S U S T A I N A B L Y

Getting greener by the day

Soda tax and jobs

Can I just say it's exciting to disagree with someone of a different stripe for a change? The someone in question is George Miranda, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 16, which represents 120,000 workers in greater New York. I assume, totally without facts, that he and I might be on the same side of many issues. But not today.

Wish I'd said that

I spend a lot of pixels trying to describe food addiction, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. I just found this on the website of Promis, a treatment center in Britian, and found it clear, direct, and brief:

Ignorance, arrogance, and bluster

I will eventually get tired of skewering the skippies over at the Center for Consumer Freedom, but not just yet. They are the "independent" nonprofit whose funding comes from restaurants and food-products companies.

Their website says they are also funded by thousands of individual consumers, but I don't believe it. I shouldn't say that, not only because it's impolitic, and not only because I have no proof, but because they'll seize on a comment like that, rather than straightforwardly address the very substantive ways in which I contend that they twist facts and truth. My disbelief lies in common sense: Thousands of Americans are donating their money to the people-should-be-able-to-eat-whatever-they-want movement? It that principle in jeopardy? Meanwhile, let's consider the restaurants and food-products people. Does anyone doubt that they would spend their money to advocate for food freedom? They don't need principle to motivate them; their entire future is based on ensuring that nothing ever impedes their sales.

I could go on with all the background bullshit, but let's take a look at their piece of yesterday, March 31, headlined "Waving the white flag on personal responsibility?" which is full of their usual half-baked inanities.

But I want to start with a shout out to my poor addled brothers: I, too, believe in personal responsibility. Even when I was 365 pounds, mired in food addiction, I was completely responsible for what I put in my mouth. Completely.

Follow up to yesterday

My good friend and good reader, Ron, whom I wish would leave comments, rather than replying by e-mail, questioned one of yesterday's posts:

Heard the one about fat being addictive?

No, it's not a joke. But judging from the multiple routes I've heard about Dr. Paul Kenny's study that suggest that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin, l-o-t-s of people have heard about it.

The report I keep seeing — forwarded from San Francisco and Israel, in addition to seeing it in my own surfing — is by health.com, picked up by CNN health.

Speak for the cause of food addiction

My issue, as much as any, is legitimacy for food addiction, based on my personal experience recovering from it. For so many people, that is the place to start, and perhaps even to end: address the physical, emotional, and spiritual deficits that are getting in the way of peace, happiness, and health.

Oh, the whiplash

Yes, readers, you have a right to be confused. The name on the blog is "Sustainably," but pretty much everything I write these days is on food, food policy, obesity, and addiction. As I've written before, there are parallels, but even so, what happened to the sustainability stuff?

And then comes a post like this one, after at least a couple of dozen "off-topic" posts! But I'm just going to live with the dissonance for now, and figure out what to do later. So, anyway...

Fizz and fakery from the soda folks

I checked in this morning with my new pal, research analyst J. Justin Wilson at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington lobbying group supported by restaurants and food companies. He recently had an op-ed published in the Witchita Eagle filled with the half truths one can expect from a paid spokesman for a private commercial interest. Such voices employ the tone and terms of reason while not being reasonable at all.

"Social stigma and isolation"

Another short interview: I ask questions of 10 words or less, and ask respondents to answer with the same brevity. The theme of the current series is people who are working in eating disorder recovery.


MARTY LERNER, 60, Davie, Fla.

Chief executive and clinical director, Milestones in Recovery

Gratuitous commercial plug

Not much news here, but I wanted to mention I heard from my good friends (whom I'm never met) at b.good, the growing burger empire in Greater Boston: Starting in a couple of weeks, their beef, which they already hand-grind each morning, will all come from local family farms.

I have signed, and I hope you'll join. Click here.

 

Recently Published

  • For Paradigm Magazine, the journal of the Illinois Institute of Addiction Recovery, I wrote an essay on the realities of food addiction.

  • Growers moved by sustainability and community building are using other people's land to fuel the locavore movement around Greater Boston. [Boston Globe food section]

  • Across Major League Baseball, teams are getting greener, scoring both public relations points and on the bottom line. See how your team fares. E/The Environmental Magazine.

  • A trio of New England inns offer not ony respite from the road, but a chance to unhook from the grid. Boston Globe travel section.

  • I present the case for food addiction in an op-ed in the Portland Oregonian.

  • The top level of the Lenox is the first entire hotel floor in Boston to get a molecular-level cleanliness treatment slowly spreading throughout the industry.

  • For the op-ed page of the Boston Globe, I wrote an essay on the existence of food addiction. If you think it doesn't exist, you're wrong, but that's OK: You're also in the mainstream, at least for today. But that's changing.

  • The electrical grid has grown but otherwise hasn't changed much since it was put into use early in the 20th century. But that's about to change. (E/The Environmental Magazine)

  • Buying locally is one way to live sustainably. Buying reused and recycled goods is another way. Doing both is twice sustainable. (Boston Home)

  • For the Boston Globe Magazine, I went through at least 1,000 web pages in search of the most notable sites regarding Boston. Sixty-four made the cut.