January 15: Stories That Caught Our Attention This Week

This week, we learned that most of what we know about nutrition is wrong, whether as a result of complications with studies, conflict of interest, or imprecise surveys. FiveThirtyEight found that eating steak with the fat trimmed off correlates with not believing in a god. Sound legit to you? That’s basically how nutrition science works today.

The National Hemp Association wants you to believe you’ll be growing hemp for industrial purposes in no time. The other day, the org hired a lobbying firm with pretty sweet connects that it hopes will help them pass some pro-hemp legislation this year.

The New York Times introduced us to the lawyer ag giant DuPont finds dreadful. A farmer approached him with some opportune name dropping (note to self: Mention someone’s grandmother and they will always make time for you) and some incriminating evidence against DuPont, who he said poisoned his cattle with runoff from their landfill beside his property. The lawyer, Rob Bilott, had been a corporate defense lawyer for years – and now he works for the opposite end of the table, prosecuting a class-action lawsuit (with 3,534 plaintiffs) against one of the biggest ag corporations around.

Lastly, Eater taught us how the rains from El Niño are gonna eff up Cali’s wine. Okay, so maybe it’s not really going to be effed up, but it’ll be different. Will we still drink it? Probably.