Time to Choose

Time to Choose

Directed by Charles Ferguson (2015)

Film Review

The appraisal of the renewables market is clearly out-of date in this 2015 film. Nevertheless  it contains excellent new material on mountaintop removal (for coal) and coal mining and pollution in China; the growing rollout of rooftop solar in the Third World (as of 2015, 70% of Bangladeshi residents still lacked access to electricity); and the disastrous replacement of Indonesia’s tropical forests with palm oil plantations.

As of 2015, 70% of the world’s carbon emission come from burning fossil fuels and 30% from destroying the world’s forests for agriculture.

The filmmakers link Brazil’s ongoing destruction of the Amazon to the country’s growing export of soy to Chinese pig farms. The country’s massive rainforest destruction has significantly reduced rain fall, leaving Sao Paulo’s 20 million residents to confront chronic water shortages. Illegally driven from their land to create soy plantations that only benefit a handful of billionaires, many subsistence farmers are left with no way to support themselves.

Illegal destruction of Indonesia’s tropical rainforests for palm oil production also displaces many of the country’s subsistence farmers, as well as leading to the near-extinction of orangutan populations. Palm oil is the main ingredient in many processed foods.

Owing to the clear cutting and burning of their rainforests, Indonesia currently has the third highest level of CO2 pollution after China and the US.

The main premise of this film is that we already have all the necessary technology to end rainforest destruction and replace fossil fuels with cheaper and cleaner renewable energy. For decades, the main obstacle to environmental reform has been billionaire oligarchs blocking forest conservation and the roll-out of renewable energy technology.

Filmmakers also emphasize the contribution industrial agriculture plays in increasing carbon emissions. This relates to the abandonment of traditional farming practices that capture carbon in the soil. At present real food (ie non-processed foods produced by traditional farming methods) is referred to as “specialty crops.”

Anyone with a public library card can view the film free on Kanopy. Type “Kanopy” and the name of your library into your search engine.

 

 

 

Corruption, Federal Farm Subsidies and the False Economy of Cheap Processed Food

Food Fight: How Corporations Ruined Food

Real Stories (2017)

Film Review

This is a documentary about the rise of the organic/local food movement in the late sixties and early seventies and the ongoing battle to end a corrupt federal food subsidy program. The latter plays a major role in the US epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

The film depicts the organic food movement as arising out of a 1960s hippy counterculture that viewed America’s growing system of industrial agriculture as intimately linked to the military industrial complex waging the war in Vietnam.*

Ironically the organic food movement began to take off just has the Nixon administration was repealing New Deal agricultural subsidies that supported small family farms and redirecting USDA subsidies to corporations producing the cheap commodities used in processed foods, such as corn, wheat and soy.

The activists interviewed decry the federal emphasis on cheap food as a false economy – we will never save enough to cover skyrocketing medical costs related to processed food diets.

Despite the rapid growth of small organic farms across the US, food activists face an uphill battle without major changes to the USDA farm subsidy program which makes cheap processed food the only affordable option for many low income families.

The high level of corporate-financed corruption becomes clear as the film follows Representative Ron Kind’s efforts to get his Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment added to 2016 Farm Bill.

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*Monsanto and Dow, the corporations producing Agent Orange and Napalm also produce the toxic pesticides and herbicides used in industrial agriculture.

 

Moving Past Cute Orangatans: The Cost of Rainforest Destruction in Human Lives

 

Spoils of Destruction. Indonesian villagers fighting palm oil giants to reclaim their rainforest

RT (2018)

Film Review

Spoils of Destruction is about the Indonesian resistance movement to reclaim rainforest illegally confiscated for palm oil plantations. In Indonesia alone, ten million hectares of tropical rainforest have been to destroyed to plant palm oil trees. In the process, tens of thousands of peasants have been driven off their land, as well as having their water and remaining land poisoned by pesticides.

I find it both ironic and predictable that the western non-profit industrial complex chooses to campaign solely about orangutans endangered by multinational palm oil companies, to the exclusion of the large human population that has been sacrificed.

Palm oil is a common processed food additive linked with diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Here in New Zealand, farmers import large quantities of palm kernel as supplementary feed for “grass-fed” dairy cows and beef.

The benefits the Indonesian government promised when the land confiscations began 20 years ago have never eventuated. At present only 30 percent of the population makes a living working for palm oil companies – the other 70% struggle to survive as subsistence farmers.

In the village of Semunjung Jaya, pesticide runoff has poisoned the river peasants formerly used for drinking water and a source of fish. Gone, too, are the wild boar villagers relied on for protein. Heavy pesticide use has also poisoned the soil on adjacent tracks of farmland – making it impossible to grow rice, vegetables or corn.

Villagers fighting to get their land back receive support and training from national groups fighting the illegal “occupation” of Indonesia by multinational corporations. With their support, residents of Semunjung Jaya are suing the Indonesian government and palm oil companies over illegal land confiscation. The government has responded by discontinuing the meager subsidy it was paying farmers who lost their land.

The Federal Campaign Against Local Healthy Food

Farmageddon

Directed by Kristin Canty (2011)

Film Review

Farmageddon (unrelated to the book Farmageddon) tells the story of a deliberate campaign by federal and state regulatory agencies to harass small family farmers and buying cooperatives.

Kanty begins by briefly outlining the major food safety problem which has accompanied the boom in industrial farming and agrobusiness in the US. Instead of addressing the unhygienic conditions factory farmed animals are raised in (with animals being confined in small cages and pens with their own feces , Congress has imposed an array of useless regulations on all food production and processing.

These regulations allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct warrantless raids on small family farms and private coops. The film tells the story of various families who have been raided at gunpoint by federal and state SWAT teams – often where no or only minor infractions have occurred. Most face confiscation of their animals, product and equipment, as well as destruction of their livelihood.

Many of the raids relate to raw milk production. The latter has proven health benefits in asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis – due to to beneficial bacteria and enzymes that are destroyed when milk is pasteurized.

The laws regulating raw milk vary from state to state – in California you can buy it at supermarkets but can’t sell yogurt or cheese made from raw milk. In some states you can only buy it at the farm gate. In others it’s illegal to sell it at all. Although it’s legal in all states for farmers and farm cooperatives to produce raw milk for their own consumption, the film depicts SWAT teams shutting down several farms and coops for doing so.

In no instance, were any of the confiscated products found to be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria. This is the implicit guarantee you get from sourcing food locally from farmers you know and trust: no  farmer selling milk that makes people sick will stay in business. The source of supermarket food, in contrast, is extremely difficult to trace.

The message that comes across loud and clear in this film in this film is that food regulations created by the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are written by agrobusiness. The latter are clearly threatened by growing consumer demand for locally produced, unprocesssed, organic food. These regulations clearly serve the interests of Food Inc rather than the public.

The Hidden Sugar in Processed Food

That Sugar Film

Directed by Damon Gameau (2014)

Film Review

Last night Maori TV showed the Australian documentary That Sugar Film. So far it’s the best documentary I have seen about the western world’s sugar addiction and the 50 years of fake science (sponsored by the food industry) resulting in the cult of the “low fat diet.” Sadly the low fat diet – the major culprit in our current global epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer – continues to be promoted by many western doctors and public health officials.

The film starts by tracing the original domestication of sugar in New Guinea. From New Guinea sugar cultivation traveled to India, which would be colonized by the British in the 1600s. During the 17th century, sugar was a status symbol for royalty.

Sugar consumption in western society was fairly moderate until 1955, when President Eisenhower’s heart attack highlighted the growing incidence of heart disease. Battle lines were drawn in the scientific community between the American Ancel Keys, who blamed increasing heart disease on fat, and British scientist John Yudkin, who blamed it on sugar. Thanks to a small fortune the food industry spent on studies demonizing fat and lionizing sugar (and major donations they made to US politicians and advocacy groups such as the American Heart Association), by the 1970s Keys had won out and the cult of the low fat diet was institutionalized.

Despite the total absence of independent research, doctors, dieticians and public health officials persuaded millions of patients to eliminate fat from their diets. Owing to shocking levels of sugar in processed foods, the vast majority inadvertently replaced the fat with sugar.

Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau replicates this process through an experiment in which he replaces the fats in his diet with supposedly “healthy” processed foods such as low fat yogurt, muesli (granola), fruit juice and smoothies and beans on toast (a favorite comfort food in Australia and New Zealand). The conditions of his new diet are that he must consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day without eating any candy, deserts or junk food.

His doctor monitors him very closely throughout the experiment. In less than a month he has put on significant weight (without increasing his caloric intake) and is showing signs of liver damage. He is also experiencing major mood swings and bursts of hyperactivity similar to children with ADHD.

Available on the Maori TV website for the next two weeks: That Sugar Film

The Care and Feeding of Gut Bacteria

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat

by Tim Spector

Weidenfeld and Nicholson (2015)

Book Review

The Diet Myth is all about looking after our intestinal bacteria – which are ultimately responsible for the proper functioning of our digestive, immune, endocrine and nervous system. As Professor Tim Spector explains, all mammals co-evolved over millions of years with the bacteria that inhabit their intestines. Because these bacteria produce a number of vital biochemicals that our bodies are genetically incapable of producing, without them the species homo sapiens would not exist. This relatively recent discovery has led many scientists to classify the microbiome (the collective name given to gut bacteria) as a vital organ like the brain, liver or kidneys.

Civilization hasn’t been kind to our intestinal bacteria. For various reasons (overuse of antibiotics, processed foods and pesticides like Roundup), urban life has caused us to lose half of the septillions of gut bacteria we started out with. Nearly all the chronic illnesses that plague modern society (obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, autism, schizophrenia and possibly drug addiction and alcoholism) can be traced to loss or malfunction of intestinal bacteria.

For this book, Spector has chosen to focus on dietary research into foods that improve the health and diversity of our remaining gut bacteria. He blames the myriad of contradictory diet fads on the reality that each human being has their own distinct collection of bacteria. This means the foods that keep them healthy depend on the preferences of their particular bacteria.

Fortunately he’s able to make a few general recommendations that seem to apply to most people.

According to Spector, people with the most diverse profile of gut bacteria are the healthiest. The best way to promote this diversity is through a diverse fiber-rich diet that includes:

• At least 20 different food types per week
• A daily serving of 5 vegetables and 2 fruits
• Daily servings of probiotic foods (fermented foods, such as yogurt, sauerkraut and miso, raw milk and unpasteurized cheeses) that contain beneficial bacteria.*
• Daily servings of prebiotic foods rich in polyphenols that gut bacteria love**
• A strict limitation on red meat,*** sugar, refined carbohydrates, transfats (hydrogenated fats found in vegetable oils, margarine and Crisco) and processed foods

Research also indicates that lifestyle factors such as exercise (athletes have the most diverse microbiomes) also promote bacterial diversity (and good health). As does episodic fasting.****

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*These mainly provide different strains of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria that crowd out harmful inflammatory gut bacteria.

**Foods rich in polyphenols include dark chocolate, coffee, green tea, turmeric, red wine, onions, garlic, (uncooked) extra-virgin olive oil, roasted nuts, Jerusalem artichokes, chicory root, leeks, asparagus, broccoli, bananas, wheat bran and fermented fruits and vegetables.

***Citing numerous studies, Spector totally debunks the claim that red meat is harmful due to its fat content. He maintains the risk associated with red meat is the conversion (by gut microbes) of L-carnitine to trimethylamine oxide, which causes plaque build-up in arteries (in Europeans – this effect appears to be absent in other ethnic groups). He recommends that Europeans limit their intake of red meat to ½ serving or less per day. Those who eat more than this have a 10% increase in mortality. Those who eat one daily serving or more of processed meat (sausages, ham, salami, etc) have a 40% increase in mortality.

****When people fast, a gut organism caused Akkermansia cleans up gut inflammation by feeding off the intestinal lining. Research reveals specific benefit from the 5/2 diet in which people fast two days a week and eat normally the other five.

The Sugar Conspiracy

The Secrets of Sugar

By Fifth Estate (2014)

Film Review

The Secrets of Sugar is a Canadian documentary about the conspiracy by the sugar industry and processed food companies to conceal the damaging effects of sugar on human health. For decades, the medical establishment has led us to believe that our intake of animal fat is responsible for soaring rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. It turns out the real culprit all along is sugar (see The Big Fat Surprise).

Investigators have uncovered industry documents going back to the 1950s linking excess sugar intake with health problems. In 1972, researcher John Yudkin published the book Pure, White and Deadly about research linking sugar to heart disease. The response by the food industry was a vicious campaign to portray Yudkin as an incompetent quack. This, in turn, led to a thirty-year shutdown of institutional funding for research into sugar’s health effects.

For me, the film’s most shocking revelation was the immense amount of sugar hidden in so- called “healthy” processed foods, such as yoghurt, oatmeal, soup and Healthy Choice frozen dinners. In one segment, a former industry scientist nicknamed “Dr Bliss” explains the importance of the “bliss point,” the quantity of added sugar that makes you crave a particular product.

A close look at product labels suggests they are designed to confuse consumers about the actual sugar content of foods. Meanwhile like the tobacco industry, Food Inc spends billions of dollars lobbying against government (and UN) recommendations for a maximum daily sugar intake and clearer food labeling laws.

For years, doctors and dieticians have been telling us that sugar is bad because of all the “empty” calories. New research indicates sugar acts as a poison, inflicting direct damage on the liver and brain via its impact on insulin production. In addition to studies implicating high sugar intake in obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, others point to its role in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease and polycystic ovarian disease.

Industry scientists interviewed in the film manifest the same “blame the victim” mentality as the tobacco industry. They maintain the responsibility lies with the consumer to choose whether to eat sugar – or to smoke. The filmmakers counter that healthy choices are impossible without good information.

The film follows an obese couple over three weeks, who achieve significant weight loss, as well as reductions in cholesterol and triglycerides, simply by eliminating all processed foods from their diet.

Also posted in Veterans Today

The History and Politics of Food Preservation

Salt: A World History

by Mark Kurlansky (2002 Penguin Books)

Book Review

Salt: A World History is a detailed chronology of the role the salt trade has played in human history. Prior to the 20th century, salt’s role in food preservation made it vital to all commercial trade. The mining and manufacture of sodium chloride has also be essential in gunpowder production, silver mining and more than 100 other industrial processes.

In addition to providing a comprehensive review of global technological refinements in salt mining, extraction and manufacture, this book also provides a detailed history (including recipes) of the dietary habits of pre-industrial societies. This part of the book should be of particular interest to sustainability and holistic health activists seeking out traditional methods of food fermentation and preservation as an alternative to processed food. Owing to a new diet I started six months ago to treat a Clostridium difficile infection (see The Care and Feeding of Intestinal Bacteria), fermenting veggies from my garden has become a core part of my daily routine.

Sodium Deficiency and the Rise of Salt Mining

Archeological evidence suggests that plant domestication and the rise of agriculture 10,000 years ago led to a sodium deficiency not present in the diets of hunter gatherer societies. That the agricultural revolution forced our early ancestors seek out surface salt deposits (i.e. salt licks), like other large mammals.

The earliest known salt works are found in Chinese archeological sites dating back to 6,000 BC. Like the rest of Southeast Asia, the Chinese used salt to ferment (pickle) fish, soybeans and other vegetables. The ancient Egyptians were the first to trade preserved foods with other cultures. In the third century BC, they traded salted fish with the Phoenicians for cedar, glass and purple dye from seashells.

Salted fish, olives and other vegetables were also a mainstay of early Greek and Roman diets. After the Romans conquered the Celts in northern Europe, they also adopted the Celtic practice of using salt to preserve ham and other meat. Archeologists have discovered elaborate Celtic salt mines in northern Germany dating from the Roman conquest.

The Basques*, the first to develop commercial whaling (670 AD), also manufactured salt to preserve whale meat. After discovering massive schools of cod in the North Atlantic, Vikings from Scandinavia settled the Ardour River just north of the Basque provinces. For the next few centuries, the Basques salted this cod and dominated the cod trade with the rest of Europe.

Control of the salt and codfish trade would trigger numerous European wars over the next few centuries – with England gaining exclusive control of the Newfoundland fishing grounds in 1759.

Salt in the New World

The history of the Americas is also one of constant warfare over salt. The Aztecs controlled their salt routes through military conquest and exacted a salt tribute from their subjects. The arrival of the Spanish in South and Central America significantly increased demand for salt. The Spanish conquistadors required salt to raise beef and dairy cattle, as well as for tanning hides and separating metallic silver from silver ore.

Control of the salt trade and salt taxes also figure prominently in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and Ghandi’s movement to end British rule in India.

The Decline of the Salt Trade

Thanks to the advent of industrial scale canning, refrigeration and fast freezing technology, the salt trade lost its global importance in the early 20th century. Fermented foods still play an important role in many Asian and a few European cultures – both for health reasons and for their importance to cultural identity.

*The Basque people are an indigenous, non Indo-European people who currently inhabit a region in the Pyrenees straddling France and Spain. DNA evidence suggests they have inhabited the area for roughly 7,000 years.