Cooking from Scratch

Making real food doesn't have to be too time consuming, but it is worth the time you spend.

You can reduce your exposures and improve your health by eating as much unprocessed food as possible, and eating as much organic as possible. For example, plenty of research, from the US and beyond, shows that conventionally grown potatoes are consistently among the top ten most pesticide-contaminated vegetables, so buying organic potatoes will reduce your exposure to pesticides, and organic potatoes have 22% more vitamin C, 21% more iron, and 5% more magnesium than their conventional counterparts (find more information here for one paper that summarizes research on the topic).

People often say, 'I can't afford that' or 'I don't have time to do any cooking from scratch.' Yet buying organic potatoes (or growing your own) is a lot cheaper than French fries, or potato chips. As for time, the kind of cooking I do doesn't burden my time too badly. Like everyone else, I am busy: I head to my desk in the morning, and work pretty much all day, usually not abandoning the computer until around 6:00 or 6:30. Then I head to the kitchen and start dinner. Cooking and cleanup for dinner takes between a half hour and an hour, depending on how elaborate my preparations.

Keeping the time manageable requires some planning, but with a little thought about the sequence, you can keep things going smoothly and quickly. If I have something that takes a lot of prep, like homemade soup, stew, spaghetti sauce, or such, I try to work on it for the next day’s meal at the same time as I am preparing tonight’s. So around 5:00 I jumped up for a few minutes and stuck the potatoes (skins on) in a pot on the stove to boil, with more than enough to have mashed potatoes tonight and potato-vegetable-cheese soup tomorrow (this is really a kitchen-sink type of soup).

I started actual dinner preparations at about 6:10, throwing on a couple burgers to cook, and while they simmered in one of my two always-in-use cast iron skillets, I cleaned and peeled a few carrots and some greens from a window box garden that supplies about 60% of our winter lettuce and greens. The potatoes that had been simmering for over an hour were to the mash-able stage, so I pulled out enough to make excess mashed potatoes and mashed them with an old-fashioned hand masher, butter, goat’s milk, and salt and pepper. I poured all but a cup or so of the water from the remaining potatoes, added milk to cover them, a couple tablespoons of butter, salt, pepper, dill, and returned the pot to the stove. We ate our burgers and mashed potatoes and the small salad made right on our plates. I got done, and set our plates aside. I brought the soup pot back to the counter and grated a couple carrots into it, added some fresh chopped onion and garlic, grated some ginger in, crushed some sesame seeds with a mortar and pestle to add, dumped in a can of corn (drained), chopped up a few jalapenos slices, diced some green onions, stirred in some more herbs (fresh chopped parsley, basil and rosemary from window pots, dried tarragon and dill dried from my summer garden), and finally added about a half cup of grated cheese. All the chopping and dicing and grating took about 10 minutes. The pot went back on the stove. I washed everything, and I began writing this at 7:05!

I will take the pot off the stove in a few minutes, let it cool and stick it in the fridge right before bed. Tomorrow my dinner prep won’t even take this long. All I have to do is put the pot back on the stove when we head out for chores tomorrow night. Dinner will be ready to eat as soon as leave my desk tomorrow evening. Nothing easier...

The great thing about this recipe is that you can put in any combo of vegetables depending on what you have in the cupboard and the fridge. Peas, beans, peppers, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli... all work. And the same with spices: experiment with odd combinations.

Exposed

Yesterday Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air, did an interview with Mark Schapiro. Schapiro is the author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, and What's at Stake for American Power, which I reviewed when it first came out. The program was excellent, and Schapiro said a couple of things that stuck with me:

1.) Gross asked Schapiro how researching the book changed the consumer choices he makes. He said: What really gets me is, I like to have the information, and industry and the government have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent me, and you, and everybody else, from having the information about these kinds of substances, so that you can make a choice. I think at the very minimum, that is something people can demand. How has it changed how I do things? I smoke, I enjoy smoking, but I know what I am doing, I know the risks and I know what is involved with a cigarette. So the thing that gets me about this whole issue is, what you don't know. Get the information out there and people can make decisions about the risks they are willing to take, but right now the information isn't out there.

2.) At the end, Gross said, "Thanks for all the bad news." Schapiro came back with this: I don't see this book as a bad-news book. I have been following environmental topics for years and I have found these arguments over and over and over again. Environmentalists say, 'Take this stuff out, it's really dangerous' and industry comes back and says 'Get real. We have got to make trade offs in modern society, and we are going to end up throwing people out of work, and it is going to be too expensive, and it will be an economic catastrophe for our country, plus the stuff isn't dangerous anyway.' To be honest I got tired of that dynamic, it gets like Kabuki theater, the same arguments back and forth. Then I started following what was happening in Europe and I said, 'Hey, wait a minute. The world's major economy is requiring that things be done differently, and so what is the reaction?' I started looking at what is the effect in Europe, and the economic catastrophe that was predicted never happened. So it has been a bluff, over and over and over here in the United States as to what is-and-isn't possible. So I see it as the opposite of a bummer. I see it as kind of a new way of looking at things and a new way of looking at what is possible.

Yesterday morning, I had breakfast with a friend. He said something similar to me, about my blog being bad news. But like Schapiro, I don't see knowledge as bad news. I see it as empowerment. When we do know about all this scary stuff, we can weigh risks, we can make educated decisions, and we can demand change. As consumers, I truly believe that we have remarkable power! Vote for safer products every time you go to the store. Let corporations and government know you won't settle for less than full disclosure so you can make educated choices. They will listen.

(Listen to the Fresh Air interview here.)

Gifts for the Season

Cut down on the consumption this holiday season: donate some percentage of what you would usually spend on stuff to put under the tree to a good cause, and make conscientious choices for the gifts you do give.

Most of us are guilty of spending too much on holiday shopping. We run credit cards up, and pile packages in a small mountain under the tree. Christmas morning comes, everyone tears through all the ribbons and wrappings, and we are left feeling dull, almost hung over, with guilt and worry, and more stuff to store in already overflowing closets, garages, sheds, and storage units.

Just about everything under the tree is imported from a country with a less-developed economy and legal system than ours (can you say, China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka...), so with every purchase we are adding to global environmental and social problems. We are also adding to our own health problems, since our own regulatory system isn’t doing the finest job of keeping unsafe products out of our carts.

Gifts of Giving

This year, consider buying a little less, and donating some of the money you would typically spend on gifts to one or more good causes. Feed someone who is hungry: buy a chicken through Heifer Project International, or meals through America’s Second Harvest. Consider a gift to a local environmental group that works in your backyard. Support the arts or libraries, parks or wildlife. Worried about health issues? Then consider making a gift to The Breast Cancer Fund, Physicians for Social Responsibility, or The Children’s Environmental Health Network. (Links for all of these groups and the businesses that are mentioned in today’s post are at the end of the post.)

Researchers have found that giving to charity is actually good for the giver. For example, a group of scientists at Oregon State University studied brain wave activity of people using MRI, and showed that there is a clear increase in positive brain activity when people were making donations. And, a survey by a Syracuse University professor showed that “people who gave money charitably were 43 percent more likely to say they were “very happy” than those who didn’t give. Better health and increased wealth—for both the individual giver and the nation as a whole—are also linked to charitable giving.”

Gifts for Family and Friends

Of course, you don’t have to stop giving gifts to family and friend, nor should you. Of the gifts you do give, though, start making conscious buying choices that are good for the recipient and the world. Consider giving some really good, organic foods and body care products. Numerous studies show that organic and naturally raised foods, such as grassfed meat and dairy products, are significantly more nutritious and have fewer pesticides on them. Plus, good food is a great present. The place to search for good food? Local Harvest, a wonderful asset for finding real food from real farmers., or across the country, has a zip-code based database that allows you to search for farms, farmers’ markets, and restaurants that focus on local and/or organic food near where you live. Use the “Store Categories” to search for products from real farmers and artisan foodies who ship products nationwide, ranging from chocolates and desserts, to fruit and flowers, pet supplies and preserves, seeds and soaps, or wool and fiber.

As for body care products, the more edible the ingredients list, the better. My new find is ProductGoat, from a relative newcomer in the field. As the name implies, this Colorado company’s specialty is making great skin-care products with goat’s milk, though they also use a wide variety of plant-based oils and essences. The list of things not used in their products is impressive. My fave in their lineup: the Serene face cream. Lemongrass gives it wonderful scent, and it is truly luscious for your skin.

I’m also partial to Pangea Organics and Grateful Body. Pangea is another Colorado company, and Grateful Body hails from northern California. I interviewed both Pangea’s founder/CEO, Joshua Onysko and Grateful Body’s founder/CEO, Shannon Schroter, a couple of years ago. Both emphasized the importance of high quality, natural ingredients.

Onysko said, if you can’t eat it, he doesn’t really want it in his products. “I tell people to follow the if-you-can’t-pronounce-it you-probably-shouldn’t-be-smearing-it-on-your-body rule.”

Schroter got into making all natural skin-care products after his two sisters died within a year of each other from cancer. He told me, “Having two sisters dying of cancer makes me very sensitive to people dropping off left and right of cancer. So our aim is to lessen the toxic load in our children. You have breast milk that has 67 toxins in it, you have umbilical cord blood of newborn children that has hundreds of chemical in it, so our first goal is to lessen the toxic load.

“Skin care is like eating,” he added, “just eating through your skin instead of your mouth. So I say, ‘clean up your diet’. These chemicals you put on your skin go into your body and there are negative effects.”

My favorite item from Pangea is the Italian Red Mandarin with Roses skin cream, which is pricey but lasts a long time. And, I hate to admit it, but my regular investment from the Grateful Body lineup is 30Plus Hot Flash Splash... a cooling mist that really does the trick.

Links to Groups

America’s Second Harvest

The Breast Cancer Fund

Children’s Environmental Health Network

Heifer Project

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Links to Products

Local Harvest.

Product Goat

Grateful Body

Pangea Organics

Holiday Thoughts

It's the start of the holiday shopping season. But, maybe we need to reconsider our buying habits.

Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Retailers offer super deals to get consumers off to a whopping start for the holiday buying frenzy. But our consumerism is a leading contributor to our environmental problems, and our environmental problems are part of our health problems. We are like junkies, just waiting for our next fix of new stuff. And like junkies, the fix only makes us feel good for a few minutes.

Last week, public radio's Marketplace ran a series called Consumed: Is the consumer economy sustainable. It was extremely interesting and worth reading or listening to at the Marketplace website. One of the segments was about how our e-waste comes back to haunt us. E-waste is our stream of disposable electronics, and a large stream it is: Americans toss or recycle hundreds of millions of electronic gizmos—from cell phones to computers, and televisions to toys—each year.

Most e-products have a relatively short life, they seem built for obsolescence. Take our VCR as an example: We still own some tapes that we pull out once in a while, but two weeks ago, we went to watch one, and the machine ate it. Our VCR wasn't really old in terms of use, as we'd gotten it at about the same time as videos starting going to DVDs. We took the cover off it to see if, by some chance, there was something easily repairable. A small plastic arm had broken, part of the moveable mechanism designed to keep the tape snugged up against the player head. It was about as thick as a toothpick. Obviously, it was designed to wear out, and with e-products, they aren’t really designed to be repaired—the toothpick-sized piece of plastic isn't something you are going to find at the local hardware store. They are designed to be thrown out and replaced.

Obsolescence is also driven by constantly changing form and function, and heavily funded marketing campaigns that tell us how important upgrading is. We’re led to believe that having the latest color cell phone, or the newest and fastest computer will somehow make us happier, more productive, or just more fulfilled. One of the experts the Marketplace staff interviewed for the Consumed series was Dr. Peter Whybrow, a UCLA professor of neuroscience and human behavior, and author of American Mania. Whybrow says our mania for consumption is a mental disorder. It isn’t making us happier or healthier. It is leaving us “on edge” and manifesting in health problems ranging from anxiety and depression to sleep deprivation.

Ken and I are big on the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.. So we sent our dead VCR to recycling, and purchased a used one at a thrift store. But recycling of e-waste is dirty business. Most electronics sent to recycling in the U.S. find their way to China, Africa, or the Middle East, where workers, who have no protective clothing or devices, strip out the valuable metals and reusable components. The people living in villages around the third world that disassemble our e-waste suffer from myriad health problems that are directly associated with the waste they are stripping. And then, as we have seen in the last year, in a strange twist of fate, the lead and other contaminants make their way back to us in the products we import from these countries, the toys, the pet food, the cosmetics... and the electronic gizmos.

Our consumption has reached a level that exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish itself. But, each of us can make the choice to buy just a little less this holiday season. And we might just be healthier and happier for our decision.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Carol

Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer

A new report by the Cancer Working Group of the Collaborative on Health and Environment reviews the state of our knowledge about the causes of cancer.

First, a bit of history: Sir Richard Doll was a famous British epidemiologist. In 1954 he was one of the first scientists to warn of the link between asbestos and cancer. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to warn about the link between various exposures and cancer, but then in the 1970s and beyond, he seemed to back away from making such connections. By the 1980s, he was publishing oft-cited scientific papers suggesting that over 90% of all cancers were linked to lifestyle, and that fewer than 4% had any environmental or occupational connection. His numbers were widely used to justify a status-quo approach to cancer research, and to support the pursuit of new treatment options rather than implementing prevention strategies.

Doll passed away in 2005. His papers were donated to the Wellcome Library, a British medical library. Researchers reviewing the collection discovered that Doll had been on the dole: he received regular payments as a "consultant" from Monsanto, DOW Chemical, Turner & Newell (an asbestos company) and the Chemical Manufacturers Association, beginning by 1979 and continuing almost to his death. He never disclosed his relationship with these special interests, even when testifying before government entities around the world about the safety of the chemical products they made.

Blame smoking. Blame bad eating habits. But don't blame the chemicals we're exposed to. Hmmm. You can read more on the Doll story, here, at Our Stolen Future.

Over the years, people in environmental health questioned Doll's numbers, yet he was considered the pillar of respectability, and his results and opinion were bandied about with great authority by anyone wanting to downplay environmental links to our health. Three environmental health researchers decided to do some digging to see if Doll's numbers stood up to scrutiny. Richard Clapp, Molly Jacobs, and Genevieve Howe plunged into a literature survey, reading all the published studies and reports they could find. Their 2005 conclusion: "Environmental and occupational contributions to cancer in the U.S. are substantial and justify continued efforts to prevent these types of exposures."

This year, Clapp, Jacobs, and researcher Edward Loechler, revisited the earlier report, Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer, A Review of Recent Scientific Literature, studying over one hundred papers and reports that have seen print since their first review. What did they find? Unfortunately, nothing unexpected: The evidence is stronger than ever for a link between many exposures we face with some regularity and cancer, such as:

breast cancer to DDT exposure, particularly before puberty;

brain cancer from nonionizing radiation, particularly from radiofrequency fields emitted by mobile telephones;

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from exposure to pesticides and solvents;

lung cancer from bad air days (pollution);

and, prostate cancer from exposure to pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and metal working fluids or mineral oils.

In this year's report, the authors come out forcefully. Perhaps, surprisingly so. Remember, scientists are trained to avoid opinionated conclusions, to remain comfortable in the sanctuary of their numbers and their peer-reviewed publications. Yet Clapp, Jacobs, and Loechler concluded this year's report with this:

We consider the scientific literature linking environmental and occupational exposures to cancer to be substantial and getting stronger as time goes on. One of us (R.Clapp) has been reviewing this literature for over thirty years. In the 1970s there were approximately a dozen substances or exposures that were considered “established” human carcinogens by international agencies. That number now approaches 100, with many more considered “likely” to cause cancer in humans. As we noted in our previous review, incidence rates for many types of cancer in the U.S. continue to rise, although we welcome the apparent decline in lung cancer in males and soon in females. The cancer burden, defined as the number of people living with cancer, with the attendant economic and human costs, will inevitably continue to grow.

This justifies urgent action to limit exposures to avoidable environmental and occupational carcinogens and to find safer alternatives to present chemical and physical risks. To repeat the call of ecologist Sandra Steingraber, “From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.”

The report can be downloaded here.

In the Rear View Mirror

Some things can only be clearly seen after they have passed. Peak Oil is one example: Whether it happened in 2006 (as some experts are now saying) or will happen in 40 to 50 years (as big-oil folks tend to say), we won’t really know that it happened until it is a been–there, done–that kind of thing. Is “peak age” another phenomenon we will recognize in the rear view mirror?

Dr. Richard Carmona is the United States Surgeon General. In 2004, he and Dr. William Dietz, Director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before Congress about the obesity epidemic. During their testimony, Carmona said, “Over the past 20 years, the rates of overweight doubled in children and tripled in adolescents. Today nearly two out of every three American adults and 15 percent of American kids are overweight or obese. That's more than 9 million children—one in every seven kids—who are at increased risk of weight-related chronic diseases. These facts are astounding, but they are just the beginning of a chain reaction of dangerous health problems, many of which were once associated only with adults.”

The nation’s top doctors went on to tell the House members that “the annual cost of obesity is now estimated at up to $117 billion in direct and indirect costs,” and “because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.”

They were referring to today’s kids, but I am starting to think that we will reach peak age, or the point in time when the longevity curve begins falling, in the boomer generation—not in today’s and tomorrow’s generations, as these learned men suggest. Their statement got some press at the time, but for the most part, Americans still talk in terms of increasing life expectancy. I think that’s wishful thinking! I’m a tail-end baby boomer, and as I look around at my peers, and their kids and grandkids, I see far more health problems popping up earlier than in my parent’s generation. For example, among my extended clan’s parental age group (my parents, in-laws, aunts and uncles on both sides, etc.) there were no heart attacks when that generation (call them the WWII generation) was in their 50s, yet two of my the men of my generation had heart attacks around 50, and are now on medication for their conditions. None of the WWIIers took blood pressure or cholesterol meds starting in their 40s, yet several of my generation did. None had cancer in their 50s, yet at least one of my generation has had a diagnosis of cancer. Just my family’s bad luck. No! I see similar trends among friends and acquaintances. And then, if I look at the health problems of young adults and younger kids (genX, genY, and even genZ) among my extended family and my friends’ families, I see even more problems cropping up at even younger ages.

Will I live longer than my mother? Will my husband outlast his father? Will boomers, genXers, genYers, and genZers continue gaining in the age department? My guess is that the answers to most of these questions will be no. Why will age drop if it does? Well, we boomers were, overall, exposed to more chemicals than our parents. Our kids have been exposed to more than we have. Their kids are being exposed to still more. Those exposures, as well as less physical activity and less healthy eating habits will combine to move our life expectancy backwards.

Washington News

Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency have recommended tightening air quality standards for lead.

Today the Office of Air Quality Planning at the Environmental Protection Agency released a final staff paper, Human Exposure and Health Risk Assessment (see it here), and in it they recommend EPA tighten lead standards. The staff basically says that the evidence of lead's health effects, particularly on children, "clearly calls into question the adequacy of the current standard."

The lead standard was developed in 1978. That standard helped get the lead out of gasoline, a major step forward in environmental health policy. The use of lead as a gasoline additive started in the 1920s, and went into hyperdrive in the 1940s. In spite of the 1978 standard, lead wasn't completely removed from gas until 1996. But in the 18-year period in which it was being phased out, the Centers for Disease Control reported a 90% reduction in kids' blood-lead levels. That's good news—a 90% reduction—but it isn't zero, and when it comes to lead, that's the only safe number. As the EPA staff says, "Current health-effects evidence does not indicate a level of lead exposure below which adverse health effects may not occur." They also say, according to a large and fast-growing body scientific studies, that "adverse effects in young children occur at much lower blood-lead levels than was understood when the current standard was set in 1978."

What does the lead do? Well for one thing, lead has been shown in several studies published in the last couple of years to significantly reduce IQ, depending on the dose and the timing of the exposure (high maternal lead exposures in the first trimester of pregnancy, for example, tend to have greater impact than later in pregnancy, and exposures earlier in childhood have greater affect.) It is clearly associated with other mental health problems and behavioral disorders: lead is implicated in ADHD, for example. It is also associated with infertility problems, birth defects, high blood pressure, and renal failure to name just a few of the long list of health disorders and diseases.

The EPA staff paper recommends "appreciably lowering the level of the current primary standard for lead (the current standard is 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3)." A staff recommendation does not mean that the standard will be changed, but it should fuel a dialog that really needs to happen.