health

The not-so-fragrant side of fresh-cut flowers

In conventional development dogma, the fresh-cut flower industry makes plenty of sense. Nations in the global south need foreign exchange and jobs; folks in the industrialized north have plenty of disposable income for buying pretty things. Moreover, land tends to be cheap in the south and dear in the north. Pursuing the promise of what […]

Tom Philpott Technology

Study links fast-food diets to Alzheimer’s

As the economy plunges into an abyss, consumers are cutting back on spending. They’re desperately seeking bargains, including culinary ones. While most companies deal with declining demand, McDonald’s saw its U.S. sales jump 5.3 percent in the last quarter. At the supermarket, meanwhile, sales of stuff like Spam and Dinty Moore canned stew are surging. […]

Tom Philpott Culture

Rumors swirl that Brazilian bombshell’s NFL heartthrob BF caught MRSA

I’ve been writing about the antibiotic-resistant bacteria strain called MRSA for a while. Evidence is mounting that by regularly dumping strong antibiotics into the feed rations of confined hogs, the meat industry is creating virulent bacteria strains that infect humans. My BF’s got a nasty bug! Photo: Daniel Semper. Well, I knew antibiotic abuse by […]

Tom Philpott Culture

Children living in FEMA trailers are alarmingly sick

Photo: Marni Rosen Children who moved into FEMA trailers after losing their homes in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have alarming rates of sickness and mental health problems, according to an in-depth review of medical records. Forty-two percent of the children studied suffer from respiratory troubles that may be linked to formaldehyde in the trailers.

Grist staff Uncategorized

New research demonstrates that higher infant mortality rates surround CAFOs

Thanks to Proposition 2, Californians will soon phase out some of the most egregious confining animal conditions. However the rest of the country continues to utilize concentrated animal feeding operations for the production of meat, poultry and dairy products. CAFOs are industrial facilities that are designed to produce the most amount of meat in the […]

Meredith Niles Food and Agriculture

A review of eco-minded feminine products, part two

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on feminine products. The first column focused on sanitary pads. In a rant about her angry vagina, author Eve Ensler famously described tampons as “a dry wad of fucking cotton” — and she ain’t far from the truth. Unfortunately, she left out a key […]

Sarah van Schagen Culture

Two studies point to ecosystem damage from factory-style farming

How does chemical-intensive, concentrated agriculture affect surrounding ecosystems — and ones that lie downstream from large operations? Seems like a key question, given that upwards of 95 percent of our food comes from such agricultural methods. Yet there has been surprisingly little study of it. For example, when the meat industry started to rapidly consolidate […]

Tom Philpott Food and Agriculture

Confirming Pollan, PNAS study shows that fast-food chains mainly peddle corn

We literally are what we eat; our metabolic function converts the stuff we consume into our material bodies: flesh, bone, hair, etc. In a memorable passage in Micheal Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, a biologist analyzes a strand of his own hair; he finds it shot through with corn’s unique carbon signature. Materially speaking, eaters of the […]