Tag Archives: school

School Lunches Just Got Way Better in These Six Cities (and It’s Not the Food)

by LesliPlunkett Posted on May 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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School lunches may be healthier than when you were a kid, but the wasteful and polluting materials that cafeterias serve them on have actually gotten worse. In an effort to save on labor and equipment costs, many schools switched from washable trays to disposable foam ones over the past couple of decades. But this trend is now beginning to change.

The school districts of six major cities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Orlando— announced today that they will stop using polystyrene foam trays, and begin serving lunch on compostable plates.

The Urban School Food Alliance, which counts the country’s largest school districts among its members, coordinated the change after developing an affordable compostable plate made from recycled newspaper that costs just a penny more than its foam counterpart.

“Shifting from polystyrene trays to compostable plates will allow these cities to dramatically slash waste sent to landfills, reduce plastics pollution in our communities and oceans, and create valuable compost that can be re-used on our farms,” said Mark Izeman, a senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, which partners with the Alliance.

This shift to compostable plates by more than 4,000 schools will save an estimated 225 million petroleum-based plastic trays from going into landfill each year.

What’s next? The Alliance hopes to introduce compostable cutlery by next school year.

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School Lunches Just Got Way Better in These Six Cities (and It’s Not the Food)

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Bees are addicted to pesticide-laden junk food, too

by FredricGilfilla Posted on April 27, 2015

bee minus

Bees are addicted to pesticide-laden junk food, too

By on 27 Apr 2015 3:20 pmcommentsShare

We don’t always do what’s good for us, especially when it comes to food. That kale smoothie? Not really feeling it, thanks — but that trough of french fries? Maybe I’ll just have one.

Like us, bees have trouble making the healthiest choices, according to a new study, published in Nature. In fact, they may prefer food that is laced with common agricultural pesticides: When choosing between two samples of sugar syrup in this experiment, both honeybees and bumblebees showed a preference for the neonicotinoid-laced sample. Here’s more from Science Daily:

“Neonicotinoids target the same mechanisms in the bee brain that are affected by nicotine in the human brain,” [said Geraldine Wright, lead scientist on the study]. The fact that bees show a preference for food containing neonicotinoids is concerning as it suggests that like nicotine, neonicotinoids may act like a drug to make foods containing these substances more rewarding. “If foraging bees prefer to collect nectar containing neonicotinoids, this could have a knock-on negative impact on whole colonies and on bee populations.”

Jane Stout, Professor of Botany and Principal Investigator in the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, said: “Our findings imply that even if alternative food sources are provided for bees in agricultural landscapes where neonicotinoid pesticides are used, the bees may prefer to forage on the neonicotinoid-contaminated crops. Since neonicotinoids can also end up in wild plants growing adjacent to crops, they could be much more prevalent in bees’ diets than previously thought.”

In short, bees cannot be trusted to control their own intake of unhealthy foods, even when there’s better fare available. Sound familiar?

Source:
Are bees ‘hooked’ on nectar containing pesticides?

, Science Daily.

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Bees are addicted to pesticide-laden junk food, too

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Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’ Pitiful Wages? You Do

by TammieHinds Posted on April 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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For Americans who like to eat out occasionally, the full-service restaurant industry is full of relatively affordable options—think Olive Garden, Applebees, or Chili’s. But these spots aren’t exactly a bargain once a hefty hidden cost is factored in: The amount of taxpayer assistance that goes to workers earning little pay.

Food service workers have more than twice the poverty rate of the overall workforce, and thus more often seek out public benefits. A new report published last week by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), a restaurant workers’ advocacy and assistance group, calculated the tab and found that from 2009 to 2013, regular Americans subsidized the industry’s low wages with nearly $9.5 billion in tax money each year. That number includes spending from roughly 10 different assistance programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, and low-income housing programs like Section 8.

Here’s the breakdown per program:

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United

The amounts were calculated by combining Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on the programs’ cost and enrollments with the number of Americans working in full-service restaurants.

ROC also found that employees at the five largest full-service restaurant companies alone cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion per year. According to the report, these five companies employ more than half a million of the sector’s more than 4 million workers.

Here’s another striking statistic: If you add up these five companies’ profits, CEO pay, distributed dividends, and stock buy-backs, the total comes to a bit more than $1.48 billion—almost exactly what taxpayers spend on these five companies’ workers, $1.42 billion.

ROC’s report notes another key point: Polling shows that most Americans want a tax system that requires Corporate America to pull its weight. If customers start realizing that their meal costs a lot more than the check says, they just might lose their appetite.

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Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’ Pitiful Wages? You Do

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Welfare Reform and the Decline of Work

by UnitedCashLoans Posted on April 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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A recent paper suggests that over the past two decades there’s been a decline in the desire of people outside the labor force to ever get jobs. Why?

We conjecture that two mechanisms could explain these results. First, the EITC expansion raised family income and reduced secondary earners’s (typically women) incentives to work. Second, the strong work requirements introduced by the AFDC/TANF reform would have, through a kind of “sink or swim” experience, left the “weaker” welfare recipients without welfare and pushed them away from the labor force and possibly into disability insurance.

This comes via Tyler Cowen, who attended an NBER session this morning conducted by the authors of this study. He came away thinking they probably hadn’t made a strong case. Still, an interesting hypothesis that probably deserves followup.

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Welfare Reform and the Decline of Work

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Are Republicans Finally Giving Up on Killing Obamacare?

by ShaneLanglais Posted on April 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Let me say right up front that I’m skeptical of the following report. But then, maybe I’m blinded by partisanship. Who knows? In any case, here is Noam Levey writing in the LA Times today:

After five years and more than 50 votes in Congress, the Republican campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act is essentially over. GOP congressional leaders, unable to roll back the law while President Obama remains in office and unwilling to again threaten a government shutdown to pressure him, are focused on other issues, including trade and tax reform.

Less noted, senior Republican lawmakers have quietly incorporated many of the law’s key protections into their own proposals, including guaranteeing coverage and providing government assistance to help consumers purchase insurance.

….At the same time, the presumed Republican presidential front-runner, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has shown little enthusiasm for a new healthcare fight. Last year, he even criticized the repeal effort….“Only 18% of Americans want to go back to the system we had before because they do not want to go back to some of the problems we had,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster said….”Smart Republicans in this area get that,” he added.

Well, maybe. Levey concedes that there will still be plenty of calls to repeal Obamacare during the 2016 presidential campaign, but he believes that in practice, Republicans will be unwilling to seriously gut a program that’s now providing health coverage for 20 million Americans, a number that will only increase over the next two years.

This is an argument I’ve made myself on multiple occasions, so I ought to be sympathetic to it. And I guess I am. On the other hand, I’ve been repeatedly astonished at the relentlessness of the GOP base’s hatred of Obamacare. Over and over, I thought it would fade out. Maybe when the Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional. Maybe when Obama won in 2012. Maybe when the law finally took full effect in 2014. But like the Energizer bunny, their unholy enmity toward the law just kept going and going and going.

So is Obamacare Derangement Syndrome finally burning itself out? I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. But maybe.

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Are Republicans Finally Giving Up on Killing Obamacare?

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

by IvaHartigan Posted on April 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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You thought Big Tobacco was on the wane in the United States?

(Insert cartoon villain voice:) “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!”

Not. Friggin’. Likely. In fact, the domestic tobacco industry is on the rebound thanks to its heavy investment in smoking “alternatives”—a.k.a. e-cigarettes, a.k.a. nicotine-delivery devices marketed in a variety of kid-friendly flavors. (Marketing flavored tobacco cigarettes has been banned since 2009.)

Kevin had a post on Thursday about the soaring numbers of kids who’ve tried e-cigs. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially announced the results of a new CDC study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Control.

From 2011 to 2013, the researchers reported, the number of middle- and high-school students using e-cigs tripled. In 2013, more than 250,000 kids who had never smoked tobacco reported using e-cigarettes, and 44 percent of those kids said they had “intentions” of trying regular cigarettes in the next year. (About 1 in 5 American adults currently smoke.) Not surprisingly, kids who had more exposure to tobacco advertising were more likely to say they intended to try smoking.

You’ll often hear vaping proponents argue that e-cigs help smokers kick the tobacco habit, thereby saving lives. And that may be true: Inhaling tobacco smoke, which still kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, is almost certainly more deadly than huffing nicotine vapors.

The one group you won’t hear the smoking cessation argument from is e-cig manufacturers. That, ironically, is because products intended to help people quit tobacco products are regulated far more strictly than the tobacco products themselves. The same goes for drug-delivery devices, which is why manufacturers fought very hard to make certain the FDA didn’t put e-cigarettes in that category.

Not that the agency didn’t try. The FDA initially sought to regulate e-cigs as drug-delivery devices, for what else could they be? But the manufacturers promptly sued, and were handed a huge win. Tobacco-friendly judges bought the industry’s argument that, under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, any product that contains nicotine derived from tobacco and makes no therapeutic claims must be regulated as a tobacco product—which makes it, presto, not a drug delivery device.

Just think about how crazy this is: Nicotine is highly addictive. At low doses it’s a stimulant, at higher doses a serious poison. (The tobacco plant and other nightshades actually produce it as an insecticide, and it’s sold for that use, too, with a stringent warning label.) If nicotine were sold as medicine—which it can’t be because it has no medical value—you couldn’t just buy it at the corner store in a dozen alluring flavors. Yet because the manufacturers make no medical claims, they can do what they want. Never mind that the 2009 law was written before e-cigarettes were invented.

Ah, screw it. Just give me the Piña Colada.

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

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Friday Catblogging – April 17 2015

by cfg2nx26 Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Friday catblogging is, of course, a core tradition around these parts. And as the blog welcomes new names and faces while Kevin concentrates on getting better, who said they all have be human? The door’s always open for Hilbert and Hopper to drop in, but we’re going to round out the feline mix with a smattering of cats who are blessed to have a Mother Jones staff member as their human companion.

First up? The Oakland-based menagerie of creative director Ivylise Simones, who oversees all of MoJo‘s lovely art and photography.

On the right is seven-year-old Inspector Picklejuice, a shelter acquisition picked up by Ivylise when she was living in Brooklyn. On the left you’ll find Frankie the Cat. This affectionate two-year-old also came from a shelter, joining the Simones household in 2014.

I’m told these two get along splendidly. Sure looks like it!

If you recognize Picklejuice’s handsome features, it may be from his widely acclaimed Instagram feed, or perhaps from his star turn in our September/October 2014 issue: click through to see him—he’s the looker playing in the box on the far right. (How’d he end up in a magazine illustration? I’ll just say that it helps to have friends in the right places.)

Here’s another of the good Inspector, keeping a close eye on happenings from a favored perch high in the loft. It’s an ideal spot to partake in two of his favorite hobbies: sleeping, and sitting around while awake.

It takes a good five foot vertical hop over open space to get up there. Impressive!

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Friday Catblogging – April 17 2015

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Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

by DeclanHSUlbce Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 through today to pitch in posts and keep the conversation going. Here’s a contribution from Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University whose sharp insights on addiction, drug policy, and many other topics have helped make the Reality-Based Community group blog a must read.

The Euro is the Windows 8 of the economic policy design world: In both cases, it’s very hard to understand how putatively smart people worked so hard to create a product so ill-suited to the needs of those who were supposed to rely on it. At this point, this isn’t much of a secret: as Kevin Drum pointed out back in 2011, a common currency deprives markets and nations of tools that normally ameliorate the effects of capital flow imbalances, inflation spikes, and crushing debt payments. Kevin and other people who understand fiscal policy better than I ever will (e.g., Matt O’Brien and Paul Krugman) convinced me long ago that the Euro was designed with a lack of understanding of (or an unwillingness to grapple with) basic lessons of economics.

But speaking as a psychologist, the common currency’s fundamental design flaws don’t end there: the Euro creators should have thought harder about what social scientists have learned about how compassion and cultural identity interact.

In asking nations to entrust their economic fate to the Euro, its designers were assuming that Europeans have a reservoir of goodwill among them. That goodwill was supposed to ensure, for example, that no prospective member had to worry that a powerful member would use its Euro-derived leverage to turn the screws on a weaker member which was—to pick an example out of thin air—wracked by colossal levels of debt, unemployment and economic misery.

But that’s exactly what the Germans have done to the Greeks. Why aren’t the Germans overcome with sympathy for the Greeks? It’s not that Germans are selfish or hard-hearted: after all, they have spent ten times the current GDP of Greece helping the economically struggling people of the former East Germany.

Social psychology researchers have identified a powerful in group bias in willingness to help others, whether it’s hiring someone for a job or supporting social welfare programs for the poor. Human beings are, in short, more inclined to help other people whom we perceive as being a member of our tribe.

Human psychology wouldn’t cause as many problems for the Euro if there was a strong European identity, if a West German was as likely to consider an East German a tribe member as they would a Greek or a Spaniard or an Italian. But when most Germans and Greeks look at each other, they fundamentally see someone who speaks a different language and hails from a different culture with a different history—and for that matter was a military enemy within living memory.

With no shared sense of tribe comes a sharp reduction in compassion and attendant willingness to help. The elites who designed the Euro may genuinely have believed and even felt a sense that Europe is all about “us”, but the currency’s recent struggles show that for too many Europeans, it’s more about us and them.

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Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

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Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 17 April 2015

by CeciliaPlate Posted on April 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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My sister has given me loads of catblogging photos to choose from, and this week I’m choosing this one. I understand that Hilbert contested Hopper’s right to this spot for a bit, but Hopper defended herself and is now queen of the chair. She has quite the regal presence.

In the meantime, padded coat hangers have been dragged downstairs, temporary window coverings have turned into cat toys, and someone is apparently pulling blue masking tape down from somewhere. On the brighter side, both cats have decided that jumping up on the couch and snoozing next to Karen while she reads or watches TV is really not a bad alternative to whoever those folks were who used to provide laps and cat food.

I understand more cat blogging will be coming later. Keep your eyes peeled.

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Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 17 April 2015

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Vaping Among Teens Skyrockets in 2014

by Jessie1861 Posted on April 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Is this chart on the right, from the Washington Post, good news or bad? On the one hand, teen cigarette use has plummeted from 16 percent to 9 percent over the past four years. On the other hand, the total rate of teen smoking—cigarettes plus e-cigarettes—has risen from 17 percent to 22 percent. The rise in e-cigarette use spiked especially sharply in 2014, more than tripling in a single year.

I’ve heard pros and cons about e-cigarettes for the past couple of years, and I can’t say I have a settled opinion about them. Taken in isolation, it’s safe to say that no kind of nicotine delivery system is good for you. But traditional cigarettes are certainly more harmful than e-cigarettes, so to the extent that vaping replaces tobacco smoking, it’s a net positive.

But that huge spike in 2014 is cause for concern. At some point, teen vaping starts to look like a serious net negative even if it’s accompanied by a small drop in traditional cigarette consumption. I’m still not sure what to think about this, but I’d say these latest figures from the CDC move my priors a bit in the direction of stronger regulation of e-cigarattes.

And if you don’t live in California and are wondering what the fuss is over my state’s anti-vaping campaign, here’s the ad that’s been assaulting my TV for the past couple of months. It’s paid for by revenue from good ol’ Proposition 99, I assume.

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Vaping Among Teens Skyrockets in 2014

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