The Food Chain

Ep. 1356: Carnivore, Herbivore or Omnivore?

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University, Author of Nourtishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Animal and Human Natural Nutrition)

One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.

Carnivore, herbivore or omnivore?

Back in the day…  Way back in the day… We were all hunters and gatherers.  That is to say, we hunted down and gathered up whatever nature had to offer, when nature wanted to offer it.

Then we got smart, and figured out how to manage the growth and development of plants.  That cleverness allowed us to corral plants and animals, and live in cities.

Today we hunt and gather foods grown and packaged thousands of miles away.  And we don’t even need mother nature nor her unpredictable offerings.  Today we can just swing by a convenience store, grab a plastic bag of something that tastes good, and walk out the door.

Given all this extra time we now have, we have the opportunity to decide how we should go about this business of eating, and often our discussion become very heated.  Those heated discussions lead us to ask…

Carnivore, herbivore or omnivore?

Ep. 1355: A Taste of Place

Fred Provenza, Author, Nourishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Animal & Human Environmental Nutrition)

Animals learn what to eat, and what not to eat, from their mothers – before they are born.  It is a taste they pick up in utero, as the mother eats her way across the landscape.  If such is the case, we wonder: 

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?

Researchers believe that humans have been using plants as medicine for over 1,650,000 years.  Birds, fish, insects, and other mammals are also known to self-medicate with plants when experiencing illness. 

In the last hundred years or so, we humans began industrializing our food chain, and now we no longer rely on plants to be our principal source of medicine.  And why should we?  After all, the grocers’ shelves are filled with potions and notions that claim to be able to cure just about every malady.  And so today we are free to roam the range all day, without having to eat a single plant.  

But then, we wonder:  Are we missing something by turning our backs on plants?  Is there some kind of magic that occurs when earth, sky and water come together to present us with a plant?  And we wonder: 

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?

 

Ep. 1354 Moms Versus Toxic Food

Zen Honeycutt, Founder & Executive Director of Moms Across America / Author of Unstoppable: Transforming Sickness and Struggle Into Triumph, Empowerment and a Celebration of Community

 

Over 80 million Americans, including over one-third of the nation’s children and adolescents, eat fast food every day. And some eat it multiple times a day! This leads us to ask:

Can America’s moms chase the dangerous chemicals out of fast food

Over 80 million Americans, including over one-third of the nation’s children and adolescents, eat fast food every day. And some eat it multiple times a day! This leads us to ask:

Can America’s moms chase the dangerous chemicals out of fast food?

Welcome to the 1354th edition of the Food Chain Radio Show... Or hey... Perhaps you’re among our friends down there in Valparaiso, who are tuned in to the Food Chain podcast at metrofarm.com or on Spotify... .

Well, whoever you are, and wherever you are, welcome aboard, I am Michael Olson, your host for this hour of What’s-Eating-What...

FOLKS...
Those who hike the backcountry of the Montana Rockies know to never corner a

mama grizzly with her cubs in tow. It’s best to give her a half hour notice that you’re coming – bang on a pan, ring a bell or sing a John Denver song with as much enthusiasm as you can muster.

The same could be said for most moms. If they perceive you to be a threat to their children, you might find your head becoming a landing pad for her cast iron skillet.

One very modern way to threaten the safety of children is to load up their fast food with harmful chemicals with names moms can’t pronounce. Of course, not all moms would consider those chemical additives to be a threat. In fact, many moms eat the fast foods themselves, and are willing to put up with the additives for the sake of convenience – or maybe they just don’t know the chemicals are in the fast food!

One mom knows, and she is as angry as the mother grizzly you never want to corner. Why is she so angry? Because she has discovered what is in the food served to children in 8 out of 10 of the nation’s most popular fast chains. And she leads us to ask:

Can America’s moms chase the dangerous chemicals out of fast food?

Contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Ep. 1353 A Fountain of Youth Diet

Dr. Michael Greger, Author, How Not To Age  

(Diet, Nutrition, Aging)

We have been searching for that proverbial fountain of youth for as long as we have been capable of searching.  Though we have searched in many places, and spent many fortunes doing so, we still grow old.  This leads us to ask: 

Can we maintain what we have, so we can retain what we want?

As we grow old, we begin resisting the fact that we are growing old.  And so we begin our resistance by searching for a fountain of youth in a package.   

According to one industry group, 60 percent of those above the age of 65 buy products that promise to maintain one’s youth, so one can retain one’s youthfulness.   Solve the problem, sell the product.

However, few if any, anti-aging products do what they promise to do.  As described in Dr. Michael Greger book How Not To Age, many of these products exploit scientific breakthroughs to package fraudulent anti-aging products. 

For example, nineteenth-century advances in magnetism led to ads asserting, “[t]here need not be a sick person in America . . . if our Magneto-Conservative Underwear would become a part of the wardrobe of every lady and gentleman,” Less comically, more tragically, public interest in Marie Curie’s work led to a range of radioactive products said to “revitalize” and “energize.” As one Wall Street Journal headline read, “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.”16

Today, we can see these so-called “scienceploitation” cures being sold on almost every street corner, but as the headline in Scientific American reads, there is “No Truth to the Fountain of Youth.

And so today we pause to ask:

Can we eat to maintain and retain the youthfulness what we want?

Contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

 

Ep. 1351: Farming for the Certified Farmers Markets

Allen Moy, Executive Director, Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association  

(California's Certified Farmers Markets)

 

They say, in the United States food travels an average of 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it is eaten. That leads us to ask: 

Can city dwellers close the distance to their food?

We begin with Michael Olson’s Second Law of the Food Chain:  The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in our food.

If, as is said, the average food in the United States travels 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it is eaten, then we city people simply do not have much control over what is in our food.

Let’s consider, by way of example, shopping for some garlic, which can easily be found for sale in most every city grocery store.   Approximately one-third of all garlic now being sold in the United States was grown by farmers over 5,000 miles away.  The reason so much of the garlic we eat comes from so far away is that it costs less to grow it there, and ship it here.

When we shop for garlic, and see that the garlic that came from far away costs much less than the garlic that was grown here, we have to wonder – being ever the food skeptics – what is in the garlic that makes it so cheap?

We do have the intentions of those distant farmers who are growing our garlic.  We also have all kinds of certifiers and inspectors with their rules and regulations that stand between those farmers and us. 

How much can those garlic farmers care about the people who will be eating their garlic 5,000 miles away?  What if those farmers decide that it would cost less to dry the garlic over a coal burning fire, even though the smoke from that fire would contaminate the garlic with mercury?  If the coal-burning fire could save time and money, and make the garlic less expensive, and more competitive, would it not be a tempting production shortcut?

How much can all those food safety guardians with all their rules and regulations really protect against all the money that can be made with distance?

Those of us who live in the city have two choices when shopping for food.  We can buy the cheap food that comes from far away, or we can find ways to close the distance to our food.  And so we ask:

Where can city people find food with its farmer’s face on it?

Ep. 1350: Farming Green Hydrogen

Mike Keller, Michael A. Keller Associates

Turning ice into hydrogen fuel

They say, if we can get to the South Pole of the Moon, we can convert some of the frozen water we find there into rocket fuel that will take us on to the next best place.  That leads us to ask: 

Can hydrogen be farmed to fuel our future?

Topics include the prospects of turning water into rocket fuel; the difference between blue and green hydrogen; and how hydrogen might be used to clean the environment and fuel the economy.

 

contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1349 Farming Community

TOM BROZ, FARMER OF THE YEAR, LIFE EARTH FARM  

Community Supported Agriculture

Community is where everybody works together today to ensure that everybody can eat tomorrow.  This thought leads us to ask:

How does one farm community?

A while ago, I had a consulting contract on the island nation of Cyprus.  The task was to find a crop with an economy sufficient to repopulate an agricultural plateau near the village of Akourdahleia, that had been depopulated by the jobs available in coastal casinos.

As I strolled the plateau with my hosts we came upon a village of Greeks happily harvesting their grapes across the way.  Though they were too far away to hear what was being said, we could easily hear their laughter and sense their joy at being engaged at the task at hand.  It was a living picture straight out of the Bible!  “This,” my host said, “is what we want to bring back to Cyprus.”

I recently heard that same laughter and sensed that same joy while strolling the grounds of Live Earth Farm in Watsonville, California, and have been endeavoring to capture its essence with a three-part Food Chain series on what I call “Contrary Farming.”  By contrary, I simply mean in opposition to the convention of the day.

The first show in the series, “Farming Children,” featured Jessica Ridgeway and the Farm Discovery Program, which brings children – many children – to the farm so they can reach down to the earth and harvest a living food.

The second show, “Farming Nature,” featured Jo Ann Baumgartner from Wild Farm Alliance and Sam Earnshaw from Hedgerows Unlimited, who, like modern day Johnny Appleseeds, travel around the countryside to bring nature, and her wildlife, back to the farm.

As you can see, both of these shows feature a contrariness to the industrial model of farming that makes one smile.  And both also find a home in today’s show, “Farming Community,” in which we will ask:

How does one farm community?

contact: www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1348 Farming Nature

JO ANN BAUMGARTNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WILD FARM ALLIANCE  &

SAM EARNSHAW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HEDGEROWS UNLIMITED 

 

When an outbreak of Ecoli killed three people and sickened 200 others a couple of decades ago, those in charge of food safety began discouraging the existence of wildlife on farms. This leads us to ask:

Should wild life be allowed back on farms?

Back in 2006, a multistate outbreak of E. Coli O157:H7 killed three and sickened an additional 202. The source of that E. Coli was found to be spinach from California, and the cause was believed to be contamination from the spinach farm.

Consumers stopped buying the spinach, as well as other leafy green produce, and so growers had to leave their precious greens to go to seed in the fields.

Though the contaminated spinach came from one grower, the entire leafy greens industry suffered its consequences.  As a result of their suffering, and threats from the government, growers got together and formed the California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, which in effect, laid down the law on how member growers could tend to their leafy greens.

Consequent to the implementation of the Agreement, growers began fencing off their fields from all the wild things in nature that might harbor E Coli.  Today, many of those farms are as barren of extraneous life as can be made possible.  No deer… no skunks… no birds… no anything!

But wait… Not everyone thinks that farms need to be without life.  In fact, some point in the other direction and claim that farms should foster the growth of as much life as possible.  And these contrarians lead us to ask:

Should wild life be allowed back on farms?