Macaroni and Cheese Dinner

Before I get into the bulk of this post I want to make one small complaint. You know that handy little not on the top of a Mac and Cheese box that says something to the effect of, “To open push on the side flap and tear back?” Well, IT NEVER WORKS!!! I usually end up with a sore finger and some choice words. What the heck!? Anyway, on to the issue.

Earlier I said I want to examine what goes into my kids’ food. Well, I’m starting with a unanimous favorite in my home: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Here is a list of the ingredients:

  • Enriched Macaroni Product (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate [iron], thiamin mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid)
  • Cheese Sauce Mix (whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, sodium tripolyphosphate (???), contains less then 2% of citric acid, lactic acid, sodium phosphate, calcium phosphate, milk, yellow 5, yellow 6, enzymes (which ones?), cheese culture)

In reading this, I have a whole bunch of questions:

  1. Where do all these long-named ingredients come from?
  2. I can’t pronounce a third of them, why am I eating the stuff, let alone allowing my kids to eat it?
  3. Why does it matter if something contains less then 2% of citric acid, and 2% of what precisely?

Trying to answer these questions, and others that might come up, I will start from the top: Wheat Flour

Question of the Week–How Can One Person Make a Difference?

I have long been under the impression that there is a systemic problem with the way the US, and the rest of the industrialized world for that matter, treats the environment. Because of the consumer nature of our society, there is a real problem when it comes to conversation.

Take as an example the fact that I don’t drink alcohol, nor have I ever had so much as a drop in my life. However, the average American drinks just over 27 gallons of beer each year. So, for everyone of me, there is someone out there who makes up for what I do.

The same thing goes for recycling, and walking, and driving…etc

What’s the point. If I can’t make a difference because of all those other guys, what can I do that will actually make a difference?

What’s in My Food?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the every increasing size of the ingredient lists on the back of many foods I buy at the supermarket. What is most disturbing to me is the fact that I can’t pronounce nearly three-fourths of them. I don’t know if they are bad or good, but I do know that I don’t know what they are.

I think it is important to know what I’m eating, duh! So I’m going to do some research and post some articles in the near future about various ingredients, especially on the foods that my small children eat.

Question of the Week–What doesn’t have High Fructose Corn Syrup?

I have been scrutinizing my labels on the foods I buy and something keeps on cropping up. For some reason there is a pervasive amount of High Fructose Corn Syrup in a large portion of my food. From my soft drink to my bread…what the heck? I didn’t realize I ate so much corn!

What doesn’t have the stuff in it?

Question of the Week–Is Cheaper Necessarily Better?

I have seen, recently, lots of opponents to alternative energy sources citing that mere money is the first and last reason for us to take a certain action. However, I have also heard many people make the same decision when buying groceries and clothing, or cars…whatever.

My question is one of value. Just because something is cheaper, is it better to go that route (then going a more expensive route)?

I am as guilty of this frame of thinking as the next person, but should it be this way? I know that living in a capitalistic society, low prices are AWESOME, but what are the costs that aren’t initially included in the price tag?

Child Labor
Pollution
Land Degradation
Loss of local jobs
Loss of Diversity
Disconnection
Depletion of Necessary Energy Reserves…

This list can go on and on…What are you going to do about it?

Wilderness, is it Supposed to be Wild?

Reading this book by Deane Curtin, I was stuck by a very interesting notion. Why do we, in the US, have protected wilderness?

When I first thought about this, I really thought about two things:

1. We need to protect the earth, and having national wilderness guarantees that the forest, or whatever park it is, will be protected from man’s effects.

2. There is an aesthetic value in going to the wilderness, a place where man doesn’t live.

Why are these two things the first thoughts that popped into my head? Well, for starters, the first point acknowleges that man can gave a negative effect on the environment. Obviously the government thinks this as well. However, I feel like something is missing. Didn’t there used to be people living where these national parks now exist? In fact, they did. Remember the natives that lived on the American continent before European settlers discovered it? These people were moved off the land (forcibly) to create the ‘wilderness.’

This seems odd to me.

It calls into question my view that man is separate from the wilderness, for, in fact, man has been living in the ‘wilderness’ for thousands of years. It wasn’t wilderness then, not in the sense that we think of it today. Hunter gatherer societies would rove from place to place, living off of the land. They would move from place to place, wherever the earth would yield up her bounty. But there were also fishing communities, and even agrarian societies (the Natives loved to grow corn, or maize). It seems to me that the notion of wilderness is, in and of itself, man-made.

When you really think about it, is man separate from nature, or its effects? Not really, even when you look at the advances of modern science. If you take a Darwinist point of view, where natural selection occurs, then, by that very term (‘natural’) mankind was selected by nature. Man is therefore a product of nature. At the same time, if you take a religious point of view, then you admit that a supreme being created mankind, you must also admit that that being created the rest of the earth. If this supreme being created everything together, then mankind is intrinsically connected with the EVERYTHING on the earth.

Even with all of the amazing things that science has discovered, all of them are derived from the earth. All of our electronics, our plastics, they are all mined from the earth. There is really no separation at all. Everything we synthesize, whether it breaks down in 10 minutes, or 3 million years, still breaks down. It is all part a a natural cycle.

Even if all of these things are false, however, one thing, above all else, shows how mankind is a part of nature, and is not separate in the least. We will all die. Our bodies will go to the earth, and become part of the age-old cycle.

Life in Seattle Without a Car…Day 3

Until you go without something, seeing how dependent you are on that thing is very difficult to see. I never new how much time using a car saves. I had to go to the grocery store with two of my daughters today. So I pulled out the stroller, and stuck them in it. Then I ran to my nearby store. It was only three blocks away, but the amount of effort it took was a lot when you compare the two modes of transportation. Not to mention I didn’t have any air conditioning in my clothes, so I was all sweaty when I arrived at the store…

As U was on the sidewalk, I noticed two things, well I noticed a bunch of things, but two stood out to me enought that I can remember them. First, in the 25 – 30 minutes I was out, I only saw one other person out for a walk, or even walking (other then the people walking to their cars) somewhere. While I was stuggling to count how many people were on the street, I was drawn to the cars, which leads me to my next thing.

At first, I noticed the sheer volume of cars on the street. It was 2 hours before most people would start their lunch break, but there wasn’t a break in traffic. That wasn’t what struck me as being odd. I see lots of cars all the time. What I noticed next was what hit me. I didn’t see any cars with more than one person…no wonder there were so many cars, everyone in the city drives solo.

I know this might seem silly that this realization comes as such a big thing to me, but honestly, everyone should experience it sometime. It gives a little bit of perspective.

As I stood there, looking at the single-passenger cars, I started to do a little math equasion. If each of these cars had two people, then there will be less cars on the road…maybe even half. Now that is fuel efficiency! That’s double what a single passenger gets!

I challenge you to get out and walk a little bit, take in the scenery. You’ll be glad you did.

The Precautionary Principle

There is a possibility that the avian flu could be an international pandemic. If the flu can mutate its form and affect humans, the result is devastating. Thousands of people could become critically ill, and many will die from it. However, it hasn’t happened, nor is it guaranteed to occur.

A nuclear war seems to be on the brink. No one has fired a missile, but the US and Russia are pointing thousands of them at each other. Nuclear winter is possible, if not inevitable… No one can be sure when, or even if a single missile will be fired.

There is a random phenomenon over Antarctica. For some reason, there is a gaping hole in the atmosphere. The hole is spreading, and there is a chance that human life on earth could be unsustainable. But it’s not set in stone.

In each of these scenarios, all of them real at some point in time, there was not a guarantee that there would be negative effects. However, simply because the negative effects were possible, action was deemed necessary and action was undertaken. For the avian flu, the CDC is setting up numerous ways to cope with the possibility of a mass pandemic. The government is in on this, as well as industry and public support. With the Cold War, granted there were missiles pointed in every direction imaginable, all measures to prevent a total nuclear war were taken, and the war was averted. When it came to the hole in the ozone, everyone, including industry itself, took measures to reduce CHC emissions and prevent a massive hole in the ozone from becoming even more massive.

Governments and people alike were living by what is called the precautionary principle: If there is a high risk, then action should be done. You don’t need to know if it is scientifically possible.

Scientific fact wasn’t stable in any of these cases, but it wasn’t needed. Simply the severity of the possible outcomes was enough to prompt action…

Take a look at this scenario:

Human CO2 emissions are at an all-time high. Industry, and the world economy is living on the notion of constant economic growth. The fuel for this is oil. The greenhouse gases are becoming ever-more present in the atmosphere, and the possibility of both global warming and climate change are staggering in their depth. The sky is the limit.

You would think that with these kinds of implications, the precautionary principle would be the rule…but it hasn’t. Why not? What is there to lose???

Life in Seattle Without a Car…Day 2

When I made the decision to go without a car, even though the decision was practically forced upon me, I didn’t think much about what was going to go into it…more then using the bus and our double stroller…

Today was my lesson in no-car-ology was in planning. That’s right, now that my car is not an option, my wife and I actually had to figure out how we were going to be getting around, especially when we need to go to say, a doctor’s appointment…

We immediately went to google maps, to see what we could see. Our immediate thought was to see exactly how far it would be to get to the bus. We looked, and saw that the total mileage was to be 3.2 miles. Not to shabby when you go one way. We decided to try our luck with walking, virtual walking that is. Thanks to google’s street view, we were able to see the road and the grade. Just our luck, after walking every one of those 3.2 miles, we came to the conclusion that nothing was too steep for a woman with two kids on a stroller, and one strapped to her front. Then, I did one final calculation. Remember, she would have to walk down and back. Therefore, the total distance was to be 6.4 miles. That’s practically 6.5!!!! Alas, this might be troublesome…

So, we went to trying to find a bus route…not such a bad way to go…anyway, after plotting a decent route via Metro, we came to the conclusion that it would take around 1/2 the time that walking would. Hmmmmmm, decisions, decisions. We had yet to make the decision, but at least we were able to plan for a contingency: rain. If it rains, we will definitely take the bus.

The lesson learned today? Planning takes time, but it is a necessary drag to not taking a car around. Today’s planning time was 45 minutes. I suppose you could add that to the bus ride, appointment, and getting the kids ready…all in all, it would take roughly 3.5 hours to do the whole thing…not to bad, compared to the 19th century…at least we have a bus.

Peak Oil? Who gives?

I can’t do this topic justice, but here is how I feel about it, regardless…

First of all, what is peak oil? Roughly defined, it is when the extraction of oil in a given place (i.e. the USA, Saudi Arabia, the WORLD) hits it’s peak. In other words, the rate at which oil is extracted hits it’s high point, and begins to decline, never reaching that high point again. This concept is based on a bell curve (thus the use of the word peak).

One thing you have to remember is that oil is a finite resource, at least in our time frame…once it is gone, it’s gone. I suppose we will be able to use the oil, after it’s gone, in like 2 million years or so…Anyway, after the extraction rate peaks, then it will continue to go down. What is scary here is the fact that the world is so extremely dependent on the stuff. It runs everything. You can’t get around that.

So, this might just be some cock and bull story, but here is where the picture becomes a little clearer. Something else that follows a bell curve, and correlates with peak oil, is something called peak discovery. The discovery rate is basically the rate at which new oil reserves are discovered. The rate of oil discovery also follows a bell curve, and generally happens anywhere from 20 to 40 years prior to the extraction rate’s peak. How do we know this? In the 50′s a man by the name of M. King Hubbert was able to predict when the US’s oil extraction would peak. He was thought of as outrageous, but hey, he got it right.

The interesting thing to note is that the discovery rate of oil has been declining in the world for some time now. However, we just don’t know when oil extraction will peak. There are many possibilities. Some say it has already happened, some say it will happen within the next 10 years, and some say the next 4o, or even 100 years…however, what you need to keep in mind is that even if oil peaks in 100 years, there needs to be some worry. What will be used for energy when that time comes? What are we going to do for our grandchildren?

These are the kinds of questions that people need to be asking themselves, and our politicians as well.

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