A New Twist on the Hidden Costs of Fast Food

The fast food industry has been taking quite a bit of heat lately. It isn't difficult to find articles that scrutinize the meager nutritional content of a drive-thru meal. Some studies have even shown that fast food is as addictive as heroin, like this one here. A recent Newsweek article discusses the conditioning that we humans have experienced with fast food labeling. The article asserts that we have learned to associate fast food labels, like the golden arches, Wendy's red hair, the Arby's hat, etc. with convenience and time-saving measures. While this might not seem like the worst thing in the world, if you believe this study, it is another contributor to our culture of "instant gratification". It makes me feel a little like Pavlov's dog, personally.

Read the article here.

UW Experts Weigh In on Food Issues

If you've ever thought to yourself, "Michael Pollan makes some interesting and potentially valid points, but who is he to tell us how to eat (or shop, or farm, etc.)?", you are certainly not alone. The most recent issue of Grow, a magazine distributed by UW's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, features twelve ideas for changing the food/farming industry by actual experts. Read mini-articles on topics from food processing and safety, cooking and food production, to farming and crop reform. Check it out here, if you haven't already.

Can Science and God Co-exist?

While most scientists surely agree that the movie "Angels & Demons" is, by and large, not credible, it did provide a 'sneak peek' at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that is currently in use at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The LHC, which has finally recovered from a few major setbacks, began proton smashing on March 30, 2010. CERN is attempting to recreate the 'Big Bang' on a much smaller scale by proving the existence of, or lack thereof, the 'God Particle', also known as the Higgs boson.

This massive project at CERN has raised some interesting concerns, among them that the LHC will create a black hole that could swallow up the earth (like 'Angels & Demons' on steroids). Regardless, the experiment is an interesting one. Click here to read an article by Eben Harrell on time.com about why the LHC experiment is important. Don't worry, Tom Hanks will surely be there to save the day.

Why Making Healthful Foods Cheaper Isn't Enough

Here is an interesting article featured on NPR about healthier food choices. Encouraging healthier eating is proving to be a complex issue; NPR takes a look at the economic side of the issue:

Bucks for broccoli or cash for carrots? Financial incentives aimed at encouraging healthier choices are catching on from New Zealand to the Philippines. Workplaces in the United States have been offering incentives for weight loss. In a London-based study, dieters got paid when they dropped pounds. Now researchers are interested in understanding how food price manipulations may influence what ends up in mothers' grocery carts. Does increasing the cost of sugary items mean fewer people buy them? Would more people buy veggies if they were more affordable?

To create successful incentives, says Yale behavioral economist Dean Karlan, a policy needs to specifically target the people whose behavior its trying to change. "So in the case of broccoli you'd want to find out who's not eating broccoli and then pay them to eat it," he says. You don't want to necessarily make broccoli cheaper for those who are already buying plenty of it, you want to target those who don't buy enough fruits or vegetables. It could be very tricky to structure such an incentive.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Google FIber Considers Madison as Test Spot

While other cities are creating a frenzy around the possibility of being a test spot for the new Google Fiber, Madison held a public meeting. Google Fiber, the company's attempt at high speed internet, would provide a wireless network that runs "100 times faster" than most internet connections. Google, which already has an office in Madison, is considering several U.S. cities to test out the service.

Duluth, MN has jokingly promised to name every first born in the city either Google or Googlette Fiber. Topeka has changed it's name to Google, Kan. for a month. Madison held the public meeting on Thursday, March 11 at Olbrich Gardens to brainstorm ideas for the application. Bids are due by March 26, 2010 and Google plans on making a decision sometime this year.

Read the article at madison.com.

The Spread of Superbugs

Agribusiness is getting even more criticism. This time it's about the use of antibiotics. There has been talk for a while now about the overuse of antibiotics and the development of "superbugs", or antibiotic resistant bacteria. Concern is rising over the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. Nicholas D. Kristof, of The New York Times, offers his take on the situation:

Until three months ago, Thomas M. Dukes was a vigorous, healthy executive at a California plastics company. Then, over the course of a few days in December as he was planning his Christmas shopping, E. coli bacteria ravaged his body and tore his life apart.Mr. Dukes is a reminder that as long as we’re examining our health care system, we need to scrutinize more than insurance companies. We also need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans.

Antibacterial drugs were revolutionary when they were introduced in the United States in 1936, virtually eliminating diseases like tuberculosis here and making surgery and childbirth far safer. But now we’re seeing increasing numbers of superbugs that survive antibiotics. One of the best-known — MRSA, a kind of staph infection — kills about 18,000 Americans annually. That’s more than die of AIDS.

Food activist on a mission in Madison

Last month, Wisconsin farmer Will Allen shared a podium in Washington, D.C., with Michelle Obama as she launched her plan to fight childhood obesity.

On Tuesday, Allen will be in the buffet line at Madison’s First Unitarian Society at a community potluck, which will be followed by his presentation on the groundbreaking national effort to bring high quality food to everyone, regardless of their income, through innovative urban agriculture.

Despite Allen’s growing national prominence — he’s a recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” — it’s likely that he’ll continue to spend a good amount time in the Madison area.

Allen’s Milwaukee-based Growing Power Inc. is a key partner in the proposed Madison “agro-urban” charter school which would be built on Madison’s South Side, at the corner of Rimrock and Badger roads. Although funding and planning are still in flux, the 4.5-acre property for the Badger Rock Middle School was purchased from Dane County for the school in January for $500,000, and agricultural work there will begin this spring — a first step in creating the vegetable gardens and orchards that will surround the school.

Click here read the article by Chris Martell

Website Seeks to Pair 'Green' Businesses with Environmentally Conscious Consumers

Posipair.com is a website developed by a former Life Sciences Communications graduate student, Sarah Manski. Recognizing the difficulty of finding good, concise information about truly green companies and services, Manski, working with her husband, developed PosiPair. In Manski's own words, "Every business is essentially their own island with marketing green goods and services. It's easy to spend hours online looking for a local, environmentally friendly company using a regular search engine like Google."

A contraction of the phrase "positive pairing", posipair.com is an online network of both businesses and consumers. The website also incorporates social networking that can link business profiles. Consumers have the option to post comments and ratings of the participating businesses. In 2009, Manski was a finalist in the Governor's Business Plan Contest, a contest designed to foster the growth of new business ideas. Manski and her business won a year's worth of free rent and several thousand dollars worth of IT services from another local company. The website is expected to launch in early 2010, so keep an eye out!

Click here to see the website

Rules Worth Following?

Here is a recent review of Michael Pollan's newest book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual". Although he isn't a nutritionist or a scientist, Pollan offers a set of guidelines to follow based on his two previous books, '"The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food". --AH

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” by Michael Pollan.

Mr. Pollan is not a biochemist or a nutritionist but rather a professor of science journalism at the University of California-Berkeley. You may recognize his name as the author of two highly praised books on food and nutrition, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (All three books are from Penguin.)

If you don’t have the time and inclination to read the first two, you can do yourself and your family no better service than to invest $11 and one hour to whip through the 139 pages of “Food Rules” and adapt its guidance to your shopping and eating habits.

Chances are you’ve heard any number of the rules before. I, for one, have been writing and speaking about them for decades. And chances are you’ve yet to put most of them into practice. But I suspect that this little book, which is based on research but not annotated, can do more than the most authoritative text to get you motivated to make some important, lasting, health-promoting and planet-saving changes in what and how you eat.

Click here to read the article...

The Future of Journalism: News Consumers Must be Savvier Than Ever — or Risk Being Duped

Here is an excerpt taken from Madison's free weekly newspaper The Isthmus about the changing face of journalism. Read the whole article to learn about the emerging and important role of blogs.

Traditional journalism is in trouble, and everyone agrees it needs to reinvent itself to survive. The worst-case scenario is that within 15 years only a handful of the largest U.S. newspapers will survive.

"As recently as three or four years ago, I was fairly convinced that most newspapers would make it," says Lew Friedland, professor at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. "Now I'm not sure. I actually don't think that most daily newspapers in the metro [non-national] range will make it."

Communities like Madison may be left with a couple of free weekly tabloids, published to collect what remains of more lucrative "display" advertising (and, in Isthmus' case, of course, to uphold the mantle of quality journalism). The number of stories will fall dramatically because the staffs are too small. And the Associated Press, which operates as a co-op, will be robbed of content as members drop like flies.