Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Wordless Wednesday 9-1-2010

Photo by John O'Neill

Brassica napus, the plant from which canola oil is produced has recently become the poster child for the concerns about Genetically Modified organisms.  This is potentially the stuff of science fiction.  A genetically modified organism escapes from its confines to the world at large and threatens the human species with extinction.  Well, in this case there may be no real danger from the spread in the wild of canola plants, but alarms are being sounded as a warning for the inevitable day when a truly dangerous GMO makes its own jail break.  You can read about the specifics of the canola escape in this article, but in this case, the real concern is not the canola itself, but the fact that what GMO opponents have warned about, and GMO proponents have downplayed, has happened big time.  In North Dakota, 86% of the canola plants growing in the wild have been found to be genetically modified… 86%!

Now the canola’s GM traits probably do not pose any real danger to humans or even to other plants growing in North Dakota, but what if they did?  There would be no going back, no way to put the canola “back in the bag”.  Therein lies the danger that many people warn about.  In this case it appears that the canola has been reproducing in the wild for several generations, combining with other genetically modified plants.  Some of the canola examined by researchers contained not one, but two modified traits.  Because 2 traits have never been inserted into one species, finding two together indicates that two differently modified  plants have combined their genes to form a new genetic modification.

As is often the case with big agricultural stories like this, the main behind the scenes player appears to be Monsanto.  As with their Round Up Ready corn, Monsanto produces a Round Up Ready canola.  The idea is that the canola plants grown to produce canola oil can be sprayed with the chemical glyphosate, or Round Up, thereby making weed control cheaper.  Of course this raises the question of how much glyphosate is then in the canola oil itself.  I don’t know the answer to that, but I am glad I normally use organic olive oil myself.  As to what the 2nd modified trait was in the wild canola, that appears to be another Monsanto modification, the Liberty Gene.

In any case, this is more evidence that the warnings of escaping genetically modified organisms are to be heeded.  Someday a GM plant or animal with unwanted or even dangerous traits may escape.  How will we then get that one back into captivity… or will be even have a prayer of doing so?

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

GM Canola Escapes

Another odd one this week.  I have been called a few things in my time, but never this… Yesterday alone five people landed here after doing the search:  “dirty yellow lizard”. I tried several ways, but I can not reproduce their result. This may be a job for the fearless Steve who always seems to be able to figure these odd ones out. Steve?

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Sunday Search of the Week 8-28-2010

One of the interesting, and sometimes frustrating things about writing on a blog where the topics are simply things that interest me or catch my attention is the limited audience and thus the limited exposure of the topics.  I often write about something that seems important, but may not be mainstream.  A few months, or even years, later the topic suddenly bursts into the mainstream.  Then I find myself screaming, “but people have been saying this for years”.  Oh well, I suppose it really does not matter.  It would be nice if things did not take so long to break out from the domains of us insignificant voices, but at least when they do there is some sense of vindication.

The latest example involves the toxic ingredients in some cosmetics.  Please go read this short post I wrote almost 3 years ago and this one from about the same time.  Then come back here and read this article on toxic cosmetics from a July 2010 issue of Time magazine.  This is exactly what I am talking about.

One note about the Time article…  Be sure to click the “Next” button 5 times or you won’t see the whole article.  Time has taken a short article and broken it up into 5 separate web pages, forcing you to click through them all to read the entire article.  Many sites now do this to be able to present you with several pages of advertisements instead of just one.  But that is a peeve for another day!

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Cosmetics and Toxics

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Wordless Wednesday 8-25-2010

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Wordless Wednesday 8-18-2010

Over 2 years ago, I wrote a post detailing our efforts to open a food co-op.  At that time, although the project looked dead in the water, a few people refused to let it fail.  A couple of months ago I started to feel confident we could meet our fundraising goal and last month I wrote a post titled The Co-op is Getting Closer where you could feel the optimism as the effort went into the final days.  I think one of the main reasons for success is that the 6 or 7 main people involved all had specific skills and a passion to use those skills selflessly in the true spirit of a co-op.  My role has been as the Owner Liaison Officer, but really what I have spent countless hours doing is much more mundane that that sounds.  I have developed and maintained the Co-op website and input and updated owner records in our owner database.  Others have used their legal, outreach, publicity, and real estate experience to keep the effort going.  One man, a computer programmer, developed the code for the owner database and managed the program to send out periodic emails to the Co-op owners.  It seems like it has just been the perfect combination of people and skill sets needed to see the effort though to where it is today.

So, after all this time and all the hard work it looks like our community will finally get its food co-op!  Our fundraising goal of 1/2 million dollars has been achieved and further funds continue to come in.  The success can be seen graphically at our Food Co-op web page.  Isn’t that a great looking thermometer!  With the experience and expertise of the people who will take this project from this point to the ribbon cutting, I feel like it is just a matter of time.

A couple of years ago when the first attempt to open the co-op collapsed, one person, (a former city councilman who is also the programmer mentioned above), stepped forward with a call to not lose faith and to continue working.  His idea was that this community really needed and wanted a co-op and in the end would support it with the finances needed to open a store.  That night a few of us climbed on board to help, and over the next year a few others with some greatly needed expertise joined the BOD.  Today we are looking at the successful fundraising results that so many thought would never happen.

The journey to this point has been long and arduous for all involved.  Although I certainly put in my own share of effort, it pales in comparison to what others did.  Their community outreach, analysis of potential sites, and single minded attention to what the owners of this co-op wanted is why we are here today.  Hopefully in a few months I will be writing another post with photos of our new store!

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Cooperative Effort Achieves Success

Instead of looking for an odd search, this week I decided to look at the most common search phrases used here over the past year.  The top 3 or 4 were no surprise although the order of those was not exactly what I was expecting.  The top 4 in order were:

1. “antibacterial soap dangers”

2. “dirty dozen foods”

3. “non stick cookware dangers”

4. “how to stop drinking soda”

When you take in other variations of these searches and the various forms of “eating less to lose weight”, there is no doubt that these are the subjects that bring the most traffic to this site.

The next on the list really surprised me though as it was written 2-1/2 years ago and is something I only wrote about once. Still, it is a very popular Google search and my post on “Economic Sustainability” is the only possible place these searchers can be directed to on this site. Given the fact that the post has zero comments, my guess is that people doing this search are looking for something else entirely and it is probably fortunate I have written on the subject only once.  heh.

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Sunday Search of the Week 8-15-2010

Peaches are in season here right now and I have been eating several every day. Like sliced tomatoes, peaches are something I do not eat when they are out of season. There is just no way I can even think the “peaches” in the stores at other times of the year are even the same species of fruit. The difference is that while I dry tomatoes, make sauce to freeze, and just generally eat cooked tomatoes year round, with peaches, the only way I like them is fresh. So I am stuck eating them one after another for about a month once a year, then waiting 10 or 11 months for the next chance.

This got me thinking about some of my previous posts about local food and our changing demands to have produce available out of season. Here is a post that gives a good overview of local food issues and, in the comments, even laments the short season of delicious peaches. Do you think about local food when you shop? OR do you just take it for granted that what you find in your local grocery is the best you can do? It takes some extra time, but a trip to the local farm stand or farmer’s market in the middle of summer can remind you what our fruit and vegetables are supposed to taste like.

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

Peaches Are The Real Local Food

I was looking at some statistics for this site and came across something I can not figure out. Many of my posts here have a lot of links back to them. Typically these are posts with some semi-useful information in them. A few examples are How To Eat Less To Lose Weight, Three Ways To Improve Your Health, and sometimes it is just the title that brings them in like, How Green is Your Cat? These all make sense but what does not is this…

My Wordless Wednesday posts are really just for fun and to get links to other sites so I can see what people are putting up for their WW photos.  It is normal for the WW posts to get 10 to 20 links back to them, a few have 30 or 40.  One WW post is off the charts though.  According to Google’s Webmaster Tools, this Wordless Wednesday post has 532 links back to it!  I can not figure it out.  I know some of my photos get stolen from time to time as I have come across them on other sites.  But this many links back to that one post just leaves me without a clue as to why.  Does anyone have an idea?  Or a suggestion as to how I can find out?

Original Article From: Healthy Living For People And Planet Earth

A WW Puzzle in Need of Solving