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GM sugar beets

Sweet beginnings

Obesity and its brethren (diabetes, cancer, GERD etc.) are the latest uninvited guests at the 21st century table. And what they’re eating is sugar.

Or is that all they’re eating? I do think we overdo it with sugar of all kinds, and that we owe it to ourselves to avoid any foods (if we can!) that contain added sugar as well as a host of polysyllables, as part of my campaign against the trend of involuntary consumption. And where stealth campaigns have been led by vested interests – check out this eye-opening article about the sugar industry’s attempt to build its market regardless of cost to human health – my hackles get raised and my consumer dollar goes elsewhere.

But I also think that we humans are obsessed with single solutions, while nature is insanely complex in every possible way: as a species we’re a long way from understanding the difference between ruling the world and knowing our place in the ecosystem. Where food is concerned, we’re no less determined. Michael Pollan wrote about it as nutritionism; David Katz reviles it as the ONNAT fallacy.

So while I absolutely agree we should drastically reduce our consumption of it, I don’t think sugar is the only villain. But it’s been very topical in recent years.

Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, explained to a shocked readership back in 2006 the many faces of the number one subsidized crop in the US — in the words of the bookstore clerk who handed my copies across the counter: corn, eh: who knew? Pollan was appalled at what he’d discovered about corn’s new evil incarnation as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is in just about everything these days. Though he recently admitted to being appalled at how his exposé had been turned into marketing leverage by the sugar industry, his book certainly spread the word to a wider public. On food labels, it can be hard to spot HFCS – or many other sugars – as the manufacturers keep adding new names to confuse us, but there are guides out there to help us dodge the bullet.

Last year’s GMO film, Genetic Roulette, presented the theory that genetically modified corn, impregnated with Bt toxin designed to explode the stomachs of caterpillars, could be implicated in this century’s astonishing increase in food allergies. We have been assured that Bt will not affect humans, but it has been found in the human bloodstream (along with glyphosate/Roundup). What is it doing there? Is GM corn contributing to leaky gut in humans? One theory holds that food allergies can be caused by food particles entering the bloodstream through a weakened intestinal wall (“leaky gut”) and the body sees the food substance as a threat and creates antibodies against it, creating a food allergy or intolerance. A good subject for further study. Meanwhile, I think we should all avoid GM products until they’re proven safe: and that includes anything containing HFCS, since it’s likely made from GM corn. Our own table sugar in Western Canada is made from genetically modified sugar beets, so avoid that too.

Then we had evidence that HFCS caused more weight gain than other sweeteners. But then Marion Nestle trashed the study design. Another weird study emerged: the “Australian paradox” claimed that Australian sugar consumption had gone down, while obesity levels had gone up. Then that study was trashed.

Then in 2009 we got Robert Lustig’s seminal lecture, The Bitter Truth About Sugar, where we learned in no uncertain terms that sugar of any kind is toxic, addictive and best friend to cancer, arthritis and all manner of inflammation. You can (and should, if you haven’t joined the 3 million viewers to date) watch it for yourself. But discovery is followed by rebuttal, and in 2011 David Katz took issue with the scapegoating of sugar and only sugar and urged the holistic approach to food. He took issue with Lustig’s definition of fructose as an addictive substance, and pointed to its origins in fruit which is not addictive. But the problem is that the fructose we’re being fed is not in fruit any more: it’s been isolated by the food industry and robbed of its accompanying fibre, enzymes and nutrients.

And, the way simplifications go, simply not eating sugar won’t necessarily protect you from cancer. Last year a study found that cancer will turn to other sources of nourishment if it can’t get sugar (glucose): cancer cells feed quite happily on glutamine, which is not a sugar but an amino acid, and the most common one in our bodies.

And now we start the new year with another study that says there is something different about fructose: an imaging study of human brains reveals its effect on appetite. It doesn’t make you feel full (as glucose does). And if you don’t feel full, you don’t know when to stop eating, and round and rounder you go.

Perhaps, then, it’s not so much an addiction as a treadmill. Stay tuned. The story is far from over…

Year of the Dragon: seeds, storms and Sipsmith gin

For the past three years, the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers have met in January, ahead of the larger “seedy” events in Victoria and elsewhere, in order to swap and share our locally grown seeds. It’s one of my favourite things about this neighbourhood’s delightfully mixed group of gardeners, chicken-lovers and food geeks. There’s no guarantee the seeds will sprout, no fancy packaging and no cost. The seeds mostly come from plants that GTUF members have grown in their own gardens and then saved, so are tested and adapted to our local climate. This gives them a big advantage over seeds purchased from major seed producers, who may be in a completely different growing zone from the consumer. Our seeds also come with an opportunity to tap the knowledge of the producer: could be someone with years of skill, or maybe just a delighted first-timer.

This year 60 of us were joined by affable seed guru Dan Jason, the visionary behind Salt Spring Seeds and the Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada. He’s also the star of Gardens of Destiny, a documentary about the importance of seed saving. Jason had put out a call a year or so ago inviting communities to consider establishing community seed banks, in order to preserve locally-adapted plant varieties (all seeds are under threat from seed patents and GMO contamination by seed multinationals) and to provide a hedge against food insecurity. Some of GTUF’s members ran with the idea and we’re in process of starting our first plantings for a seed bank this year.

After the first half hour of picking and choosing for our gardens, we settled in to hear Jason speak and answer questions on seed saving and community seed banks. He began with a primer on why we should do this: in short, because our food seeds are at risk: multinationals have been ramming through GMO legislation despite the lack of testing for food safety, the potential health dangers from unlabelled GMO ingredients (which are in nearly every processed food you can buy in North America) and cross-contamination of our food supply with GMO. This puts our ability to grow safe and nourishing food at risk.

The good news is that Jason believes we can take matters into our own hands and make a positive difference, if we join with our neighbours to safeguard our seeds and learn to grow food:

“Community seed banks are an extension of something people have done throughout recorded history. With a community seed supply, people become the custodian of their own seeds; this empowers a community to grow what is wanted to eat there.”

He stressed the importance and also the ease of saving your own seeds:

“Plants produce a phenomenal amount of seeds. You mostly get so much back from a single plant it doesn’t take a huge number of people to do this. You maybe need just a couple of dozen in each community. You don’t have to be an expert in all seeds. Just go with the people who know tomatoes or beans or parsley, and make them the mentors for those varieties. They can advise and teach others about details of saving seeds in a particular family.

Jason was particularly encouraging about the prospects for urban farmers who are buffered from cross contamination by GMOs because of their distance from large farms, the only economically-feasible places GMOs can be grown. He spoke in praise of the higher yields that any small scale production can get (large scale industrial producers are handicapped by input costs, including fuel and equipment, and by the risks of monoculture; small growers can diversity to protect against crop losses, and can monitor and deal with potential problems more easily) and observed that growing in neighbourhoods we can share the strengths and weaknesses of our situation: the shady side of a street growing greens and the sunny side growing the heat-loving crops like tomatoes and peppers.

More of the same message seems to be contained in this book, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability which I suspect is not the simple attack on vegetarianism that its title suggests, but more of what its subtitle says. A preview in this video:

And finally, I will be nursing myself through the dragonly blasts of wind and water that have started this year with  sips from a precious bottle of Sipsmith Gin, made in Hammersmith, London which I brought back from the UK.  I’d heard a bit about on a Radio 4 program that talked to artisanal gin makers in London and am looking forward to taste-testing it against my favourite local brand, Victoria Gin.