The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Be sure to plant a vegetable garden this year

It’s not too late to plant a great garden and enjoy wonderful organic vegetables throughout the summer and into fall.

In May, I usually go to Madrid and visit my daughter and her family. However, this year, due to covid-19, I’m not traveling.

Deane Rimerman, the forester who helps me with my pruning, offered to build me a cold frame, a cover for my raised-bed garden, so the seeds would sprout sooner and the seedlings would grow faster. See the photo above.

I’m already eating salads from my garden. It’s fabulous because I haven’t been ordering lettuce and greens from my local co-op due to concerns about possible contamination.

Early June isn’t too late to plant a garden. It’s when I usually do it when I get back from Spain. This photo is from 2018. As you can see, I had a very healthy, productive garden.

Even if you don’t have a space for a garden, you can grow a lot of vegetables in pots on your patio.

To get some ideas on what to plant in a garden, see my report from 2017 “My Garden Is in Full Production.”

Also see the article “9 Reasons Planting an Awesome Vegetable Garden Can Improve Your Life.”

Copyright 2020, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

Online grocery retailers heavily promote unhealthy foods, analysis shows

Online grocery platforms often undermine Americans’ efforts to eat well, according to a review of retailers’ promotions, pricing, placement, and delivery by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. More than half of food and beverage promotions on online retailers’ home pages and search result pages were for unhealthy products, and more than three-quarters of the food- and beverage-related emails that retailers sent promoted unhealthy products.

The center evaluated the practices of six national retailers operating in the Washington, D.C., area: Amazon Prime Now, FreshDirect, Peapod (Ahold Delhaize), Safeway, Target, and Walmart Grocery. (The latter two weren’t delivering in the District of Columbia during the early 2019 study period, so weren’t included in the ordering and delivery parts of the assessment.)

The center’s researchers created two customer accounts and collected promotional data on each retailer’s home page, and promotional, pricing, and search result data on each retailer’s search result pages for five staple products: milk, bread, cereal, drinks, and chicken. The researchers also scored the quality of the produce delivered.

Researchers who say red meat isn’t that harmful after all are wrong

Public health officials for years have urged Americans to limit consumption of red and processed meats because of concerns that these foods are linked to heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.

However, recently, an international group of researchers conducted an analysis and concluded that the advice, widely given by health officials and advisors, isn't backed by reliable scientific evidence.

If there are health benefits from eating less red meat, they're small, the researchers said. They contend the advantages are so small that they can be seen only when looking at large populations, and aren't sufficient to tell consumers to change their meat-eating habits.

Cheesecake Factory wins another Xtreme Eating Award, with Cracker Barrel, Jimmy John’s, and Topgolf winning first-time awards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cheesecake Factory’s Cinnamon Roll Pancakes are the 21^st menu item from that chain to receive one of the Xtreme Eating Awards from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The organization has given the awards for bad food to America’s restaurant chains since 2007.

The pancakes from The Cheesecake Factory have a day’s worth of calories, 2,040; two-and-a-half days’ worth of saturated fat, 51 grams; more than a day’s worth of sodium, 2,950 milligrams; and almost three-days’ worth of added sugar. It contains 137 grams of total sugar, which CSPI estimates is all or nearly all added sugar.

These kinds of meals help explain why two out of three American adults and one out of three children and teens are overweight or obese, said Lindsay Moyer, senior nutritionist for CSPI.

How is Trump’s tax act affecting you?

On Saturday afternoon, I mailed in my income taxes for 2018. Instead of getting a refund of around $1,000 like I do most years, my refund was $170.

The TurboTax representative I spoke to said deductions that were helpful to me in the past, such as for my small business and charitable donations, have been eliminated.

So while Trump’s tax revisions are helping the rich, they have no benefit for me. That huge corporations pay little or nothing in income taxes and I’m paying more is discouraging. I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes. I support good schools, roads, and bridges. But Trump’s tax law is making the rich even richer.

Consumer groups sue over USDA’s roll back of school nutrition standards

The Trump administration violated the law when it rolled back nutrition standards for school meals, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court.

The violations occurred when the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a final rule that weakens nutrition standards on the amount of whole grains and sodium served in school meals, the lawsuit contends. The weakened standards put about 30 million children, including about 22 million low-income children, at greater risk of health issues associated with diets high in sodium and low in whole grains.

The plaintiffs, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland, represented by Democracy Forward, are asking the court to set aside the rule lowering the nutrition standards and require the agency to follow Congress’s requirement to set school nutrition standards based on nutrition science as reflected in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Which store has the cheapest ingredients for a stew?

Last week, I was coming home and I realized I forgot to stop at the local co-op to get the ingredients I wanted to make a crock pot stew. Instead of driving back across town, I decided to stop at Safeway and shop there instead.

My priority in buying groceries is to purchase as much organic food as I can. So, at Safeway, I set about buying organic vegetables for the stew. I was shocked when I got to the checkout and found out that the large sweet potato that I selected cost $3.41 cents.

I decided to compare prices and see if the makings for the stew were cheaper at my local co-op, Safeway, or Trader Joe’s. I’ve shopped at Trader Joe’s a few times recently because I heard an article on National Public Radio that said it had good prices and service.

Here’s the comparison for the stew ingredients:

Marion Nestle investigates food industry sponsored research in her latest book

Every time I hear about how research shows a food, such as coffee, is good for you, I wonder who paid for the research.

Marion Nestle, consumer activist, nutritionist, and professor, looks at research paid for by food companies in a new book.

In “Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat,” Nestle reveals how millions of dollars flow from corporations and trade groups to research laboratories at colleges and universities, distorting how consumers think about food and health. The ultimate goal of this research is to promote sales of their products.

7 cancer-causing food additives widely used in foods banned by the FDA

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned seven chemicals used in artificial flavors that have been linked to cancer in animals.

“Chemicals that could cause cancer should never have been allowed in our food in the first place, especially not hiding behind the confusing label of ‘artificial flavors,’” said Melanie Benesh, the Environmental Wording Group’s legislative attorney. “The FDA finally did the right thing by taking this important step to better protect consumers.”

The EWG and other environmental and public health groups petitioned the FDA for the ban.

No amount of alcohol is safe, global study shows

A new study finds there’s no safe level of drinking alcohol.

The study shows that in 2016, nearly 3 million deaths globally were due to alcohol use, including 12 percent of deaths in males between the ages of 15 and 49. The report was published Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet.

“The health risks associated with alcohol are massive,” said Emmanuela Gakidou, Ph.D., professor of global health at the University of Washington School of Public Health and the senior author of the study. “Our findings are consistent with other recent research, which found clear and convincing correlations between drinking and premature death, cancer, and cardiovascular problems. Zero alcohol consumption minimizes the overall risk of health loss.”