Food Link-O-Rama

 Posted by on 10 January 2009 at 7:18 am  Food, Link-O-Rama
Jan 102009
 
  • Modern Forager’s Best Blogging from 2008: You might want to check out Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Weight Gain and What Sweetener Should You Choose? Sugar? Honey? Agave Nectar?.
  • Dr. Eades recently pointed someone interested in the health effects of salt to The (Political) Science of Salt, a lengthy 1998 article by Gary Taubes. It’s well worth reading — particularly if you think that healthy eating for a normal person requires any kind of salt deprivation.
  • Is Being Healthy A Vain Pursuit?: Scott Kustes of Modern Forager got a rash of comments on this post. I didn’t have time to add one, but I do think that the real question is moral, to wit: is it permissible to spend your own time, money, and energy pursuing the joys and pleasures your own life, rather than catering to others? Obviously, by any rational standard, the answer is YES.
  • Worried About Antibiotics In Your Beef? Vegetables May Be No Better: Scientific American reports that “new studies show vegetables like lettuce and potatoes–even organic ones–carry antibiotics.” Here’s the opening paragraphs of the article:
    For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places: Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.

    Today, close to 70 percent of all antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are routinely fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.

    People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms.

    The Minnesota researchers planted corn, green onion and cabbage in manure-treated soil in 2005 to evaluate the environmental impacts of feeding antibiotics to livestock. Six weeks later, the crops were analyzed and found to absorb chlortetracycline, a drug widely used to treat diseases in livestock. In another study two years later, corn, lettuce and potato were planted in soil treated with liquid hog manure. They, too, accumulated concentrations of an antibiotic, named Sulfamethazine, also commonly used in livestock. As the amount of antibiotics in the soil increased, so too did the levels taken up by the corn, potatoes and other plants.

    “Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure,” said Holly Dolliver, a member of the Minnesota research team and now a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. “A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (U.S.) agricultural land.” Manure, widely used as a substitute for chemical fertilizer, adds nutrients that help plants grow. It is often used in organic farming.

    The scientists found that although their crops were only propagated in greenhouses for six weeks–far less than a normal growing season–antibiotics were absorbed readily into their leaves. If grown for a full season, drugs most likely would find their way into parts of plants that humans eat, said Dolliver.

    Less than 0.1 percent of antibiotics applied to soil were absorbed into the corn, lettuce and other plants. Though a tiny amount, health implications for people consuming such small, cumulative doses are largely unknown.

    Read the rest here. At some point, I’ll blog about why I avoid meat from animals treated with hormones and antibiotics. Regarding this story, I’ll just say that I don’t want to be ingesting antibiotics without some specific medical reason for doing so — not even in small doses.

   
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