Fighting Depression & Switching to Biofuels

Fighting Depression & Switching to Biofuels plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

This is a tough time of year when the weather is gloomy and it can be worse as we get a bit older. Sharon Johnson of Oregon State University Extension explains how difficult it can be to spot depression in an older person and what some of the triggers and signs might be.

JOHNSON: We have lots of transitions as we age and loss can range from your dog dies to you have to relocate from your family home to a residential living setting, so we encourage is for caregivers or children to just be very mindful of things like stooped posture. Things like reduced eating behavior, things that are sometimes subtle can be indicators of depression and depressive illness especially in the older adult male, in the 85 year old man can be something hard to identify but important to identify because suicide is a real critical consideration there.

The next time you grab a shuttle at the airport you just may be driving on renewable fuel. Enterprise Holdings launched efforts for their entire fleet of more than 600 airport shuttle buses across 50 North American markets to begin using at least 5 percent biodiesel (B5) and they will immediately convert buses in nine markets to 20 percent biodiesel (B20) as a first step toward the company's goal of converting its entire bus fleet to B20 over the next five years.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

The latest buzz in the fight against obesity has the FDA strongly suggesting manufacturers post the calorie count and nutritional information on the front of food packaging. That way consumers will be slapped in the face with how much they are really consuming. I’m not sure why they think that will make a difference.  First off most people indulging in snack foods aren’t doing it for their health, secondly the nutritional info is in teeny tiny print, and thirdly the portion sizes listed are grossly out of touch with reality; when was the last time you limited yourself to eight chips, or two sandwich crèmes, or a quarter cup of ice cream. One FDA official tries to substantiate the moving of nutritional information to the front of packaging by stating it would stop confusion and misinterpretation of serving sizes. Here’s an experiment for those concerned with what we as consumers put in our mouths everyday, how about instead of moving the nutritional information on the packaging they just put a large banner across the front warning that “eating this can make you fat”.  Then again, that same strategy hasn’t seemed to work for the tobacco industry.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.