"An individual who shops primarily at the supermarket will have less exposure to the indications of the place of origin of all food products and the seasonality of the fresh produce." -- Jennifer Wilkins, et. al. "Consumer perceptions of seasonal and local foods," Ecology of Food and Nutrition, V. 41, 2002, 415-439.
"The average supermarket product is handled 33 times on its way to the shelf, and many food products travel thousands of miles before reaching the store." -- Amy Guptill and Jennifer Wilkins, "Buying into the food system: Trends in food retailing in the US and implications for Local Foods," Agriculture and Human Values, V. 19, 2002, 39-51.
"In America, the average pound of food travels 1,200 miles before it reaches the consumer's home." -- Helen Trobe, "Farmer's Markets: Consuming Local Rural Produce," International Journal of Consumer Studies, 25.3, 2001, 181-192.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Corparoo: Story By a Fan, By Evan Warren
Imagine a music festival that starts off innocent. Imagine a music festival where people can go and enjoy great music, eat and drink inexpensively and learn about better ways to recycle and protect the environment. Well that place used to be the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Remembering past experiences and now having worked at the festival, I have seen first hand at what is described as a “corporate takeover”. Superfly Productions has been promoting Bonnaroo since the beginning of what used to be a jam-band influenced, environmentally-conscience music festival. This innocent adolescent (6th year) of a festival has abruptly turned into a corporate monster. The price rise on everything from water to food to merchandise is astounding. Even thought the festival is making more money, Superfly continues to raise the price on admission. It is as if the company does not care at all about the fans. A company that is already making a ton of money is milking this festival for everything that it is worth. Little of the money is going toward efficiently cleaning up the event. The rest is going toward filling the promoter’s and advertiser’s pockets. There must be something done to take this corporate giant down and get back to the drawing board.
In December 2006, Superfly Productions bought a huge chunk of Sam McAlister’s farm just outside Manchester, TN. “Bonnaroo is the top-grossing event of its kind in the world, capturing the top festival award at the Billboard Touring Awards for three consecutive years. Last year's event grossed $14.7 million.”(Waddell, 2007) Superfly Productions bought the land from Sam McAlister for a measly $8.6 million, considering that the company almost doubled that price in one festival. The company alone has grossed over $50 million since the introduction of the festival in 2002. This has been a huge success for Superfly Productions but there is just one catch for concertgoers, everything has increased in price. What was $2.00 a bottle for water in 2005 is now $4.00 a bottle at 2007’s festival. A bag of ice in 2005 would cost you $1.00; in 2007 a bag of ice cost $3.00. A 12 oz. can of beer went from $4.00 in 2005 to $6.00 in 2007. Even all the merchandise went up an extra $5.00. Actually everything you could possible fathom jumped in price since the festival went corporate last year. There is no reason for the increase in prices. There is just one word to describe what is controlling this festival: Greed.
Waddell, Ray. “Jam Band Scene: A Sticky Situation.”
Billboard 25 June 2005 Vol. 117 Issue 26, p21-21, 1p, 1c
Save Our Environment, By Kristi Trucks
Measure your carbonfootprint here
In the May 2007 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, the self-described green issue sheds light on the impact “America’s 34 million sport-utility vehicles spew up to 30 percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons than passenger cars, and 75 percent more nitrogen oxide.”
My Corolla receives 38 miles per gallon highway and 30 miles per gallon city. Imagine the costs ensued by the owner of a sport-utility vehicle. SUVs are, typically, fuel inefficient. For instance, in Consumer Reports annual review of 2007 cars and trucks, the Dodge Durango Limited received the lowest marks for fuel-efficiency with an overall mpg of 12. As the owner of a Dodge Durango you can expect to be spending more time and money at the gas station. However, it is not simply about saving money. The website www.fueleconomy.gov, a collaborative effort between the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, attempts to answer the following question: “Why is Fuel Economy Important?” According to the website, in addition to saving money, Americans should invest in more fuel-efficient vehicles in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, prevent depletion of nonrenewable resources like petroleum, and help protect the environment.
In the May 2007 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, the self-described green issue sheds light on the impact “America’s 34 million sport-utility vehicles spew up to 30 percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons than passenger cars, and 75 percent more nitrogen oxide.”
My Corolla receives 38 miles per gallon highway and 30 miles per gallon city. Imagine the costs ensued by the owner of a sport-utility vehicle. SUVs are, typically, fuel inefficient. For instance, in Consumer Reports annual review of 2007 cars and trucks, the Dodge Durango Limited received the lowest marks for fuel-efficiency with an overall mpg of 12. As the owner of a Dodge Durango you can expect to be spending more time and money at the gas station. However, it is not simply about saving money. The website www.fueleconomy.gov, a collaborative effort between the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, attempts to answer the following question: “Why is Fuel Economy Important?” According to the website, in addition to saving money, Americans should invest in more fuel-efficient vehicles in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, prevent depletion of nonrenewable resources like petroleum, and help protect the environment.
The Media's Impact on a Woman's Figure, By Jennifer Johns
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services the average dress size of a woman is between a size 11 and 14, compared to the 0 to 2 average dress size for a model or an actress.
“One sociocultural factor that appears to influence body satisfaction in both men and women is the media…it can evoke comparisons between themselves and unrealistic media images of thinness and/or muscularity." -- Lorenzen, Lisa A., Frederick G. Grieve, Adreian Thomas. "Exposure to Muscular Male Models Decreases Men's Body Satisfaction." Sex Roles 51(2004): 743-748.
“Since women entered the workforce, there has been a 60% increase in advertisements in which women are portrayed in purely decorative roles. Increasingly, women’s presence in advertisements has no substantial relation to the product; increasingly, the woman’s role is to be sexy and alluring.” -- MacKay, Natalie, Katherine Covell. "The Impact of women in Advertisements on Attitudes toward women." Sex Roles 36(1997): 573-582.
“Negative body image is often the result of a social comparison process, in which discrepancies are perceived between the cultural ideal of attractiveness, usually characterized in the media by a particular emphasis on thinness, and women’s views of their own bodies. Negative body image is particularly problematic because it is positively correlated with eating disorders.” -- Linder, Katharina. "Images of women in general interest and fashion magazines advertisements from 1955 to 2002." Sex Roles: A Journal of Research October 2004 1-13. July 24 2007
“Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less." -- Kilbourne, J. Beauty and body image in the media. July 30, 2007, from link
Today, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average U.S. woman is about 5’ 4’ inches tall and weighs 152 pounds and has a body mass index of about twenty six (US Dept. of Health). According to U.S.A Today, the average model weighs about 120 pounds and is about 5’11” inches tall, which would make her body mass index below a healthy level. In comparison, fashion models in the 1960’s weighed about 130 pounds and were about 5’7” tall, which made her body mass index at a healthy level. Thus, since the 1960’s the size and shape of models have increasingly gone down, especially in the nineties, which produced the label “heroin chic” for ultra thin models. Ultimately, today’s society consists of women obsessed with being thin and being close to the “ideal” body type.
According to Anne Becker, a Harvard researcher, she “found that eating disorders had been virtually nonexistent prior to the introduction of television, but then they suddenly became common” (Cole & Daniel 41). Research for more than forty years has found a link between the role of media influences and eating problems. The media “promotes eating disorders” by showing only thin women and linking this to beauty, success, and the ideal body (Cole & Daniel 41). In comparison, the media depicts fat women as being lazy, ugly, and a failure. This, without a doubt, causes psychological problems relating to food, exercise, and being thin. For all of history, women are meant to be delicate and beautiful, and in today’s society, the media defines beauty as being thin and if you are not thin, you must find a way to achieve it. A study conducted by Becker in 1995 studied women in Fiji who had not been exposed to television until that year. The people of Fiji had traditionally prized a curvy body with hips, breasts, and a round derriere, which ultimately changed after the introduction of television. After three years, women began dieting, showing concern about their body size, losing weight, and eating disorders became common. This in itself proves the power of the media and the negative effect it has on women.
Cole, E., & Daniel, H.D. (Eds.). (2005). Featuring females: Feminist analyses of
media. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Addiction, American Style: The Overconsumption of Oil, By Louyis Dixon
The reason is that the U.S. economy, like the economies of every other first-world country, is fueled by an outrageous appetite for crude oil. The population of the United States alone consumes more than three-fourths of the world’s oil production on a daily basis. This is a terrifying number if you compare it to the top ten oil consumers of the world. America is the number one consumer, using over fifteen million barrels a day more than the second seated consumer China, who uses only 6,534,000 barrels a day.
For Better or Worse: The Commodified Bride, By Katie Green
In 2005, it was recorded by Howard's Brides,Inc. that the average cost of a wedding for a middle class family was 30,000$.
The Environment Information Agency (EIA) documents on their website that American's produced 4.5 pounds of trash a day in 2006... Now, include the commodities encouraged for one day that creates a $30,000 white wedding.
Wal-Mart, Low Wages, Low Morals, By Casey Chapman
Wal-Mart is..."promoting themselves to low-income people. That's who they lure. They don't lure the rich...they understand the economy of America. They know the haves and the have-nots. They don't put Wal-Mart in the Piedmonts. They don't put Wal-Mart in those high-end parts of the community. They plant themselves in the middle of Poorville." WWW.WatchWalmart.Com
Interestingly, if the Walton family were to give back one percent of their company's $9 billion annual profits, insurance coverage could be provided at no cost to all employees.
Sources:
S. Anderson, "Wal-Mart's pay gap," Institute for Policy Studies 2005
A. Dube & K. Jacobs, "Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart jobs," UC Berkeley Labor Center August 2, 2004.
B. Quinn, How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and the World and What You Can Do About It, 2000.
"(The) effect of this is to create a passive mental attitude. Since there is no way to stop the images, one merely gives over to them. More than this, one has to clear all channels of reception to allow them in more cleanly. Thinking only gets in the way.”
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television.
“Human society is where we’re destined to spend most of our lives. The distinctive company of our own species is right for us.”
McKibben, Bill. The Age Of Missing Information.
The Mass Consumption Epidemic, By Robby Coleman and Logan Schofield
"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about." -- Union of Concerned Scientists, World Scientist Warning Briefing Book, 1992."
Have it Your Way: Disastrous Effects of Fast Food Culture, By Lori Randall
“The percent of adults aged 20 to 74 who are obese based on their body mass index increased from 24 percent in the 1960s to 33 percent in 1988-91. With all the public health campaigns and increasing consumer awareness concerning nutrition, it is then surprising to learn that in 1994, the share of all adults aged 20 and older who are overweight climbed further, to 35 percent." -- Bowman, S., & Vinyard, B.
"The odds of becoming obese over a 15-year period increased by 86% among young white adults . . . visiting fast-food restaurants more than twice per week, compared with those visiting fast-food restaurants less than once per week.” --
Ludwig, D.S., Bowman, S.A., Gortmaker, S.L., Ebbeling, C.B., & Pereira, M.A.
Bummer: An SUV Crisis, By Eric Capiluto
"Advertising commodifies the natural world and attaches material value to non-material goods, treating natural resources as private and ownable, not public and intrinsic." -- Hope, Diane S., "Environment as Consumer Icon in Advertising Fantasy," Enviropop, 2002, 161-174.
"Switiching from driving an average car to a 13 mile per gallon SUV for only one year would waste more energy than if you left your refrigerator door open for 6 years, left your bathroom light burning for 30 years, or left your color television turned on for 28 years." --Sierra Club, Driving Up the Heat: SUV's and Global Warming, link
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
What's in You Water, By Heather Smith
"Some of this marketing is misleading, implying the water comes from pristine sources when it does not. For example, one brand of 'spring water' whose label pictured a lake and mountains, actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards." -- National Research Defense Council, Source link
"America is mad for Fiji water--an emerging victor in the designer water wars. On one level it's refreshing to see people excited about water. But there's a dark side to our new water craze. And in many ways, Fiji Water optimizes the self-destrucive insanity of consumer culture. ... [W]atching people drink Fiji Water out of little, indestructible plastic tanks adorned with colorful images of tropical flowers and waterfalls, something that threatens the very existence of the tropical paradise depicted on the bottle." -- Michael I. Niman, Source link
McDonald's Menunaires, By Cody Pearson
Consultant for the “Super Size Me” film and Nutritionist, Andy Coghlan reported in a 2006 research study that analyzed the fast food consumed at McDonald’s restaurants with the daily consumption of 5 grams or more of Trans Fats raises the risk of heart attack by 25%. Half of the 43 “large”-sized fast food meals, many of which are also found on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu exceeded the five gram level. Trans Fats are thought to pose a hazard by raising the proportion of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, leading to the accumulation of fat in arteries. Trans Fats also increase the risk of arterial inflammation and the development of an irregular heartbeat.
The obvious repercussions from the highly saturated Trans Fat foods served at McDonald’s are formed when liquid vegetable oils go through a chemical process called hydrogenation. Common in a wide variety of food products such as biscuits, chips and doughnuts, the hydrogenated vegetable fat is used by food processors because it is solid at room temperature and has a longer shelf life.
The Harvard School of Public Health released a study that an approximated 30,000 or more premature heart disease deaths are caused each year by Trans Fats from partially hydrogenated oils in food supplies like those used by the McDonald’s Corporation.
Wal-Mart, Always Low Wages
"The average retailer in the United States makes $12.28 per hour. However, Wal-Mart's highest earner makes $9.68 with starting wages being substantially lower." -- Numbers from Anthony Bianco, The Bully of Bentonville, 2006.
Plastic Surgery Barbie, by Heather Horvath
If Barbie were an actual woman, "her narrow hips and concave stomach would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to have regular periods." -- M.G. Lord, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll, 1994.
"The majority of people getting plastic surgery are of the younger generation. People between the ages of 19-34 had nearly 2 million cosmetic procedures, and 24 percent of all procedures. The most popular surgical procedure in this age group was breast augmentation, 54 percent of the breast augmentation total (The Growing Trend of Ethnic Plastic Surgery)... The Food and Drug Administration lists 25 complications, including pain, inflammation, calcification, chest wall deformity, toxic shock syndrome, wrinkling and scarring. Most patients later have to have second or even third operations because the implants do things like move or break open. The surgery can later interfere with mammography, increasing the chance that a tumor will go undetected. And women who have the surgery are less likely to have enough milk breast-feeding. The FDA says about 40 percent of augmentation patients have at least one serious complication within three years." -- Research by Heather Horvath
The Hidden Truth in Disney, By Benjamin Cabeza
"Because Disney is such a large media corporation and their products are so ubiquitous and so widespread globally, Disney's stories and the stories that Disney tells will be the stories that will form and help form a child's imaginary world, all over the world, and that's an incredible amount of power. When you have that kind of power, when you essentially become a dominant storyteller for children globally, we have to begin to ask very serious questions about what stories are being told here. Are these the stories we really want our children to hear?" -- Justin Lewis, Professor in Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.
"Disney films all play a similar refrain: a stylized, naturalized, and Westernized elite hero combats a privileged, antisocial, oversized villain, while cute animal sidekicks and thuggish rebels knock about in front of a shapeless, faceless humanity. Animating hierarchy centers Disney's vision, whatever the era, geography, or species." --Lee Artz, "Monarchs, Monsters, and Multiculturalism," in Rethinking Disney, Ed. Mike Budd and Max H. Kirsch
"In the world of Disney, females not only get into trouble easily, they also lack the ability to save their own lives...however strong or powerful a female character may be, she still needs to be rescued by a male." --Mickey Mouse Monopoly, Written and Produced by Chyng Feng Sun, Directed by Miguel Picker, Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 2002.
Walmart, Always Small Town Crisis, By Ian Driver
"Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas." -- R. Freeman & A. Ticknor, "Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's An Economic Disease," Executive Intelligence Review, 2003.
Nike: Don't Do It, By Cindy Wong and Michael Cash
"Unions are not allowed and whenever one is formed it is destroyed by union busters (most of the time local thugs and criminals) hired by the companies. Since unions can't be formed the workers can't receive better wages, benefits, or rights. Any organization put together by the workers will be immediately destroyed at once. These people are basically slaves, they are scared into staying, they are paid very, very low wages or nothing at all, and are denied basic benefits and worker's rights (in some cases human rights, too). Some factory management rape, abuse, and assault the workers putting a sense of fear in them so they don't leave and stay despite the abuse." -- The Anti Sweat Shop Labor League (source link).
Diamonds, Not Your Best Friend, By Krystal Floyd
"During the last ten days of their contracts, black laborers were kept nude except for leather mitttens padlocked to their hands. Two days before their release all were heavily purged and the stool examined for any diamonds that might have been swallowed earlier... The De Beers Company received a petition from supervisors stating that whites should be exempt from examinations in the nude: It would be a disgraceful and degrading thing if they should be compelled to disrobe in the searching house, and so lowered in the sight of the natives." -- Stefan Kanfer, The Last Empire: DeBeers, Diamonds, and the World, 1993.
Have it Your Way, By Lori Randall
"The prevalance of obesity in children has increased threefold or more during the last 3 decades, raising serious public health concerns. A number of environmental factors undoubtedly have contributed to this epidemic. The present study suggests that fast-food consumption may be one such factor. . . These within-subject comparisons provide a high level of confidence that the associations between fast food and dietary factors are causally related and not the consequence of confounding by unrecognized or incompletely controlled socioeconomic or demographic factors." --
“The odds of becoming obese over a 15-year period increased by 86% among young white adults . . . visiting fast-food restaurants more than twice per week, compared with those visiting fast-food restaurants less than once per week”
Both quotations from Ludwig, D.S., Bowman, S.A., Gortmaker, S.L., Ebbeling, C.B., & Pereira, M.A.
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