<p>I agree about shade grown coffee. Growing organic coffee results in just as many acres of rain forest being chopped down as traditional coffee. Shade grown farming protects the canopy where most of the birds live. And the canopy serves as freeways for the other animals too, not just birds.
Honestly I am not a coffee drinker, but I have heard it tastes more smooth too, as it takes longer to mature and is less acidic.</p>
<p>I have been working on the 100 mile diet for the last few months. Pretty easy to do when you live in a great farming area as I do (Monterey/Salinas). Virtually everything you could want is grown or raised within 100 mile of here. Not sure that would be so easy in the Rocky Mountain states or the east coast.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, I make my own ketchup, with my own tomatoes out of the garden. Easy to do and lasts all year long. (and, yes I use regular sugar rather than corn syrup)…</p>
<p>[Mercury</a> in Some High Fructose Corn Syrup?](<a href=“http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-in-high-fructose-corn-syrup]Mercury”>Healthy Eating - How to Eat Clean, Dealing With Barriers to a Healthy Diet)</p>
<p>From WebMD</p>
<p>Mercury and High-Fructose Corn Syrup
The new report comes from researchers including David Wallinga, MD, director of the IATP’s food and health program. They bought 55 products that list high-fructose corn syrup first or second on their list of ingredients, which means high-fructose corn syrup was a leading ingredient in those products.</p>
<p>Wallinga’s team sent samples of those products to a commercial lab, which checked the levels of total mercury in each sample.</p>
<p>“Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31%,” write Wallinga and colleagues.</p>
<p>Lab equipment today can detect inconsequetial levels of any substance. The article said nothing about exceeding current limits nor the actual source in foods having many ingredieints.</p>
<p>Of course, they also said tobacco was safe too, and any other gov subidized industries and the corn industry is one of em.
Did you see King Corn the movie?
[Independent</a> Lens . KING CORN | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/]Independent”>King Corn | Corn in America | Independent Lens | PBS)</p>
<p>Wallinga explains that mercury can be used to make caustic soda, which is one of the products used to make high-fructose corn syrup. </p>
<p>“The problem is that we don’t actually know where our companies are buying their high-fructose corn syrup from … it’s a global industry.”</p>
<p>“For me, the take-home message is really that this is a totally avoidable, unnecessary exposure to mercury,” says Wallinga. “We’ve got a safer, more efficient technology for making these chemicals that are part of the ingredients used to manufacture high-fructose corn syrup.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We buy only organic, fair trade, shade-grown coffee. It’s widely available in most major cities and many college towns, or on-line (if you can’t find it locally, try [Peace</a> Coffee](<a href=“http://www.peacecoffee.com%5DPeace”>http://www.peacecoffee.com) – all their coffees are organic AND fair trade AND shade grown). No point in establishing false trade-offs. There’s no reason shade-grown coffee can’t be grown organically, and if you prefer organic you can easily choose a shade-grown brand.</p>
<p>Lab equipment today can detect inconsequetial levels of any substance. The article said nothing about exceeding current limits nor the actual source in foods having many ingredieints.</p>
<p>This seems obvious* but Chemical industry= pretty powerful.*
Labs are run by people- people make mistakes not to mention some have more selfish agendas than others. Standards of safety also change</p>
<p>Example I live in an 100+ year old house , when I was unbeknownest to me pregnant with my second child ( I didn’t know I was, until four months along), my H insisted upon using a heat gun to remove old paint from wood molding without removing it from the wall.
I had both my kids tested for lead- ( after exhibiting potential symptoms) when the youngest was a few years old.
It came back negative- or at least below allowable standards * at the time*
A few years later, measurable amounts were lowered for acceptable heavy metals in blood, including lead. Was this possibly a factor in their learning difficulties?</p>
<p>The accuracy of the articles cited not withstanding- there are so many chemicals that are known to be very toxic to life that are still being used, even where they have been banned. It is bad enough that corporations are allowed to sell banned products to other countries with lower standards than US, even though we know they cause harm, but corporations are also allowed to continue use of toxic chemicals after banning- * to use existing sources up*</p>
<p>Another personal example, when my older daughter was born, we lived in a lovely neighborhood, about 1/2 mile down the shore from the Gates mansion.( we were renters). It was a rambler, and became quite infested with carpenter ants, which had infiltrated the crawlspace and were coming up into the walls ( I had never gone under the house, not ever having any reason to do so- besides I had been on bedrest for four months, and visiting my daughter everyday in the hospital for two.</p>
<p>I contacted the landlord, horrified that one of these ants bit my daughter on the face after she came home- and she promised me she would take care of it promptly.</p>
<p>It wasn’t so p</p>
<p>“Virtually everything you could want is grown or raised within 100 mile of here. Not sure that would be so easy in the Rocky Mountain states or the east coast.”</p>
<p>Yeah, Alice Waters irritated me when she was advocating the 100-mile lifestyle without acknowledging that there’s only so many people that can live in Berkeley. I guess she thinks people in Chicago should have a diet completely free of citrus…or maybe she’d grant us an orange at Christmas.</p>
<p>Given the moderate prices paid for foods from even distant places, the distribution system is pretty efficient.</p>
<p>* don’t know what happened to my post* 
</p>
<p>I would agree that food can be fairly inexpensive, but I am wondering about the price we are paying for not knowing exactly where our food came from and what happened to it before we got it.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i1CU5YW1IGWQeQQ3hkd7efc5JSEgD99OU0AG2[/url]”>http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i1CU5YW1IGWQeQQ3hkd7efc5JSEgD99OU0AG2</a></p>