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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
EATING DISORDERLY
Can one bring an eating disorder back into order?
Guest: Dr. Elizabeth Esalen from the Lotus Collaborative
Some of us eat to live. Others live to eat. The rest of us have lost control of eating.
In fact, many people throughout the developed world now suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some point in their life. These disorders include anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, or disorders not otherwise specified.
Contrary to what some might think, eating disorders are not a fad or lifestyle choice; they are real, complex, and devastating conditions that have very serious consequences for one’s health and productivity. The extent to which we in the developed world suffer from eating disorders leads us to ask…
To what extent do we suffer from eating disorders? Who is most vulnerable to losing control of their eating? How does one address a loved who has an eating disorder? How are eating disorders treated? And…
Can one bring an eating disorder back into order?
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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
SOIL, FOOD AND FAITH
Can soil and food feed one’s faith?
Guest: Fred Bahnson, Director of the Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative, and author of Soil and Sacrament
Some time ago, I hosted an edition of the Food Chain Radio program from a federal prison. The focus of the program was the prison’s horticulture program.
In touring the grounds with the warden, I quickly recognized the prison contained two kinds of inmates: those who were not part of the horticulture program and those who were.
Those who were not, pumped iron on the prison’s cement-covered exercise yard; those who were, built up the prison’s soil and tended its plants.
The difference was in the eyes.
Those who were not part of the horticulture program had the look of one totally present, as one would be if one were a predator or prey in nature. Eat or be eaten.
Those who were part of the horticulture program had the look of someone not totally there, as if they had somehow tunneled out and escaped. Free!
In his Soil and Sacrament, Fred Bahnson claims, “Our yearning for real food is inextricably bound up in our spiritual desire to be fed.” This thought leads us to ask…
Why does religious literature often feature the metaphor of farm and garden?
How does the growth of soil inspire the growth of faith?
Can soil, food, and faith strengthen community?
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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
OUR OCEAN TRASH PATCHES
Is it possible to throw plastic away?
Guest: Captain Charles Moore, Founder The Algalita Marine Research Institute
Out there in the oceans of the world, where the life we will eat sometime in the future, there exists giant patches of decomposing plastic trash that some say are as big as North America.
In truth, these patches, or gyres, are hard to see by the casual observer, or by satellites high in the sky, as they are made up of tiny nodules of decomposing plastic polymers that grow in size as one approaches the center of the spiraling vortex of currents.
Nevertheless, the patches are huge, and cover large extents of the ocean, and so lead us to ask…
To what extent does plastic trash inhabit our oceans?
Does this decomposing plastic trash find its way back into our food chain?
What can be done, if anything, to ameliorate the damage of our plastic trash?
And finally…
Is it possible to throw trash away?
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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
OUR OCEAN TRASH PATCHES
Is it possible to throw plastic away?
Guest: Captain Charles Moore, Founder The Algalita Marine Research Institute
Out there in the oceans of the world, where the life we will eat sometime in the future, there exists giant patches of decomposing plastic trash that some say are as big as North America.
In truth, these patches, or gyres, are hard to see by the casual observer, or by satellites high in the sky, as they are made up of tiny nodules of decomposing plastic polymers that grow in size as one approaches the center of the spiraling vortex of currents.
Nevertheless, the patches are huge, and cover large extents of the ocean, and so lead us to ask…
To what extent does plastic trash inhabit our oceans?
Does this decomposing plastic trash find its way back into our food chain?
What can be done, if anything, to ameliorate the damage of our plastic trash?
And finally…
Is it possible to throw trash away?
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Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
THE CROP DUSTER: FLYING IT ON
Are crop dusters now essential to agriculture?
Guest: Bert Atwood, Author of My Father Was A Crop Duster
To succeed in the business of farming, one must, to the extent possible, exert control over elements in the environment, among them nutrients and pests.
When one’s farm is small, as farms tended to be in the distant past, control was exerted by the tools in hand, or by the implements pulled by animals. As technology progressed, and brought forth new control measures like mechanized tractors and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farms grew larger, and larger, and larger still.
Today, some farms are measured in the tens of thousands of acres. To exert control to such an extent, many farmers rely on the services of crop dusters. For a few dollars per acre, these magnificent men, and women, in their flying machines can stop a threatening fungus, kill noxious weeds, and fertilize a hungry crop.
In fact, crop dusters now make it possible for one farmer to grow a thousand acres of crops without weeds or pests. This realization leads us to ask…
Are crop dusters now essential to agriculture?
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SLAYING NATURAL FOOD
Should any food be labeled “Natural”?
Guest: Stephen Gardner, Director of Litigation Center for Science in the Public Interest
It is a food selling $40 billion a year, but there is really nothing to it but a suggestion that really doesn’t mean anything.
Many of the foods once labeled “Natural,” like Goldfish crackers, Naked juice, and Silk soy drink, are now shedding the label to become, well, whatever is next!
Consider, for example, Silk, a milk-like drink made from soy. Silk was introduced as an “organic” food in 1996 by the White Wave Company at the Natural Foods Expo in Anaheim. In 2002, White Wave was purchased by Dean Foods, and by 2005 the organic drink was generating sales in of $350 million a year. In 2009, Dean switched from organic soybeans to conventional beans, and Organic Silk became Natural Silk. Today, Silk is just Silk.
One of the reasons food and drink companies, like Dean, PepsiCo, and Campbell Soup are shedding the natural label is to avoid an avalanche of lawsuits alleging false advertising. According to a recent post in the Wall Street Journal, at least 100 lawsuits have been filed in the past two years “challenging the natural claims of Unilever PLC’s Ben & Jerry’s, Kellog Co.’s Kashi, Beam Inc.’s Skinnygirl alcohol drinks and dozens of other brands.
These lawsuits lead us to ask…
Why do consumers spend $40 billion a year on the suggestion of natural?
Why are some trying to litigate foods labeled natural off the shelf?
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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
COOKING, EATING AND LIVING WITH ABANDON
Can we learn to cook, eat and live with abandon?
Guest: Karen Karbo, Author Julia Child’s Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life
At six foot three inches, she was taller than most men, not particularly pretty, and had a voice like a cartoon character.
Some say she was a Che Guevera armed with a pound of butter and a sauce pan. Maybe so, but she was not born the revolutionary of cooking, eating, and living.
In fact, she was born into a straight-laced family, a formica kitchen, tv dinners, and oh yes, golf at the country club. Then war came and everything changed for Julia. She found herself working intelligence in Asia, where she met a man named Paul Childs. After the war, she became Julia Childs, and the Childs ran off to Paris, where Paul took her to dine at a favorite restaurant. That meal marked the birth of Julia Childs, revolutionary.
Julia Childs’ kitchen revolution leads us to ask…
Can we, too, learn how to cook, eat, and live with abandon?
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Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
STALIN’S GREAT HOLODOMOR
Why did Stalin’s government starve millions to death?
Guest: Professor Walter Zaryckyj Center for U.S. – Ukrainian Relations
In 1932 and 1933, approximately seven million Ukranians and Cossacks were starved to death in the breadbasket of the Soviet Union by the central government of Joseph Stalin.
Some scholars suggest the Holodomor (“extermination by hunger”) was caused by bad weather and poor planning – an accident of policy. It was, after all, the time in which Stalin’s central government was going about the countryside eliminating private property. The resulting economic chaos, the argument goes, was enough to cause the killings.
Other scholars suggest the Holodomor was an act of willful intent. This argument points to the recalcitrance of the Ukranian people toward Stalin’s central government. The Holodomor, their argument goes, was a deliberate act of genocide.
Stalin’s starving to death of tens of millions of Ukrainians and Cossacks leads us to ask…
How did Stalin’s government take control of the Ukraine’s food?
How did that government manage to withhold the food from the people who grew the food?
