Converting corn to ethanol in Iowa not only leads to clearing more of the Amazonian rainforest, researchers report in a pair of new studies in Science, but also would do little to slow global warming—and often make it worse.

“Prior analyses made an accounting error,” says one study’s lead author, Tim Searchinger, an agricultural expert at Princeton University. “There is a huge imbalance between the carbon lost by plowing up a hectare [2.47 acres] of forest or grassland from the benefit you get from biofuels.”

Growing plants store carbon in their roots, shoots and leaves. As a result, the world’s plants and the soil in which they grow contain nearly three times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. “I know when I look at a tree that half the dry weight of it is carbon,” says ecologist David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, coauthor of the other study which examined the “carbon debt” embedded in any biofuel. “That’s going to end up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when you cut it down.”[...]

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Consumers are asking the food industry: “What are all these weird ingredients that I can’t pronounce doing in my salad dressing? And why is the dressing in a nonrecyclable bottle? And why is grocery shopping such a drag?”

Americans concerned for their health, the environment and where their food comes from are changing the way they eat. And a yearning for more sensory stimulation is changing the way they shop. In response, manufacturers are changing the way they do business.

In 2008, more products designed to appeal to socially conscious buyers will make it onto shelves, according to food-trend analysts. Companies are focusing on promoting green initiatives and making their food labels easier to read, using fewer scary-sounding ingredients and emphasizing additive-free and “good-for-you” products. At the same time, the grocery industry is turning its stores into pleasure palaces complete with mood lighting, piped-in smells and tasting bars.

Last year, Safeway reopened on First Street in Livermore, making the transition from supermarket to “lifestyle” store – a concept designed to appeal to a generation weaned on iPods and text messaging who complain that grocery shopping “is so boring.”

“I actually had a young person tell me that,” said Lynn Dornblaser, a trend expert for Mintel, an international marketing research firm. So, she says, the grocery industry is taking its cues from department stores.

Livermore’s Safeway is a good example. Its coffee and tea section, a corner of the store bathed in warm lighting with rich hardwood display shelves and lots of free samples, looks more like a department in London’s Harrods than a grocery store aisle.[...]

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