Linda Barberic's partner Keith helps her prepare a healthy meal, using olive oil instead of butter.
(Photo by Julie Grant)
With so many Americans facing diabetes,
heart disease, and other health problems,
the Thanksgiving meal has become a battleground
in some families. Some family members want
to make it a healthy meal, others want to
stick with their traditional family dishes.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
With so many Americans facing diabetes,
heart disease, and other health problems,
the Thanksgiving meal has become a battleground
in some families. Some family members want
to make it a healthy meal, others want to
stick with their traditional family dishes.
Julie Grant reports:
Four years ago, Linda Barberic gave her left kidney to her sister. The surgery went well. But since then, there have been a lot of other health problems in the family.
“We’ve had a few strokes in the family, we’ve got diabetes, we’ve got high blood pressure, we’ve got some other heart conditions, a few heart attacks.”
That’s some serious stuff. Linda thinks a lot of it has to do with the way her family eats: lots of salt, fat and sweets. She is hosting everyone for Thanksgiving dinner. And thought this might be a good time to get them all on board with healthier eating.
So she sent out a mass email to the family.
“So I thought this year, why not give everyone a challenge and make it a healthy Thanksgiving. Really – no fats, no butters, no salts, no heavy creams.”
Linda even suggested some recipes: steamed green beans with lemon zest, fingerling potatoes roasted with fresh garlic and thyme.
The resounding response: No salt, no fat, no fun.
Someone even said they wouldn’t come. They wanted the turkey with gravy, green bean casserole with crispy onions on top, and Mom’s dumplings with lots of butter.
Her brother-in-law Matt Previte is one of those with a heart condition. He and Linda’s sister, Sandy Previte, appreciate Linda’s thought, but…
Matt: “For one meal, for one day, one special occasion – it’s not worth it.”
Sandy: “How often do we eat gravy? Twice a year. So I’m like, let’s do the traditional. Why not? Let’s just stick with what it’s about – people getting together to have good food.”
So Sandy says why not have the gravy, have the butter?
But her sister Linda says it’s not one or two days a year. Her family, like many, eats fatty, salty foods all the time.
That’s one big reason why two-thirds of American adults are considered overweight or obese. And diabetes has become an epidemic.
So, why do we keep going back for more – when we know it’s making us sick?
Linda Spurlock is director of human health at the Museum of Natural History in Cleveland.
She says we’re hard-wired to crave sugar, fat and salt.
“If you did not have the inherited yearning for fat or for sugar and grab it anytime you could get your hands on it, you probably would not live to reproduce back 2- or 3- million years ago.”
But while our ancestors had to smash open bones to get to the marrow – so they could get the fat they needed – we can just pull up to the drive through and order whatever we want to eat.
Spurlock says the original Thanksgiving meal was probably a small, lean turkey, squirrel, raccoon, and roasted root vegetables.
“And how it got bigger and bigger and bigger –
I have a feeling that it wasn’t until quite recently that people had the expectation of several kinds of pie for dessert and yes giblet gravy and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.”
Spurlock says Americans can start eating healthier by training themselves to enjoy the simple taste of vegetables. But she says Thanksgiving probably isn’t the time for it.
Linda Barberic has come to the same conclusion.
“ I kind of just backed off on it. And said, ‘do what you’re going to do.’ Thanksgiving is about family. I’m grateful that everyone is healthy this year and everyone is here. So, I’m just grateful to have Thanksgiving. But, I have a feeling there will be some fat. (laughs)”
Every march, the Cownose Stingrays migrate into the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:
Transcript
We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:
In a little boat just off shore of Virginia’s Cone River, AJ Erskine leans overboard. He is using 20-foot poles with gaping jaws full of long needle like teeth to scrape the bottom of the emerald colored river.
“These things are called hand tongs.”
Up comes a pile of oysters. They’re only about a year old.
“We don’t feel comfortable giving them more than one year of a chance.”
That’s because Erskine is worried about stingrays, specifically Cownose Rays. Every march, the winged sea creatures migrate into the bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat.
“What they do is flap their wings, put the oysters in a pile, and crunch the shells, and they go through a seed bed of oysters in a weekend.”
Erskine says it’s become a huge problem for oyster farmers.
The rays also damage the underwater environment. They uproot aquatic grasses, destroying nurseries for fish and blue crabs.
Some biologists believe there are more rays because a main predator – the shark – has been overfished out in the Atlantic. Tiger Sharks in this area have declined 99% over the past 30 years.
Other biologists say it’s that strict limits on fishing in the Chesapeake Bay have meant fewer rays caught accidentally in giant nets. Whatever the reason, oyster farmers are looking for a way to control the rays.
A hundred miles inland, in Richmond, Mead Amery thinks he has a solution.
“Depending on how you prepare it, it’s delicious.”
Avery is a seafood distributor. He and officials with the State of Virginia want you to try stingray.
“The texture is wonderful, it has a veal pork type of texture.”
It’s been a tough sell so far.
“People hear ray and think, ‘I don’t wanna eat that!’”
Marketers are trying hard though. They don’t call it Cownose Ray but rather Chesapeake Ray. They’re pushing the ray in restaurants from Virginia to Japan. And it may take off – after all, lobsters used to be considered insects of the sea and only the poor ate them. The popular Chilean Sea Bass used to be a nuisance by-catch.
But, while those cases offer hope for marketers, they carry warnings for environmentalists. Both Sea Bass and Maine lobsters were dangerously overfished because of their popularity. Bob fisher is a biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He knows full well there are risks involved in going after stingrays.
“You remove a top predator like that from the food chain, we don’t know what the repercussions would be.”
He says stingrays are slow to mature and give birth to only one offspring at a time. And no one even knows how many there are. But Fisher is still very much open to the idea of harvesting the rays given the problems they seem to be causing for oyster growers.
“I look at things that are in our oceans as resources, it’s our responsibility to take care of our resources, but it’s also a resource that’s there that can be, and I believe should be, utilized for humans.”
Fisher is working with the Marine Products Board, and the Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan to strictly limit fishing of the ray to what’s sustainable.
So, if the whole thing is successful, you might find Chesapeake Ray on a plate near you.
Fish advisories dot the banks of the Tittabawassee and
Saginaw Rivers. Various forms or pollution, including historical dioxin
pollution from Dow Chemical, have led to warnings to avoid certain species
of fish and limit consumption for them. Pregnant woment and young children
are given more stringent warnings. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
Transcript
It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:
It was hard for me to understand why wild game like deer or turkey might be contaminated from river pollution, so I hit up Daniel O’Brien for some answers. O’Brien’s a toxicologist with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. He says the problem starts with dioxin in the river.
“It’s in the sediments in these contaminated parts of the Tittabawassee River, and after flood events in the spring when, say, mud in the river gets deposited onto bushes or whatever and deer browse those, then they pick up soil that way.”
Part of O’Brien’s job is to spread the news about the contamination. He says when you buy a hunting license in Michigan you get this brochure.
“It’s a booklet that has all the regulations for hunting and trapping in it.”
These wildlife consumption advisories are voluntary but they kinda read like owners manuals. They lay out where the dioxin-contaminated animals are. They tell you what animals you can eat, and what parts. For example, no one’s supposed to eat deer liver from the areas – that’s got the most dioxin in it. And, of cuts you can eat, the advisory says how much, and how often. Plus, they tell who should eat less or maybe none at all.
“Kids might be more sensitive. They might have a more stringent advisory than somebody like me who’s kinda your middle-aged man and we might not be as susceptible to toxic effects.”
The idea’s to protect people from dioxin, and the risk it poses for cancer and diseases of the immune, reproductive, and developmental systems. It’s an important job, given how big hunting is in Michigan.
“We have three quarters of a million hunters every year that go afield and harvest half a million white-tailed deer.”
Michigan scientists take the issue seriously, but I’m kinda curious whether hunters do. So, I visit the Saginaw Field and Stream Club. Inside, there’s this paneled wall with faded pictures of club presidents. It stretches from the club’s founding in 1916 – all the way to this guy, current President Tom Heritier.
“We’re still here today.”
Heritier says his club’s smack-dab in the contaminated area and everyone knows about the advisories, but, well …
“With the game advisories, I have not heard one person who has any problem with the deer or the birds around the watershed.”
This goes for him, too.
“Nobody is sick from it. I don’t know of anybody that has died of exposure. That’s never been proven. It’s nothing to take lightly, but then again, it might be a little bit on the overblown side, too.”
The State of Michigan tried to survey hunters like Heritier. Officials wanted to know if hunters were feeding tainted game to young children. That survey never made the budget.
Before I leave the hunting club, Heritier wants to clear something up. He’s actually mad about dioxin. It’s in the environment – he wants it gone.
Heritier: “There’s absolutely no reason for industry to be polluting our natural resources, whether it be air, soil, or water.”
Allee: “Even if it’s not a slam-dunk, for sure, killing people off sort of thing?”
Heritier: “Number one, God didn’t put it there, it don’t belong there. That’s the way it is.”
Well, Heritier wants the environment protected from dioxin, but not necessarily himself.
State scientists say, if Heritier changes his mind and wants to reduce his health risk – they’ll keep printing those game advisories for him.
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.
With Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner aims to educate Americans about the realities of the food industry (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:
Transcript
A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:
This documentary is disturbing. It shows some of the things that happen to our food behind the scenes.
“There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that’s dropped between us and where are food is coming from. The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.”
The film, Food Inc., looks at how raising animals and growing crops have been industrialized from the farm to the grocery store.
Food processors have relied more and more on technological and chemical fixes to food contamination problems and storage issues instead of questioning whether the assembly line factory, mass production approach is the best way of handling food.
It looks at how companies such as Monsanto are treating farmers who want to save their seeds to replant next year – hint — involves lawyers and lawsuits.
It looks at how companies fight against labeling that would give consumers more information on packages. They say more information might unnecessarily scare their customers.
And it uses video from hidden cameras to show how animals are treated at big factory slaughterhouses.
Robert Kenner is the film’s producer/director. He thinks most people won’t like what they see.
But, he also says things can change. If people think about it, they actually vote with their forks three times a day.
“On some level, I think it’s going to be lead by moms who don’t want their children to be eating this food that’s making them sick.”
Kenner says these massive food recalls we’ve seen over the last several years are bad enough, but there’s a greater threat to our health.
“Obviously E.coli and things like that are very frightening, but ultimately it’s the everyday stuff that we don’t see – such as the sugar, salt and fat – that are making us fat. And that’s what I think needs to be changed most. That we get food that’s healthy and that we don’t subsidize food that’s making us sick.”
Food Inc. interviews farmers and food processors and some food industry critics, including author Michael Pollan.
He says those foods subsidized by the government are the kinds of ingredients that are causing some of the leading health problems, such as early onset of diabetes and heart disease.
“All those snackfood calories are the ones that come from the commodity crops – from the wheat, from the corn, and from the soybeans. By making those calories really cheap, that’s one of the reasons the biggest predictor of obesity is income level.”
Pollan says it’s wrong when it’s cheaper to buy a cheeseburger than it is to buy broccoli.
The director and producer of Food Inc., Robert Kenner says he knows the film spends a lot of time looking at the dark side.
But he also gives some of the progressive food processors and even Wal Mart credit. He says they’re doing something about meeting the consumer demand for better, safer and more healthy foods.
“There are lots of great options out there and they are growing options.”
Such as farmers markets, grocery stores letting you know if food is grown locally, and a growing selection of organic foods.
Kenner says he hopes his film, Food Inc., not only outlines the problems with how our food is handled, but gets people to start asking questions about the choices they make when it’s time to eat.
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.
Linda Barberic's partner Keith helps her prepare a healthy meal, using olive oil instead of butter. (Photo by Julie Grant)
