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Aug 25, 2009 5:25pm

Immersion In Nature Makes Us Nicer

New research finds those who feel a strong connection to the natural world have a more caring attitude toward others.

Maintaining a connection to nature, either through the presence of indoor plants or artworkdepicting the natural environment, has been shown to decrease stress levels andstimulate healing. Newly published research suggests it may also make us better people.

A series of studies suggests immersion in nature “brings individuals closer to others, whereas human-made environments orient goals toward more selfish or self-interested ends,” according to a paper posted on the Web site of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. This appears to be the first research to examine the impact of the natural world on people’s values and aspirations, and its findings have intriguing implications for architects, designers and urban planners.

A team led by University of Rochester psychologist Netta Weinstein conducted three studies in which participants were shown a series of slides depicting either natural landscapes or urban settings. They looked at each slide for two minutes, while they were asked to notice the color and textures and imagine the sounds and smells of the environment pictured. They were then asked to what extent they felt involved in and engaged by the photos.

Those participating in the first study were then asked to rate the importance of four life goals, two of which were related to community and connectedness (“to have deep, enduring relationships” and “to work toward the betterment of society”) and two of which were more egocentric (“to be financially successful” and “to be admired by many people”).

The results: Those exposed to the nature scenes placed a higher value on community/connectedness values and a lower value on self-oriented values than those who saw the cityscapes. What’s more, “as individuals were more immersed in the slides presenting natural settings, they experienced greater increases in intrinsic [community/connectedness] aspirations.”

Another test confirmed these results by having participants engage in a “funds distribution” task. “As individuals were more immersed in nature slides, they were more likely to make generous decisions,” the researchers write. “As they were more immersed in non-nature slides, they were less generous and greedier.”

In a separate test that did not involve slides, “participants who were immersed in a lab setting with plants present reported higher valuing of intrinsic aspirations” than those in a setting devoid of living green growth.

So why would immersion in nature instill feelings of selflessness? Weinstein and her colleagues suggest the answer lies in an enhanced sense of personal autonomy. “Nature affords individuals the chance to follow their interests and reduces pressures, fears, introjects and social expectations,” they write.

While conceding that more research will be necessary to confirm or refine these results, the researchers say their findings “highlight the importance of effective urban planning that incorporates green spaces and other representatives of nature.”

Their findings will also be of interest to architects and interior designers. Frank Lloyd Wright’sconcept of bringing the outside inside may not just be a prescription for aesthetic beauty, but also for peaceful coexistence.

“Together, these findings suggest that full contact with nature can have humanizing effects,” the researchers conclude. “Our results suggest that, to the extent our links with nature are disrupted, we may also lose some connection with each other.”

Aug 24, 2009 1:25pm

Collective Responsibility

From The Way We Live Now in NY Times Magazine

“…The question of personal responsibility, then, ends up being more complicated than it may seem. It’s hard to argue that Americans have collectively become more irresponsible over the last 30 years; the murder rate has plummeted, and divorce and abortion rates have fallen. And our genes certainly haven’t changed in 30 years.

What has changed is our environment. Parents are working longer, and takeout meals have become a default dinner. Gym classes have been cut. The real price of soda has fallen 33 percent over the last three decades. The real price of fruit and vegetables has risen more than 40 percent.

The solutions to these problems are beyond the control of any individual. They involve a different sort of responsibility: civic — even political — responsibility. They depend on the kind of collective action that helped cut smoking rates nearly in half. Anyone who smoked in an elementary-school hallway today would be thrown out of the building. But if you served an obesity-inducing, federally financed meal to a kindergartner, you would fit right in. Taxes on tobacco, meanwhile, have skyrocketed. A modest tax on sodas — one of the few proposals in the various health-reform bills aimed at health, rather than health care — has struggled to get through Congress…”

Aug 18, 2009 10:36am

We are not raising citizens, we are raising consumers!

BY KURT MICHAEL FRIESE

There has been a cultural revolution in this country over the last 50 to 75 years, a sort of intellectual cleansing that has removed from most people’s minds any understanding of food, of cooking, of the pleasures of the kitchen and table, and replaced it with the language of the drive-thru, the shopping mall, and the convenience store. Michael Pollanrecently addressed this problem well.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our schools, where our kids are not taught about food and cooking, not even the “Home Economics” of my high school years. No, instead the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) teaches something called “Family and Consumer Science.” There you have it—we are not raising citizens, we are raising consumers. Our children are being taught one way of surviving in this modern, fast-paced world: the way of conspicuous consumption.

A recent federal mandate required that every school district write and implement a “Wellness Policy” that addressed, among other things, the epidemic of obesity and childhood diabetes now rampant in our youth. This was a noble endeavor; however, it needed to be more than a mere academic and bureaucratic exercise. What is called for here is a true revolution, one that, like all revolutions, will be very difficult to conduct in the face of the stalwart forces of the status quo. The fear of change is a very difficult one to overcome.

Like all of us, our children are what they eat, and they cannot be expected to learn and grow effectively on fat, salt, and corn-sweetener-laden government-subsidized surplus. What is offered to them today is the result of the entrenched bureaucracy at the USDA, the immoveable object of parental indifference, and the irresistible force of union and administrative fear of change. Unlike the rest of the student’s school day, the lunch period is conducted not by the curricular side of the school system, but by the maintenance side. Meanwhile, the hardworking members of the ICCSD Food Service staff are restrained by inefficient kitchens, ludicrous time restraints, and a budget that is laughable at best. How well would you expect to eat on $1.60 per day?

We need a paradigm shift. From the parents and the rest of the taxpayers in the district, we need an understanding that spending more money is not “just throwing money at the problem,” it is an investment in the health and well-being of our children and our community. Parents must no longer choose to ignore the situation to the proven detriment of their children. From the teachers’ unions we need the flexibility to see that there are other models for the school day and the school year that can be effective besides the one we have in place, which was created over 100 years ago to fit an agrarian calendar so that kids could be home to tend to the farm when needed. The school year in the U.S. is 180 days long. It is 240 in Germany—and 243 in Japan. School days and even school weeks are longer too. A longer school day will provide the time necessary for children to eat healthily. Today they have 30 minutes or less, and most of that is spent standing in line.

If we move lunch away from the maintenance side of the equation and over to the curriculum, food will gain the attention that is necessary for it to demonstrate its own importance. We cannot continue to teach one thing in health class and peddle another in the lunch room. Teaching about food, its history, its culture, its etiquette, and its importance to our health and community will ensure a more productive and enjoyable future for our kids. To those who say “don’t try to tell me what I can and can’t feed my kids,” I say this: First, the USDA is already doing that, and in a demonstrably unhealthy way. Second, they may be your kids, but they’re our future.

This Labor Day, Slow Food USA will formally launch its Time for Lunch campaign with “Eat-Ins” scheduled all over the country—as of this writing, 227 in 49 states (step up, Mississippi!). In partnership with Sustainable Table, The Center for Ecoliteracy, Roots of Change, Edible Communities, and other organizations, Slow Food is calling on Congress, during its reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, to put real food on our children’s lunch trays. To do so, they must double the federal contribution to school lunches from $1 to $2 per meal.

Modeled on the sit-ins of the 60s, these Eat-Ins are potluck picnics to raise awareness. They are a call to action for our kids, alongside Slow Food’s signature celebration of local, sustainable, traditional food. Here’s a simple salad that’s delicious and ample enough to bring to to an Eat-In near you.

Anchovy, Goat Cheese and Romaine Salad
8 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon kosher salt
40 anchovy fillets—rinsed and chopped
6 ounces red wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon black pepper
6 heads romaine lettuce—rinsed and coarsely chopped
12 ounces fresh goat cheese—crumbled
1 cup red onion—minced

Place garlic, salt, and anchovy fillets in food processor; pulse until chopped. Add red wine vinegar, and then puree. Slowly add in olive oil while motor is running. Add black pepper. Toss greens with vinaigrette. Garnish with goat cheese and red onion.

From Grist website

Aug 12, 2009 7:45am

Debunking the meat/climate change myth

Editor’s note: Eliot Coleman is one of the most revered and influential small-scale farmers in the United States, famous for growing delicious vegetables through the Maine winter with little use of fossil fuel. Eliot sent me the following letter as a response to my recent piece on the greenhouse-gas foorprint of industrial meat. At question is a 2007 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which claimed that 18 percent of global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions stem from meat production.

—Tom Philpott

I am dismayed that so many people have been so easily fooled on the meat eating and climate change issue following the UN report. The culprit is not meat eating but rather the excesses of corporate/industrial agriculture. The UN report shows either great ignorance or possibly the influence of the fossil fuel lobby with the intent of confusing the public. It is obviously to someone’s benefit to make meat eating and livestock raising an easily attacked straw man (with the enthusiastic help of vegetarian groups) in order to cover up the singular contribution of the only new sources of carbon—burning the stored carbon in fossil fuels and to a small extent making cement (both of which release carbon from long term storage)—as the reason for increased greenhouse gasses in the modern era. (Just for ridiculous comparison, human beings, each exhaling about 1kg of CO2 per day, are responsible for 33% more CO2 per year than fossil fuel transportation. Maybe we should get rid of us.)

If I butcher a steer for my food, and that steer has been raised on grass on my farm, I am not responsible for any increased CO2. The pasture-raised animal eating grass in my field is not producing CO2, merely recycling it (short term carbon cycle) as grazing animals (and human beings) have since they evolved. It is not meat eating that is responsible for increased greenhouse gasses; it is the corn/ soybean/ chemical fertilizer/ feedlot/ transportation system under which industrial animals are raised. When I think about the challenge of feeding northern New England, where I live, from our own resources, I cannot imagine being able to do that successfully without ruminant livestock able to convert the pasture grasses into food. It would not be either easy or wise to grow arable crops on the stony and/or hilly land that has served us for so long as productive pasture. By comparison with my grass fed steer, the soybeans cultivated for a vegetarian’s dinner, if done with motorized equipment, are responsible for increased CO2.

But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America not to mention innumerable deer, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, and so on all eating vegetation and in turn being eaten by native Americans, wolves, mountain lions, etc. Did the methane from their digestion and the nitrous oxide from their manure cause temperatures to rise then? Or could there be other contributing factors today resulting from industrial agriculture, factors that change natural processes, which are not being taken into account? It has long been known that when grasslands are chemically fertilized their productivity is increased but their plant diversity is diminished. A recent study in the journal Rangelands (Vol. 31, #1, pp. 45 - 49) documents how that the diminished diversity from sowing only two or three grasses and legumes in modern pastures results in diminished availability of numerous secondary nutritional compounds, for example tannins from the minor pasture forbs, which are known to greatly reduce methane emissions. Could not the artificial fertilization of pastures greatly increase the NO2 from manure? Might not the increased phosphorus, nowhere near as abundant in natural systems, have modified digestibility? I am sure that future research will document other contributing factors of industrial agricultural practices on animal emissions. The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised. But what about clearing the Brazilian rain forest? Well, the bulk of that is for soybeans and if we stopped feeding grain to cattle much of the acreage presently growing grain in the Midwest could become pasture again and we wouldn’t need Brazilian land. (US livestock presently consume 5 times as much grain as the US population does directly.) And long term pasture, like the Great Plains once was, stores an enormous amount of carbon in the soil.

My interest in this subject comes not just because I am a farmer and a meat eater, but also because something seems not to make sense here as if the data from the research has failed to take some other human mediated influence into account. But even more significantly, if we humans were not burning fossil fuels and thus not releasing long-term carbon from storage and if we were not using some 90 megatons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, would we even be discussing this issue?

If those people concerned about rising levels of greenhouse gasses, instead of condemning meat eating, were condemning the enormous output of greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel and fertilizer use by a greedy and biologically irresponsible agriculture, I would cheer that as a truthful statement even if they weren’t perceptive enough to continue on and mention that the only “new” carbon, the carbon that is responsible for rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, is not biogenic from livestock but rather anthropogenic from our releasing the carbon in long term storage (coal, oil, natural gas.) Targeting livestock as a smoke screen in the climate change controversy is a very mistaken path to take since it results in hiding our inability to deal with the real causes. When people are fooled into ignorantly condemning the straw man of meat eating, who I suspect has been set up for them by the fossil fuel industry, I am appalled by how easily human beings allow themselves to be deluded by their corporate masters.

Linked to Grist

Aug 5, 2009 9:09am

How to lick a slug

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

MOUNT HOOD, Ore.

While backpacking here with my 11-year-old daughter, I kept thinking of something tragic: so few kids these days know what happens when you lick a big yellow banana slug.

My daughter and I were recuperating in a (banana slug-infested) wilderness from a surfeit of civilization. On our second day on the Pacific Crest Trail, we were exhausted after nearly 20 miles of hiking, our feet ached, and ravenous mosquitoes were persecuting us. Dusk was falling, but no formal campsite was within miles.

So we set out a groundsheet and our sleeping bags on the soft grass of a ridge, so that the winds would blow the mosquitoes away. Our dog looked aghast (“Ugh, where’s my bed?!”), but sulkily curled up beside us. As far as we could tell, there was no other hiker within a half-day’s journey in any direction.

We debated whether to put up our light tarp to protect us from rain. “No need,” I advised my daughter patronizingly. “There’s zero chance it’ll rain. And it’ll be more fun to be able to look up at shooting stars.”

It was, until we awoke at 4 a.m. to a freezing drizzle.

The rain not only punctured the doctrine of Paternal Infallibility but also offered one of nature’s dazzlingly important lessons in perspective, reminding us that we’re just tenants — and ones without much sway.

Such time in the wilderness is part of our family’s summer ritual, a time to hit the “reset” switch and escape deadlines and BlackBerrys. We spend the time fretting instead about blisters, river crossings and rain, and the experiences offer us lessons on inner peace and life’s meaning — cheap and effective therapy, without the couch.

All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.

Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”

Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.

A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.

Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)

One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.

One sign of trouble: the number of visits to America’s national parks has been slipping for more than a decade. Likewise, Europe and Canada have both done an excellent job of building networks of long-distance hiking trails, while the U.S. has trouble maintaining the trails it has.

One of our family’s annual backpacks is the 40-mile Timberline Trail circuit around Mount Hood, crossing snowfields and dazzling alpine fields of flowers. In years when we’re particularly addled, we hike it as many as three times. But a washout almost three years ago left part of this gorgeous trail — completed in the 1930s — officially closed, and unofficially rather difficult to get by. Here’s a spectacular trail that was built in the last depression, and we can’t even sustain it.

So let’s protect nature, yes, but let’s also maintain trails, restore the Forest Service and support programs that get young people rained on in the woods. Let’s acknowledge that getting kids awed by nature is as important as getting them reading.

Oh, and the slug? Time was, most kids knew that if you licked the underside of a banana slug, your tongue went numb. Better that than have them numb their senses staying cooped up inside.

Aug 5, 2009 9:06am

Dr.Seuss's The Lorax

Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment have teamed up to bring Dr. Seuss’s environmental tale, The Lorax, to a big screen near you on Seuss’s birthday in 2012.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story (for shame!) the story is told by a selfish entrepreneur who clear cuts the forest of all of its Truffala trees leaving no homes for the animals. It’s often referred to as a parable about industrialization, greed and obsolescence as embodied by the narrator, brilliantly named the “Once-ler”. There was also an animated version made in 1972.

And remember…”You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.”

Aug 1, 2008 4:42pm

A sad, very sad reality

Western cultures believe in a the magic fix, the magic diet, the magic formula. One pill to fix to a problem, even if it creates 12 other problems, that is not a problem, there are 12 other pills to take. I call this perspective myopia - a lack of foresight or discernment : a narrow view of something, in this case, the bigger picture.

Lets not question how, as a society, we came to think that giving Statin to 8 years is ok. Lets not question how, in our a society, we have people called “scientists” who’s job is to find a pill that replaces exercise. How much more disconnected to our body can we become? A pill society, a society where the human body has lost any purpose. Applied any Darwinism, and in a couple of hundred of years, humans will look like, well, they will look awful.

In the news today “Why bother exercising? Take a pill. Here’s a couch potato’s dream: What if a drug could help you gain some of the benefits of exercise without working up a sweat? Scientists reported Thursday that there is such a drug - if you happen to be a mouse….”

Sad, very Sad!

Aug 1, 2008 11:34am

Julie Logue-Riordan is the owner of the cooking school “Cooking with Julie”. After living and working many years abroad in Asia and Africa, Julie now makes her home in Napa. In addition to running the cooking school Julie also is a Culinary Instructor for Copia. She is a Member of International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), San Francisco Professional Food Society, Chaine des Rotisseurs and Slow Food. She took some precious time to answer my questions.

What do you remember about food when you were a child?

As a child I was fortunate as my father was an avid foodie. He would take a long diversion for the best peaches.

If I say Picnic, what do you think about?

A quiet place where all your senses bright, on a cotton blanket with fabulous artisan cheeses and a cool rose wine. And a dog to eat the leftovers.

What is your favorite food?

Does chocolate count? Actually it depends on where I am and the season. In Chaing Mai it would be Kao Soi and in Napa it would be Goats Leap cheese and of course one of our great red wines. Hopefully wine is a food!

What does good food brings?

Good food brings many benefits and best of all they are delicious. It is a great way to build friendships

What is a perfect meal?

A meal made with your own or locally grown produce and homemade bread.

Do you think it is possible to feed the world in a mindful and sustainable way?

I believe it is possible but it will take time there are lots of politics involved that makes it difficult. I’m encouraged regularly with people becoming aware and active even if it is only to visit their local farmers markets.

Is food only food? Or is it bigger than simple nutriments?

What we eat is what we are. Each time we eat or buy food we are making a statement about who we are and voting with our fork for the kind of place we want to live in.

What do you think are the problems today with food and children?

Children are given too many choices and are being marketed to.

If you could change one thing in the way we eat today, what wouldit be?

I would get rid of high fructose corn syrup.

Your fondest memory as a child about nature?

Fishing in streams, and hiking to pick berries. Nature is so rewarding.

What does spending time in nature brings you?

It revitalizes me in a wonderful way.

Do you have plants at home? Why?

I have a garden and grow tomatoes, herbs and flowers. I love having fresh veggies and fruits. There is nothing more satisfying than clipping some fresh herbs to add a special flavour to a dish.

If you could build your summer house anywhere in the world, where would it be? Why?

There are lots of wonderful places but my husband and I have dreamed of the south of France and in Sydney. Wine, food, and culture. Plus great weather.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is the time children spend playing in nature?

10 It is so important for children to know about nature even if it is only a park that they can get to.

When you go on vacation, where do you go? Why?

I like a change of scene to imerse myself in the local culture whether it be somewhere in Europe or Asia

If you could change one thing in the way cities and public buildings are designed, what would it be?

More public water fountains for people and dogs.

Do you think enough is done to bring children to nature?

I’m not sure, I don’t know much about any programs.

Do you think it is possible for human to grow in a mindful and sustainable manner?

It is possible and I try harder and harder each day!

Aug 1, 2008 11:19am

Cousteau and Attenborough were my childhood heros. I watched and followed them religiously. In fact, when Cousteau died, I reacted like any child when their super hero dies, he simply can’t. He is suppose to live forever. I experienced the “super-hero-is-in-fact-human” denial.

This morning in the UK newspaper Independent, a recent survey has David extremely worried and wonder how children will know how to take care of Nature since they are so disconnected.

“The wild world is becoming so remote to children that they miss out, and an interest in the natural world doesn’t grow as it should. Nobody is going protect the natural world unless they understand it.”

Jul 28, 2008 9:46am

Two great headlines in the news today.

Ban On Energy Drinks

HILLSBOROUGH, N.J. (AP) ― They can be popular because they’re sweet, they give you a lift and they have hip-sounding names like Red Bull and Spike Shooter.

But school officials across the country aren’t as buzzed about caffeinated energy drinks as some of their students. They’re worried about young people gulping down too much caffeine—and getting so hyper that they lose focus on their studies.

“Being hepped up on caffeine can be a distraction to your learning,” said Joe Trybulski, principal of Hillsborough Middle School in central New Jersey.

The Hillsborough school, with more than 1,200 seventh and eighth graders, is among a growing number across the country that have banned or are considering banning energy drinks from their campuses….. click here for more.

Ikoma “Eco-City” to Cut Back on Vending Machines

Vending machines have come under fire lately for being bad for the environment, as inefficient 24-hour operation leads to significant amounts of electricity being wasted. Especially in Japan, there are over 5.4million vending machines (as of Dec 2007). Half of them are for beverages and it is said that if we eliminated ALL of them we could reduce at least ONE nuclear reactor (out of the total 55). Now, Ikoma City in Nara Prefecture is standing up and doing something about it.

The city is aiming to eliminate all non-essential vending machines from city facilities such as parks and gymnasiums within a 6-month period started in April, 2008. Currently, there are 39 cigarette and drinks vending machines in Ikoma, but the city is looking to get rid of as many as possible….. click here for more.

Jul 26, 2008 12:43pm

Schwarzenegger Terminates Trans Fat in Calif.

from ABC News

California Becomes the First State to Ban Trans Fats

By MOLLY HUNTER

July 25, 2008 —

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made it official: California will be the first trans-fat free state in the nation.

All-natural palm, rice and soybean oils will soon be king, and life in the Golden State will be forever altered.

The California legislature pushed the bill through last week, and Schwarzenegger signed it into law Friday, July 25.

The ban will require food providers to begin phasing out trans fat oils by July 1, 2009. Thereafter, noncompliance with the ban will result in fines of up to $1,000.

Trans unsaturated fatty acids are the partially hydrogenated oils that result from a chemical process producing solid fats with a longer shelf life.

These so-called “trans fats” were once thought to be healthier than butter, but research in the last decade has shown that they are much more harmful to health than had been believed. According to the American Heart Association, trans unsaturated fatty acids are medically proven to increase the risk of coronary heart disease by raising bad cholesterol (LDL) levels and reducing good cholesterol levels (HDL).

With more than half a million Americans dying each year from heart disease, the switch may be coming not a moment too soon.

This ban comes on the heels of the New York City’s prohibition on trans fats in restaurants, which took full effect on July 1. But the wheels began turning in California before the Big Apple’s eateries sought substitutes for their deep fryers.

Tiburon, a northern California town of about 8,700 people, has boasted trans fat-free restaurants since 2004. All 18 restaurants turned away, rather effortlessly and voluntarily, from partially hydrogenated oils at the urging of a lawyer, Steven Joseph, and his task force at bantransfats.com.

“The change has been very well received by our customers,” said Carl Peschlow, owner of Sweden House Bakery in Tiburon. “Those so-called bad fats do, however, give our croissants a little oomph.”

Peschlow said that while his bakery made the change relatively early, they still use a “tiny bit” of trans fat in their croissant recipe. Otherwise, Peschlow said, “the croissants just look like fat pancakes.”

When New York City turned its attention to trans fats, they looked to Joseph’s Project Tiburon for guidance. Joseph, a California transplant from Washington D.C., also led the fight against Kraft in 2003, asking the food giant to “cease and desist marketing and selling Oreo cookies to children in the State of California” until the popular chocolate sandwich cookie contained zero trans fats.

Kraft caved and has since become a leader in the industry, reducing or eliminating trans fats in 650 of its products. “Clearly that’s what people wanted and that’s what they care about,” said Susan Davison, Kraft’s director of corporate affairs.

Joseph and his team also prompted McDonalds to re-think its use of trans fats, and today Wendy’s has gone completely trans fat-free. (California staple In-N-Out Burger has never used trans fats since opening in 1948.)

The California Restaurant Association along with other organizations has led the charge against the ban, claiming that many restaurants are making the shift without the government’s help.

Chains including Taco Bell, Denny’s, Burger King, Olive Garden, El Pollo Loco and Red Lobster have voluntarily pledged to fully or partially eliminate trans fats in their kitchens.

Beware: Silent, Unlisted, Deadly Fats

However, there are still fast food chains that haven’t quite caught the sans-trans fever.

Carls Jr., for one, pledged to eliminate all trans fats by January 1, 2008, but as of July 16, 2008 hasn’t followed through in all locations. A spokesperson for the company told ABCNews.com that by November 2008, all restaurants should be using trans fat-free oils.

And some restaurants, like KFC and Popeye’s, have gone partway, eliminating trans fats from all but the biggest and juiciest of options.

KFC’s chicken and biscuit bowl tips the scale at 870 calories, and is one of the few menu items with trans fats. Popeye’s, meanwhile, boasts a 660-calorie-count chicken and sausage jambalaya with trans fats.

Bojangles, famous for its southern chicken and biscuits, has not done anything companywide to stop use of trans fats. They hope to do so in the future, but neither their Web site nor a spokesperson for the company gave ABCNews.com any additional nutritional information regarding trans fats.

Restaurants are not responsible for listing nutritional information on their menus, though several city and county ordinances have been proposed across the country.

Food packages on the other hand were required by the FDA as of January 1, 2006, to list trans fats on the nutrition facts label, an announcement that thrust trans fats into the spot light.

Doctors: Simply Swapping Out One Fat For Another

For many doctors, the dishes that weigh in at many hundreds of calories really shouldn’t be consumed in the first place.

“Perhaps the biggest issue,” said Keith-Thomas Ayoob, associate professor in the Pediatrics Department at Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, “is how much of the foods do we even need to be eating? Is this going to change obesity? No, because you’re swapping out one fat for another, the calories are the same. Would it be more beneficial for our hearts? Maybe.”

Ayoob described the ban as a positive, albeit small, step.

Madelyn Fernstrom, associate professor and director of the University of Pittsburgh Weight Management Center, reiterated that the focus needs to be on the actual food.

“A better message is eat less fat of any type, and more fruits and vegetables,” Fernstrom said.

Fernstrom, like Ayoob, does not see a huge advantage to banning trans fat.

“Doing something is better than nothing,” she admitted. But she said she does not think the California ban will have any impact on residents’ health.

Still, Dr. David Katz, ABC News medical contributor and associate director of the Nutrition Science, Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, thinks the ban is right on track. Katz said that limiting trans fats is one of the best ways to lead a population to a healthier lifestyle.

“We don’t ask people to screen their food for lead, or arsenic, or mercury. These are known toxins; we should be able to assume that known poisons are not put into our food,” said Dr. Katz.

Dr. Katz maintained that as an artificial and harmful product linked to heart disease and diabetes, trans fats effectively mean slow death. “In this case, government regulation is pretty easy to justify,” Dr. Katz added.

L.A. Follows Healthy Lead of Northern Neighbors

Down south from the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles’ south side is filled with unhealthy restaurant choices.

According to a study by the L.A. Times, 45 percent of the 900 restaurants in south L.A. are fast food joints, while only 16 percent of the Westside’s 2,200 restaurants meet that description.

L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry has introduced a bill that would ban all future development of fast food chains in a 32 square-mile area of southern Los Angeles.

The bill aims to limit the fast food chains popping up on every L.A.street corner, and offers incentive packages to grocery stores to move into those neighborhoods.

Harold Goldstein of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy cited a study by the CCPHA which found that people living in neighborhoods with fast food and convenience stores have a 20 percent higher prevalence of obesity and 23 percent more diabetes than their counterparts living in more health-conscious neighborhoods.

The Skinny on the Substitutes

While healthier restaurants are still sparse in southern L.A., healthier oils have become widespread.

Companies including Carolina Soy Product (CSP) of North Carolina, California Rice Oil of California and Loders Croklaan of Illinois offer up soy-based oil, rice oil and palm oil as healthful alternatives.

The demand for these substitutes has grown steadily in recent years, and CSP saw its profits double when New York City did away with trans fats.

Bob Dawson, chief operating officer for Carolina Soy Product, currently manages one satellite warehouse in California, but both eastern companies aim to expand westward in anticipation of future demand.

“I really felt like California would be ahead of the curve in terms of healthy eating,” Dawson said of his interest to jump into the California market.

While most recognize that the California ban won’t solve the problem overnight, at least it is getting the ball rolling.

“This is certainly not the mother of all nutrition issues,” wrote Dr. Katz of Yale University, “there will be many other fish to fry (in healthful oil). But this is important and yes, all by itself it should help move the needle visibly.”

Jul 25, 2008 10:37am

So nice advertising from the San Francisco Zoo. Today, on the The Cool Hunter website. The campaign is called “When San Franciscans connect with their animal” On the “about” section of the site, here is what we find:

From a young age, it’s an almost instinctive human emotion to want t connect with animals. As children, we’ve all fantasized what it must be like to have a tail. Or wings. Maybe even feathers. It’s this curiosity that fuels our imagination and makes us want to learn more about animals and their relationship to us.

Once activated, this curiosity never leaves-even later when we become adults.

Launching in 2008, the “our gallery site” is part of the Critter Quest interactive media campaign built out of the San Francisco Zoo’s mission statement of connecting people with wildlife, inspiring caring for nature and advance conservation action. Instead of just showing pictures of animals to get people to remember the zoo, we wanted to create opportunities to get Bay Area residents to re-connect with animals - as well as to remind everyone that the SF Zoo belongs to all of us.

Jul 25, 2008 10:24am

I came upon a blog entry from an Australian about the book Fatland. The book was reviewed in the NY Times in 2003.

At least from a business perspective, the fattening of America may well have been a necessity. Food companies grow by selling us more of their products. The challenge they face is that the American population is growing much more slowly than the American food supply — a prescription for falling rates of profit. Agribusiness now produces 3,800 calories of food a day for every American, 500 calories more than it produced 30 years ago. (And by the government’s lights, at least a thousand more calories than most people need.) So what’s a food company to do? The answer couldn’t be simpler or more imperative: get each of us to eat more. A lot more.

Critser doesn’t put it quite this way, but his subject is the nutritional contradictions of capitalism. There’s only so much food one person can consume (unlike shoes or CD’s), or so you would think. But Big Food has been nothing short of ingenious in devising ways to transform its overproduction into our overconsumption — and body fat. The best parts of this book show how, in the space of two decades, Americans learned to eat, on average, an additional 200 calories a day. In the words of James O. Hill, a physiologist Critser interviewed, getting fat today is less an aberration than ”a normal response to the American environment.”

Jul 25, 2008 10:13am

In today’s NY Times, an article about the infamous High Fructose Corn Syrup. HFCS is what many people have been pointing the finger at for quite some times. It is often how people differentiate Europe from America. The drastic increase of this substance’s intake is in direct correlation with America’s weight.

Most of the carbohydrates we eat are made up of chains of glucose. When glucose enters the bloodstream, the body releases insulin to help regulate it. Fructose, on the other hand, is processed in the liver. To greatly simplify the situation: When too much fructose enters the liver, the liver can’t process it all fast enough for the body to use as sugar. Instead, it starts making fats from the fructose and sending them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides. (From Fructose, Sweet but Dangerous)

From the article

In humans, triglycerides, which are a type of fat in the blood, are mostly formed in the liver. Dr. Parks said the liver acts like “a traffic cop” who coordinates how the body uses dietary sugars. When the liver encounters glucose, it decides whether the body needs to store it, burn it for energy or turn it into triglycerides.

But when fructose enters the body, it bypasses the process and ends up being quickly converted to body fat.

“It’s basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence,” Dr. Parks said. “It’s a less-controlled movement of fructose through these pathways that causes it to contribute to greater triglyceride synthesis. The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body.”

Fructose is not bad by itself, what has changed over the years is that the increase in consumption is in astronomical proportion. High Fructose Corn Syrup is in everything and mostly in soda, and drinks like gatorade, which kids drinks some many in a single day.

Jul 24, 2008 10:52am

Panel OKs one-year ban on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A.

The measure is part of an effort to address health problems in the area. Some question how such eateries will be defined.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

9:42 PM PDT, July 22, 2008

A proposal that would place at least a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a broad swath of neighborhoods, mostly in South Los Angeles, won unanimous support from a Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday.

If approved by the full council and signed by the mayor, the law would prevent fast-food chains from opening new restaurants in a 32-square-mile area, including West Adams, Baldwin Village and Leimert Park. The moratorium would be in effect for one year, with the possibility of two six-month extensions.

Ban on new fast-food restaurants

Opinion: Editorial - Banning fast food in South L.A.

The measure, proposed by Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose 9th District includes much of South Los Angeles, defines a fast-food restaurant as “any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.”

Councilman Jose Huizar questioned that definition during the meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee and requested clarification from city planners — particularly the definition of a “limited menu” — before the proposal goes before the council.

“McDonald’s has been increasing the number of items on their menu, so at what point would they exceed that definition?” Huizar said.

Councilman Jack Weiss said restrictions on fast-food restaurants in Westwood have caused problems for such businesses as Ben & Jerry’s and Smoothie King, which would not otherwise be considered fast-food outlets.

Restaurant lobbyists initially opposed the law. But Andrew Casana, a lobbyist for the Sacramento-based California Restaurant Assn., said his group is working with Perry and other council members and is waiting to see how they define fast food and plan to deal with lots that remain vacant after the law expires.

Perry said that after speaking with restaurant lobbyists, she amended her proposal to allow for “fast-food casual” restaurants, such as Subway or Pastagina, that do not have heat lamps or drive-through windows and that prepare fresh food to order.

Perry said she has been attempting to address the health issues associated with fast food, such as diabetes and obesity. She is trying to persuade supermarket chains and sit-down restaurants to open in her district, which has been especially hard hit with such health problems.

The Community Redevelopment Agency is offering grocers and restaurants incentives that include tax credits, electricity discounts and expedited reviews by the city Planning Department and Building and Safety Department.

“It’s important to offer incentives to bring restaurants into an area, especially an area that has suffered prejudices and stereotypes,” Perry said.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, whose entire 8th District is within the affected area, attended Tuesday’s meeting and expressed support for the proposed law.

Huizar called for the city to do more to combat pervasive junk food advertising by educating children in South L.A. about healthy eating.

Julia Ansley, 66, a retired elementary school teacher who has lived in South L.A. more than 40 years, attended the meeting and said afterward that she was encouraged by the vote. “It’s much needed,” she said of the proposed ordinance. “Our community has been neglected by city planners.”

In April, the county Department of Public Health released a study showing that 30% of South Los Angeles adults were obese, compared with about 21% of adults countywide. South L.A. also has the highest incidence of diabetes in the county, 11.7% compared with 8.1% for the county as a whole.

A Times analysis of the city’s roughly 8,200 restaurants late last year found that South L.A. had the highest concentration of fast-food eateries. Per capita, the area has fewer eateries of any kind than the Westside, downtown or Hollywood, and about the same as the Valley. But a much higher percentage of restaurants in South L.A. belong to fast-food chains, and the area has far fewer grocery stores than other parts of town.

molly.hennessy-fiske @latimes.com

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