From the Archives: Food Costs, Health Implications, and Income Equality

Yeah, that’s a lot to cover.

In 2010, the Justice Department held a series of hearings regarding the state of food in the US. It was interesting, and, I must admit, mostly depressing. It did, however, lead to a series of blog posts by myself and others about some of the information presented. This came up recently on a board I frequent in the form of a rising food costs discussion, and it dovetails nicely with the series of blog posts that will start here on Monday about saving money on groceries, too. So, today you get not just my blogs about it, but also the Grist.org article by Tom Philpot!

From EclecticEdibles:

“Some of you may know that the Department of Justice has been holding agriculture antitrust workshops over the past year, culminating with the final workshop this past week in Washington, DC. You can catch some of it on C-Span, including what I am writing about here.  I am going to leave aside things from this panel like what farmers make in relation to prices charged for food, and focus on one of the panelists, because listening to his patter you’d think we were living in a Golden Age here in the US.” Read the rest…

Continue your reading with this post from Grist.org (I’m linked & referenced by Mr. Philpott, which I have to admit was a bit heady for me!):

“Mythbusting: Cheap food does not equal higher quality of life.”

How is That Frugal?

I get a lot of surprise when people read my posts about food, from what we eat overall to what we eat specifically, because I say it’s frugal. They see things like “London Broil,” or “Grass-fed local” and say, “But that’s so expensive.”  And they are right, it is expensive. Which is why you don’t sit down and eat a huge slab of it.

How is it frugal to eat this way? Let me break it down:

1. My definition of frugal is not: as much consumable calories as I can get for as little money as I can spend. My definition is: as much quality nutrition as I can get in as ecologically sustainable manner as I can mange, within a budget. This means making choices. For example, we eat a lot of vegetarian meals, which are cheaper than meat, so we can afford to buy quality meats.

2. At some point, this country is going to have to start paying the real cost of food. That is not what you are paying when you purchase many items at the store. The government is paying a large portion of the actual cost for you, in the form of subsidies, which go to large companies for the most part. I believe it is more cost-effective to buy food locally, to keep the money within the community rather than send it to some corporate honcho somewhere. This is a long-term outlook, of course, but buying “cheap” food just contributes to a larger problem that is going to come back to bite us in the butt.

3. Being sick and/or fat is not frugal. The saying goes “you can pay now, or you can pay later.” I’ll pay now, thanks. Staying at a healthy weight and keeping as many crappy chemicals as I reasonably can out of my body is a worthwhile expenditure to me. If that means eating less so I ca afford better food, so be it.

As Thadd says, “Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two.” We choose Good and Cheap, which means it’s definitely not fast. There’s lots of planning involved, and I’ve learned to be a Master Food Organizer (hey, I think I’ll trademark that and start giving classes on how to become one!). It takes a very strong commitment, and it sometimes means giving up other things.  We all have decisions to make regarding food, and this is what works for us. We don’t eat like typical Americans by a long shot.  Our average food expenditure each week is about $70-80 for the two of us, but it takes a LOT of work to keep it that way. Mostly, that work is cooking, and finding good recipes that use less expensive ingredients. We go through a lot of lentils and beans, but we don’t do it grudgingly.  We have learned great recipe for these ingredients so that it is something we look forward to.

And, we enjoy the size of our grocery bill while we enjoy the food!

Raw Milk: The Choices I Make, and Why

Raw milk has risks. It just does. That means it is exactly no different from anything else we ingest, from lettuce to alcohol. I choose to accept these risks,because I know what they are, and I’ve decided that any potential risks from raw milk from a local, well-vetted farm with excellent husbandry and milking practices is still lower than that of drinking conventional milk.

Here’s the deal:

-Not all of us who drink raw milk are uninformed, on jumping on some bandwagon. I’ve done the research. In fact, part of my job is literally to research food illness, benefits, husbandry practices,etc. I didn’t just hear someone says “raw milk is awesome” and decide “hey, I must drink that!” Raw milk isn’t a recent thing for me. I grew up drinking milk warm, directly from the teats of the cows and goats I milked on our farm. We didn’t pasteurize, but we were taught really excellent husbandry and milking practices. And yes, we milked by hand. We weren’t a dairy, we were too poor to have a milking machine, and as kids we were excellent free labor for our parents.

-I trust my local farmers far more than I trust corporate agriculture. I can stop by and visit my cow, help feed, watch the milking, and see what they do with the milk (including the fact that they’re drinking it, the same as we are) anytime I want, without notice. They provide any information I ask, including testing/herd testing information, with appropriate  verification if requested. I didn’t just wander onto some field with a guy milking a cow and say “hey, can I have some of that?”  Which is essentially what I’m doing if I buy food from corporate agriculture. Corporate Ag sickens thousands each year, from eggs to dairy to produces. Do people get sick from local goods? Of course. But, after looking at all the facts, I believe that–for my family–the risks of non-GMO, grass-fed, pastured, unpasteurized cow’s milk is simply far less than trusting a corporate food system we already know is horribly corrupt. I’ve been sick from mass-produced goods. I have never yet been sick from anything I’ve gotten from my local, vetted farmers. I realize that’s anecdotal, and I don’t expect others to make my choices. But *I* should have a right to make an informed decision about what I eat.

-The risks are, from all the data I can collect since the data is fairly sparse, pretty statistically insignificant. I know that when it’s you or a family member, statistics become irrelevant; but, when making reasonable food choices, they can be helpful. Depending who you listen to, between 3 and 10 Million people drink raw milk in the US. There is, from all the data I could find, an average of 100-150 cases of hospitalization a year reported, meaning they were serious enough to be diagnosed and hospitalized. Only 2 recorded deaths since 1998 that I could find (there may be more, I am willing to revise this, so please let me know). This means that reported cases of illness are between .00005% and .00016%. Even assuming there are, say, 100o unreported cases a year, you’re still only looking at well below a 1% chance of getting ill from raw milk.  I’ll live with that.

-Not all of us who drink raw milk espouse Weston A. Price Foundation values. I am not a member. I do believe in whole foods, I do believe in not eating processed sugars or many simple carobhydrates. I do think we get too few CLAs, Omegas, and the like in our diets as Americans overall. That is about where my paradigm similarities with them ends. I don’t have a problem with them. They’re free to make whatever food choices work for them, and I do applaud the fact that most members bother to educate themselves on what they’re eating, which is more than I can say for the vast majority of Americans who choose to eat crap “food.” I just don’t believe everything they do, and their paradigm borders too closely on fanaticism for me, personally. It’s also frequently tied to religion, and I prefer to keep religious issues out of my food choices.

-I don’t think raw milk is magic. Yes, there are many people who’ve got stories about it curing this or that, and maybe it does. Or, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, and that’s not why I choose it. I’m healthy, I am not looking for a panacea. I, personally, notice my (very mild) seasonal allergies are non-existent when I am drinking local, raw milk regularly. The same is true of local, raw honey. Is it psychosomatic? Possibly. But, since that’s not why I drink it, I don’t actually care. I drink it because I like the fact that the cow (from my farm) has been fed no corn or GMO feed, that it eats grass and therefore likely has higher levels of good fatty acids, that the milk tastes better to me, has a higher fat content (yes, we do actually look for that–Thadd needs something like 4 thousand calories a day, and we get almost none of them from simple carbs or sugars) , that it actually contains no hormones or antibiotics (as opposed to “allowable” amounts), that it’s only hours old when I get it, that it supports local agriculture, and that I can make cheese and other products from it much more readily than I can from high-heat pasteurized milk.

-I don’t feed it to the world. Thadd and I drink it. I do make my own cheese, and some of those cheeses can only be made with raw milk or, in some cases, low-heat pasteurized milk. Unfortunately, the latter is not available literally anywhere near me, so the former is my best choice, even if I didn’t want to drink it. These products, and the raw milk itself, are used for only ourselves. We have no children, and typically when we have guests over, we’re drinking local wine, cider, beer, or freshly-made lemonade, not big glasses of milk.

-You can know the risks, and still elect to take them. Simply because someone chooses to do something someone else views as “risky” does not mean the chooser isn’t aware of the risks. People who climb Mt. Everest are doing something I would personally never do, but I am pretty sure they’re aware of what they’re getting into. People have many different reasons for choosing what they choose to do, and can look at the same information, and come to a different decision. For some people, any germ associated with food is abhorrent. For me, food without germs is abhorrent. I think, overall, that germ theory has led us in the wrong direction, and is one reason we’re so sick as a nation. (I don’t use hand sanitizer, but I do wash my hands thoroughly. I don’t use bleach to clean my house, but I do clean well with soap and water.)  Of course, germs are not the same as pathogens, and while I realize that pathogens can be present in raw milk, appropriate practices keeps the risk of that very small. Small enough, in fact, that I choose to take it because for me, it’s a smaller risk than the long-term effects of what is in much commercial milk.

-Not all of us believe that raw milk should flow freely like a river down a mountain, unhindered and unregulated. I certainly don’t. I would love it if our government could take a step back from lobbyists who contribute heavily to their campaign funds, and draft real, reasonable regulation that would help ensure the safety of a raw milk supply and the products thereof. It’s not impossible. Other countries have done it well (some so well it can actually be gotten at vending machines, and the instances of illness are reported to be the same as pasteurized). Europe is famous for its fresh, raw milk cheeses. People are not hospitalized or dying in droves from fresh ricotta or aged Roquefort (the latter of which is required, by law, to be made from fresh, raw sheep’s milk). Unfortunately, our government, and many people who seem to speak on either side of this issue, seem to see no middle: it’s either a free-for-all, or a felony.  When really, it should be more along the lines of: here are solid regulations for husbandry, milking, testing, storage, and transport. Follow them, or you will be liable, just like other food companies (oh, wait…other food companies get people sick and hospitalize them all the time with no real consequences). So, until and unless those who do the regulation can get their collective heads out of their collective arses,  it leaves those of us in the middle with a lot of vetting to do on our farms.

Raw milk is not for everyone. There are plenty of instances when pasteurized milk is the better choice. But, there’s no good reason why the choice can’t be offered in a safe way.

Related Articles

• Why Hide Serious Government Data on Raw Milk Drinkers? (via Food Freedom) (healthisahabit.wordpress.com)
• Real Raw Milk Facts

If You Want to Change the World, Get OFF Your High Horse.

Your diet is the best diet. It’s the healthiest, most environmentally responsible, animal-loving, morally upstanding, heart-friendly, age-defying, or whatever. Fine.  We’ll start with that assumption and go from there.

Here’s the deal: whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, locavore, paleo, Raw, CR, or some other niche eating habit, there’s science to prove your way is the right way. And, there’s science to prove your way is the wrong way. Welcome to reality, where things are 1) not that black and white, 2) most nutrition studies are woefully crappy science, and 3) the woefully crappy science is funded by special interests that want the science to say something specific. But most importantly, welcome to the world where 99% of the US population simply doesn’t give a damn.

And there, my friends, is your untapped market.

Start there. Seriously, you’re not going to convert a paleo to veganism by quoting “The China Study” at them, nor are you going to convert a hardcore vegan to paleo using Weston Price. They’ve seen it, they’ve heard it, they’ve chosen another path. Accept it and move on, because all you’re doing is making people tired, annoyed, and uninterested in actually starting *any* kind of better eating because there’s so much confusion and negativity.

However, there is one thing that pretty much any and all of the respected (such as it is) science says, regardless of whether you’re vegan, paleo, or somewhere in between: We should be eating real food, not processed crap. And that is where your personal food agenda can stop blowing smoke up your own self-righteous behind and actually make some kind of difference to…well, to anyone but you.

So, how do you change the world? By trolling blogs and belittling the person on “the other side” of the food spectrum, who in all likelihood has not only heard and seen it all before, but has probably been hearing it and seeing it for years? Does this actually sound like the best tack for recruitment to your personal foodie cause? Because it’s not. I defy anyone to give me one verifiable example where viciously haranguing someone on the opposite end of the eating spectrum with snarky, trolling blog comments and yelled epithets has resulted in a complete 180 in the harangued person’s eating habits. People who honestly want to change the world, not just have something to feel superior about, don’t do that.

Here’s how you change the world:  Come back into reality, where the vast majority of the pe0ple in the US are not waffling on whether or not “The China Study” is valid science, or if that bone stock from “Nourishing Traditions” will widen their kid’s palette.  The vast, overwhelming majority of people in the US aren’t even close to that kind of nutrition evaluation yet, and won’t be until a whole lot of other things change.  Most people are not making the choice between a veggie burger or homemade chicken stock from pastured birds, they’re choosing between Hungry Man dinners or a frozen pizza.

And here’s where we all fail. To the people who haven’t yet drunk our cool-aid, all this irate proselytizing and side-choosing just makes those of us who are eating a healthier diet (whatever it may be) look like over-reactive  nutcases who take ourselves way too seriously. It’s too confusing, it’s too much work, and we all look like a bunch of lunatics with a superiority complex. Not exactly a recipe for a popular food movement. How about we stop playing holier-than-thou and criticizing everyone who doesn’t eat the same way we do as uneducated, immoral, or stupid; and, instead, start working together to create an environment where people can learn to eat well and have encouragement and impetus to do so?

Start from the place that all the science agrees on: junk food is bad for you. Stop eating it, and start eating real food. This is something almost every “niche”  food lifestyle choice has in common, and it’s a powerful starting point for a movement that could actually make a difference in the US.

We’re not going to get the entire country to switch to whatever lifestyle you believe is best overnight (or frankly, in the next 5-10 years). That is reality, and while you may not like it, you need to learn to live with it.  You can’t save every cow or carrot, but you can make a difference in the overall direction of the food lifestyle winds. Whether you believe paleo or veganism is ” The Way,” hopefully you can admit that someone grabbing either a quinoa-bean casserole or a bowl of pastured chicken soup is a HUGE step up from a bag of Doritos and a can of Coke.  Can we all just take a step back from our I’m-so-brilliant rhetoric and agree that someone cooking a dinner from scratch, whether it’s tofu stir-fry or meatloaf, is almost certainly better than taking the family to Taco Bell?

How about we focus on  teaching people how to read labels and use fresh, whole ingredients to make real foods? How about we push to stop feeding our kids a third-cup of sugar for in-school breakfasts? How about we educate our population about the dangers of various preservatives and simple carbohydrates? How about we’re honest about obesity and the risks obese individuals face? How about we support ways to make whole foods more readily available to our population that fast and junk foods?

Once our population has the tools to even comprehend what the hell we’re saying, or to care, when we talk about GMO foods, carbon footprints, sprouting grains, pastured animals, complete vegetarian proteins, or who Mr. Price and Mr. Campbell are–then we cab resume the argument over which micro-managed food lifestyle is “the best.”

Eat what you choose to eat, eat what you choose to love, and help others learn about nutrition through respect, education, and outreach. We’ll all get a lot farther in our road to a better food reality a lot faster if we work together from a civil, rational common ground.

More Grist for the Mill

Image via Wikipedia

If you enjoyed the article below about the Food Marketing Institute‘s idiocy with numbers, you should really check out Tom Phillpot’s article “Mythbusting: Cheap Food Does Not Equal Higher Quality of Life,” on Grist.org. Tom expands on some of the data I was able to dig up, and adds his own thoughts on food spending vs. quality of life. It’s worth the read.

One thing he addresses that I didn’t get into much in my article was income inequality, which is a huge part of what is wrong with our food system. About two years ago, I was asked to talk to an AP Psych class about food and psychology. It was fortunately a fairly progressive teacher that asked me, because the topic pretty quickly turned to school lunches, especially free school lunches. About half the kids in that class were on free lunch. It was difficult to watch the looks on those kids faces as we went over their menu, and they realized what they were being fed, and what it meant for their performance, their health, and their futures.

These kids face enough challenges in life, but as a nation we choose to compound those challenges with cheap food that has, as Milehimama is currently blogging, amounts of sugar, fat, and additives that can have profound impacts on our children. It makes them fat. It makes them tired. It increases their chances of all kinds of health-related issues like diabetes, cancer and heart disease. The shear amount of sugar is enough to give even the most focused kids a good shot at exhibiting symptoms of attention deficit disorders.

Until we, as a nation, understand that cheaper is not better when it comes to food, we will not conquer our health care crisis, our obesity epidemic, or our falling academic performance. We will not be helping our poor get out of the poverty cycle, we will be hindering them. It is, in a way, a form of unintentional (or at least, I hope it’s unintentional) discrimination that gives those already at a disadvantage an even bigger disadvantage.

I am proud to say that not only did one of the free lunch students invite me back as a guest speaker for a school project she decided to organize about nutrition, but many of those students also started bringing in their own (healthier) lunches.

Related Articles

• Mythbusting: Cheap food does not equal higher quality of life (grist.org)
• Obama Signs Nutrition Bill Into Law (newser.com)
• Men in aprons, food-police backlash, and 8 more trends (grist.org)

Different Ideas about “Quality of Life”

Some of you may know that the Department of Justice has been holding agriculture antitrust workshops over the past year, culminating with the final workshop this past week in Washington, DC. You can catch some of it on C-Span, including what I am writing about here.  I am going to leave aside things from this panel like what farmers make in relation to prices charged for food, and focus on one of the panelists, because listening to his patter you’d think we were living in a Golden Age here in the US.

Erik Leiberman, the panelist representing the Food Marketing Institute for the “Food Chain Supply Competition” portion of the workshops, rattled off some impressive-sounding statistics about how much Americans spend–or rather, don’t spend–on food. Statistics that I decided to check out. Since the FMI is an Corporate Ag entity, I was surprised at how uninformed and unprepared Mr. Lieberman seemed, and I was also surprised at the lack of research that went into his spiel.  Sadly, it seemed like another example of agribusiness not taking concerns seriously. Apparently, a Department of Justice panel wasn’t important enough for them to take time to at least prep their representative on rhetoric and sincerity.  Michele Simon, author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, was at the panels:  “I expected to hear an industry shill parrot the corporate line, but this guy couldn’t even be bothered to sound convincing. He kept looking down at his notes to read from his talking points, which didn’t exactly endear him to the already skeptical audience. This was in contrast to others who came better prepared and in the case of actual farmers, spoke from the heart.”

I get that corporation have to make money. We all have to make a living.  Really, though, there should be some expectation of doing it in an ethical, informed, and responsible manner. This would entail knowing what you’re talking about when you speak about your business, especially when you speak in hard numbers. Mr. Lieberman not only lacked empathy or apparently emotional connection to a subject so many at the panels (and around the US) were passionate about, he also either lacked the staff to collect appropriate date or the data itself is intentionally misrepresented. I don’t expect everyone to know every detail about every facet of the business they’re in, especially if it’s a large business and they’re not the CEO; but, I do expect that if they give numbers and make correlations using those numbers that they at least 1) have the right numbers and 2) have some idea what those numbers actually mean.

During the hour-and-a-half panel discussion, Lieberman kept coming back to his assertion that the “True cost of food declined consistently over…many decades. This is despite the USDA’s price index showing steady increases of 2-6% or more a year.  Some items increased even more dramatically: ” In 2007, retail milk prices rose 11.6 percent, and egg prices were up 29.2 percent, while vegetable oil and bread prices are expected to increase 9 percent or more in 2008.” Yet, upon questioning by other members of the panel, Mr. Lieberman continued to insist prices were falling steadily. If I can find these statistics online with a quick google search on the USDA website, I’m not quite sure why Mr. Lieberman couldn’t, too.

He also asserted that US consumers spend only 9% of their disposable (after-tax) family income on food: 5.5% at home, he other 4% eating out (yes, I realize that doesn’t equal 9%).  His statistics directly conflict with government agency statistics regarding how people spend money.  According to the US Department of labor, in 2009, Americans spent 12.99% of their family income on food (7.56% at home, the rest eating out), up from 12% in 2008. According to the USDA, Americans spent 9.9% of their disposable income on food way back in 2005.  Percentage of household income spent on food has actually risen in recent years, not decreased, as have prices.

Another bit of information not mentioned is that “average” isn’t really indicative of much. The poor and lower-class spend a far larger amount of their income, about 25%, on food. The upper-middle class and wealthy significantly less. As Forbes says: “The more Americans make, the less they spend on food.”

And, many people spent essentially nothing at all, because they are on government nutrition assistance programs such as SNAP or WIC, and that doesn’t count in these statistics as a percentage of disposable income spent. Since many people using SNAP do have an income, their income is counted into the numbers used to get these statistics, but the amount spent on food using food stamps is not. Since 2008, the number of people on these assistance programs has increased dramatically. According to new USDA statistics just out (thank you Marion Nestle for pointing me to these), the number of people receiving SNAP benefits rose from 28.2M in 2008 to 40.3M in2010. That’s an increase of 12M people, and approximately 31 BILLION dollars, that is being spent on food but not tallied into Mr. Lieberman’s impressive-sounding statistics.

All this leads back to Mr. Lieberman’s continued and repeated assertion was that food prices have dropped, and that spending less of our national household income on food ” has “raised quality of life in our country.” He compares what we spend to France and Spain, who he says spend about 15% of family income on food.  “You can see how that raises quality of life in our nation,” says Mr. Lieberman. (I haven’t found the French and Spain stats for myself yet, largely because I don’t speak French or Spanish–please let me know if anyone out there has these stats.)

Let’s do some basic comparison, shall we? I’ll use Mr. Lieberman’s spending statistics,  just for fun.

Issue                                             US                           France                   Spain

Food spending                           9%                           15%                          15%

Overweight adults                    60%                            9%                         13.4%

Overweight Children                 33%                       13-15%                   25%

Type 2 Diabetes, Adult           25.9%                       3.5%                     10%

Heart disease Death*                106.5                         39.8                      53.8

*per 100,000 people

I think you get the idea here. I have no idea why Mr. Lieberman thinks that paying less for food has anything at all to do with quality of life. Diabetes, obesity, coronary disease…these have all increased dramatically as we decrease what we spend in food. I can’t speak for all Americans, of course, but I suspect that the majority would agree with me that “increased quality of life” is measured by health and well-being as well as dollars and cents. Looking at the statistics above, even if Mr. Lieberman’s 9% was accurate, it wouldn’t follow that the reduction in spending on food equals a better life.

For me, at least, increased quality of life doesn’t mean being sick and fat, even if it means I only have to spend 9% of my disposable income to get that way.

Resources:

Despite Higher Food Prices, Percent of U.S. Income Spent on Food Remains Constant., Annette Clauson.  http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/September08/Findings/PercentofIncome.htm

How The Average US Consumer Spends Their Paycheck, VisualEconomics.com. http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/

Americans Spend Less Than 10 Percent of Disposable Income on Food, Winston-Salem News.  http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july192006/food_prices_71906.php

OECD Health Data, 2010. http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html

American Diabetes Association

World Health Organization

Food stamp use and cost up sharply since 2008, by Marion Nestle. Foodpolitics.com.

Friday Fast Ones

Fast One: Store-purchased organic eggs may not live up to all they’re cracked up to be. Those in the local food movement pretty much already know this, but it’s worth getting out there. Most organic eggs from supermarkets are produced in glorified (and often not so glorified) factory farms with very little difference from non-organic eggs, except for the price tag. Supermarket brands, including Whole Foods, rank lowest on the list of quality. What it  means to you: If you’re buying Certified Organic eggs at the supermarket, you’re probably being shafted. Find a local farmer, and get your money’s worth. And, honestly, it’ll probably be less money; though, it’s still a far better value even if it’s the same price or more expensive.  Ask around at your local farmer’s market, or go to localharvest.org to find real eggs.

Fast One: PA rejected regulation 2777, which would have effectively banned any an all ways of selling raw milk in PA! What it means to you: Well, if you’re in PA it means you can still get raw milk. If you’re anywhere else in the country, it means that some politicians are hearing those of us who are being active about wanting choices in our food. If you want the ability to decide if you should drink raw milk, eat pastured eggs and chickens from a small farm, or any other kind of food freedom, you need to get active.  Monsanto, the Corn Refiners Association, The Dairy Council…all of these companies spend millions of dollars a year lobbying to control your food.

Fast One: Speaking of the Corn Refiner’s Association, they’re now actively pushing their “educational” agenda about HFCS on blogs, and paying or otherwise compensating “mommy bloggers” to push their product as healthy. Essentially, they give money, gifts, or other compensation to people for listening to a presentation, and they blogging the positives. CRA reps are popping up on negative-HFCS blogs everywhere, and disappear when pushed about their agenda, whether or not the CRA is paying them to comment, etc. What this means to you: Buyer beware. Take a critical look at the blogs you read, and do some digging into their integrity. Taking money or other gifts to post positively about a product or service isn’t something I consider ethical, do you? There’s a large amount of money being spent here. People are becoming more aware of  HFCS and choosing to eschew it, which is starting to hurt the profits of Corporate Agriculture. They’re fighting back, and doing it in a fairly sneaky way, which writes a story all it’s own. There’s a whole post here in and of itself, one I’ve done before in some respects; but, really, just go read the link and the comments. It’s worth it.

And, last but not least:

Friday Fast One: It’s VA Wine month! There are 180 wineries in VA, many of them using grapes grown either on their estate or in close proximity.  What this means to you: Well, a very good weekend, if you plan it right! It also means, however, that all of those locavores (I hate that word, btw) out there need to hop on this bandwagon. Supporting local includes beverages, and there are some amazing wines coming out of VA. Several wineries are competing for international awards, and holding their own. For some insights, visit Swirl, Sip Snark, Dezel at MyVineSpot.Com, Drink What YOU Like, or  VA Wine Time to check out The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and plan a trip!

To Celebrate VA Wine Month, I’ll be splashing (which means pouring wine tastings) for Wintergreen Winery at Rebec’s Garlic Fest this Saturday. Swing through, say hello, see my New Hair, and try some great local wines! I’m the short blond with the short ‘do at the tasting station!

Related Articles

• Rebranding High Fructose Corn Syrup: Good or Bad Idea? (mpdailyfix.com)
• New York hopes to ban spending food stamps on soda (salon.com)
• Brands and blog tours – not always so sweet. (mom-101.com)
• Not a Sweet Idea: Rebranding HFCS to Corn Sugar (triplepundit.com)