UC Blog
Cost isn't the only deterrent to eating healthy
We Americans like our sweets and fats, plus they're convenient and cheap, conditions that that don't bode well for a society suffering from an obesity crisis, according to UC Cooperative Extension nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor Brenda Roche.
Roche shared these sentiments with millions of Americans on the National Public Radio program Marketplace this week. The story dealt with the higher cost of healthy calories vs. empty calories. Roche said she teaches youth in her nutrition classes that junk food costs can add up too.
"When we talk with youth and we show them when they spend about $2.50-3.50 a day on soda and snack foods after school, how much that adds up to over time -- over a year, five years, 10 years. It's just mind boggling," Roche said.
Other evidence was offered during the Marketplace piece dispelling the notion that people turn to junk food to save money. A study from the University of Buffalo found that if you reduce the cost of healthy food, shoppers use the money they save to buy more chips and cookies.
"Junk food's convenient, it tastes good. We just have a natural predisposition to like this type of food," Roche explained.
Starches, fat and sugar are significantly cheaper than lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Native plants offer myriad rural benefits
The economic benefits of dedicating some farmland to grow native plants are not well understood. But for Winters farmer John Anderson, the question is less one of dollars and more one of sense, according to an article in the Vacaville Reporter.
As part of a Food Systems and Sustainability Symposium held at the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute recently, participants toured Anderson's Hedgerow Farms, where he produces more than 60 native plant species on 400 acres.
Anderson said native plants attract beneficial bugs, reduce erosion, stop invasive weeds, boost crop yields through native bee pollination and add a scenic touch to otherwise barren edges of farmland, writer Geoff Johnson reported.
California's natural ecosystems have been severely impacted by farming and development. UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Rachael Long said the state's biodiversity is likely to suffer even more as the state grows. California is expected to push past 50 million residents by 2032.
"There's tremendous pressure on our natural resources here," Long was quoted in the article. Because of the absence of economic incentives, Anderson said he believes the government should consider installing native plants. A location he pointed out to tour participants is 17,000 miles of irrigation canal banks in California's Central Valley. Adding native hedge rows to just five percent of that could make a dramatic difference, he said.
California brome.
UCCE helps farmers tackle powdery mildew
In desperation, Allan and Mineca Griggs turned over a chunk of their Shasta County vineyard to University of California researchers to find a solution to their severe powdery mildew, according to a story in the Redding Record-Searchlight.
“There are not too many people willing to sacrifice a crop in their vineyard to do a trial. No one wants to jeopardize their income,” Griggs told reporter Laura Christman. “But I wanted to know an answer.”
The Griggs farm, situated at the 2,400-foot elevation and surrounded by forests, is an ideal environment for powdery mildew, but the farm is by no means alone in its struggle with the fungus. Powdery mildew is the No. 1 disease of grapes in California, according to UC Davis plant pathologist Doug Gubler, who has been studying powdery mildew for 27 years.
Gubler headed up a trial on the Griggs' farm comparing four organic treatments for powdery mildew: Kumulus (micronized sulfur), Serenade (bacterial product), JMS Stylet (horticultural oil) and Regalia (knotweed extract). Some vines were left untreated as a control. Micronized sulfur worked the best, Christman reported.
The viticulture farm advisor in Shasta County, Dan Marcum, applied the treatments to the vineyard.
“There might be better ways to make the other products do better,” Marcum said. “There’s more research to be done.”
Downy mildew and powdery mildew on a grape leaf.
UCCE employee shares her personal passion for plants
Los Angeles County's UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener coordinator, Yvonne Savio, has coined a term to describe the her horticultural style: "circus gardening."
"If it's green and it grows after I've put it in, it stays," she told Pasadena Star-News reporter Michelle Mills. "You water it once or twice, and it's on its own. I tell my Master Gardeners that I've killed many more plants than they ever knew existed because I'm always playing with everything."
Mills developed a feature story about Savio, highlighting the fact that the UCCE employee, who is in charge of LA County UCCE's urban garden program, was named the 2010 Horticulturist of the Year by the Southern California Horticulture Society.
The article also ran in the Redlands Daily Facts.
Savio shared her passion for plants at her Pasadena home, which her father designed and built when Savio was 3. A backyard hillside is terraced for vegetable beds, and perennials grow on the down side of each of the terraces as a living mulch. Savio grows vegetables, fruits, annuals and drought-tolerant perennials, cactus plants, succulents, bromeliads, ground covers and roses.
At work, Savio's newest program is the Grow L.A. Victory Gardens Initiative, in which 10 Master Gardeners throughout Los Angeles County have established dozens of locations where beginning gardeners attend classes and receive a space to practice their lessons, the article said. "It isn't just a class session," Savio was quoted. "They form a neighborhood garden circle." Savio said her Horticulturist of the Year award vindicates her work to help more people grow their own food. "We're talking reality, people and food and becoming more involved with our own world," she was quoted.
Yvonne Savio
Nevada profs write the book on California ag
Two University of Nevada, Reno, professors have teamed up to produce a fact-filled, entertaining, practical guide to California agriculture, according to UNR's Nevada News. Geography professor Paul Starrs and art professor Peter Goin coauthored a Field Guide to California Agriculture, published by the University of California Press.
A paperback version of the 504-page book sells for $24.95 from UC Press; Amazon offers it for $16.47.
The authors say California has “the most dramatic modern agricultural landscape in the world."“Believe us: we, too, try to share our love for the eccentricity and possibility of California. All those miles, all those conversations (routinely in Spanish, which we both speak with some fluency), have brought agriculture to life,” Starrs wrote in the preface.
Goin said he was particularly struck by the state's crop diversity.
"California has so many specialty crops partly because of the state’s ethnic diversity and global markets," Goin noted. "Think chili peppers, pomegranates, pistachios, prickly pear and pima cotton. It’s a visual and culinary feast.”
Why did Nevada professors write about California agriculture? Both love to travel and have roots in the state. Goin’s father worked as a seasonal farmworker in lemon groves while studying at UC Berkeley. Starrs is a resident of both Nevada and California and has spent time discovering the back roads of California, the story said.