Articles by Emily Gertz

Junk-food makers seek to make junk food healthier

Not strictly environmental news, but on the closely-related topics of human health and consumer habits:

The City of New York has asked local restaurants to voluntarily hold the fat by switching from extremely heart-unhealthy transfats -- found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil -- to healthier fats like sunflower and olive oils in their dishes.

Our famous black-and-white cookies are apparently impossible to make without transfats, but not all local treats will suffer. After all these years of considering butter and beef fat the anti-Christ, the data on transfats renders (heh) foods prepared in or prepared with animal fats less evil than their hydrogenated counterparts:

Not all of New York's beloved foods will suffer. Balthazar's French fries rely on healthier peanut oil, which is to frying oils what Manolo Blahnik is to shoes. Magnolia Bakery uses butter in its cupcakes. On the rare occasion that the Magnolia bakers make a pie, they use a new version of Crisco without trans fat, said Allysa Torey, the owner.

Even without a lot of cash, food-loving New Yorkers can find ways to avoid trans fats. At Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side, the thick-cut French fries that go so well with a pastrami sandwich are fried, as they always have been, in beef tallow.

Denmark's had a law severely limiting the percentage of trans fats in a food item's total fats since 2003, and Canada's considering a similar rule.

My initial response is to wonder if such measures can catch on in America, where the freedom to choose from various modes of self-destruction is practically a national religion. But ... what if we didn't have to choose? What if there were ways to have our junk food guilt-free?

Inuit fight climate change with human-rights claim against U.S.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier. Photo: ICC. When Sheila Watt-Cloutier was growing up in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit village in far northern Quebec, summer days never got hot enough for shorts and T-shirts. Only […]

John G. Roberts’ enviro record not so green, but also not provoking a lot of protest

John G. Roberts (left) and President Bush. Photo: The White House/Eric Draper. Not only are the far-right Family Research Council and the biz-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce raving about President […]

G8 to warming planet: We’ll change. We promise.

As expected, U.S. obstructionism has led to a G8 communique on global warming that's long on aspirational phrases and short on solid commitments to changing our carbon-loading ways. Among other watered-down statements, the leaders of the developed world promise to:

... raise awareness of climate change and our other multiple challenges, and the means of dealing with them ... work with developing countries on building capacity to help them improve their resilience and integrate adaptation goals into sustainable development strategies ... make available the information which business and consumers need to make better use of energy and reduce emissions ...

Says the Beeb, "President George W. Bush has been reluctant to accept the position of the 'scientific consensus' on global warming."

What's with the scare quotes, BBC? National science academies from 11 nations agree: Global warming is real.

As for President's Bush's "reluctance to accept," let's call that what it is: An expedient political position that rewards his and Dick Cheney's supporters in the energy industry.