10 facts about dairy milk

We are hit with so much propaganda about the "need" to drink cow milk that many Americans uncritically believe it. To follow up on an article I once wrote about all the dairy hype ("The Land of Milk and Money"), I offer this more recent article listing "10 Fascinating Facts About Cow Milk." And yes, most of the world's adults are lactose intolerant. It is not even possible for them to drank milk. We milk-drinkers are the unusual ones. Actually, I'm mostly there. I put soy milk on my cereal, but I still do enjoy ice cream. But I don't consume milk products for the calcium. I know that there are other ways to get calcium.

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How can consumers choose without informed consent?

A summary of California's Proposition 37:

"Requires labeling on raw or processed food offered for sale to consumers if made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways. Prohibits labeling or advertising such food as “natural.” Exempts foods that are: certified organic; unintentionally produced with genetically engineered material; made from animals fed or injected with genetically engineered material but not genetically engineered themselves; processed with or containing only small amounts of genetically engineered ingredients; administered for treatment of medical conditions; sold for immediate consumption such as in a restaurant; or alcoholic beverages."
Essentially, it requires a label on foods that are genetically modified.  That's it.  A label indicating whether or not the food one is considering buying has been tampered with at the genetic level.  It doesn't ban or tax such products, it just offers you, the consumer, the chance to know what is in the food you are purchasing. Here is a list of the companies opposed to this Proposition, and the amount they have spent just this week to defeat it:

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Let them eat insects

According to the BBC: The price of meat will skyrocket and we might all be getting much of our protein from eating insects.

"Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers." . . . But insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans, says Gaye. "They will become popular when we get away from the word insects and use something like mini-livestock."

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Many restaurants and bars play special (ear-damaging) music to make you eat and drink too much.

Restaurants and bars play special music to make you eat and drink too much. This claim sounded a bit far-fetched, but then I read this article by the NYT: "Working or Playing Indoors, New Yorkers Face an Unabated Roar." Not only can the loud music and the rhythms make you eat and drink too much; it can and does damage the hearing of the patrons. Much of the music is louder than "a C train hurtling downtown in Manhattan." Normal conversation is 60-65 decibels. Music in many restaurants exceeds 90 decibels, some exceeding 100 decibels. How loud is too loud?

The background noise is too loud, Dr. [Gordon] Hughes said, if a person’s voice has to be raised to be heard by someone three feet away. Signs of too much exposure include not hearing well after the noise stops, a ringing sound and feeling as if the ears are under pressure or blocked. None of these symptoms necessarily mean the damage is permanent, though even if hearing seems restored to normal, damage may have been done. Yet hearing loss from noise typically takes months or even years to develop.
I played in a band when I was younger, and I do regret the damage I've done to my ears (I hear fairly well, but I have a difficult time discriminating a particular conversation in a loud room. Because I'd like to hear other people talk and because I want them to be able to hear me, I work hard to sway the selection process toward a restaurant or bar in which we can hear each other easily. Not only do I want to hear the word, but I want to hear the dynamic range of the other people--it's hard to express oneself fully if one is always shouting. Nonetheless, despite my efforts, and despite the assurance that we're going to a "quiet" place, probably half of these places fail the test quoted above. Further, I find it strange that we have become a country where people need to wear hearing protection in order to safely enjoy many types of concerts.

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