Kiera has written about the environment, arts and culture, and more for Columbia Journalism Review, Orion, Audubon, OnEarth, Plenty, and theUtne Reader. She lives in Berkeley and recently planted 30 onions in her backyard.
We taste-tested Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Annie's Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese, Cheez-Its, and a simple, homemade pasta-and-cheese dish. Watch the video to see how they stacked up.
Perhaps you've heard about the recent outcry over the use of yellow dyes 5 and 6 in Kraft's popular Macaroni & Cheese. A couple of food bloggers have petitioned the food giant to ditch the artificial colors, calling them "unnecessary" and "potentially harmful."
The petition has already racked up more than 250,000 signatures. That isn't surprising, since Kraft's cheesy, gooey dish is a childhood staple. (I subsisted on a strict diet of it and Eggo waffles until about age 10.)
So just for fun, let's pretend that the petitioners succeed, and Kraft replaces its artificial dyes with natural coloring—or (gasp!) no coloring at all. Would the stuff then be healthier?
Well, let's consider the ingredients list for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese:
Now compare that to the ingredients list for Kellog's Reduced Fat Cheez-Its:
Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate [vitamin B1], roboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid); soybean and palm oil with TBHQ for freshness, skim milk cheese (skim milk, whey protein, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes, annatto extract for color), salt, containst two percent or less of paprika, yeast, paprika oleoresin for color, soy lecithin
To me, the list looked pretty similar—except for one thing: Instead of yellows 5 and 6, Cheez-Its uses annato extract and paprika for color. Yes, you read that right: Cheez-Its uses natural coloring, while Kraft Macaroni & Cheese uses artificial. Indeed, agreed Jesse Jones-Smith, a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, "Kraft actually has a few extra additives, even compared to Cheez-its." She added, "If you gave a kid two servings of Cheez-its and a glass of milk, you would actually have more sodium in Kraft Mac & Cheese. Otherwise, the two meals are pretty nutritionally equivalent."
Nutritionist Marion Nestle isn't a fan of the stuff in the blue-and-yellow box, either. "Kraft Mac & Cheese is a delivery vehicle for salt and artificial colors and flavors," Nestle wrote in an email. "It is a non-starter on my list because it violates at least three of my semi-facetious rules: never eat anything artificial; never eat anything with more than five ingredients; and never eat anything with an ingredient you can't pronounce."
Right. But that got me wondering: What about Annie's Homegrown, the supposedly healthier brand of packaged mac and cheese? When Jones-Smith compared Annie's and Kraft's nutritional information labels and ingredients lists, she found that their dry pasta and sauce packets weren't too different:*
The real difference, she says, was in what the two manufacturers recommended adding: Kraft suggests making the dish with four tablespoons of margarine and a quarter cup of two-percent milk, while Annie's recommends two tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of lowfat milk. "Margarine often has trans fat—why would they recommend margarine?" wondered Jones-Smith. The result is that when prepared, Kraft packs substantially more calories and fat into a serving than Annie's:
So what's a healthier alternative? I asked Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, for a recommendation. She suggested a simple cheese, pasta, and cauliflower dish. Basically you mash up two cups of boiled cauliflower with a cup of parmesan, a little olive oil, and salt and pepper. Add it to a pound of pasta with a little of the pasta's cooking water, and you have a creamy, cheesy dish that Jones-Smith says is also more nutritious than both boxed versions: It's lower in sodium, fat, and calories, and slightly higher in protein. (It's slightly higher in saturated fat because of the real parmesan.)
It also tastes good. That's not to say that boxed mac and cheese tastes bad; it's hard to go wrong with cheesy, starchy comfort food. But I'm willing to guess that Adler's concoction is a few more steps removed from a bowl of Cheez-Its. Which is, well, comforting in its own way.
You can watch our taste test in the video at the top of this post.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated some of the values for Cheez-Its' nutritional information.
"Even on a good day, I get discouraged thinking about the election of a new pope," laments Maureen Fiedler, a nun and blogger at the progressive Catholic newspaper National Catholic Reporter. "They all look like a Vatican version of the tea party movement."
On Tuesday, three weeks after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on February 28, the world's cardinals will begin their conclave to choose a new pope. The past few decades have been rough ones for a church struggling with the widespread sex abuse scandal and an ever-worsening shortage of clergy. But with 1.16 billion members worldwide, the church is still massive—and it's actually in a perfect position to help save the planet, should it choose to do so.
So will Benedict's successor keep up the ecocrusading? Fiedler is right that on social issues like birth control, gay rights, and celibacy among priests, the papabili—or likely contenders—are predictably conservative. Nevertheless, some have spoken out on climate change, conservation, and other hot topics. Here's my extremely unscientific look at a few of the most environmentally aware:
Cardinal Peter Turkson, Ghana: Turkson is probably the most controversial of all the papal candidates. In 2011, he really riled anti-UN types by calling for a "true world political authority." Then, during a meeting of bishops at the Vatican last year, he showed a ridiculous video warning about the spread of Islam in Europe. Most recently, when asked about the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour:
"African traditional systems kind of protect or have protected its population against this tendency," he said. Because in several communities, in several cultures in Africa, homosexuality or for that matter any affair between two sexes of the same kind are not countenanced in our society."
So, yikes. Nevertheless, in the past few years Turkson has often expressed interest in protecting the planet. Here he is talking about environmental stewardship in 2012:
In this 2010 interview with U.S. Catholic magazine, Turkson talked about how surface mining devastates Ghanaian ecosystems, and why Americans should care. In a 2011 address during a visit to Wasnhington, DC, he emphasized that protecting the environment can help the poor:
…despite the naysayers, economic resources exist that could help wipe the tears from the eyes of those who suffer injustice, who lack the basics of a dignified life, and who are in danger from any deterioration in the climate. The poor do benefit from champions in solidarity who believe that injustice can be reduced, that harmonious relationships can be fostered, that our planetary ecology can be made sustainable, that a world of greater communion is possible.
Cardinal Scola
Cardinal Angelo Scola, Italy: In a recent speech to twentysomethings in Italy, Scola showed hipster cred of sorts by quoting Jack Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy. In his 2005 book The Nuptial Mystery, however, he alienated both feminists and the gay community by arguing, as the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal put it, "that feminism is responsible for homosexuality, because the more women act like men, the more men are likely to want to have sex with other men." Right. For those of you who still care what he has to say about the environment after that doozy, consider his elegantly stated thoughts in a 2010 article called "Protecting Nature or Saving Creation?":
The way for the urgent, collaborative convergence between ecology and theology is to continue the logic of creation with love. This logic is scientific, religious and political all in one. And consequently it is the logic of justice and of the complete development of humanity.
Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, Brazil: Like many of the other candidates, Scherer is extremely conservative on issues you'd expect; for example, he has vociferously opposed abortion and gay marriage, the AP reports. But he's also been a champion of the poor and outspoken on deforestation, writes National Catholic Reporter's John L. Allen Jr.:
Scherer has also embraced the strong environmental concerns of the Brazilian bishops, especially with regard to the Amazon. In 2004, he called on the Brazilian government to strictly control the expansion of farmland in the Amazon, "so that measures are no longer taken after the problem is already there, after the forest is felled and burned."
Cardinal Rodriguez
Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Honduras: If I were electing the pope, Rodríguez would probably get my vote. This guy doesn't just pay lip service to environmental stewardship. As the president of Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Church's social-justice NGO, Rodríguez has spoken out strongly on climate change, calling it a "faith issue." Last year Rodríguez's team advocated for a legally binding treaty that would force world nations to reduce carbon emissions.
Rodríguez is progressive in other ways; he once said that "neoliberal capitalism carries injustice and inequality in its genetic code." He has also advocated immigration reform in the United States. Rodríguez is not without controversy, however. Here's National Catholic Reporter on a particularly low point:
In 2002, Rodriguez set off a tempest in the United States by comparing media criticism of the Catholic Church in light of the sex abuse scandals to persecutions under the Roman emperors Nero and Diocletian, as well as Hitler and Stalin. He suggested that the American media was trying to distract attention from the Israel/Palestinian conflict, hinting that it reflected the influence of the Jewish lobby.
Cardinal Tagle
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Philippines: At 55, Tagle is probably the youngest of the candidates. He's also one of the more progressive (though not as much as Rodríguez). Tagle is known for his work with the poor, and he recently supported an anti-development protest in an eastern coastal region of the Philippines. And then, there's this tidbit from the AP:
Even as a bishop, Tagle did not own a car. He took the bus or "jeepney," the popular working-class minibus, to church and elsewhere.
On the other hand, Tagle has strongly opposed the use of birth control among Catholics, as have almost all of the other candidates. One could argue—and Julia Whitty does a great job of it in thisMother Jones piece—that the best gift that a pope could give to the poor and the environment would be to allow Catholics to use birth control. But even though the Vatican once almost took that route, there's little support for it among today's cardinals. That's too bad, considering the views of the faithful, at least in the United States: A recent New York Times and CBS News poll found that 71 percent of American Catholics would prefer a pope who favors modern birth control.
As a lifelong hypochondriac, I've always been comforted by the Hippocratic oath. What an excellent idea, having doctors pledge to put patients first. So I was less than thrilled to learn that doctors are under increasing pressure—from state legislatures, industry, and other groups—to break that oath by withholding key pieces of information from their patients. "We are very concerned about special interests attempting to influence our practices," says Valerie Arkoosh, president of the National Physicians Alliance (NPA). "We've seen state legislatures overreaching a lot with regard to doctor-patient relationship." Here are five things that—depending on where you live—your doctor could be keeping from you:
Fracking chemicals might be making you sick. Many of the chemicals that oil and gas companies are pumping into the ground (and groundwater) during the hydrofracking process are known carcinogens or neurotoxicants. Pennsylvania recently passed a law requiring companies to disclose the ingredients of proprietary fracking fluids to doctors who can show that a patient may have been exposed, so long as the doc signs a nondisclosure agreement. State officials say the info can be shared with patients, but the law itself contains no such guarantee. "How are you supposed to treat a patient if you can't say why you're treating them?" Arkoosh asks. "I wouldn't know how to do that."
Your fetus has a serious anomaly. Fourteen states forbid parents from suing doctors who withheld information that might have caused them to seek an abortion. Proponents argue that these laws protect the rights of disabled people. As Nancy Barto, a Republican state senator who championed such a law in Arizona, put it on her blog, "Wrongful life/wrongful birth lawsuits implicitly endorse the view that the life of a disabled child is worth less than the life of a healthy child."
The gun in your house may get you shot. Pediatricians routinely ask parents whether they own guns, since research shows that gun owners and their families are almost twice as likely to be murdered and 17 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun. But in Florida, the Firearm Owners' Privacy Act—introduced by conservative legislators and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in 2011—forbids doctors from asking patients whether they own guns. A federal judge has since ruled most of "Docs vs. Glocks" unconstitutional, but Scott aims to appeal the decision. Dr. Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician at the Children's National Medical Center's Child Health Advocacy Institute in Washington, DC, calls the move "absolutely absurd." Since the connection between guns and injury is clear, he says, "as health professionals, it's our job to share that information with patients."
There's a cheaper and safer drug than the one I prescribed for you. It's no secret that pharmaceutical companies push new drugs on doctors. But now they employ data-mining to do so. For a licensing fee, industry marketers can access the American Medical Association's database of physicians, which allows sales reps to track down precisely which drugs a doctor is prescribing. "That's how reps get incentivized—they know what drugs to pitch to what physicians," Arkoosh says. "Those drugs are always the most expensive drugs. And we don't have a full understanding of the safety profile of these drugs. Vioxx is exhibit A." (In 2004, Merck pulled its blockbuster anti-arthritis drug after a study revealed that Vioxx increased patients' risk of heart attack and stroke; the company has paid out billions of dollars to settle the resulting lawsuits. Cheap alternative: ibuprofen.) The good news is that Obamacare requires doctors to disclose in a public database any gift worth more than $10 that they receive from pharma reps. Until next year, when the provision kicks in, the NPA counsels doctors to opt out of the AMA database.
Alternative vaccination schedules can sicken your kid. In his popular 2007 tome, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, pediatrician Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears (son of the best-selling author Dr. William Sears) encourages parents who are skittish about shots to reconsider the vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to decrease the likelihood of a bad reaction. Parents should consider getting "fewer shots at each infant checkup and spreading the shots out over more time," he suggests on AskDrSears.com, the online arm of his family's pediatric advice franchise. Online parent forums are full of posts touting pediatricians amenable to the Sears vaccine schedule. But Dr. Mary Fallat, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' bioethics committee, says doctors have an ethical duty to warn parents that delaying vaccines will leave kids exposed to disease. If enough of them adopt the Sears schedule, it could weaken our herd immunity to catastrophic diseases like whooping cough. The kicker? A 2010 study in Pediatrics showed that adopting an alternative schedule doesn't affect children's long-term outcomes.
Editor's note: Gluten intolerance has been quite the hot topic this week—for more on the subject, see this New York Times piece on the uptick in cases of gluten sensitivity, or this other one, which mentions gluten as a possible trigger for inflammation that worsened a little boy's arthritis.
A few months ago, I visited a well-meaning but ineffective chiropractor. I was seeking relief for pain in my hip, but she seemed much more interested in my mental health.
"Do you ever feel stressed?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah," I said. "Doesn't everyone?"
"Well, I think you should try a gluten-free diet for that," she said. She then pulled out a prescription pad and wrote down the names of a few specialty food manufacturers.
I nodded agreeably, quietly resolving to chuck her note into the nearest recycling bin. As gluten-free breads, pastas, and cereals have proliferated over the past few years, I had begun to suspect that so-called gluten sensitivity was not so much a medical condition as a nutritional fad.
A few days later, though, I rediscovered the note in my purse and out of curiosity decided to Google one of the brands the chiropractor had written down. "Many people are finding that they feel better on a gluten free diet, and not just the people who have Celiac Disease or a Gluten Sensitivity," claims the website of Udi's, a leading manufacturer of gluten-free foods. "People report increased energy levels, as well as a better ability to focus." It goes on: "The biggest reason to go gluten free when not medically required to is simply because there is no downside to doing a gluten free trial, provided proper nutrition is maintained."
Sometimes a bad application of a good idea can make the idea itself seem worse. Examples abound: communism, social Darwinism, the last two seasons of The Office. And then there's Arizona Snowbowl, a ski resort outside Flagstaff that's poised to become the first to make all of its artificial snow from reclaimed sewage water. In wetter regions, resorts often get that water from nearby lakes or rivers, "but we simply don't have those resources," says resort general manager JR Murray. So Snowbowl intends to pump as much as 1.5 million gallons of reclaimed water each day from a source roughly 15 miles away.
Now one could argue—and many have—that Snowbowl never should have been built here in the first place. Perched atop a 9,000-foot extinct volcano in the scenic San Francisco Peaks, it has been plagued by water shortages since its founding 75 years ago. Some seasons there isn't enough snowfall to make the place profitable. "The very notion of committing water to skiing in Arizona is silly," says Taylor McKinnon, who directs public lands campaigns at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Pumping it 15 miles uphill with globe-warming coal electricity is plainly irresponsible." (Roughly one-third of the state's power derives from coal.) What's more, local tribes, who have long opposed the ski resort, say that the artificial snow would further desecrate the peaks they consider sacred land.
Beyond the blustering on Benghazi and the budget sequester, there are many serious issues facing the nation. Climate change, gun violence, immigration reform, drone warfare, human rights—Mother Jones is dedicated to serious investigative reporting on all of these. But we need your help. We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our work is mostly funded by donations. Please donate 5 or 10 bucks to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund today to turbocharge our reporting and amplify our voice. Thanks!
