Most of the food Americans eat, 73 percent of the U.S. food supply, is ultra-processed.

Ultra-processed food is making people sick. Diet-related disease now kills more people globally than smoking. The connection to type-2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer is well established.

We need states to act because there are no federal regulations for school meals concerning the level of processing or the use of synthetic additives like colors, flavors, sweeteners, or emulsifiers.

Ultra-processed foods are laced with obesogens, chemicals that alter metabolism and train the body to store fat. Add in high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, refined carbs, and synthetic emulsifiers that spike blood sugar, promote inflammation, and short-circuit the hormones that tell you when you’re full, and you have a product engineered to keep you eating.

When cigarette smoking was restricted in the 1980s and 90s, Big Tobacco bought up food companies and applied the same logic they’d used on smokers: the faster a substance delivers its hit, the more addictive it becomes. They built that into the food. Lunchables wasn’t an accident. Scientists now classify ultra-processed food as addictive as cigarettes.

Legislators in 28 states are working to define or restrict ultra-processed food or ingredients, with Arizona and California passing the first laws targeting school meals.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban Ultra-Processed Food From Schools!

Wondering what’s actually in the food you’re eating? Check the Environmental Working Group’s Food Scores.

European Society of Cardiology:

“Food preservatives are used in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods. People who ate the largest amounts of non-antioxidant preservatives had a 29% higher risk of hypertension and a 16% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke and angina.

Researchers found eight preservatives specifically linked to high blood pressure: potassium sorbate, potassium metabisulphite, sodium nitrite, ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate, sodium erythorbate, citric acid, and rosemary extracts. Ascorbic acid was also specifically linked to cardiovascular disease.

These findings support existing recommendations to favor non-processed and minimally processed foods, and avoid unnecessary additives.”

Read the full press release from the European Society of Cardiology for details on the study and what researchers are calling for next.

Yale University, ScienceDaily.com:

“A major long-term Yale study just upended one of the most common assumptions about getting older. Tracking more than 11,000 Americans over twelve years, researchers found that 45% of adults over 65 showed measurable improvements in cognitive function, physical ability, or both. Nearly a third got sharper mentally, and more than a quarter actually got stronger and faster on their feet.

What made the difference? How people thought about ageing. Older adults who held more positive beliefs about getting older were significantly more likely to show real gains, even after accounting for chronic illness, depression and education level.

The lead researcher was direct about it: improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common. When scientists average everyone together, the declines of some mask the gains of many. Look at people individually, and the story changes completely.”

Your beliefs about aging may be shaping your biology more than you think.

Real Organic Podcast, Episode #281:

“Sewage sludge is promoted as a beneficial fertilizer. It’s not only microplastics, but that’s an example of one of the unwanted contaminants in the sewage stream. There is no safe level in terms of ingesting PFAS. The level that is safe is zero, and that is well established.

There’s no need to put sewage sludge on land. That is not a farming practice. That is a disposal practice. Because we know that sewage sludge is always contaminated with PFAS and thousands of other chemicals that are dangerous to human health and to healthy ecosystems, we need to reduce the volumes of sludge and we need to contain it.

As much as 70 million acres of land in the United States may have received sewage sludge. Farming is the backbone of this country. Let’s not try to break it with yet another trouble.”

Listen to civil engineer and public health advocate, Laura Orlando, lay out the full case for why spreading sewage sludge on American farmland needs to stop.

Check out the world of real organic farming with the Real Organic Podcast, hosted by Linly Dixon and Dave Chapman and recently named one of the “best climate podcasts” by Earth.org. New episodes every Tuesday!

TAKE ACTION: To protect human health and the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency should fully re-evaluate the multiple problematic ingredients found in the sewage sludge that is now being spread on farmland. Tell the EPA to Ban Toxic Sludge from Farmland!

Seventy-three percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, engineered for addiction by the same companies that hooked people on cigarettes. Sewage sludge laced with PFAS is being spread on American farmland and called fertilizer. The USDA just cancelled 49 out of 50 grants that were keeping the next generation of organic farmers on the land.

Democratic and Republican politicians in Washington seem to have lost their minds. They don’t care about ordinary people, working families, rural communities, or the food supply their constituents depend on. Their primary concern is pleasing their wealthy donors and winning the next election by demonizing their opponents.

That’s why this work falls to all of us.

We are ready to work with any and all people of good faith, no matter how they’ve voted or not voted in the past. We don’t have to agree on every issue to work together. But we have to build something new. We need to regenerate, not just our food and farming systems, but our politics, our health, and our relationship with the land itself.

We need your help more than ever to carry out this momentous task.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Have you considered making a gift from your IRA?

THE REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE SOLUTION

In 2019, Ronnie Cummins, co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association and Regeneration International, met two brothers in Mexico doing something extraordinary with a plant most farmers throw away. Jose and Gilberto Flores had figured out how to use agave leaves, the part everyone discards, to rebuild degraded soil, reduce erosion, feed livestock and capture water. When Cummins witnessed their agave agroforestry system firsthand, he knew he was watching something that needed to be in a book.

That encounter is where this book begins. Written with Regeneration International Director, Prof. Dr. André Leu and scientist and activist Vandana Shiva, The Regenerative Agriculture Solution follows the Flores brothers and others, including Allan Savory and John Liu, who have launched landscape-scale restoration projects around the world. The science behind their work keeps pointing to the same conclusion: we have been thinking about the climate crisis the wrong way.

“Read this book to understand why you should care about regenerative agriculture.” — Allan Savory, president, Savory Institute; chairman, Africa Centre for Holistic Management

Order your copy at Chelsea Green Publishing.

Donate $50 to OCA and get a free copy.

The Endocrine Society:

“Exposure to a common plastic chemical before and shortly after birth may have lasting effects on behavior. Researchers found that male rats exposed early in life to DEHP — a plasticizer used in products ranging from medical devices to toys — showed significantly higher anxiety as adults, even long after exposure had ended.

This research demonstrates that one of the most widely used plasticizers worldwide is capable of causing behavioral changes when the subject is exposed during the prenatal and immediate postnatal developmental stages, with this effect lasting over time.

Although the study was conducted in rodents, the findings suggest that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals before and shortly after birth could potentially cause long lasting behavioral changes in humans as well.”

The effects lasted into adulthood — but researchers have found something that could reverse them. Read more at ScienceDaily.com

by Stacey Leasca, Food & Wine:

“Your kitchen sponge may be generating pollution every time you wash dishes, according to a new study — but the same scientists say there’s an even bigger environmental concern at play. 

Researchers from Germany’s University of Bonn found that kitchen sponges may be releasing a statistically significant amount of microplastics, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Advances in February. The article reveals that kitchen sponges that contain plastic material gradually wear down during everyday use, releasing microplastics into wastewater.

While researchers found that sponges released a meaningful amount of microplastics, they concluded that the volume of water used while washing dishes by hand had an even bigger impact on the environment.”

Researchers recommend three ways to reduce the environmental impact of dishwashing.

Lily Hawkins, Policy Director, Organic Farmers Association:

“While no announcements have yet been made about relocation for the National Organic Program, the agency has lost one-third of its staff this year alone, threatening organic integrity and the agency’s ability to prevent fraud.

The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, a $300 million initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, is under threat. These grants were designed to provide essential training and financial support for underrepresented producers — including Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and veteran farmers.

In a shocking move this March, the USDA cancelled 49 of the 50 active contracts. This follows a year of administrative delays under the guise of ‘DEI reviews.’ With the vast majority of farmland owned by non-farming landlords and prices continuing to skyrocket, these grants were a lifeline for the next generation of producers.”

Read the full update from the Organic Farmers Association to find out what you can do right now to push back.

 Adam Albright-Hanna, Upworthy:

“In Finland, researchers wanted to test a simple idea: what happens to kids’ health if you swap out the pavement, gravel, and plastic in their daycare yards for actual nature?

So, they dug up segments of forest floor and moved them into urban daycare centers. They rolled out grass. They added planter boxes where kids could grow and tend crops, and peat blocks for climbing and digging. Then they waited and ran blood tests.

Within just 28 days, the kids playing in the greened-up yards showed measurable changes. They had more diverse skin microbiota, increased levels of regulatory T cells (the cells that help prevent the immune system from attacking the body itself), higher plasma TGF-β1 levels, and a shift in immune markers associated with better regulation.”

This supports something called the “biodiversity hypothesis,” the idea that growing up surrounded by a rich variety of microbes essentially trains the immune system to behave properly.”

Desperate for Shade on Your Walk? There’s (Almost) an App for That Cities have been measuring heat for years but nobody has built a tool that actually helps you avoid it on a walk, until now, almost. Researchers are getting close and the thinking behind it matters. Learn more at Grist.

Scientists Say Most People Need More Protein Than Current Guidelines Suggest A new review suggests that eating more protein and getting more exercise than current minimum recommendations may help people stay stronger, sharper, and more independent as they age, with the goal being to extend healthspan and maintain the ability to fully enjoy life for decades longer. Learn more at ScienceDaily.

Adobe Houses Can Last Thousands of Years and Barely Cost Anything to Make. Here’s Why They’re Banned. Adobe, one of the oldest building materials on earth, is naturally fire resistant, thermally efficient, and incredibly durable, yet U.S. building codes have made it nearly impossible to use. Cement industry lobbyists played a major role in writing the very regulations that sidelined it, and the costs that followed have kept adobe out of reach for most builders. Learn more at Upworthy.

Joaquin Phoenix on the Mental Health Crisis Hidden Inside Factory Farms In a Variety op-ed, Phoenix turns the spotlight away from animals and toward the people doing the work. Factory farm and slaughterhouse workers, many of them undocumented or from marginalized communities, face relentless psychological exposure to suffering, with little access to mental health care and enormous barriers to speaking up. Read the full piece at Variety. 

They Shut Down the Government’s Climate Science Website. So the Scientists Rebuilt It Themselves. Climate.gov’s team was fired after a directive “from above” ordered their contract cut. Former managing editor Rebecca Lindsey refused to let the mission die and recruited former colleagues to build climate.us, a new nonprofit picking up where the government left off. Read the full story at Ars Technica.

Summer Rainbow Pickled Vegetable Plate A beautiful way to use whatever is coming out of the garden right now. Quick-pickled vegetables in a rainbow of colors, the kind of thing that looks like you tried harder than you did. Get the recipe at Chelsea Green.

The Quiet Unraveling of America’s Food Safety Net The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is reshaping SNAP in ways that are only beginning to be felt. The law reduced federal SNAP funding by $186 billion through 2034, the largest cut to food assistance in U.S. history, and raised work requirement ages so that more older adults now risk losing benefits. Learn more at Politico.

Your Local Park Is Bringing in the Green (and By That, We Mean Money) A new report finds that for every dollar invested in parks, cities see $3 in economic benefits, which is a compelling argument for anyone who has ever watched their city defund green space. Learn more at Grist.

Breastfeeding Leaves Subtle Epigenetic Marks on Infants’ DNA The largest study of its kind found that babies exclusively breastfed for at least three months carry DNA methylation marks in their blood linked to immunity and developmental processes, offering a potential molecular explanation for why breastfeeding has such lasting effects on health. Learn more at Technology Networks.

Your AI Habit Is Wasting Precious Resources. Here’s How to Use It Responsibly Every ChatGPT prompt you fire off to polish a sentence or answer something you already half-know is running through a massive data center burning real electricity and water. Global data center electricity use could roughly double to around 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. Worth thinking about. Learn more at The Conversation.

New Research Advances Amaranth as a Nutritious and High-Performing Leafy Green Crop New studies highlight significant diversity within amaranth varieties, with certain accessions showing high biomass yield, uniform growth, and elevated levels of essential nutrients, making the ancient grain a promising candidate for sustainable agriculture in regions facing climate variability or limited resources. Learn more at Phys.org.

Q&A: Why Climate Politics Cannot Be Separated from Indigenous Sovereignty and Justice As governments prioritize energy security and resource extraction, Indigenous leaders are warning that land rights and consultation processes are increasingly being pushed aside. Learn more at Eco-Business.

Scientists Reveal Why Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others Some people get eaten alive while the person next to them walks away without a single bite. Researchers are finally getting closer to understanding the specific chemical mix on certain people’s skin that makes them so much more attractive to mosquitoes. Learn more at ScienceAlert.

GMO Deregulation Becomes Law in Europe: 20 Organizations Condemn Vote Against Food Sovereignty and the Rights of Farmers and Consumers For twenty-five years, Europe resisted the kind of GMO deregulation that the U.S. accepted long ago. Last week that resistance ended. The European Parliament voted to eliminate risk assessment, traceability, and labeling requirements for crops produced with new genetic techniques, opening the door for Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta, Corteva and others to patent their way through the European seed supply. Twenty organizations across the continent have signed a joint condemnation. Learn more at Navdanya International.

Amid National PFAS Frenzy, the “Maine Model” Shows States How to Stop “Forever Chemicals” at the Source As the federal government continues to reduce PFAS protections, states have an opportunity to step up for their residents, but only if they avoid certain pitfalls and loopholes that can undermine those efforts. Learn more at The Revelator.

Bones Communicate With the Rest of the Body to Support Overall Health Your skeleton is running a whole communication system you probably never knew about, sending signals to your organs, responding to your gut microbiome, and constantly remodeling itself in ways that affect your overall health. Learn more at The Conversation.

Regenerative Gardening, Flower Farming & Building Soil with Briana Bosch, Acres U.S.A. Podcast Ep. 112 A lovely listen for anyone curious about growing things with the soil in mind. Briana Bosch talks through how regenerative practices apply to home gardens and small flower farms. Find it on Apple Podcasts.