How Monsanto Is Sabotaging Efforts to Label Genetically Modified Food.

 

 

 

Photo Credit: illuminating9_11

 

 

 

Inter Press Service / ByCharlotte Silver

 

 

Lobbyists from the biotech industry are ardently opposing GMO labeling.

 

As the 2012 Farm Bill continues to take shape in the halls of the United States Congress, the immense influence of corporate interests is on display.


On June 21 the United States Senate voted overwhelmingly against the Sanders Amendment that would have allowed states to pass legislation that required food and beverage products to label whether or not they contain genetically engineered ingredients.


The amendment, proposed by Independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is particularly relevant as many states prepare to vote on a ballot initiatives that would require such labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods.


Lobbyists from the biotech industry have ardently opposed GMO labelling. These opponents argue that because food labelling has historically been handled by the Food and Drug Association (FDA), it is a federal issue and, therefore, individual states do not have the right to implement such legislation. Indeed, in the case of Vermont, Sanders' home state, Monsanto successfully intimidated the state legislature from voting on a bill that would have required GMO labelling.


Patty Lovera, the assistant director of Food and Water Watch, explained that states planning to vote on GM labelling in November could face a legal fight to defend their right to enact such laws.
"However, this amendment would have taken this threat away," Lovera told IPS.


In a move heralded by food advocates, Sanders introduced amendment 2310 on June 14 this year, after his own state legislature backed out of voting on the popular bill, H.722, also known as the Vermont Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.


Vermont lawmakers allowed the bill to stall – and ultimately die – in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee in April, after a representative from biotech giant, Monsanto, threatened to sue the state if the bill passed.


Significantly, the Senate vote, 73-26, did not fall along partisan lines, with 28 Democrats voting against the Sanders Amendment.


Lovera emphasised that the powerful biotech lobby informs how politicians vote. "This doesn't happen overnight, this is a result of years and years of lobbying and pressure from the biotech industry," she said.


In a report published in November 2010, Food and Water Watch revealed that the largest food and agricultural biotechnology firms and trade associations spent a total of 572 million dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying over the course of ten years.


Importance of Labelling
The Senate vote comes amidst near global agreement that there is a need for GMO labelling.
Codex Alimentarius, the food safety arm of the United Nations, concluded last year after nearly 18 years of debate, that countries were free to label goods as containing genetically engineered ingredients and that labelling of genetically-modified organisms would indeed help inform consumers' choices.


"GMO labels are a risk management measure to deal with any scientific uncertainty," said Dr. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with the Consumers Union, who has been a long-time advocate for mandatory testing and labelling of genetically engineered (GE) foods.


"Labelling is the only way to track unintended effects," Hansen said. "How can you know what you are allergic to if you do not know you are eating GMO's?"


In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Association's hands-off approach to regulating genetically engineered foodstuffs runs contrary to international standards. Currently the U.S. is the only developed country that does not require safety testing for GE plants. However, the Codex Alimentarius instructs countries to conduct safety assessments of all GE plants.


According to testimony written by Dr. Hansen, "This means the U.S. cannot meet the global standards for safety assessment of GE foods. Consequently, countries that require food safety assessments for GE foods could block shipment of such GE foods from the U.S."


Recent polls conducted by MSNBC and Thompson Reuters found that between 93 and 96 percent of the American public believe genetically engineered foods should be labeled as such.
California's GMO labelling initiative collected close to one million signatures, doubling over the requisite 500,000 signatures to secure a place on the November ballot, and the FDA received over 850,000 letters in support of labelling GE food.


Voting as they did, the U.S. Senate did not in any way reflect the desires of their constituents or reflect the guidance of food experts.
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Visit IPS news for fresh perspectives on development and globalization.

Big Food's Latest Ploy to Get Richer While Making Americans Fatter.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

 

Salon / ByDavid Sirota

 

 

Fast food restaurants lead "fourth meal" campaign.

 

 

Major food corporations face a quandary. They are under Wall Street’s constant profit-growth pressure, but they can’t substantially raise product prices because the food market is so cost-sensitive. Therefore, to entice us to spend even more on eating, Big Food has lately been trying to extend the biological limits of consumption by challenging one of the most basic structures of American culture: the traditional meal schedule.

For the last few decades, food companies had aimed their marketing at single meals, pushing to inflate portion sizes. That initiative was wildly successful. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported, the average restaurant meal in the United States is now an unfathomable four times larger than it was in 1950. That has translated into “Americans now consum(ing) 2,700 calories a day, about 500 calories more than 40 years ago,” according to the Atlantic Monthly.

One predictable result of this trend is an obesity rate that’s poised to top 40 percent and that already costs the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in additional healthcare expenditures. The other result is that the super-size campaign has become a victim of its own success. Indeed, food companies are coming to realize that, in terms of per-meal product sales, they are quickly approaching the point where the human body simply cannot — or will not — accommodate any more calories in a single sitting. That has left Big Food fretting about a profit-making path forward, and that’s where the innovators at Yum! Brands come in.

Known for ignoring public health concerns and pioneering weapons-grade junk food, this conglomerate’s subsidiaries have most recently given us the cheeseburger-stuffed pizza (Pizza Hut), the Dorito-shelled taco (Taco Bell), and the “Double Down” (KFC) — a bacon and cheese sandwich that replaces bread with slabs of deep-fried chicken. So it should come as no surprise that with the three meals hitting their caloric max-out point, Yum! Brands has been leading the effort to add a whole new gorging session to America’s daily schedule.

The campaign is called “fourth meal” and was originally launched in a series of Taco Bell spots telling kids that “everyone is a fourth mealer — some just don’t know it yet.” Now, new “fourth meal” ads are once again popping up all over television, insisting that “sometimes the best dinner is after dinner.” The ads are backed by an eponymous website and a “cravinator” smartphone app that helps binge eaters select their junk food of choice.

Though the “fourth meal” campaign has been ongoing since 2006, it is particularly notable today because it proves that such marketing will persist even as the obesity epidemic becomes a full-fledged headline-grabbing emergency. And it persists, of course, because these kinds of ads are wholly unregulated and tend to deliver for the food industry.

Social science data illustrates that latter truism. In 2010 and 2011, for instance, researchers from Yale University and Texas A&M University both found that fast-food ads successfully change kids’ eating expectations and shape their culinary desires. Likewise, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently reported “that greater familiarity with fast-food restaurant advertising on television is associated with obesity” likely because kids who see the ads develop “food consumption patterns that include many types of high-calorie food brands” being advertised.

In terms of cultural change, then, Yum! Brands is making a shrewd long-term investment in an eating revolution. Sure, it may for now seem like a stretch. But when the next obese generation believes “fourth meal” is equal to breakfast, lunch and dinner, don’t be surprised — and don’t ask why. The answer is on your television set, your Web browser and your smartphone screen.

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David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books Hostile Takeover and The Uprising. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com.

Toxic Chemicals in Hair and Nail Salons Create Serious Suffering in the Name of Beauty.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

In These Times / By Michelle Chen

 

 

Working long hours amid noxious fumes, salon workers are in constant contact with chemicals linked to various illnesses and reproductive health problems.

 

The following article first appeared at Working In These Times, the labor blog of In These Times magazine. For more news and analysis like this, sign up to receive In These Times' weekly updates.


You shouldn’t have to suffer to be beautiful. But many women suffer for the beauty of others, polishing nails and styling hair with a toxic palette of chemicals.

Working long hours amid noxious fumes, salon workers, typically women of color, are in constant contact with chemicals linked to various illnesses and reproductive health problems.

While environmental justice campaigns have historically focused on localized pollution issues, the National Healthy Nail & Beauty Salon Alliance organizes around the intersection of workplace environmental health and racial and economic justice. According to the Alliance’s analysis, the hazards endemic to the nail salon industry are stratified by ethnicity and gender: roughly four in ten workers are Asian immigrants, many of them of childbearing age, poor, uninsured and with limited English-speaking ability. And they are assaulted daily by invisible threats:

On a daily basis and often for long hours at a stretch, nail and beauty salon technicians – most of whom are women of reproductive age – handle solvents, glues, polishes, dyes, straightening solutions and other nail and beauty care products, containing a multitude of unregulated chemicals that are known or suspected to cause cancer, allergies, respiratory illnesses, neurological and reproductive harm.

These toxic environments reflect the marginal nature of neighborhood beauty shops that operate with little oversight. The Alliance reports that workers are often crammed into “poorly ventilated, small workspaces,” lacking protective gear, sometimes using inaccurately labeled products, not knowing to protect themselves.

Environmental justice activists in Harlem, New York, are investigating the health implications of beauty products marketed to women of color with a “Beauty Map” project. The data visualization pinpoints where and how these ethnic beauty products are sold in the community. According to WE ACT’s research:

The presence of ethnic personal care products sold in pharmacies, discount chains, and corner stores in Northern Manhattan, revealed more than 600 non beauty related points of source in addition to the 348 beauty salons, supply stores, and hair braiding shops in the area....

Given the prevalence of ethnic personal care products sold in Northern Manhattan stores and use among residents, WE ACT is advocating for chemical policy that will better protect consumers against potentially harmful ingredients in personal products.

One particularly popular and controversial hair treatment is Brazilian Blowout, which produces formaldehyde gas linked to cancer and associated with respiratory ailments. Earlier this year, in a Nation Institute report, California-based stylist Jennifer Arce talked about becoming sick from Brazilian Blowout, recalling that among her coworkers, “We were all getting rashes, headaches, and bloody noses.” Pointing to a workplace culture of fear, she said, “I'm now hearing from hair stylists who have had their jobs threatened and are being bullied by co-workers and management if they complain about exposure to Brazilian Blowout.”

In New York City, the ACLU and labor activists have campaigned to protect, and raise public awareness about, low-income immigrant nail salon workers facing abuse from their employers and the workplace toxins.

Despite these hazards, women workers can find power at the interface between a poisonous industry and consumers who lust for beauty. The California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative has brought together salon workers, owners and public health advocates to provide health and safety training for salons and to push for tighter regulations on the industry.

The Collaborative, which includes Asian Health Services and other community organizations, has worked with San Francisco salons to raise workplace standards cooperatively. In collaboration with city and county environmental authorities, the Collaborative has partnered with Asian Law Caucus and Environment California to set up a recognition program for salons that keep their shops free of the “toxic trio” of nail polish chemicals (toluene, dibutyl phthalate and formaldehyde). Additionally, the group is pushing to expand the bilingual services provided by safety regulators and the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.

The Collaborative’s policy director Catherine Porter told In these Times that while stronger regulations are needed, a rewards system for salons that use less toxic products and greener practices could motivate local owners to promote healthier workplaces:

We see recognition programs as a way that nail salons can set themselves apart from their competition. Nail salons will say to themselves, "Oh, if I use safer products and safer practices, that's actually something that I can market, and I can use that to attract more customers and a more loyal customer base." Plus, we think that as more salons move in the direction of using less toxic products, that will in turn pressure nail product manufacturers to develop safer alternatives.

The state of California recently gave advocates a boost with a legal settlement that will stop deceptive labeling practices by the manufacturer of Brazilian Blowout. The Collaborative and the National Healthy Nail & Beauty Salon Alliance has called for stronger federal labor protections and stricter labeling and reporting standards. The proposed federal Safe Cosmetics Act would not only ramp up federal oversight of personal care products but also move the industry toward phasing out the most dangerous chemicals.

But despite these community-driven efforts, the supply chain remains dominated by companies that profit by degrading environmental health, and by a consumer culture that endorses the trading of health for beauty. As workers absorb the poisonous cost of "perfection," the ugly mirror image of the beauty business is slowly coming to light.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times. She is a regular contributor to the labor rights blog Working In These Times, Colorlines.com, and Pacifica’s WBAI. Her work has also appeared in Alternet, Ms. Magazine, Newsday, and her old zine, cain.

Will Africa’s Elephants be Extinct in 10 Years?

 

 

 

 

 

by Tara Holmes

 

 

 

Africa’s majestic elephants are in serious trouble. Like any other species on the planet, the animal is being severely impacted by a changing climate and a growing human population, but it is also being slaughtered to the brink of extinction.

Prized for their ivory, which on today’s market can sell for over $1,500 a kilo, African elephants are particularly susceptible to poachers. The growing demand for ivory-based products in Asia, particularly in developing China, is fueling the new rage in illegal trade in Kenya and Kenyan officials are at a loss for what to do. As a recent CNN report stated: “If this level of killing continues, if elephants continue to be slaughtered for trinkets and statuettes, in ten years time, most of Africa’s elephants will be gone…”

The numbers are staggering. Samuel Wasser, a recognized authority on the disappearance of elephants, has warned that no more than 400,000 African elephants remain in the wild today. As a point of comparison, there were over one million at the beginning of the 1980s. We’re clearly at a major moral crossroads: hundreds of species are lost daily and those that remain are struggling for habitat and resources. The elephant, one of the planet’s most socially intelligent creatures with a long human history, is now among those creatures being thoughtlessly eradicated, but in this case, for decorative artwork.

Unfortunately, this issue remains predominately buried in the media with little international attention. Local communities, governments and animal welfare groups, however, are working diligently to bring this important topic to the spotlight in an effort to raise awareness and ultimately save the African elephant from extinction, mainly citing the important place elephants hold in the larger web of African wildlife, as well as noting their larger global significance.

So what can you do? First and foremost, should you ever witness ivory being sold, immediately document and report it. You can also contact your elected officials to express your concern in hopes the U.S. may continue to push for increased international trade regulations under CITES. In the end, however, this problem comes down to global accountability and market demand; as long as ivory is prized, there will be illegal poachers on the supply side. What we really should be asking is: is it worth it? I think we all know the answer to that question.
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Related Stories:
1.3 Tons of Illegal Ivory Seized at Nairobi Airport
Elephants Being Massacred in Cameroon
Are Elephants Being Eaten in Thailand?

Read more:africa, china, cites, elephant, extinction, ivory, kenya, poacher

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/will-africas-elephants-be-extinct-in-10-years.html#ixzz1yLYkhAGH

The Ungodly Constitution: How the Founders Ensured America Would Not Be a Christian Nation.

Photo Credit: Jasmic

The founders made a noble effort to say goodbye to all that in order to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.

 

Free Inquiry / BySusan Jacoby

When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, almost no one in politics or everyday life went around proclaiming, “I am a Christian.” If indeed you were a Christian—that is, someone who considers Jesus Christ the Messiah—you identified yourself as a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Catholic, and so on in excelsis in order to let others know where you stood in the vast American religious landscape.

Calling oneself a Christian today, by contrast, has a special, politicized meaning. For most people in public life, this self-identification suggests a particular form of conservative Christianity, a brand of religion that seeks not only to proselytize but to impose its values on others through the machinery of the state. The huge exception to this rule is President Barack Obama, who has been forced by the birther-paranoids to advertise his credentials as a Christian in order to refute the lie that he is a “secret Muslim.”

Once upon a time (until around 1980, actually), the appellation “Christian” used to mean “right-wing Protestant,” as a consequence of the historic animosity between many forms of American Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church. That is no longer true, as demonstrated by GOP primary hopefuls Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, the darlings of Protestant fundamentalists, although they personify the cliché “more Catholic than the pope.” (In Gingrich’s case, the relevant pontiffs would be certain medieval and Renaissance vicars of Christ who produced numerous children through extra-pontifical liaisons.) Santorum is in fact a Catholic fundamentalist—unlike the majority of American Catholics, who do not accept either the notion of papal infallibility or the Vatican line on sexual behavior. Liberal Catholics, well aware of the political meaning of Christian in American politics, generally call themselves plain old “Catholics.”

Thus, when Santorum and Gingrich used their dog whistles throughout the Republican primaries to imply that Obama is not the Christian he claims to be, what they really meant is that he is not their kind of Christian. It has also become standard for politicians to offer a nod to “our Judeo-Christian heritage” in an effort to display theocratic inclusiveness. The slippery Gingrich never stumbled over this phrase, but Santorum often did, dragging Judeo out to four syllables so that it came out “Jew-day-ee-oh.” It is clear that this ecumenical platitude was not a part of the sanctimonious Santorum’s upbringing.

Was the United States founded as a Christian nation, meaning that the framers of the Constitution established a government whose laws would not only reflect but also enforce the rules of a particular brand of Christianity? No, period. The answer is as clear as Santorum’s pronunciation of Judeo is slurred, and the explanation can be found in the old (i.e., pre-1980) American practice of identifying oneself by denomination.

Denominational identification is as old as the earliest colonies in the New World, given that the first Puritan theocrats were fleeing persecution by adherents of another denomination—the Church of England. By the revolutionary era, doctrinal and intellectual distinctions separating one Christian denomination from another remained as immense as the gulf between the beliefs of a Jew and any Christian, or between any orthodox religious believer and a deist.

The founders did not want doctrinal differences to wreak civic havoc of the kind then evident throughout Europe. That is why they left not only Jesus but indeed any deity out of the Constitution. That the American population was and is overwhelmingly Christian is a fact. That makes it all the more remarkable that the founders did not establish a Christian government.

The Christian Right cannot point to a single mention of Jesus or Christianity in any of the nation’s founding documents and is forced to rely, for divine antecedents, on the line in the Declaration of Independence that talks about all men being endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. But even if this were a statement of belief in a specific god rather than a general assertion of the philosophy of natural rights, it is most decidedly not a statement of faith in Jesus Christ.

In any event, it is futile to engage in debate with spokespeople for the Christian Right on this subject, because for them, the Christian origin of the American state is an article of faith that cannot be disproved by facts or plain English. Tell them, for instance, that the godlessness of the Constitution was taken for granted and attacked by conservatives at state ratifying conventions in 1787 and 1788, and they will point to the conventional “Year of Our Lord” dating of the document. This supposedly refutes hundreds of statements by angry ministers complaining about the absence of God from the document that would furnish the young government’s written foundation. As one cleric observed at North Carolina’s state convention, the Constitution’s ban on religious tests for public office in Article VI, Section 3 amounted to “an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come among us.” He was entirely accurate in his description of the potential effects of letting anyone, regardless of religious belief, run for public office. And when it came time to ratify the Constitution, he and his fellow theocrats were voted down in every state.

The ungodliness of the Constitution kept popping up in public discourse throughout the nineteenth century, most notably when a powerful group of Protestant ministers came to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and demanded that he support an amendment to declare Jesus Christ, not “We the People,” the source of all governmental power. Lincoln, a canny politician who knew when not to take on another battle in the middle of a bloody civil war, declined to take any action and instead went along with a move to placate the ministers by putting “In God We Trust” on a two-penny coin in 1864. Lincoln presumably viewed the inscription of trust in a deity on a coin as an innocuous action calculated to avoid the trouble that would surely be generated by a Christian amendment to the Constitution. Little did he know that nearly 150 years in the future, right-wing politicians would employ that slogan to attack the much older motto E Pluribus Unum.

Lincoln’s brand of compromise was described by Jon Meacham in Timemagazine as “a long-standing covenant between believers and nonbelievers in which secularists live with public religious appeals and images in exchange for self-regulating moderation on the part of the faithful. It’s an ancient and wise accommodation that allows religion and politics to inform each other without promoting an eschatological war between church and state.”

In fairness, Meacham argues that extremists like Santorum had violated this unspoken and unsigned “covenant.” However, “self-regulating moderation on the part of the faithful” is a flimsy altar upon which to base any agreement regarding the separation of church and state. Had the founders believed in the capacity of the faithful for such “self-regulation,” they never would have prohibited religious tests for national office at a time when most state governments still had religious discrimination written into their laws.

One aspect of the imaginary covenant between religious believers and secularists began to break down in the 1960s, long before the rise of the Christian Right. Since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid and the expansion of federal aid to education during Lyndon Johnson’s administration, secularists have rarely objected to the expenditure of federal funds through religious institutions like hospitals and charities. This is hardly a symbolic matter. It is far more important than the symbolic victories won by secularists of that era in the Supreme Court on issues like school prayer.
The firestorm set off by the Obama administration’s effort to make Catholic institutions offer insurance policies that cover contraception was described by the media as a dispute over religious liberty. Religious liberty meant, to the Catholic bishops, the right to participate in federal programs and receive funds provided by all taxpayers while imposing their religious doctrines on employees and patients alike—whatever their religion or lack thereof. Not every religion wants to have the taxpayers’ cake and eat it too. Mormon charities, for instance, do not accept government money.

The ability of the religious Right to frame this dispute purely as a matter of religious freedom—meaning freedom for the most conservative forms of religion—is a direct result of the long erosion of the separation of church and state at the practical level of taxpayer funding. Throughout these decades of erosion, what was once the religious center has constantly been pulled to the right.

(It should be noted that the furor is also a consequence of the Catholic bishops’ inability to convince their own flock to follow the church’s lead on sexual issues. The bishops are attempting to reassert control over Catholic hospitals—some of them run by uppity nuns—where church doctrine has been violated for years when it comes to such matters as the morning-after pill for rape victims and abortions needed to save a mother’s life. But the split within the Catholic Church is not the subject of this article.)

There is no real answer to be found in the nation’s founding documents about this question, because the founders never envisioned an America in which the federal government would spend billions of dollars on health and education, whether through religious or nonreligious institutions. It is worth noting, however, that Virginia’s 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom—which later served as the template for the Bill of Rights—came into being in opposition to a proposal that would have taxed Virginians for the support of Christian teaching in the public schools. Virginia’s law, not the statutes of states that still had established churches, became the template for Article VI, which was supposed to ban religious preference within the government, and the First Amendment, which prevented government from favoring one religion over another. The issue in Virginia, then, like the national issue over the prerogatives of sectarian hospitals today, encompassed both religious freedom and money.

The bishops are not the least bit concerned about the freedom of non-Catholic (or, for that matter, Catholic) employees whose consciences tell them that contraception is just fine. They are not concerned about rape victims, whatever their religion, who will not only be refused the morning-after pill by their hospitals but also will not even be told about other nonsectarian hospitals that provide such services. They will not be concerned if someday the Vatican decides that living wills are a usurpation of divine and ecclesiastical authority and that everyone has a duty to go on living and suffering until some deity decides to pull the plug.

The question is not whether the United States is a Christian nation: it is whether church authorities adhering to a deeply conservative brand of Christianity (along with some ultra-Orthodox rabbis who do not speak for most American Jews, any more than bishops speak for most American Catholics or the Family Research Council speaks for most American Protestants) get to use taxpayer money to further their parochial agenda.

It is true that most American secularists tolerate a good deal more religious symbolism in public life than we would like, but it is sheer fantasy to suggest that we have signed on to any covenant that tolerates the expenditure of public money according to the prescriptions and proscriptions of canon law or general biblical laws.

Oh, wait. There really weren’t any biblical laws about contraception because there wasn’t any effective contraception. But then, biblical Israel was definitely not a Christian nation. It was, however, a theocracy, like every Christian feudal monarchy and nation-state that succeeded the Roman Empire. The founders made a noble effort to say goodbye to all that in order to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.
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Susan Jacoby is the author of Freethinkers: a History of American Secularism (Metropolitan, 2004) and a forthcoming biography of Robert Green Ingersoll, to be published next January by Yale University Press.

31 Ways To Know You're In The Right Relationship.

By: Margaret Wheeler Johnson

As anyone living in the age of depressing divorce rates knows, a happy long-term couple is almost like a unicorn: If by some miracle you encounter it, you can't stop staring, and you have a feeling no one will ever believe you when you tell them you saw it.

The Internet is filled with articles on how to decide when to end it, how to recognize when your relationship is toxic, codependent, one-sided, stagnant, asexual, manipulative. But we don't talk all that often about what defines a happy relationship. Picture it: You're dating someone new. You're waiting to feel the toxic stagnant codependency. Where is it? Months go by. Still nothing. At some point a corner of your brain dares register the thought: Could this be one of those? Could I actually be happy?

To help you answer that question, you lucky thing, here's a completely unscientific list of 31 ways to know you're in the right relationship:


You don't...

1. Fear it.
If you're afraid of commitment, best to work that out before you put yourself in a situation where it's hoped you'll eventually commit.

2. Hide anything more significant than a surprise party from each other.
That includes exes, cheating, debt, STDs, chronic illness, felonies, whether you want a marriage and/or children, genetic abnormalities (if you both want kids), a strong desire to live somewhere else, professional failures and successes, doubts about your sexual orientation, a strong preference for un-vanilla sex.

The truth will come out, and if you're with someone you feel the need to conceal any of this from, he or she probably isn't right.

3. Snoop.
If no one's hiding anything, why are you looking? Going through your significant other's email, phone, Facebook account, or journal strongly indicates that you don't trust the person you're with. You're also violating his or her trust in you.

4. Hide the relationship from other people in your life.
If you're unwilling to introduce the person you're dating at appropriate junctures to the most important people in your life, that's usually a bright, flapping red flag.

In general, if you have a good thing going, you can't wait for him or her to meet your friends, siblings, parents, the guy at the deli, and you wouldn't have any qualms about presenting this person to professional acquaintances, people you knew in college, family friends, even your ex.

5. Think you're superior.
If you feel that your significant other is your inferior in any way you know matters to you in a mate -- morally, intellectually, socially, financially or professionally -- you're never going to respect him or her as much as you hope to be respected.

The best relationships make you feel that you've convinced a person more exceptional than you to love you.

6. Resent the other person's success.
Professional jealousy can be as poisonous to a relationship as constantly thinking he or she is flirting with your best friend. It also suggests that you're spending a lot of time comparing yourself to a person you supposedly adore, rather than sitting back and marveling at how amazing he or she is. In a good relationship, you quit (or refuse to ever engage in) the one-upmanship.

7. Let any substance or behavior come before the relationship.
Any addict or over-user of a substance or behavior is cheating on you with his or her drug of choice. You deserve more.

8. Stew.
When something the other person does annoys you or turns you off, you don't push it to the back of your mind and hope it will go away, because it won't. You bring it up in the moment or sometime in the next 24 hours.

9. Damage property, animals, children or each other during an argument.
You think this goes without saying until you read something like this New York Times "Modern Love" and realize that human beings can rationalize staying with someone who leaves holes in their walls.

On the other hand, if you damage a vase or two in the heat of a different kind of passion, totally fine.

10. Challenge each other on personal issues in front of other people.
You know which conversations you shouldn't be having at brunch with friends.

11. Depend on each other for things no one can or should supply.
If you're looking to your significant other to resolve your emotional issues, make you more responsible/successful/adult, support you financially, improve your social standing, expand your group of friends, provide you with the family you never had, or make your parents finally accept you, it's possible you shouldn't be in a relationship at all, or at least not yet.

12. Begrudge each other time with your respective friends.
You can't be everything to your significant other, and why would you want to be? Sounds exhausting. Friends enrich your life, will accompany you to do things that your significant other may not enjoy, and keep you from getting tired of the person you're seeing.

Besides, if the relationship doesn't work out, those friends going to be the ones coming over to your house, dragging you out of bed and helping you rejoin humanity. Be good to them.

13. Lose Yourself
This is easier said than done, especially when the relationship is going really well. As tempting as it is to never leave the house (maybe never leave the bed), you keep doing the work, exercise, volunteering, socializing, networking, and daughtering you were doing before. Remember, these things made you the person Your Person fell in love with. They're part of you. Don't give them up for anyone. You can't afford it.

14. Have a secret plan B.
If you're where you need to be, the following thoughts don't cross your mind: "Maybe he'll dump me," or "If my ex moves back from Mongolia, everything could change."

15. Have much drama.
You know the cliche: The person worth your tears won't make you cry. Usually.


You do...
16. Put it all on the line.
If you're not risking having your heart broken, you're not doing it right.

17. Respect the people he or she is closest to.
You don't have to love them, but you should think they are honest and moral and have integrity. Want to know you're with a good person? Look to the people he or she thinks are good people.


18. Inspire each other to be better.
A good relationship is galvanizing, not in the oh-my-god-I-met-this-amazing-person-I'd-better-hurry-up-and-fix-myself sense (thought there's probably a little of that when you first start seeing anyone amazing) but in the way that knowing someone else believes in you makes you believe in yourself that much more. You want to prove yourself worthy of his or her confidence.

19. Humble yourselves.
You know you can't hide your flaws for long, so you don't try. You recognize that this person is going to have to take you as you are, as foolish or charitable (or both) as that may seem to make him or her. You know you're both going to mess up endless times and have to apologize and be forgiven and forgive. You'll wonder if one of the bigger mistakes is the one that will end it, and you'll have to prove to one another that the relationship transcends that. You recognize that you signed up for all of this.

20. Talk about sex.
Most couples don't instinctively know all of the ways to please each other. You have to talk about -- or at least show -- what you want. If you don't know what you want, you need to figure that out, STAT (step 1? Get thee to Babeland). And after you have talked about it, you do it. Better.

21. Talk about the rest.
The same things you're not supposed to talk about on a blind date -- religion, money, politics, kids -- are things you should discuss with someone you're serious about. What? You just remembered that thing you need to do? Get back here. No one said this was going to be painless. They said it was going to be hard and awesome.

22. Fight.
If you agree on everything, someone's not telling the truth. See #2 and #8.

23. Have times when you don't talk.
Not because you're angry with each other but because you can be quiet together. When you find yourself with silences you don't need to fill, when you find you can just walk along or lie about or work side by side and feel together without needing to verbally affirm that, you've got a good thing going.

24. Have object permanence.
Child psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that when babies get to be 8 or 9 months old, they begin to develop "object permanence," the idea that an object doesn't vanish when they can no longer see it.
In a good adult relationship, you know that you can go out into the world and do your thing, and the bond you've formed with the person you care about will be there when you get back.
This is also known as trust.

25. Take care of your body.
You know that you won't enjoy sharing it with someone else if you don't like, respect, and nurture it. Your partner feels the same way.

26. Divide and conquer.
You're not identical, thank god, which probably means you have certain strengths and he or she has others. Someone is more organized, someone is more outgoing, someone is a born listener. Someone is better with money, someone is more creative. Someone is more adventurous in bed.
If you each play to your strengths, you in all likelihood remember a gift (possibly an inspired one), your home(s) look(s) great, the bills get paid on time, sex is endlessly fun, and you leave everyone at the party thoroughly charmed.

27. Remember to look at each other across the room.
There's nothing more reassuring (or sexier) than glancing up from the interminable conversation with your eighth cousin or the head of operations or the report you can't seem to finish and locking eyes with Your Person and remembering that by some quantity of luck neither of you may deserve, you found each other.

28. Observe.
You notice when the other person is about to lose it, needs to leave even if you've been there only 20 minutes, is talking to someone he or she can't stand, did something he or she feels guilty about, is silently berating himself or herself, is ruminating over the thing his or her boss said, is about to spend an insane amount of money, and best of all, about to crack up in a situation where he or she shouldn't. You pay attention because you care, and because that's the good stuff.

29. Make time.
You realize that if this is it, one of you is going to be around some distant day in the future to lose the other. In that moment, you will not regret not checking your email in this one.

30. Occasionally get over yourself and your cynicism and fear of cliche and do something deeply, unapologetically romantic.
You send the flowers, have the book signed by the author, request the song, write the note, have the damned thing (tastefully) engraved. You call the other person and tell him or her that a specific thing he or she did this morning that made you fall that much more in love. When you're not expecting it, he or she dares to say, even though we all know there are no guarantees ever, "When we're X age, want to Y?"

31. Just know.
Reader, marry that.

The American Diet in 1 Chart.

Relic of the past—or shape of things to come?danforth1/Flickr

—By Tom Philpott

When I was a kid in the 1970s and early '80s, processed food was everywhere. I remember TV dinners, fish sticks, Tater Tots, Hamburger Helper, canned pear halves in sugar goo, and more. And that was in my house, where my mom used processed food to supplement her habit of cooking from scratch two or three times a weeks.

In at least one friend's house, heat-and-serve fare seemed to have replaced cooking altogether, starting with an unholy (although quite coveted by me at the time) frozen pancake-and-sausage breakfast product made by Jimmy Dean.

Since then, we've seen the explosion of farmers markets, CSAs, cooking shows, and celebrity chefs. Cooking from scratch is cool, and processed food is on the way out. Right? Turns out, processed food is more popular than ever. Check out this chart, part of a package of fascinating ones from NPR's Planet Money team, generated from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, on how we spend our grocery dollars:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Credit: Lam

Note that in 1982, we dropped 11.6 percent of our grocery expenditures on processed food, making it the fifth heftiest item in the food budget. Today, we spend nearly twice that, and processed food has edged out meat as our largest grocery expenditure. Our spending on meat as a percentage of grocery budget, meanwhile, has plunged by a third; and most other categories, like fruit vegetables and beverages, were stable.

What's all this telling us? Well, one thing it's not telling us that we're eating less meat than we did 30 years ago. Indeed, even though meat consumption has fallen over the past couple of years, we're still eating roughly the same amount of meat per capita now than we did in '82 (and more than any other country on the planet except tiny Luxembourg).* What's happened is that meat, like most other foodstuffs, have gotten dramatically cheaper in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since the early '80s. How much cheaper? Planet Money has a chart:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPRPork chops, chicken legs, steak, ground beef—all have plunged in price. So we're able to eat more meat while spending less on it than anyone could have dreamed in 1982. Planet Money tapped Stanford economist Walter Falcon for an explanation: "We've seen major restructuring in poultry, pork and beef industries that has allowed efficiencies and brought down the cost." True enough; but one analyst's "efficiencies" are another's relentless attack on labor, animal welfare, public health, and the environment. I made that case in a post last year (and make it all the time, I guess).

I think the Planet Money charts are telling us is that American eaters have gotten a windfall from the the era of cheap meat that dawned in the early '80s. Meat prices tumbled as small farms shuttered, to be replaced by massive factory-scale farms that stuffed animals with cheap, subsidized corn and soy and kept them alive and growing to slaughter weight with daily doses of antibiotics. Regulators looked the other way as these gigantic facilities created messes they didn't have to pay to clean up. Meanwhile, as Mother Jones' Ted Genoways showed in his blockbuster piece last year on Hormel, corporate meatpackers managed to bust unions, speed up kill lines, and drive down employee wages. It all added up to bargain-priced meat.

See how your food spending stacks up to the national average with our handy calculator.

Consumers put some of the savings into eating more meat, and shifted some out of the savings out of food purchases altogether (in another chart in the same post, Planet Money shows that in 1982, a little more than 12 percent of our spending went to groceries, while now less than 9 percent does). But what what they mostly did was shift cash that once went to meat into processed food.

And contrary to to the view from my farmers market bubble, the processed-food industry is thundering along. A recent report from the UK market research firm Report Buyer found that US retail sales of frozen foods hit $56 billion in 2010, up 22 percent since 2006—and projects that sales will approach $70 billion by 2015. Another market research report, this one from Global Industry Analysts, found that that the US is the globe's leading market for "microwavable foods," due to the "reluctance of Americans to prepare time-consuming meals."

And according to the Institute of Food Technologists, US consumers are cooking significantly less, not more, than they did in the early '80s.

After all, 30 years ago, nearly three-quarters (72%) of main courses served at dinner were homemade, but by 2010, that total had declined to 59%, according to the NPD Group, which tracks consumer consumption patterns.

These are sobering trends—ones that can't be ignored people working to challenge the power of Big Food and creating functional alternatives to it.

Correction: Due to a calculation error, the original version of this article stated that we ate 10 percent more meat now than we did in 1982. The sentence has been corrected.

   90 Percent of People Want Labeling on Engineered Food, But We Still Don't Have it: Why Is that?

Photo Credit: Africa Studio/ Shutterstock.com

AlterNet / ByDave Murphy

More than a million people have asked the FDA for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food, yet we still don't have it. Why? Here's a little history lesson.

 

 

 

 

Popular resistance is boiling over on the GMO labeling issue, as the New York Times reported recently in a front page story.

More than a million people have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food on a legal petition in March and on May 2nd, nearly a million voter signatures were submitted in California to place a GMO labeling initiative on ballot in November. Clearly, Americans believe strongly in their right to know what's in their food. Ninety percent of US voters want this type of labeling. Yet we still don't have it. Why?

Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA's policy on genetically engineered food as part of his "regulatory relief initiative." The policy, Quayle explained, was based on the idea that genetic engineering is no different than traditional plant breeding, and therefore required no new regulations.

Five years earlier, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush visited a Monsanto lab for a photo op with the developers of Roundup Ready crops. According to a video report of the meeting, when Monsanto executives worried about the approval process for their new crops, Bush laughed and told them, "Call me. We're in the dereg businesses. Maybe we can help."

And help he did - more than anyone could have ever imagined. Today, the politically motivated policy lives on, even though it contradicts modern scientific consensus.

How is it possible that the U.S. is making critical decisions about our food system with a decades-old policy that is at odds with global opinion? In a word: politics. As Quayle explained in the 1992 press conference, the American biotechnology industry would reap huge profits "as long as we resist the spread of unnecessary regulations."

Politics Not Science Set the Agenda

Dan Quayle's 1992 policy announcement is premised on the notion that genetically engineered crops are "substantially equivalent" to regular crops and thus do not need to be labeled or safety tested. The policy was crafted by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer who was hired by the Bush FDA to fill the newly created position of deputy commissioner of policy.

 In an ironic twist, the Obama administration appointed Michael Taylor as the deputy commissioner of foods in 2009, where he now oversees food safety policy for the federal government. Taylor's appointment was highly controversial, not only for crafting this pseudo-scientific policy, which laid the groundwork for helping GMOs avoid rigorous scientific testing and common-sense labeling, but also for his role in guiding the approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered synthetic hormone rBGH.

From the start, the policy of "substantial equivalence" had many critics. The concerns by the FDA's own scientists were summed up in a memo by FDA compliance officer Dr. Linda Kahl, who protested that the agency was "... trying to fit a square peg into a round hole . . . [by] trying to force an ultimate conclusion that there is no difference between foods modified by genetic engineering and foods modified by traditional breeding practices."

As Kahl wrote, "The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks."

The FDA itself admitted as much in 2001, with a proposed policy that companies should notify the government at least 120 days before commercializing a transgenic plant variety and provide data on each separate genetic transformation event -- information they said they did not need for foods derived through traditional cross breeding.

In other words, the FDA said there is a difference between genetic engineering and traditional plant breeding. In spite of this, the FDA is still following the Dan Quayle/Michael Taylor inspired policy instead of its 2001 policy to set the agenda.

Out of Step with World Opinion

Across the world, there is now agreement that genetically engineered foods are different from conventionally bred foods and that all genetically engineered foods should be required to go through safety assessments prior to approval.

These positions are spelled out by Codex Alimentarius, the food safety standards organization of the United Nations, which the World Trade Organization considers to be the global, science-based standards, and thus immune to trade challenges.

But, at present, none of the genetically engineered plants on sale in the United States can meet this global standard, because - unlike all other developed countries - the U.S. does not require safety testing of genetically engineered crops.

The U.S. stands nearly alone on the issue of labeling, too. More than 40 other countries require labeling of genetically engineered foods, including European Union member nations, Japan, Australia, Russia and even China, allowing consumers in those countries to make informed choices about whether or not to buy these foods. Yet we haven't been able to get labeling here in the U.S., thanks to Dan Quayle and Michael Taylor's deceptive policy.

Growing Pressure for Change

The FDA position on GMOs is also out of step with the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Americans, 90% of whom want labeling. The issue is so reasonable and makes such common sense that in November 2007, then Senator Barack Obama felt compelled to make a promise to Iowa farmers that if elected he'd label GMOs, saying he'd "let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they're buying."

But lacking the courage or political will to get this done at the federal level, and stymied in the state legislative area - nearly 20 states have tried to pass labeling mandates and failed due to intense lobby pressure by special interests - all eyes are now on the California ballot initiative that will take the issue directly to voters.

As the Times reported, "The most closely watched labeling effort is a proposed ballot initiative in California that cleared a crucial hurdle this month, setting the stage for a November vote that could influence not just food packaging but the future of American agriculture.

The 20th anniversary of Dan Quayle's announcement fell on Memorial Day weekend, a fitting symbol for the question before us: Will democracy win out and will Americans have the right to know what's in our food? Or we will continue to let our food policy be ruled by political decisions engineered last century in a Monsanto boardroom by corporate lobbyists?

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Dave Murphy is the founder of Food Democracy Now!, a sixth generation Iowan, and an advocate for sustainable agriculture.

Better Than Sugar? The Truth About 6 Alternative Natural Sweeteners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByAnneli Rufus

 

 

 

The global market for non-sugar sweeteners is expected to reach nearly $10 billion by 2016. But what's in this stuff, and is it worth the switch?

 

It's been a wild week in the sugar wars. Disney just announced that it will ban ads for candy, sweet cereals and other sugary foods on all child-focused broadcasting. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks. On the heels of a brand-new UCLA study linking high-fructose corn-syrup consumption with memory loss, the USDA rejected a petition last Thursday from the Corn Refiners Association to change the name of high-fructose corn syrup to "corn sugar."


Every anti-sugar, anti-HFCS fusillade boosts a booming business sector: The global market for non-sugar sweeteners, now topping $9 billion, is expected to reach nearly $10 billion by 2016. We're spending big money on stevia and agave, and just starting to discover dark horses such as erythritol and monk fruit.


What's in this stuff, and is it worth the switch? Here are six to consider.


1. Stevia
Stevia gets most of the buzz and leads the industry, with stevia-sweetened products expected to comprise a $1 billion sector all its own by 2014. Up to 300 times as sweet as table sugar, powdered stevia extract is derived from the leaves of subtropical shrubs that have been consumed by indigenous South Americans for centuries. Yet it has virtually no calories and doesn't raise blood-sugar levels or promote tooth decay. The FDA approved stevia for food use in 2008; now Coke, Pepsi and Starbucks put it in drinks. What could possibly go wrong? Well -- a yucky bitter aftertaste. But two weeks ago, German researchers announced their discovery of two taste receptors on the human tongue that specifically detect stevia's aftertaste. This new data could revolutionize the way stevia is cultivated and refined.


2. Agave Nectar
Made from the sap of succulents native to Mexico, agave nectar is about 150 percent as sweet as sugar but lower on the glycemic index. Loaded with cachet -- evoking sunshine and tequila -- it's turning up everywhere: in Coca-Cola's Full Throttle Blue Agave energy drink, for instance. Last month, carbon-neutral chocolate company Newtree reduced the sugar in its bars by 35 percent and added agave instead. But agave is highly processed and about 90 percent fructose, "so it dumps right into your liver," warns wellness expert Maria Emmerich, author of The Art of Eating Healthy: Sweets (CreateSpace, 2011). "Things that are lower on the glycemic index are not necessarily better for your health. I received a huge box of agave nectar from a company to review for my blog recently, and I couldn't even bring myself to give it away for free."


3. Erythritol
Far less familiar is erythritol, a non-glycemic, virtually non-caloric, aftertaste-free polyol or "sugar alcohol" that occurs naturally in fruits such as melons, pears and grapes. About 70 percent as sweet as table sugar, whose taste it resembles, erythritol comes in white crystalline powder form and is a common ingredient in foods -- especially baked goods -- labeled as "light" and "low-calorie." Studies show that up to 90 percent of erythritol is excreted unchanged in human urine within 24 hours of consumption -- thus it's not absorbed into the body -- and that, like stevia, it does not harm teeth.


4. Monk Fruit (Lohan Guo)
Industry insiders predict that monk fruit, aka lohan guo, is on the verge of becoming stevia's fiercest new rival. Calorie-free, aftertaste-free and non-glycemic but about 300 times sweeter than sugar, liquid and powdered lohan guo concentrate is derived from the antioxidant-rich, lemon-sized fruits of trees that thrive in the hot, misty mountains of southern China and northern Thailand and were allegedly first cultivated by Buddhist monks 800 years ago. Its presence in Kellogg's Kashi Squares Berry Blossoms cereal and Kashi Cocoa Beach granola is just the beginning.


5. Tagatose
You've probably never heard of tagatose, but it's a low-calorie, low-glycemic, aftertaste-free, probiotic ... sugar. FDA-approved for US food use since 2003 but still seldom seen, tagatose is over 90 percent as sweet as table sugar, yet contains far fewer than half as many calories. Molecularly speaking, tagatose is a form of sugar that occurs naturally in dairy products. But the body metabolizes tagatose differently than it metabolizes sucrose, aka table sugar, so as to produce different effects: Amazingly, some studies suggest that tagatose actually lowers blood sugar. Thus it is being studied for use in anti-diabetes drugs.


6. Barley-Malt Syrup
Barley-malt syrup is made by soaking and sprouting barley grains, then drying and cooking them until the mash becomes viscous, dark and earthily sweet -- but not quite as sweet as table sugar. Relatively low on the glycemic index, barley-malt syrup digests slowly, thus guarding against blood-sugar spikes and crashes. It's a leading sweetener in the macrobiotic diet, which credits whole grains with fighting disease. "Flavorwise, barley-malt syrup is reminiscent of molasses and brown sugar," explains Barbara Johnston-Brown, who bakes with it at her vegan-macrobiotic Green Earth Café in Berkeley, CA. "It can be a little bitter if you overuse it, but used judiciously it heightens the richness of whatever you're making."


Wellness expert Emmerich, who favors erythritol, doesn't try to persuade her clients -- even the most obese ones -- to stop eating sweets. Rather, she educates them about non-sugar alternatives and suggests that they bake their own treats to keep in the freezer.


"If a donut or Pop Tart is screaming in your face and you can't resist the idea of a donut or Pop Tart, then I would prefer that you have a healthier version on hand. If you just tell people no, no, no, and give them no other options, they tend to give up and not even try."


She denounces the marketing tactics used by the alternative-sweetener industry -- which is an industry, after all.


"They promote honey instead of sugar. Well, honey is the highest-caloric sweetener out there. Why do you think the only animal found in nature that has tooth decay is the honey bear? And agave is widely promoted as being '100-percent natural.' Just because things are natural doesn't mean they're good for us. Heroin's natural, too."
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Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, most recently The Scavenger's Manifesto (Tarcher Press, 2009). Read more of Anneli's writings on scavenging at scavenging.wordpress.com.