Eat a carrot, hurt the economy? Bad reporting, false choices.

I was stunned this morning to see a headline over an AP article saying, Eat a carrot, hurt the economy? Sometimes. The story summarized a study in Lancet, saying that:

In Britain, experts estimated that fixing the country's bad eating habits might prevent nearly 70,000 people from prematurely dying of diet-related health problems like heart disease and cancer. It would also theoretically save the health system 20 billion pounds ($32 billion) every year.

In Brazil, however, the rates of illnesses linked to a poor diet are not as high as in the U.K. So Brazilians would get relatively few health benefits while their economy might lose millions.

Yet even a quick look at the Lancet series on The Health Benefits of Tackling Climate Change finds another conclusion. The first paragraph says making technical and lifestyle changes to combat global warming would not be "socially uncomfortable and economically painful" as is commonly thought, at least from a public-health point of view. In fact,

If properly chosen, action to combat climate change can, of itself, lead to improvements in health.

The series highlights several areas where climate-inspired changes would make people healthier, by reducing household energy emissions, changing urban land transport, and finding low-carbon ways to generate electricity.

But what about those Brazilian ranchers? They would have a greater health benefit than in the UK:

A 30% fall in the adult consumption of saturated fat from animal sources would reduce heart disease in the population by around 15% in the UK and by 16% in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. If the study had used additional health outcomes such as obesity and diet-related cancers, the health gains might have been even more substantial.

The study lists a "key message" as being:

Achieving a substantial cut in greenhouse-gas emissions will depend on reducing the production of food from livestock and on technological improvements in farming.

The full journal article itself, Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture, does address the benefits of raising animals for meat in certain situations:

For example, ruminant livestock in upland and marginal areas can help to maintain and build the carbon-sequestering properties of soil. Where grazing cattle are reared without use of feed inputs or additional fertiliser, and at low stocking densities, carbon sequestering can outweigh methane and nitrous oxide emissions....Further, in many geographical regions (including the uplands in the UK) no form of food production other than livestock rearing is feasible at present. Livestock rearing also has a key cultural and economic role in many parts of the world and is estimated to create livelihoods for a billion of the world's poor people.

False choices. The AP story presents a false limit on the choices involved. Certainly if people worldwide were suddenly told to quit raising animals for food and offered no other way to feed themselves, misery would ensue. But for the most part, the choices are not limited to "raise meat or starve."

Limited consequences. The AP article doesnt' mention other consequences not slowing global warming by all means possible, including the easy and healthy choice of eating less meat. More carbon emissions creates increased human aggression and ever more environmental refugees, already 20 million strong and growing rapidly, "more than those displaced by war and political repression combined" according to a U.N. study. We also hurt or kill other living beings and environmental systems.

So unless you are a subsistence farmer raising livestock on the thin, rocky pastures, go ahead and eat that carrot. Before you pick a burger over beans for lunch, check out these pictures showing the effects of rising sea levels on everything from the property value of beach houses to the displacement of 13 million people in Bangladesh to the very existence of the tiny island country of Tuvalu.

Timeline: Eden Organic response to bad pasta labels

I've been trying to let this go, but this statement from Marketing Manager Sue Potter kept me up last night:

We began corrective measures immediately upon learning of our mistake in July.

I believe this is true: they planned to correct the boxes on the next print run. Two months later, they were working on the artwork for boxes that would be printed in a few more weeks.

But many corrective measures weren't in place months after they say they knew about the problem and some still aren't, including easy fixes like putting the right information on their website. Here's a time line (all dates 2010):

• Unknown date: Eden Organic Pasta ships a variety of pasta with boxes showing the wrong serving size, making it seem like the pasta contained twice as much protein and other nutrients as it actually does.


• July 13 — the date Eden Organic says they found out about the problem.


• unknown date — a customer complains and accepts coupons as compensation.


• early September — I search the web for a good version of high-protein, organic pasta. I'm delighted to find that some of Eden Organic's pasta has nearly the same protein level as Barilla Plus. I go to my local Whole Foods and buy every variety I can find for testing. EO's Kamut Vegetable Spirals are good enough that I decide to recommend them in my book and rework the shopping lists and cost calculations accordingly.


• September 19 — During a test for cooking time with the vegetable spirals, I notice that there are far more serving than there should be in the box. I fill out the customer support online form describing the problem. My comment begins like this: "Problem with label on your Kamut Vegetable Spirals. Please help -- urgent request from author with book manuscript due very soon who wants to recommend your products." This is a Sunday, but I hope to hear something Monday morning.


• September 20, 2:00 p.m. — I call Eden Organics, since I haven't received a response to my email. The Customer Support representative says that marketing knows about the problem and I'll have to talk with the Marketing Manager, who will call me back.


• September 20, a while later — Sue Potter calls and tells me "everyone makes mistakes" and she's glad customers are willing to work with them. Work how?, I ask. After a fairly heated exchange, she asks what I would consider acceptable. I say, a refund and communications to the customers so no one else has this problem. I recommend she talk with others at EO and let me know what I should tell my readers.


• September 21 — Sue emails me offering a 55-cent coupon for the product of my choice. (I'd paid $3.69 for the pasta with the bad label.) She says the website would be updated within the day. I respond, refusing the coupon, asking again for a refund, and pointing out that the website has incorrect information for several other products. I blog about the problem. At least one reader also contacts Eden Organic to complain.


• September 22 — The website is corrected for Kamut Vegetable Spirals but not for other products in the same line with the same error. I draft a newsletter article about the problem.


• September 22, 3:08 p.m. —Sue emails me with an apology and an offer to send me a refund for $4.00. She says that EO will put stickers on the boxes they have in inventory to show the correct serving sizes. I'm happy to hear about the stickers, so I update the newsletter and this blog.


• September 23, 8:28 a.m. — The EO website is still has the wrong serving sizes for other pasta in the same line.

The persistence of bad information. Many people never read labels, but even those who do probably don't read them often. Once you find a product that works, why would you go back and re-read the fine print? Here's how a problem spreads when bad labels remain on the shelves and on the Internet:

• Other families might do what I did, research pasta looking for the most nutritious choice, find an acceptable one, make it the family choice, and move on to other issues.


• Other writers and menu planners might do what I did, use the Internet to find healthy food to recommend for their readers, clients, and patients. Once the decision and perhaps purchase order is made, why go back to look for label changes? Given how many colleges are offering green and vegetarian meal options, I wonder how many are serving Eden Organic Pasta without realizing there is a problem.


• Other vegetarians might do what we didn't do, go back to eating meat when they felt hungry and weak after days of being short on protein. These people would now be at the meat counter, not in the pasta aisle scrutinizing high-protein pasta labels. Other families might quit having their Meatless Mondays for the same reason.

This is why I felt it was worthwhile pursuing this issue. It's not about getting a $4 refund after two emails and two phone calls. It's about making sure people have the correct information to eat healthy, organic food that is low on the food chain. Doing so is good for your health, the economy, and the environment.

What seems like just a "typo" to Eden Organics seems like a barrier to slowing global warming to me.