Hey everyone!
I suppose you might be asking where have all our posts gone? Well, we've move our blog.
You can now follow us over at our new 21st Century Food Blog. It's still slightly under construction, but all our great posts are now over there!
Hope you enjoyed things so far!
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Problems with the Agricultural Industry of Today
The food chain is a little bit out of whack these days, notably with fruits and vegetables. Ideally, crops would be grown, harvest and then shared or sold and eaten. It starts at the farm, and gets to your dinner table in maybe two steps. However, that is hardly the case these days with the way the agricultural industry is run in the Western world.
The sad truth of the matter is that the cozy little image of a small family running a small farm is quickly becoming an antiquated concept. Every day there are fewer and fewer farms run by actual people and more and more run by enormous companies. Where people can give their product a human touch and pride themselves in their work, mega corporations are normally more concerned with volume of produce and making money.
One of the main problems with this line of thinking is that once corporations begin buying up farms and land, they eventually gain control of massive holdings that are well beyond their reasonable scope of being able to manage and overview every holding effectively.
It has taken a recent massive outbreak of E-Coli in Europe for officials to admit that the way the agricultural industry is set up doesn't work. Because such a massive volume of food is produced by only two or three corporations, they are having a hard time tracking the source of the outbreak because there is simply too much going on.
The food could come from dozens of farms in an area, which all grow the same crop and ship it to the same distributor, who then mingles it will all the other food and sends it out to various locations, and then to grocery stores and markets and so forth. Because of this, tracking the origins of an outbreak is a nightmare, become too much food comes into contact with it and ends up in too many areas.
If farms were more localized, an outbreak of E-Coli wouldn't spread across the continent, and would be easy to contain because the crop could be identified immediately.
One of the reasons small local and organic farms are so important is that they are actually accountable for the crops they produce. Unlike in the system of corporations where farms just produce and send the crops away and out of their hands, smaller farms tend to take pride in their work and remain local and visible. As well, there is much smaller chance that dangerous food bacteria will emerge and spread from these locations.
It also helps that organic farms do not use pesticides and other toxic chemicals to protect their crops from insects, considering that there are plenty of natural and safe to humans ways of fighting off insects and other ills from their crops.
The sad truth of the matter is that the cozy little image of a small family running a small farm is quickly becoming an antiquated concept. Every day there are fewer and fewer farms run by actual people and more and more run by enormous companies. Where people can give their product a human touch and pride themselves in their work, mega corporations are normally more concerned with volume of produce and making money.
One of the main problems with this line of thinking is that once corporations begin buying up farms and land, they eventually gain control of massive holdings that are well beyond their reasonable scope of being able to manage and overview every holding effectively.
It has taken a recent massive outbreak of E-Coli in Europe for officials to admit that the way the agricultural industry is set up doesn't work. Because such a massive volume of food is produced by only two or three corporations, they are having a hard time tracking the source of the outbreak because there is simply too much going on.
The food could come from dozens of farms in an area, which all grow the same crop and ship it to the same distributor, who then mingles it will all the other food and sends it out to various locations, and then to grocery stores and markets and so forth. Because of this, tracking the origins of an outbreak is a nightmare, become too much food comes into contact with it and ends up in too many areas.
If farms were more localized, an outbreak of E-Coli wouldn't spread across the continent, and would be easy to contain because the crop could be identified immediately.
It also helps that organic farms do not use pesticides and other toxic chemicals to protect their crops from insects, considering that there are plenty of natural and safe to humans ways of fighting off insects and other ills from their crops.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
A drug to erase bad memories?
Here's some odd health news: researchers believe they have developed a pill that can erase bad memories.
When we are experiencing high levels of stress our anxiety, our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol. Researchers at a clinical study realized that the hormone remains with us when we recall the memory and once again feel stressed out, and hypothesized that the hormone itself was tied to reproducing the memory.
By giving volunteers a cortisol-dampening pill after having exposed them to a stressful short film, researchers discovered that patients had difficulty in remembering the film and what it was about it that caused them anxiety in the first place.
This research honestly feels like something out a science-fiction, and eerily close to what happened in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where the main characters both had their memories of each other erased after their relationship grew painful.
While this new pill sounds like it good have positive benefits, such as soothing people haunted by a traumatic event, it also has the potential to be abused. People might see the pill as the solution to minor problems and heart aches, rather than coping with them. Imagine taking a pill to erase your memory every time you make a mistake; you will only end up repeating that mistake over and over.
Our memories and experience make up who we are, without them we would be much like goldfish circling forever in our fish bowl, not realizing how we got there or where we are going. Bad memories are as important as the good, because without them we would never learn from past mistakes or become stronger human beings.
What do you think? Can having some of your memories erased be a good thing, or should we go on living?
When we are experiencing high levels of stress our anxiety, our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol. Researchers at a clinical study realized that the hormone remains with us when we recall the memory and once again feel stressed out, and hypothesized that the hormone itself was tied to reproducing the memory.
By giving volunteers a cortisol-dampening pill after having exposed them to a stressful short film, researchers discovered that patients had difficulty in remembering the film and what it was about it that caused them anxiety in the first place.
This research honestly feels like something out a science-fiction, and eerily close to what happened in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where the main characters both had their memories of each other erased after their relationship grew painful.
While this new pill sounds like it good have positive benefits, such as soothing people haunted by a traumatic event, it also has the potential to be abused. People might see the pill as the solution to minor problems and heart aches, rather than coping with them. Imagine taking a pill to erase your memory every time you make a mistake; you will only end up repeating that mistake over and over.
Our memories and experience make up who we are, without them we would be much like goldfish circling forever in our fish bowl, not realizing how we got there or where we are going. Bad memories are as important as the good, because without them we would never learn from past mistakes or become stronger human beings.
What do you think? Can having some of your memories erased be a good thing, or should we go on living?
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