I'm sure many of you have heard of the "Dirty Dozen". This was put together by some anti-agriculture groups that tried to scare people about the fruits and vegetables they eat. Unfortunately it's all to easy to scare consumers about the food they eat these days and the truth ends up taking a back seat to a slick marketing campaign. But now there's a new website available that addresses this very issue.
Please check out www.safefruitsandveggies.com to learn the truth about the food we eat.
Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Freezing Florida
Florida crops suffer millions in damage from cold
BY JOHN FRANK
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson estimated the price tag from the extended freeze in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though he cautioned the extent of the damage is still largely unknown.
"This is the longest duration of cold in 60 years,'' he said.
In a Wednesday briefing for lawmakers, Bronson said preliminary reports show at least 30 percent of the state's crops were destroyed when below freezing temperatures gripped the state for nearly two weeks.
"That doesn't mean we lost everything,'' he cautioned. "We are hoping they can salvage as much as they can.''
Now that temperatures have thawed, damage assessment teams are visiting farmers throughout the state to get a better picture of what was lost. But already it's clear that fish farmers took the biggest hit with most losing their entire stock. And pole bean prices shot from $10 a crate before the freeze to $45 a crate this week, Bronson said. For strawberries, citrus and squash, it's a waiting game to see what is left after the protective ice melts from the crops.
Read More
It’s a testament to our outstanding food supply system and the hard work of farmers that food is still readily available after all of the hardships agriculture has faced lately. Between water shortages in California, horrible planting and harvesting conditions in the heartland and now killer frosts in our southernmost regions, food should be scarcer than it is. But I can guarantee that you will not be seeing any empty grocery store shelves anytime soon.
BY JOHN FRANK
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson estimated the price tag from the extended freeze in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though he cautioned the extent of the damage is still largely unknown.
"This is the longest duration of cold in 60 years,'' he said.
In a Wednesday briefing for lawmakers, Bronson said preliminary reports show at least 30 percent of the state's crops were destroyed when below freezing temperatures gripped the state for nearly two weeks.
"That doesn't mean we lost everything,'' he cautioned. "We are hoping they can salvage as much as they can.''
Now that temperatures have thawed, damage assessment teams are visiting farmers throughout the state to get a better picture of what was lost. But already it's clear that fish farmers took the biggest hit with most losing their entire stock. And pole bean prices shot from $10 a crate before the freeze to $45 a crate this week, Bronson said. For strawberries, citrus and squash, it's a waiting game to see what is left after the protective ice melts from the crops.
Read More
It’s a testament to our outstanding food supply system and the hard work of farmers that food is still readily available after all of the hardships agriculture has faced lately. Between water shortages in California, horrible planting and harvesting conditions in the heartland and now killer frosts in our southernmost regions, food should be scarcer than it is. But I can guarantee that you will not be seeing any empty grocery store shelves anytime soon.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Something Dies For A Vegan Meal Too
Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: December 21, 2009
I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.
In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”
But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.
“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said. Read More
When vegetarians or vegans try telling you that nothing had to die for their meal, you might mention that everything they will ever eat was once alive and then died. It drives them nuts when you do it, but that’s usually the case when logic is applied against an emotional argument. More than likely, they will use the tired argument that plants don’t have a central nervous system. It might not be like ours, but they can and do respond to stimuli. I have been accused of speciesism because I choose to eat meat, but a vegan diet isn’t any different. ~Troy
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: December 21, 2009
I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.
In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”
But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.
“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said. Read More
When vegetarians or vegans try telling you that nothing had to die for their meal, you might mention that everything they will ever eat was once alive and then died. It drives them nuts when you do it, but that’s usually the case when logic is applied against an emotional argument. More than likely, they will use the tired argument that plants don’t have a central nervous system. It might not be like ours, but they can and do respond to stimuli. I have been accused of speciesism because I choose to eat meat, but a vegan diet isn’t any different. ~Troy
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