David Horsey

E. coli conservatives

I remember the day last September. The supermarket had a new kind of salad dressing, one that looked like it would taste good with spinach. I went to the produce section to buy a bag. But they all had been recalled. Three people had died from E. coli contamination from eating spinach. I decided I could live without the spinach.

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E. coli conservatives (2): The China connection

Some recent developments: new brands getting recalled all the time (it's up over 5,000 now); corporate flacks spinning at fast enough velocity to escape earth orbit; Senate hearings reminding us of that the central scandal of America's food-safety system under conservative government, that the FDA has now power to order recalls (something I'll be writing much more about in the future).

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E. coli conservatives (3)

Stunning new news in the Bush FDA's pet food scandal. The list of poisoned ingredients keeps expanding. South Africa--whose food safety system is apparently superior to ours--has found contaminated corn gluten.

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E. coli conservatives (4): LIVE AND IN CONCERT!!!

Last year I attended a major conference of conservative intellectuals and activists at Princeton University as the token liberal. There I heard Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention say that the Democratic Party ostracizes all pro-life Democrats. Reflecting on the pro-life Democrat who happened to hold the obscure position of Senate minority leader, I finally realized I'd met, socialized with, interviewed, and debated enough conservative Republicans to come to a firm conclusion: They could be divided into two groups--those who had lied or stonewalled to my face, and those who hadn't...yet.

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E. coli conservatives (5): hearings

A witness, Terri Marshall, tells the story of her mother-in-law, who went to the hospital after presenting symptoms of salmonella. At the hospital, she was able to enjoy a favorite snack--Peter Pan peanut butter. An ineffectual U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA had not been able to identify it as the very product that had made her sick, in a nationwide outbreak.

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The E.coli series is from a great new blog: The Big Con. It's a must read.

You Are What You Grow
by Michael Polan

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight? Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice. As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

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Mad Cow: Don't Ask, Don't Find

However, the USDA's testing program is not random. The program is voluntary and beef processors are paid to bring in test samples. Since a diseased sample would result in serious ramifications for the slaughterhouse, there is an incentive to pick samples from healthier-looking cattle.

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