Weekend Compost Roundup

categories: Food Safety, Recommended Reading

Published July 11, 2009 @ 08:50AM PT

Raiding the internet garden for your intellectual delectation ...

- Nitrates, including those from fertilizers, may be an environmental trigger for Alzheimer’s, Diabetes and Parkinson's Disease. A nutritionist friend of my mom's had been warning our family for years about the dangers of nitrate preservatives in meats, guess she knew something.

- If the nitrate news wasn't bad enough, there is increasing worry about the endocrine disruption potential of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. The endocrine system consists of all your hormone-producing and reproductive glands, so messing with it is understandably serious.

- The meat industry has no desire to have their products further tested for safety, even when E. coli contamination sickens and even kills their customers. The most disturbing line in the article ... "Several weeks later, the recall was initiated."

- Latinos in the US are more likely to be hungry, that is, with nearly 20 percent living in 'food insecure' households, as they're called these days.

- More food policy news, wherein we learn that Whole Foods is going to start testing independently for the presence of GMOs in the brands it carries.

- In 'honor' of the destructive little frat boy punks who smashed a microwave left outside our building for freecycling (a popular custom in West Philly) last night, The Guardian posts this editorial on the resurgence of hand crafting and a culture of waste not, want not values.

- And speaking of screwed up things happening in Philly, there is apparently a club here that tried to enforce a whites-only policy at their pool because black and Latino kids were coming to use it for a summer camp. Seriously!? What f*ing year is this? I mean, sweet jeebus, but that is some embarassing bullsh*t.

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Comments (1)

"- The meat industry has no desire to have their products further tested for safety, even when E. coli contamination sickens and even kills their customers. The most disturbing line in the article ... 'Several weeks later, the recall was initiated.'"

It seems to always be that way -- that recalls are made public well after the products are likely to have been consumed -- unless they're sitting in the freezer.

Posted by Sue G. on 07/18/2009 @ 01:07AM PT
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Author

Natasha is an amateur eater with severe snarkolepsy and a c. 2002 blogging habit. She had a fabulous time studying ecological agriculture and policy at The Evergreen State College, and even did her homework while writing at various times for pacificviews.org, boomantribune.com, and mydd.com.