View from the Loft

Michael Pollan's new rule

Check out the "real food" advocate's new rule on my food blog.

Soy products: how does your brand rate?

Cornucopia Institute has released a ratings scorecard of various soy brands. Check out my food blog post if you eat/drink a lot of soy.

FDA's lack of power and guts endangers us all

This is ridiculous:

Even though federal health officials have begun a criminal investigation into whether the Peanut Corporation of America deliberately sold contaminated products, the government still needed the company’s permission last week before announcing a huge recall of its products.

The wording of the recall statement had to be approved by the company before the Food and Drug Administration could publish it under current rules. The agency relies on cooperation from food makers to ensure the safety of the food supply even when those makers are suspected of crimes.

President Obama has promised a full review of the FDA's operations. One hopes that such a review will include investigating whether the need for the peanut company's approval delayed getting warnings out to consumers. And there was definitely a serious delay in spreading the word:

 

Public health officials pinpointed the Blakely plant as the source of the salmonella outbreak on Jan. 9. The peanut company announced a limited recall on Jan. 13 and expanded it on Jan. 16. The company waited until Jan. 28 before recalling all products made at the plant in 2007 and 2008, even though it had known since 2007 that tests of products showed contamination with salmonella.

Some food company executives and public health officials knew of the tainted food before an official announcement was made. At Costco, for example, Keebler and Austin peanut butter crackers were pulled off the shelves a week before the peanut company and Kellogg announced the nationwide recall of these products.

 

While it's laudable that some food buyers take action in such a timely way, that doesn't let the FDA off the hook. The FDA does have some power to get toxic food off the shelves, but they rarely, if ever, use it:

 

The F.D.A. can seize a product that it suspects is contaminated, and it can ask a federal judge for authority to recall products if a maker refuses to do so. The agency can also announce that it suspects problems with a product before the company agrees to a recall. But it rarely does any of these.

The FDA needs broader emergency powers here. It's simply not acceptable that valuable time is spent negotiating press releases with the offending company while people are getting sick and even dying from contaminated food. And it's galling that even the steps the FDA could take, it doesn't, preferring not to ruffle the feathers of the food industry.

 

For a list of foods on the recall list, go here. But you'd better keep checking--it seems like every day, more products are announced.

 

How many people are going to have to sicken and die before the US government takes the necessary steps to ensure the safety of our food supply?

 

I hope the Peanut Corporation of America is bankrupted at the very least, and that some of its top executives see the inside of a jail cell to boot, for their cavalier attitude of profit above all. The least we can do is make an example of them.

 

 

More on processed foods

Part seven of my incredible expanding marathon series here.

Be good to yourself

. . . and check out my series on avoiding processed foods, over on my other blog. So far there are six parts, with more to come.

Part one here.

Part two here.

Part three here.

Part four here.

Part five here.

Part six here.

Bon appetit!

Chewing gum, candy bars, heat-treated garbage: it's what's for dinner!

You may already know that grain is not a natural food for cows. Back when I became the vegetarian that I was for several years, I knew that grain-feeding beef was bad practice in terms of what it meant for humans, in that feeding grain to cows and then to people is a very inefficient way to deliver protein. The fifteen pounds of grain that it takes to manufacture a pound of beef protein could, instead, go directly to feed many more people than can be fed with a pound of beef.

I didn't realize that the cows suffer from a grain diet. According to Jo Robinson in Mother Earth News,

Replace the grass with grain and the rumen [the specialized organ that allows fibrous grasses to be digested] becomes too acidic. After several months, the condition can progress to “acute acidosis.” Cattle with acute acidosis develop growths and abscesses on their livers, stop eating, sicken and even die.

[snip]

To keep the calves alive and gaining weight, they must be given a steady diet of antibiotics.

Even with these countermeasures, many calves develop “subacute acidosis,” a more aggressive form of acid indigestion. A calf with subacute acidosis will hang its head, drool, kick at its belly and eat dirt. Alarmingly, this is regarded as “natural” in the feedlot. According to an article in the trade magazine, Feedlot: “Every animal in the feedlot will experience subacute acidosis at least once during the feeding period. … This is an important natural function in adapting to high-grain finishing rations.” When calves are finished on high-grain diets, a certain amount of suffering is simply taken for granted.

From Science News we learn that

Grains can accumulate in an animal's intestines because they lack starch-digesting enzymes. Thus, a high-grain diet can promote an overgrowth of Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium associated with sudden death in feedlot cattle, Russell's article suggests.

Humans, too, are now paying the price of this harmful cattle diet:

Finally, grain-based diets can promote Escherichia coli (E. coli) within the digestive tract of cattle, and these E. coli are more likely to survive acid shocks that mimic the human gastric stomach. This discovery, first reported by Russell and colleagues in 1998 (Science, 11 September), has now been confirmed. Other USDA scientists have likewise shown that cattle switched from grain-based diets to hay were less likely to shed harmful E. coli 0157:H7 in feces.

Some scientists believe that this particularly vicious form of e. coli actually evolved in the digestive tract of grain-fed cattle as bacteria adapted to the more highly acidic environment. Where once the e. coli would not have survived the acidity of the human stomach, having resided in a low-acid environment, bacteria that have adapted to the high acidity of the grain-fed stomach are no longer killed by human stomach acid.

Most of us know that the rules about feeding CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) animals have been changed in recent years because of mad cow disease, or BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy). It's a relief to know that chicken manure can no longer be fed to cows, and that cows are no longer unwittingly being turned into cannibals by eating rendered and ground-up cattle. But you might be surprised to discover what is being fed to feedlot cattle.

Feed is 60% of the costs of running a CAFO, so operators are always looking for cheaper ways to feed the animals. One way to do that is to feed them "byproduct feedstuffs." That can be just about anything.

In New York state, chewing gum has been used as a cheap feed supplement. The novel practice was recommended in a 1996 study in the Journal of Animal Science. The study concluded that stale chewing gum — still in its aluminum wrappers! — can “safely replace at least 30 percent of [cattle] growing or finishing diets without impairing feedlot performance or carcass quality.” In other parts of the country, cattle are being finished on stale pizza dough and candy bars, even heat-treated garbage. Feedlot operators drive to the manufacturing plants or municipal landfills and load up their trucks with this yummy fare, or they buy the used goods from middlemen called “jobbers” who offer a more varied buffet.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, one "farmer" feeds his cattle 100% junk food, "including french fries, tater tots, and potato peels." Another uses 17% stale candy bars and 3% stale "party mix." Why this increased use of junk? One reason is the production of ethanol, which has resulted in higher corn prices.

No studies have as yet been done on the nutritional quality of beef fed diets like this, but the outcome can't be good. Ruminants are meant to eat grasses; it's as simple as that. We do know that grass-fed beef is superior nutritionally to grain-fed beef, as shown by many studies. It's high in conjugated linoleic acid, (a cancer fighter, among other things) and high in omega-3 fatty acids. It also has high levels of vitamins B6 and B12, which helps reduce homocysteine levels. You can access a collection of good information on the health benefits of grass-fed beef here.

The USDA, needless to say, doesn't require any labeling to indicate what the animal has been fed. I myself would now be very suspicious of any supermarket beef, even if it says "grain-fed" (which most people continue to think is a good thing, a practice that ensures marbled and tender beef). Who knows what that cow ate in life?

I haven't even talked about the antibiotics and growth hormones in supermarket beef, and I won't get into it here. Suffice it to say that these are in virtually all supermarket meat, and that European countries are enduring WTO-imposed sanctions for their refusal to accept hormone-containing meat for their markets. I urge you to read the entire Mother Earth News article "What's in Your Beef?" and find out for yourself why your best bet is to avoid supermarket beef. The article includes some suggestions for finding beef that is raised truly naturally on grass and hay.

If you can afford it, you might want to join forces with another family (or more) and buy freezer beef from a farmer who pastures his cattle rather than grain-feeding.

The USDA is not protecting our food supply. This, after all, is the government agency that went to court to prevent voluntary BSE testing on the part of a beef producer, and which banned the marketing of BSE test kits! As with most government agencies today, the USDA is all about protecting the profits of big business. So let the buyer beware: do your homework and find out where you can buy meat that is safe, natural, and good for you.

[cross-posted to You Are What You Eat]

Stop deceptive labeling of meat

The USDA is set to approve the use of the labels "natural" and "naturally raised" for beef that most of us would agree is neither. Such labels would apply to beef prophylactically and regularly dosed with antibiotics, beef confined in CAFOs and not allowed to roam freely, and beef not allowed to graze on pasture.

What, then, does "natural" mean to the USDA? Not much:

It will mean [the cattle] didn't get growth promoters, although there is no verification of even that more limited claim. The existing term "natural" only means that no artificial ingredients were added during processing.

You can sign a petition and add your own comment here. The USDA is accepting comments until January 27. Please take a minute to sign the petition. As things stand, the proposed labeling will only confuse consumers and mislead them. Much better would be such labels as "no antibiotics," "no hormones ever used," "no artificial ingredients added," and the like.

(On a related note, if you are concerned about the effects of CAFOs on the animals raised in such operations, on the environment, and on human health, please consider buying beef from an alternate source. If you are a Michigander and would be interested in buying a side of beef, perhaps in conjunction with another family or families, I can personally and heartily recommend this source, which raises beef not only naturally but organically. The taste is amazing, and the meat is much healthier for you than grain-fed beef [grain, soy, and corn are not natural foods for a ruminant].)

[cross-posted at You Are What You Eat]

Food pantries' shelves are bare: can you help?

Food pantries all over the nation are facing shortages in the millions of pounds this holiday season.

America's Second Harvest is urgently calling for national support to raise funds to help millions of Americans facing hunger during the holiday season.

America's Second Harvest and the people served by food banks from coast to coast are facing a potential crisis. We are projecting an immediate food shortage of 15 million pounds -- the equivalent of more than 400 truckloads or 11.7 million meals -- by the end of the year.

While the need for food grows, the donations from corporations and the government have dwindled, leaving food banks in dire straits.

The ailing economy and rising food and fuel prices are taking a toll on struggling families' budgets.  Moms and dads face impossible decisions like whether to pay to heat their homes and keep their children warm or buy groceries to feed them.   When they find themselves in desperate need, they turn to our network and the agencies we serve for help. Right now many of our member food banks and food-rescue organizations are seeing an increase in demand, as high as 20% in areas including Denver, Orlando and Phoenix.

We're talking not only about the unemployed, seniors, and the homeless, but also about working people who cannot adequately feed their families with their wages. There are something like 35 million people in this country considered to be "food insecure"--that is, people who cannot be sure that they'll have enough food in the immediate future. Nearly 13 million of these are children.

Why the shortage?

According to Gerry Brisson, vice president for development at Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan,

the food shortage comes primarily as a result of more efficient processing by the food companies, resulting in fewer mistakes and overruns. These overruns have accounted for the bulk of food sent to food banks.

“And their margins are tighter, too, so they’ve got to be more efficient for their business’ sake,” Brisson said.

For Gleaners, the drop in donations has been significant: 35% since January. "Just-in-time" inventories mean less waste for food manufacturers, who now tailor their production to sophisticated inventory and delivery systems.

In addition, the federal government has not been providing the amount of food it once did:

America's Second Harvest, the country's largest hunger relief organization, assisting some 50,000 providers, said federal donations to food banks have been stagnant since 2002. According to Satterwhite, Mississippi Food Network said USDA commodities represent about 60 percent of his network's food distribution to state outlets.

Some organizations have been hit hard by declines in a separate federal program that buys excess crops like peaches and potatoes from farmers and then donates them to food banks. Those donations shrunk to 89 million pounds in 2004 from 251 million pounds in 2003, according to Vermont Foodbank.

And as if all that isn't bad enough for those who depend on food banks, the current Farm Bill is stalled in the Senate. That bill authorizes funding for nutrition and food assistance programs for low-income people.

All in all, it's a looming crisis. How shameful that in the United States we have people going hungry.

Please help if you can. You can donate to America's Second Harvest here, or locate a local food bank you'd like to help here. And please consider visiting the Hunger Action Center to urge your elected officials to support food-assistance and nutrition legislation. 

Improve your vocabulary and feed the hungry

Here's a cool site--a sister site to Poverty.com--where you can test your vocabulary and donate rice to the hungry. For each word you get right, ten grains of rice are donated through the United Nations. Being the word person that I am, I got totally hooked. If you get a word wrong, you can still keep playing, and thus donating rice. You can even choose to have your vocabulary level and donation total remembered for your next session.

Think ten grains of rice isn't much? The site began on October 7, and with each passing day, as people have discovered the site, the amount of rice donated has gone up. The accumulated total through November 24 is 3,664,079,450 grains of rice! I don't know how many grains of rice are in a pound, but three billion seems like a lot of grains.

It's fun, it improves your vocabulary, and best of all, it feeds the hungry. I hope you'll visit and perhaps bookmark the site.

Putting up the harvest

As planned, we processed our tomatoes yesterday--40 pounds of them, and I still had around 15 pounds on my counter. We made 7 quarts of tomato juice and 7 quarts of tomato soup base (I'll add milk or cream and thickener after I thaw it). I had a little juice left over, so I simmered it down to about a pint of tomato sauce. I hadn't planned on the soup, but once you have the Squeezo assembled, you might as well make use of it, and I had plenty of tomatoes to work with.

There were frost warnings last night--so early!--so after a day spent processing tomatoes, we had to take precautions in the garden. We picked all the eggplants and squash, no matter how tiny, beans, tomatillos, some corn (not all; Jim said it could withstand a frost), and tomatoes and peppers that were ripe. We put a row cover--a lightweight fabric--over the pepper plants, anchoring it with rocks (conveniently located throughout the garden, hah). At first we puzzled over how to protect the tomatoes, as we grew them on a trellis this year, but ever resourceful James came up with the idea of laying a tarp over the top of the trellis and spreading it over the plants.

I cut the cilantro, which was a shame, since it could have grown much more, and the dill plants that weren't yet headed. The cilantro I'll have to use right away, as it's not a good candidate for drying, but the dill leaves I'll dry. We grew zinnias in the garden this year (Jim's mom used to do this, and he wanted to follow tradition, although he didn't know why she did it), and we really had no idea of how hardy they are, so I cut a bundle of the flowers in various colors. I haven't been good about cutting the flowers, not being used to having such flowers, but perhaps by next year I'll be in the habit of having cut flowers in the house all summer long.

Most of the plants in the herb garden can take some frost and cold--for instance, I usually have fresh sage for the Thanksgiving stuffing--but basil dislikes cool weather, let alone frost. The basil hadn't been doing all that well with night-time temperatures in the low forties and high thirties, so we decided to just harvest it all. We have two big bins of cut basil to deal with. I'll be drying it and, for the first time, making pesto to freeze. I'm also looking forward to infusing some vinegar with purple ruffles basil; it should impart a lovely color to the vinegar.

We decided to leave the petunias, in hanging baskets and porch-railing boxes, out. Jim reminded me that last year they proved to be quite hardy.

As it turned out, we didn't get any frost; the lowest the thermometer dropped to was 35 degrees. Oh well, better safe than sorry, etc. And I'll be spending another long day in the kitchen, putting up the harvest. But you know, it's a good feeling to just pop down to the basement on a winter's night and collect the makings of a meal from the freezer and storage shelves--and better yet, as Greg Brown aptly puts it, to "taste a little of the summer."