Tag Archives: food

what to eat, or you can take my cheese…WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!

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Harvard School of Public Health explains how the new U.S. government nutrition guidelines were developed without proper scientific oversight. The normal process is a transparent one where an expert panel reviews the latest evidence and submits a report with recommendations, supposedly without any bias or industry influence. (A cynic could probably look at these highly credentialed experts at leading universities and show that they receive research funding from industry and from government agencies being heavily lobbied by industry, because where else would they receive funding from? But they can at least channel any propaganda through some scientific and ethical guardrails you would hope.) USDA employees aren’t obligated to follow these recommendations to the letter, but they at least give them some weight and balance them against the economic and political factors. This time the panel submitted their report as usual, but USDA then cherry-picked a separate set of experts to produce a “supplemental report” without the transparency or adequate documentation. And the guidelines are then based on that. So they are not credible.

Even though the process was not credible, the consensus seems to be that the new guidelines are not really all that different. The main issues have to do with how they are being (badly) communicated, including an apparent emphasis on more saturated fat (which is not really what the technical guidelines say at all, but the concern is that very few people will drill into the technical guidelines). If I can try to clarify the saturated fat issue, it seems to be that a portion of the population that has no cholesterol issues may be able to increase saturated fat intake with no ill effects, but a portion of the population that has cholesterol issues will have more heart attacks and strokes and early death if they do so. Nutrition advice really should be more personal in an ideal world, but with public health guidelines, broad, simple, clear statements that benefit a majority of the public on balance seem to be the way to go. And replacing saturated fat with healthier plant-based fats and oils definitely seems to fall in this category. If people who are eating a lot of sugar and processed garbage were to replace it with meat, that might actually benefit them which may be what the guidelines are trying to say. Of course, they should be replacing it with fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, healthy fats and proteins. And I want to state that I support vegetarians and vegetarianism on ethical and environmental grounds. These considerations are missing entirely from the government’s concept of “nutrition”, and they should not be.

Another criticism I have always had of these guidelines is the use of weight, like eat so many grams of fat per day, or fat should be X% of your calories. Even those of us who might consider ourselves reasonably quantitative and logical think in volume or area, not weight. If you told me to aim for X tbsp of vegetable oil per day or Y slices of cheese, I could do that. Tell me Z grams or ounces, and I have no idea what to do, and then I am supposed to convert that to energy units (calories) and determine what percentage it is of my total calories for the day. But people don’t pay much attention to these guidelines anyway. They need to be getting this information from “trusted messengers” like teachers and doctors, and if these messengers had simple clear messages from the government that they themselves understood and trusted, they could just pass them along. Something like a point system that approximates the weights and calories involved could work.

I don’t think these guidelines have much short-term impact just because us laypeople don’t pay attention, and the professionals that could help us eat better don’t get clear communication materials out of these guidelines that they can work with.

But the longer-term damage here is the damage to the credibility of government health and medical advice. When I tell my kids “not to believe everything you hear and read on the internet”, I tell them to be aware of the source of the information. And one source I would have considered credible in the past is a major federal agency like USDA, CDC, etc. If major government, academic, and professional journalistic sources are telling you the same thing and it matches what that social media influencer or your friend are telling you, it’s still not 100% guaranteed to be true but you can start to have some confidence. But the credibility of federal agencies has really been significantly damaged by this administration and it may take a long time to recover, even if the past norms are ever put back into place.

December 2025 in Review

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2025 is in the books! I covered a number of “best of” posts by others in December so I will highlight a few of those below. I still have some “best of” posts queued up so they will continue to roll out in January.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Global progress on poverty reduction stalled around 2020. Gains in Asia are offset by losses in Africa. Meanwhile, gains in crop yields may have plateaued and are expected to decline as climate change drives increasingly extreme weather.

Most hopeful story: From Our World in Data, carbon dioxide emissions in the US and most developed countries peaked around 2006 and have been falling. Global internal combustion engine vehicles peaked around 2018, while electric vehicle sales are rising. Renewable electricity generation is growing exponentially as costs of existing technology fall, and there are some promising advances in materials science that could improve wind turbines and batteries. There is hope for fusion power, although it still seems to be the proverbial two decades away.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: BBC lists 25 most important scientific ideas of the 21st century. Highlights include various genetic technologies (stem cells that don’t come from babies, mRNA vaccines, tissue engineering for human organ transplants), attribution analysis, and of course large language models. Science magazine echoes some of these and adds gene editing, new antibiotics, and progress on heat-resistant rice strains as 2025 breakthroughs.

October 2024 in Review

Only half way through November – here is an “October in Review” post.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: When it comes to the #1 climate change impact on ordinary people, it’s the food stupid. (Dear reader, I’m not calling you stupid, and I don’t consider myself stupid, but somehow we individually intelligent humans are all managing to be stupid together.) This is the shit that is probably going to hit the fan first while we are shouting stupid slogans like “drill baby drill” (okay, if you are cheering when you hear a politician shout that you might not be stupid, but you are at least uninformed.)

Most hopeful story: AI, at least in theory, should be able to help us manage physical assets like buildings and infrastructure more efficiently. Humans still need to have some up-front vision of what we would like our infrastructure systems to look like in the long term, but then AI should be able to help us make optimal repair-replace-upgrade-abandon decisions that nudge the system toward the vision over time as individual components wear out.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Some explanations proposed for the very high cost of building infrastructure in the U.S. are (1) lack of competition in the construction industry and (2) political fragmentation leading to many relatively small agencies doing many relatively small projects. Some logical solutions then are to encourage the formation of more firms in the U.S., allow foreign firms and foreign workers to compete (hardly consistent with the current political climate!), and consolidate projects into a smaller number of much larger ones where economies of scale can be realized. There is some tension though between scale and competition, because the larger and more complex a project gets, the fewer bidders it will tend to attract who are willing to take the risk.

how to “rebalance your gut microbiome” after Halloween candy

We kind of know what we’re supposed to eat, but we still don’t do it consistently, right? At least, I’m speaking for myself here. It doesn’t hurt to see it written down in one place:

Fiber-rich foods such as whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, fruits and vegetables regulate digestion and nourish beneficial gut bacteria.

Polyphenol-rich foods such as dark chocolate, berries, red grapes, green tea and extra virgin olive oil help reduce inflammation and encourage the growth of healthy gut bacteria.

Unsaturated fats such as omega-3 fats, walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseed, avocados and fatty fish such as salmon can also support a healthy microbiome.

Fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir and miso help replenish beneficial bacteria and restore gut balance.

Thinking about the gut microbiome seems like a trendy new reason to eat the things we were supposed to be eating anyway, but if you eat this way you are probably getting pretty good overall nutrition while limiting calories to something reasonable. And without sending massive herds of animals to the slaughterhouse, which is better for the planet not to mention the animals (although the salmon might feel a bit singled out).

coming food and water shortages?

Something called the Global Commission on the Economics of Water says that “half of the world’s food production is at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly worsening water crisis threatens global agricultural systems”. Even if this group and these numbers turn out to be a bit alarmist, food really is where the climate change shit is likely to meet the fan. There is downward pressure on yields in tropical regions with increasing heat, partially offset on increased yields from longer growing seasons northern regions. Then there is increasing drought in important food-growing and food-consuming regions will be a big issue, and flooding will be an issue in others. This article doesn’t mention sea level rise, but eventually that is going to impact agriculture anywhere near a coastline or dependent on a coastal aquifer.

The poorest people and countries will be directly impacted by any food shortfall first, while the middle classes will feel the pinch at first in the form of higher prices. But longer term I am concerned that food shortages will drive mass migration and anti-immigrant political movements that could get very ugly. We are already seeing some precursors of this in the United States and Europe today. Whether climate change is a key driver today (and it is at least somewhat of a driver for some people aspiring to move from the Middle East to Europe and Central America and North America), it is only going to get worse.

Thank goodness we have had a robust and constructive debate around global food security policy during this year’s U.S. election cycle…oh…right, I just woke up from that dream again.

consumption of farmed fish exceeds consumption of wild fish for the first time

In 2022, aquaculture supplied a majority of seafood consumed by humans for the first time. But there are many gray areas – fish are hatched in tanks, released to the wild or pens located in natural water bodies, then caught again later. Farmed fish are fed wild-caught fish. And regardless, fish farming generates nutrient loads to natural waters.

I’ve fantasized about a system where earthworms are produced using compost from food scraps and other sustainable sources, then fed to fish and shellfish in tanks, then the nutrient-enriched water is used in fertilizer-free hydroponic agriculture, and finally the water is cycled through a wetland treatment system and used repeatedly. So the only input to this hypothetical system would be garbage (okay, and air and energy), and the outputs would be compost, fish, shellfish, and vegetables. I’m sure there are may practical challenges to this system, but in principle it should work. AI might be able to constantly monitor and make small adjustments to a system like this to keep it running efficiently.

February 2024 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The war on terror continues, and the propaganda umbrella has expanded to cover attacks on any group labeled as “Iran-backed”. Fentanyl gets an honorable mention, but affects mostly the poor and miserable whereas the war on terror threatens to immolate us all.

Most hopeful story: The people who are in charge of the USA’s nuclear weapons still believe in the ideals behind the founding of the country, at least more than the rest of us. Okay, this is lean times for hope, but seriously this at least buys us time to figure some stuff out.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I am not a great chef by any means, but all hail recipe websites, however pesky they may be, for helping me make edible food.

those darn recipe sites

This is some seriously dark humor. But ha ha, also so true. You have to scroll forever to get to your recipe, and at least for me the mobile version of any recipe site is infuriating because it constantly crashes. And yet…what is also true is recipe websites have made our world better. Instead of winging a recipe, or relying on one book you happen to have lying around, you can find out the ingredients, measurements, and even watch a video of how to make it well. You can even look at several versions of a dish, then wing it, and it will usually come out pretty well. And if you wing it in the future, it will come out better than if the recipe sites did not exist. So thank you, recipe sites.

October 2023 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Israel-Palestine. From the long-term grind of the failure to make peace and respect human rights, to the acute horror causing so much human suffering and death at this moment, to the specter of an Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran. It’s frightening and depressing – but of course it is not my feelings that matter here, but all the people who are suffering and going to suffer horribly because of this. The most positive thing I can think of to say is that when the dust settles, possibly years from now, maybe cooler heads will prevail on all sides. Honorable mention for most frightening story is the 2024 U.S. Presidential election starting to get more real – I am sure I and everyone else will have more to say about this in the coming (exactly one as I write this on November 5, 2023) year!

Most hopeful story: Flesh eating bacteria is becoming slightly more common, but seriously you are not that likely to get it. And this really was the most positive statement I could come up with this month!

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The generally accepted story of the “green revolution“, that humanity saved itself from widespread famine in the face of population growth by learning to dump massive quantities of fossil fuel-derived fertilizer on farm fields, may not be fully true.

what if everything we thought we knew about the green revolution is wrong?

The story I have always accepted about the green revolution is that the world avoided famine by learning to manufacture and dump enormous quantities of fossil fuel-derived synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on crops. This came at an enormous environmental price, but saved literally billions of people. To the extent I have ever questioned this, I have wondered if there are any good alternatives to this system going forward, given the world’s enormous human population, and whether the system is sustainable (in the dictionary sense of can we continue to feed the world’s population this way even accepting the high environmental price) for the long term.

This article questions the mainstream story of the green revolution. The tag line of this website/blog is “ecosocialism or barbarism”, so I am not saying it is 100% credible, I am just saying I found it thought-provoking and the ideas/claims are worth digging into.

Meanwhile, the government urged Indian farmers to grow nonfood export crops to earn foreign currency. They switched millions of acres from rice to jute production, and by the mid-1960s India was exporting agricultural products.

Borlaug’s miracle seeds were not inherently more productive than many Indian wheat varieties. Rather, they just responded more effectively to high doses of chemical fertilizer. But while India had abundant manure from its cows, it produced almost no chemical fertilizer. It had to start spending heavily to import and subsidize fertilizer.

India did see a wheat boom after 1967, but there is evidence that this expensive new input-intensive approach was not the main cause. Rather, the Indian government established a new policy of paying higher prices for wheat. Unsurprisingly, Indian farmers planted more wheat and less of other crops.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/10/11/how-not-to-feed-a-hungry-planet/

So even if we continue with the current system, will the planet’s biophysical limits push back at some point? Synthetic fertilizer contributes to global warming emissions both through the industrial process required to fix nitrogen gas from the air and from releases from farms (nitrogen dioxide, tractors, cows, livestock, etc. All other things being equal, heat drives down grain yields. And all other things are not equal, because drought, flooding, and salinization are in the mix. Then we have nutrient-laden runoff poisoning the oceans.

On the plus side, we hear there is a demographic transition that could at least reduce the growth rate in the number of new mouths to feed. This is partly due to improving living standards particularly for women and children, but improving living standards also mean people want to eat more meat and processed food and not just bowls of grain. Meat substitutes are coming along (Chicky Nobs anyone?), so there is a lot going on.

Food is where the climate change sh**, er, rubber meets the road.