“Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture’s impact on our environment.”

In the 1970′s US company Monsanto developed and introduced a new herbicide to the market, Roundup. Its main active ingredient is glyphosate, which is highly toxic and has been shown to have a number of serious effects on humans and animals, ranging from endocrine disruption to genetic damage. Oral ingestion of even small quantities has proven lethal in humans. Despite scientific evidence of Roundup’s toxicity, Monsanto has made various false claims regarding the product’s safety for humans and the environment, and the company has even paid scientists and labs to manufacture false “studies” and test results. Roundup has been the number one selling herbicide in the world for the past 30 years.

Since the mid-90′s Monsanto has been producing genetically modified (GM) seed crops that are resistant to Roundup, called Roundup Ready. Roundup Ready crops now include soybeans, corn, canola, and sugar beet. Wheat and alfalfa are still under development. About 95% of all soybeans and 80% of all corn grown in the US is based on GM seed patented by Monsanto.

In an effort to expand its already far reaching dominance of the genetically modified and hybrid seed market, Monsanto has resorted to bullying its clients (= farmers) into signing highly questionable licensing contracts. The Associated Press (AP) obtained these confidential agreements, which are now under investigation by the US Justice Department for possible antitrust violations. Among other things, these contracts prohibit farmers from mixing Monsanto GM seed with GM seed from other manufacturers.

While it seems to be of little relevance to the end consumer whether his cornflakes come from GM seeds produced by Monsanto or DuPont, a de facto elimination of any competition leaves Monsanto in charge of controlling the price for those cornflakes. In 2008, Monsanto raised prices of some of its corn seeds by 25%, with another 7% increase planned for this year. The company raised prices for its soybean seeds in 2008 by 28%, and may raise them again this year by another 6%.

Never tired of defending its spotless reputation, Monsanto posted a response to the AP’s investigation on the company blog, explaining the principles of the free market and why it is impossible for Monsanto to do anything but good. Which makes non-organic cornflakes taste that much staler, unless you eat them with a generous amount of Posilac pumped up milk, but that’s another story…

Lesson #1
Never rush around and try to cook a meal in a hurry.

Lesson #2
Never start cooking without mise en place, or putting everything in place. Chop, prep, weigh, measure, take out the pots and pans – do it before you even think about turning on the stove. It’s the holy grail of cooking and those who mess with it will feel its wrath.

Lesson #3
Never cut corners by substituting fresh vegetables with frozen ones. If it’s seasonally unavailable, don’t go for the frozen stuff. It’s vastly inferior to fresh, in-season produce.

Which leaves us with one very happy dog, who got to indulge in a lunch gone wrong…

More glossy advertisement vs. cold reality can be seen here.

That was 14 years ago, and the situation has hardly improved even though it only takes a few very simple steps to significantly reduce the amount of food that gets wasted every day.

Wooohooo! Beginning next month, produce shopping in the EU will be elevated to a whole new level of excitement. After years of very strict and very detailed regulations on the size and shape of basically every fruit and vegetable sold in stores across Euroland, the sexy curved cuke is about to descend upon the Old World.

According to EU regulations, cucumbers and a host of other fruits and vegetables are categorized into different classes, with only the top class making it onto the shelves of stores. This, so the good people in Brussels reasoned, would ensure a truly egalitarian shopping experience from London to Warsaw. It also had the truly unegalitarian effect of keeping prices for produce high, and of wasting mountains of non-conforming produce outcasts. In a seemingly triumphant victory of man over nature, the size, shape, color, weight, height, width, diameter, and general appearance of such innocents as cauliflower, plums, celery, leeks, spinach, and cucumbers were decisively defined as either up to standard or swine food. Bureaucratic as this may sound, one can only speculate about the dreamy minds that penned down these regulations. For example, one finds that “Extra Class” cucumbers must be “well developed” and “well shaped and practically straight”, with the “maximum height of the arch: 10mm per 10cm of lenght of the cucumber”.

All those romantic notions were put to an end last November when the EU’s Agricultural Commissioner, who goes by the lush name of Mariann Fischer Boel decided it was time to deregulate. Twenty-six (26!) fruits and vegetables are now de facto liberated and free to grow however crooked, curvy, wobbly, knotty, and natural they want. Some poor specimen were not so lucky though. Take the shy pear for example. The Official Journal of the European Union Commission Regulation (EC) No 86/2004 of January 15, 2004 classifies pears into three categories, with size being determined by “maximum diameter of the equatorial section”. Of course, nobody had the heart to get rid of such poetic classifications. The fact that Extra Class pears “must not be gritty”, however, was clearly the work of an underpaid assistant lacking both imagination and charisma…

Bye bye, straight cucumber!

According to the latest genetic research, all humans were originally lactose intolerant. The enzyme that’s responsible for the digestion of lactose ceases to be produced in the human body once children are weened off of breast feeding. Based on genetic studies of bone fragments, neolithic Europeans were all lactose intolerant. This, however, changed drastically with the advent of agriculture some 7,000 years ago. Humans discovered that the milk of their cows was a great source of nutrition that provided much needed sustenance. Initially, drinking cow milk caused my neolithic ancestors great pains, badly bloated stomachs, and a lot of diarrhea.

Enter evolution and the process of positive selection. The ability to drink milk provided humans with an enormous nutritional advantage. Scientists have figured out that humans who became lactose tolerant were able to raise ten times the amount of offspring than those who weren’t. Guess who lived to see their great-grand children romp around in the dark forests of central Europe? You guessed right. The lactose tolerant bunch. A single mutation had turned the neolithic farmers of Europe into dairy lovers. The mutation responsible for lactose tolerance is located on the gene that produces the lactose “digesting” enzyme. As a consequence of this mutation, this enzyme continues to be produced even when humans are no longer breast fed. Similar mutations on the same gene were found among herding tribes in Eastern Africa, where they developed about 6,800 years ago.

The rapid spread of lactose tolerance among neolithic Europeans and the close association with the development of prehistoric agriculture is one of the most convincing examples of the power of evolution. In only 400 generations, a lactose intolerant population in central and northern Europe became almost 100% lactose tolerant. The chart below illustrates the worldwide distribution of lactose intolerance today. Not surprisingly, areas with predominantly European ancestry have the lowest rates of lactose intolerance.