Articles by Grist staff

Industrially grown produce shows long-term nutritional decline

Talk to old-timers, and they'll often tell you that the tomatoes you find in supermarket produce sections don't taste anything like the ones they had in their childhoods in the '30s and '40s.

Turns out, they're probably not as nutritious, either.

In an article [PDF] published in the February 2009 issue of the HortScience Review, University of Texas researcher Donald R. Davis compiles evidence that points to declines in nutrition in vegetables and (to a lesser extent) fruits over the past few decades.

For example:

[T]hree recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results.

He points to another study in which researchers planted low- and high-yielding varieties of broccoli and grain side-by-side. The high-yielding varieties showed less protein and minerals.

The principle seems to be that when plants are nudged to produce as much as possible -- whether through lots of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides or through selective breeding -- they deliver fewer nutrients. It evidently isn't just the flavor that's become diluted in those bland supermarket tomatoes.

This is a fascinating insight. We should reflect that for at least 50 years, the best-funded agricultural researchers are the ones work to maximize yield -- that is, gross output per acre. Even now, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is expending hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to increase yields in Africa.

Rather than isolate and fetishize yield, perhaps ag researchers should learn to take a whole-systems approach: study how communities can develop robust food systems that build healthy soil and produce nutritious food.

(It should also be noted that last year the Organic Center compiled peer-reviewed studies finding that organically grown produce tends to deliver significantly higher nutrient levels than conventional.)

Salmonella-linked Ga. peanut-butter plant had dismal sanitary record

Is it just me, or has our food-safety system lapsed into a state of decadence that might have made Caligula blush?

In the past few days, I've learned that the FDA ignored clear evidence that mercury was entering the food supply through high-fructose corn syrup; and that the FDA and USDA continue to ignore the increasingly obvious threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in industrial pork.

Now I hear mind-numbing news about the Peanut Corporation of America, whose Georgia plant is evidently the source of the salmonella outbreak that has sickened five hundred people, killing seven, nationwide.

Given the breadth of the outbreak and the sheer number of products infected, the company must have owned a mammoth  share of the industrial peanut-butter market; its tainted paste has shown up in everything from health-food store staples like Clif Bars to supermarket fodder like Famous Amos cookies.

According to a recent New York Times report, sanitary conditions at the Georgia plant have for years approached the tragi-comic. And despite a steady stream of reproaches from Georgia health officials, the company was allowed to continue churning out peanut butter for the nation's food factories until the salmonella disaster struck. Here's a summary of the company's rap sheet:

As evidence mounts of deadly bacteria from CAFO pigs, will the FDA and the USDA act?

Last June, Iowa State researcher Tara Smith delivered preliminary results of a study linking the deadly, antibiotic-resistant pathogen MRSA to pigs in concentrated animal feedlot operations. Despite mounting evidence of the link from Canada and Europe, U.S. public-health officials had never formally studied the issue, even though MRSA kills something close to 20,000 Americans every year -- more than AIDS.

In a must-read blog post at the time, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ace health reporter Andrew Schneider documents the craven inaction of the FDA and the USDA as this public-health menace gained force. (I weighed in here.) As Schneider wrote:

An effective way to say there isn't a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat

Now Smith's research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Examining CAFOs scattered in Iowa and Illinois, Smith and her team found the MRSA strain in 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of the workers who tend them. The sample size is small; more study must be done. Will the government undertake it?

A real reckoning with the MRSA-CAFO link could deliver a devastating blow to the meat industry. To keep animals alive while stuffed together by the thousands, standing in their own collected waste, it's evidently necessary to dose them with lots of antibiotics. CAFO conditions destroy animal's immune systems; antibiotics pick up the slack. Take them away, and the CAFO model might crumble.

That, presumably, is why the Bush agencies so studiously ignored the problem. Let's hope the Obama FDA and USDA do better.

Update [2009-1-28 8:40:10 by Tom Philpott]:

The Seattle PI's indispensable Schneider reacts to the publication of Smith's findings:

So I called some disease detectives and food safety specialists in agencies responsible for ensuring that our food supply is safe. You could almost hear them cringe over the phone. And, no, to the best of their knowledge, neither the FDA, USDA nor CDC had launched systematic testing of the U.S. meat supply for MRSA. One physician said that a study was being done on the MRSA strain (ST398) that Smith had found on the pigs but added, "I don't think it has anything to do with meat."

Canada's economic recovery plan includes green items

Stephen Harper, the recently reelected prime minister of Canada, is including plenty of environmental items in his government's $40 billion (about $33 billion U.S.) economic stimulus bill, including tax credits and grants to support homeowners fund energy efficiency improvements.

Here's the government's own rundown of the plan's green items:

Action to Build a Greener Canada -- Budget 2009 targets investments that improve Canada's environment. These include:

* $1 billion for green infrastructure projects.
* $1 billion over two years for renovation and energy retrofits to social housing.
* $300 million over two years to the ecoENERGY Retrofit program.
* $1 billion for clean energy research, development and demonstration projects.
* $87 million over two years for key Arctic research facilities.
* $245 million over two years for the cleanup of federal contaminated sites.
* $10 million to improve government environmental reporting. (Unless otherwise noted, all amounts are in Canadian dollars)

Harper's conservative government is also saying the right thing about climate change. According to the CBC, the "government said it's committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020, pledging over the next five years to give $1 billion in support to projects that encourage sustainable energy."

But cutting those emissions seems to hinge on the successful development of carbon capture and storage technology. Harper's budget would "provide $15-million over five years towards research, and another $850-million over the same period for clean-energy demonstration projects, including large-scale carbon capture," according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.