Tag Archives: usda

We Have Terrible News For Anyone Who Eats Chicken

by MarisaHarlow Posted on June 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

One of the US Department of Agriculture’s main tasks is to ensure that the nation’s meat supply is safe. But according to a new peer-reviewed study from the department’s own researchers, the USDA’s process for monitoring salmonella contamination on chicken—by far the most-consumed US meat—may be flawed.

The process works like this: After birds are slaughtered, plucked, and eviscerated, the carcasses are sprayed with a variety of antimicrobial chemicals designed to kill pathogens like salmonella and campylobacter, and then plunged into a cold bath (which also includes antimicrobial chemicals) to lower their temperature. At that point, a few of the birds are randomly selected, rinsed, removed from the line, and put into plastic bags filled with a liquid that collects any remaining pathogens. The liquid is then sent to a lab for testing within 24 hours. (The test birds go back into the production line.) If a large number of them test positive for salmonella, the USDA knows there’s a problem and takes steps to address it.

According to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which oversees safety protocols in the nation’s slaughterhouses, the salmonella system works great. The agency’s latest numbers show a steadily falling incidence of positive tests for salmonella on chicken carcasses: just 3.9 percent in 2013, down from 7.2 percent in 2009.

But a new study by scientists at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) paints a less rosy picture. The researchers simulated the FSIS’s method for testing collecting pathogens from chicken carcasses, and found it can turn up negative results even when salmonella is present.

Here’s why: When those birds are plucked off the line for testing, they’ve just been bombarded with antimicrobial chemicals, and traces of those chemicals can collect in the testing bags along with remaining microbes. In order for tests to be accurate, the germ-killing chemicals have to be quickly neutralized by the testing liquid. If they’re not, they can keep killing bacteria and, as the study puts it, “lead to false-negative results due to sanitizer carryover into the carcass.” And that’s exactly what happened in the simulation the researchers conducted. The authors concluded that their study “suggests that current procedures for the isolation and identification of Salmonella on poultry carcasses may need modification.”

But the FSIS disagrees with this conclusion. “FSIS is confident that our testing results yield accurate outcomes,” an agency spokesman wrote in an email. He emphasized that the ARS study was a simulation, and “did not evaluate the same practices as our in-plant personnel utilize.”

Salmonella poisoning remains a huge problem. Starting in March 2013, a salmonella outbreak traced back to chicken sickened more than 600 people in 29 states, 38 percent of whom had to be hospitalized. And—unlike the FSIS’s tests for salmonella on chicken carcasses—salmonella poisoning rates have not shown any steady decline pattern over the past 15 years. Here’s a chart from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Chart: Centers for Disease Control

Not all of those infections come from contaminated chicken, of course. The CDC doesn’t break down salmonella poisoning by food source, and doing so is tricky, said Mansour Samadpour, a food safety expert and chief executive of IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group. Most chicken-related salmonella infections come from not from eating undercooked meat, but rather from cross-contamination, he said—like cutting vegetables for a salad with the same knife used to slice raw chicken. As a result, the source of a given salmonella-triggered food poisoning is hard to trace. But chicken is the “item in the supermarket most likely to be contaminated with salmonella,” he said.

And also, while the FSIS’s numbers show impressively low rates of salmonella on chicken carcasses from its carcass testing—3.9 percent in 2013, 4.3 percent in 2012—other numbers from the agency suggest the problem may be worse. In another report, based on tests conducted in 2012, the FSIS gathered chicken samples from the very end of production lines, after they’d been cut into parts, the way consumers typically buy them. They found a positive rate for salmonella of 26.2 percent—about six times the rate found the same year on the FSIS’s testing of carcasses.

For Samadpour, that huge discrepancy suggests that the carcass testing may indeed be generating lots of false negatives. That means consumers could be being exposed to salmonella-contaminated chicken at much higher rates than the FSIS’s carcass numbers suggest.

The solution is pretty clear, Samadpour told me. Instead of testing whole carcasses just after they’ve been bathed in antimicrobials, while they’re still in the middle of the processing line, the tests should happen at the end of the processing line, when the carcasses have been cut up and are ready for packaging. He said Big Chicken could learn something from the beef industry, which began testing its finished products in that manner for a virulent E. coli strain called O157:H7 in the 1990s: Rates of poisoning from that often-deadly bacteria have plunged since.

In the meantime, I’m taking extra care when prepping chicken. Here‘s how the CDC says consumers should handle it.

Visit link:

We Have Terrible News For Anyone Who Eats Chicken

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Have Terrible News For Anyone Who Eats Chicken

Americans Are Gorging Themselves on Cheap Meat

by DeannaColleano Posted on March 30, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While the Dutch and other nations are advising consumers to cut down on red meat, it’s estimated that Americans will eat more beef this year than we have in the last decade.

The Netherlands Nutrition Centre’s new dietary guidelines suggest eating no more than 500 grams (just over one pound) of meat per week, including no more than 300 grams (0.7 pounds) of red meat, which it describes as “high carbon.” The agency wants the Dutch to scale back red meat for health reasons and sustainability. After all, the meat industry produces 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and land for grazing takes up a quarter of the Earth’s non-ice surface. The Dutch agency’s new guidelines also decrease the recommended fish consumption from twice to once per week, and they encourage protein from sources such as unsalted nuts and legumes.

In the United States, on the other hand, diners are piling more meat onto their plates. The USDA has predicted that 2016 will be the biggest year in a decade in Americans’ consumption of beef. We’ll eat an estimated 53.4 pounds, nearly half a pound more per person than last year.

Bloomberg Business compares US chicken and beef consumption since the 1970’s. Source: Bloomberg

According to Bloomberg, the increase could be due to cheaper prices on red meat and the popularity of protein-heavy diets like the paleo diet. Also, there are more cows. Droughts that plagued the Southwest in 2014 meant fewer cows and higher beef prices. However, cattle counts from earlier this year show there are nearly 3.5 million more cows than two years ago.

The Dutch aren’t the only sustainability conscious eaters. Sweden altered its dietary guidelines in 2009, and in 2012 Brazil called for cultivating and eating foods that had “environmental integrity.” Last week, the United Kingdom released its EatWell Guide, which advised Brits to eat less red meat.

It’s unclear whether the USDA will change its guidelines to reflect sustainability any time soon. When “My Plate,” the Obama administration’s food group

The USDA’s “My Plate” guidelines were released in January. The guidelines advised more vegetables, fruits and lean meats, and less sugar. Source: ChooseMyPlate.gov

recommendations, came out earlier this year the government played it safe and only mentioned eating leaner meats. The guidelines instead came down hard on limiting sugar intake.

See the original post – 

Americans Are Gorging Themselves on Cheap Meat

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Americans Are Gorging Themselves on Cheap Meat

New Dietary Guidelines Won’t Include Sustainability

by TahliaCJVchx Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines are released later this year, they’re sure to make waves in the nation’s food economy. Updated every five years, the rules—the government’s official line on what Americans should eat to stay healthy—inform decisions on everything from agricultural subsidies to government food assistance programs to school lunch.

But there’s one thing the new guidelines won’t touch: the health of our environment.

In a statement posted Tuesday on the USDA website, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwel announced that the guidelines will not include recommendations about how to choose foods with the lightest impact on the planet. The dietary guidelines, they wrote, are not “the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation.”

The decision came despite the fact that in its February report, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee—the team that reviews scientific and medical evidence and offers advise on what should be included—highlighted the ties between environmental impact and healthy eating. “Access to sufficient, nutritious, and safe food is an essential element of food security for the US,” the report stated. “A sustainable diet ensures this access for both the current population and future generations.”

As my colleague Maddie Oatman noted when the committee released its recommendations, those ideas didn’t go over well with Big Ag backers. Industry groups sent letters to Secretary Vilsack arguing that environmental impact is outside the scope of the Dietary Guidelines and spent millions of dollars trying to dissuade the USDA from including sustainability in its update.

Director of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs, who is a Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, called Tuesday’s announcement a “shameful abnegation of political responsibility,” after heralding the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report as a key breakthrough.

“For US government officials to suggest that this chapter should be deleted would be to argue for deleting science itself; a shameful abnegation of political responsibility in the face of lobbying pressure,” he said in a press release. “Secretaries Burwell and Vilsack will be remembered for whether they stand up for science or for corporate lobbies.”

Link:

New Dietary Guidelines Won’t Include Sustainability

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Dietary Guidelines Won’t Include Sustainability

When Schools Serve Pizza and Corn Dogs for Lunch, These Companies Make Bank

by MauriciDoherty Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

It’s no secret that school lunch isn’t exactly healthy—Cheetos, Domino’s, and funnel cake are still fair game to serve to the millions of kids that receive free food under federal breakfast and lunch programs.

A report released this week by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reveals which companies are profiting off of school meals. Schools buy a lot of their food, at very cheap rates, from the US Department of Agriculture—which in turn buys ingredients from private companies.

The report found that in 2013, the USDA bought over $500 million worth of food from 62 meat and dairy companies—and just six large companies accounted over half of those sales.

In addition to buying food from the USDA, schools can buy directly from private companies—and the meals have to comply with a set of regulations that went into effect last summer and require the meals to contain a certain amount of whole grains, fruits and veggies. Since then, a number of companies have reformulated their products to meet the minimum requirements, marketing supposedly nutritious options like corn dogs made with whole grain flour and antibiotic-free chicken tenders.

When the Physicians Committee reviewed ads targeting the School Nutrition Association (SNA), a professional organization representing the 55,000 school food service employees that decide which food to buy, they found that the ads were dominated by these faux-healthy foods. As they put it,

Of 106 ads for unhealthful meat and dairy products, 23 were full-page ads for Domino’s or Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza. Pizza is the number-two source of calories for children and adolescents ages 2-18, according to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It is also the second-leading source of saturated fat and the third-leading source of sodium.

A Domino’s ad in one issue of the magazine even urges “Help us take a slice out of cancer,” despite the fact that a daily serving of pepperoni or other processed meat is linked to colorectal cancer risk. Similarly, women who consume the most red meat during childhood are at higher risk for developing breast cancer.

Here are a few examples of ads for “healthy” foods—pizza, mozzarella sticks, and corn dogs—from SNA’s School Nutrition magazine, which came out in advance of the organization’s annual conference.

Link:

When Schools Serve Pizza and Corn Dogs for Lunch, These Companies Make Bank

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on When Schools Serve Pizza and Corn Dogs for Lunch, These Companies Make Bank

Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest

by BreannaRoemer Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The nation’s honeybee crisis has deepened, with colony die-offs rising sharply over last year’s levels, the latest survey from the US Department of Agriculture-funded Bee Informed Partnership shows. A decade or so ago, a mysterious winter-season phenomenon known as colony-collapse disorder emerged, in which bee populations would abandon their hives en masse. These heavy winter-season losses have tapered off somewhat, but now researchers are finding substantial summer-season losses, too. Here are the latest numbers.

Chart: Bee Informed Partnership/University of Maryland/Loretta Kuo

Note that total losses are more than double what beekeepers report as the “acceptable rate”—that is, the normal level of hive attrition. Losses above the acceptable level put beekeepers in a precarious economic position and suggest that something is awry with bee health. “We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, University of Maryland entomologist and director for the Bee Informed Partnership said in a press release. But now his team is also seeing massive summer die-offs. “Years ago, this was unheard of,” he added.

And here’s a map a map depicting where losses are heaviest:

Chart: Bee Informed Partnership/University of Maryland/Loretta Kuo

The survey report doesn’t delve into why the nation’s bees are under such severe strain, noting only, as USDA entomologist and survey co-coordinator Jeffrey Pettis put it, “the need to find better answers to the host of stresses that lead to both winter and summer colony losses.”

A growing weight of science implicated pesticides—particularly a ubiquitous class of insecticides called neonicitinoids, as well as certain fungicides—as likely factors.

Here are US Geological Survey maps of where two major neonics, imidacloprid and clothianidin, are grown. Note, too, the rapid rise in their use over the past decade.

Chart: USGS

Chart: USGS

A 2013 paper co-authored by the USDA’s Pettis and the University of Maryland’s vanEngelsdorp found that lows levels of two particular fungicides, chlorothalonil and pyraclostrobin, “had a pronounced effect” on bees’ ability to withstand a common pathogen. Here are the USGS’s maps for them.

Chart: USGS

View original: 

Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest

Here’s How the Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Affect You

by AbigailKennemer Posted on May 1, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The US poultry and egg industries are enduring their largest-ever outbreak of a deadly (known as pathogenic) version of avian flu. Earlier this month, the disease careened through Minnesota’s industrial-scale turkey farms, affecting at least 3.6 million birds, and is now punishing Iowa’s massive egg-producing facilities, claiming 9.8 million—and counting—hens. Here’s what you need to know about the outbreak.

Where did this avian flu come from? So far, no one is sure exactly sure how the flu—which has shown no ability to infect humans—is spreading. The strain now circulating is in the US is “highly similar” to a novel variety that first appeared in South Korea in January 2014, before spreading to China and Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, according to a paper by a team led by US Geological Survey wildlife virologist Hon Ip.

How did it spread? The most likely carrier is wild birds, but it’s unclear how they deliver the virus into large production facilities, where birds are kept indoors under rigorous biosecurity protocols. On Thursday, the mystery deepened when birds in an Iowa hatchery containing 19,000 chickens tested positive for the virus. “This is thought to be first time the avian influenza virus has affected a broiler breeding farm in this outbreak,” Reuters reported. “Such breeding farms are traditionally known for having extremely tight biosecurity systems.” John Clifford, the US Department of Agriculture’s chief veterinary officer, recently speculated that the virus could be invading poultry confinements through wind carrying infected particles left by wild birds, taken onto the factory-farm floor by vents.

Can humans catch it? So far, no. But public health officials have been warning for decades that massive livestock confinements make an ideal breeding ground for new virus strains. In its authoritative 2009 report on industrial-scale meat production, the Pew Commission warned that the “continual cycling of viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks increases opportunities for the generation of novel flu viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmissions.” It added: “agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities.”

Is this bird flu affecting the poultry industry’s revenue? Yup. The specter of flu is already pinching Big Chicken’s bottom line. China and South Korea—which imported a combined $428.5 million in US poultry last year—have imposed bans on US chicken, drawing the ire of USDA chief Tom Vilsack, Reuters reports.

What’s the worst-case scenario? If the virus spread to the Southeast, Big Poultry will be in big trouble. Here’s a map showing where chicken production is concentrated (from Food and Water Watch). Already, the strain has turned up in wild birds as far south as Kentucky.

Map: Food and Water Watch

What are we doing to stop the flu from spreading further? All the flu-stricken birds not killed outright by the virus are euthanized—but beyond that, the strategy seems to be: ramp up biosecurity efforts at poultry facilities and cross your fingers. Flu viruses don’t thrive in the heat, so “when warm weather comes in consistently across the country I think we will stop seeing new cases,” USDA chief veterinarian Clifford recently said on a press call. But USDA officials recently told Reuters it’s “highly probable” that the virus will regain force when temperatures cool in the fall—and potentially be carried by wild birds to the southeast.

See more here:  

Here’s How the Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Affect You

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s How the Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Affect You

There’s a Place That’s Nearly Perfect for Growing Food. It’s Not California.

by ShaunLadprsnu Posted on April 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

California is by far the dominant US produce-growing state—source of (large PDF) 81 percent of US-grown carrots, 95 percent of broccoli, 86 percent of cauliflower, 74 percent of raspberries, 91 percent of strawberries, etc.

But all three of its main veggie growing regions—the Imperial Valley, the Central Valley, and the Salinas Valley—face serious short- and long-term water challenges. As I recently argued in a New York Times debate, it’s time to “de-Californify” the nation’s supply of fruits and vegetable supply, to make it more diversified, resilient, and ready for a changing climate.

Here are maps of US fruit and vegetable production:

USDA

USDA

Now check out this map depicting average annual precipitation. The data are old—1961 to 1990—and weather patterns have changed since then as the climate has warmed over the decades. But the overall trends depicted still hold sway: The West tends to be arid, the East tends to get plenty of rain and snow, and the Midwest lands, well, somewhere in the middle. So the map remains a good proxy for understanding where water tends to fall and where it doesn’t, though the precipitation levels depicted for California look downright Londonesque compared to the state’s current parched condition.

Not only is California gripped in its worst drought in at least 1,200 years, but climate models and the fossil record suggest that its 21st-century precipitation levels could be significantly lower than the 20th-century norm, when California emerged as a fruit-and-vegetable behemoth.

So here’s an idea that could take pressure off California. In my Times piece, I looked to the Corn Belt states of the Midwest as a prime candidate for a veggie revival: Just about a quarter million acres (a veritable rounding error in that region’s base of farmland) from corn and soy to veggies could have a huge impact on regional supply, a 2010 Iowa State University study found.

Now my gaze is heading south and east, to acres now occupied by cotton—a crop burdened by a brutal past in the South (slavery, sharecropping) and a troubled present (a plague of herbicide-tolerant weeds):

Let’s leave aside all of the cotton growing on the arid side of the map. (The drought is already squeezing out production of the fluffy fiber in California; as for the Texas panhandle, cotton production there relies heavily on water from the fast-depleting Ogallala Aquifer—not a great long-term strategy.)

What I’m eyeing are those cotton acres on the water-rich right side of the map—the Mississippi Delta states Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Louisiana, along with the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia to the east. According to the USDA, mid-Southern and Southeastern states planted more than 4 million acres of cotton in 2014. This is what’s left of the old—and let’s face it, infamous—Cotton Belt that stocked the globe’s textile factories during the 19th-century boom that delivered the Industrial Revolution (a story told in Sven Beckert’s fantastic 2014 book Empire of Cotton).

Decades of low prices have already put a squeeze on Southern cotton acres, and the fiber has recently slumped anew in global trading. Why not transition at least some acres into crops with a robust domestic market? I bounced my idea of a Cotton Belt fruit-and-vegetable renaissance off a few experts to see if it was nuts. Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, called it “noncrazy.” He pointed out that, as in most other parts of the United States, small-scale farms that sell directly to consumers are “already gearing up down there,” and added that the region “seems ripe for entrepreneurial companies to come in, buy land, grow farmers, introduce a whole new vegetable supply chain on a bigger scale, especially with California’s woes.”

I’m not talking about a fantasy in which everyone eats from within 20 miles (although such locavore networks, which have thrived nationwide over the last two decades, certainly add diversification and resilience to the overall food system). I’m simply pushing a more regionalized, widely distributed scheme for filling our salad and fruit bowls, one less dependent on California and its overtaxed water resources.

Scott Marlow, executive director of North Carolina-based RAFI USA, a farmer advocacy organization, also said the idea make sense—with caveats. One is credit. Marlow says that most farmers who still plant cotton are large enough that they rely on loans to start the growing season—and bankers understand and are used to cotton, but may find vegetables too exotic and risky. For such farmers, “if the banker won’t lend for it, they are not doing it,” he said. Reforms in the latest farm bill made it easier for “specialty crop” (i.e., fruit and vegetable) farmers to get good crop insurance, and that, in turn, made it easier to get loans, he said. But those changes take time to sink in.

He added that the South’s high levels of precipitation can actually be a liability compared to California’s aridity, because “rain spreads diseases through splash erosion, ruins product, screws up harvest, reduces product quality.” California farmers, who meet their watering needs through controlled irrigation, don’t have those problems.

But rain troubles can be addressed through low-tech means like high tunnels, which are already being adapted by Southern produce farmers to extend the growing season, but also to protect sensitive crops from rain, Marlow said. Black plastic mulch, another widely adapted practice, also helps keep crops healthy in rainy periods, he added. The South’s farmers have demonstrated the ability to innovate, he said, but “there have to be markets, there has to be risk management, and there has to be access to credit.”

Converting swaths of Dixie country to vegetables won’t be a fast or easy process. But if California’s water troubles drag on, as it appears they will, broccoli may yet emerge as the heir apparent to doddering King Cotton.

Link: 

There’s a Place That’s Nearly Perfect for Growing Food. It’s Not California.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Anker, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, Monterey, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s a Place That’s Nearly Perfect for Growing Food. It’s Not California.

The Agriculture Department Has Advice In Case You’re Ever Kidnapped

by MillieLogue Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

In an apparent effort to prove that you can write an explainer about anything, Alex Abad-Santos writes one today about the Taken movies. So how good is Liam Neeson’s advice in those movies to the various family members of his that get abducted? Here is Abad-Santos:

According to the a safety protocol guide on the USDA’s website, it’s recommended that you….

Wait. The USDA? As in the Department of Agriculture? WTF?

Anyway, yes: it turns out the United States Department of Agriculture has a Personnel and Document Security Division, and they have a handy web page called “Kidnapping and Hostage Survival Guidelines.” Sadly, it turns out not to really be a USDA document. It’s part of a security program developed for the Defense Security Service Academy by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center. The security awareness cartoons were provided by the Information and Personnel Security Office, Chief of Naval Operations. From there, the whole package was distributed to other government agencies, including the USDA.

Still, it has a quiz! If you’d like to test your knowledge of proper security procedures for government employees, click here.

Read more: 

The Agriculture Department Has Advice In Case You’re Ever Kidnapped

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Agriculture Department Has Advice In Case You’re Ever Kidnapped

Sorry, Raw Sugar Is No Better For You Than Refined

by ShannaQuintero Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Along with plain white refined sugar, most hip coffee shops now offer “raw” sugar. I usually go with raw: The golden crystals and brown paper packets somehow make me think it’s more wholesome than the conventional white stuff, which, as highlighted in a previous Mother Jones investigation, many scientists now believe is far worse for you than the industry would have us think.

Sugar in the Raw, a leading raw sugar brand, suggests on its Frequently Asked Questions page that its product is indeed more wholesome. “White sugar is obtained by refining the sugarcane crystals to remove the molasses (and with that, trace nutrients),” it states. “Some nutritionists believe that the small amount of micronutrients retained in Sugar In The Raw® provides advantages over refined white sugar.” Raw sugar is also more expensive: On Amazon, a four-pound bag of Sugar in the Raw retails for $12.99, versus $3.25 for regular.

So is the raw stuff really more virtuous? Sugar in the Raw could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman for the Wholesome Sweeteners brand of raw sugar explained to me that, like refined sugar, raw—technically called Turbinado—sugar comes from sugarcane (refined sugar can also be derived from beets). The main difference between the two is in the boiling of the cane juice: The juice for refined sugar is boiled several times to remove all the molasses, whereas Turbinado sugar is boiled only once.

The residual molasses gives Turbinado sugar “some flavor and texture other than just sweetness,” says Katherine Zeratski, a registered dietitian with Mayo Clinic. But it doesn’t provide any significant nutrition. Refined and raw sugar are “calorically identical,” Zeratski notes. And while Turbinado sugar does contain calcium, iron, and potassium, it contains them in trace amounts. We used the USDA’s National Nutrient Database to calculate a few comparisons:

By Katie Rose Quandt

While one 2012 study found that molasses from sugar cane acted as an antioxidant in laboratory cell cultures, Kimber Stanhope, a University of California-Davis microbiologist who focuses on sugars, said she was unable to find any research suggesting the same effect for cells in the body. She emails: “Given the lack of scientific evidence that consumption of molasses has any health benefits in humans, and the fact that the molasses content of Turbinado sugar is very low, it is certainly a stretch to suggest that Turbinado sugar is healthier than refined sugar.”

There goes my virtuous latte.

View post:

Sorry, Raw Sugar Is No Better For You Than Refined

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sorry, Raw Sugar Is No Better For You Than Refined

How Much It Costs to Raise a Kid, in 4 Charts

by WinfredBSB Posted on August 19, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A middle-income family with a child born in 2013 can expect to spend about a quarter of a million dollars in child-rearing expenses over the next 18 years, according to a new report from the USDA.

Costs such as housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, child care, and education will amount to an expected $304,340 ($245,340 in 2013 dollars) for middle-income families, a 1.8 percent increase from last year’s report. For each income bracket, costs will increase as the child ages:

Although households with incomes in the lowest third will spend less than half as much on child-related costs as higher income families, their spending will amount to a far greater percent of total income.

Housing is the highest child-rearing expenditure, amounting to 30 percent of expenses for middle-income, husband-wife families with two children. Raising a child is costliest in the urban Northeast and least expensive in rural areas.

USDA

The report notes that child-rearing costs have grown 24 percent since 1960, when a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($198,560 in 2013 dollars). The USDA has also released an interactive calculator to help families estimate child-rearing costs based on type of household, number of children, location, and income.

See more here:  

How Much It Costs to Raise a Kid, in 4 Charts

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Much It Costs to Raise a Kid, in 4 Charts