January 21, 2011· Wal-Mart on the healthy food bandwagon · 5-a-Day not enough fruits and veggies · Biotech crop limits sharply criticized · New pesticide may be behind bee deaths · Columbians succeed with alternative crops Wal-Mart on the healthy food bandwagon(AP
via Yahoo! Finance) Wal-Mart also said it would reduce prices on fruits and vegetables by $1 billion a year by attempting to cut unnecessary costs from the supply chain. The company also said it would work to reduce price premiums on healthier items made with more expensive ingredients. "Our customers often ask us why whole wheat pasta sometimes costs more than regular pasta made by the same manufacturer," said Wal-Mart's Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability. The first lady accompanied Wal-Mart executives Thursday as
they announced the effort in "No family should have to choose between food that is
healthier for them and food they can afford," said Bill Simon, president
and CEO of Wal-Mart's As the largest grocer in the Mrs. Obama said the announcement has "the potential to transform the marketplace and help Americans put healthier foods on their tables every single day." "We are really gaining some momentum on this issue, we're beginning to see things move," she said. Wal-Mart plans to reduce sodium by a quarter and cut added sugars in some of its private label products by 2015. It also plans to remove remaining industrially produced trans fats. A number of food makers have made similar moves, lowering sodium in their products based on shopper demand and increasing scrutiny by health groups. Bumble Bee Foods, General Mills Inc., Campbell Soup Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. all announced sodium reductions to their products in this spring alone. Food makers say they are trying to reduce sodium gradually, making it a more palatable change to its customers and giving the industry time to reformulate products. Most said they support efforts to curb sodium in American's diets but are waiting to see if the Food and Drug Administration decides to mandate a reduction. Mrs. Obama has a history of working with Wal-Mart. She once served on the board of Westchester, Ill.-based TreeHouse Foods Inc., a food supplier for the store, but resigned in 2007 while her husband was campaigning for the presidency. Barack Obama had criticized the store over wages and benefits it pays employees. 5-a-Day not enough fruits and veggies(WebMD.com) – We’re all urged to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but new research finds eight servings may be needed to cut the risk of dying from heart disease. The diet and lifestyles of more than 300,000 people across
eight countries in Each additional portion in fruits and vegetables was linked to a 4% lower risk of death. One portion counted as 80 grams, such as a small banana, a medium apple, or a small carrot. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Average Intake of Fruits and Vegetables The average intake of fruits and vegetables in the various countries was five servings a day. Healthy eating tailed off the further north the researchers
looked in Swedish men and women were the worst, with only 3.5 and 2.9 portions a day. The researchers say factors like cost and availability of fruit and vegetables are likely to account for differences in intake. Data came from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Heart study. Every Portion Counts Study researcher Francesca Crowe, MD, of the Cancer
Epidemiology Unit at the In other words, did the fruits and vegetables make people healthier, or are people who eat better also more likely to have healthier lifestyles? Crowe says healthy eating also needs to be added to healthy lifestyle behaviors as well as other recommendations “such as not smoking, not having high blood pressure or high blood lipids [cholesterol] and being in a healthy weight range.” Stepping up from five servings to eight servings a day might be hard, but Crowe says, “It may be a more manageable public health guideline to recommend that everyone increases their intake by one portion per day. “This is a much more modest effect for an individual but if everyone could achieve this then at a population level the impact would be quite large.” In a statement, Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, says, “The take-home message is still that eating fruit and vegetables is healthy for your heart. We need to remember to make five portions our minimum as the more fruit and vegetables people ate the lower their risk of dying from heart disease became.” Recent research from the British Heart Foundation and the Biotech crop limits sharply criticized(DesMoinesRegister.com)
Vilsack is considering planting restrictions for a biotech version of alfalfa to protect growers of organic and other nonbiotech varieties from contamination. A court challenge has slowed commercialization of the crop, developed by Monsanto Co. While the biotech crop is safe, the planting restrictions may be needed for the alfalfa and some future crops to protect the financial interests of nonbiotech farmers, Vilsack told the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday. The panel's chairman, Frank Lucas, R-Okla., said the proposed restrictions would set a bad precedent and "shift the financial burden from those who choose to produce organic to other producers who choose a different cropping system." A decision on planting rules could come next week. Vilsack said the proposed rules would essentially ban the use of the biotech alfalfa seed in some parts of the nation. "This is not picking sides," he said. "This is trying to figure out how we can have all sides of agriculture be able to prosper in this country." The biotech industry and conventional farm groups are furious at the proposed restrictions, saying they threaten to slow development and commercialization of new biotech crops. Vilsack argued that the industry is threatened by endless litigation that could be avoided if agricultural interests compromise on a policy for protecting organic and nonbiotech farmers from the genetically engineered products. Some lawmakers, including Reps. Leonard Boswell, D-Ia., and Steve King, R-Ia.,
raised questions about whether the proposed policy could undermine Vilsack said the policy would be "very consistent with the positions we've taken on the international scene" as long as it is "justified by the science and is within the rules we have." Collin Peterson, D-Minn., the committee's ranking Democrat, said the USDA proposal creates more questions than answers and expressed doubts that the litigation would end. "Some folks will apparently use every tool possible to try to shut down biotech crops." New pesticide may be behind bee deaths(The Independent) – A new generation of pesticides is making honeybees far more susceptible to disease, even at tiny doses, and may be a clue to the mysterious colony collapse disorder that has devastated bees across the world, the US government's leading bee researcher has found. Yet the discovery has remained unpublished for nearly two years since it was made by the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory. The release of such a finding from the American government's
own bee lab would put a major question mark over the use of neonicotinoid
insecticides – relatively new compounds which mimic the insect-killing
properties of nicotine, and which are increasingly used on crops in the Bayer, the German chemicals giant which developed the
insecticides and makes most of them, insists that they are safe for bees if
used properly, but they have already been widely linked to bee mortality. The In The American study, led by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, research
leader at the Dr Pettis told The Independent his research had now been put forward for publication. "[It] was completed almost two years ago but it has been too long in getting out," he said. "I have submitted my manuscript to a new journal but cannot give a publication date or share more of this with you at this time." However, it is known about, because Dr Pettis and a member of his team, Dennis van Engelsdorp, of Penn State University – both leaders in research focusing on colony collapse disorder (CCD) – have spoken about it at some length in a film about bee deaths which has been shown widely in Europe, but not yet in Britain or the US – although it has been seen by The Independent. In The Strange Disappearance of The Bees, made by the American film-maker Mark Daniels, Pettis and van Engelsdorp reveal that they exposed two groups of bees to the well-known bee disease nosema. One of the groups was also fed tiny doses of imidacloprid. There was a higher uptake of infection in the bees fed the insecticide, even though it could not subsequently be detected, which raises the possibility that such a phenomenon occurring in the wild might be simply undetectable. Although the Neonicotinoids have attracted
growing controversy since their introduction by Bayer in the 1990s, and have
been blamed by some beekeepers and environmental campaigners as a potential
cause of CCD, first observed in the Between 20 and 40 per cent of American hives have been
affected, and CCD has since been observed in several other countries from In the Leading the calls for neonicotinoids
to be banned in the Yesterday the Buglife director,
Matt Shardlow, said of the Pettis study: "This
new research from "The weight of evidence against neonicotinoids is becoming irresistible – Government should act now to ban the risky uses of these toxins." Bayer insists its neonicotinoids
are safe for bees when used properly. Dr Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer
CropScience Columbians succeed with alternative cropsBenjumea, a resident of the
Colombian "Everything is different now, more peaceful. I go to bed at night with no worries," Benjumea says. He used to make $2,800 a month growing coca. Now he makes about $840 with plantains. On the flip side, he doesn't have to deal with guerrillas or drug traffickers anymore. The Colombian government has greatly increased its military presence in the area, improving security and giving farmers an alternative to growing coca. Benjumea says his peace of mind and the safety of his family are priceless. "Coca is a plant that can make you a lot of money, but also gives you a lot of headaches," he says. He's part of a new wave of Colombian farmers growing alternative crops in a region called La Macarena. This region was known for decades as a stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the guerrilla group commonly called FARC. La Macarena used to be not only a recruiting and training hub for guerrillas, but also a major coca production center and a key transit route for illegal armed groups. In a community called The United States has provided more than $7 billion in the
past 10 years to help Colombia fight drug trafficking. Most of the money has
been used to help Colombian National Security Adviser Sergio Jaramillo said
government partnerships with the farmers in "You need to stabilize those drug-producing areas.
That's what we're doing here, and there's no better investment for prosperity
in a country like During a three-day visit to "We have to continue to be supportive of According to Going into alternative crops hasn't been easy for local
farmers. At the fish farm in El Pinalito, the locals
say at the beginning they only saw "failures." But after getting
specialized training and equipment from the government, production began to
increase considerably. At the sugar cane processing plant in the End Transmission |
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