A new study indicates preschoolers are eating more fruits and veggies... but often, they're also consuming too many calories by drinking lots of juice. (Photo by Tommy Johansen)
Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago, according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago,
according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and
more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Penn State University researcher Sibylle Kranz says years of public health messages about
the benefits of fruits and vegetables appear to have paid off. She says preschool children
are indeed eating significantly more fruits, vegetables and grains than they were in 1977
when her study began.
But they’re also eating about 200 more calories a day, and a lot of those calories are
coming in the form of juice. Kranz says health officials may need to tweak their message
so parents know just how much juice a day is okay for their two to five year olds.
“Children should not consume more than six ounces of fruit juice – and this is, we’re
talking about 100% fruit juice.”
Kranz says kids who drink more than six ounces of juice a day could run the risk of
becoming overweight. And she says the juice is probably replacing more nutritious foods
like milk.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the curb. But not everyone can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… that choice could be affecting your health:
Transcript
For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the curb. But not everyone
can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… that choice could be affecting your health:
(sound of garbage trucks)
It’s not been that long ago that people everywhere but in the largest cities burned their trash in a
barrel or pit in the backyard. That’s not as often the case these days. Garbage trucks make their
appointed rounds in cities, small towns, and in some rural areas. But they don’t pick up
everywhere… or if they do offer service… it’s much more expensive because the pick-up is so far
out in the country.
Roger Booth lives in a rural area in southwestern Illinois. He says garbage pick-up is not an
option for him.
“Well, we burn it and then bury the ashes and things. We don’t have a good way to dispose of it
any other method. The cost of having pick up arranged is prohibitive.”
He burns his garbage in the backyard. Booth separates bottles and tin cans from the rest of the
garbage so that he doesn’t end up with broken glass and rusty cans scattered around. A lot of
people don’t do that much. They burn everything in a barrel and then dump the ashes and scrap in
a gully… or just burn everything in a gully or ditch. Booth says that’s the way most folks take
care of the garbage in the area. No one talks about the smoke or fumes put off by the burning.
“I haven’t ever thought much about that. So, I don’t suppose that I have any real concerns at this
moment. I don’t think I’m doing anything different than most people.”
And that’s what many people who burn their garbage say. A survey conducted by the Zenith
Research Group found that people in areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota who didn’t have regular
garbage collection believe burning is a viable option to get rid of their household and yard waste.
Nearly 45-percent of them indicated it was “convenient,” which the researchers interpreted to
mean that even if garbage pick-up were available, the residents might find more convenient to
keep burning their garbage.
While some cities and more densely populated areas have restricted backyard burning… state
governments in all but a handful of states in New England and the state of California have been
reluctant to put a lot of restrictions on burning barrels.
But backyard burning can be more than just a stinky nuisance. Burning garbage can bring
together all the conditions necessary to produce dioxin. Dioxin is a catch-all term that includes
several toxic compounds. The extent of their impact on human health is not completely known…
but they’re considered to be very dangerous to human health in the tiniest amounts.
Since most of the backyard burning is done in rural areas, livestock are exposed to dioxin and it
gets into the meat and milk that we consume.
John Giesy is with the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center at Michigan State University.
He says as people burn garbage, the dioxins are emitted in the fumes and smoke…
“So, when they fall out onto the ground or onto the grass, then animals eat those plants and it
becomes part of their diet. And ultimately it’s accumulated into the animal and it’s stored as fat.
Now, particularly with dairy cattle, one of the concerns about being exposed to dioxins is that
then when they’re producing milk, milk has fat it in, it has butter fat in it. And the dioxins go
along with that.”
So, every time we drink milk, snack on cheese, or eat a hamburger, we risk getting a small dose
of dioxin. Beyond that, vegetables from a farmer’s garden, if not properly washed, could be
coated with dioxins. And even a miniscule amount of dioxin is risky.
John Giesy says chemical manufacturing plants and other sources of man-made dioxin have been
cleaned up. Now, backyard burning is the biggest source of dioxins produced by humans.
“So, now as we continue to strive to reduce the amount of dioxins in the environment and in our
food, this is one place where we can make an impact.”
“That’s the concern. That’s the concern, is that it’s the largest remaining source of produced
dioxin.”
Dan Hopkins is with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says, collectively, backyard
burning produces 50 times the amount of dioxin as all the large and medium sized incinerators
across the nation combined. That’s because the incinerators burn hot enough to destroy dioxins
and have pollution control devices to limit emissions. Backyard burning doesn’t get nearly that
hot and the smoke and fumes spread unchecked.
The EPA wants communities to take the problem of backyard burning seriously. It wants state
and local governments to do more to make people aware that backyard burning is contaminating
our food and encourage them to find other ways to get rid of their garbage…
“(It) probably won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, but by exchanging successful efforts that other
communities have had, we should be able to help communities fashion approaches that have a
high probability of success.”
But… public education efforts are expensive… and often they don’t reach the people who most
need to hear them. The EPA is not optimistic that it will see everyone stop burning their garbage.
It’s not even a goal. The agency is just hoping enough people will find other ways to get rid of
their trash that the overall dioxin level in food is reduced.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
There’s an effort underway to get people to stop burning their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that experts have found that toxins from backyard burning can get into food:
Transcript
There’s an effort underway to get people to stop burning their trash. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that experts have found that toxins from backyard burning
can get into food:
Often, garbage truck routes don’t include rural areas, so many people there just burn their trash.
But that can lead to toxins getting into food. John Giesy is with the National Food Safety and
Toxicology Center at Michigan State University.
“Well, when we burn waste in a barrel, the dioxins will be in the gas and in the particulates. And,
so, they go downwind, but those particulates ultimately fall out.”
And they end up on the grass that livestock eat. We end up taking in the dioxins in the meat and
milk products that we eat. Because backyard burning is the largest human-caused source of
dioxins, the Environmental Protection Agency is working with states and communities to try to
get people to get rid of their trash some other way.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Most dairy farmers around the Great Lakes region milk their cows all year long. It brings in a steady paycheck and ensures a steady flow of milk to manufacturing plants. Now a small but growing number of farmers give their cows a break during the coldest months. It’s a technique called seasonal dairying. Its supporters say it’s gentler on the cows. It’s easier on the environment. And it gives small dairy farms a future in an industry that’s growing ever bigger. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
Most dairy farmers around the Great Lakes region milk their cows all year long. It brings in a steady
paycheck and ensures a steady flow of milk to manufacturing plants. Now a small but growing
number of farmers give their cows a break during the coldest months. It’s a technique called seasonal
dairying. Its supporters say it’s gentler on the cows. It’s easier on the environment. And it gives
small dairy farms a future in an industry that’s growing ever bigger. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
It’s a chilly winter day in the northern New York town of Denmark. Kevin Sullivan strides into
the barn where his 60 cows munch quietly on their day’s feed.
“In the winter we’re pretty much conventional farmers.”
On conventional farms, cows stay in the barn all year long. The farmer trucks hay and grain into
the barn to feed them. But Sullivan is a grazier. His cows munch on pasture grasses from April
to October. And when they’re inside for winter, he “dries the cows off” for a couple months.
That means they don’t give milk until they start calving in the spring. Sullivan says he first read
an article about what’s called “seasonal dairying” ten years ago.
“I started thinking about it then and I kinda ran it past my wife and she laughed at me and said
‘y’know it’ll never work.'”
The problem with the seasonal system is dairy farmers are used to relying on their monthly milk
check to pay bills. No milk, no check. That took some getting used to.
“The first year was kind of scary ’cause you don’t really have any income for a couple months in
the wintertime but after we made it through that first year, I knew it was going to work pretty
good.”
The reason it works is outside.
Sullivan zips up his jacket and walks out to the barnyard. Unlike most farms, there’s not much
mud, just acres of thick green grass peeking through a dusting of snow.
“Once you get a sod built up like this, you can bring out your cows, I mean, the cows could be out
here today and they’re not going to hurt this pasture at all.”
Grazing is the key to seasonal dairying. You time when your cows give birth to calves and
produce their best milk to coincide with spring and early summer. That’s when pastures grow
the most nutritious grass. Sullivan says it’s a cow’s natural cycle.
Cows were made to eat grass. A lot of people forgot about that, I guess. I would say the two biggest things that
harm a cow is grain and concrete and a lot of guys push grain and the cows are on concrete all
the while but by kicking the cows outside and letting them be on the sod and letting them eat the
grass, you can get rid of about 90% of your cow problems.
In the pasture, they’re less susceptible to foot diseases than cows in a muddy barnyard. And
because grazing cows roam many acres, their manure is spread naturally and fertilizes the land.
A grazing farm typically has less erosion, uses fewer pesticides, and is less polluting to nearby
creeks than a conventional farm, where cows are confined to a small area and the farmer has to
dispose of tons of manure.
The method is easier on the animals and the land. And often easier on the farmer’s wallet too. A
study by the American Farmland Trust finds seasonal dairying can be an economically viable
alternative to conventional farming, especially for small farms like Kevin Sullivan’s. But only one or two percent of farms in the U.S. are seasonal. Brian Petrucci directs the American Farmland
Trust’s farm division.
“At some point in the last twenty years, it was decided that the only way to farm in this country was to get big or
get out.”
Under the tutelage of Ag school extensions, farm herds have swelled from the hundreds to the
tens of thousands. State and federal environmental agencies have had to create new regulations to
contain all the waste the farms generate. At the same time, thousands of small farms have gone
out of business.
Petrucci says seasonal dairying can help reverse the trend. But it’s slow to catch on in part
because the agriculture industry – the companies that supply the farmers – often doesn’t benefit.
“Dairy graziers and others who are operating on a smaller scale are not the consumers of feed
stuffs and farm supplies and farm equipment that the larger farmers are.”
There’s another reason, says Pete Barney of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in St. Lawrence
County, New York. It’s rooted in dairy history in this country.
“Milk plants, milk companies wanted a year-round, constant supply of milk, so now farmers bred
animals so they were coming in periodically throughout the whole year so they could keep a constant
flow of milk going.”
A different system can work on a large scale. Brian Petrucci says in some countries all dairy
farms are seasonal and grazing operations.
Back on the Sullivan farm, Kevin Sullivan says seasonal dairying is also good for his family. The
two months off from milking means more time for his kids, even a vacation, a rare thing among
dairy farmers.
“Farming is, you know, daily grind. Most people get locked into it and they don’t realize that there is
something besides going to the barn and doing chores every day. It’s really kind of opened up
our life a little bit to enjoy our hobbies in the wintertime at least.”
Sullivan’s business is good. He’s invested in an ice cream factory with some neighbors. He says
thanks to grazing and seasonal dairying, his fields are clean and green, his cows are healthy, and
his farm is thriving when so many other small farms are up for sale.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Most dairy farmers around the Great Lakes region milk their cows all year long. It brings in a steady paycheck and ensures a steady flow of milk to manufacturing plants. Now a small but growing number of farmers give their cows a break during the coldest months. It’s a technique called seasonal dairying. Its supporters say it’s gentler on the cows, it’s easier on the environment, and it gives small dairy farms a future in an industry that’s growing ever bigger. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
Most dairy farmers around the Great Lakes region milk their cows all year long. It brings in a steady
paycheck and ensures a steady flow of milk to manufacturing plants. Now a small but growing
number of farmers give their cows a break during the coldest months. It’s a technique called seasonal
dairying. Its supporters say it’s gentler on the cows. It’s easier on the environment. And it gives
small dairy farms a future in an industry that’s growing ever bigger. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
It’s a chilly winter day in the northern New York town of Denmark. Kevin Sullivan strides into
the barn where his 60 cows munch quietly on their day’s feed.
“In the winter we’re pretty much conventional farmers.”
On conventional farms, cows stay in the barn all year long. The farmer trucks hay and grain into
the barn to feed them. But Sullivan is a grazier. His cows munch on pasture grasses from April
to October. And when they’re inside for winter, he “dries the cows off” for a couple months.
That means they don’t give milk until they start calving in the spring. Sullivan says he first read
an article about what’s called “seasonal dairying” ten years ago.
“I started thinking about it then and I kinda ran it past my wife and she laughed at me and said
‘y’know it’ll never work.'”
The problem with the seasonal system is dairy farmers are used to relying on their monthly milk
check to pay bills. No milk, no check. That took some getting used to.
“The first year was kind of scary ’cause you don’t really have any income for a couple months in
the wintertime but after we made it through that first year, I knew it was going to work pretty
good.”
The reason it works is outside.
Sullivan zips up his jacket and walks out to the barnyard. Unlike most farms, there’s not much
mud, just acres of thick green grass peeking through a dusting of snow.
“Once you get a sod built up like this, you can bring out your cows, I mean, the cows could be out
here today and they’re not going to hurt this pasture at all.”
Grazing is the key to seasonal dairying. You time when your cows give birth to calves and
produce their best milk to coincide with spring and early summer. That’s when pastures grow
the most nutritious grass. Sullivan says it’s a cow’s natural cycle.
“Cows were made to eat grass. A lot of people forgot about that, I guess. I would say the two biggest things that
harm a cow is grain and concrete and a lot of guys push grain and the cows are on concrete all
the while but by kicking the cows outside and letting them be on the sod and letting them eat the
grass, you can get rid of about 90% of your cow problems.”
In the pasture, they’re less susceptible to foot diseases than cows in a muddy barnyard. And
because grazing cows roam many acres, their manure is spread naturally and fertilizes the land.
A grazing farm typically has less erosion, uses fewer pesticides, and is less polluting to nearby
creeks than a conventional farm, where cows are confined to a small area and the farmer has to
dispose of tons of manure.
The method is easier on the animals and the land. And often easier on the farmer’s wallet too. A
study by the American Farmland Trust finds seasonal dairying can be an economically viable
alternative to conventional farming, especially for small farms like Kevin Sullivan’s. But only one or two percent of farms in the U.S. are seasonal. Brian Petrucci directs the American Farmland
Trust’s farm division.
“At some point in the last twenty years, it was decided that the only way to farm in this country was to get big or
get out.”
Under the tutelage of Ag school extensions, farm herds have swelled from the hundreds to the
tens of thousands. State and federal environmental agencies have had to create new regulations to
contain all the waste the farms generate. At the same time, thousands of small farms have gone
out of business.
Petrucci says seasonal dairying can help reverse the trend. But it’s slow to catch on in part
because the agriculture industry – the companies that supply the farmers – often doesn’t benefit.
“Dairy graziers and others who are operating on a smaller scale are not the consumers of feed
stuffs and farm supplies and farm equipment that the larger farmers are.”
There’s another reason, says Pete Barney of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in St. Lawrence
County, New York. It’s rooted in dairy history in this country.
“Milk plants, milk companies wanted a year-round, constant supply of milk, so now farmers bred
animals so they were coming in periodically throughout the whole year so they could keep a constant
flow of milk going.”
A different system can work on a large scale. Brian Petrucci says in some countries all dairy
farms are seasonal and grazing operations.
Back on the Sullivan farm, Kevin Sullivan says seasonal dairying is also good for his family. The
two months off from milking means more time for his kids, even a vacation, a rare thing among
dairy farmers.
“Farming is, you know, daily grind. Most people get locked into it and they don’t realize that there is
something besides going to the barn and doing chores every day. It’s really kind of opened up
our life a little bit to enjoy our hobbies in the wintertime at least.”
Sullivan’s business is good. He’s invested in an ice cream factory with some neighbors. He says
thanks to grazing and seasonal dairying, his fields are clean and green, his cows are healthy, and
his farm is thriving when so many other small farms are up for sale.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
A revival of pasture-based agriculture in the Midwest is pleasing cheese maker's palettes. Photo courtesy of Uplands Cheese Company.
If you drive out into our Midwestern countryside these days, expecting pastoral scenes of placid cows grazing leisurely on grassy hillsides, you’ll be at least 50 years too late. Traditional pastoral herding practices, based on the summertime abundance of self-renewing grasses, has mostly disappeared. It’s been replaced by year-round production based on dried feeds grown from intensively worked soils. However, if you were to visit Pleasant Ridge Farm in Dodgeville, Wisconsin or a small number of other farms around the Great Lakes region, you would find a successful and quite modern, revival of pasture-based agriculture. You would also find an incredibly tasty cheese. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Janus reports:
Transcript
If you drive out into our Midwestern countryside these days expecting pastoral scenes of placid cows grazing leisurely on grassy hillsides, you’ll be at least 50 years too late. Traditional pastoral herding practices, based on the summertime abundance of self-renewing grasses, have mostly disappeared. It’s been replaced by year-round production based on dried feeds grown from intensively worked soils. However, if you were to visit Pleasant Ridge Farm in Dodgeville, Wisconsin or a small number of other farms around the Great Lakes region, you would find a successful and quite modern, revival of pasture-based agriculture. You would also find an incredibly tasty cheese. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Janus reports:
Although they own a dairy farm and milk 200 cows, Mike Gingrich and Dan Patenaude really don’t farm at all like their neighbors. They’re grass farmers and herders. Their cows feed themselves on well-managed, systematically rotated pastures of flavorful summer grass – on farmland that does not know the plow, or soil erosion. So fresh is their grass that their cows convert it into milk that is unusually rich in essential dairy flavors. As Mike explains:
“This rotational grazing was a way that we preferred to run a dairy. It’s easier on the soil, it’s easier on the animals, and easier on the farmer, I think, too. All of our land is pastureland. We graze our cows all summer long. That is unusual. So they’re eating a live plant. Pasture produced milk is sort of like going back in time. You know, a hundred years ago and earlier, all milk was pasture produced.”
As traditional dairy farmers, Mike and Dan’s labors had been both anonymous and poorly compensated. Their milk was combined with that
of hundreds of other farmers and processed into a standardized,
personality-free product. But, on the way to proving that herding could be economically viable, they learned that this method of farming also made a real difference in the richness and flavor of their milk.
“I had always heard from old-time cheese makers that the best milk for making cheese was the June milk when the cows were on that new pasture. And that’s the ideal stage… for both nutrition for the cow and the flavor development of these cheeses coincidentally. That’s why, for instance, dairy products from New Zealand will have a stronger dairy flavor because their national milk supply is grass-based. Whereas in the United States, our national milk supply is stored feeds predominantly, and they’re much milder, they don’t have these dairy flavors.”
Because of their system of rotational grazing that allows them to move the cows from pasture to pasture, their cows are regularly introduced to new and flavorful grass. That means that they have that strong tasting June-like milk from late spring through October. Finding a way to get that milk with its unique qualities directly into the mouths of consumers was the next step for Mike and Dan. They decided that making their own cheese was the answer. So, Mike got his state cheese maker’s license, apprenticed in a small road-side cheese factory and became a farmstead cheese maker.
“A farmstead cheese comes from the milk from a single farm.
It has the potential of having unique and different and interesting flavors that are not available in production cheeses. And that’s because the cheese maker is the same person that milks the animals. Because we use only our milk, and we manage our cows so differently than a
typical farm, we really get a substantially different milk, and then of
course the cheese that we make is only from that milk.”
To make a cheese worthy of their milk, Mike chose a French alpine cheese called Beauford as his model because it too is made from the milk of grass-fed cows that gives it a pronounced but subtle, earthy
flavor and color. Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, like its French cousin, is cave-aged and turned by hand at least fifty times. And like its French cousin it has something lacking in mass-produced cheeses. It has “terroir” – the flavor of a particular place and the character of the people who make it.
Apparently there is a place for “terroir” in America. Last year Pleasant Ridge Reserve was awarded the Best in Show by the American Cheese Society. This year Mike and Dan will sell 2,000 ten-pound wheels of their cheese to top-scale restaurants, gourmet cheese retailers and on their Web site, at prices many times what they would get if they just waved goodbye to their milk at their farm gate. And, happily for cheese lovers, Mike and Dan, like a handful of other Great Lakes states farmstead cheese makers have found a way to package some of the splendor from their grass.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Ed Janus.
As of this month (Oct.), there are six billion people on the planet and
the population will keep rising. It’s predicted the population will hit
eight-and-half billion by the year 2025. But some experts say the demand
for food will rise even faster. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… feeding the world will be one of the biggest
challenges of the coming century:
Officials at Monsanto were upset earlier this month (January) when the
Canadian government failed to approve its bovine growth hormone,
R-B-S-T, for use in Canada. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator
Suzanne Elston discovered, the decision wasn’t based on any negative
human health impacts:
This month (January), the Canadian Government ruled that Canadian Dairy
Farmers will not be allowed to use the R-B-S-T growth hormone on their
cows. The hormone increases milk production by 15%. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
More and more dairies are packaging their milk products in colorful plastic containers instead of clear plastic. But some say that may be hurting the plastic recycling industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel reports:
A new study indicates preschoolers are eating more fruits and veggies... but often, they're also consuming too many calories by drinking lots of juice. (Photo by Tommy Johansen)