Category Archives: Food

Energy, Food, Security

Walk, Don’t Run. Drive, Don’t Walk.

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Energy consumption and emission is the focus of this mind-bending, paradigm-shifting article in the Times Online.

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Similarly, it seems an airline mogul has been pointing out that beef eaters are a bigger problem for the environment than those who fly:

Michael O’Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world’s cattle. “The way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows,” Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. “I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.”

Statistics are a funny thing, as everyone from Groucho Marx to Mark Twain has famously observed. The question is, however, what really impacts people in their daily life.

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.”

And to think that kids who sat on the couch and ate bowls of cereal were derided for not keeping a healthy lifestyle. Little did we know they were really trying to save the planet…if you don’t count the marathon television and video game sessions.

Energy, Food, Security

The Challenges of a Bio-Refinery Model

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The problem with starting a company that is supposed to be good for the environment is that the owners have a big moral dilemma (e.g. a market opportunity) when faced with the waste (e.g. byproducts) they produce.

The NYT reports that industrial chemists in America are seeking ways to make profit from biofuel beyond its primary use. Scientists are working on disposal alternatives for fuel byproduct:

In another lab at Iowa State, Robert C. Brown is using distillers’ dry grain —a main byproduct of corn ethanol that is largely sold as animal feed — to produce hydrogen and a compound called PHA. Mr. Brown hopes his version of PHA, which is biodegradable, could be used for surgical gowns and gloves that must now be disposed of as medical waste.

Ethanol as a fuel is as much a dead-end for our general welfare as corn-syrup is for food, but don’t try to tell that to an industry trying to squeeze every penny out of crops while externalizing risks. Concerns for the welfare of the planet, let alone a fellow human, are not the usual rules of game here. The value system underlying the research is based on the much older highly-industrialized model of finding profit in areas without regulation (e.g. to ensure health). The news these days usually attributes this kind of risky behavior to China , rather than right in our own back yard.

The price of glycerol, now 20 to 50 cents a pound, could drop as low as 5 cents a pound as biodiesel production increases.

Mr. Kraus [professor of chemistry at Iowa State] said the higher quality glycerol made with the new process could command a much higher price. “What we see,” he said, “is an opportunity to make something that might cost 80 cents a pound.”

Money talks. In sum, it appears that the bio-fuel innovators are starting to try and emulate the model they think of as successful:

This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, where fuel is just one of many profitable products.

“Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels,” said Kenneth F. Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end.”

The problem with this is that the petroleum industry model is unhealthy. It puts the environment, including human health, low on the list of priorities for success.

In an emerging market where health and the environment threaten to be a top priority, a big paradigm shift for the vision of a bio-refinery seems like a sensible conclusion. More than one product, indeed, but waste disposal should have a whole new meaning. Or as the Director of Beijing Olympics cycling events put it recently

[President of the International Olympic Committee] Rogge’s comment reminds us that we have to work harder to fix environmental problems.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. After billions have been spent, pollution and waste are still a problem, which means a market opportunity of many more billions ahead.

Food, History, Security

Omega-3 and Intelligence

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Not to be confused with Intelligent Design. This has to be one of the most entertaining and informative articles I have read in a while.

My only complaint is that the title could have been a tad more clever. “The Government’s Big Fish Story” just doesn’t have the same ring as “The Government’s Fishy Story”, for example. Leave it to the British press to have a more refined sense of humor.

Anyway, here is a good example of the issue(s) at hand:

So far, the Food and Drug Administration has issued only a tepid statement that “supportive but not conclusive research” indicates that DHA and EPA are good for your heart. And the Food and Nutrition Board—the scientific panel that, funded mostly by federal money, creates Daily Recommended Intakes (DRI) for essential nutrients—has shrugged off the issue altogether. It crowned ALA essential, but ignored DHA and EPA. “We didn’t feel the data were sufficient,” says Linda Meyers, Ph.D., director of the board. It’s precisely the sort of comment that leaves omega-3 researchers flabbergasted.

“They’re in the Dark Ages,” says Bill Lands, Ph.D., a retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) biochemist who has written extensively about omega-3s and is widely considered the field’s elder statesman. “The science was very clear 15 years ago. But they’re not interested in science. All they’re interested in doing is preserving the status quo, when they could be saving lives.”

We all know the FDA is a bunch of loonies. They have banned Vegemite on a stupid technicality, while using another technicality to allow harmful color additives into widespread use in America. It seems like they are in the pocket of big industry to the point where they would only approve Omega-3 if it was associated somehow with a giant government lobby group. Apparently no such lobby group exists, and thus the topic is “lacking data” (e.g. campaign contributions) and has become “controversial” (e.g. open for bidding).

But wait, there is more to the story than just the health and welfare conspiracy theory. Evolution, speaking of controversy, is also up for discussion.

I stare down at the fish lying on the laboratory countertop. It stares back with one dead eye. Hours ago it was swimming in the Chesapeake Bay with 2 million of its brethren; tomorrow they’ll all be squashed in a giant screw press to make 10,000 gallons of oil destined for fish-oil capsules and omega-3 fortified foods.

[…]

Bony, oily, and without much meat, the menhaden isn’t even considered edible by most people. And yet, hidden inside is a substance that some anthropologists claim was critical to our very evolution; without it, they say, we’d still have brains like chimps’.

Ask most scientists and they’ll tell you that Stone Age man evolved on the African savannas, developing his big, complex brain as a result of all the animals he’d hunt and eat. But most scientists would be wrong, according to Michael Crawford, Ph.D., who, along with researchers from the USDA, conducted a 2002 study challenging the prevailing theory, which he calls “a load of rubbish.”

Uh, oh. I hear the footsteps of angry fundamentalist religious leaders coming to dispute the notion that man has evolved. Perhaps the Catholics will be the least vigilant as this story might have the side effect of driving people to return to Friday fish services.

On to the next issue (could you see this one coming?), it seems the pharmaceutical and agriculture industries also have a hand in all this:

Changing agricultural techniques have worsened the situation. The natural omega-3 contents of meat, milk, and eggs have plummeted now that our livestock no longer graze on ALA-rich grass, instead consuming corn, wheat, and other grains that are loaded with another group of fatty acids, called omega-6s. In fact, the disappearance of omega-3s from our diets has coincided with an upsurge in omega-6s, mainly in the form of cereals, grains, and processed foods made with hydrogenated oils. Dr. Simopoulos estimates that in caveman days, we ate an equal amount of the two types, but that the average American now eats 16 times more omega-6s than omega-3s.

“That’s what’s really killing us,” says Lands. “The balance of 6 and 3 got out of whack.” These two types of fatty acids have a biochemical yin-and-yang relationship: While omega-3s reduce our body’s inflammation response, omega-6s encourage it. Each fatty acid is crucial: For example, if your inflammatory response is too weak, you won’t be able to fight infection properly. And in theory, the push and pull should create perfect balance. Instead, the excess of omega-6s in our diets may have left us in a perpetual state of inflammation.

“The reason you take ibuprofen and Celebrex and all those nonsteroidals is to prevent the manufacture of these inflammation molecules in the first place,” says Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., a neuroscientist with the NIH. “The mental picture I have is of the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, where the finger is expensive pharmacology, and the flood is omega-6s.”

Great stuff. Security, food, history…all rolled into one. And they did not even get to the part where the solution, more fish or equivalent natural sources of oil, are threatened by environmental abuse. Instead they give hope that “molecularly distilled” versions may provide a safe future for the food industry.

Food, History, Poetry, Security

WWI Spirits Unearthed in Gradesnica

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Soon after I wrote about the potential value of beer to Vikings (greater than gold?), I find a story extolling a historic French soldier brandy find as the “nectar of the gods”.

Farmers in Gradesnica have unearthed what they say are cases of spirits from trenches once used by French soldiers.

Spirits of those killed by artillery. This Eau de vie gets a new lease on life.

Valued at thousands of euros a bottle, it is said to have survived a German shell strike that killed many soldiers.

The first case of 15 bottles was reportedly unearthed by villagers in the south of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia about 15 years ago.

Several further batches, containing about 12 bottles each, are said to have been found in subsequent digs.

What drives the price so high? Rarity, surely. It also might be something like the phenomenon of product cycles, as Wikipedia suggests the modern value of Cognac sales is linked to interest from young Americans.

Many have credited hip-hop culture as the savior of cognac sales in the USA; after nearly floundering in 1998 due to economic crisis in Asia—cognac’s #1 export market at the time…

Reminds me of the time I discovered no one in Milwaukee would be caught dead drinking a particular drink if their parents enjoyed one, but they were more than happy to try it if it was from their grandparents’ or older generation. The old stuff becomes new again eventually.

Incidentally, if you are ever lucky enough to find a tender who still keeps a pot of Door County cherry mash with spices melting in a pot behind the bar, I highly recommend ordering an Old Fashioned. Soda-water, if they ask. Don’t believe anyone who says a cube of sugar or even a maraschino cherry is involved in achieving the appropriate flavor. They might as well call grape juice with aspartame a variety of brandy.

Granted, the Wikipedia is referring to American sales, and surely the interest in the Gradesnica bottles will be driven by those painfully aware of the region’s social as well as military history, or experts in the trade of fine spirits. But on the other hand, with all the silly XO, VS and VSS labels on cognac today, I wonder if a new label will appear to commemorates the survival of the French cache as the ultimate in exclusivity. The marketing for something like this is superfluous, but perhaps someone will still propose a label or even a brand.

Maybe we can expect Busta Rhymes to come out with a Courvoisier remix — “pass the Gradesnica” — with the sensibilities of the Clash’s Spanish Bombs. Andalucia is known for an Eau de vie made from aniseed. Hmmm, I see a theme here…battle booze.