Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women. (Men too.) You don’t even want to know your chances of dying from it, at least not before we tell you about this advice from a Dallas cardiologist about how you can switch to healthier foods to thwart heart disease and greatly reduce your risk of heart attacks.
Tags: · almonds, avocado, blueberries, cardiologist, cocoa, dark chocolate, epicatechins, flavonoids, heart disease, heart health, kale, leading killer, organic, pesticides, Salmon, Shyla High, Why Most Women Die, women and heart attacks
The GE-salmon known variously as the AquAdvantage salmon and a “frankenfish” has been swimming toward approval, but is currently bogged in a heated public comment period. Learn more about the tug-and-pull over what would be the first genetically modified animal to debut on your plate.
Tags: · AquAdvantage, Atlantic salmon, FDA, frankenfish, GE foods, genetic modification, GMOs, labeling, Pacific salmon, safety, Salmon
Like eel? Tuna? Catfish?
You might want to find some new entrees. The Food and Water Watch’s Smart Seafood Guide for 2010, published this week, warns that many such popular fish and seafood are simply not safe to eat, while others are not ethical to eat. Some marine food sources present both health and ethical problems.
Tags: · Atlantic cod, Atlantic flatfish, bluefin tuna, catfish, caviar, Chilean seabass, Dirty Dozen for Seafood, Fish, flunder, Food and Water Watch Seafood Guide, King Crab, Mercury, mercury in seafood, Orange Rougy, PCBs, Salmon, Seabass, seafood, shark, shrimp, sole halibut, sturgeon, sustainable seafood, tuna, what seafood to eat
By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now
The polar bear is the high-profile furry face of animals threatened by climate change. With Arctic ice melting at an increasing pace — due to global warming — its range and habitat is disappearing.
But, the polar bear is just one of many species endangered by a warming planet and other man-made threats. Beyond the tragedy of extinction of a species is the chain reaction in the environment triggered by that loss.
That complex web of life that connects people, animals, plants and places is known as biodiversity, and is the underpinning of life on Earth. To raise awareness of its importance to the planet, the United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.
Courtesy IUCN / Staghorn coral thicket © L De Vantier
Tags: · Arctic fox, beluga whale, biodiversity, Climate Change, clownfish, emperor penguins, Endangered animals, endangered species, global warming, International Union for Conservation of Nature, International Year of Biodiversity, IUCN, koalas, leatherback turtle, Polar Bear, quiver tree, Red List, ringed seal, Salmon, staghorn coral
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
California is experiencing its third year of drought, statewide, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which provides two-thirds of California’s fresh drinking water and yields a giant portion of the nation’s food supply, is dangerously
close to running dry, water conservationists and water managers say.
Yesterday, federal officials vowed to act. During a visit to Sacramento, Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes met with local interests – farmers, fisheries, families and municipalities in the region – and promised to free up more water for their use. He acknowledged that the drought has compounded a pre-existing condition – the overall degradation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Tags: · asparagus, California agriculture, corn, crops, Drought, hay, pears, Sacramento, Sacramento Bee, Sacramento municipal water, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Salmon, tomatoes, Water Conservation, water restrictions, water scarcity, water shortage
By Christopher Peake
Green Right Now
For most of us, walking into a seafood store is an exercise in both ignorance and hope: we’re ignorant of what’s available but we hope we’ll leave with what we want. We all know fish come in two colors: the red one is salmon and the rest are white. Here is what you should know about fish:
Mark Musatto, a partner at Airline Seafood in Houston, says “There are three basic feelings I want every customer to have when they enter my store: they should feel, smell and see the freshness; notice that fresh fish has a sheen and a translucency and I want customers to tell me how they plan to cook their fish and we can talk about the best fish for that method.
Tags: · American Albacore Fishing Association, bass, endangered fish, Environmental Defense Fund, lobster, local dining, Mercury, Monterey Bay Aquarium, oysters, pollock, Salmon, seafood, Seawatch, shrimp, Sushi, tuna
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
What happens when salmon are given a pesticide cocktail? The effects are more pronounced than the damage done from exposure a single pesticide, according to a study just released in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal.
In an attempt to replicate real world pesticide exposures, researchers from NOAA Fisheries Service and Washington State University studied how coho salmon reacted to five common pesticides, individually and in various combinations.
They found that almost every pesticide pairing resulted in a chemical reaction in the brain – a reduction of an enzyme – that could lead to the accumulation of acetylcholine, which would affect the salmon’s behavior, jeopardizing its ability to survive.
Tags: · carbaryl, carbofuran, chlorpyrifos, diaznon, Environmental Health Perspectives, malathion, NOAA, pesticides, Salmon, Washington State University
By Heather Ishimaru
KGO – San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal regulators say a record-low number of chinook salmon returned to California’s Central Valley last year, indicating that severe restrictions on salmon fishing are again likely this year.
Federal regulators estimate slightly more than 66,000 Chinook or King salmon adults came back to the Sacramento River basin to spawn last year — the lowest estimate on record.
Tags: · Heather Ishimaru, kgo, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, Sacramento River, Salmon, San Francisco, San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association
Concerns about the loss of aquatic life, including the fish we eat, have rippled around the globe this year with warnings about the loss of certain salmon, the Alaskan Pollock (the fish sticks fish) and of course sharks, which are becoming endangered at alarming rates.
This week brought more hard to digest news, that mountains of edible saltwater fish are being ground up and turned into animal food, for farm-raised fish, chickens and pigs, no less. This raises so many questions that it would be difficult to list them all here. But let’s start with: “What happens when pigs and chickens are forcibly turned into carnivores?” and “We’re catching fish to feed fish, really?”
Tags: · Alaskan Pollock, BarbaraKesslerBlog, Environmental Defense, forage fish, Pew Charitable Trust, Salmon, sustainable fishing
Republican presidential candidate Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has historically opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), has been uncharacteristically taciturn on the energy issue since he chose pro-drilling Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Green-energy proponents find that ominous.
“With the pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate, John McCain’s race towards the Bush administration’s failed energy policy is now complete,” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said recently. “… No one is closer to the the oil industry than Governor Palin. Along with her support for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts, she also opposes a windfall profit tax on the richest oil companies. …She has been dismissive of alternative energy, saying ‘alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop’, when in reality it is the oil she would like to drill that would take a decade to bring to market.”
The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) in Washington, D.C., showed a similar concern over Palin.
“Obviously, it’s a very disappointing pick for a (presidential) candidate who at one time made a priority of getting us away from the old fossil fuels of the past – Sen. McCain,” said David Sandretti, the League’s communications director.
Tags: · Alaska, Carbon Emissions, Clean Air, global warming, Governor Sarah Palin, League of Conservation Voters, Oil Companies, Pebble Mine, Polar Bears, Project Vote Smart, Proposition 4, Riverkeeper. Alaska Clean Water Act, Salmon, Senator Barack Obama, Senator Joe Biden, Senator John McCain, Sierra Club
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift