Good Food from Healthy Farms
Archive for October, 2009
America’s Fruit and Vegetable Conundrum
Oct 6th
A study from the CDC outlines the lack of fruits and vegetables in American diets.
The data indicates that a staggering average of 86% of American are not meeting recommended requirements for fruit and vegetable consumption (2+ fruits/3+ vegetables a day). What’s more astonishing is that an average of 90.5% of adolescents are also not meeting those requirements.
The study goes on to present different community solution factors including the prevalence of farmers markets, produce distributors like Terra Organics, and health food stores. In addition, the CDC touches on the correlation of nutritional and farm-to-school programs to higher percentages of adolescents meeting recommended fruit and vegetable consumption.
Read the full report here and listen to Cookie Monster!!
Guide to GMO’s
Oct 1st
What are GMO’s?
Genetically modified organisms (or GMO’s) are plants, animals or microorganisms that through scientific intervention and splicing of genes have been, in a sense, edited in a lab to include the genetic code from other products it would not naturally mix with. The process of genetic engineering looks at genes like legos (a highly contested perspective) that can be mixed and matched to achieve superior products. Examples of this are genes from human beings in rice to grow pharmaceuticals or a bacteria gene inserted into corn and cotton to produce internal pesticides.
“In 2006, 252 million acres of transgenic crops were planted in 22 countries by 10.3 million farmers. The majority of these crops were herbicide- and insect-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa.” (Human Genome Project) More >
