Sugar = Drug?

I want to dissect a provocative little article on one of my favorite punching bags, sugar.

It demonstrates, in my reading, the distance between basic fact and effective massaging of cultural values.

When it comes to sugar, a simple and highly refined carbohydrate, I agree that Americans eat too much of it.

I'd be more than happy to support a tax on sugar in order to reduce consumption.

I'll even agree that it works on the body in the same way as a drug.

Start with this message and get parent's attention.

How we talk about sugar, however, is important as is how we talk should seek to further the goal of decreasing consumption and increasing health.  I doubt beginning the conversation by talking about sugar as a drug will further that goal.

We can talk about it as a health risk.  We can talk about obesity as a threat to national security.  We can talk about lots of things in order to build a degree of taboo to sugar's over use.  Describing sugar as a drug, however, just makes us sound like a bunch of chicken-little fundamentalists screaming about fire and brimstone. 

It doesn't matter if it is true, if you do not deliver your message in believable fashion.  Going full-
fundamentalist on the public hurts your cause because people stop listening to you.  If you act like a nut, people will assume you are a nut.  First impressions are difficult to overcome.

Run with this message and turn people off.

I am just old enough to remember when drunk driving was not considered a serious offense but something to be laughed about.  Public education and the stigma that came to be associated with the practice did more to reduce it prevalence than locking up drunk drivers.  And the stigma was built up slowly with small doses of emotion and the education of children, who then took the message back home to their parents.

I also remember when nurses smoked on the hospital floor.  I'm sure that the increased taxes on tobacco have played a major role in reducing smoking in America but the shaping of values that changed our perception of smoking so that it was seen as dirty and polluting did even more good in the battle against nicotine.  That change of perception began slowly.  It is good to remember how the change began and not assume the current state happened with one quick blitzkrieg.

John Wayne did not need to attack cigerette smoking to get people to think about reducing their consumption of it.

John Wayne did not have to criticize anyone for not getting a regular physical to make it more acceptable to get one. 

The ad does not need to call nicotine a drug to encourage people to smoke less.

We are closer to the beginning of the campaign than the end.  Many parents have not yet heard the harder critiques of sugar and its impact on health.  If your first message to parents is that they are bad parents poisoning their children with sugar, you won't get very far.  If you start, however, by pointing out the effect of "too much" sugar and go from there, you will have a greater likelihood of success.

Pasture diversity

Here is the fruit of some forgotten experiment.  I don't remember what they are but I am glad to see them taking over a part of the yard that is too steep to mow.  We'll wait for the seeds to develop and spread and then let the herbivores in to clean up everything else.

 

Agriculture is complicated

and the complication goes beyond "buying organic," shopping local, know your farmer, or any other quaint slogan.  The economy is complex and the economics of farming is wrapped up not only in the economics of eating but the biology of the soil and the whole biosphere.  Even the most intense and well-informed foodie oversimplifies what goes into sustainable agriculture because no one person can know and understand it all.  What we need is an appreciation of how whole systems, including those who are responding to very different incentives, must be engaged in that change.  Perhaps that is starting to happen.

Standing in Klaas’s fields, I saw how single-minded I had been. Yes, I was creating a market for local emmer wheat, but I wasn’t doing anything to support the recipe behind it. Championing Klaas’s wheat and only his wheat was tantamount to treating his farm like a grocery store. I was cherry-picking what I most wanted for my menu without supporting the whole farm. I am not the only one.

In celebrating the All-Stars of the farmers’ market — asparagus, heirloom tomatoes, emmer wheat — farm-to-table advocates are often guilty of ignoring a whole class of humbler crops that are required to produce the most delicious food.

and later...

It’s one thing for chefs to advocate cooking with the whole farm; it’s another thing to make these uncelebrated crops staples in ordinary kitchens. Bridging that divide will require a new network of regional processors and distributors.

Take beer, for example. The explosion in local microbreweries has meant a demand for local barley malt. A new malting facility near Klaas’s farm recently opened in response. He now earns 30 percent more selling barley for malt than he did selling it for animal feed. For other farmers, it’s a convincing incentive to diversify their grain crops. 

Investing in the right infrastructure means the difference between a farmer’s growing crops for cows or for cafeterias. It will take the shape of more local mills (for grains), canneries (for beans) and processors (for greens). As heretical as this may sound, farm-to-table needs to embrace a few more middlemen.

I'd drink to that.

One in three freshwater lakes

is susceptible to an algae outbreak that could poison your dog. 

Dogs often fall prey to such bacterial outbreaks, according to a recent study led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Their penchant for drinking stagnant water or diving headlong into contaminated ponds makes them susceptible to accidental poisoning. Nearly 100 dogs were killed by cyanobacterial toxins between 2002 and 2012, according to the CDC’s survey of veterinary hospital records, news reports, and state-agency archives dating back to the 1920s. “It’s really important that the CDC is showing an interest,” says toxicology expert Val Beasley, a professor emeritus of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yet the CDC study offers a mere glimpse into this burgeoning dilemma.

One of our closest lakes is overwhelmed with blue-green algae.  Even twenty years ago this liberal arts major knew that he did not want to eat anything that came out of that body of water or spend any real time in it.  I am proud to discover that the Wisconsin DNR is not shying away from talking about the threat.

The mighty Mississippi, carrying everything to the Gulf of Mexico.

While algae blooms are part of the natural cycle and predate human intervention they have become more frequent with the advent of industrial agriculture but this need not be the case.  The underlying problem is simple, too many organic nutrients finding their way into water ways.  Increased grasslands between field and stream as well as more judicious use of fertilzers are two simple steps that could yield positive results with time.The obstacles include education (farmer's love their lakes and rivers too) and a farm policy that does not reward over-production of corn, a crop that requires heavy fertilization would be two common-sense places to begin. 

Still, until then, I wouldn't eat the fish and while a hunderd dogs a year is small potatoes compared to the number of automobile related dog deaths, I'd make sure that Fido, no matter how much she loves the water, is under your control so it is you who decide when and where she enjoys a summer swim.

Eye Grabbing Body Paint

If you are looking at ways to add some flavor to your local county fair, you could take a page from China's Yunnan Province.