According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the main cause of methane emissions into the environment is a result of the digestion of ruminant livestock: cows, sheep, etc. Researchers in Northern Australia are working to solve this problem. They may have found a supplement to reduce the burping (and farting) of cows. Their solution is seaweed. You don't hear much of a high demand for seaweed, but that may change according to researchers. The article states that seawees's chemicals work against the bacteria in that makes methane in the stomach, reducing emmisions by 99%. So, by adding a little seaweed into the diets of livestock may help the environment substantially. The article does mention a few other ways researchers have been trying to reduce methane emissions, but nothing has the scientific support as the seaweed.
Seaweed may pave the road to a healthier environment, and healthier livestock, but that would only be the beginning according to the EWG. Methane emission from livestock digestion are only one of the many ways greenhouse gases get into the air. They have a much bigger solution to the whole problem, but adding seaweed to animal feed may be decent start. Full Article Here.
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The article, "McDonaldization of Society", talks a lot about how much of our world today has been McDonaldized, or has made its main goal "efficiency". Very few parts of our society have managed to not become McDonaldized, but some, like in the article I have posted today, are trying to deMcDonaldize their ways of doing things. Two authors that grew up within McDonaldized churches have begun to realize that maybe it is time for a change. Following the "slow-movement" against McDonaldization from the 1980s, they want to also enforce this in the churches.
Falling into the rabbit hole of McDonaldization, churches have had a focus on efficiency and control. Their main goal is to get people in the door fast and effectively. These two authors have proposed a challenge for churches. To focus on the older ways of ministry and to be patient, the main theme of their book. They want the churches to put a better emphasis on quality rather than quantity. They say this will make people feel more part of a community and will improve the community as a whole. It will bring everyone together while increasing their influence in number. The author's churches have actually started to change their ways that reflect the principles of "Slow Church", the name of their movement. A lot of churches have moved to less populated locations and have done various things for their communities to bring people together, rather than residing where their members were located. Churches are more focused on their faith and teaching that faith instead of increasing their member populations, something that is far more important in the long run, according to the authors. You can find the full article here. It’s not untrue that we associate poor families with bad eating. Oddly enough, poor people actually eat the same and sometimes better than those with more income. Just like in the movie, Food Inc., the family of four explained the reason they ate a lot of fast food was because it was cheapest and they couldn’t always afford better meals. This article disproves this common misconception we hold by stating that “no significant difference was seen by poverty status in the average daily percentage of calories consumed from fast food among children and adolescents aged 2 to 19”. Children among the poorest families were found to have eaten the least amount of fast food. It is more of the middle class that are found to eat at these fast and cheap restaurants most often; not the lowest class families. This connection, that really isn’t even one at all, affects the ways in which poorer families are seen and even helped. The article talks about bills that have tried to be passed wanting to limit the items one can purchase using food stamps. Some of the items included fast food, junk food such as cookies and soda, and even seafood and crab, insisted by a state representative of it being unfair for poor people to be able to buy “luxury” foods when he himself needs to budget for things like that. The article goes on to say that this is an unfair thing to be doing to those who have less. It’s not okay to “[punish] against the poor”. There has been large conversation about this issue, whether poor people should take responsibility for being poor, and have their food assistance more regulated. Even though the lower class doesn’t eat as poorly as, say, the middle class. Full article Here. The article I came across has nothing to do with vegans, but maybe it should. Similar to how Tracie McMillan immersed herself into the different types of food work to get a better understanding of how food goes from the ground to the table, Seth Holmes also worked within the subject he was studying. He worked with migrant farmers coming from Mexico into the U.S. to work on berry farms. He learned the harsh ways in which these people work, picking berries for hours on end, seven days a week. He only worked two out of the seven days to squeeze in interviews, but the two days he did work put a huge toll on his body, physically and mentally. When I said this article has nothing to do with being a vegan, it doesn't, but if you take a look at this article, maybe next time you're buying blueberries you'll stop and think about how the farmers were treated during harvesting them.
Full article here. Imagine buying a snack, but instead of opening the plastic wrap around it, you can just bite into the snack and its packaging altogether. Yum, am I right? Probably not, at least not yet. Scientists and researchers think they have found a solution to improving spoilage of food and plastic pollution. Not to mention the fact it will be edible. As of now, there isn't much taste to the packaging, but researchers believe they can include flavorings and even vitamin and nutrient additives. The packaging is made out of a milk protein. Pretty much what industrialized "cheese" is made from. Is it safe? Apparently. But so is every other industrialized food product. There would be good coming from this other than being able to eat the package. Plastic pollution is huge and causes many problems on our planet. I walk by a pond every day outside where I live and there is always a new piece of plastic floating along. Making more packaging that is biodegradable and better for the environment is always an improvement. As for the spoiling of foods, that can be debated upon. Should we be manipulating foods even more so they last longer? Or should we respect the natural biological processes that foods have of spoiling? Too late for that, so it can't be much worse to have our cheese and meat last even longer, right? One other use for this milk protein could be as a spray for coating certain foods. Cereal would last longer in milk without getting soggy, and the spray would reduce the amount of sugar that is currently coated on. This new idea is being prototyped somewhere in Texas and with more tests and improvements you might be seeing edible packaging in the years to come. Click here for full article
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