In orange juice, pulp is becoming a fiction

Listen up, Florida Citrus Commission! And for that matter, California, too…

Isn’t there anyone left who remembers fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice you could buy at a roadside juice stand or sample for free as a tourist at a welcome station? Now that’s real OJ. This “no pulp” liquid from concentrate that seems to have overtaken the juice section in most chain grocery stores is about as eviscerated as anything I can imagine and more closely resembles what the FDA labels a “drink” than “100% real juice.” This is what we get stuck with when we allow the market to cater predominantly to kids, whose ability to discriminate highest quality taste hasn’t fully developed. Yuck!

If you really want fresh-squeezed taste and texture, buy some oranges and a juicer of some sort and make your own juice. Short of that, don’t ever-ever-ever buy concentrate (it’s had all the good stuff removed and then put back in, a really bad way to process food). Stick to NOT FROM CONCENTRATE. Go for pulp. That’s the good stuff.

 

There oughtta be… a Chesapeake Bay Film Festival!

My friend and colleague Chris Palmer has done it again, motivating students at the Center for Environmental Filmmaking to make real-life productions while they’re engaged in active learning. Tonight’s special on Maryland Public TV, part of a weeklong series of programs about the Chesapeake Bay, is titled EcoViews. The students produced four short segments on different aspects of life on and around the Bay, a thoroughly enjoyable, informative and entertaining show! More! More!

Here’s a great advance write-up about the making of the program in the campus weekly paper.

Now, here’s another idea, one that ought to be produced for next year: In theaters, house parties and community centers near you, a week-long series of films and videos about the Bay — patterned somewhat after the DC Environmental Film Festival, but with a more personal touch, on a scale you can share with your neighbors in small rural communities as well as suburban and urban centers throughout all the states that make up the watershed.

Get collaboration from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Chesapeake Bay Program, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Sierra Club (the Montgomery County group is already in the habit of showing films in members’ homes, along with a potluck supper), and lots of other prospective participating sponsors. [Visit these organizations by clicking on their links at the right, on this blog's main page.]

Like the idea? Spread the word and say you read it here first.

Musings on pet health, or, why I don’t purchase grocery store pet food

Official Takes Risks Warning on Pet Drug

By JEFF DONN
The Associated Press
Sunday, April 22, 2007

——–

Please read the above article, which has to do with ProHeart, a vaccine to prevent heartworm that was pulled off the market. While it doesn’t concern pet food, it does provide a scary illumination of much of what’s wrong with our current regulatory system for food and drug safety.

I have been skeptical of the FDA for a long time, and the USDA too. So many regulatory agencies are simply too cushy with the big companies they are supposed to regulate, despite often doing good and credible work on some issues. In their defense — and also in defense of many state government agencies — too often there simply aren’t a large enough number of inspectors to get the job done and get it done right. But I think all you need to do is count how many small and family farms are left today, and how many independent small food-related businesses there are compared with chains, and it’s obvious whose interests are being favored. You can also inspect the FDA records — file a Freedom Of Information Act request if you have to — to see how frequently (or not!) the FDA acts on the cautionary content often expressed in consumer responses to Public Comment on assorted proposed regulations. (See current FDA info on the Pet Food Recall here.)

There are only a handful of folks in Congress — among them, Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Dennis Kucinich — who have enough of a clue and enough gumption to take both the FDA and the companies to task for weaknesses in the ingredients in processed pet food. Makes me very, very mad because I feel helpless, i.e., who ya gonna trust anymore… (as if I trusted them in the first place…) Anyone want to place bets on how long it’s going to be before we start hearing melamine has found its way into the human food chain…? (See 5/10/07 post for link to B.L. Ochman’s blog on 4/25/07 re melamine in baby formula!)

Back to the issue of trust: Well, there is one source I do trust. It’s the Whole Dog Journal. WDJ is independently published, and carries no advertising. Among dog health newsletters, it’s my favorite, even more so than newsletters from vet schools @ Cornell and Tufts, which are also good, but WDJ I swear by. Those of you who are reading this who frown on holistic approaches or don’t know what they are, let me assure you that WDJ lives up to its name — Whole Dog. That means the content looks at both conventional and holistic (complementary) vet medicine, and both the physical and behavioral well-being of your dog.

Full issues on the website are available to subscribers only, but Nancy Kerns is one of the most responsible editors in the biz and makes a selection of the most important articles available to all site visitors when the news calls for it. She’s done that with this analysis of the current Pet Food Disaster. Thank you, Nancy, for this valuable public service!

As for us, Cori has done fine ever since she’s lived here on California Natural Reduced Calorie Chicken or Lamb & Rice, made by parent company NaturaPet. We are just keeping our fingers crossed NaturaPet stays in the clear. I am happy to support small, independent pet supply stores in our area rather than the big box stores or chain supermarkets. And I’m also happy to report that the Ark Pet Supply & Grooming Store run by the Montgomery County Humane Society sells both our brand and many others that are on the WDJ’s approved list.

Now, I know not everyone around the country lives conveniently near these types of stores. But if you subscribe to WDJ and study their annual lists of approved foods — both wet and dry — you’ll also have contact information for each manufacturer. The good news is that many will ship right to your doorstep. For a fee, of course, but think of the peace of mind you’ll have for giving your beloved pet as high quality food as you can. We weren’t able to go to yesterday’s Beaglefest in Northern Virginia, but I’m sure the chorus of beags who did go would vote with a resounding Arooooooooo!

[Note added 5/11/07, after the online chat 5/9 hosted by PetHobbyist.com:  Perhaps I should have second thoughts.  One of the panelists pointed out WDJ's reviews were published before the recalls...]

 

 

We are all Hokies

Looks like mid-April from here on in my life is always going to be a time of memorial for me.

Twelve years ago tomorrow, I was driving from Richmond to Virginia Tech to give a presentation based on my master’s thesis research then in progress. En route, I heard the terrible news about the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, and the rest of my visit was colored by that news.

This year we have the terrible events of April 16, at Virginia Tech. My heart goes out to all Hokies and their families and loved ones. You are a strong community, and we are all with you during this time of deep grief. May you find comfort in the human family that surrounds you around the world.

Sierra Club Career Fair a big hit

Montgomery County (Md.) Sierra Club
4th Annual Environmental Career Program
March 21, 2007
Brookside Gardens

We did it! After a drop in attendance last year, we cracked the publicity and motivation codes for the ‘07 fair, our fourth. More than 100 high school and college students and adult career-changers spent a couple of hours visiting with some 17 or so exhibitors. Talk centered on what kinds of jobs you can do in environmental science, policy and management…and what kind of educational or internship background you need to break in.

What was our secret? One of our organizers, Dawn Walker, lined things up with Wendy Rieger of NBC Channel 4 at last fall’s Green DC Festival. Wendy hosts a weekly “Going Green” (see RSS feed on this blog site) segment and graciously expressed interest in promo-ing our event. Then, almost by chance, we got on the PTSA listserv of one of the high schools to which we routinely mail announcements and flyers. That seemed to light a spark, and before we knew it, we were on virtually all of the PTSA listservs. Plus, several of the schools posted the event on their websites, and some highlighted it as the career-related event is is designed to be. The high school students who attended this year came from a much wider spread of Montgomery County schools than in previous years, so I’d have to conclude the website calendar listings and the listservs made a big difference.

We’ve been trying to identify a couple of young people who can help spread the word among their peers, either by word of mouth or through social media like Facebook or MySpace or the like. So if anyone stumbling across this post is in our geographic area and would like to help, please comment and let us know how to reach you for next year’s program!

We’ve also been talking about whether, when, or how to expand, perhaps to a half-day program with a couple of workshop sessions along with the exhibits. These would be on things like resumes, interviewing, and related topics job hunters always want to know about. So let us know what you think about that idea too!

Reading list for the Earth and all its creatures thereof

I will add to and update this list often, but for starters, in no particular order:

• John Storer, Man in the Web of Life
• Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
• Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature
• Diana Beers, For the Prevention of Cruelty
• Anson Laytner, The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity
• William Conlon, Changes in the Land
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and The Sea Around Us
• Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

• Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (1992) — see pp. 241-242 quoted below, and An Inconvenient Truth

The way we experience the world is governed by a kind of inner ecology that relates perception, emotions, thinking, and choices to forces outside ourselves. We interpret our experience through multiple lenses that focus — and distort — the information we receive through our senses. But this ecology now threatens to fall badly out of balance because the cumulative impact of the changes brought by the scientific and technological revolution are potentially devastating to our sense of who we are and what our purpose in life might be. Indeed, it may now be necessary to foster a new “environmentalism of the spirit.” How do we, for example, conserve hope and minimize the quantity of corrosive fear we spill into our lives? How do we recycle the sense of wonder we felt as children, when the world was new? How do we use the power of technology without adapting to it so completely that we ourselves behave like machines, lost in the levers and cogs, lonesome for the love of life, hungry for the thrill of directly experiencing the vivid intensity of the ever-changing moment?

No wonder we have become disconnected from the natural world — indeed, it’s remarkable we feel any connection to ourselves. And no wonder we have become resigned to the idea of a world without a future. The engines of distraction are gradually destroying the inner ecology of the human experience. Essential to that ecology is the balance between respect for the past and faith in the future, between a belief in the individual and a commitment to the community, between our love for the world and our fear of losing it — the balance, in other words, on which an environmentalism of the spirit depends.

Remembering Chief Seattle as we near the National Day of Climate Action

I don’t know who first used the phrase “web of life” — I’m sure others even before Chief Seattle also recognized the interconnectedness of all living things. But with only a few days to go before the nationwide rallies to get Congress’s full attention to the importance of acting now to reduce the human impact on climate, it’s especially fitting to recall the great chief’s words.

I reproduce here one of several versions of an oft-cited speech attributed to him in 1854 or 1855, when President Franklin Pierce announced his intention to purchase the land belonging to Seattle’s tribe.

This version is from the Washington State Library, which notes there is no verbatim transcript of the text, and also that Chief Seattle did not speak English.

———

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life [emphasis added], he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We are all brothers after all.”

———

I am much pained, yet also heartened, by this passage. Pained that we have indeed lost so much of what Chief Seattle feared we would lose… heartened there are still many among us who are moved by his words and who take small actions, one person at a time, one step at a time, to re-right the world.

We must keep that light burning.