1 Week, 7 Stories - the newsletter # 5

Welcome to 1 Week, 7 Stories – the newsletter. Every edition will feature 7 stories, from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and do my best to offer some context. Sometimes built around a theme, sometimes random, but with a Canadian twist.

Add a new word to your inflation vocabulary. Skimpflation. This is when food manufacturers tweak their recipes to reduce the cost of production. As global inflation hits every part of the food chain from the cost of the raw inputs to transportation costs, maintaining profits margins is complex.? Consumers have shown they are willing to trim their food budgets, especially when it comes to snack food which means simply raising costs at the checkout is not the answer. Skimping on the content of processed food is one option before it makes it to the grocery shelves. Messing with your favorite snack food ingredients isn’t new according to JustFood, but inflation has added a new impetus to tweak recipes to cut costs or to play the long game and take on a complete reformulation. And they don’t need to inform you.? Retail Gazette reports that changes can include less fat in yoghurt, reduced percentages of beef in packaged lasagnas, and raising salt content to cover some of the changes. Less fat, less meat? Not so bad. You already know that you should be watching your processed food salt intake and now you have a whole new reason to check the package label.

Waste Not Want Not

Staying with food, “Here's why food waste is a major climate change issue”, according to a CBC story. There are 2 ways food is wasted. There is food loss during the production and manufacturing process, and there is food waste at the distribution and household part of our food system. If food waste is redirected to those in need while it is still safe to consume, we can cut waste and once past its useable life it can be composted for fertilizer or biofuel. If it is just left to rot in landfills, in fields or orchards, or in garbage bins it releases methane. Anywhere from 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste and loss! According to Second Harvest, 58 percent of food produced for Canadians is lost or wasted every year and it only makes sense to sort this one out. More than 150 countries signed a declaration at COP28 committing to make food systems a key part of their strategies to address climate change – the least we can do is make sure we sort it out in our own backyard. Canada has a federal Food Waste Prevention and Diversion funding program to look at ideas and innovation, but you can do your bit at home with Canadian Geographic’s “10 ideas to decrease food waste during the holidays”.

Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disease that causes red blood cells to deform which can lead to life-threatening complications. It disproportionately affects people of African descent and until recently the only cure was a bone marrow transplant. However the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved the first CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease. Scientific American points out that the treatment is extremely expensive, and we don’t know whether insurers will cover the $2 million cost in the US. The treatment was approved in the United Kingdom in November and while there are clinical trials underway in Canada.? The 6,000 Canadians living with the disease will have to wait and see if there is a timeline for its approval here. CRISPR is a customizable tool to edit parts of the genome for research purposes or in the case of the recently approved treatment, repair mutated genetic material so that the body produces normal red blood cells. ???

This just in from Maple Syrup World. “It takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.” Unfortunately, severe storms and changing temperature shows that maple syrup production has dropped to a five-year low according to Statistics Canada.? New Brunswick saw a 35 percent drop, which the ?executive director of the New Brunswick Maple Syrup Association said in a CBC story and Information Morning interview this week, was a “nightmare for producers”. To add to the maple syrup producers’ challenges we can take a step back to the earlier story on ‘skimpflation’.? Pearl Milling maple syrup (formerly Aunt Jemima) used to contain real maple syrup but to cut costs it now has high-fructose corn syrup and more chemical additives. My advice? Look on store shelves for Canadian-made maple syrup that is 100% the real thing. It might cost a little extra, but right now it is the right choice.?

I am a morning person. I have always believed it goes back to my days of producing early morning talk radio where you had to be ready to go by 5:00a and leave no room for error when the microphones went live. I simply got used to an early alarm. Now it seems there may be another reason: “Neanderthal DNA may explain why some of us are morning people”. According to the Guardian story, research which compared ancient Neanderthal DNA to modern DNA found similarities in the genes that govern your “body clock”. My 23andMe profile says I have more Neanderthal DNA than 64% of the company’s other customers. These are genetic markers that evolved in Neanderthals and came into our human lineage when the two started to interbreed. I have 248 of the 3,731 variants that 23andMe test for. No 23andMe customer has had more that 500 of the markers. Read more about what the company has to say about Neanderthal DNA and I have a free Washington Post link to take you deeper into circadian variants. ???

“Nova Scotia shortbreads to be gifted to the stars at Golden Globes”. First off my apologies, but you’ll need a subscription to read that story. Secondly, when did we get into the habit of turning gift into a verb? What would be wrong with “Nova Scotia shortbreads will be a gift to the stars at Golden Globes”. OR “Nova Scotia shortbreads will star at the Golden Globes”? Or simply replaced “gifted” with “given”? Apparently is has been considered a legitimate verb for 400 years, but has only been gaining traction over the last few years. My past English teachers would have kept me after school and made me write out “I will never gift gifts” a hundred times if I had used used it as a verb! Rant over and on to the soon to be famous shortbreads from the Nova Scotian Cookie Company. Thousands of the original, blueberry and chocolate chip varieties of the cookies will be shipped to the Beverly Hills to be given to celebrities who visit the “gifting suite”. (There it is again. In a city full of creative people, the best they can come up with is the gifting suite.) The cookies are seen as a taste treat, but what may well make them special is that they are prepared and packed by a social enterprise which employs adults considered to have an intellectual disability.

It’s Sunday the 17th. One week to Christmas Eve. The most crowded store at the two strip malls near me? Dollarama. With inflation and consumer debt being top of mind as the year draws to a close, “Dollarama cashes in”. That may seem like a harsh headline, but it is the reality as the “Gap Between Canada’s Rich and Poor Is Widening at Record Pace”. The working poor are Canadians who struggle to find housing and are showing up at Food Banks as they try to make ends meet. And they are boosting discount stores’ sales. You don’t have to be poor to shop at Dollarama – I’m there all the time - but the fact the Canadian chain opened 55 new stores this year is a sign of where the economy stands right now. My weekly shout out then is to help those who need a boost. One person, one charity or one collection box at the checkout. ?It is the right thing to do.

?I’m available for contract and freelance work with not-for-profits and charities. With 40 years of experience in hand, I’m here to help you make a difference in your media relations, public relations, and general communications needs.? You could even get a regular news summary such as this one – tailored to your organization.