities of the booming U.S. fast-food industry. Apparently recession America has a taste for Happy Meals.

From Sarah Jaffe at The Atlantic:

Fast food weathered the recession, and the biggest names are seeing big profits. Yum! Brands, which runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, saw profits up 45 percent over the last four fiscal years, and McDonald’s saw them up 130 percent. (After Walmart, Yum! Brands and McDonald’s are the second and third-largest low-wage employers in the nation.)

Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour would likely have a tiny effect on how much consumers pay for food, but it could cut deep into those corporate profits.

Fast-food workers are not just cooking and serving the pink slime to you — they have essentially become it, squeezed for profit through Yum! and McDonald’s capital meat grinders.

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