Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by FishWise, a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings.

Let’s face it–choosing sustainable seafood can be difficult. The sustainability of a particular species depends not only on the inherent vulnerability of the species itself, but also on where and how it was caught.

To figure this out, there are apps that place extensive information at our fingertips and conveniently guide our responsible seafood choices. Nowadays, living in a wireless world, the Seafood Watch app for iPhone and Android has replaced the Seafood Watch card in our wallet provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Blue Ocean Institute also has its FishPhone app in addition to their printed guides.

For some consumers, knowing the location and method of catch is not enough! They want to be able to trace their fish back to the source. Some of you can visit local fish markets that generally work very closely with the fishermen themselves, however, most seafood buyers rely on their local grocery store for their seafood needs. Even for experts who work in the seafood industry, tracing seafood back to the source is challenging since the seafood supply chain can be extremely complex.

To go one step further, there are now companies who allow consumers to go online and trace the product back to the source by entering a code on the package in their hands.

Partnering with Trace Register™ – the global food traceability company, Kwik’pak Fisheries has developed a tool that allows consumers to trace their Yukon River Salmon back to the source. We can go to their “Trace Your Fish” web page and enter this example code: 103104. We are then presented with information about the product’s nutritional value, the name of the Yupik fishermen who caught it, how they caught and processed the fish, a map showing the catch location and even healthy recipes to try out.

Some Northern Chef farmed raised shrimp carried by Tai Foong are yellow ranked by the Monterey Bay as well as being traceable. Try this code: 877971002797 and enter it in their Dine Well Shrimp page where we can learn the details about their aquaculture practices, their shrimp quality, and their location in Thailand on the map.

These companies are at the frontier of traceability and others are guaranteed to follow suit, which is great news for consumers like you. The more information you have at your fingertips when choosing seafood, the better the choices you can make for yourself and the environment.

FishWise is a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings through environmentally responsible business practices, such as policy development, employee training, sourcing assistance and point of sale information. This approach empowers consumer to make environmentally informed choices when purchasing seafood.

To learn more about sustainable seafood, visit www.fishwise.org or sign up for their mailing list.

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Ana Simeon from Sierra Club BC and Seachoice.

Figuring out the right salmon to eat is maybe the biggest challenge when it comes to sustainable seafood. There are Pacific and Atlantic, farmed and wild. Then there are all the individual species – sockeye, chinook, coho, chum, and pink – which further divide into “runs,” populations that spawn in the same stream. To complicate matters even further, not all farmed salmon was created equal – there is “open net” and “closed containment”, with very different ecological impacts. If all this makes your head spin, worry not! Follow our Salmon Ladder, an easy step-by-step process to help you navigate the diversity of salmon on the market and the conflicting claims of suppliers. The Salmon Ladder is based on Seachoice’s science-based ranking system developed in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Meet the Hero: Pacific Salmon

These fish are absolutely amazing and more than worth the effort to get to know, even if they weren’t such a healthy and delicious seafood treat. Salmon are a creature of contrast: they spend most of their lives in the ocean, yet they play a key role in the ecology of the coastal forest. They are delicious and full of heart-healthy Omega-3 fatty acids which sustains bald eagle populations, allows bears to fatten up for the winter, and provides up to half the nitrogen needed by the giant trees of the coastal rainforests. Thanks to instinctual abilities that are still not fully understood, each individual fish comes back to its native stream to spawn. This means that each river and stream has its own genetically distinct population or “run.” This genetic diversity is part of what makes wild salmon such amazing survival artists.

Meet the Villain: Salmon Farms in the Ocean

If you look at a map of the West Coast from Alaska to California, you will see hundreds of sheltered bays and inlets. This is where young salmon fry like to hang out and fatten up before swimming out into the open ocean. Unfortunately, these same bays and inlets are dotted with hundreds of giant salmon feedlots.

Imagine tens of thousands of fish held in net pens in the ocean. Because of overcrowding, they are swarming with parasites and disease and require constant application of chemicals. Wild salmon fry on their migration routes have to run the gauntlet of these farms and are no match for such an assault of parasites, particularly the notorious sea louse. As has been repeatedly demonstrated by research from scientists around the world, sea lice from fish farms are a key factor in killing off young fry. This process has already wiped out the plentiful salmon runs of Scotland, Ireland, Norway and other northern European counties. It will happen in North America, too, unless we, as consumers, stand up for wild salmon by boycotting open-net farmed salmon and demanding sustainable industry practices.

Farms Belong on Land

This doesn’t mean we must abandon the idea of salmon farming altogether. Impact on wild fish can be eliminated by keeping the farms on land, like any freshwater aquaculture. This is called closed-containment technology and has been successfully pioneered in Washington State. Look for the SweetSpring brand freshwater Coho, grown and harvested at a land-based closed containment salmon farm. SweetSpring Salmon is rated a SeaChoice “Best Choice.”

Large salmon farming conglomerates don’t like the idea of closed containment because they would rather have the ocean perform the service of cleaning and aerating the pens for free. This is where you and I come in with our magic cloak: customer power. Please vote with your wallet and tell your friends – withholding your dollar is the kind of feedback that ultimately the industry will not be able to ignore.

The Salmon Ladder

Step 1: If a fish is labelled “Farmed Salmon” or “Atlantic salmon,” leave it alone. Atlantic salmon has been fished practically to extinction in the wild so any Atlantic salmon sold commercially comes from open-net feedlots. The fish raised in closed containment are Pacific coho, not Atlantic.

Step 2: Choose “Farmed Salmon – Closed Containment” if you’re in a rush and don’t have time to investigate various wild salmon options. This is an ocean-friendly, sustainable choice.

Step 3: With wild salmon, play detective. Your efforts will be amply rewarded by the unbeatably delicious taste. Ask your server where your salmon was caught, then consult your SeaChoice guide or iPhone app for the most up-to-date rankings. The rankings can be different from fishery to fishery, and from species to species, depending on how they were caught and where.

Download Additional Resources:

• SeaChoice guide
• Seachoice Iphone app
• Seachoice Sushi Guide

Wait there’s more! Our wild Alaskan salmon are under threat: To learn more about how to protect one of our most valuable sustainable fisheries, check out the FRESH campaign to halt the construction of Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay. We are pressuring the EPA to protect this sensitive watershed, rather than supporting corporate interests.

Ana Simeon works as communications coordinator and grassroots organizer for Sierra Club BC and Seachoice, a coalition of five internationally respected Canadian conservation organizations working to shift the market to sustainable seafood. Ana also writes for BC print and online media on environmental topics. Providing social media and online content for Seachoice taps into her passion for local food, food security and all things culinary.

Ana enjoys hiking, bird-watching, and grows a sizeable vegetable garden with her husband Tom. On cold, rainy days, she keeps to her fireside with a book from her extensive collection of 1930 British detective fiction.

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by FishWise, a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings.

Land-based farmers have been doing it for years—collecting cash up front from customers at the beginning of the season and offering a consistent supply of fresh, high quality fruits, vegetables and other goods in return. And now, at a time when over 85% of American seafood is imported, U.S. fishermen are also getting on board, so to speak, and offering seasonal seafood to the local community.

This type of arrangement, whereby fishermen sell their product direct to the consumer, is known as a “community supported fishery” (CSF) and they have blossomed on the East coast, particularly North Carolina, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Now CSFs are slowly but steadily establishing themselves around the rest of the country.

With the influx of cheaper and often less sustainable seafood imports (some types of farmed shrimp, farmed Atlantic salmon and some tuna species), U.S. fisherman are working hard to establish ways to earn a maximum return for their catch. With a CSF program, fishers get a much-needed cash injection at the beginning of the season when they need it most and can increase their share of the profits by selling directly to local customers. Also, when fishermen can earn more for their catch, they fish less aggressively which can mean less impact on the local environment and safer conditions for fishermen.

Just as importantly, you as the customer get the opportunity to learn about new fish species that you may not normally purchase, come to appreciate the seasonality of seafood, and help support local fishers and families, many of whom have been fishing for generations.

If you are interested in learning more, The North Atlantic Marine Alliance has put together a list of community supported fisheries around the country from San Luis Obispo, California to Port Clyde, New England – check it out!

FishWise is a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings through environmentally responsible business practices, such as policy development, employee training, sourcing assistance and point of sale information. This approach empowers consumer to make environmentally informed choices when purchasing seafood.

To learn more about sustainable seafood, visit www.fishwise.org or sign up for their mailing list.

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by FishWise, a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings.

Farmed vs Wild Seafood – Few issues elicit more passionate discussion amongst seafood lovers worldwide. Regardless of your views on farmed seafood – positive, negative or maybe somewhere in between, one thing is for certain: aquaculture is only going to become more important in the future as a source of protein. In the last few years, aquaculture production has greatly increased and now accounts for half of the seafood production worldwide.

Without question, some farmed seafood is unsustainable. Many of you are probably aware of the removal of mangrove forests to make space for large scale shrimp farms in Southeast Asia and the disease, waste and fish escape issues associated with farmed Atlantic salmon in places such as Canada, Chile and Norway.

While improvements are needed for some farmed shrimp and salmon practices, sustainably farmed seafood is also plentiful. The U.S. is leading the way in sustainable farming practices with many species such as channel catfish, striped bass, rainbow trout, oysters and freshwater prawns – all ranked green “Best Choice” options. These species are sustainable as they use best management practices when farming. Just as importantly, they are easy to cook and taste fantastic.

So next time you are at the seafood counter, consider sustainable farmed options. Who knows, you might just like it!

FishWise is a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy that helps seafood businesses improve the sustainability of their seafood offerings through environmentally responsible business practices, such as policy development, employee training, sourcing assistance and point of sale information. This approach empowers consumer to make environmentally informed choices when purchasing seafood.

To learn more about sustainable seafood, visit www.fishwise.org or sign up for their mailing list.

Today’s guest blogger is Eric Douglas, Director of Education for the Divers Alert Network. He is an advocate for spiny lobster divers, who face decompression sickness, paralysis and death, as they are forced to dive to greater depths to meet economic demands. It’s a sobering reminder that we must always remember the safety and well-being of the faces behind our food as we work for sustainable food systems.

Spiny lobster might be sustainable, but the harvesting techniques aren’t.

Around the world, divers harvest the sea for spiny lobster, abalone and other shellfish, while they face paralysis or death without understanding the danger.

Over the past year, Eric Douglas, Director of Education and Dr. Matias Nochetto, Director of Operations and Outreach at Divers Alert Network (DAN) have traveled to Honduras, Mexico and northeast Brazil to learn about these divers and to investigate ways to help.

The Disease

Decompression sickness (DCS) commonly referred to as “the bends” is a condition caused by exposure to depth and pressure. When divers spend too much time at depth, bubbles form in the body tissues and bloodstream, restricting blood flow and causing joint pain. Or they can form in the central nervous system, causing weakness, numbness or paralysis.

Worst Case

Of the three populations of divers Douglas and Nochetto are working with, the Miskito Indians from Honduras are by far the most troubling. They make eight to 12 dives a day to more than 100 feet for 12 days in a row, while living in squalid conditions on board boats filled with 100 or more people and no sanitation. They work very hard while at depth, swimming quickly to find the lobsters or hammering the conch shells to remove the animal.

The divers are paid by the pound for their catch, encouraged to dive and ignore minor symptoms. They only raise concerns when they are too weak to keep diving or can no longer walk. When groups have attempted to teach the divers techniques to dive more safely, the divers refuse, saying they can’t make enough money to support their families if they dive within established safe diving tables.

There are more than 2000 Miskito Indians who are members of the Association of Handicapped Miskito Indian Lobster Divers, yet the directors do not believe they represent all the Miskito Indians who have dive-related disabilities.

“Harvesting is literally costing men their lives. In La Moskitia, there are an estimated 200,000 Miskito Indians. That means approximately one percent of the total population is suffering from some disability brought on by diving,” Douglas said. “That is approximately five percent of the working age male population. It is just astounding that we can maim and kill an entire population and no one notices.”

The Environment

Marine Protected Areas, such as the one near Isla Natividad in Baja California Sur, Mexico have helped shore up the depletion of fisheries and natural resources. However, each year the divers still must dive deeper to fulfill their catch, as shallower waters become depleted.

Harvesting lobster using compressed air in Northeast Brazil, in the Rio Grande do Norte region, is actually illegal, yet the divers collect more than 6,000 tons of lobster annually for sale to foreign markets. In spite of the legal embargoes on fishing for lobster, the environmental organizations lack the ability to adequately patrol the coastline to enforce the laws. Diving for lobster has the highest incidence of workplace injury of any occupation in the region.

Efforts

“The world was shocked about the number of dolphins we were killing because of our hunger for tuna, but so far nothing has been said about the number of divers we kill because of our hunger for sea produce,” Nochetto said. “Whether it’s lobster from the Caribbean, Salmon from Chile, Sea Cucumber from Zanzibar, Conch or Abalone from Mexico, the problem is quite always the same. Human ambitions for making a naturally limited product ubiquitous and inexpensive have a woefully unacceptable cost, both from an ecological point of view as well as from a public health perspective. The incidence of death and permanent disabilities as a result of an occupational hazard among commercial non-professional harvesting divers is pandemic,” he concluded.

DAN is reviewing the diving techniques and trying to find simple ways to increase the diver’s safety margins, using decompression stops or other techniques to help their bodies reduce their decompression stress. They are also working to support the hyperbaric chambers that treat these divers with training and educational programs to make sure the divers receive the best care. Lastly, the organization is working to offer training in oxygen first aid to help the divers care for themselves and each other.

But until these divers can make a living diving more safely, being paid adequately for their catch, men will continue to be paralyzed or die in search of lobster.

Our guest post today comes from sustainable seafood expert Casson Trenor, Senior Markets Campaigner at GreenpeaceUSA, author of the book and blog Sustainable Sushi, and sustainable seafood consultant for the San Francisco restaurant Tataki. We look forward to continued collaboration with Casson in the future!

Our oceans are in a perilous state. Rampant abuse and rapacity has led us down a dangerous path; stories of overfishing, toxic contamination, and ocean acidification put consumers in a state of confusion and fear at the seafood counter. Luckily, all is not lost—by making informed choices, we can enjoy healthy, delicious seafood while supporting fishermen that are doing their utmost to work in harmony with the planet. Here are four examples of fish we just shouldn’t eat, followed by four sustainable, restorative seafood options that merit our support:

Bluefin Tuna

The fish that fed Rome’s legions now barely ekes out an existence as it is hunted relentlessly to satisfy the top echelon of the world’s sushi industry. Bluefin prices soar while stocks continue to plummet, shackled to the twin lead weights of insatiable demand and ineffectual management.

Bluefin stocks around the world are verging on utter collapse and yet fishing pressure does not abate. Politics and short-sighted economic interests are nearly always victorious over science and environmental consciousness whenever this bluefin is involved. But even if we can’t depend on political processes, we can least put the chopsticks down.

Orange Roughy

Orange roughy simply isn’t built to withstand heavy fishing pressure. First off, it reaches market size well before sexual maturity — a lamentable characteristic, since this results in many roughy being eaten before they’ve had a chance to reproduce and repopulate the fishery. Second, the animal itself can live to a tremendous age — 90-year-old roughy are not uncommon (at least, they weren’t before we started eating them all). Fish that live that long are generally not built to reproduce in great numbers; they have evolutionarily invested in longevity rather than in quantity of offspring.

To worsen matters, orange roughy is caught using wantonly destructive bottom trawl nets, and its flesh is a simple, flaky white fillet (there are other, more sustainable sources for this type of product.) It’s best to avoid this species altogether.

Shark (and Shark Fin)

Sharks are apex predators, feeding slowly from the top of the food chain and ensuring the populations of other animals in their areas are kept in check. Without sharks, we see population explosions of their prey items, which in turn devastate the organisms they prey upon, and so on. The removal of a single shark from the food system it polices is akin to hurtling a massive monkey wrench into the core gears of the ocean’s ecological stabilization machinery, and we are tossing out somewhere between 50 and 100 million of these wrenches every year.

While many sharks are killed accidentally as bycatch in longline fisheries that target other animals (longlined swordfish is particularly worrisome), the majority of annual shark casualties are perpetrated intentionally by those in the shark fin industry. Shark fins—used for soup, especially for weddings and other significant events, by certain segments of the world’s Chinese communities—can fetch astronomical prices and are often used to convey a message of status and wealth.

Chilean Sea Bass

The Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass) are long-lived, slow-to-reproduce apex predators. Decade after decade, we have pushed the boundaries of our oceans in every way imaginable — geographically (ships are going further), bathymetrically (ships are fishing deeper), and temporally (ships are spending more time on the water). In our quest for seafood, we strain at the very boundaries of our food system, until we reach the ocean’s farthest-flung reaches in all three categories — by dropping hooks to the ocean floor off of Antarctica in the middle of winter.

That is how, where, and when we catch Chilean sea bass.

Sustainable fishing simply cannot occur in an area and at a depth that is so obviously a reaction to an overblown and exhausted food system that, because of its inability to balance itself, has cantilevered out into dangerous extremes.

Still, it’s not all doom-and-gloom in the seafood world. Here are four great options that merit our support – fish and fisheries that are hallmarks of a different kind of seafood industry: one that operates with the welfare of the oceans in mind.

1. Sardines

First of all, I’m not talking about the unidentifiable, semi-fossilized fish paste that you find covered in oil or mustard sauce when you open up a sardine tin — fresh sardines are a totally different animal. They are inexpensive, delectable indulgences that carry fabulous flavors, perform marvelously on a grill, and are used by top-level sushi chefs to make mouth-watering nigiri and sashimi dishes. Even better, these tiny delights are packed full of Omega-3 fatty acids while their short lifecycle keeps them relatively mercury-free. Unfortunately, we’re using them in the worst possible way.

The vast majority of our sardines are sold to foreign bluefin tuna ranches, where they are used to fatten up juveniles that have been purloined from wild stocks. This is a problem on many levels: bluefin tuna are severely endangered, have little Omega-3 content, can be extremely high in mercury, and are exorbitantly expensive. We’re using our sardines — healthy, delicious fish that most Americans can afford — to fuel a foreign industry that is harming the ocean in order to create a luxury good with dubious health benefits that is only available to the very wealthy.

Buying sardines from your local fish market helps to create a reward system for sardine fishermen. If the demand for these fish in the US marketplace continues to grow, our fishermen won’t need to sell their entire catch (at a ridiculously low price, I might add) to a foreign bluefin ranch.

2. Wild Salmon

There are four reasons to eat wild Alaskan salmon. One — it tastes fantastic. Two — it’s a high-Omega-3, low-mercury fish. Three — it’s a relatively sustainable industry that merits our support. And four — the alternative, conventional farmed salmon, sucks.

Farmed salmon tends to be raised in the open-net pens situated in sheltered bays and coves. There are no controls to mitigate the flow of ocean water in and out of these pens. As such, there are tremendous problems with the transmission of diseases, parasites, genetic material, and waste from these pens to the ecosystems around them. Links between salmon farms and the degradation of wild salmon populations in places like Canada and Norway are well-established. Also, the salmon farming industry has a real problem with antibiotic abuse.

Wild Alaskan salmon provides a delicious alternative to all this nonsense. Thanks to progressive fishery management, we have access to a domestic product that is comparatively sustainable and healthy. To make matters even better, recent marketing efforts for previously underappreciated species like keta (chum) and sockeye have helped to make wild Alaskan salmon available at price points that are competitive with farmed products.

3. Dungeness Crab

For shellfish lovers, it is difficult to find a better option than Dungeness crab. These fisheries are extremely well-managed and have been so for decades. The crabs are caught in non-lethal traps which keep bycatch at negligible levels and allow female and juvenile crabs to be returned unharmed to the seabed. This process, whereby only mature males are taken, helps to keep Dungeness crab populations resilient and robust. Additionally, the number of crabs that can be landed during a given season is carefully measured and kept to levels that will keep populations thriving.

With such precise targeting on top of strong science-based quotas, our Dungeness crab fisheries provide excellent examples of progressive resource management. And the kicker? Dungeness crab is among the best-tasting shellfish in the world. Grab a cracker and go to town.

4. Pole-caught Skipjack Tuna

Canned tuna is a hugely popular seafood item, and also a tremendous problem. The species that’s most often used for this purpose is a small, quickly growing tuna species called skipjack. Due to its physiology and life history, skipjack has the potential to be a strong sustainable seafood option; unfortunately, the tuna industry that feed our appetite for ersatz, steam-cooked tuna meat is wreaking havoc on our oceans. Skipjack boats generally fish with purse seine nets and fish aggregating devices (free-floating rafts that attract many different types of fish), also known as FADs. The use of FADs ensures that these boats take far more creatures than just mature skipjack — billfish, sharks, juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tunas, and even turtles are attracted by the FADs and subsequently ensnared by the seine nets.

Thankfully, a new industry is beginning to develop — skipjack tuna caught on a pole-and-line. It’s the same fish, but the use of a pole rather than a FAD and purse seine allows fishermen to be much more precise about what they do and do not catch. Next time you’re shopping for canned tuna, look for the words “pole caught” on the can to support companies that are trying to do right by our oceans.

Casson Trenor is Senior Markets Campaigner with Greenpeace USA, where he spearheads the organization’s efforts to hold restaurants and supermarkets accountable for their seafood sustainability practices and to help educate the public about the global fisheries crisis. He is the author of Sustainable Sushi and a founder ofTataki Sushi Bar, the world’s first sustainable sushi restaurant. The material in this post originally appeared on Alternet.org.

In conjunction with our petition to the FDA to label genetically-engineered foods, we’ve partnered with author Robyn O’Brien to bring you groundbreaking news on toxins that leach from these foods.

New research from Canada has found a food toxin that is produced in insect resistant crops developed in the United States in the blood of pregnant women, their unborn babies and the general population.

It is the first study to show that these toxins, which are produced in genetically modified crops widely used in the United States and patented by the agrichemical industry, have not only survived the digestive tract but also passed the placental barrier and entered the bloodstream of unborn babies.

Pesticides used on crops that have been genetically engineered to withstand increasing doses of herbicides and weed killers were also found in the bloodstreams of these women.

The food toxin found is used in a strain of corn that is widely used in the United States as livestock feed and has been genetically modified to produce an insecticidal protein. This corn has received cultivation approval by the European Union but has not been widely adopted outside of the United States and is currently banned in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Luxemburg and Greece.  Because of the toxin that this corn contains, the corn is now regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency as an insecticide.

This is the first study to dispute the claim by industry that no genetically engineered protein survives intact in the intestinal tract or can enter the bloodstream, given that this study detected this food toxin, known as Cry1Ab toxin, in the bloodstream of not only pregnant women but also their unborn babies.

The research was conducted by a team of scientists at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec and has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology. The team took blood samples from 30 pregnant women prior to delivery, 30 samples from umbilical cords immediately after birth and samples from 39 non-pregnant women who were undergoing treatment. All the women were of a similar age and body mass index, and none worked with pesticides or lived with anyone who did.

Traces of the toxin were found 93% of the pregnant mothers and in 80% of the umbilical cords. The research suggested the chemicals were entering the body through eating meat, milk and eggs from farm livestock which have been fed GM corn.

The findings appear to contradict the GM industry’s long-standing claim that any potentially harmful chemicals added to crops would pass safely through the body, according to an article in the UK Telegraph.

“To date, most of the global research which has been used to demonstrate the safety of genetically modified crops has been funded by the industry itself,” states the article.

The findings add to concerns about the toxicity and potential allergenicity of these genetically engineered proteins expressed by many scientists and reinforce the importance of exercising precaution when it comes to protecting the health of the pregnant mothers and their babies.

To avoid these genetically modified proteins and toxins in your family’s diet, you can look for food labeled “USDA Organic” as by law, these foods are not allowed to contain these insecticidal proteins or genetically engineered organisms.  You can also look for products labeled “Non-GMO”.  To learn more, please see our tips, Want to Steer Clear of GMOs? Here’s How.

The article above was originally published by Allergy Kids Foundation.

About Robyn O’Brien

Robyn authored “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.” A former food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded www.allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food’s Erin Brockovich.” You can learn more at www.robynobrien.com.

Sources and Notes

Aziz A. and Leblanc S., 2010, Reproductive Toxicology, accepted 13 February 2011.

Seralini G-E., Mesnage R. Clair E., Greese S., Spiroux de Vendômois J.ann Cellier D., 2010. Environmental Sciences Europe 2011, 23:10, see www.enveurope.com/content/23/1/10.

Benachour N and Séralini G-E, 2009. Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chemical Research in Toxicology Vol22 No1 pp 97-105 available from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/tx800218n.

In today’s guest post, Jonathan Bloom, author of the book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) shares his thoughts on why food waste is a problem for more than just your wallet. This post originally appeared on his blog, WastedFood.com.

Today, we also share tips on how to cut back on food waste in your kitchen, helping you to save money, simplify your kitchen, reduce your environmental impact, and make the most of the food you have on hand.

If you’ve ever thought about food waste, this thought has probably passed through your mind: Why do I even care?

Or maybe you’ve heard about wasted food’s ramifications before but find yourself in need of a refresher. In either case, it’s never a bad thing to consider why we shouldn’t squander food. So here goes:

There are environmental, ethical and economic reasons why food waste matters. The environmental implications of food waste alone make it worth avoiding. A massive amount of resources–mostly oil and water–go into producing our food. When we don’t use roughly 40 percent of it, we’re squandering those embedded resources.

In addition, when we send food to the landfill, its anaerobic rotting creates methane. That greenhouse gas is more than 20 times as potent at trapping heat as CO2. Given that and our staggering rate of waste, our food-filled landfills are steadily aiding climate change. Landfills are the number two source of human-related methane emissions. And while some landfills have systems in place to either destroy or harness the methane, they aren’t all that efficient.

From an ethical standpoint, it’s pretty simple. When you consider that 15 percent of U.S. homes are food insecure, throwing away food is morally callous. And no, the food you leave on your plate isn’t going to feed anyone (here or in a developing nation). But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t donate excess food instead of preparing too much. Or buy less food–to reduce the amount you’ll discard–and pass the savings along to your local food bank.

And finally, it doesn’t make much economic sense to throw away a good without using it. That holds true for individuals, families, institutions and government. Depending on spending habits, a family of four throws out between $1,300 and $2,200 a year. And on the whole, America squanders $160 billion annually. In both cases, it’s a waste of money that could better be spent elsewhere.

To be fair, we’re never going to completely eliminate food waste. There will always be some stuff that slips between the cracks. But for all three of the above reasons, we should strive to reduce the waste we do create. Do you care enough to make an effort?

Jonathan Bloom is the author of American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). He writes the blog WastedFood.com and his freelance work has appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, TimeOut New York, and other publications. He is also a certified barbeque judge.

In conjunction with our petition to the FDA to eliminate artificial food dyes, we’ve partnered with author Robyn O’Brien to bring you her thoughts on the harmful effects of food dyes.

Right now there is a lot of discussion around the science of food dyes. Do artificial colors contribute to hyperactivity in kids? Are food dyes responsible for ADHD? Is it the government’s job to take these dyes out of our kids’ foods or is it ours?

The fact of the matter is that you are going to get a different answer depending on who you ask. I learned this the hard way when I went to some of our leading pediatric allergists a few years ago to ask about the link between the introduction of GMOs into our food supply and the sudden epidemic we were seeing in the number of American kids with food allergies. They didn’t like the line of questioning and fired off some pretty aggressive responses. But given my background as a food industry analyst, I quickly learned that financial ties between doctors and agrichemical, food and pharmaceutical corporations can play a pretty important role in what these doctors are willing to say.

So when people get heated up around the science of food dyes, I find myself asking the same questions: Who has funded the research? Is there a financial incentive involved to protect the status quo? And are doctors that are speaking out on this issue in any way affiliated as spokespersons for either the food or pharmaceutical companies that stand to benefit from the continued use of these food dyes in foods?

Since there are usually extensive financial ties between doctors and food and pharmaceutical corporations, it is often helpful to turn to the consumer marketplace and food companies themselves for answers because money talks.

And interestingly, Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart have already removed these artificial food colors and dyes from the products that they distribute in other countries. They’ve reformulated their product lines in other countries and no longer include these food dyes, and they did it in response to consumer demand and an extraordinary study called the Southampton Study.

The Southampton Study was unusual in that it tested children on a combination of two ingredients: tartrazine (yellow #5) and sodium benzoate. The study’s designers knew that a child very rarely has occasion to ingest just a synthetic color or just a preservative; rather, a child who is gobbling up multicolored candies is probably taking in several colors and at least one preservative.

What’s amazing is that in the U.K., the federal food safety agency actually funded the Southampton Study that led to even U.S. corporations eliminating synthetic colors and sodium benzoate from their U.K. products.

And in response, a whole host of companies, including the U.K. branches of Wal-Mart, Kraft, Coca Cola and the Mars candy company (who make M&Ms), have voluntarily removed artificial colors, the preservative sodium benzoate, and even aspartame from their products. Particularly those marketed to kids.

When I first learned about this in the spring of 2007, I was stunned. Our American companies had removed these harmful ingredients from their products overseas—but not here? It was one of those stories that I went around repeating to everyone I knew.

“They’ve eliminated those additives in England,” I kept saying. “Kraft, Mars, and Wal-mart just took them out.” The companies didn’t fall apart. The world didn’t come to an end. The parents and caregivers in England weren’t condemned to a lifetime of bean sprouts and home-ground oatmeal. They just got to buy mac ‘n’ cheese and diet colas and grocery-store muffins and even Skittles without the additives that had been shown to make some kids hyper.

Now when I first learned this, I found the information discouraging. But then I realized that we aren’t asking our corporations to reinvent the wheel, we are simply asking for them to place the same products on our grocery store shelves that they are selling overseas.

Because Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-mart are living proof that is possible for giant corporations to make and sell kid-friendly, family-friendly, and healthy processed foods so that we can give our kids some special treats—like the U.K. versions of Starburst and Skittles, for example —without necessarily exposing them to a chemical cocktail that might also give them brain tumors, or leukemia, or the symptoms of ADHD, as the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently highlighted in their report “Rainbow of Risks”.

And it is inspiring (once you get over the initial shock) to see how far the companies have gone and how quickly they acted to remove these dyes from kids’ foods in other countries.

Asda, for example, the U.K. branch of Wal-Mart acted just one week “after details were leaked to the UK press of a study by researchers at Southampton University…” They didn’t even wait for the study to be published—that’s how concerned they were about public opinion.

In an article published by the Food and Drink Federation, a Web site that monitors food issues in Europe, Jess Halliday reported that “Asda [U.K. Wal-Mart] has pledged to remove any artificial colours or flavours from its 9,000 own label products, as well as aspartame, hydrogenated fat, and flavour enhancers such as monosodium glutamate.”

Wow. The Southampton study didn’t even mention those last three items. Why was the U.K. Wal-Mart rushing to make such healthy choices, when the U.S. Wal-Mart still offered the same old stuff? Wal-Mart had even been slapped by a lawsuit from the Ajinomoto, the company that now makes aspartame, which claimed that U.K. Wal-Mart’s publicizing of its aspartame-free products was a kind of defamation—all while U.S. Wal-Mart continued to use the sweetener.

Can you imagine how grateful parents in the UK must be when they read this? “[U.K. Wal-Mart] will also meet the Food Standards Agency’s salt-reduction targets–two years ahead of the 2010 deadline,” the article continued.

Isn’t that amazing? Over in the U.K., our American companies rushed to meet government standards two whole years before they even go into effect. It begs the question, why?

According to Asda/U.K. Wal-Mart food trading director Darren Blackhurt, “We know that our customers, particularly those that are mums and dads, are becoming more and more concerned about what’s in the food they buy.” Indeed, the article continues, “consumer awareness of nutrition and food quality in the UK has soared in the last few years. . . ” Accordingly, U.K. Wal-Mart was planning to spend 30 million pounds, or about $50 million, to reformulate its product line, adding that, “in the main, taste will be unaffected.”

Pretty stunning, right? Clearly learning about this remarkable decision is sure to leave a few American parents a little hyperactive. And if you look at the decision a little more closely, you will discover that Asda/Wal-Mart was far from the only British company to respond to the Southampton Study in such a dramatic way. According to the Food and Drink Federation in the U.K., several companies—whether British-based or British division of American corporations—had started offering their customers color- and additive-free processed foods.

“We are aware of the recent publication from the University of Southampton on selected artificial colours, and we will continue to follow the guidance of regulators on this issue.”—Coca- Cola Great Britain. And in fact, on May 27, 2008, the story broke that Coca Cola was removing sodium benzoate from its products—but only in the U.K.

“Kraft Foods UK has no products aimed at children that contain the ingredients highlighted in the FSA [Southampton] study. . . . [W]ith our recent Lunchables reformulation in the UK, we reduced fat and salt, as well as removed artificial colours and flavours. Without compromising quality, taste and food safety, we will continue to see where we can make changes and still meet consumer expectations.”—Kraft Foods UK

“We know that artificial colours are of concern to consumers, which is why, in 2006, Mars began a programme to remove them from our products. . . in November 2007, Starburst Chews became free from all artificial colours. . . . in December 2007, Skittles were made free from all the artificial colours highlighted in a landmark study by Southampton University. . . We have already removed four colours mentioned in the Southampton study from Peanut and Choco M&M’s, and are in the process of removing the final one so they too will be free from these artificials during 2008.”—Mars UK

“Nestlé UK does not manufacture children’s products that contain any of the additives investigated by the FSA [Southampton] research. . . . and from September 2007, the UK’s favourite kids’ chocolate brand—Milky Bar—is to be made with all natural ingredients.”—Nestlé UK

“We are committed to replacing all artificial colours in our sweets. We note the Southampton University findings, but we had begun this process already because we are continually listening to our customers.” —UK Cadbury Chocolate division

Every time I read over those quotes, I find them absolutely stunning. Why are companies that operate in the U.K.—including our very own U.S. companies—so eager to take out the artificial colors there and so completely reluctant to do so here? Why are they willing to spend the money to reformulate their products there while refusing even to consider such a change-over here?

Maybe the answer can be found in a BBC report on Asda/U.K. Wal-Mart, “Explaining its decision to halt the use of artificial colours and flavours, Asda said it was acting because ‘mums and dads are becoming more and more concerned about what’s in the food they buy.’” An Asda/U.K. Wal-Mart press release elaborates: “Reformulation was hard work, but it was a labour of love.” Well, why can’t they perform that same labor of love over here? Is it too much to ask for what they have overseas?

After all, we’re not asking them to reinvent the wheel—they’ve already removed these ingredients from their products elsewhere. So why can’t our children get the same protection? Why they can’t serve up the same products to us? Is it too much to ask for the same value to be placed on the lives of the American kids in their cost-benefit analyses that has been placed on the lives of kids in the UK?

Today it is estimated that 50% of Hispanic and African-American children will develop diabetes, that 1 in 90 boys has autism, and that 1 in 4 children has asthma. The Journal of Pediatrics reported that from 2002-2005, there was a 103% increase in diabetes medication for children, a 47% increase in asthma medication, a 41% increase in ADHD medication and a 15% increase in high cholesterol medicine.

And while the science may be disputed as to whether commonly used food dyes such as Yellow 5, Red 40 and 6 others made from petroleum pose a “rainbow of risks” that include hyperactivity in children, cancer (in animal studies), and allergic reactions, because of the problem of hyperactivity, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of these dyes given that the British government and European Union have taken actions that are virtually ending their use of dyes throughout Europe.

As a proud American, it seems to me that our duty as moms and dads and concerned citizens is pretty clear. We have to get this information out there so that our government and our corporations to listen to us, the way that governments and corporations in Europe, Australia, the U.K., Japan, and other developed countries listen to their citizens.

Because while our children may only represent 30% of our population, they are 100% of our future. Perhaps it’s time that we treat them like our country depends on it.

To take action, please join the team at FRESH and sign our petition: http://action.freshthemovie.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6068

To learn more, we also invite you to view this powerful TEDx talk given by Robyn O’Brien in which she shares her story, grounded in a successful career as a food industry analyst to a mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast, and how it inspired her patriotic path.

The article above includes excerpts from “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.”

About Robyn O’Brien

:

Robyn authored “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.” A former food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded www.allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food’s Erin Brockovich.”  You can learn more at www.robynobrien.com.

Before starting graduate school, I studied and worked in the fields of environmental education and organic agriculture. While working on farms and community gardens, it became impossible for me to ignore the patterns of food access and community  health. Growing fresh healthy produce was fulfilling work but I decided to shift gears towards making this food available to everyone. There are so many organizations and individuals in New Orleans who are doing just that. The most inspiring aspect of the food/urban agriculture community’s work here is the commitment to addressing the problems in our food system by bringing everyone to the table to ensure that the movement is not circumscribed by class or race.

I recently attended the Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference in New Orleans, an amazing event not to be missed by anyone interested in food and community. Among the many, many inspiring speakers was Aba Ifeoma, a founding member of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. She posed this question to those in the audience doing community work around healthy food and food justice: Are you working for or are you working with? If we are working for, we lack community engagement and as Aba pointed out, we may be reinforcing traditional roles of power without even being aware of it. If our work lacks community engagement, especially those communities who suffer the most from our broken food system, we will never bring strength to the food movement.

This engagement is not easy and requires time and trust. I am currently working with students at the James Weldon Johnson Elementary School in New Orleans as a New Orleans Albert Schweitzer Fellow to develop and implement a garden program called Makin’ Groceries. (Makin’ Groceries is slang for grocery shopping in New Orleans.) Students at the Johnson School are predominantly African-American (99%) and eligible for free or reduced lunch (98%). The goal of the Makin’ Groceries program is to incorporate families and communities through a school garden program to improve attitudes towards fresh fruits and vegetables and begin a conversation about food accessibility. I developed this program quite blind to community work in New Orleans and the strains young families face these days. I’m positive that I am learning more than anyone else involved in the project!

Although the in-school portion of the Makin’ Groceries program has been successful, the community and family engagement is slow going. Just last weekend I invited all my students to a free children’s event at Hollygrove Market and Farm, an urban farm in the neighboring community. Only one of the thirty-six students in the program attended. I was in the middle of lamenting my recruitment failure to a fellow community gardener when she interrupted- “You had someone come out, that’s great. That’s how it starts!”

We have had some unique engagement successes. In order learn more about their own culinary and agriculture traditions, 3rd graders at Johnson developed questions and conducted interviews with a family or community member. Many students asked about how to make traditional dishes such as yaka mein and jambalaya. Others learned of grandparents and parents who kept large gardens at one time. Students took notes during the interviews and are still in the process of writing up their reports. This
was an authentic way to engage families and communities and honor culture while respecting travel and time constraints faced by these families. We hope to send copies of our final reports along with pictures of the students and their interviewees to First Lady Michelle Obama.

A few ways to begin to address these issues in your city, town, and community:

• Learn about the work of your local or regional Food Policy Council; if none exists think about creating a coalition to address food policies in your area. Agriculture is intrinsic to culture; work with local media artists, students, and community members to record and document food and agriculture traditions, highlighting variety and diversity.

• Partner with a community organization working with a low-income community to sponsor a dinner and evening  program to talk about health concerns, food access, and local projects addressing these issues. A screening of FRESH is a perfect kick off to such an event!

• Join (or start) local efforts to support low income community members to grow their own food through community gardening, garden education, and backyard gardening programs. Make sure your farmers market accepts food stamps.