ANR BLOGS

Trans fat trouble

The health advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest issued a press release May 16 announcing that it filed a lawsuit against Burger King because it is the only leading restaurant chain that had not yet committed to eliminating trans fats from its menu. Indeed, media have been reporting on trans fat bans on a regular basis. This week, Applebees, Hooters and Starbucks all announced their plans to remove trans fat from the foods they serve, according to various media outlets. New York City and Philadelphia were the first cities to pass laws getting trans fat out of restaurants. According to media reports, the Montgomery County Council in Maryland on May 15 unanimously passed a resolution to ban the use of trans fats in most foods served in local restaurants and in prepared food at supermarkets.

These developments would be applauded by Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr and Anna Jones, editors of Nutrition Perspectives, a bimonthly newsletter from the UC Davis Department of Nutrition. (Back issues are online. Current issues are only available to subscribers in hard copy form.) An article in the March/April 2007 edition provides objective, scientific information about trans fatty acids and their effect on cardiovascular disease risk. In short, the article says people should not eat trans fat and they should not substitute unhealthy saturated fat for the trans fat in their diets.

The article, written by Jones, debunks common concerns about trans fatty acid bans. "The main concerns are that a decrease in (trans fatty acids) content in foods would result in a rise in saturated fat consumption as well as a rise in cost and decrease in palatability and availability of foods," Jones wrote in the article. "However, Denmark banned the use of oils containing more than 2 percent trans fatty acids in 2004 and has not experienced those problems."

UC ANR role in Bakersfield murder trial

A jury in Bakersfield this week found Vincent Brothers guilty of five counts of murder. The story was widely covered in the media. Here is the report from KGET Channel 17. You might be wondering what this has to do with UC Agricuture and Natural Resources news. One of the 137 witnesses in the landmark trial was UC Davis entomology professor Lynn Kimsey.

Brothers claimed he couldn't have killed his family in Bakersfield on July 4, 2003, because he was in Ohio at the time and traveled in a rental car to Missouri the day before the prosecution said the murders took place. Kimsey examined the rental car's radiator, air filter and other bug samples collected by detectives. According to an April 2, 2007, article in the Bakersfield Californian by Jessica Logan, Kimsey found a species of paper wasp, two species of true bugs and a very distinctiive grasshopper leg. "The bugs would be splattered on Brothers car if he drove one of two major routes between Ohio and California," Kimsey testified, according to the Bakersfield Californian. No butterflies were found on the car, which indicated the car may not have been driven during the day. "The car did have several moth pieces on it and other night flying bugs, indicating it was likely driven at night," the newspaper reported Kimsey testified.

At the trial, Kimsey said she based her testimony on the 7 million bug collection at the R.M. Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, on consultation with other experts and published papers.

Stockton Record reports on cherry season

I love living in the San Joaquin Valley. Almost year-round you can find roadside stands with "farm-fresh" fruit in season. A recent edition of the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center's newsletter quoted a writer, Thomas Semon, who believes the phrase "farm fresh" is helping debase the English language.

"The phrase 'farm fresh' is part of a long-established practice of advertisers to use language that doesn't really mean what it says but sounds good, and is not specific enough to be clearly deceptive," he says.

In my usage of the term in the first sentence, however, 'farm fresh' does really mean what it says. In the valley, the first roadside stands to open in the spring sell the best strawberries you have ever tasted. Close on strawberries' heels come cherries. According to a story in the Stockton Record yesterday, a strong supply of the delicious tree fruit will be soon be sold on valley roadsides.

Reporter Reed Fujii went to UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Joe Grant for his opinion on the 2007 cherry crop. "My sense of what's going on around here is it depends on what orchard you're in," he was quoted in the article. There's orchards with light to very-light crops, and then there's orchards with very heavy crops." Grant continued: "I'd be concerned in some of the heavier orchards being able to size well. Some of these overset orchards, if they are small, it could be tough sledding as far as sales goes."

Speaking of healthful fruit, the annual Blueberry Field Day and Tasting is held at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center today.

San Diego boaters help preserve bay water quality

This Saturday morning, San Diego boaters are invited to attend a UC Cooperative Extension Boat Hull Invasive Species & Water Quality Seminar. Experts will share information about research on boat hull coatings that don't pollute the bay.

According to a "UC Delivers" article by Leigh Taylor Johnson of the Sea Grant Extension Program, boat owners have been using copper paints to control "hull fouling," the buildup of aquatic plants and animals on the hull. Hull fouling slows sailboats and increases powerboat fuel consumption. Copper leached from the paints into the bay, however, harms marine life. Johnson and program representative Jaime Gonzalez conducted field trials of nontoxic epoxy and ceramic expoxy hull coatings. The alternative coatings are a little more expensive, but the cost is offset by the nontoxic coatings' longer service life.

More details will be presented at the seminar, to take place from 9 to 10 a.m. at the Sunroad Resort Marina, 955 Harbor Island Drive in San Diego. For more information, contact Gonzalez at jagonzalez@ucdavis.edu.

Organic farmer Tom Willey comments on UC’s new organic research land

Madera County organic farmer Tom Willey weighed in yesterday with what I would describe as cautious appreciation for the decision to dedicate 10 acres at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center to research on organic farming. Willey’s comments were published in the weekly newsletter “What’s Growin’ On,” which accompanies the boxes of fruit and vegetables that go to his farm’s “subscribers.”

Willey runs a Community Supported Agriculture program, in which consumers pay a monthly subscription to receive a weekly box of fruit and vegetables. Here's a link to his farm's Web site. Since I am a subscriber, I receive the delicious fresh produce and the newsletter, which includes an update on the farm, recipes featuring fruit and vegetables in the box, and Willey’s column, “Farther Afield.” In the column, he notes that, when asked to comment about the land newly designated for organic research, he has “weighed my words judiciously.” “California’s organic farmers . . . over the last quarter century have conducted their own ‘bootstrap’ research and shared it through a uniquely open network. A conundrum with organic research is that wholistic growing systems mimic the multilayered complexity of natural ecologies and resist simple analysis for single input response so common to conventional agriculture’s inquiry.” He closes: “Let’s hope that tenacious local farm advisor Richard Molinar’s little plot at Kearney is a harbinger of an equally rapid growth of the too long dormant partnership between California’s great university and the burgeoning organic community.”

Click here for more on Kearney's organic research plot.

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