Eat real food 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Johns Hopkins University says that most of the foods we eat--75% of the US food supply and over half the average adult's calories--are ultra-processed. That includes common foods like lunch meats, chips, boxed meals, instant oatmeal, energy drinks. “Many of these ultra-processed foods are intentionally designed by the food industry to be irresistible to consumers . . ." And they succeed. (How hard is it to eat just one chip?)

For the sake of our health, federal nutrition standards have been updated under the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The message they want us to hear is simple: "Eat real food." There's a new food pyramid in town:

It looks different from the old one. In short, we are encouraged to make protein, dairy, health fats, vegetables, fruits the biggest part of our diet, with grains a lesser part: "Prioritize fiber-rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates that displace real nutrition."

The colorful, bold new website? Built by National Design Studio, of course.

from Eat Real Food

Eat real food 1

Yummy fast food is so appealing that it's a "go-to" when we need a quick meal which everyone in the family will like. Americans eat more fast food on average than people of any other country. We also buy highly or ultra processed food at other places, including grocery stores, when we need that quick meal.

But do we make that choice for excellent nutrition? Nope. Ultra/highly processed foods (photo) or fast foods are convenient, but no one thinks they're the healthiest choice. We need something easy because we have hectic schedules, or because no one at home can cook.

Some say Americans are also the sickest. According to a 2020 report from the CDC, over half of us have chronic conditions or diseases. 

So, what should we eat instead? Our current federal government has taken a stand in favor of "Real Food," saying "highly processed food has hollowed out our health, driving obesity, diabetes, heart disease and early death."

In that case, what should we eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner?

from Eat Real Food

(cont'd tomorrow)

Fast food ↓

Is your favorite fast-food place in trouble? You probably wonder about that, if you see the take-out line of cars dwindling or the dining room looking old and shabby. Some old franchises just don't appeal to new generations.

Losing customers is one reason a business may fail. There are quite a few other reasons, including inflation. No business is untouched by inflation. Fast food may still be fast, but it's not so cheap anymore.

See if your favorites are in the video below:

McDonald's is on the list, but it still plans to expand with 8,000 new restaurants and some tweaking of the menu and prices. 

Pie & AI

Are you using artificial intelligence yet to aid you in day-to-day challenges and questions? Here's a down-to-earth story from my own life.

We spent Thanksgiving Day with beloved relatives. My part was simply to bring the pumpkin pie, which I've done many times and was happy to do. But this time I had a complicated math problem to figure out. So, of course, I asked Grok to give me a hand! 

Here's the problem I had. I prepared pumpkin filling according to a recipe for a deep dish 9-inch pie pan. But I was going to use a standard 9-inch pie pan. How much filling (measured in cups only) should I put in the smaller, standard 9-inch crust?

It took only seconds for Grok to answer fully, with sophisticated math and reasoning but in simple terms which were easy to execute. 

Good cattle? 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A scientific study was done on the raising of beef at White Oak Pastures to answer that question. Quantis, an environmental research firm, looked into all aspects of beef production at this farm and came to a stunning conclusion: their "grass-fed cattle sequester more carbon than they produce."

Far from adding to carbon emissions thought to produce climate change, beef production done this way is actually a benefit to the Earth.

By the way, climate activist Bill Gates no longer believes that climate change will wipe out humanity. He's joined the trend to de-escalate the fear of climate catastrophe. Good news.

from blog at White Oak Pastures

Good cattle?

White Oak Pastures stopped using the industrial model of cattle farming and switched to the regenerative model. Many animals - not just cattle - now live off his land and even improve it.

Microbial life thrives in the rich soil. Rain water is absorbed into the soil rather than running off of it, and much more carbon is sequestered in it. The regenerative model of farming is healthier for the animals and for the soil than the industrial model of farming.

But maybe you have heard Bill Gates' claim that cattle actually have a negative effect on the environment, that we should all eat manufactured lab meat rather than meat from real animals on real pastures. A different regenerative farmer thinks that's wrong. He claims that real cattle are not bad for the climate or environment.

So, which is it? Are cattle really a threat to the climate and the Earth, or not? 

(cont'd tomorrow)

US ag innovation 2

(cont'd from yesterday's 2021 re-post)

Vertical farm 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) can yield crops at 100x the per-square-foot productivity of a flatland farm by scaling vertically. They use much less water, no pesticides, and weather has no effect.

But light is available to traditional farmland for free in the form of sunlight. Not so for vertical trays or towers of lettuce indoors. Light, in fact, is expensive. Recent advances in LED lighting (a doubling of its efficiency coupled with a big drop in its cost) have cut the operational expenses of these farms to the point where they can now provide about 5% of all our produce.

In a mostly-free market like ours, individual customers choose which businesses will survive. They pick the product which serves their needs best and which is offered at a price they are willing to pay. That's the sweet spot these farmer-entrepreneurs want to find.

US ag innovation

America, like The Netherlands and a number of other countries, has been using alternative farming methods for years now.

Check out this post on "vertical farming" from four years ago:

Vertical farm 1

Over 330 million people in the United States are fed by our efficient, productive agricultural system. But the system has been changing as entrepreneurs figure out how to make it better. 

"Vertical farming" breaks traditional farming methods by going vertical (up) instead of horizontal (across the flat ground). These "farms" are located in city buildings where compact plants grow in high stacks of trays or in vertical towers.  

City stores and customers have access to produce that's much fresher than regular produce often coming from hundreds or thousands of miles away. A supply chain that long drains 45% of the produce's nutritional value.

photo

Water usage is an issue: global agriculture uses 70% of the world's fresh water. But vertical farms need much less, up to 95% less water than farms growing produce in the ground. That's a significant difference.

But vertical farming doesn't solve every problem. Trade-offs must be figured in if they are to survive.

(cont'd tomorrow)

from Inc.

Tiny ag exporter

The Netherlands is the size of the American state, New Jersey. But the country exports more food than any other country in the world, except the United States. 

How do they do that? The people were motivated after World War II to make food security a very high priority. When Nazis invaded and seized their country, farms were disrupted and about 20,000 people died of starvation. It made an impact.

The Dutch applied their human potential for solving problems to the issue of food security. Growing high quality tomatoes and peppers, for example, is highly mechanized. Water use is a fraction of water use on a more normal farm though crops are grown hydroponically.

"Inside large greenhouses, farmers grow millions of tons of tomatoes and peppers with the help of bees, robots, and custom LED lights."

Tesla Diner

With seating for 250 guests and a retro-futuristic menu, the Tesla Diner opened last week in Hollywood CA. 

Diner food is available, yes, and more than food. On the top floor you can view movies or Starship launches on very big screens, and of course you can charge your EV at the same time. There's an Optimus robot to observe under glass and an Optimus to serve popcorn.

"When you recharge your Rivian, does a girl on roller skates deliver free ice cream to you??"

Polyface farm 2

(cont'd from yesterdays post)

Re-post from 2017 

Polyface Farm has not applied a chemical since the family bought it in 1961, says Joel Salatin. They don't run things like a "normal" farm does today. Mimicking the pattern of nature, fertilizer and sanitation are supplied by the animals instead of by chemicals and antibiotics. 

The farm is open to visitors and cameras every day, and he claims they have no disease problems like those that plague industrial farms. Cows are moved to fresh pasture every day, chickens follow cows by 3 days, then turkeys. Pasture receives the time it needs to re-grow.

"It’s all a symbiotic, multi-speciated synergistic relationship-dense production model that yields far more per acre than industrial models. And it’s all aromatically and aesthetically romantic." That means it smells good and looks good. We were there last summer, and it's beautiful.

"On our farm we have cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, ducks, lambs, fruit, honeybees, forests--it's breathtaking choreography, always dancing," p. 119 of The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs.

Polyface Farm

Re-post from 2017

There's a beautiful farm in the Shenandoah Valley of northern Virginia. The passionate farmer, Joel Salatin, is known all over the world because his message resonates with almost everybody who loves nature, farming, or food . . also because he has oodles of personality and has written twelve books.

Polyface Farm is "the farm of many faces". They grow chickens, pigs, turkeys, cows, all the animals doing what they naturally do - unlike the typical industrial farm, which is a mono-culture of corn or chickens or something else.

Their methods are not ordinary, not like factory farms or CAFO farms. Animals are grown humanely on rich pastures which are sustainable. By the way, these pasture lands capture carbon like no factory farm can. The whole system produces healthy soil, healthy animals, nutritious food, and a beautiful environment.

It's called regenerative farming. 

Dinner cost 2024

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

That big 2022 spike in the cost of Thanksgiving dinner (yesterday's post) didn't continue, thankfully. Last year the cost declined a bit, and this year the cost declined a bit more. The Farm Bureau makes the point, however, that we're still paying more than we ever paid any time before 2022 (image).

 

How these average prices impact us has been figured out in a practical way by economist Gale Pooley. He compares average prices to average wages paid to workers at the time.

 

It's a good measure of what these prices actually mean to people at the time of the survey. He calls this measure of what it costs the "time price," meaning the amount of time an average worker would have to work to purchase this dinner.

Average wage in 1986 was $8.96 per hour, so a wage earner then paid for their 1986 dinner with about 3.2 hours of work. Today in 2024 the average wage is $30.48 per hour. So an average wage earner pays for that dinner today with about 1.9 hours of work.

In general terms, Americans are finding it more affordable to pay for that dinner than we did thirty-eight years ago. How did that happen? Innovation and improvement in agriculture, transport, manufacturing, all the businesses that touch our dinner in some way.

from Doomslayer

Dinner cost

American Farm Bureau surveys the cost of a typical Thanksgiving dinner prepared for ten guests every year. (Go here for the list of items; somehow they neglected green bean casserole.) Here is the history of that cost (image) since 2005:

These prices are not adjusted for inflation, so it's just the raw dollars' cost from each year's survey. You can see the inflation we all know has been happening since the pandemic started in 2020. Prices were almost flat from 2011 til 2020, a long time. The highest costs ever in the survey occurred two years ago.

But the survey was started long before 2005. When it began back in 1986, the raw cost of the dinner was $28.74. Since then the cost has risen to $58.08, a rise of 102% in 38 years.

What is the real impact on us? In tomorrow's post we'll see the way an economist has figured that out.

from Doomslayer

(cont'd tomorrow)

No turkey czar 2

Remember 2020? We were deep into the covid pandemic. Thanksgiving was different because we couldn't get together.

This re-post from four years ago is a good reminder that we easily obtain our holiday dinner turkey due to the "invisible hand" of the U.S. free market, not due to a bureaucratic Turkey Czar.

My niece invited the extended family to her apartment for Thanksgiving this year. She created a  Facebook event called "A Very 2020 Thanksgiving." Then she cancelled it because our governor's covid restrictions forbid multiple household gatherings. Yes, a very 2020 Thanksgiving.

My household had no turkey. But if you did, I think I know how you got it. You didn't order it special from a local shop or farm. You put it in your cart on a normal trip to the grocery store. You knew there would be plenty of reasonably priced turkeys for all who wanted one.

Thousands of people made that happen:

"Poultry farmers, of course, but also the feed distributors, and the truckers who brought it to the farm, not to mention the architect who designed the hatchery, the workmen who built it, and the technicians who keep it running. The bird had to be slaughtered and defeathered and inspected and transported and unloaded and wrapped and priced and displayed. The people who accomplished those tasks were supported in turn by armies of other people accomplishing other tasks — from refining the gasoline that fueled the trucks to manufacturing the plastic in which the meat was packaged."

There is no turkey czar with a master plan, issuing orders, forcing these workers to cooperate. But they do cooperate. They made thousands of smart decisions independently. Why? To create an income and take care of their loved ones. 

"Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance." 

Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand" of the free marketplace.

from the Boston Globe

NYC pays 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Migrants being housed in New York City hotels (photo) may receive pre-paid credit cards to buy food and baby supplies, a pilot program begun last March funded by the city through a controversial no-bid contract with a finance company which profits in some way.

 

They say that it saves the city millions of dollars, compared to their former policy of giving boxed meals (which received some complaints about the quality). The cards must be re-loaded every week at a value of about $350, for a monthly dole of about $1400. Recipients promise to use the cards only for authorized purchases.

Mayor Adams is ending the program at this year's end, going back to boxed meals. About $3.4 million was the total cost of this program to the city.

from CBS

Price control

One of our candidates for president of the United States says she wants to start controlling prices in this country. She claims that food would be cheaper, for example, because greedy evil companies in the food business would be forced by the government to sell at low prices.

Would that be good for the people? Here's a report from National Public Radio about the outcomes in one nation where that plan has been done by the socialist government for years.

photo

Venezuelan citizen Anny can shop only on certain days and at government-run stores. She is limited in how much she can buy. She must prove her identity. And, of course, many shelves are empty and food shortages are common.

NPR published this article in 2015, nine years ago. I doubt that it would be published today. Why not? Because of this: our political party on the left wants similar controls now, and NPR is a mouthpiece for the party's policies. This article would tell voters that price controls are a bad thing.

from NPR, "The Nightmare of Food Shopping in Venezuela"

If food is bad 3

(cont'd from last Wednesday's post)

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the main way the U.S. government gives food to the poor in America. What it's supposed to do: "SNAP provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being."

The aim is that the poor "can afford nutritious food"--so there are restrictions on which foods can be included under the program.

Given those priorities, you will be surprised to learn that: "Revenue from taxpayer-funded SNAP makes up nearly 20% of Coke’s annual US revenue, and 75% of SNAP goes to ultra-processed foods."

image

How does this happen? Lobbying by big food companies who convince authorities to promote their bad foods. It's one of the factors in this author's claim that our U.S. food systems are making us sick and fat.

from Substack

If food is bad 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

What this author means by "our food system is poisoning us," is not that food companies are evil or trying to kill their fellow Americans. He summarizes it this way: our system is "a web of policies and incentives that promote chemically intensive farming and ultra-processed foods."

Tufts University spent three years and millions of dollars on analyzing the nutrition of common foods. Their study produced the "Tufts food compass" and it's called "the most comprehensive and science-based nutrient profiling system to date.” Take a look:

image

"After 3 years of work and millions in NIH funding, the study found that Lucky Charms are healthier than whole milk, twice as healthy as beef, and better for you than a baked potato or cooked green peas."

It's real hard to take them seriously if this is the advice we get from experts about what foods are best for us to eat.

from Substack

If food is bad 1

"Americans have never been fatter. We’ve never been sicker." This author is not alone in his accusation. But it sounds overwrought. We want to see his evidence before we believe it, so here's a summary of his argument.

1) "In 1990, zero states had obesity rates above 20%. As of 2018, zero states had obesity rates below 20%." (The source for this data is not on the image, but compare to this Forbes article. The definition of obesity is the same, BMI of 30 or more.)

2) "We have the . . sickest population of Americans that has ever existed." (Here's a CDC article about the prevalence of chronic disease for comparison to his statement.)

He says that obesity and sickness were not common in the past: "Your grandparents’ generation grew up exercising less, smoking more, drinking regularly, and without any special diets. Yet, by and large, that generation was healthy, because their food system wasn’t poisoning them."

Yes, he claims that our food system is poisoning us. 

from Substack

(cont'd tomorrow)