People brought Garlic Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And they even used it for medicine.(Photo courtesy of the NBII, Elizabeth A. Sellers)
An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country, and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant reports that some people are getting smart in their efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:
Transcript
An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country, and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant reports that some people are getting smart in their efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:
Brad Steman spends a lot of time in the woods. He likes the serenity. But as we walk through this park, he winces. The entire forest floor is carpeted with one plant and one plant only: Garlic Mustard. Thousands of them. The thin green stalks are as tall as our ankles.
Steman calls it “the evil weed.” Its triangle-shaped leaves shade out wildflowers, so they don’t grow. Even worse, Steman says Garlic Mustard poisons baby trees.
“So a forest filled with Garlic Mustard you will see very little regeneration of that forest, very few seedlings, small trees. So looking down the line, once those large trees start dying off there’s nothing to replace them. And that now is the greatest threat to our Eastern forests.”
Steman says every year Garlic Mustard is spreading farther into the woods. Anywhere the ground is disturbed.
“So here’s a big stand of it along a trail. This is typically where it starts. This is thick. This is a healthy stand. There’s potential there for an explosion. So we should probably pull some. I’ll pull some; you don’t have to pull any.”
Thank goodness he’s doing it – it looks like tedious work. Steman crouches down and starts pulling them out of the ground, roots and all. He sprayed herbicide on some of it, and so far this season he’s filled 35 big garbage bags with Garlic Mustard plants. He’s sick of weeding. But it doesn’t look like he’s made a dent here. All along the Eastern half of the US and Canada people are pulling up Garlic Mustard from parks and just throwing it away. But some people don’t like this approach.
“All these people are very shortsighted when they’re doing that.”
Peter Gail is a specialist in edible weeds.
“They’re not looking for other alternative uses – creative ways to use these plants that would be profitable, that would be productive.”
Gail says: “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.” People brought Garlic Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And they even used it for medicine. Yep. That same nasty weed.
Gail says today Garlic Mustard just needs an image makeover. Some weeds have become big stars in the cooking world. A few years ago Purselane was just an unwanted vine, with its fleshy, shiny leaves matted to the ground. Now it’s known as a nutritional powerhouse, and is the darling of New York and LA eateries. Gail wants that kind of fame for Garlic Mustard.
“This is a Garlic Mustard Ricotta dip, Garlic Mustard salsa, stuffed Garlic Mustard leaves – these are all things you can do with this stuff. It’s fantastic!”
Garlic Mustard seeds taste like mustard, the leaves taste like garlic and the roots are reminiscent of horseradish. Gail says people should go after Garlic Mustard in the parks, but then they should take it to farm markets to sell.
“My normal statement is that the best way to demoralize weeds is to eat them. Because when you eat them they know you like them and they don’t want to be there anymore, and so they leave.”
Today Gail decides to blend a pesto using the early spring leaves. He picks every last Garlic Mustard in his yard to make a batch.
“Well there it is, garlic mustard pesto. And it isn’t bad, is it?”
The government does not regulate pet products at all. An environmental group looked at pet toys and found some were contaminated with lead. (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)
An examination of pet products
on store shelves found some of
them were contaminated. Lester
Graham reports there is currently
no regulation of toxins in pet
toys and other products:
Transcript
An examination of pet products
on store shelves found some of
them were contaminated. Lester
Graham reports there is currently
no regulation of toxins in pet
toys and other products:
Your puppy’s chew toy might be poisoning him.
The government does not regulate pet products at all. An environmental group looked at pet toys and found some were contaminated with lead.
Mike Shriberg is with the Ecology Center.
“We found over a quarter of pet products had detectable levels of lead in them. Over 7% would have been recalled if they were children’s products.”
Signs of lead poisoning in dogs can be more aggressiveness – even toward the pet’s owner – or withdrawn behavior.
So, how do you tell whether your pet’s toy or bedding is safe?
“There’s no real way to tell. Our data base, healthystuff-dot-org is a first step. But, remember, we only tested a small percentage of the millions of pet products out there.”
Shriberg’s group is calling for the government start doing something to stop toxic chemicals such as lead from being used in pet products.
DDT was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place - including in Great Lakes fish. (Photo courtesy of Tony Arnold)
Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:
Transcript
Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:
In the early morning hours, anglers gather on Navy Pier in downtown Chicago.
Ray Penn is practically within casting distance of the city’s skyscrapers.
He dips his line in the waters of Lake Michigan, hoping to pull out something tasty.
“I filet ‘em, and I fry ‘em, yeah. They got a little bit of bones in ‘em, but – oh yeah. Oh, yeah, baby! I felt that!”
It’s looking like a good morning for rock bass.
“See, there’s a bass on the end of this. This is a small bass, now this guy here, he’s edible.”
Penn says he eats fish a couple of times a week, without giving it a second thought.
Down the pier, Patrick Duhan has the same attitude.
“This is the Great Lakes! It’s such a big body of water. It’s almost like the ocean. They throw tons of crap in the ocean, and there’s just too much of it to screw up.”
But, scientists say, people have managed to screw up the Lakes a fair amount.
Epidemiologists have been studying a group of sport fishers, like these guys, and charter boat captains, who eat a lot of Great Lakes fish.
Mary Turyk of the University of Illinois at Chicago measured the contaminants in their blood, and tracked their health over the years.
“We found we had 36 cases of new diabetes. And what we found was that DDE, the metabolite of DDT, was related to diabetes incidence.”
DDT.
That’s the pesticide made famous by Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring.”
The chemical was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place – including in fish.
And like mercury or PCBs, it concentrates as it moves up the food chain.
So you don’t have to eat much.
“The captains were eating, I think, on average, a meal a week. One meal a week? Yeah. That doesn’t seem outlandish or anything. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. In fact, recommendations from the FDA for eating fish, based on mercury levels, are two meals per week, for pregnant women.”
So just half that much fish was linked to about a 33% increase in diabetes cases.
Turyk says it’s not clear how DDE or DDT might contribute to diabetes.
It may have to do with effects on hormones or the immune system.
“We really need more basic science to determine mechanisms that might be responsible for this.”
Another unknown is just how dangerous might this be, and when does it start to outweigh the advantages of an otherwise healthy food?
Tamara Duperval is a family doctor at a West Side Chicago clinic.
She says she still tells people to eat more fish.
“In our population, it’s really a wonder and a challenge to try to present fish as an option, when primarily the staple of diet is either chicken or beef.”
That population is mostly low-income and minority.
She says about half are overweight or obese.
From a nutrition point of view, those are exactly the people you’d want to be eating a lean, healthy protein like fish.
So Duperval is concerned about sending mixed messages.
“I do think it is confusing. And, it’s in part, I think, how we communicate crisis in this country, especially when it comes to food safety. They miss the overall preventative message, that fish is good food, and it actually provides a lot of important nutrients that are lacking in their diets.”
Health authorities often issue advisories about certain fish that have a lot of pollution.
Duperval says understanding those warnings can help people avoid some of the hazards.
But the diabetes research shows we may still have a lot to learn about these chemicals, so what’s safe to eat is getting harder to know.
Environmental scientist Rachael Pierce and her team travel on airboats into the marshes around Lake Okeechobee. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Rachael Pierce has to shuffle her feet when she checks her snail traps... just to be sure she doesn’t surprise any alligators. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Pierce measuring an apple snail. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
We’ve spent billions of dollars
just trying to partially restore
the Everglades in Florida. Now,
there’s a struggle to save a bird
there that’s close to extinction.
It’s a raptor called the snail kite.
It’s becoming one of the symbols
for saving the Everglades. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
We’ve spent billions of dollars
just trying to partially restore
the Everglades in Florida. Now,
there’s a struggle to save a bird
there that’s close to extinction.
It’s a raptor called the snail kite.
It’s becoming one of the symbols
for saving the Everglades. Rebecca
Williams has more:
The snail kite eats pretty much only one thing – a snail called the apple snail.
The apple snail’s been disappearing – partly because of people messing with water levels in the Everglades for farming and cities.
Scientist Rachael Pierce and her team have raised apple snails in the lab and let them go in a marsh at the edge of Lake Okeechobee. Now they need them to stick around and have babies.
“It’s unlikely the snail kites will come back here to this marsh because we haven’t released that many snails. But in the future when we scale this up we do hope to start seeing snail kites.”
The survival of the snail kite depends on this working. And, some people say, if the snail kite goes extinct, things won’t look good for the restoration of the Everglades.
Dr. Kessler's new book describes the three components in food that keep us addicted: sugar, salt, and fat. (Photo courtesy of the National Canter Institute)
On average, people in the US
are much fatter than just 30
years ago. Obesity is an epidemic.
The Environment Report’s Lester
Graham talked with the author
of the book ‘The End of Overeating,’
which argues the American diet
is to blame:
Transcript
On average, people in the US
are much fatter than just 30
years ago. Obesity is an epidemic.
The Environment Report’s Lester
Graham talked with the author
of the book ‘The End of Overeating,’
which argues the American diet
is to blame:
Lester Graham: This is The Environment Report. People in the US are much fatter than just 30 years ago. Obesity has become an epidemic. The author of the book, “The End of Overeating” argues, “It’s the American diet.” David Kessler is a pediatrician and served as commissioner of the US Food and Drug administration under George Bush I and Bill Clinton. Dr. Kessler, give me the short answer, why has obesity become so rampant in the US?
David Kessler: We’ve taken fat, sugar, and salt, put it on every corner in America, made it available 24/7, made it socially acceptable to eat any time. We’ve added the emotional gloss of advertising—you’ll love it, you’ll want it. We’ve made food into entertainment. In fact, we’re living in a food carnival.
LG: I’ve been watching restaurant commercials, especially since reading your book, and I see a lot of, “It’s a fun time, it’s a good time, bring your friends, it’s a family gathering.” There is a lot of that emotional appeal, but it doesn’t talk about nutrition.
DK: Exactly. Sometimes about the economic value of food, but always it’s the emotional gloss that’s added. And food’s very reinforcing. Fat, sugar, and salt stimulate us, we come back more. But when you add that emotional gloss: “You’ll want it, you need it, you’ll have a good time.” That amplifies the reward value of food.
LG: Now your book spends a lot of time looking at the science of why we respond to sugar, salt, and fat and how the food industry has taken advantage of our response to sugar, salt, and fat. Why do we like those things in our food, why do we always crave more?
DK: That was the question that got me started 7 years ago. I wanted to understand why it was so hard for me to resist my favorite foods. I was watching Oprah one night, there was a woman on the show who said, “I eat when my husband leaves for work in the morning, I eat before he comes home at night, I eat when I’m happy, I eat when I’m sad, I eat when I’m hungry, I eat when I’m not hungry.” And then she said, “I don’t like myself.” And it was that behavior, I could relate to that. I have suits in every size. That’s what I wanted to understand, I wanted to understand the science and we finally do have the science to explain to that woman that it’s not her fault. In fact, her brain is becoming excessively activated by all the food cues in our environment—she’s being bombarded, she’s being constantly stimulated.
LG: You infer the food processors and the chain restaurants, are using some of the same techniques the tobacco companies used to get people hooked on cigarettes. In what ways?
DK: They certainly understand the inputs. They understand that sugar, fat and salt stimulate. They understand the outputs, that you come back for more. Have they understand the neuroscience? I doubt it. But they learned experientially what works, and they optimized food, they constructed food to stimulate us to come back for more. Let me explain how it works, let me give you analogy with tobacco. We have to be careful, there are similarities but there are also differences. Nicotine: nicotine is a moderately reinforcing chemical. But add to that the smoke, the throat scratch, the cellophane crinkling of the pack, the color of the pack, the image of the cowboy, the glamour, the sexiness, the sense that it was cool, the imagery from 20, 30, 40 years ago. What did we end up with? A highly addictive product. If I give you a packet of sugar and say, go have a good time, you’ll look at me and say, “What are you talking about?” Add to that sugar fat, add texture, add mouth-feel, add color, add temperature, put it on every corner, make it into entertainment, and what do we end up with? One of the great public health crises of our times.
LG: Now I don’t think the food industry sees this as necessarily trying to build addiction or using these chemicals as a way to re-wire our brain. I think any good chef will tell you, I want to cook things that will please you, that make you happy. It just so happens that sugar, salt, and fat make us happy. So, what’s wrong with it, if that’s what we want?
DK: The argument that the food companies will use is that all their giving consumers is what they want. But we now know, we have the science to show, that these chemicals are activating the brains of millions of Americans and what happens is that we keep on coming back for more. Look at modern American food, pick any appetizer from any major American restaurant chain. What is it? It’s layered and loaded with fat, sugar, and salt.
LG: Well, let’s pick one you highlighted in your book, because I happen to like it, it’s the Southwest Egg Roll at Chilis. It’s tasty!
DK: The Washington Post outed me because I had to go dumpster diving in order to find out what was in restaurant foods. We worked for a decade at the FDA putting nutrition facts labeling on all foods in the Supermarket, but not so in the restaurant foods. If you look at the ingredients, some fifty ingredients: the sugars, the fat, the fat loaded on fat, the salt in that eggroll. One industry insider just called it the equivalent of a fat bomb.
LG: You spend a little bit of time in the book on how food is labeled. How, for example, cereal manufacturers hide just how much sugar is really in that box. How do they hide it?
DK: Different names on the label, not just sugar, they’ll use honey, they’ll use molasses, they’ll use other terms so its not the first ingredient listed on cereals. But, understand, its not just any one ingredient. We have made food highly stimulating. The multi-sensory nature of food, it’s a rollercoaster in the mouth. 30 years ago, we used to chew on the average of 30 times per bite. Now it’s less than half of that. Food goes down in a whoosh, it stimulates, it rarely lingers. In fact, most of what we are eating is so pre-digested. Chicken: I went in and ordered a margarita grilled chicken dish, I thought it was healthy. Little did I know it was bathed, it was mixed in these cement mixers with sugar and fat, our meat is injected with these needles, solutions are added, sure it tastes good. But in some ways it keeps us in this cycle of consumption. And understand the cycle of consumption based on past learning, past memory, we get cued. Our brains get activated. The cue can be as simple as a sight, a smell, a location, my car can be a cue! Because where I’ve gone before, I get in the car and start having these thoughts of wanting. I was walking down Powell street and I started thinking about chocolate covered pretzels. Why? Because I had been, six months earlier, a place on Powell street. I had forgotten entirely about it, we’re such effective learners—just walking down that street will create thoughts of wanting. Thoughts of wanting arouse me, they capture my attention, they pre-occupy me, I eat for that momentary pleasure. Next time I get cued, I do it again, and every time I engage in this cycle, I just strengthen the neural circuits. What am I in search of? I’m in search of this ephemeral pleasure, is there any real satisfaction? Rarely.
LG: Your book is called “The End of Overeating.” How do we stop overeating, when much of the food at the grocery store and the restaurants is prepared the way it is, we have all these visual cues, these reminders of how food is a reward in our lives. How do we stop that cycle, how do we break or rewire our brain back to a more healthy style of eating?
DK: First, we have to come to the understanding that our behavior is becoming conditioned and driven. And it’s not just our behavior, it’s the behavior of our children. And once we understand that, once we understand that food in fact has become hot stimuli, and preoccupy us and capture our brains, and hijack our brain circuits, and we can see this on the neural imaging. What we have to do is cool down the stimulus. How do you cool down a stimulus? First, you can just get rid of the cues. That sounds easy, you create a safe environment in your home, but you end up walking down the street so that’s not very practical. The other effective way is to eat with some structure. What do we do in The United States? By putting fat, sugar, and salt on every corner, eating 24/7, eating in our cars, eating all the time, we’ve taken down any boundaries. So eating with some structure—knowing what you’re going to eat, when you’re going to eat it, and if it’s food that you want, it helps protect you from being bombarded by cues, because if you know what you’re going to be eating in several of hours, the cues in the intervening time that you get hit with just don’t have the same power. In the end, what’s the best way to reduce and take the power out of a stimulus? How do you change what you want? Want something else more. What we have to do, and I think this is essential as a country, because social norms effect us, they really effect our behavior, they effect our neural circuitry. If I look at that huge plate of fries and say, “That’s my friend, that’s gonna make me feel better,” my brain’s going to get activated and then there’s nothing I can do to stop myself from finishing that plate of fries. If however, we change how we view food, psychologists call it a critical perceptual shift. How did we win, well, we haven’t quite won it but how did we succeed in the perceptual shift against tobacco? 30, 40 years ago we used to view the product as something that was cool, something that was socially acceptable, something that we wanted. We changed that perception. Now we look at it for what it is, a deadly, disgusting, addictive product. Tobacco is easy because we can live without tobacco. Food is much harder. But, all the processed foods, foods that stimulate us, that are just fat and sugar, fat and salt, fat and sugar and salt, getting us to come back for more and more, I think we have to change how we view food back, perhaps it’s very simple in the end, ho w much real food are we eating?
LG: You did the research, started 7 years ago, you wrote the book, now you’re talking about food on interviews like this. How has it changed your life?
DK: What’s very interesting, being trained as a physician, I thought I would go into the world and understand the metabolism, the endocrinology, the bariatrics, the physiology. What I actually gained in understanding was that we’re all wired to focus on the most salient stimuli in our environment. That’s what makes us so successful as a species. It could be alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, it could be gambling, but for many of us, food has become the most salient stimuli, and what about that food? It’s the fat, sugar, and salt. I look at that food and I say, I need it, it’s going to make me feel better, and I’ve come over time to understand that I can feel just fine, eat about half as much as I was eating but feel just as satisfied.
LG: David Kessler is the author of “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.” Thanks very much for speaking with us.
Nitrates and nitrites are found in a lot of foods - like bacon, hot dogs, and pepperoni - as food preservatives
(Photo by Renee Comet, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
A new study in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease finds a strong
link between some food preservatives
and an increased risk of death from
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
A new study in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease finds a strong
link between some food preservatives
and an increased risk of death from
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Nitrates and nitrites are found in a lot of foods we eat: bacon, hot dogs, and even cheese and beer.
The chemicals aren’t there naturally – they’re added as preservatives. And they’re also used in fertilizers.
Dr. Suzanne de la Monte is the study’s lead author.
She says they found a strong connection between higher death rates from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes and the increases in our exposures to these chemicals in our food and water since the late 1960s.
“What we’ve identified says this is certainly something I would consider very very important. Are there other things? Probably.”
She says people could be genetically predisposed to these diseases.
But she says long term exposure to nitrates and nitrites could also be playing a role in two ways: whether we get these diseases and how severe they might end up being.
The documentary, The End Of The Line, takes a look at the status of the world's oceans (Photo courtesy of End Of The Line)
Fish is a big part of our diet. We eat everything from fish sticks and fast food fish sandwiches to sushi and swordfish steaks. But Lester Graham reports a new documentary makes the case we’re overfishing the oceans:
Transcript
Fish is a big part of our diet. We eat everything from fish sticks and fast food fish sandwiches to sushi and swordfish steaks. But Lester Graham reports a new documentary makes the case we’re overfishing the oceans:
This new film is called The End of the Line.
“Everybody recognizes that there’s major problems with the world’s fisheries. And at one level it’s a question of ‘how bad is it?’”
That’s Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, one of the scientists in the documentary.
The film is a compelling argument that huge fishing trawlers are pushing the fish stocks to the edge.
The first sign of a problem was the cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland. It collapsed in the 1970s.
But it seemed, despite problems around the world, the total catch around the globe was going up every year. That is, until researchers realized just a few years ago, Communist officials in China were reporting inflated fish numbers to impress their superiors. The world catch was actually getting smaller.
Scientists were stunned, and worried.
“For the first time in human history, the future of the food the world gets from the sea was in doubt.”
“Send a shiver down my spine because that was the one thing a lot of people were holding on to: well, things may be bad, but at least we’re catching lots and we’re catching more every year, so, it can’t be that bad.”
Boris Worm at Dalhousie University is one of the researchers who confirmed the world catch is getting smaller.
He and others have been studying the fact that boats are catching fewer fish, even though the nets are larger and the long lines put out more hooks.
Claire Lewis produced The End of the Line documentary. She admits, this leaves people who see fish as a good source of low-fat protein in a spot.
“It’s very hard. As a parent, you have conflicting evidence. You want to give your children and you want to feed yourself healthy food. You know that’s what fish is. On the other hand, you cannot possible ignore what we’re doing to the oceans, to the ecosystem in the ocean in eating too many fish.”
“Today in every ocean of the world, high-tech industrial vessels are hunting down every known edible species of fish.”
Ray Hilborn: “The basic problem in most fisheries that are in troube is too many boats.”
Charles Clover: “Too much capacity chasing too few fish.”
That last speaker is Charles Clover. The film documentary is based on a book he wrote by the same title. Like the film’s producers, he wants people to be more aware of the plight of the world’s fisheries.
Producer Claire Lewis says there are examples where fishing is being controlled more carefully.
“The most graphic example, I think, in our film, is that fact that in Alaska – which is a very well managed fishery – they take 10% of the stock only. In the North Sea in the E.U., they take 50% of the stock. Now, it seems to me that’s a really, really big difference.”
Lewis says, if left to the big commercial fishing operations, they’ll just keep fishing until fish stocks collapse. And she believes stricter government regulations and better informed consumers are the only things that will stop them.
“I really do believe that it’s the individual consumers who are going to make a difference to this. I think it’s something we can all individually do.”
The film tries to get people to start thinking about what they can do: such as, asking about the fish before you buy it, letting politicians know a sustainable fishery is important, and it encourages people to get involved with groups such as Seafoodwatch.org.
The End of the Line is narrated by actor and environmental activist Ted Danson. It’s appearing in theaters across the nation.
Neal Fisher only uses charcoal for his summer grilling (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)
Summertime and the grilling is easy… but how environmentally friendly is it? We sent reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which type of grill is greener: gas or charcoal:
Transcript
Summertime and the grilling is easy… but how environmentally friendly is it? We sent reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which type of grill is greener: gas or charcoal:
Neal Fisher thinks he’s an environmentally friendly kind of guy. He and his wife recycle, they use compact fluorescent light bulbs in the house, they walk most places and hardly ever use their car.
But when it comes to outdoor grilling… it’s charcoal all the way.
“It may be a little decadent when you’re taking the environment into consideration, but I do it.”
(sound of grilling)
On tonight’s menu, it’s burgers, Jamaican jerk chicken, onions, and asparagus. Everything is grilled on basic, 22 ½ inch Weber kettle.
“Nothing fancy, no frills.”
To get the fire started, Fisher throws about 7 or 8 pounds of hardwood lump charcoal into a chimney starter.
“I don’t use the lighter fluid, I just use the charcoal chimney. I figure if I’m going to be cooking wood, I don’t want to cook a lot of chemicals too. So that’s something. I don’t kid myself that this is at all healthy for the world. I sometimes joke about it, too, well there goes my carbon footprint. Suddenly I’m carbon Sasquatch.”
To find out if Fisher really is a carbon Sasquatch, I called up Eric Johnson in Switzerland.
“Basically the footprint of using charcoal is about 3 times higher than the footprint of gas.”
Johnson just published a study in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review. In it, he compared the carbon dioxide emissions – or carbon footprint – of the two most popular types of grills: charcoal and propane gas.
When it comes to straight up carbon emissions – gas grills win hands down. Run your gas grill for an hour; emit 5.6 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. Use charcoal briquettes for an hour of grilling; emit a whopping 11 pounds of CO2.
Fair enough.
But what if we look at the total carbon cycle of propane gas, a fossil fuel and charcoal, which is a bio fuel?
For that answer, we’ll turn to Bill Currie. He’s a professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.
“You have to think about, can we replace the carbon back in the pool that charcoal came from? Can we replace it biologically over a reasonable period of time? And with charcoal, the answer is yes, we can re-grow those trees.”
That’s because charcoal is made out of wood, which is a renewable energy source. So if charcoal is harvested locally in a sustainable way, the re-grown trees can absorb the CO2 – which makes charcoal essentially carbon neutral. So charcoal made out of wood which is renewable. Propane gas on the other hand is made from oil. Not renewable.
“Fuels that are based on coal, oil, petroleum based fuel, it’s not possible to put that CO2 back where it was biologically in a reasonable amount of time. And that’s the big difference.”
But does any of this really matter? I mean, how important is grilling in the overall environmental scheme of things. Well Currie says it’s definitely not a big-ticket item like, say, the size of your house or the number of cars you have.
“It’s probably a small factor in the whole analysis. But at the same time, we make dozens or hundreds of these choices a day. And if we know that one alternative is better than another, these little things do matter because they add up.”
Especially when you consider that Americans are expected to use more than 60 million grills – both charcoal and gas – on July 4th. That’s the carbon equivalent of 900,000 trees. Now that’s a Carbon Sasquatch.
There are alternative methods to starting your grill, other than lighter fluid (Source: Frettie at Wikimedia Commons)
Backyard grilling is a great American summertime tradition. But, there’s some concern about grilling contributing to air pollution. Lester Graham reports you can reduce the pollution… it all depends on what you use:
Transcript
Backyard grilling is a great American summertime tradition. But, there’s some concern about grilling contributing to air pollution. Lester Graham reports you can reduce the pollution… it all depends on what you use:
So, let’s say you’ve got your charcoal. And now you’re squirting it with lighter fluid to get the fire going.
“Oooo. (laugh) Well, lighter fluid contains something called volatile organic compounds and helps to form a pollutant called ground level ozone.”
Beth Gorman is with the the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality in Tuscon. She says that ozone contributes to smog.
“This is a bad thing that we don’t want to breathe.”
And, lighter fluid residue can end up getting on your grilled veggies or burgers.
Gorman suggests a charcoal chimney which can get your charcoal lighted in no time, or an electric charcoal starter.
If you’re thinking a gas grill pollutes less, experts say when you consider the total carbon footprint, charcoal wins because it comes from a renewable resource: trees.
Chef Ben Bebenroth and his crew plate mushroom dishes
for their dinner guests.
(Photo by Julie Grant)
(Photo by Julie Grant)
Farm owner Tom Wiandt shows honey mushrooms
growing on a log.
(Photo by Julie Grant)
Mushroom cultivation at Killbuck Valley Farm.
(Photo by Julie Grant)
Most people don’t spend a lot of
time thinking about where their food was
grown. Even fewer actually go out and forage
in the woods for it. But that’s what one
chef is trying to get people to do. Julie
Grant reports this chef wants people to
connect the dots between the environment
and their food:
Transcript
Most people don’t spend a lot of
time thinking about where their food was
grown. Even fewer actually go out and forage
in the woods for it. But that’s what one
chef is trying to get people to do. Julie
Grant reports this chef wants people to
connect the dots between the environment
and their food:
(sound of gathering)
The threat of rain has passed. Cars are pulling in the grassy
drive at Killbuck Valley Mushroom Farm. And Chef Ben
Bebenroth cuts big leafy greens from the garden as a visiting
dog chases a chicken through the yard. He’s starting
preparations for a six course meal.
(sound of chopping and sizzling)
“The menu is going to be a loose guideline tonight, at best.”
Most of the guests have driven an hour from the city and the
suburbs of Cleveland. They’re dressed for a dinner party,
not for hiking. But, a hike in the woods is exactly where
some of them are going.
Tom Wiandt: “Anyone who wants to see wild mushrooms,
come hither.”
Guest: “Question – how far and how rough?”
Tom: “Not too rough. We’re just going along the bottom of
the hollow here.”
(sound of hiking)
Farm owners Tom and Wendy Wiandt show their 20 guests
honey mushrooms growing on a log. They stop to explain
the difference between puff balls – some are poisonous,
others delicious. Each person carries a paper lunch bag to
fill with fungus.
Guest: “It’s a gold mine up there.”
Tom: “Oh, did this big stump produce this year?”
Wendy: “Yeah.”
Tom: “Holy moley did it ever. That’s the great thing about
dead trees.”
Guest: “Look at that. Wow.”
Tom: “That’s dinner tonight.”
The guests carry their bounty back to the chef. They’re
rewarded with a glass of wine. And they learn a little more
about the Wiandt’s farm – how they cultivate bright yellow
oyster mushrooms, fuzzy lion’s manes, shitakes, and more.
(sound of kitchen)
Chef Bebenroth and his crew are at work in his outdoor
makeshift kitchen. He’s using the mushrooms in various
dishes.
Some of the guests are excited about getting involved in
finding food for the meal. Others are a little skeptical.
Guest: “This is really farm to table, literally. We’re a part of
that movement, right Tony?”
Guest: “I’m a Wendy’s kind of guy.”
But that Wendy’s guy was impressed once dinner was being
served.
“Your first course is going to be a shittake and truffle tea,
with antelope tartar.”
After courses of cooked greens and mushrooms, squash
with local goat cheese, steaks, desserts and lots of wine –
the party was down right festive.
(sound of laughing and music)
Guest: “It is surreal to be here, under the stars, the dog on
stage, the exquisite cuisine.”
Chef Bebenroth creates these dinners at farms around the
region through the summer and fall. And despite what
seems like a high price – this event was $150 a plate – it’s
still tough for him to break even on them. But it’s important
to him. It’s taking that idea of farm to table that guests say
they want to be involved in – and showing them what it really
means.
“We’re so divorced from how our food becomes our food
anymore. You’re empowering people to say, ‘pick this,’ or
they’re watching me pick it. That, to me is really completing
that circle. And they’re starting to understand it does matter
what I put in the air, what I put in the ground, in the water.
This is going into my body, it’s going into my kids.”
Bebenroth hatched this whole plated landscape idea
because he wanted to be outdoors. Now, as his guests
drive back to the city and the suburbs, he hopes he’s made a
few converts – made people see small local farms and the
woods as essential to their dinner.
People brought Garlic Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And they even used it for medicine.(Photo courtesy of the NBII, Elizabeth A. Sellers)
