 Is it on? All right, we're gonna get started in a few minutes. Actually, less than one minute. Yeah, no, I know. We were letting some people get over here since we changed a second room today. A lot of people are having trouble finding this room. So we'll get started now. Please take your seats and we're gonna start this morning with Diana Rogers, who will be talking about healthy foods that are cruel, social justice in the food industry. Okay, so I started today's presentation with this slide here. So this is from the real food challenge. And I really love it because I think that, you know, we're all here. We're all interested in food and there's other pieces to nourishing food other than just the macro and micronutrients and how they work in our body. Okay, so there's all these other components. And there's a famous quote that I really love by Wendell Berry. And it is, to be interested in food but not food production is clearly absurd. And, you know, I might even change the clearly absurd to irresponsible. So I'm really thrilled that you're all here and that you're interested in hearing what I have to say because I'm really passionate. As a producer of food, I really take this to heart. So how the producers are treated is just as important as how many Omega-3's your grass-fed beef has. So those of us who write about food have a powerful opportunity to affect the choices that thousands of people make on a daily level. So also for those of you who are food bloggers, I think it's great to have a microphone and also to use that microphone. So if you have a recipe that, you know, calls for bananas or chocolate or coffee, you just slide fair trade in there and it could just raise a little more awareness about some of the issues that are going on. So I'm going to talk specifically today about bananas, coffee, and chocolate. There's many more foods that are affected by social injustice, but these three I thought were, you know, particularly often blogged about it within the paleosphere and so I've sort of circled in on the major issues within each industry. So I'm going to start with bananas. And depending on the data you look at, the average Americans consumes anywhere between 10 pounds and 26 pounds of bananas. It's our number one consumed fruit in America and they don't even grow here. They're incredibly inexpensive. So they're, oh, and I can't see it on here. So I'm going to look up here. So they're cheaper than apples, but they're, again, they don't even grow in the United States. So Banana Republics is a really fashionable store, but it actually reckons back to these aggressive companies going in and setting up shop in these poor countries. Virtually all the profits were sent overseas, and today five companies control about 75% of the banana industry. So workers' rights are a big issue. Until very recently, we in the United States got most of our bananas from Ecuador, and so Ecuador, the government went in and they, oh, and I just lost my presentation. Here we go. So until recently in Ecuador, they were supplying both the EU and the US with most of our bananas. The government went in and really improved the working conditions for the banana workers. They got more restrictive on the pesticides that were used. And so most of the companies just picked up and moved to Guatemala. So today we're getting most of our bananas from Guatemala, which does not have as great working conditions and is much more relaxed on the use of chemicals. So bananas are a monocrop and they grow on really big plantations. They're an incredibly weak species. Every banana that you get in the grocery store pretty much is a cavendish banana. These replace the gross Michel banana, which was also wiped out by a disease. And today at all the major banana companies, they're racing to find a new monocrop variety of banana to replace the cavendish. So this is Panama disease that you see here and it turns the bananas black. There's other diseases that are affecting bananas as well. And so just replacing these bananas with yet another monocrop is really not the best solution. So the biggest issue to me that came out of all the research I did was the heavy pesticide use within the banana industry. So in the late 70s and 80s, banana companies, Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide nemagon to protect their crops in Nicaragua. So this was banned in the U.S. And upon entry in the U.S., we don't test the fruits and vegetables that come in, but in the E.U. they do. So a lot of companies that were saying they were organic got caught, got flagged in the E.U. but not in the U.S. So we just sort of take the farmer's words for it from overseas that they're saying it's organic. So with all this aerial spraying, what you end up seeing is a lot of suffering. The spray ends up going on local people's homes, on schools. A lot of banana workers are sterile in the fields. Children are massively deformed and there's a lot of cancers and other incurable illnesses. So good, better, best choices for bananas. So good would be the grow fair trade. So they come from a really big plantation so that's not why it's on the better or best category. So the grow brand is what you would find on the west coast. Better would be fair trade like equal exchange on the east coast or discovery. So those generally come from smaller plantations. And then the best would be maybe to reconsider your consumption of bananas and just eat locally grown organic fruits and vegetables. Okay, so I'm moving on to coffee now. Unlike bananas, coffee is not really usually grown on massive plantations. It's usually on much smaller family farms which can make it harder to trace the origins. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world and it's dominated by four multinationals, Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sarah Lee. So here you see the top world production of coffee and then here is the top consumption of coffee. Okay, so coffee is largely traded on the commodities market which is set in New York and London. Since 1990 the retail sales of coffee have gone up to 80 billion a year. And the farmer for one kilo only gets about 30 cents. And then that's on the commodity level. So here we see what's happening is there a coffee crisis so more production and lower prices. So this was inspired by the IMF, the Vietnamese government subsidized coffee production and that really sparked the coffee crisis. So in 2002, 8% more coffee was produced than purchased. And so all these small farmers, especially in Africa, that's where the biggest economic problem is within the coffee industry, were really suffering. They can't even do the basics for their family like feed them and clothe them. And so what a lot of them are doing is ripping out the coffee and planting caught, which is a drug that you chew and it has massive effects and is really damaging to the mouth. So alternatives for coffee, we have good, better and best. So good is just buy more fair trade coffee. Better would be direct trade certified with third party verification. So direct trade is a level beyond fair trade. They're working directly with the farmers and so fair trade has one set price, direct trade is a much higher price. And you always want third party verification. So I tend not to just take the word for it from the company that they've got. You know, some companies have come up with their own branding for whatever their trade policy is for their coffee. And unless they have that third party verification and are agreeing to be transparent about their sourcing, I really feel uncomfortable buying coffee just with all the issues that are going on. So best would be maybe to drink less coffee. So the fair trade certified. And there is a direct counterculture coffee has a third party verification that they work with. Okay, and finally chocolate. So and on your way out, I have some chocolate samples for everybody. So like coffee cacao is on, it's produced on small family farms. Most of it comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast. It also contains sugar and vanilla, which are also major socially unjust issues are going on within those industries as well. So there's multiple facets going on with chocolate. And organic chocolate is more likely to come from South America because there's a lot of disease in Africa is the same thing actually with with coffee. So the biggest issue and the most heartbreaking for me within within this whole presentation is really the child slavery that goes on within the chocolate industry. So children, you know, ages 10 to 15 are often tricked into leaving their homes. Sometimes they're kidnapped while playing in the street, but a lot of them are just so poor and they're they're being lured into promises of, you know, great jobs and cities to leave their families. The average price is around $300 per child, but they can be sold for as little as $30 and 60% are under age 14. So the working conditions are not great. These children are working 12 hour days. They're climbing with large machetes to go get the cacao beans. They have very poor nutrition. They're actually often fed bananas on these coffee plantations. They have no health care, no education, and they often can't speak the local language because they're imported. They're trafficked from another country. And so escape is really dangerous. And because once they get out, what are they going to do? They have no education. They can't speak the local language. And they don't even know what their rights are. And they're really savagely beaten. So this is an image of Drissa, who was one of these child slaves that was freed. So he was locked in a room with 17 other teenage boys with just a tin can as a toilet. And he and all of his roommates were tricked into coming to this coffee farm. He was isolated once he got to the farm. He tried to escape, and this is what happened. He was beaten severely. This image isn't looking so great, but I'm sure you've seen this. So you walk into any major retailer or drug store and you see all this chocolate. This is pretty much all African chocolate. So all the cheap chocolate that you're getting is pretty much slave chocolate. So the chocolate holidays are really Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, with Halloween being the most chocolate-centered holiday in North America. 90 million pounds of chocolate are sold the week leading up to Halloween. And there are some small grassroots campaigns to boycott this chocolate, but it needs to get more momentum, so we need to really be pretty serious, I think, within the paleo community about fair trade chocolate. All right, so good, better, best alternatives. So good would be to look for chocolate from the Caribbean Central and South America. So the child slavery is much less likely to occur there, and it's also more likely to be organically grown. So better is a company called Divine Chocolate. You've probably seen that in Whole Foods, and that's 51% owned by the farmers in Ghana. So it's not organic because it's difficult to grow organic chocolate in Africa, but it is fair trade. And then best would be chocolate with an FLO, IMO, or Fair Trade America certification. And I have the logos towards the end of the presentation so you can take a peek at what they look like. Direct trade is also great, but again with third-party verification. So it's not just, I know where I get my chocolate from, you know, you really need to make sure that they're backing that up. So for more information on other fair trade issues, you can go to the Fair Trade International website. So cotton, flowers, fresh fruit, honey, gold, juices, rice, which is now kind of paleo. Spices and herbs, sports balls, so that's like soccer balls. Who's making them? Sugar, tea and wine, so these are the major ones that they'll let you know what the better choices are. It's the Fair Trade International. I have a link, actually I posted this whole presentation on my blog, and I'll have that at the end, and I have links to every single thing I mentioned in here and sources for everything. Okay, so here's some of the logos you can look for, Fair Trade, Fair Trade Certified. So there's like an international fair trade, and then there's a U.S. fair trade. They have slightly different rules. There's an app that you guys can all get for your cell phone called the Better World app. I think it's about two bucks, but they have everything organized by category. So you can just look up chocolate, and they have a whole beautiful rating system of the A plus, A, A minus, B, everything. So that's really handy. It's nice. They also have a great website and a book, too. And then, like I said, the Direct Trade Certified. So we've got this one here, Direct Trade Certified by Counterculture. So there's work cited, image credits, and this is my blog. So I posted all of this information up on my blog so you can link to everything from there. So that's it. Thanks, Diana. Maybe we can take one or two questions. So for coffee, when you go to Trader Joe's, they have organic fair trade, but it's so inexpensive. And have you investigated, like, the Trader Joe's, like, is it really fair trade and organic for $5.99 for, like, 20 ounces of coffee? It just seems like it's too good to be true. I haven't looked at the Trader Joe's. I did look at Starbucks, so Starbucks only carries 3.7 percent fair trade coffee. They have made a commitment on their website to brew fair trade coffee for the customers who request it, but they don't do that. And so that would be a great, a great thing that we might be able to, you know, put pressure on them because they're not going to, I mean, people, customers are the ones that need to make the request for that. Do you have any information on your blog about fair trade, the fair trade certified, like, black and white logo that's really familiar to us in North America about their resignation from Fair Trade International and Fair Trade International's criticism of their relaxed standards to focus more on marketing and less on actual fair trade? Right. So there, I mean, there is, and there's another movement called authentic fair trade that's coming up as well, that Equal Exchange is trying to push, which is a great company that helped me with this. So nothing's perfect. None of these labelings are perfect. I think it's a great step in the right direction. And there are different levels, and there is internal strife about it, so I didn't get into that on my blog, but I am aware of what's going on with that. Any other questions? Okay. I guess we'll end here. Thank Diana. Thank you.