Jellyfish Recipes

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Brisbane

...One of Brisbane's most famous chefs, Lien Yeomans, says she's a fan of cooked jellyfish. But she says you have to be very particular about the type you eat.

"There's lots of kinds of different dishes but the two species of jellyfish that are used for eating are the Sua ro - Bizen Karuga (Rhopilema esculenta) and the Sua sen (Aurelia aurita).

"According to the Vietnamese, jellyfish is very good for people with high blood pressure or children who have stomach problems".

Lien says jellyfish aren't eaten fresh. "They usually just use the top part of the jellyfish and just dry them and then they fold them up in a piece of paper and sell it to you. When you get it home, you soak the whole thing in cold water; wash all the salt off and then cut them into little strips; then blend them in boiling water and they curl up and then you choose your favorite Vietnamese salad dish to go with it"!

"It's a very popular dish in spring and summer", adds Lien, "it's delicious and most people would like it if they didn't know what it was"!

Recipes 1 - Vietnamese jellyfish salad: (nom sua or goi sua)
Serves 4
200g salted jellyfish
1 green cucumber
1 large carrot
¼ cup sugar
50ml fish sauce
50ml lemon juice
1tspn finely chopped hot chilli
2tbspn crushed roasted peanuts
2tbspns crushed roasted sesame seed
100g chicken breast
100g pork butt
2 eggs beaten
2tbspns coriander leaves chopped

Method:
1. Wash, soak and rinse jelly fish in cold water. Drain well, roll up into a tight roll and cut into thin strips. Blanched in boiling water for 15seconds (until the jellyfish strips curl up). Leave aside.
2. Wash cucumber, cut into quarters lengthwise, seeded and cut into very thin diagonal strips, sprinkled with ½ sugar. Leave until sugar dissolves then squeeze dry.
3. Peel and shred carrot, sprinkle with the rest of the sugar. Leave until sugar dissolves, then squeeze dry.
4. Cut chicken and pork into thin slices, shallow fry; then cut into thin strips.
5. Grease a non-stick pan; make a thin omelette with beaten eggs. Let cool then roll up and cut into thin strips.
6. Mix prepared jellyfish, cucumber and carrot with fish sauce, lemon juice, chilli, crushed sesame seed and peanut and arrange the mixture on a platter and top with strips of chicken, pork, omelette and coriander leaves.
7. Mix well before serving. Adjust taste to achieve a balance of sweet, sour, salty, spicy and nutty.

Recipes 2 - Marinated jellyfish with green apple dressing
Ingredients (for 4)
400g salted jellyfish
1tbspn chilli oil
1tspn toasted sesame seeds
1tspn sea salt
Juice of 2 green apples
Juice of 1 lime
1tspn sugar
1 red Spanish onion, cut into thin slices.
100g snow peas cut into thin strips diagonally.
Coriander leaves, chopped

Method:
1. Wash, soak and rinse salted jellyfish. Drain well. Mix jellyfish with chilli oil, salt and sesame seed.
2. Mix apple juice, sugar and lime juice.
3. Mix snow peas and red onions; arrange this on a plate and top with jellyfish and coriander. Dress with apple and limejuice.

"Box Jellyfish Invade Oahu Waters" (last week)

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West Oahu is experiencing a box jellyfish invasion. Lifeguards say they normally count about 40 box jellyfish on the western shore, but Wednesday they counted over 500.

The box jellyfish's sting attacks the heart, nervous system and skin cells. Stings are so powerful that victims have been known to go into shock and die of heart failure before they even have the chance to reach the shore.

The pale blue creatures routinely appear eight to 12 days after a full moon. Lifeguards will warn the public if there have been sightings. As of Thursday, Oahu's west and south shores are under a box jellyfish advisory.

First jellyfish of the summer arrive in Javea

From typicallyspanish.com

It's feared that record numbers will arrive on the coasts of Spain this summer

The first jellyfish of the summer have been detected in Javea.

Red cross lifesavers yesterday attended to 62 bathers who had been stung on the Arenal beach, and decided finally to fly the red flag at 4,30pm.

The lifesavers then went out on a boat and managed to catch many more of the jellyfish.

Last year the jellyfish did not arrive until the start of the month of August and there are fears and forecasts that their numbers will be far higher this summer.

See also: Turtles being used to hunt down jellyfish in Málaga

and: Why are we being invaded by jellyfish?

"Researchers Find a Use for Jellyfish, The Many, Many Jellyfish."

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(Of couse some people eat jellyfish, and there have been various other medical uses for them as well... turtles eat them... it's not like they are useless or something. Maybe industry had not found a "use" yet...)

By HENRY FOUNTAIN / from The New York Times

You may not have noticed (then again, if you’re a beachgoer, maybe you have) but there are an awful lot of jellyfish in the world. Aside from invading beaches, the creatures clog seawater intake pipes at power plants and do other kinds of damage to ports and coastal industries.

Jellyfish removal is now big business, but that creates a new problem: what to do with all the jellyfish waste? Researchers in Japan have come up with a potential solution.

Akiko Masuda of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Saitama and colleagues have extracted a previously unknown glycoprotein — a repeating sequence of amino acids with sugars attached — from jellyfish. The compound is a type of mucin, a gelatinous, moisture-retaining substance secreted by animals (it’s a main component of human saliva and mucus, for instance), and it could find uses in cosmetics, as a food additive or in drug manufacturing. Since jellyfish mucin has a simpler structure than some other mucins, it may be usable as a building block for creating custom-tailored mucins with antibiotic or other specific properties.

The researchers, who reported their findings in The Journal of Natural Products, extracted the mucin from several species including the moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita, one of the most abundant in the world) and Nemopilema nomurai, one of the biggest at up to six feet in diameter and 450 pounds. They found that the mucin made up as much as 3 percent of the dry weight of jellyfish. So there is an awful lot of mucin in the world as well.

"Organic farming can feed the world..."

(I don't recall thinking that "conventional" agriculture produced more, myself— the author seems to have thought that...)

From the University of Michigan:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population....

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.

In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, without putting more farmland into production.

The idea to undertake an exhaustive review of existing data about yields and nitrogen availability was fueled in a roundabout way, when Perfecto and Badgley were teaching a class about the global food system and visiting farms in Southern Michigan.

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources...

After comparing yields of organic and non-organic farms, the researchers looked at nitrogen availability. To do so, they multiplied the current farm land area by the average amount of nitrogen available for production crops if so-called "green manures" were planted between growing seasons. Green manures are cover crops which are plowed into the soil to provide natural soil amendments. They found that planting green manures between growing seasons provided enough nitrogen to replace synthetic fertilizers.

Organic farming is important because conventional agriculture—which involves high-yielding plants, mechanized tillage, synthetic fertilizers and biocides—is so detrimental to the environment, Perfecto said. For instance, fertilizer runoff from conventional agriculture is the chief culprit in creating dead zones—low oxygen areas where marine life cannot survive. Proponents of organic farming argue that conventional farming also causes soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity.

For their analysis, researchers defined the term organic as: practices referred to as sustainable or ecological; that utilize non-synthetic nutrient cycling processes; that exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides; and sustain or regenerate the soil quality.

Perfecto said the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is "ridiculous."

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies—all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," she said.

"China Tries To Go Green"

...August in Beijing is dreaded for its brutal heat and humidity, which conspire with high levels of pollution, dust, and sand blowing in from the Gobi Desert. The air gets thicker and hazier, despite the fact that it's also the rainy season.

...(The government in Beijing is) busy battling the problem by instituting new power-saving measures to curb energy consumption in order to reduce pollution and laying the groundwork for, well, near-perfect weather.

...This week, officials at China's Meteorological Administration are launching a practice session firing rockets into the sky to disperse rain clouds. The drill is designed to simulate part of the climate-control process scheduled to take place around this time next year in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Early this month, when Beijing was hit by a muggy mini-heat wave, President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders initiated a creative solution for energy conservation: they swapped their suits and ties for white-collared shirts.

The breezier garb comes in handy now that the State Council (China's cabinet) has ruled air conditioners cannot be set any cooler than 79 degrees Fahrenheit. A team of 22 officials are on hand to check that offices, hotels, malls, and other big buildings in the city are observing the new ruling.

Authorities will also try out a test-run ban to ease the smog. Beginning the first week of August, one third of the capital's 3 million cars will be taken off the streets for several weeks. Officials have not said how they'll proceed, but it's not their first time. Last November, during a major China-Africa leadership summit, the city banned nearly half a million vehicles, helping to pave – ahem – the way for blue skies.

Attempts to tackle pollution aren't limited to the capital city.

Workers have continued to build "The Green Wall," approximately a 400-mile barrier of trees and enclosed grassland stretching across China's northern frontier, to be completed by 2010.

Scientists in the southern city of Guangzhou are trying to create a new species of trees that can "resist" pollution.

In Shenzhen, home to one of China's first great experiments with capitalism, the mayor issued a plea to its affluent citizens to stop buying cars in an effort to help ease growing pollution.

Japan's Earthquake - and Radiation Leaks

By NORIMITSU ONISHI / from The New York Times

TOKYO — A powerful earthquake shook Japan’s northwestern coast on Monday morning, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 900, flattening hundreds of buildings and leaving thousands homeless.

The earthquake also caused a small fire at a nuclear power plant, the world’s largest, which later leaked a small amount of water containing radioactive materials into the Sea of Japan.

The company operating the plant said the radioactivity level posed no danger to the environment, but it delayed acknowledging the leak for several hours.

Television commentators criticized the company’s delay in reporting the leak, which was likely to raise fresh concerns about the safety of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Japan depends greatly on nuclear power, and its nuclear industry has long been afflicted by scandals and cover-ups.

The earthquake was centered off the cost of Niigata, a prefecture that was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2004.

Skyscrapers here in Tokyo, about 130 miles southeast of Niigata, swayed for almost a minute.

Japan’s meteorological agency said the magnitude was 6.8; the United States Geological Survey put it at 6.6.

The tremor occurred at 10:13 a.m. on what was a national holiday here. It caused minor tsunamis and buckled roads and bridges. It also toppled one local train and shut down service on the bullet train for several hours, as well as interrupting the supply of power and water to tens of thousands of homes.

Nuclear reactors in the affected area shut down automatically, but the quake caused a small fire at an electrical transformer at a nuclear plant in Kashiwazaki, a coastal town close to the quake’s epicenter.

Japanese television stations showed flames and black smoke billowing from the nuclear plant, which is operated by Tokyo Electric.

Also: Japan Quake Overturned Drums of Nuclear Waste

On Tuesday, officials said about 100 drums containing low-level nuclear waste fell over at the plant during the quake. They were found a day later, some with their lids open, said Masahide Ichikawa, an official with the local government in Niigata prefecture.

A spokesman at Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, said the company was still trying to determine whether any hazardous material had spilled but said there was no effect outside the plant.

''We have no information at this time that there is any effect on the outside environment,'' TEPCO spokesman Manabu Takeyama said.

And: Japanese nuclear reactor under-designed for earthquake?

...Based mainly on historical precedent, TEPCO designed the reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa assuming that the area would have a maximum ground acceleration of 274 gal. Yesterday, the number 1 reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa experienced an acceleration of 680 gal as the ground slid from east to west; the number 5 reactor accelerated at 442 gal east/west, and the number 6 reactor was hit with 488 gals up/down, as measured on site.

TEPCO is in the middle of re-evaluating the safety of its reactors in line with new guidelines implemented in Japan in September 2006, which call for more stringent safety measures. Surveys of active faults now have to take into account earthquakes going back 130,000 years, for example, compared with the previous standard of 50,000 years. TEPCO plans to finish this re-evaluation by December 2008. Whether this re-evaluation would have affected the maximum 'gal' limit for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa remains unclear....

Free Soil Party

I noticed over at Women’s Space/The Margins that Heart is running for President on the Free Soil Party ticket. So that's cool. I hope she gets lots of publicity.

Feminists are basically marginalized - but the blog world has been great as far as people being able to connect and express a point of view that one doesn't see in the Corporate Media much. Anyone working to bring that point of view some light deserves our support. Good luck, Heart!

"Woman content living in 84-sq. ft. dream home"

By John Sharify / from katu.com

OLYMPIA -- Talk about down-sizing! One woman is living in a house that you really have to see to believe.

"It's 84 square feet, so roughly the size of a parking spot. Actually, smaller than a parking spot," says Dee Williams, who decided it was time to move. She was living in a 1,500-square foot home in Portland, but decided the house wasn't small enough - yes, small enough!

Dee built the tiny cabin herself out of salvaged material. She picked the door out of a dumpster and retrieved the floors from a house fire. Dee's new tiny home sits in her friend's backyard.

"In exchange, I do work on their house," she says.

It takes Dee five steps, sometimes four, to get from one end of her house to the other.

"Two steps through the kitchen and you're in my living room. Two steps into the living room, you bang into the wall," Dee says, laughing.

Two solar panels provide electricity. A tiny propane tank allows Dee to cook in her $10,000 home on wheels. Do her friends think the 44-year-old hazardous waste inspector is crazy?

"My friends definitely thought, well, they had some questions for me!" she says.

The obvious question: Why?

The simple answer:

"A simpler life, time, more money. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have a big utility bill," Dee says.

Her monthly heating bill in the winter is $6, less in the summer.

"I'm able to offer money to my family if they need it, (and to) my friends if they need it," says Dee.

To get to her bedroom, she walks up a step ladder to her loft.

"Every night I look at the stars and watch it rain over and over again. So this is it. Not much to it," says Dee.

And that's the point. Not much to it. Simple. Small. A dream house tinier than a parking spot.

"Right now there's nowhere else I want to be!"

"A New Populism Spurs Democrats on the Economy"

From the New York Times

WASHINGTON — On Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly moving toward a full-throated populist critique of the current economy.

Clearly influenced by some of their most successful candidates in last year’s Congressional elections, Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, calls it “trickle-down economics without the trickle.”

Populism is hardly new in the Democratic Party. Al Gore vowed to fight for “the people versus the powerful” in his presidential campaign seven years ago, and Republicans have long accused the Democrats of practicing “class warfare.”

But the latest populist resurgence is deeply rooted in a view that current economic conditions are difficult and deteriorating for many people, analysts say, and it is now framing debates over tax policy, education, trade, energy and health care. Last week, Senate Democrats held hearings on proposals to raise taxes on some of the highest fliers on Wall Street, the people at the top of private equity and hedge fund firms.

In the House, Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Financial Services Committee, convened party leaders and economists for a searching discussion of “globalization, outsourcing and the American worker — what should government do?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, offered the participants some blunt marching orders: “The American people want to know what we’re doing about their economic security.”...

"Report: Dead zone in Gulf grows"

NEW ORLEANS - (AP) Researchers predict the recurring "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to its largest size in at least 22 years, 8,543 square miles.

The forecast, released today by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is based on a federal estimate of nitrogen from the Mississippi River watershed to the Gulf of Mexico. It discounts the effect large storms or hurricanes might have.

The "dead zone" in the northern Gulf, at the end of the Mississippi River system, is the second-largest area of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, can be caused by pollution from sources including farm fertilizer, soil erosion and discharge from sewage treatment plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Excess nutrients can spur growth of algae, and when the algae die, their decaying takes up oxygen faster than its brought down from the surface. As a result, fish, shrimp and crabs can die or otherwise be adversely affected, the consortium Web site says.

Eugene Turner, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at Louisiana State University who is involved with the report, said it's tough to determine caused byhypoxia or other factors, such as climatic effects. However, "we really don't want to mess with this, to make it worse," he said.

The dead zone usually begins forming in the spring and exists through summer and into the fall. Though the size of the dead zone has shrunk some years, on average, it's steadily grown larger, Turner said.

If the prediction for July stands, it would be the largest dead zone measured since mapping began in 1985, the report says. An assessment is set to be made at summer's end.
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See also: gulfhypoxia.net
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And from Grist: Gulf Dead Zone: Bigger than ever

U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn this spring, a 15 percent-plus jump from last year. If you lumped all that land together -- not too hard to imagine, given that corn ag is highly concentrated in the Midwest -- you'd have a monocropped land mass nearly equal in size to the state of California.

...fishing communities along the Gulf Coast are bracing for disaster.

That's because growing corn in vast monocultured fields requires heavy doses of synthetic nitrogen, but all of that fertilizer doesn't end up in corn plants. A good bit of it washes into streams which feed into the Mississippi River, then to be carried clear down to the Gulf.

In a process known as hypoxia, all of that free nitrogen feeds a giant algae bloom, which ties up oxygen and destroys most life underneath: hence the "Dead Zone."

"Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran"

by Ewen MacAskill Julian Borger / from The Guardian

· Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out
· President 'not prepared to leave conflict unresolved'

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

..."Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.

"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."

Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.

"Logged to death" (Solomon Islands)

By Dev Nadkarni / from the NZherald.co.nz

As it enters its 30th year of independence this month, the Solomon Islands finds itself on the brink of a twin disaster. In those three decades, its economy has overwhelmingly depended on just one rapidly disappearing natural resource - timber - which successive governments have failed to manage well, jeopardising the country's environmental health and economic wealth.

Estimates of how much tree cover is left vary, but the general agreement from most international environment groups is that the archipelago will be rendered almost completely treeless in the next five to six years. Moses Rohana, project manager for Environmental Concerns Action Network of Solomon Islands, fears commercial forestry will end as early as 2010.

The International Monetary Fund warned that at current felling rates, the natural forests will be depleted much sooner than envisaged.

Rick Houenipwela, governor of the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, is clearly worried. "The extraction rate is faster than before. We will get to the other end of the forest much before our earlier estimates," he says.

Despite these loud alarm bells, the country's logging industry is growing at a rate of as much as 12 per cent, according to some estimates. Against a computed sustainable rate of a quarter-million tons a year, more than four times that volume - more than a million tons - was felled last year.

Perversely, that growth rate makes the Solomon Islands the fastest-growing economy in the Pacific Islands region at an impressive 6 per cent. But it is fated to be shortlived, as the main resource propelling it disappears in the next few years.

Over the years, sustainable forestation initiatives have consistently failed to catch up with this indiscriminate rate of felling, and most replanting projects, except for a handful in the country's western province, have been all but abandoned.
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History from APACE (2004)

"Typhoon Man-yi lashes southern Japan, injures dozens"

TOKYO (Reuters) - A strong typhoon lashed southern Japan with high winds and heavy rain on Saturday, injuring dozens and prompting calls for thousands of homes to be evacuated.

Man-yi was headed for Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu after striking the southern islands of Okinawa on Friday, moving northeast at 30 km (19 miles) per hour, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.

Winds were up to 216 km per hour (234 mph) and 500 mm (18 inches) of rain was expected to fall on some parts of Kyushu later in the day.

Thirty-five people had been injured, Kyodo news agency said, and local officials advised more than 5,000 homes to evacuate as they warned of flooding and landslides.

NHK public television said 389 flights to and from Kyushu had been cancelled.

The storm was classified as a category 2 typhoon by UK-based Web site Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com), down from category 4 on Friday.

After moving along the coast of Japan's southeastern island of Shikoku, the typhoon was expected to brush by Tokyo late Sunday and Monday, a national holiday.
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See also:
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer)

Twinkie, Deconstructed: Processing the American Diet

Steve Ettlinger, author of a new book called Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats. But he did nothing about it until his daughter asked him what polysorbate 60 was.

In his book, Ettlinger leads us through every step needed to manufacture a Twinkie. Ettlinger describes mines and mile-long factories and reveals the enormous industrial effort that goes into making a Twinkie, although the book can be generalized to include all processed foods....

(Excerpts from an Interview with Steve Ettlinger->

Ettlinger: Our way of life might say we want something that can be wrapped in plastic and not lose flavor. Our way of life might say we want little servings of foods packaged separately; we don't want to have to cut something. ...

I wanted to go back to the ground. I wanted to see where each ingredient came from the ground because that appeals to me. I like connecting the dots and making it complete from start to finish. ...

For example, the carbon dioxide that is pumped into these sodium carbonates to turn it into sodium bicarbonate comes from a nearby coal mine; that was interesting to me. And I actually talked to the people who dig the whole in the ground and truck the carbon dioxide over to the plant I visited in Green River, Wyo. For me, it's great satisfaction to get to the bottom of things and to see precisely where they come from....

So, I know that certain foods are linked to certain places. What's appealing to me about Twinkie, Deconstructed is that processed foods, by their very definition, are not linked to any place. They're anti-linked, they're meant to be producible everywhere and always the same.

...One of my sources sent me a sample of polysorbate 60, a large quart container of this light brown goo, and I asked, "Can I taste it?" He said, "You wouldn't want to; you won't be able to taste your dinner for a week." That kind of scared me. No one else sent me a sample and said, "Don't taste it."

...I think mankind is driven to always improve on nature or try to control it. In this case the motivation comes from mankind's desire to preserve food, which goes back thousands of years to smoking and salting. And what the food chemists who have created a cake with a long shelf life have done is sort of in the tradition of salting your fish or smoking your pork so it will last...

Well we're part of an international complex -- the Twinkie Industrial Complex. We're eating things made with colors from Chinese petroleum and flavors made from Middle Eastern petroleum and vitamins made from all kinds of things in China and India, and so forth. And it is reassuring to me to eat something made from whole wheat, without all those ingredients. It's reassuring to me to eat locally grown food -- I get a kick out of that...

So, in my mind, I let the reader decide based on the facts that I give them if they want to eat food processed with toxic chemicals made in factories that are a mile long. I don't, but ... this book isn't about me, it's about, "What is this stuff? Where does it come from?" It's the pure unadulterated pleasure of knowing where your food comes from so you can make an informed choice.