Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
by Marion Nestle
Feb
24
2022
Corn for ethanol? Not a good idea.
We grow lots of corn in the U.S.
- Most of it is genetically modified, meaning that the potentially carcinogenic herbicide, glyphosate, gets dumped all over it in enormous quanitities
- 40% of the corn is used to produce ethanol; this provides an incentive to grow corn in places where water is limited or land is poor.
One argument in favor of using corn for ethanol is that using ethanol for fuel reduces climate change.
But recent reports suggest that using corn for ethanol is a net loss for the planet.
- Jessica Fu writes in The Counter. Corn ethanol was supposed to help the climate. Instead, its production may have made things worse: Environmental advocates have long warned that incentivizing ethanol production could be a net loss for the planet. A new study suggests that those fears may be well-founded. Read more
- Virginia Gewin in Civil Eats writes: How Corn Ethanol for Biofuel Fed Climate Change
- C. Jones points out: Iowa is addicted to cornography, but we would all be better off using electric power.
- Dr. Jonathan Foley concludes: It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System: As a crop, corn is highly productive, flexible and successful. As a system, the same is not true.
Comment: Growing corn for ethanol is makes no sense at all. It’s bad for land and water. Dumping glyphosate also makes no sense. We need an agricultural policy that promotes agroecology/regenerative agriculture/sustainability, and that promotes the health of everyone involved in production and consumption.
