Schools That Cut Fat and Sugar Saw Dramatic Results

Well they finally have a study that indicates that school nutritional measures do work to some degree.  Previous work that I’ve looked at was not as encouraging.  The difference may lie in whether your trying to prevent overweight or obesity.  Apparently, nutrition programs have yet to impact obesity though it’s effective against being overweight.  

 

The article notes however that exercise remains the other vital side of the coin.  

 

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Schools that cut fat and sugar saw dramatic results

TRALEE PEARCE

The Globe and Mail

Study:  Overweight Children

 

April 22, 2008

 

Schools that get rid of high-fat snacks and soda may see quick results in the battle to prevent children from becoming overweight, new research shows.

 

A Temple University study, published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, found that schools that overhauled their nutrition policies saw a 50-per-cent reduction in new cases of overweight children in two years.

 

The growing rates of overweight and obese children have driven researchers to get outside of the health clinic and into the schools to study solutions, the study’s lead researcher, Gary Foster, said in a statement. “We focused on school because children spend most of their lives there and eat at least one if not two meals there.”

 

The study was conducted with 1,349 students in Philadelphia over a two-year period, looking at the results of 10 elementary schools that had adopted a revamped nutrition policy and five comparison schools. Under the revised policy, developed by the Food Trust, a non-profit organization, soda was replaced with water, fruit juice and low-fat milk; snacks were capped at 7 grams of total fat and 2 grams of saturated fat; and candy was eliminated.

Additionally, students received 50 hours of nutrition education a year and were rewarded with raffle tickets for prizes such as jump ropes and bicycles. The program also involved parent education.

 

Only 7.5 per cent of the students became overweight in the schools that transformed their nutrition policies – compared with 15 per cent in the control group. The number of new and existing obese students was constant at both sets of schools, suggesting different measures might be more successful for obese children.

 

While the changes were able to reduce the incidence of new cases of overweight in the students, Dr. Foster, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, says more needs to be done, such as intensifying physical education in schools and even trying to convince nearby corner stores to stock healthy and single-serving snacks.

 

Canadian observers say the findings support efforts being made here to encourage healthy eating in schools.

 

Last week, the Ontario government announced legislation banning trans fats in schools. Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said Dr. Foster’s study is very encouraging to proponents of those efforts. It builds on a policy banning junk food in elementary vending machines – she says 97 per cent of the province’s schools have complied – and increasing daily physical activity.

 

“This kind of research strengthens what we’re trying to do here,” Ms. Wynne said. “And it supports what we’ve already done.”

 

Not that it’s a hard sell to parents or educators. “This is something school communities want to do,” she said. “It isn’t a push for them.”

 

While the Philadelphia study shows a nutrition makeover can work, physical activity should also be a high priority for elementary schools, said Marla Gold, director of McGill University’s Cardiovascular Health Improvement Program in Montreal, which runs a summer program for teens to improve their eating and physical activity habits.

 

Physical activity should be more than the typical hour a week, and it shouldn’t focus solely on sports, she added.

 

“They need to be lifelong activities in addition to sports and fitness,” she said.

 

And, as the study found, parental involvement is crucial, she said. Often kids who are overweight also have inactive and overweight parents. Psychological support and group therapy are also important.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080422.LCAFETERIA22/TPStory/Life

World Challenges on the Food Front = Huge

The news just keeps on rolling in on the rising food prices and food riots worldwide.  Rice for example has doubled in price in the last 5 weeks according to news outlets in print and on TV.  Wheat has become so expensive that it’s cutting into the bottom lines for bakers.  

 

“The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP’s emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.”

 

Dr. Lester R. Brown, an expert on these issues released another advisory not long ago.

 

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Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option

 

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm

Lester R. Brown

Earth Policy Institute

Plan B Update

For Immediate Release

April 16, 2008

 

A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.

 

The world has not experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.

 

In Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least. During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24 drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.

 

In Pakistan, where flour prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany the trucks that transport grain.

 

Food riots are now becoming commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (See additional examples of food price unrest at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72_data.htm.)

The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP’s emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.

 

Around the world, a politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their domestic food prices. Russia, the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in the world market.

 

The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth’s population, the desire of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.

 

Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets.

 

New sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.

 

Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.

 

Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region’s major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to.

 

The collective effect of these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.

 

Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security.

 

This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself.

 

#   #   #

 

Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute.

 

For more information, see Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available online for free downloading.

 

Data and additional resources at www.earthpolicy.org.

 

For information contact:

 

Media Contact:

Reah Janise Kauffman

Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12

E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org

 

Research Contact:

Janet Larsen

Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14

E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org

 

Earth Policy Institute

1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403

Washington, DC  20036

Web: www.earthpolicy.org

Why Bother to Act? Good Question. (Michael Pollan)

Michael Pollan really didn’t have to single out the Chinese person as the evil twin who would continue to pollute even as he stopped.  He could have found plenty of those twins across the street from where he lived.  Anyways, Michael is talking about the ripple in the pond effect of our positive or negative seeming actions.  Ultimately it’s all a gamble.  Question is whether you feel like it matters one way or the other.

 

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Excerpt:

 

Why Bother?

By MICHAEL POLLAN

Published: April 20, 2008

New York Times – United States

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

 

Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

But the drop-in-the-bucket issue is not the only problem lurking behind the “why bother” question. Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

A sense of personal virtue, you might suggest, somewhat sheepishly. But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision? And not just on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or on the lips of the vice president, who famously dismissed energy conservation as a “sign of personal virtue.” No, even in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, it seems the epithet “virtuous,” when applied to an act of personal environmental responsibility, may be used only ironically. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment — buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore — should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr. treatment.

….

 

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author, most recently, of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

If the TTC Vanished – Result?

You’ll note some recent ads on the subway lines that have been talking about the value of the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission).  Well I finally ran into one of those ads and did some investigating.  There are some intriguing statisticsand the report touches on the environmental, social, health and economic benefits of the system.  Of course the system is far from perfect, however nothing gets better unless you decide you want to improve it.  Now there are some stats to back up the argument to do so.  

 

According to the report if we had no TTC, we’d have:

$6.2 billion in lost economic benefits (lost jobs anyone?)

$23 million in environmental and energy costs

$309 million in additional medical expenses (increased outdoor air pollution if more people drove a car I suspect)

$3.5 billion in additional travel time costs (in life some things follow a normal curve – okay never mind that, the more cars you have the more congestion you get – my friends Michael Rasile and Laura Lee know that one first hand as they drive to and from work)

$1.5 billion in new vehicle operating and ownership costs (a past TO Star article indicated that it costs you $8000 dollars a year to own and maintain a car from numerous expenses including insurance – I’ll be happy to dig it out for you)

$195 million in long term highway and parking construction costs (more road maintenance – we spend more on that than health according to Dr. Wayne Roberts, Director of the Toronto Food Policy Council; gods, do we need more heat sinks like parking lots – we’re losing 16% of good growing land a year here)

 

[That's a total of $12 billion or over $1 million per TTC worker annually!]

 

Denis, you will certainly find this report useful if you haven’t already run across it.  

 

The ads and the website are based on a report by MPP Marilyn Churley.  I have included the links belows.  

 

 

http://WorthaMillion.ca 

http://WorthaMillion.ca/files/file/Churley%20Report.pdf

Old Farming Crushed By New Rules?

The boulder rolls down the hill 

at the will of the mighty

and it wreaks havoc

on all the little things that stand before it

until at last

it falls off a cliff 

and smashes to pieces

on the jagged corpses

of its fellows below

 

 

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Editor’s Note: This article from the New York Times explores agriculture in Poland since it became part of the European Union. Rules dictated from Brussels have had a negative impact on smallholder farmers. Previously farmers were able to practice traditional, sustainable agriculture and make a good living doing so. Now the production harmonization rules of the European Union to modernize (industrialize?) agriculture has left smallholders in a precarious position. Rules around hygiene have effectively shut farmers out from participating in agriculture.  Agricultural ‘modernization’ has resulted in pork and milk prices falling 30 percent since Poland joined the European Union.  Farmers are poorer – agri-business is richer. Agricultural tradition versus modernization: what side is ahead of the curve?

 

 

April 4, 2008

 

Old Ways, New Pain for Farms in Poland 

 

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 

STRYSZOW, Poland – Depending on your point of view, Szczepan Master is either an incorrigible Luddite or a visionary. A small farmer, proud of his pure high-quality products, he works his land the way Polish farmers have for centuries.

 

He keeps his livestock in a straw-floored “barn” that is part of his house, entered through a kitchen door. He slaughters his own pigs. His wife milks cows by hand. He rejects genetically modified seeds. Instead of spraying his crops, he turns his fields in winter, preferring a workhorse to a tractor, to let the frost kill off pests residing there.

 

While traditional farms like his could be dismissed as a nostalgic throwback, they are also increasingly seen as the future – if only they can survive. 

 

Mr. Master’s way of farming – indeed his way of life – has been badly threatened in the two years since Poland joined the European Union, a victim of sanitary laws and mandates to encourage efficiency and competition that favor mechanized commercial farms, farmers here say.

 

That conflict obviously matters to Mr. Master. But it is also of broader importance, environmental groups and agriculture experts say, as worries over climate change grow and more consumers in both Europe and the United States line up for locally grown, organic produce. 

 

For reasons social, culinary and environmental, small farms like Mr. Master’s should be promoted, or at least be protected, they say. They not only yield tastier foods but also produce few of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. 

 

In part because Poland has remained one of the last strongholds of small farming in Europe, it is also a rare bastion of biodiversity, with 40,000 pairs of nesting storks and thousands of seed varieties that exist nowhere else in the world. 

 

But European Union laws are intended for another universe of farming, and Polish farmers say they have left them at a steep disadvantage. If they want to sell their products, European law requires farms to have concrete floors in their barns and special equipment for slaughtering. Hygiene laws prohibit milking cows by hand. As a result, the milk collection stations and tiny slaughterhouses that until a few years ago dotted the Polish countryside have all closed. Small family farming is impossible.

 

“We need to reward them for being ahead of the game, rather than behind it,” said Sir Julian Rose – an organic farmer from Britain – who, with his Polish partner, Jadwiga Lopata, founded the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside some years back and has been fighting the regulations. 

 

“The E.U. has adopted the same efficiency approach to food as it has to autos and microchips,” he said. “Those who can produce the most are favored. Everything is happening the reverse of what it should be if they care about food and the environment.”

 

The small farmers who have rallied behind the coalition here in southern Poland have touched a deep nerve and gained broad influence. 

 

Ms. Lopata received the prestigious Goldman Prize for protecting the environment for her quest to preserve traditional farms. Prince Charles visited her farm (by helicopter) with its solar panels and the black sheep (responsible for mowing the grass) in the yard.

 

All 16 states of Poland have now banned genetically modified organisms in defiance of European Union and Word Trade Organization mandates. Last month, the Polish Agriculture Ministry announced that it planned to ban their import in animal fodder, another refusal to accept European Union policy. 

 

In Brussels, headquarters of the European Union, officials say they have no desire to undo Polish tradition. “We are not advocating the industrialization of European farming – from our side we think there is a place in Europe for all shapes and sizes of farms,” said Michael Mann, spokesman for the European Commission Agriculture Directorate. But, he said: “There has to be some restructuring to become more competitive and less reliant on subsidies. Farming is a business. They will have to look for market niches.”

 

The European Union currently pays farmers who meet health and sanitary standards a subsidy, to help maintain Europe’s farming tradition and as an acknowledgment that it is more expensive to farm in Europe than in other parts of the world. 

 

It also provides matching funds to all European Union national governments for agricultural development, to upgrade and modernize farms. The national governments decide what types of projects qualify, but the boundaries are loosely defined. In various countries they have included buying new equipment and developing organic cultivation, as well as turning nonperforming farms into bed-and-breakfasts. 

 

In a coming review of such polices, the European Commission is planning to encourage spending more money to develop organic agriculture. “The whole idea is to empower farmers,” Mr. Mann said. 

 

“They don’t need to change anything if they don’t want to,” he added. “But they have to survive in business. If you’re still milking cows by hand, maybe you would want to use the money to put in a new system.”

 

While overall farm income in Poland has gone up since the country has joined the European Union, that is certainly not the case for the small farmers here. In Poland, 22 percent of the work force is employed in agriculture, and the country boasts by far the highest number of farms in Europe. Most of them are tiny. 

 

The average farm size is about 17 acres, compared with about 59 acres in Spain, France and Germany. There are 1.5 million small farms in Poland. Only Italy, with its proliferation of high-end niche agricultural products, compares to Poland in its abundance of small producers. 

 

But the fall of Communism and, more recently, European Union membership have opened this once cloistered land to global forces: international competition, sanitary codes, trade rules and the like. Sir Julian recalls that at an agricultural conference in 1999 a pamphlet advertised “Poland up for grabs!””That is what has happened, he said. 

 

In a market newly saturated with huge efficient players, these small traditional farmers are being overwhelmed. The American bacon producer Smithfield Farms now operates a dozen vast industrial pig farms in Poland. Importing cheap soy feed from South America, which the company feeds to its tens of thousands of pigs, it has caused the price of pork to drop strikingly in the past couple of years. Since European Union membership, the prices of pork and milk have dropped 30 percent. 

 

In early March, hundreds of Polish farmers demonstrated outside the office of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, complaining that they were losing money on each hog they raised. Anyway, Mr. Master said, raising pigs for sale was a nonstarter. He is forbidden to slaughter his own pigs, and the nearest abattoir that meets European Union standards is hours away; there are only five in all of Poland. 

 

“It is impossible for me to farm,” he lamented over beet soup, in his ragged sweater and black work pants. He and his wife know that the European Union offers subsidies and loans to modernize traditional farms. But, they say, it is not enough money, it is not what they want and they are not adept at navigating the bureaucracy. They tried to fill out the paperwork to get certified as an organic farm but found it overwhelming.

 

Poland has a tradition of small farming that has persisted for centuries. Unlike farmers in the rest of Eastern Europe, Poland’s farmers even resisted collectivization under Communism. Now, Ms. Lopata said, they are “organic by default,” and “at the vanguard of an ecological, healthy way of food producing.”

 

In a small barn covered with matted straw, Barbara and Andrzej Wojcik say they feel like outcasts. They used to make a decent living selling pork from pigs they raised as well as the milk and butter from their six cows. 

 

But they said that with the price of pork so low they could not afford to raise pigs slowly, the traditional way. As for milk, their local collection station closed a few years ago. So they have no way to get their products to market, even if they buy the required stainless steel equipment. 

 

Now they have sold all but two of their cows and reverted to subsistence farming. They live off their parents’ pensions, barter and a bit of money selling sewed crafts. “The new laws are killing us,” Ms. Wojcik said. 

 

Mr. Mann, from the European Commission, acknowledges that small farmers in places like Poland may have to adapt. “There is a place for the small farmer,” he said, “but they have to be smart and not rely on payouts.” 

 

But deft adaptation seems hard here, a place set in its ways – and may be bad for the environment anyway. A collective system for selling organic vegetables to the city, devised by Ms. Lopata, never got off the ground.

 

“They tend to be very individualistic,” she said. “They think they survived Communist efforts to collectivize them, so they will survive this. They don’t realize the European Union and the global market are even harder.”

 

http://foodforethought.net

2007 SECOND WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD

January 10, 2008

Northern Hemisphere Temperature Highest Ever

Frances C. Moore

Earth Policy Institute

With the record for 2007 now complete, it is clear that temperatures around the world are continuing their upward climb. The global average in 2007 was 14.73 degrees Celsius (58.5 degrees Fahrenheit)—the second warmest year on record, only 0.03 degrees Celsius behind the 2005 maximum. January 2007 was the hottest January ever measured, a full 0.23 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous record. August was also a record for that month and September was the second warmest September recorded.

Looking at the northern hemisphere alone, 2007 temperatures averaged 15.04 degrees Celsius (59.1 degrees Fahrenheit)—easily the hottest year in the northern half of the globe since the record began in 1880, and more than a degree warmer than the 1951–80 average. Paleo-temperature records from ancient tree rings suggest that the northern hemisphere is now warmer than at any time in at least the last 1,200 years.

 

The year 2007 fits into a pattern of steadily increasing global average temperature, with the eight warmest years on record all occurring in the last decade. According to the dataset maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, global average temperature rose from 14.02 degrees Celsius in the 1970s to 14.26 degrees in the 1980s and then to 14.40 degrees in the 1990s. In the first eight years of the twenty-first century, the world averaged 14.64 degrees Celsius. (See data.) Since 1990, mean global temperature has risen by 0.33 degrees, a rate of increase faster than climate models had predicted. 

 

Although 2007 did not post a new record high, the year stands out as being extremely warm despite several natural factors that usually cool the planet. El Niño conditions in the southern Pacific tend to increase the global average temperature, and yet the second half of 2007 saw the opposite develop—a La Niña, which would usually depress global temperature. This is in stark contrast to conditions in 1998, the third warmest year, when temperatures were boosted around 0.2 degrees Celsius by the strongest El Niño of the century. In addition to the moderate La Niña, solar intensity in 2007 was slightly lower than average because the year was a minimum in the 11-year solar sunspot cycle. The combination of these factors would normally produce cooler temperatures, yet 2007 was still one of the warmest years in human history. This strongly suggests that the warming effect of increased greenhouse gas concentrations is now dwarfing other influences on the Earth’s climate.

 

The impact of the exceptional warmth in 2007 was especially apparent in the Arctic, where several feedback mechanisms amplify the effect of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic Ocean shrank dramatically to a new low, 23 percent below the previous 2005 record. This opened the Northwest Passage for the first time in recorded history and prompted a scramble to claim large swaths of the newly exposed Arctic.

 

Regionally, several areas saw record-setting temperatures in 2007. Southeastern Europe suffered through temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius in a heat wave that killed up to 500 people. In Japan, thermometers in August reached 40.9 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded in that country. Chart-topping temperatures and severe drought conditions proved a lethal combination, as extensive wildfires spread in both Greece and the American West in July and August.

 

While some areas baked under intensive heat or drought conditions, others were inundated by record amounts of rain. England and Wales experienced widespread flooding and damage estimated at £3 billion ($6 billion) during the wettest May to July period since records began in 1766. In South Asia, some of the worst flooding in decades occurred during the monsoon season, affecting at least 25 million people and killing more than 2,500. Fifteen countries across Africa—from Ghana to Ethiopia—were affected by severe floods in the summer of 2007. These displaced hundreds of thousands of people and washed away crops and farmland, seriously damaging food security in the region. Other countries that saw exceptional or record flooding in 2007 include China, Indonesia, Mexico, and Uruguay. 

 

Intense rainfall events and flooding will only become more common in the future, as climate models show that warmer temperatures will cause a greater share of total precipitation to fall in extreme events. This means that there will be more heavy rainstorms but also more dry periods, producing both more severe droughts and more frequent, more intense floods. Rainfall data from the twentieth century show precipitation intensity increasing over the last two decades, suggesting this trend is already beginning.

 

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel prize–winning body of more than 1,250 scientists, released its Fourth Assessment Report, which detailed the likely climatic consequences if human beings continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It reported that unabated emissions would result in a temperature rise of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius (2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit) during the twenty-first century.

 

To put this in perspective, temperatures over the last 100 years rose by a comparably small 0.74 degrees Celsius, and yet this appears to have already contributed to trends of more heat waves, longer and more intense droughts, higher sea level, more frequent heavy rain events, and stronger hurricanes. Future warming on the scale projected by the IPCC will bring with it a multitude of outcomes that can only be described as disastrous. These include hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress, a third of species at increasing risk of extinction, widespread coral mortality, grain yield declines at low latitudes, the loss of 30 percent of remaining coastal wetlands, and the disappearance of glaciers feed some of the world’s major rivers.

 

The temperature record for 2007 shows that we have now fully entered into what some are calling a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activities are the main driver of the global climate system. The many effects of warmer temperature, which we are already beginning to see, will only become more severe and more costly to society if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut quickly and dramatically. Our future now depends on what we do to limit warming by moving away from climate-disrupting fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies.

 

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Temp/2008.htm

Kids, Schools & Society: Healthy Spirits?

So is the school environment a microcosm reflection of the ills of our society?  Time to look at the social determinants of health (thank you Dennis and many others for the work you do on this subject – just don’t forget the food).

 

Some noteworthy facts from the study mentioned below (which can be downloaded from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dca-dea/yjc/index-eng.php):

• Positive attitudes of one’s friends towards others have a protective influence on emotional health and well-being.

(How many of us would follow Dale Carnegie’s advice and praise people whenever we can instead of blasting them for their failures?  We could create positive people as a drop of water ripples outward from its point of impact.  Of course I guess you’d have to be positive already.  Humans follow the laws of the universe though we like to fool ourselves otherwise.  Of course this is linked to a caring community, nutritious diets and exercise.)

• Almost half of students are physically inactive. Fewer than half report daily consumption of fruits or vegetables, and only half report daily consumption of low-fat/skim milk. The problems of inactivity, obesity and poor nutrition are particularly apparent in youngsters from homes with the lowest levels of family wealth.  (A healthy body is needed for a healthy mind and vice versa.  It’s a feedback cycle.  Healthy mind (the coordinator) is linked to the social determinants while healthy body is linked to food (the building blocks).  I can certainly understand this finding having suffered poor health for much of my childhood through to early university – oh, the glories of “extremely” high carbohydrate diets) 

• Most forms of bullying have decreased in the past four years. However, more than one-third of students have still been victims of bullying. More students – about 40% – from higher-income families acknowledge they have bullied others. 

(I can understand this one from my own history.  I wonder if the wealth part parallels our North-Western vs. South-Eastern situation.  Such as the West exploiting the East through migrant labour, having them take our e-waste, cheap labour to produce our food.  The politics people would get that.  Of course you may not agree and I accept that).  

• Health-risk behaviours such as smoking, drinking and marijuana use are strongly associated with lower academic achievement, a less positive attitude towards school, not living with both parents and having poorer parental trust and communication. Also, those who report that they find it easier to talk with friends have higher rates of substance use.

 

At least the smoking fell.  That was the easy one relatively speaking.

 

The solutions are there.  Like our problems with the environment and climate chaos (which are inextricably linked to how we deal with people – deal with people badly, deal with environment badly), it’s a matter of willpower (and along those lines, political will).  Who’s going to take the first step, inspire and lead?  

 

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Queen’s-led study tracks trends in youth health behaviour

Wednesday April 02, 2008

 

Positive school experiences and good family relationships exert an important influence on almost all aspects of young people’s health, a new Queen’s University-led national study shows. 

 

On the other hand, family wealth and peer relationships have both positive and negative influences on youth health.

 

These are just a few of the findings from the new youth behaviour report released today in Ottawa by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The report examines smoking, alcohol and drug use, physical activity and body image, eating patterns, emotional health and injuries in children aged 11 to 15. More than 9,500 students from Grades 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 participated in 2006.

 

The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey has been carried out in Canada every four years since 1990 by the Social Program Evaluation Group (SPEG) at Queen’s, in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada. The study is supported by the World Health Organization and involves research teams from 41 countries in North America and Europe. The new report examines the health settings and contexts of young people in relation to their health attitudes and behaviours.

 

Among key findings from the study (comparing 2006 to 2002):

 

• Daily smoking among both boys and girls has declined significantly, especially in Grade 10, with a drop from 15% down to 4% of boys, and a drop from 11% down to 6% for girls. The proportion of students getting “really drunk” twice or more has also declined slightly among Grade 10 students. In 2006, the proportion of boys in Grade 10 who report ever trying cannabis dropped to 38% from 50% in 2002, whereas, the proportions for girls were similar across the two years, at about two-fifths.

 

• Almost half of students are physically inactive. Fewer than half report daily consumption of fruits or vegetables, and only half report daily consumption of low-fat/skim milk. The problems of inactivity, obesity and poor nutrition are particularly apparent in youngsters from homes with the lowest levels of family wealth.

 

• Health-risk behaviours such as smoking, drinking and marijuana use are strongly associated with lower academic achievement, a less positive attitude towards school, not living with both parents and having poorer parental trust and communication. Also, those who report that they find it easier to talk with friends have higher rates of substance use.

 

• Most forms of bullying have decreased in the past four years. However, more than one-third of students have still been victims of bullying. More students – about 40% – from higher-income families acknowledge they have bullied others. 

 

• From 31 to 48 % of boys and girls in Grades 6 to 10 report one or more medically-treated injuries in a 12-month period. School factors – particularly, higher academic achievement levels – are associated with lower occurrences of serious injury.

 

• While emotional health is similar for both boys and girls in Grade 6, by Grade 10 girls experience poorer emotional health than boys. Higher levels of parental trust and communication are much more important to young people’s emotional health than living with both parents, or to family wealth.

 

• Positive attitudes of one’s friends towards others have a protective influence on emotional health and well-being.

 

“Improving school and family strengths may indicate the best opportunity for success of youth health interventions,” says SPEG director Dr. William Boyce, who edited and contributed to the report. “At the same time, the greatest need for interventions appears to be within the peer context and in social income policy. Further research is needed to investigate how these protective factors combine with risk factors and lead to health improvement or to poor health in young people.”

 

Other Queen’s contributors to the report are: Wendy Craig (Psychology), Will Pickett (Community Health and Epidemiology), Ian Janssen (Kinesiology and Health Studies),  John Freeman, Matt King, Don Klinger and Hana Saab from the Faculty of Education; and Frank Elgar from Carleton University.

 

An executive summary of findings, in English and French, is available upon request. The complete study may be accessed on-line.

 

For more information on The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children, see: www.hbsc.org

 

Keywords:  bullying, social determinants, health, food, nutrition, food security, low income, high income, affluence, schools, education, society, microcosm, reflection

Food Less Nutritious? Blame the Farm Method

Brian Halweil of the World Watch Institute released the report (which I happen to have).  Modern agriculture blasts the land into lifeless dust and then uses drugs to keep it working (i.e.  the chemical fertilizers, the pesticides).  This was the cause of the Dust Bowl back several decades and the impacts of this agriculture continue to be felt as more and more land is abandoned and eroded.  

 

Nurture the soil and one creates health in all things that stand upon it.  The report below can be found at http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Yield_Nutrient_Density_Final.pdf

 

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*Editor’s Note:* A new report from The Organic Centre<http://www.foodnews.ca/index.htm> explains that modern high-yielding conventional cultivars are lower in nutrients than conventional, lower yielding crops. This finding has important implications for public health and agricultural production. First, the decline in nutrient content of foods combined with diets rich in processed, high fat, high sugar diets contributes to growing incidences of obesity and diabetes. 

Second, intensive agriculture is not conducive to the development of healthy root systems. Giving up some yield, providing more space and time for crops to absorb nutrients from healthy soils can improve nutrient quality. The perspective offered by this report reinforces Peter Goodchild’s discussion <http://foodnews.ca/> (previous post) on how we might do agriculture in a post-fossil-fuel society.

The Rice is Rising … and Stolen

Here we have it.  Our major food crops are all going up in price as more land is altered to make way for biofuel.  Bakers are finding it hard to stay in business.  Food aid is going down (because it’s costly to buy food).  The whole jazz lovely.  Now here’s further evidence that another Asian staple, rice, is skyrocketing in cost (it just doubled).  The hungry will steal and if necessary kill to survive.  What do you see?   People can’t afford to buy the rice (most of which is exported) and so theft is at an all time high.   

  

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Farmers fall prey to rice rustlers as price of staple crop rockets

Asian countries curb exports to avoid shortfalls as ‘perfect storm’ nearly doubles price in three months

Ian MacKinnon in Samblong village, Thailand

The Guardian, Monday March 31 2008

Workers in a rice field on the outskirts of Chiang Mai in Thailand. Photograph: Alamy

Knee-deep in muddy water, her face smeared with sandalwood paste and a broad-brimmed hat for protection against the broiling sun, Samniang Ketia grins broadly at her good fortune to be in the rice growing business as she replants shoots for the next harvest two months off.

The 37-year-old, who leases a small plot of land in Samblong, central Thailand, knows the price of rice has rocketed – in some cases nearly doubling in three months – and that she is about to reap the benefit when she sells what her family does not eat.

But the price rises have a downside and spawned a new phenomenon: rice rustling. One night, one of Samniang’s neighbour’s fields was stripped as it was about to be harvested. Local police have now banned harvesting machines from the roads at night while on the northern plains farmers are camping in their fields, shotguns at the ready.

“I’ve never heard of it happening before, that people have stolen rice,” said Lung Choop, 68, who grows rice on his smallholding. “But it’s happening now because rice is so expensive. I guess I’ll have to guard my own distant fields when they’re ready.”

Across Asia the suddenly stratospheric rice prices have prompted countries to ban exports amid fears that shortages could provoke food riots.

While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, partly because of extra demand for biofuels to offset rising oil prices, rice held fairly steady.

However, prices for the staple food of about 2.5 billion Asian people rocketed two months ago. Thai rice, the global benchmark, which was quoted at just below $400 (£200) a tonne in January rose to $760 (£380) last week.

Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they could afford, an insurance policy which has in turn raised prices further.

Late last week, Cambodia banned all exports for two months to ensure “food security”, following the lead of Egypt, a major exporter. Vietnam, which ships 5m tonnes abroad each year, on Friday declared a 20% cut in exports.

India started the ball rolling late last year. With dwindling stocks, the large exporter introduced curbs that effectively banned exports, around 4m tonnes. Pakistan and China also introduced curbs.

Hopes that India would re-enter the market within the next few months were dashed on Thursday when it raised the minimum price for exports from $650 a tonne to $1,000, effectively maintaining the ban, which was escaped only by the foreign currency-earning premium basmati.

The Philippines is potentially among the biggest losers – with 91 million people, it cannot feed itself. After its farmers warned of a looming shortfall Manila’s fast-food outlets offered to serve “half portions” of rice to conserve stocks. The Philippines’ president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has also pleaded with Vietnam to guarantee 1.5m tonnes of rice this year.

While Indonesians took to the streets of the capital, Jakarta, in protest at rising prices even Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, is bracing itself.

The country produces 30m tonnes of rice a year, and aims to export 8.5m tonnes. Last year 9.5m tonnes was sold abroad and more may be exported this year, prompting ministers to consider curbs. “A rice shortage in the local market is very likely,” said Prasert Kosalwit, director general of the Thai government’s rice department.

Rice shortfalls were reported in southern Thailand as traders from the northern rice belt bought up stocks at inflated prices.

With global rice stocks at their lowest level since 1976, analysts expect price rises to continue until the end of next year. Some analysts predict it could hit $1,000 (£500) a tonne before farmers, spurred by the high prices, plant more crops and increase supplies.

Demand outstripped supply by nearly 2m tonnes last year. The predicted shortfall this year is more than 3m tonnes on the 424m tonnes required.

Across Asia, with its vast and growing population, there is little if any extra land to bring into production, and it may take several years for any “supply response” to materialise.

Growing urbanisation over the longer term in countries such as China and India is cited as a key factor in the shortfall, where the increasingly affluent middle classes demand more meat and dairy products, with land turned over to growing feed for livestock.

Rising wealth in Africa has also become a factor. Oil-rich Nigeria is now the largest importer in Africa, a continent which takes the lion’s share of Thai exports, about 40%. Asia soaks up 35%.

Severe weather across Asia has also damaged production. Record icy temperatures were recorded in China and Vietnam, the latter of which also suffered a pest outbreak. Bangladesh endured a devastating cyclone while Australia suffered a prolonged drought.

“It’s been described as a ‘perfect storm’ of factors that have pushed prices to their highest levels since the 1970s,” said Adam Barclay, of the International Rice Research Institute.

The World Food Programme is also alarmed. The extra cost of feeding the 28 million “poorest of the poor” spread across 14 Asian countries will cost $160m a year and it has asked three dozen donor governments for the cash, part of a $500m global appeal to offset rising food prices.

“The real danger with rising rice prices is that the ‘working poor’ will simply be pushed into the category of ‘poor’ who will look to us to feed them,” said Paul Risley, spokesman for WFP Asia. “There are hundreds of millions living at, or just below, the poverty line of $1-a-day, spending 70% of their day-labour wages on food.

“If food costs double they’ve no opportunity to increase their earnings and no alternative but to reduce what they and their families eat.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008