San Francisco’s zany Bay to Breakers race brings out not only world class runners but crazy costumes as well. Some companies took advantage of the crazy and healthy atmosphere to promote various items (energy drinks, anti pain patches) but we had to question the Foster Farms “Say No to Plumping” race team.

Sure, everyone seemed to enjoy having their photo taken with the plump Foster Farms chickens but the brightly colored 16-person Foster Farms race team seemed bent on raising awareness of a little-known food fact: “plumped” or saltwater-injected chicken that costs consumers their health and money.

Instead of plumping maybe consumers and Bay to Breakers racers should be more concerned with eating chicken that isn’t organic, isn’t free-range and isn’t raised humanely. Foster Farms claims that they do not add hormones, steroids, or artificial enhancers. Okay but they don’t say whether or not the chicken is truly free-range or all natural.

This whole “Plumping” thing seemed to scream for everyone to be an aware consumer as far as economics go but aren’t missing the boat to promote health as well? It won’t do any good to save a buck or two on chicken (or any other meat for that matter) if you come down with some disease because of how a company raises the chickens . Maybe next year, maybe we’ll see some organic, pastured chickens run the race.

In addition to the great views that most people would ooh and ah about, what gets our green genes going are some of the less sexy LEED elements. Instead of subjecting occupants to dingy indoor views and lighting, the architects designed architectural curtain wall to enable direct views of the outdoor environment for 90% of the building’s occupants. We also like the fact that they used recycled materials for at least 10% of the material construction. The vast majority of the recycled content comes from the building structural steel and in the aluminum curtain wall, not recycled materials used inside the building. Way up high in the sky, the roof will be a highly reflective, lightly colored ‘cool roof’ system that will reduce the affect of urban heat islands. Although the “cool roof” is cool, we’d like to see an actual Green Living Roof up top but we can’t have it all.

With several other Green elements on tap we’re actually looking forward to seeing something attractive and Green hit the South Beach/Soma area. Memo to Tishman – Speyer execs: “Keep sending out those Green building memos.”