Saturday, February 18, 2006

You are what you eat

Matt's comment to my previous post makes me want to elucidate the bigger view that I believe drugs like rBGH , and other additive and pesticides used on our food, fit into.

Matt makes good points: usually people do not become sick as a reuslt of drinking bad milk, because that milk has been pasteurized, and if our milk supply was cut in half because we stopped using rBGH then we would face the problem of making up a lot of milk that is no longer being produced.

At one time, farmers were not using rBGH and we were producing enough milk naturally to feed the nation. When the decision was made to start using the hormone, I don't think the long term implications were considered. Widespread use has now put us in the situation that if we chose to stop using rBGH, or to stop pasteurizing our milk, we would have some very challenging problems to solve.

We eat food to be nourished. While modern food additives, pesticides, hormones, and production techniques have allowed us to eat more food, they have not necessarily allowed us to be better nourished. In many cases, despite consuming more food, we are less nourished than we would be eating less food without the modifications. To use milk as an example, rBGH means the cow is producing twice the milk, but is not able to spare the nutrients (calcium for example) for that milk to be as nutrient dense as it would be otherwise. Then the milk is pasteurized, destroying all of the enzymes and probiotics in the milk, and changing the configuration of many of the protiens making them more difficult to absorb, if not altering them beyond recognition. After that we skim the fat from the milk, removing many healthy short chain fatty acids, and losing the vitamin A and D it contains. The homogenization process makes the milk smell atrocious, so deodorizing chemicals are added to hide the odor. Milk fats which are removed during homogenization also make milk's vitamins and minerals more available for absorption, an effect which is lost when the fat is removed. The milk we drink commercially has much less in common with natural milk than we think.

In the early 1930's Weston A. Price created a comprehensive documentation of the dietary and nutritional variation among dozens of primitive societies, as well as the average North American of the day. His book Nutrition and physical degeneration documents his studies and is still available at online bookstores. Among other things, he found that the food consumed by every single primitive society contained at least four times the vitamin and mineral concentration as analagous foods in the North American diet. Consider how much food we are now squeezing out of the same resources compared to what we did in the 30's, and you can imagine that food today is likely contains much less 1/4 of the nutrients it used to. Not only are we removing nutrients from our farmland faster than the bacteria and microorganisms that live in the soil can replenish them, but the rate of that replenishment is being reduced, as the same pesticides and antibiotics that protect the crops, are destroying the soil that feeds them.

I believe that for the first time in the history of this continent, we will see the quality of life of an entire generation significantly reduced from the generation before it. As baby boomers move further into retirement ages, I believe we will see diseases like arthritis, osteoporosis, digestive and gastrointestinal disease, and cancer changing the lives of our elderly more extensively than ever before. And I believe it will be largely a result of a lifestyle which allows highly processed foods, white flour, refined sugar, and food additives to constitute the bulk of it's food sources. If 30 is the new 20, then 60 will be the new 70.

In North America, we no longer face any type of food shortage. Nobody suffers because there are not enough dietary calories to go around. Many countries still face severe food shortage crises, but we have spent a great deal of ingenuity and effort to extend our food production capacity, and in North America we have done a very good job in producing enough. Now that we succeed so well in providing the voume of food our society needs, we are doing our society a disservice by allowing it to consume such a low quality of food.

Friday, February 17, 2006

rBGH: does it do a body good?

After reading Chris' latest post at One Finger..., I was inspired to write a related piece that had been on my mind lately.

Chris' piece was mainly on fraudulent research projects and the lack of an effective system to monitor & punish fraudulent researchers.

I'm a big proponent of raw & organic foods, and after recently getting on the bad side of some foul organic milk, I started some more research into how & when milk becomes tainted.

Normally, a cow will produce milk for approximately 12 weeks after giving birth. Farmers that produce commercially sold milk give their cattle rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) to double this period of milk production & get twice the milk from the same number of cattle. Cattle that are on rBGH are at an increased risk for mastitis, and an infected cow is likely to produce infected milk. Risk of producing infected milk rises by nearly 80%.

The FDA has approved the use of rBGH in cattle because studies have identify that 'no significant difference has been shown between milk from treated and untreated cows'.

Who conducted these studies? Mostly Monsanto enployed scientists. What else do we get from Monsanto? Prosilac, the drug containing the rBGH that milk farmers give their cattle.

As Chris points out, as there are not enough resources for us to investigate all of Dr. Chandra's research projects, there are not nearly enough resources for the FDA to conduct its own unbiased research on all the food additives & food related products that are introduced every year. Placing the burden of proof on the manufacturer of each product is a great solution. However, if we also allow the manufacturer to evaluate that proof then the system is useless. Monsanto (& every other food product manufacturer) is able to fund, design, staff & conduct all their own research, and then to interpret the results of that research themselves.

Having no way of consistently distinguishing fraudulent research from valid research not only harms the credibility of responsible scientists, the impact of fraudulent research puts every one of the general population at potential risk.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Say it ain't so Wayne

I think this whole Rick Tocchet gambling ring issue has gotten a little out of hand (in Canada anyhow).

I'm no lawyer & I don't think all the information that will determine the legality of this ortanization has come out yet. However, most of the articles & reports I've seen haven't been forcusing on the legality of the issue but the morality of it. Athletes shouldn't be gambling because it brings the sport into disrepute. Illegal gambling goes on all the time & is being uncovered all the time; it's the fact that athetes are gambling that makes this situation newsworthy.

If the hockey players involved have been gambling on NHL hockey, then they are certainly in the wrong, and are certainly bringing the integrity of the league, the sport, and their reputations into question. However, there doesn't seem to be any indication yet that any hockey bets were placed. I don't think involvement in the NHL gives a person any moral obligation not to gamble on the NFL, or MLS or any other non-hockey sports league.

I think the potential involvement of Wayne Gretzkey adds an extra emotional component for us Canadians. He's such an icon, and on such a pedestal that we hold The Great One to moral standards much higher than your average Canadian. We can't stand the idea that Wayne might be involved in some questionable activities. We make a moral judgement on the whole issue based on our perceptions & desires of Mr Gretzkey.

I love Wayne & I hope I can maintain my shining perception of him after this whole debacle is resolved, but I try not to judge him, nor the rest of those implicated, unfairly. The legality of the whole situation will come out in the courts, and as far as I'm concerned, as long as they've kept their hands off hockey, Tocchet & co. can have one less thing on their consciences.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

What energy crisis?

It seems that over the last couple of years the impending energy crisis is finally being recognized by the wider population (in North America anyhow).

SUV sales have plummetted, hybrid vehicle options are becoming widely available and are a huge selling point, the car companies leading the industry are the same ones offering the most competitive and available highly fuel efficient vehicles. Way to go North America.

I'm reminded of this because of two articles I read in the Globe & Mail this morning:

The first was on Joe Clark's company Clark Sustainable Resources (or some similar company name... I can't find it online) and how they're planning to log an old growth hardwood forest in Ghana. Since when is a old-growth forest a renewable resource? When the forest is underwater! I just thought this sounded more like the plot for Michael Bay's newest movie than a real resource concern. The project still has all the trappings of the old clear-cutting projects: we're going in and removing millions of tonnes of biomass, which will disrupt or destroy the existing ecosystem.

By now you may be wondering why an old growth forest is underwater in the first place. The Ghanan government made the lake by damming one of their rivers. If we're going to exonerate ourselves from the label of 'clearcutters' in any circumstance in which the forest is underwater, it doesn't work if we're the ones that drowned the forest to start with. The article didn't go into what Clark's intentions are with the project so I can't judge him on that, but if I were running a sustainable resource company, I can't imagine a good reason that a logging project would even show up on my radar.

Also, if nuclear energy is going to be the next big energy resource, finding new sources of nuclear materials had better be on our priority list because since the turn of the century our uranium resources have been depleting quickly as was the subject of the second energy article of the morning.

That was one of 4 articles I saw this morning focusing on how we're getting and using our energy and how it's impacting our lifestyle and environment. It's very heartening to see the attention that's been given to the issue lately, but it also seems that as we look further into the problem of feasible alternative energy sources, we end up with more questions than answers about how we'll heat our homes 30 years from now.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Finally, closure

After 8 years, I've finally got some closure on a debate my friends & I started in Mrs Hines' grade 10 chemistry class: is the little ledge on my hole-reinforcer dispenser a mechanism, if the reinforcers pop off the tape when I pull them out?

We can't really agree on who was arguing for which side at the time, but the debate has been resolved regardless: it is a mechanism!

Okay, so 8 years in the making, it might be a little anticlimactic.

Still, the best part is that those people I chose to spend my time with in grade 10 are the same people I chose to spend my time with in grade 4, and are the people I choose to spend my time with today.

Cheers to good friends, and to pulley mechanisms.