sugar
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The sweetener lobby: still a powerhouse in the school lunch debate
For the sweetener industry, shovelling empty calories to your kids has been very, very good business. They’d prefer not to stop. “Healthy Schools” legislation written by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh comes up for its first committee vote today after months of deliberations and with one very conspicuous missing element: no regulation of sugar in school meals. Removing the […]
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The trouble with Brazil’s much-celebrated ethanol ‘miracle’
Not as sweet as advertised: industrial-scale sugarcane production in Brazil.This is a post about Brazil’s sugarcane-ethanol “miracle,” but I can’t resist starting off with a look askance at our own corn-derived ethanol phenomenon. Has there ever been a “green” technology more ecologically discredited than corn-based ethanol? It may yield slightly more energy than it consumes […]
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Ask Umbra on dating, individual actions, and coffee stirrers
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I’m a single gal, living in Seattle, where one would think it might be easy to meet a socially and environmentally conscious, yet non-douchey fellow, but it’s actually really difficult to find any suitable guy to go out with. It’s like if I meet a dude who […]
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Florida Everglades restoration now a bailout for U.S. Sugar
Cypress trees in the Everglades. Photo: National Park ServiceThe New York Times published a monster investigative piece Monday on the disaster that is the Everglades Restoration Project. In some ways, it distills much of what’s wrong with both corporate and government culture in this country. Fun fact: the key beneficiary of the restoration plan will […]
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What’s for breakfast at school today? 13 teaspoons of sugar
Yesterday I stopped by the cafeteria at my daughter’s school here in the District of Columbia — H.D. Cooke Elementary — and this is what many of the kids were having for breakfast: A package of sugar-glazed cookies called Kellogg’s Crunchmania Cinnamon buns; chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk; grape juice. A 1.76-ounce packet of Crunchmania contains […]
