Is the environment making us fat and sick?
Organic Consumers - 5/21/2009.Collaborative on Health and the Environment – Conventional wisdom says that the meteoric rise in obesity and related health conditions - the early stages of which are now called metabolic syndrome - is due to the West having a bad case of "couch potato syndrome." That is, over the past few decades, we have been eating too much and not exercising enough. While poor diet and inactivity play an undeniable role in fostering metabolic syndrome, that's not the whole story. Clinical and epidemiological evidence increasingly implicates another culprit: the environment. |
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Local seeds vs. big guns
Common Dreams - 5/20/2009.by Sarah Simpson – It was April 18 – a warm and sunny day, weather completely unlike we had seen for some time. I must confess, I didn't have a chance to buy those not-so-fancy farming overalls like I had hoped. But, I did manage to plant my grains – inch by inch, (or thereabouts) crooked row by crooked row. |
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Mason on a mission in Guatemala
Portland Press Herald - 5/20/2009. By Meredith Goad – You are probably familiar with J. Patrick Manley's work. Manley, a mason who owns Brick Stove Works in the town of Washington, built the wood-fired ovens at Fore Street, Primo, the Edge, Black Crow Bakery, Cafe Miranda and other popular Maine eateries. But you may not know that, thanks to Manley and his cadre of Maine volunteers from the group Masons on a Mission, there are 1,500 families living in Guatemalan villages who have their own hand-built masonry cook stoves. The stoves are more than just a charitable donation for the women who spend their days bent over open fires in poorly ventilated homes. Yes, the cook stoves that Manley builds, known as estufas, feed families, but they also save eyes and lungs. |
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Cracking down on farm animal cruelty
Bangor Daily News - 5/19/2009.Op-ed by Katie Lisnik – Gov. John Baldacci has signed some landmark bills in recent weeks. Among them is LD 1021, which prevents two cruel and inhumane factory farm confinement methods. Effective Jan. 1, 2011, the new law will prohibit gestation crates and veal crates — individual cages that virtually immobilize breeding pigs and veal calves for nearly their entire lives. |
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