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Thursday, December 30
Hidden Caffeine in Food and Drink: Do You Know What You Are Consuming?
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 30 Dec 2004 10:29 PM CST
 Hidden Caffeine in Food and Drink: Do You Know What You Are Consuming?
National Geographic
Did you know?
Guarana: Hidden Caffeine
Guarana
is an ingredient found in many sodas, energy drinks, protein bars, and
natural weight-loss aids. It comes from the seeds of a woody vine
native to Brazil named for an Amazonian people, the Guarani, who
process the seeds for use in food, drink, and medicine. What might be a
surprise is that guarana contains concentrations of naturally occurring
caffeine higher than that found in coffee, tea, cacao, and kola.
Guarana sodas are immensely popular in South America, especially
Brazil, and the stimulant is finding its way into more and more energy
drinks. Guarana is sometimes marketed as a natural alternative to
caffeine, but it's caffeine all the same. Look at the labels of some
energy drinks and you'll see both caffeine and guarana, which means
that you're getting caffeine from two sources.
Rethinking Caffeine
Scientists
have developed various theories to explain caffeine's "wake-promoting"
power. The consensus today focuses on the drug's interference with
adenosine, a chemical in the body that acts as a natural sleeping pill.
Caffeine blocks the hypnotic effect of adenosine and keeps us from
falling asleep. Since caffeine has also been shown to enhance mood and
increase alertness in moderate amounts, it's a potent potion for
students and scholars stuck in the lab at three in the morning. Paul
Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician who often worked his equations
around the clock, is known for saying that "a mathematician is a
machine for turning coffee into theorems."
..."Caffeine
helps people try to wrest control away from the human circadian rhythm
that is hardwired in all of us," says Czeisler. But then a shadow
crosses the doctor's sunny face, and his tone changes sharply. "On the
other hand," he says solemnly, "there is a heavy, heavy price that has
been paid for all this extra wakefulness." Without adequate sleep—the
conventional eight hours out of each 24 is about right—the human body
will not function at its best, physically, mentally, or emotionally,
the doctor says. "As a society, we are tremendously sleep deprived."
In fact,
the professor goes on, there is a sort of catch-22 at the heart of the
modern craving for caffeine. "The principal reason that caffeine is
used around the world is to promote wakefulness," Czeisler says. "But
the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep.
Think about that: We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that
is largely the result of using caffeine."
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Nearly Half of U.S. Food Goes To Waste
by
Chad Thompson
on Thu 30 Dec 2004 01:09 PM CST
 Nearly Half of U.S. Food Goes To Waste
Last
week's Agribusiness Examiner #385 had this rather shocking story - something
to consider when we look at the suffering of others, and the constant
insistance in the wake of the South Asian Tsunami that we "do enough".
FOOD PRODUCTIONDAILY.COM: As the US celebrate[d] Thanksgiving, a new
study reveals that almost half the food in the country goes to waste
--- a statistic that
should alarm an industry that is struggling to achieve greater efficiency in order to salvage profits.
The new study, from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson,
indicates that a shocking 40% to 50% of all food ready for harvest
never gets eaten.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied
Research in Anthropology, has spent the last ten years measuring food
loss, including the last eight under a grant from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA). Jones started examining practices in farms and
orchards, before going onto food production, retail, consumption and
waste disposal.
What he found was that not only is edible food discarded that
could feed people who need it, but the rate of loss, even partially
corrected, could save U.S. consumers and manufacturers tens of billions
of dollars each year. Jones says these losses also can be framed in
terms of environmental degradation and national security.
Jones' research evolved from and builds on earlier work done at
the University of Arizona. Archaeologists there began measuring garbage
in the 1970s to see what was being thrown away and discovered that
people were not fully aware of what they were using and discarding.
Those earlier studies evolved into more sophisticated research
using contemporary archaeology and ethnography to understand not only
the path food travels from farms and orchards to landfills, but also
the culture and psychology behind the process.
The fact that the U.S. is a wasteful nation is not necessarily
news, of course. The country has long has been chastised for its wilful
consumption of the world's resources, and many aspects of the country's
culture encapsulate what environmentalists disparagingly refer to as
today's "throw-away society."
Similarly, researchers have known for years about the volumes of
food Americans toss into the trash. But only recently, though, has that
been quantified as a percentage of what is produced, and the UA
statistics are the first tangible proof that Us food production is
frighteningly wasteful.
A certain amount of waste in the food stream cannot be helped of
course. Little can be done, for instance, about weather and crop
deterioration. The apple industry, for instance, loses on average about
12% of its crop on the way to market.
Apples in the U.S. are harvested over a two-month period and then stored and
sold year-round. People in the apple business use aggressive methods to
maintain their crop, with fresh apples hitting the supermarkets on a
regular basis and marginal ones sent to be made into applesauce and
other products.
The goal of apple growers is to provide a nutritious product, all
year long, at fairly constant prices. Jones says they've adopted a
conservative business plan that forgoes the boom-and-bust cycles that
other fruit and vegetable growers aim for and opts instead for a steady
income stream.
But Jones argues that fresh fruit and vegetable growers, in
contrast, often behave like riverboat gamblers. They will take a risk
on the commodity markets if they think it will help them make a
financial killing. A bad bet often means an entire crop is left in the
field to be ploughed under.
Jones' research also shows that by measuring how much food is
actually being brought into households, a clearer picture of that end
of the food stream is beginning to emerge.
On average, households waste 14% of their food purchases. Fifteen
per cent of that includes products still within their expiration date
but never opened. Jones estimates an average family of four currently
tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain
products.
Jones says that consumers better need to understand that many kinds of food
can be refrigerated or frozen and eaten later. Nationwide, he says,
household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious
economic problem.
Cutting food waste would also go a long way toward reducing
serious environmental problems. Jones estimates that reducing food
waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25% through
reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilisers,
pesticides and herbicides.
Consumers and retailers are also of course responsible for
minimising food waste, but it is manufacturers, who are being squeezed
by high raw material prices and low retail costs, that stand to gain
most by establishing greater operational efficiencies to cut out
unnecessary waste.
By demonstrating how wasteful food production in the US currently
is, the UA study suggests not only where savings could be made, but
also how far many companies are from making them. [ November 25, 2004 ]
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