The new food pyramid came out. Well, it doesn’t really look like a food pyramid anymore. They’ve successfully weaned us completely off the building block design I grew up with, eliminating sweets, fats and sugars from what I’m supposed to eat at all. But who are we kidding? It’s some of the cheapest energy available and has kept Americans kicking butt since we used them for soldiers in the World Wars. Even today they try to ship chocolate to the soldiers in the Middle East, but temperature has been a bit of a limiting factor and I’ve heard the chocolate that can survive that is not really worth eating.
The link I gave you above to the food pyramid comes from a friend’s blog. She gave some interesting input on it and I found it more helpful than the still currently limited information on the USDA blog. I have this sinking feeling that I blogged just last year on a new food pyramid and they probably just finished creating that website, so we’re in for a bit of a wait as they tell us over again how to eat and how to not get as fat as we are. But as time goes on, I’m seeing more that it’s not just how much we eat, it’s how much we do. And I found it ironic that they decided to suggest drinking fat free milk even though the fat provided in milk is much better for people than other fat they could intake. Milk is so great for you, there’s no reason why 1% or 2% milk isn’t just fine. Just remember to limit your fat intake somewhere else.
I didn’t gain weight when I ate a lot, I gained weight when I ate more than I was burning in daily exercise and work. I lose weight when I do physical labor and play sports, regardless of how much I eat or drink during that time. Sure, how much I eat or drink might limit how much weight I lose, but I lose weight. Amanda and I are in the process of tracking our weight change versus how much we walk and I can tell you that already the graphs are pretty interesting for me. I’ve learned a lot about my exercise levels and how much I really do or don’t walk on a given day and I’ll give you 2 fun facts I picked up the past couple weeks. First, stairs at work instead of the elevator isn’t gonna do it unless you work at the Sears Tower. Second, I need to ditch the desk work. Unfortunately neither of these are helpful in my situation so I’ll keep walking as much as I can and limiting unnecessary food intake.
And that’s what really important out of all this. We don’t all have a ton of time to go exercise and be super athletes. I hate lifting, my wife hates running, and our dog can’t go swimming with us. But all of us can find ways to be active, and we can avoid intaking large quantities of food. If you want a health food diet just eat healthy quantities for starters. People who pack themselves full of fiber material such as lettuce just to limit their intake or who starve themselves to limit calories are most likely not enjoying their weight loss strategies for various reasons. And our bodies are designed to be efficient. If your intake balance shifts, your body will find a way to capture as much as possible from what you provide it – that’s just a fact of life and something those of us who work with food animals are acutely aware of. Just like humans, animals adjust to different energy sources or quantities and their bodies naturally do what is efficient. Our problem is that we’re smart enough to provide ourselves more food than we need and then our body is too efficient. We eat too much and then our body stores too much and we get fatter. And we don’t exercise.
The food pyramid provides a great guideline for balancing your meals, but we need to limit how much balanced food we eat. And then we need to get outside and be active.
Showing posts with label USDA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USDA. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Waste of Food
As I sort through the leftovers from last weeks low turnout, this article from Feedstuffs was par for the course. I just thought I'd share it along with my own brief thoughts on the issue. The article speaks well for me, but I want to emphasize what a shame I think it is that food goes to waste in this country or in any other country while people, while kids suffer through the pains of hunger. How greedy and uncaring are we that we'd rather claim a loss on wasted food than give it away and deal with adjusting our accounting? What will it take for people to realize that farmers don't need to produce more food to account for and support world population growth. The problem and the fault lies with the bureaucrats and power-hungry dictators who care more about their own ego than solving world starvation.
When the concept of infrastructure was first pitched to me as the reason for world hunger, I was offended. I was frustrated that this problem couldn't be solved by my chosen profession. There is no GMO, no better managed dairy, no higher producing, better cared for sow that can solve world hunger. It was a blow to me, but should really serve as an inspiration to people. This world is a twisted place, but one thing has always been true the world around. When you waste food there is always a starving person in another country that your parents used as an example to make you clean your plate. Here in America, cleaning your plate isn't the problem - it's filling our plate too full in the first place and this is equally as condemning a waste of food.
With US ag exports through the roof, farmers are doing their part to feed the world. Time will tell if politicians will ever really care about feeding their people, but you can do your part to solve world hunger by not wasting food and being generous to others less fortunate when you have the opportunity.
When the concept of infrastructure was first pitched to me as the reason for world hunger, I was offended. I was frustrated that this problem couldn't be solved by my chosen profession. There is no GMO, no better managed dairy, no higher producing, better cared for sow that can solve world hunger. It was a blow to me, but should really serve as an inspiration to people. This world is a twisted place, but one thing has always been true the world around. When you waste food there is always a starving person in another country that your parents used as an example to make you clean your plate. Here in America, cleaning your plate isn't the problem - it's filling our plate too full in the first place and this is equally as condemning a waste of food.
With US ag exports through the roof, farmers are doing their part to feed the world. Time will tell if politicians will ever really care about feeding their people, but you can do your part to solve world hunger by not wasting food and being generous to others less fortunate when you have the opportunity.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Conference on USDA Blog
This is just a brief note to send you to the USDA blog in order to read more about the secretaries' visit to the National 4-H Conference. My apologies for being tardy to share this but there's a lot I'm still catching up on.
Two comments: 1) If you look at the picture, you can see Lindsey, Lauren and myself right in the center. Since I was triggering the questions during the Q & A, I'm right on the aisle. 2) If you look at the first comment on the blog below, you probably question the motive of the commenter just as much as I did. 4-H encompasses all ethnicities and there was a very diverse group there as alwayshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. But this is because it reflects the population of youth involved in 4-H and the welcoming community that is 4-H. If the commenter wanted to increase the number of Latinos in 4-H, he would need to actively encourage youth to join 4-H. However, what he really seemed to be saying to me was that he wished they could have been there to promote their organization to the USDA.
Two comments: 1) If you look at the picture, you can see Lindsey, Lauren and myself right in the center. Since I was triggering the questions during the Q & A, I'm right on the aisle. 2) If you look at the first comment on the blog below, you probably question the motive of the commenter just as much as I did. 4-H encompasses all ethnicities and there was a very diverse group there as alwayshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. But this is because it reflects the population of youth involved in 4-H and the welcoming community that is 4-H. If the commenter wanted to increase the number of Latinos in 4-H, he would need to actively encourage youth to join 4-H. However, what he really seemed to be saying to me was that he wished they could have been there to promote their organization to the USDA.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Back from National 4-H Conference
One of the first things that I did when I got back from conference was to summarize in a word document all of the thoughts swarming my head. It's funny that until I sat back and read this document afterwards, I never had realized the amount of emotional investment I've made not just into 4-H but even into just one facet of the organization like the National 4-H Conference. I've now been there 5 times in the last 6 years in a progression of roles. Every conference has its high points and its deepest frustrations, but truth be told, I wouldn't trade one minute of any of it for something else (even as much as I missed being home with Amanda, who had a really rough week without me).
I know I've posted before how proud I am of the young people (at least younger than me) that I work with in 4-H, but once again I just want to applaud these exceptional youth who volunteered a week off of work, a week without classes, knowing the sacrifice, the lack of rest, the hard work they would put in, and the harder work they would put in trying to catch back up on their lives after conference. But knowing all of this, they dove into the conference with zeal and exceeded all of my expectations. I'm proud of you guys, just like I was proud in the past to be one of you. You are all going to go great places and if I can ever help you get there, just call.
This was also a learning experience and a new challenge for me. I've never been responsible for that much education and training for someone else. In less than a week, I learned much more about material delivery (what worked AND what didn't) and advising without answering questions. I also got to see how our pre-conference planning could have been improved to allow for more sleep among the facilitators. It had never occurred to me that lack of sleep could be a problem, but not everyone's into that, I suppose, so I learned to broaden my viewpoint once again. National 4-H was very kind in providing Lauren and I this opportunity and for engaging us in discussions afterwards as well. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that working with Lauren was great as well. Throughout this whole process we were often seemingly telepathically connected and we provided a good balance of leadership styles. It was a pleasure.
The only other thing I wanted to comment on was the increased professionalism that surrounded the conference this year. This started with the Sec. of Ag and the Sec. of Ed both giving a short talk and doing a short Q & A session with the delegates. Unlike many of these opportunities, the secretaries didn't shy away from the tough questions or use the answer time to elaborate on other issues not addressed in the question. Instead they spoke directly and openly with the delegates. I was really impressed by both secretaries and they helped set the tone for the conference of getting down to business. This carried over into the stakeholder presentations which were new this year. All of the delegates put a lot of hard work into these presentations of possible solutions to critical youth issues, which were then presented by the delegates to different government entities. It put a professional face on the youth within 4-H and I know that it really blew away the office that I was at during the presentations. Great things came out of the conference this year and I can only hope that this progress continues to future conferences.
I know I've posted before how proud I am of the young people (at least younger than me) that I work with in 4-H, but once again I just want to applaud these exceptional youth who volunteered a week off of work, a week without classes, knowing the sacrifice, the lack of rest, the hard work they would put in, and the harder work they would put in trying to catch back up on their lives after conference. But knowing all of this, they dove into the conference with zeal and exceeded all of my expectations. I'm proud of you guys, just like I was proud in the past to be one of you. You are all going to go great places and if I can ever help you get there, just call.
This was also a learning experience and a new challenge for me. I've never been responsible for that much education and training for someone else. In less than a week, I learned much more about material delivery (what worked AND what didn't) and advising without answering questions. I also got to see how our pre-conference planning could have been improved to allow for more sleep among the facilitators. It had never occurred to me that lack of sleep could be a problem, but not everyone's into that, I suppose, so I learned to broaden my viewpoint once again. National 4-H was very kind in providing Lauren and I this opportunity and for engaging us in discussions afterwards as well. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that working with Lauren was great as well. Throughout this whole process we were often seemingly telepathically connected and we provided a good balance of leadership styles. It was a pleasure.
The only other thing I wanted to comment on was the increased professionalism that surrounded the conference this year. This started with the Sec. of Ag and the Sec. of Ed both giving a short talk and doing a short Q & A session with the delegates. Unlike many of these opportunities, the secretaries didn't shy away from the tough questions or use the answer time to elaborate on other issues not addressed in the question. Instead they spoke directly and openly with the delegates. I was really impressed by both secretaries and they helped set the tone for the conference of getting down to business. This carried over into the stakeholder presentations which were new this year. All of the delegates put a lot of hard work into these presentations of possible solutions to critical youth issues, which were then presented by the delegates to different government entities. It put a professional face on the youth within 4-H and I know that it really blew away the office that I was at during the presentations. Great things came out of the conference this year and I can only hope that this progress continues to future conferences.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
On it goes...
Barilla pasta became the first big pasta-maker to join the cage-free egg movement. Whether or not they were pressured into it or bought out by HSUS, we'll probably never know. But what I do know is that they represent just one in a huge wave of propaganda conquests by HSUS as they buy, force or lie their way into the forefront of animal rights idiocracy. I think it's great that Barilla cares so much about the welfare of chickens, but maybe before they force more of the market production to convert to cage-free production, they might've wanted to ask whether or not cage-free is really a better system for the bird. For further reading on the matter, check out this OSU compilation on the welfare of birds in both systems. You might just be surprised.
While we're at the old grind of trying to spread facts to the few who care to elevate about media-hyped fiction, try out this sow housing fact sheet released by the USDA and ARS. I found it to be a more honest and unbiased evaluation of the current situation and research. In class today, we discussed the highly controversial issues surrounding the care and euthanasia of pigs. I understand the concern with animal welfare. As long as there are people beating animals, we have not done enough. But what frustrates me is the momentum from video releases which are used to push for irrational methods of caring for animals, such as untested swine housing, lack of castration, castration with anesthetics which are more detrimental to the piglet than the surgery, and utopic descriptions of how a pig should be allowed to act to exhibit "normal" behavior. For those of you who haven't seen pigs, don't watch their normal behavior - it will make a bad impression (ever seen Old Yeller?).
Finally, I have just two topics that border gross for me. First is the suspected live burial of pigs during the spread of foot and mouth disease in Korea. Foot and mouth disease is a horrible disease which spreads much faster than the vaccine would be able to work. While Compassion advocates the vaccine, you need to understand that the animals in question were obviously already afflicted with the disease. They should obviously have been euthanized prior to burial but they were not going to be saved one way or another.
And then there's the Dutch guy who thinks we should eat bugs. What do animal rights activists think about this? What a tasty alternative to bacon, eh?
While we're at the old grind of trying to spread facts to the few who care to elevate about media-hyped fiction, try out this sow housing fact sheet released by the USDA and ARS. I found it to be a more honest and unbiased evaluation of the current situation and research. In class today, we discussed the highly controversial issues surrounding the care and euthanasia of pigs. I understand the concern with animal welfare. As long as there are people beating animals, we have not done enough. But what frustrates me is the momentum from video releases which are used to push for irrational methods of caring for animals, such as untested swine housing, lack of castration, castration with anesthetics which are more detrimental to the piglet than the surgery, and utopic descriptions of how a pig should be allowed to act to exhibit "normal" behavior. For those of you who haven't seen pigs, don't watch their normal behavior - it will make a bad impression (ever seen Old Yeller?).
Finally, I have just two topics that border gross for me. First is the suspected live burial of pigs during the spread of foot and mouth disease in Korea. Foot and mouth disease is a horrible disease which spreads much faster than the vaccine would be able to work. While Compassion advocates the vaccine, you need to understand that the animals in question were obviously already afflicted with the disease. They should obviously have been euthanized prior to burial but they were not going to be saved one way or another.
And then there's the Dutch guy who thinks we should eat bugs. What do animal rights activists think about this? What a tasty alternative to bacon, eh?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Praise from the Secretary
I think it's really wonderful to be involved in the industry that USDA Secretary Vilsack cited as "leading this country's recovery". Everyone needs and deserves to be able to eat and America's farmers should be proud to have that responsibility. Those numbers don't look too bad either.
Also, for a really great read building on that blatantly erroneous (no wonder they struggle to stay in business) New York Times cheese article, read this...
It's nice to see that HSUS is doing great things with its money. Especially seeing as how they just won that community refresh funding from Pepsi for saving cats and dogs.
And that's all for today. I hope it's a great one for you!
Also, for a really great read building on that blatantly erroneous (no wonder they struggle to stay in business) New York Times cheese article, read this...
It's nice to see that HSUS is doing great things with its money. Especially seeing as how they just won that community refresh funding from Pepsi for saving cats and dogs.
And that's all for today. I hope it's a great one for you!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Vilsack on Colbert
For those of you interested, you can hear how the Colbert interview of Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack went down. Frankly, that cheese head looks a but more like Dick Cheney to me.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Tom Vilsack | ||||
| ||||
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Arsenicized chicken
Thanks to Ann and Dr. Oz for giving me something to talk about today beyond the boring newsletters. I already sent this in a response email so I'm just going to re-post with links. True to my morals on blogging, I have included links to your own enlightenment opportunities. Not that I wouldn't appreciate you taking my word for it, but reading for yourself is always worth the time when you have it.
Please keep in mind, I was unable to watch the Dr. Oz chicken clip because their website isn't loaded up yet from today, but I can take a stab at breaking things down. "Dr." Oz decided to jump on the bandwagon (or his producers did) and talk about food quality and the sticky topic of feed additives for poultry.
Dr. Oz probably spent a lot of time talking about antibiotics in chicken. Poultry association probably confirmed it because it's true. I can't honestly say that I'm really comfortable feeding steady antibiotics to animals because I come from a veterinary medicine standpoint which fears those outbreaks which are unstoppable due to antibiotic resistance. I also recognize that the FDA doesn't have a solid track record in getting things right.
However, they are our governmental food regulation agency for a reason. The best minds are put onto determining what is safe to eat and what isn't. If people are going to complain, then they need to complain to the agency with the authority to change something, and they need to present facts that are worthy of compelling said agency to change its policy. Those facts don't exist right now and no amount of speculation is going to prove that we are getting antibiotic resistance from chickens any more than they can attempt to prove that beef growth hormones or rBST in milk were changing hormones in humans. Hormones aren't delivered in quantities large enough to impact humans at all. It is my opinion that the same is true for antibiotics fed to animals.
Once the antibiotics are processed by the body and put to the uses that they were intended for, biologically speaking, then they are not going to suddenly appear in your dinner plate contents. I think that the abuse of free antibiotics among human doctors and patients is much more concerning and a far greater contribution the antibiotic resistance scheme than that which is absorbed and utilized in the animal while it is still living.
Consumer reports put out this article recently which Dr. Oz probably referenced. I couldn't even make it a paragraph before I was frustrated by the inadequacy of the intelligence applied to this article. I spent 4 years reading everything known to man about "mad cow disease" before it was even a big deal. I predicted the discovery of mad cow disease in the US over a year before it happened due to faults that I saw in our standards. And even I think it is preposterous to attempt to connect the feeding of ruminant MBM to the possibility of "mad chicken" disease. Furthermore, I looked into arsenic just a bit, and it didn't take me long to find an article from Europe about arsenic levels in food. Not surprising, the highest arsenic level by far and the estimated primary cause of arsenic introduced to humans is through rice. Yet how often do we hear consumer reports talk about rice arsenic? Ironically enough, I'm eating rice for lunch as I write this. Notice also that they found no detectable traces of arsenic in the chicken muscle in the first place. This whole article claims that arsenic in chickens is a problem, but they only found arsenic in the liver and it was less than 25% of the legal limit accepted by the FDA. If this lack of finding was blown out of proportion, how much validity do you expect from the antibiotic feed claims?
They also probably claimed mis-labeling of products which I think is something more of the past than now. People are always trying sell product and whatever they can do to make a dime, they will. This includes new labels which can't always be monitored when the label is being started. That being said, I think organic foods are far worse regulated and more unpredictable right now than any standard poultry industry product. The USDA is still sorting through what "organic" will legally even mean yet it's being sold to ignorant consumers every day. We can't throw any part of agriculture under the bus, including organic producers, but the industry concerns about wholesome food and correct labeling and advertising procedures applies to all farmers and producers just like any other industry.
I think that the key is to remember that we started feeding antibiotics to chickens or pigs in order to promote their health. Farmers have both a moral and financial responsibility to provide healthy lives to their animals and wholesome food to their consumers. They are following the regulations set down before them and in most nearly all cases are going above and beyond regulations to ensure a quality product for the public. The antibiotics have not been proven to be bad for the public and since they are helpful to the animals to reduce sickness-related stress and to improve their well-being, why shouldn't we use them?
Please keep in mind, I was unable to watch the Dr. Oz chicken clip because their website isn't loaded up yet from today, but I can take a stab at breaking things down. "Dr." Oz decided to jump on the bandwagon (or his producers did) and talk about food quality and the sticky topic of feed additives for poultry.
Dr. Oz probably spent a lot of time talking about antibiotics in chicken. Poultry association probably confirmed it because it's true. I can't honestly say that I'm really comfortable feeding steady antibiotics to animals because I come from a veterinary medicine standpoint which fears those outbreaks which are unstoppable due to antibiotic resistance. I also recognize that the FDA doesn't have a solid track record in getting things right.
However, they are our governmental food regulation agency for a reason. The best minds are put onto determining what is safe to eat and what isn't. If people are going to complain, then they need to complain to the agency with the authority to change something, and they need to present facts that are worthy of compelling said agency to change its policy. Those facts don't exist right now and no amount of speculation is going to prove that we are getting antibiotic resistance from chickens any more than they can attempt to prove that beef growth hormones or rBST in milk were changing hormones in humans. Hormones aren't delivered in quantities large enough to impact humans at all. It is my opinion that the same is true for antibiotics fed to animals.
Once the antibiotics are processed by the body and put to the uses that they were intended for, biologically speaking, then they are not going to suddenly appear in your dinner plate contents. I think that the abuse of free antibiotics among human doctors and patients is much more concerning and a far greater contribution the antibiotic resistance scheme than that which is absorbed and utilized in the animal while it is still living.
Consumer reports put out this article recently which Dr. Oz probably referenced. I couldn't even make it a paragraph before I was frustrated by the inadequacy of the intelligence applied to this article. I spent 4 years reading everything known to man about "mad cow disease" before it was even a big deal. I predicted the discovery of mad cow disease in the US over a year before it happened due to faults that I saw in our standards. And even I think it is preposterous to attempt to connect the feeding of ruminant MBM to the possibility of "mad chicken" disease. Furthermore, I looked into arsenic just a bit, and it didn't take me long to find an article from Europe about arsenic levels in food. Not surprising, the highest arsenic level by far and the estimated primary cause of arsenic introduced to humans is through rice. Yet how often do we hear consumer reports talk about rice arsenic? Ironically enough, I'm eating rice for lunch as I write this. Notice also that they found no detectable traces of arsenic in the chicken muscle in the first place. This whole article claims that arsenic in chickens is a problem, but they only found arsenic in the liver and it was less than 25% of the legal limit accepted by the FDA. If this lack of finding was blown out of proportion, how much validity do you expect from the antibiotic feed claims?
They also probably claimed mis-labeling of products which I think is something more of the past than now. People are always trying sell product and whatever they can do to make a dime, they will. This includes new labels which can't always be monitored when the label is being started. That being said, I think organic foods are far worse regulated and more unpredictable right now than any standard poultry industry product. The USDA is still sorting through what "organic" will legally even mean yet it's being sold to ignorant consumers every day. We can't throw any part of agriculture under the bus, including organic producers, but the industry concerns about wholesome food and correct labeling and advertising procedures applies to all farmers and producers just like any other industry.
I think that the key is to remember that we started feeding antibiotics to chickens or pigs in order to promote their health. Farmers have both a moral and financial responsibility to provide healthy lives to their animals and wholesome food to their consumers. They are following the regulations set down before them and in most nearly all cases are going above and beyond regulations to ensure a quality product for the public. The antibiotics have not been proven to be bad for the public and since they are helpful to the animals to reduce sickness-related stress and to improve their well-being, why shouldn't we use them?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Cattle Dashboard
If you're into the meat industry, livestock production or beef slaughter at all, then you'll be excited about this new slaughter reporting site with the USDA which then leads me to the national beef price right now. $97/cwt when I check, and that seems great as we approach our county fair.
And while we're at it, check this unbelievable report from Traverse City, MI. I'm glad that they were apprehended by law enforcement and believe that they deserve to be punished.
And while we're at it, check this unbelievable report from Traverse City, MI. I'm glad that they were apprehended by law enforcement and believe that they deserve to be punished.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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