Local Sourcing, Global Distribution

I was travelling recently and saw a brand of granola bar with which I was unfamiliar, conveniently placed near the register as an impulse grab, and it worked. For $2.99 (plus whatever sales tax is in Reagan Airport) I was the proud owner of an 18 Rabbits brand granola bar. I knew nothing else about it beyond the orange wrapper, though as the cashier was giving my change, I did see that the bar's name was "Nibble a Sultana".

My amusement came about 2 minutes later when I sat down to try to find the ingredients list and look over the product more.  Apparently I was hungry and suggestible, as the tagline in the black box hooked me in solidly, "Why Not Go All The Way?"

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Food Subsidies vs Dietary Recommendations

I'm on a food kick at the moment, please bear with me. I'm currently reading Omnivore's Dilemma. I have only finished the first section which takes a look at the ways that corn takes a part in the US food chain. Keeping in mind how much corn gets directed into feeding cattle, chicken, and pigs, here's a nice visual of how government policy and subsidies don't match the dietary recommendations produced by that same government.


Graphic courtesy of an article on Celsias.

Sound Off! What do YOU think?

I haven't posted on this topic, waiting for the now released FDA approval of the use of meat and milk from cloned animals safe for human consumption. Thanks to Celsias for the reference to this quote from Michael Pollan in the NY Times.

“I think the bigger concern with cloned animals is not personal health.
It’s what will it take to keep a herd of genetically identical
chickens, horses or pigs alive? Sex and variation is what keeps us from
getting wiped out by microbes. If everything is genetically identical,
one disease can come along and wipe out the entire group. You will need
so many antibiotics and so much sanitation to keep a herd of these
creatures going. The bigger concern should be antibiotic resistance.” —
NY Times

I can't think of any way to "prove" that these products are not indistinguishable from non-cloned versions of the food, but something about this just doesn't fill me with reassurance. We already have monoculture crops with little genetic diversity, is the rest of the food supply about to follow in search of the perfect docile, high yielding milk or beef cattle. And how long till someone is tinkering with those clones to improve upon them, yet they'll still be indistinguishable.

For a long time, I thought nothing of GM foods, since humans have been practicing genetic control and hybridization since the origin of agriculture. (check out the history of corn for example). However, the more I learn about how GM foods are being developed and the traits that are being engineered, I'm much less sanguine about consuming any produce that is on offer at the market.

What do you think?

What's In Your Honey?

Thanks to Vanessa and her assistant Eva over at Green as a Thistle for investigating the differences between conventional and organic/raw honeys.

And for those with a kick about sustainable agriculture, go read the wikipedia article about how Honey Bees are not native to the Americas and are used to pollinate about 1/3 of the commercial food crops used in the US. This isn't to say that pollinators aren't necessary, just that industry has chosen to use a particular species, and is now at risk due to an unknown ailment in the species.

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