Good Reading (factory farmed turkeys, plastics in the kitchen and pizza is a vegetable?)

As we head into Thanksgiving next week, you have to check out this post from the PEW research center about turkeys in factory farms.  I learned this charming fact:

"The 271 million turkeys that the National Turkey Federation projects will be sold this year will produce more than 229 million cubic feet of litter (PDF) (a mixture of bedding and manure)—enough to fill 9,200 semitrailers. Much of this litter is applied to nearby land, contributing to the growing problem of excessive nutrients in agricultural runoff."

If that doesn't have you looking for a local, organic, humanely raised turkey (or having a vegetarian feast) maybe this will:

"Thousands of birds are concentrated in cramped production facilities, typically providing just 2.5 to 3.5 square feet of space per turkey (PDF)."

Would you like to live in an elevator?

Here is a great post about how and why to avoid plastics in the kitchen.  There are some new ideas here and more evidence why we should avoid plastics, even BPA free ones.  

For more tips about how to avoid BPA please nab your copy of my new ebook, Eat Non-Toxic: a manual for busy parents. 

And how about this news:  Pizza is now a vegetable.  No matter if that pizza is loaded with cheese and white bread, and slicked with grease, it is now a vegetable!  Forget the 12.5 million kids that are obese in our country.  No one will tell us what to feed our kids in schools! Oh wait, they already do-- by sending us BPA laden canned foods, GMO and factory farmed beef, and white bread products.  Sweet!

Schools can and are making a difference. At my local public school they are doing everything they can in making their food healthy and local. But they can't do it alone!  Not when leaders are defying common sense and good nutrition like they did this week.

That's what I am reading this week.  How about you?