August 30th, 2009

5 a day & the truth about orange juice

5 fruit & veg a day is pretty easy to get if you know how much of each item constitutes 1 portion. The NHS website lists the most common ones so you get a pretty good idea.

Also interesting:

Because they are considered a ‘starchy’ food, potatoes don’t count towards your 5 A DAY. (Starchy foods are foods like potatoes, rice, pasta and bread.) We’re not suggesting you don’t eat them, but they should form the ‘starchy carbohydrate’ part of your meal

And:

A glass (150ml) of 100% juice (fruit or vegetable juice or smoothie) counts as 1 portion, but you can only count juice as 1 portion per day, however much you drink. This is mainly because it contains very little fibre. Also, the juicing process ‘squashes’ all the natural sugars out of the cells that normally contain them, which can be harmful for teeth – especailly if you drink a lot of it in between meals

Which reminds me of the rather unappetizing way fruit juice is made commercially. In this article at the Boston globe website, the author of “Squeezed: The Truth About Orange Juice” unravels the sleight of advertising:

IDEAS: What isn’t straightforward about orange juice?

HAMILTON: It’s a heavily processed product. It’s heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.

IDEAS: What goes into these flavor packs?

HAMILTON: They’re technically made from orange-derived substances, essence and oils. Flavor companies break down the essence and oils into individual chemicals and recombine them. I spoke to many people in the industry at Firmenich, different flavorists, and at Tropicana, and what you’re getting looks nothing like the original substance. To call it natural at this point is a real stretch.

IDEAS: Why isn’t orange flavor listed in the ingredients on the carton?

HAMILTON: The regulations were based on standards of identity for orange juice set in the 1960s. Technology at that time was not sophisticated at all . . . I don’t think the concern is so much “are these flavor packs unhealthy?” The bigger issue is the fact that having to add flavor packs shows the product is not as fresh and pure as marketed.

After having read that I generally don’t drink much fruit juice unless it’s freshly juiced. Still, it’s even better just to eat the fruit itself.

August 30th, 2009

what happens to seeds in a compost heap?

You’d think with all the waste vegetable matter thrown into a compost heap, the seeds of all the fruit and veg would thrive in such a fertile environment… Not so:

A properly functioning compost pile gets hot enough that few seeds will germinate, and the chemical composition of a compost pile is simply too rich for most plants: so many nutrients are actually poison. (Remember back to your childhood when your neighbors over-fertilized, and killed, their lawn.) So compost away, seeds and all. A few seeds may tough it out, but it’s unlikely you’ll end up with a pepper plant in your compost pile.

Well well! From Re-Nest

June 11th, 2009

geological time

geotime

Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism wrote a wonderful meditation on.. a rock. Well it’s much more than a rock, as he explains beautifully. It represents the unimaginable stretch of time before us, and stands as an omen for our future.

Here’s the introduction:

It was out in the open with no ropes or glass around it, inviting visitors to touch it. I brushed a hand across its polished surface, which was as smooth and cool as a sheet of glass. Nothing about that touch hinted at the stone’s age or history; yet it had traveled down immense vistas of time to come here, to our era, so that I could see and touch it on that day. And in the moment of that touch, I knew, I as a modern Homo sapien was briefly reunited with predecessors ancient beyond imagining, perhaps some that date back almost to the origin of life on Earth itself.

The curious, gorgeously colored strata of this stone are called banded iron formations. The dark bands are layers of metallic iron oxide compounds such as magnetite and hematite, while the reddish layers are silica-rich quartz minerals like chert, jasper and flint. Banded iron formations occur almost exclusively in very ancient rocks, and are common in strata dating to between 2.5 billion and 1.8 billion years ago.

Read more at his blog

June 6th, 2009

moderation, intelligence and sharing

Home is an important, sobering film, but it’s also beautiful and optimistic. It’s available on YouTube in its entirety, in high definition, for free.

It is directed by the renowned aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, which affords the film a powerfully god-like perspective, albeit one weakened by a rather uninspiring narration; the information is good, but the diction is clichéd and the delivery flawed (some words are mispronounced by the narrator, hardly in-keeping with a god-like voice, and she often sounds unenthusiastic and disengaged, like she isn’t thinking about what she’s saying — give me David Attenborough or Dr. Ian Stewart!).

The effect of Bertrand’s aerial perspective is that we get to take a step back — avoiding sentimental human detours for the most part — and consider the earth as one big organism. Everything is linked, as the narrator reminds us constantly.

The general message to take home is that although our planet is in jeopardy, we can save it through “moderation, intelligence and sharing”.

There have been other films like this. This film stays quite general and factual in its approach however, choosing not to hammer away at any one specific point — simply letting the powerful images and facts do the work. The plain facts and footage it offers on meat production, for example, — without rhetoric demanding people stop eating meat — should be enough to convey to people the severity of the impact of humanity’s meat-fixation. That particular section was quite powerful, I thought, as that particular environmental issue has generally been skirted recently, as if it were not even an issue worth considering, or as if there were no sensitive way to broach the topic to a world of meat-lovers.

Cheers to Aengus who aroused my attention to this.

May 31st, 2009

gardening love

Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXVI:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The Guardian careers website has a nice video about a gardener whose love for his trade would (literally) not be weakened by tempests nor Time. The video begins with a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (above).

May 15th, 2009

earth’s full.

David Attenborough is worried about overpopulation…

The latest venture for this veteran of wildlife documentaries is as controversial as anything he has done in his long career. He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. “For the past 20 years I’ve never had any doubt that the source of the Earth’s ills is overpopulation. I can’t go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet.”

But that’s not to say he’s a misanthropist.

For all his love of wild animals and places, Attenborough does not want to be immersed in them full-time. That’s why he has chosen to live in London for more than 50 years. “I would go mad if I lived in the rainforest,” he laughs. “I like what human beings do, I’m fascinated by them, and if you want to know any of those things, a big city is the place.” He would miss libraries, concerts, theatre – and the chance to wander into the British Museum “just to have a look at something”.

A bonus few words on God:

While Attenborough has no truck with those who attribute the wonders of nature to a creator (see #AskAttenborough: Your questions answered), he is reluctant to call himself an atheist. “I’m not, because, with due respect to Richard Dawkins who is a friend and who I admire, that doesn’t seem to me a scientific statement. Often when I open a termite’s nest and see thousands of blind organisms working away that lack the sense mechanism to see me, I can’t help thinking maybe there’s a sense mechanism I’m missing, that there’s someone around who created this. We cannot discount that. But I don’t know.”

Read more at NewScientist

May 13th, 2009

if i didn’t already love Ghent…

If I weren’t already in love with the city of Ghent after my time there in 2007/8, here’s another example of why it’s such a cool place…

The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.

Starting this week there will be a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors will opt for vegetarian meals.

Ghent means to recognise the impact of livestock on the environment.

The UN says livestock is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, hence Ghent’s declaration of a weekly “veggie day”.

Public officials and politicians will be the first to give up meat for a day.

Schoolchildren will follow suit with their own veggiedag in September.

It is hoped the move will cut Ghent’s environmental footprint and help tackle obesity.

Around 90,000 so-called “veggie street maps” are now being printed to help people find the city’s vegetarian eateries.

From BBC NEWS

Thanks Aengus for bringing this to my attention.

April 18th, 2009

low-tech solar panel

345

An inventive Chinese farmer has made a solar panel array from beer bottles… Well, sort of.

“I invented this for my mother. I wanted her to shower comfortably,” says Ma Yanjun, of Qiqiao village, Shaanxi province.

Ma’s invention features 66 beer bottles attached to a board. The bottles are connected to each other so that water flows through them.

Sunlight heats the water as is passes slowly through the bottles before flowing into the bathroom as hot water, reports China Economy Network.

Ma says it provides enough hot water for all three members of his family to have a shower every day.

And more than 10 families in the village have already followed suit and installed their own versions of Ma’s invention.

From weirdasianews.

April 18th, 2009

beauty/practicality/philosophy

eumar-abisko-washbasin-12

I think this is beautiful.

In these environmentally-conscious times the cast mineral marble washbasin Abisko brings us back to nature. Inspired by the unspoilt waterfalls of the Swedish National Park Abisko, the sink is unfettered by pipes. Nor does it allow water to accumulate in a big tub, something designers Johan Kauppi and Lars Sundström deem unnecessary. Rather, one should be aware of just how much water one is using, and catch it with careful consideration. An extraordinary, sculptural piece, the Abisko washbasin captures the freshness of mountain streams as water cascades down the length of the sink to slip away down a discreet floor-level grill. Living with an awareness of our limited resources, surrounded by cherished objects… these are the keys to happiness offered by the Abisko Washbasin from Eumar.

More images at Trendir.

via notcot

April 11th, 2009

q: when does saving water become an issue?

a: when you begin to understand how much water you use.

Meat eaters in particular be prepared to feel guilty: GOOD has a chart showing how much water is used in various processes of production. The amount of water it takes to produce a steak is phenomenal, compared to, for example, the amount of water it takes to flush a toilet.

Posted in Green | No Comments »
April 4th, 2009

vegetable zen

What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.

Richard Dawkins

Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Albert Einstein

via 10 reasons to be a vegetarian

March 19th, 2009

green cities please

heden-flygfoto

Above, a proposed village for Sweden.

Will we one day have green cities? I hope so… Because these grassy roof designs are beautiful. via neatorama

February 27th, 2009

Daddy eats cows.

Slate has a great article about raising vegetarian children. Mark Oppenheimer is a married to a vegetarian wife who believes their children should be raised vegetarian until they are old enough to make the ethical choice themselves of whether they want to eat meat.

…In asking my vegetarian friends, however, I have found that children raised as vegetarians tend to accept vegetarianism as a fact of life. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really: We all think that what we ate as young children was the best food in the world; it’s only with some effort that we introduce radical changes to our diet. Vegetarianism comes easily to those who have never known otherwise. “I look at it like this,” my rabbi, Jon-Jay Tilsen, a vegetarian father of four vegetarian children, told me. “Various societies and cultures have their own cuisines. And if we had been French, we’d be feeding our children frog’s legs—and in other places, monkey brains. In this country they eat cows, pigs, and chickens a lot—but in India they would sooner eat their brother-in-law than eat a cow. The point is that something that seems disgusting to eat is just a matter of what you were brought up with.” His children, unaccustomed to eating meat, have never expressed a desire to.

Read more

February 21st, 2009

meat zen: in-vitro meat production and the environment

In these times of ever-increasing environment-consciousness and financial despair, is lab-grown meat an auspicious solution to many problems?

To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.

“The challenge is getting the texture right,” says Matheny. “We have to figure out how to ‘exercise’ the muscle cells. For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would.”

Where’s the Beef?

And, the authors agree, it might take work to convince consumers to eat cultured muscle meat, a product not yet associated with being produced artificially.

“On the other hand, cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, the environment, and animal welfare, and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes,” says Matheny. The paper even suggests that meat makers may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter.

“The benefits could be enormous,” Matheny says. “The demand for meat is increasing world wide — China ‘s meat demand is doubling every ten years. Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years.

“With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that’s better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea.”

Matheny saw so many advantages in the idea that he joined several other scientists in starting a nonprofit, New Harvest, to advance the technology.

2005: Paper Says Edible Meat Can Be Grown in Lab on Industrial Scale (quoted above)

2007: Vegans vs Vegetarians

2008 (april): Growing meat without growing animals

2008 (may): Will lab-grown meat save the planet?

2009: Pros of petri dish meat (not just ethical)

February 19th, 2009

2m plastic bottles

chris-jordan1

Above: Chris Jordan’s piece “Plastic Bottles” depicting 2m plastic bottles — the amount used by Americans every 5 minutes. Below, a close-up.

chris-jordan2

This is taken from the treehugger article: top 5 environmental artists shaking up the art world.

February 17th, 2009

Obama Railroad

obama-high-speed-railroad

Obama signed and made official today his new 782.2 million dollar economic stimulus bill. Some of this is going to green causes such as making the US military more environmentally friendly.

Next to that Obama plans to make the biggest ever investment in the US railroad, creating an entirely new and very extensive railroad system.

“The time is right now for us to start thinking about high-speed rail as an alternative to air transportation connecting all these cities,” Obama said. “And think about what a great project that would be in terms of rebuilding America.”

Read more at treehugger.

I think the recession could have many such positive benefits like this — necessity is the mother of invention, they say.

February 11th, 2009

live moss bathmatt

moss_carpet

Nguyen La Chanh designed this live moss bath mat so you can get in touch with nature after you shower. The moisture that seeps into the mat nourishes the moss. No more damp, smelly bathroom mats to contend with, once you have this living mat. It also looks pretty stylish too.

This novel design actually has some practical worth too (in theory). How would you replace the moss when it died though?

via Reuben Miller

February 8th, 2009

understanding photosynthesis

Speaking of gleaning nature’s knowledge of technology, scientists at UCD and Imperial College London have made a breakthrough in their their research as to how photosynthesis works in plants. Potential applications for technology developed after this research could include more efficient solar panel technology and applications in pharmacy.

Researchers have taken laser snapshots lasting just one ten-thousandth of a billionth of a second to examine the role of electrons in energy transfer.

Ian Mercer of University College Dublin, Ireland, collaborating with researchers at Imperial College London, UK, examined the protein LH2, a well-known photosynthetic system.

The protein helps to pull electrons out of water which are then used to drive the reaction that makes sugars from carbon dioxide.

“More generally, we’re trying to understand how nature can transport energy across large molecules, and photosynthesis is a good example of where nature does it remarkably efficiently,” Dr Mercer told BBC News.

Full article: BBC Science

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