Occupy the Food System: 300,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto in Federal Court

from NationOfChange.org

Little did Willie Nelson know when he recorded “Crazy” years ago just how crazy it would become for our cherished family farmers in America.   Nelson, President of Farm Aid, has recently called for the national Occupy movement to declare an “Occupy  the Food System” action.

Nelson states, “Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, destruction of our soil…”

Hundreds of citizens, (even including NYC chefs in their white chef hats) joined Occupy the Food System groups, ie Food Democracy Now, gathered outside the Federal Courts in Manhattan on  January 31st, to support organic family farmers in their landmark lawsuit against Big Agribusiness giant Monsanto. (Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association v. Monsanto) Oral arguments were heard that day concerning the lawsuit by 83 plaintiffs representing over 300,000 organic farmers, organic seed growers, and organic seed businesses.

The lawsuit addresses the bizarre and shocking issue of Monsanto harassing and threatening organic farmers with lawsuits of “patent infringement” if any organic farmer ends up with any trace amount of GM seeds on their organic farmland.

Read more

Let Us Eat Cake (for Breakfast)

These researchers should win a humanitarian award.  A group of Israeli researchers published an ingenious study in the international journal Steroids (as in hormones that regulate eating behavior) that found eating dessert after a big breakfast caused major weight loss. Over the 32 week study, obese participants who ate a large (600 calorie) protein-and-carbohydrate-rich breakfast that included dessert of cake, cookies or chocolate lost significantly more weight--a whopping 40 pounds on average-- than their counterparts eating a typical calorie-restricted, low-carbohydrate breakfast. Both groups were asked to eat the same total calories throughout the day (1400 for women and 1600 for men.)

After the 16th week, in the second half of the study, the low-calorie breakfast group regained an average 22 pounds per person while the high-calorie breakfast-dessert eaters lost an additional 15 pounds each on average. 

In this study persistence paid off, which is often not the case for dieters who typically hit a wall and find themselves gaining back weight despite Herculean efforts. In the first 16 weeks both groups of dieters (heavy vs moderate breakfast) lost the same amount of weight (about 33 pounds), but after the 16th week, in the second half of the study, the low-calorie breakfast group regained an average 22 pounds per person while the high-calorie breakfast-dessert eaters lost an additional 15 pounds each on average. The results will come as no surprise to legions of failed dieters who know how tough it is to be virtuous all the time.

Falling Off the Wagon, graphically: The high calorie breakfast dessert eaters, labeled HCPb, lost significantly more weight in the second half of the study than the low calorie eaters (LCbs.) "Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term," says lead researcher, Daniela Jakubowicz of Tel Aviv University's Wolfson Medical Center. The researchers established a biological basis for falling off the wagon. A major finding was the difference in levels of ghrelin (the hormone that increases feelings of hunger.) For the breakfast-dessert eating group, ghrelin levels fell by 45.3%, but for those who ate a restricted breakfast ghrelin only fell by 29.5%.  The more precipitous drop in ghrelin left the happy breakfast-cake eaters feeling more satisfied and less hungry for the rest of the day.

In the study, those who ate the lighter breakfast with no sweets eventually cheated later in the day. But, says Jakubowicz, "The group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including dessert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day." In this case, starting the day with a reward increased willpower.

Study Finds Similarities Between Food, Drug Addiction

 By William Weir for the Hartford Courant

A new study from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity suggests that a chocolate milkshake and a line of cocaine might not be so different.

The study, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that addictions to food and drugs result in similar activity in the brain.

"This past year we got interested in the idea of food addiction and the neural process," said lead researcher Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology doctoral student at Yale University. "We just wanted to get down and deep into whether people really experience food addiction."

The study included 48 women with an average age of 21 who ranged from lean to obese. They took a test developed at the Rudd Center to measure food addiction, based on an established test for measuring drug addiction. The test includes statements such as, "I find that when I start eating certain foods, I end up eating much more than I had planned," and respondents rate how closely the statements match their own experiences.

With functional magnetic resonant imaging (fMRI), a brain imaging procedure, the researchers examined brain activity when the subjects were shown, and then drank, a chocolate milkshake. The results were compared with the subjects' brain's response to the anticipation and consumption of a tasteless solution.

What they found was that the brains of subjects who scored higher on the food addiction scale exhibited neural activity similar to that seen in drug addicts, with greater activity in brain regions responsible for cravings and less activity in the regions that curb urges. The researchers also found that the brain activity indicative of addiction was found in both lean and obese subjects who scored high in the test for food addiction.

Gearhardt says the findings suggest that certain triggers, such as advertisements for food, have not just a psychological, but a physiological, effect on certain people.

"We found that the high food addiction group showed low inhibition: They have less control in their consumption, and that's something we've seen also in addicts," she said.

That's especially significant, she said, when so many processed foods trigger strong reward responses in our brains.

Our response to high-sugar, high-fat foods once helped us survive as a species, she said, "but today, foods are so much more rewarding than anything our brains have evolved to handle." Although there are very few natural foods that are high in both fat and sugar, she said, many processed foods offer both. She compared these foods to strong drugs like cocaine.

email: bweir@courant.com

Rare Cacao Beans Discovered in Peru

By Florence Fabrikant for The New York Times

DAN PEARSON was working in northern Peru two years ago with his stepson Brian Horsely, supplying gear and food to mining companies, when something caught his eye.

“We were in a hidden mountain valley of the Marañón River and saw some strange trees with football-size pods growing right out of their trunks,” Mr. Pearson said by telephone last week. “I knew nothing about cacao, but I learned that’s what it was.”

It was, he would learn after sending samples of seeds and leaves to the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, one of the rarest, most prized varieties of cacao.

“The DNA of this material is pure Nacional,” said Dr. Lyndel Meinhardt, a scientist with the service. “These are very rare.”

Until the early 20th century, Nacional, a member of the Forastero family, one of the three main genetic categories of cacao, was widely grown in Ecuador, then the world’s largest cacao producer. But it succumbed to disease, which even cross-breeding could not resist. Some Nacional still grows in Ecuador, though most is not pure. At least one chocolate company, Kallari, says it uses it in blends.

But with the help of the Swiss chocolate expert Franz Zeigler, beans that Mr. Pearson and his stepson buy are being made into slabs of pure Nacional chocolate. “The magnitude of this find is bigger than anything I have known,” Mr. Zeigler said.

The chocolate is intense, with a floral aroma and a persistent mellow richness. Its lack of bitterness is remarkable.

One reason may be that Nacional cacao has a rare and precious characteristic: some of the beans are white, not the usual purple, and those from the Marañón Canyon are about 40 percent white. White beans, which Dr. Meinhardt said have fewer bitter anthocyanins, produce a more mellow-tasting, less acidic chocolate. Dr. Meinhardt said white beans are mutations that happen when trees are left undisturbed for hundreds of years.

A cacao pod is filled with sweet, whitish, viscous pulp embedded with seeds. Inside these seeds are the beans. You cannot easily tell which pods or seeds will have white beans, but Mr. Pearson said, without revealing more, that he has figured it out.

Chocolate made from 100 percent white beans is extremely expensive. (When roasted the beans turn brown and they are unrelated to “white chocolate.”)

Cacao is thought to have originated in the rain forests at the source of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers and then gradually dispersed northward. What surprised Dr. Meinhardt the most about Mr. Pearson’s cacao was that it was growing at an altitude above 3,500 feet, while cacao rarely grows above 2,000 feet.

In the canyon, 186 farmers are growing pure Nacional. The beans are transported to a town several hours away, where they are dried, fermented and roasted, then sent to Lima and shipped to Switzerland. The chocolate is processed there by a company recommended by Mr. Zeigler, which Mr. Pearson did not want to name. The beans are made into what they call Fortunato No. 4, a 68-percent bittersweet couverture, a high-butterfat chocolate that’s easy to use.

They have 15 tons of it in slabs. A company in Switzerland and one each in Germany, Canada and the United States (Moonstruck Chocolatier, of Portland, Ore.) are making candies and bars with the chocolate.

At Moonstruck, the exclusive American retailer for the chocolate, Julian Rose, the chocolatier, is coating pure Nacional beans with pure Nacional chocolate. These will be introduced this weekend at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, and are sold as Fortunato Tumbled Beans at moonstruckchocolate.com ($12 for 3.5 ounces; bars of Peruvian Fortunato are $12 for 2 ounces). Mr. Rose said the flavor of this chocolate is so refined that it does not need vanilla, commonly added to chocolate, to round it out.

At the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, Michelle Tampakis, the director of advanced pastry studies, said the chocolate was extremely smooth when melted, with a full-bodied, nutty flavor that was not bitter.

Mr. Zeigler, who visited the canyon with Mr. Pearson last year, said he had a “Jurassic Park feeling” about the experience. “And the discovery of the white beans tops the whole thing,” he said. “I have no doubt this chocolate will be up there with the very best in the world.”

Another Stroke Culprit: Fried Fish

A wide swath of the South has long been known as the “stroke belt” because it has higher rates of stroke and other cardiovascular illnesses than the rest of the country. Now researchers are suggesting one culprit: fried fish.

Fish contain omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce the risk for stroke, and the American Heart Associationrecommends at least two fish meals per week. But deep-fat frying destroys these natural fatty acids and replaces them with cooking oil.

Scientists writing online in the journal Neurology analyzed the diets of more than 21,000 people nationwide. They found that people in eight stroke belt states — North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana — ate a three-ounce serving of fish an average of twice a week, roughly the same as people elsewhere. But they were 32 percent more likely to have that fish fried. Nationally, African-Americans ate more fish meals than whites, and twice as much fried fish.

Read the full story in The New York Times.