Tag: organic food

organic food

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its newest Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides on Monday, which is Earth Day. And apples top its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues for the third year in a row. 
More on Shine: Another Reason to Eat Organic

Other changes from the 2012 findings: cherry tomatoes and hot peppers are newcomers this year. Blueberries and lettuce, meanwhile, dropped off the Dirty Dozen list. The environmental watchdog group uses data compiled by the USDA, based on pre-washed samples of 48 types of conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables, to produce its findings.
More on Yahoo!: Colle Farmers Market Reacts to Organic Farming Boom in Russia

“I think most Americans would be very surprised about how prevalent pesticide residue is,” EWG senior analyst Sonya Lunder told Yahoo! Shine, noting that pesticides were still seen on 67 percent of the samples, which were all either washed or peeled before being tested.

Among the top three worst offenders—apples, strawberries and grapes—nearly every sample had pesticides on it, Lunder said, with one grape alone showing traces of 15 pesticides.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Services acknowledges that scientists do not have a full understanding of the health risks associated with exposure to pesticide residues through food, soil, water, or air. Still, notes EWG, various U.S. and international government agencies have linked pesticides to a slew of health risks, including cancer, hormone disruption, brain and nervous system toxicity and irritation to the skin, eyes and lungs.

Dirty Dozen 2013:

Apples
Strawberries
Grapes
Celery
Peaches
Spinach
Sweet bell peppers
Nectarines (imported)
Cucumbers
Potatoes
Cherry tomatoes
Hot peppers

Additionally, the EWG added a “plus” category for the second year, noting two items—domestically-grown summer squash, plus kale and collards—that, though they didn’t meet Dirty Dozen standards, were commonly contaminated with exceptionally toxic pesticides. These organophosphates, dangerous to the nervous system, were phased out of agricultural use in the 1970s and ’80s, but still linger on many farm fields.

Still, there’s also good news, as the guide includes the “Clean Fifteen”—fruits and veggies with the lowest levels of pesticides, offering hopeful solutions for anyone not in the position to find or pay for more expensive organics. Many of these safest options have naturally protective coatings, such as corn, which tops that list once again this year, and papaya, which is a newcomer. Watermelon, sadly, dropped off the clean list from 2012.

“The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure,” notes the EWG report, stressing that “eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.”

Clean Fifteen 2013:

Corn
Onions
Pineapple
Avocados
Cabbage
Sweet peas (frozen, since they’re more readily available)
Papayas
Mangoes
Asparagus
Eggplant
Kiwi
Grapefruit
Cantaloupe
Sweet potatoes
Mushrooms

The consumer list, Lunder said, “shows the real difference you can make in your purchasing habits, even if you’re only buying conventional.”
Related:
The Bottom Line: Is Organic Food Really Any Healthier?
6 Tips for Finding Cheap Organic Food
Is Organic Food Healthier? New Study Fuels the Debate

Raw foodism (or rawism) is the practice of consuming uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet.
Depending on the type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include a selection of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds (including sprouted whole grains such as gaba rice), eggs, fish (such as sashimi), meat (such as carpaccio), and non-pasteurized/non-homogenized dairy products (such as raw milk, raw milk cheese, and raw milk yogurt).[1]

Early proponents include St. Louis Estes, Edmund Bordeaux Szekely, Johnny Lovewisdom, Ann Wigmore and Viktoras Kulvinskas (co-founders of the Hippocrates Health Institute), Arnold Ehret (author and advocate of fasting), Aris Latham (of Sunfired Foods, Inc., known as the godfather of raw food), Arshavir Ter Hovannessian[41] and Norman W. Walker (who advocated the consumption of vegetable juices).
Notable contemporary proponents include several chefs, published authors and lecturers, such as Dr. Douglas Graham, Rene Oswald, Matthew Kenney, Tonya Zavasta, Alissa Cohen, Aris Latham, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, and Elijah Joy, as well as representatives from rawfood producing companies, such as Natural Balance Food‘s founder, Jamie Combs.
Celebrity proponents include Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Jason Mraz, Ben Vereen and Carol Alt. Woody Harrelson has published books on raw food, starred in a raw food film, created a raw food website[42] and also opened O2, a raw food restaurant and bar. Model and actress Carol Alt includes raw animal products in her diet; she has written several books on her version of the raw diet and lifestyle.
Interest in the “Raw Foods Movement” continues to grow today[43] and is especially prevalent in Australia and the western United States,[44] like California.[45] In Europe, it has remained a novelty, although a few restaurants have opened in the UK,[10] Germany,[46] and other large cities.[47] Numerous all-raw cookbooks have been published.[48]
Supercharge Me! 30 Days Raw is a feature-length documentary film about the raw foods diet, made by Jenna Norwood, a former public relations consultant turned independent filmmaker, health educator and raw food chef.[49] In the film, inspired by Morgan Spurlock‘s Super Size Me, Jenna ate only raw foods for thirty days, to document the effect it would have on her health.

Richard Wrangham, a primate researcher and professor of anthropology, has suggested that eating cooked food is more “natural” for the human digestive system, because he thinks that the human digestive system may have evolved to deal with cooked foods.[130][131] Wrangham thinks that cooking explains the increase in hominid brain sizes, smaller digestive tract, smaller teeth and jaws and decrease in sexual dimorphism that occurred roughly 1.8 million years ago.[130][131] Most other anthropologists oppose Wrangham,[132] stating that archeological evidence suggests that cooking fires began in earnest only c.250,000 years ago, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint appear across Europe and the Middle East. Two million years ago, the only sign of fire is burnt earth with human remains, which most other anthropologists consider to be mere coincidence rather than evidence of intentional fire.[133] The mainstream view among anthropologists is that the increases in human brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking, due to a shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to the consumption of meat.[134][135]

a single and self-regulating complex system

The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.

The scientific investigation of the Gaia hypothesis focuses on observing how the biosphereand the evolution of life forms contribute to the stability of global temperature, ocean salinity, oxygen in the atmosphere and other factors of habitability in a preferredhomeostasis.

Since life started on Earth, the energy provided by the Sun has increased by 25% to 30%;[8]however, the surface temperature of the planet has remained within the levels of habitability, reaching quite regular low and high margins. Lovelock has also hypothesised that methanogens produced elevated levels of methane in the early atmosphere, giving a view similar to that found in petrochemical smog, similar in some respects to the atmosphere on Titan.

Processing of the greenhouse gas CO2 plays a critical role in the maintenance of the Earth temperature within the limits of habitability.

Currently this Gaian homeostatic balance is being pushed by the increase of human population and the impact of their activities to the environment. The multiplication ofgreenhouse gases may cause a turn of Gaia’s negative feedbacks into homeostatic positive feedback. This could bring an accelerated global warming and mass human mortality.  Simulation which included rabbits, foxes and other species, led to a surprising finding that the larger the number of species, the greater the improving effects on the entire planet (i.e., the temperature regulation was improved). It also showed that the system was robust and stable even when perturbed.

Even as more Americans buythe products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

Everyone knows about how the advent of artificial fertilizers and pest controls altered the face of agriculture around the world during the Green Revolution more than half a century ago. And while few people are fully ignorant of the damage done to the environment through the use of these synthetic pesticides (and fertilizers), not many people have given much any thought to what will happen when we run out of these vital resources; which is nearing much faster than you might have guessed.

If you’ve ever used fertilizers you have probably at least seen their N-P-K ratings on the bag, standing for the three main fertilizers: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Nitrogen is quite plentiful and renewable, despite being the most damaging environmentally and largely being synthesized from natural gas, but the same is not true for phosphorus (bone meal) and potassium (potash). These vital minerals exist in quite limited quantities and cannot currently be feasibly synthesized, which causes major problems. The world’s phosphorus supply comes almost exclusively out of relatively unstable Morocco, and potassium from Canada and the former states of the Soviet Union, potentially making them future sites for “fertilizer wars” similar to the last century in the Middle East when supplies can’t easily keep up with demand.

Industrial agriculture could be hitting fundamental limits in its capacity to produce sufficient crops to feed an expanding global population according to new research published in Nature Communications.

The study argues that there have been abrupt declines or plateaus in the rate of production of major crops which undermine optimistic projections of constantly increasing crop yields. As much as “31% of total global rice, wheat and maize production” has experienced “yield plateaus or abrupt decreases in yield gain, including rice in eastern Asia and wheat in northwest Europe.”

The declines and plateaus in production have become prevalent despite increasing investment in agriculture, which could mean that maximum potential yields under the industrial model of agribusiness have already occurred. Crop yields in “major cereal-producing regions have not increased for long periods of time following an earlier period of steady linear increase.”

The paper makes for ominous reading. Production levels have already flattened out with “no case of a return to the previous rising yield trend” for key regions amounting to “33% of global rice and 27% of global wheat production.” The US researchers concluded that these yield plateaus could be explained by the inference that “average farm yields approach a biophysical yield ceiling for the crop in question, which is determined by its yield potential in the regions where the crop is produced.”

Think about these issues when you’re considering whether or not to go with small scale organic foods or extremely wasteful and disrupting industrial ones.

Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

By
Published: December 30, 2011

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.