You are what you eat

How does your soy product brand rate?

Okay, I had a longer post on this topic about half finished when the browser just stopped working. I can't bring myself to rewrite the whole thing.

The gist of it is that the Cornucopia Institute has issued a report detailing the practices and sourcing of various companies that produce and market soy products, such as soy milk, cheese alternatives, tempeh, soy sausages, and so on. The Institute has issued a ratings scorecard that shows you at a glance how your brand rates according to ten criteria, ranging from the source of the soybeans (most of us really don't want to eat anything that comes from China) and whether they're tested for GMO contamination to whether any soy lecithin in the product was extracted using hexane (hexane is a neurotoxin and a hazardous pollutant, yet it is commonly used in so-called "organic" foods).

You should consult the ratings scorecard for yourself, but I'll summarize briefly here.

The top-rated companies, which scored 5 out of 5 "beans" (instead of stars), were Eden Foods, Unisoya, Vermont Soy, Small Planet, FarmSoy, Twin Oaks, and Green Cuisine.

Some well-known soy companies, including Vitasoy and Nasoya, garnered only one bean. And in the zero bean category ... well, say goodbye to Boca Burgers, Gardenburger, Pacific Foods, Silk (a good rule of thumb is "If it's made by Dean foods, don't eat it"), and Soy Dream. These companies rated low for various reasons, but one of the main reasons is that they wouldn't disclose their sourcing. That, to me, indicates that they may be using soybeans imported from China. It is highly doubtful that China is following the organic standards defined by the USDA.

If you can't read the entire report--and you really should, if you ingest a lot of soy products--at least read the executive summary. 

You may not care about some of the criteria used by Cornucopia, such as whether the soybeans were procured from a family farm or a publicly-held corporation, while other criteria may seem more crucial to you. For that reason you owe it to yourself to read the full report's list of criteria. And I urge you to read the section on hexane. It's certainly nothing I want to ingest, yet it's used as a solvent to extract oils from various seeds and from soybeans (thus, it's probably left as a residue in soybean oil, and is most certainly a residue in many soy products).

I'm going to add that I myself am suspicious of soy generally, except for fermented soybeans. It's one of the reasons I quit being a vegetarian; too much of what I substituted for animal products was soy, with the exception of tofu (which is fermented, of course), which I didn't (and don't) like! Soy contains enzyme inhibitors that block the action of certain digestive enzymes. According to Sally Fallon and Mary Enig,

These inhibitors are large, tightly folded proteins that are not completely deactivated during ordinary cooking. They can produce serious gastric distress, reduced protein digestion and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake. In test animals, diets high in trypsin inhibitors cause enlargement and pathological conditions of the pancreas, including cancer.14

Soybeans also contain haemagglutinin, a clot-promoting substance that causes red blood cells to clump together.

Trypsin inhibitors and haemagglutinin are growth inhibitors. Weanling rats fed soy containing these antinutrients fail to grow normally. Growth-depressant compounds are deactivated during the process of fermentation, so once the Chinese discovered how to ferment the soybean, they began to incorporate soy foods into their diets.

There are other problems with soy as well, and while fermenting the beans eliminates most of the problems, it may not eliminate all of them.

So, as in all things related to food, choose wisely! The soy scorecard ought to help you make an ethical, healthy choice if you decide to keep soy products in your pantry.

Quick vegetarian meals, part one

This post is in response to a friend who asked for some fifteen-minute vegetarian recipes. I laughed and said, "Well, maybe 30-minute recipes ..." and she replied that even that would be helpful.

I was a vegetarian for nine or ten years, and believe me, it was no hardship (except, as my friend pointed out, in restaurants, which can be a problem in that you always end up having a pasta dish or the meatless pizza or some such). At the time I didn't object to soy-based meat substitutes, but today I'd balk at that, so I'm not going to include these in my menus or recipes.

Most vegetarians depend on legumes for much of their protein. I love beans, lentils, and split peas, and I relied on them for many of our meal plans. During my vegetarian years, I didn't have a pressure cooker, which was foolish of me. A pressure cooker makes fast work of dried beans, even if they're unsoaked.

But let's start at the beginning. (I want to state right here that my friend probably knows all this, and I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who hasn't stopped to consider these points.) I'm a believer in meal planning, and I plan meals covering one to two weeks. This simplifies grocery shopping, I never have to wonder "what's for dinner," and I don't rely on those nasty processed foods. I have all the ingredients I need to make dinner on a given night. It also ensures variety and gives me the advantage of being organized, so that I know I have to soak beans on Tuesday night for Wednesday's dinner. I'm not rigid about this stuff, but having a general plan works great for me.

So, the first thing to do is to plan your meals around your schedule. A busy day followed by an evening of work or social obligations is not the time for an elaborate dinner. Save that for weekends or whenever you have the luxury of time.

Second, I can't emphasize enough how much a pressure cooker can help. I can whip up split-pea soup in under half an hour, including chopping the veggies. In the smaller of my two pressure cookers, I make risottos whose taste cannot be differentiated from the time-consuming stove-top, constant-stirring-required version. Dried beans are cooked through very quickly compared to the hours of simmering they otherwise require, and they're far superior to canned beans (cooked dried garbanzo beans, in fact, seem like an entirely different vegetable from the canned variety). Vegetable broth is done in a matter of minutes.

The slow cooker (crock-pot) is also extremely valuable, especially for the working person. I had forgotten this handy tool until one summer when I had so much to do out in the garden that I never felt like cooking at the end of the day. Putting dinner in the slow cooker before noon meant that we were guaranteed a decent meal after the busiest (and grimiest!) of days. And it doesn't heat up the kitchen much, either. Among other conveniences, the crock-pot cooks previously soaked dried beans overnight so that they're ready for the next day's meal.

Next, let's consider the meal itself. Your meal should include protein, so if you're having, say, spaghetti with marinara sauce, it's a good idea not only to sprinkle your pasta with parmesan, but also to have a side salad that incorporates feta and chickpeas, or whatever cheese and bean varieties you like. To simplify putting a balanced meal together, it's helpful to have the following on hand:

• Washed salad greens. Either buy pre-washed salad greens, or wash the greens, spin them dry in a salad spinner, lay them on paper towels, roll them up in the toweling, and put them in a plastic bag. Don't add juicy veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers until you put the actual salad together, as they will cause wilting and sogginess.
• Cooked dried beans, or canned beans. These can be added to salads and pasta (and pasta salads!) and soups and casseroles ... you get the idea. Having a bean salad in the fridge is even better; use two or three kinds of beans for variety, throw in some scallions, tomato, bell pepper, sliced black olives, celery, or whatever, and toss with a vinaigrette, and you've got lunch or a dish to round out a dinner. Add cooked pasta for a great main dish salad.
• Hummus, if you like it. Spread it on a pita, topped with some fresh veggies and/or sprouts and some good yogurt, and you've got an instant lunch.
• Cheeses that you like. These can be shredded into salads, rice, pita sandwiches, quesadillas (I'll get to that), refried beans, vegetarian chili, etc. to complete the protein in a meal.
• Hard-cooked eggs. These add protein to a tossed salad, fit well in many pasta salads, and are good to eat out of hand or as deviled eggs. I love egg salad, which can be used to stuff a tomato as well as serving as a sandwich filling.
• Tofu, if you like it. I don't, but I wish I did. It can be used in all manner of dishes, including salads, soups, stir-fries, breakfast eggs or shakes, etc.
• Better Than Bouillon, vegetarian or mushroom type. This is somewhat expensive, but even a little really strengthens the taste of soups and stews. You can also make a good mushroom gravy using fresh mushrooms and the Bouillon.

Of course, I never had all these things on hand at all times, but having some of them, at least, does make things easier when time is at a premium.

Other things to consider:

• When you cook dried beans, cook more than you'll need, and freeze the rest in some of the cooking liquid for another recipe down the line. Toss cooked beans into salads, rice dishes, pasta, soup, etc. for a protein boost.

• Cook more rice than you need for a recipe, and plan to use it as fried rice in the next day or two (more on this to come).

• Freeze leftover soup, or dishes like lasagna or eggplant parmesan, in amounts suitable for lunch or for another dinner. The freezer is your friend!

• Make veggie stock when you have time and freeze it in amounts you're likely to use for your favorite recipes.

• Think about how to use one recipe two ways. For example, leftover vegetarian chili is great as a burrito filling (just simmer the excess liquid away) or even an omelet filling.

Neither of the above lists exhausts the possibilities, of course, but it should give you some ideas about planning, using ingredients efficiently, and so on.

Next up, I'll post some ideas and recipes for quick meals.

Wasted food

There's a whole blog out there devoted to the issue of wasted food: wastedfood.com.

This is not a trivial issue. Some estimates are that 40% or more of the food Americans buy is thrown out--more than $100 billion worth of food per year. Let's think about that for a moment. Consider, too, the packaging that goes into all that food we didn't actually need to buy, and the carbon footprint of the industrial food system that produced that unnecessary food. Worst of all, think about the 37 million or so people in this country who are "food insecure," who could surely use some of what the rest of us so cavalierly toss out.

I've always been unhappy about throwing food away. It just seems so wrong ... When I don't get around to canning or freezing my garden produce, the guilt is terrible--even if, as my daughter points out, it's not a total waste because it goes into the compost for next year's garden. Better, I suppose, than going to a landfill. I feel just as bad wasting whatever I've bought at the supermarket.

The freezer is indispensable in cutting down on waste. Yesterday I put two pint boxes of black bean soup in the freezer; we'd eaten leftovers for lunch a couple of times, but after two or three days one starts to worry about spoilage, so into the freezer it went. Putting leftovers in the freezer means that on any given day, I have a guaranteed no-fuss, just defrost-and-warm lunch.

When we have a large cut of meat, such as a roast, I plan for the leftovers even before I cook the roast. Roast beef sandwiches, beef-and-pasta salad, barbecued beef sandwiches, beef pot pie, roast beef hash: these are all possibilities, and rarely do I have to throw out meat.

With whole chickens, it's the same: I plan to use the leftovers for another meal (chicken divan, pot pie, etc.), and I make stock out of the carcass. Often I freeze the carcass until I have the time and inclination to make broth out of it.

I use whole grains, so I take care to store them in the freezer if I know I won't use them up before they become rancid. Whole cornmeal, steel-cut oats, whole-wheat flour and the like must be used within a few months, and I surely don't want to throw anything away, so once again, the freezer is the answer. I store nuts and seeds in the freezer as well.

One of the keys to not wasting food is to not buy too much food. Seems self-evident, and yet people do buy too much. Perhaps the large bag of salad, with its lower per-unit cost, is just too good to pass up, or there's a buy-one-get-one-free sale, but for whatever reason, Americans often buy more food than they can eat.

There's also another phenomenon at work, one I saw illustrated on the British show You Are What You Eat; people buy fruits and vegetables because they know they're "supposed" to, but then the produce doesn't get eaten. On the episode I saw, the woman of the house bought fruit galore, but the entire family, including her, passed it up in favor of cookies, donuts, chips, etc.

Late last fall I found myself with several lemons that were drying out and looking rather ill, so I juiced them all and made lemonade. I find myself doing more of this sort of thing as my horror of food waste grows. Apples, peaches, and pears can be sliced and the slices dried in the food dehydrator; berries can be frozen; overripe bananas can be frozen in their skins to be used in baked goods; citrus fruits can be juiced, and so on.

Anyway, pop over to wastedfood.com for some thought and discussion on this topic. It might serve as a reminder and an inspiration to all of us who have worried about food waste.  Oh, and check out this article in the Austin-American Statesman, too.

How does your brand of organic milk rate?

That organic milk in your refrigerator may not be what you think it is: truly organic, produced by pastured cows raised humanely by farmers concerned with sustainability and maintaining a healthy environment.

Big Agriculture wants in on the lucrative organic milk business, and they don't mind bending, or even ignoring, the rules. It's up to us, the consumers, to understand the difference between, say, Horizon milk and actual organic milk. It's up to us to help maintain the integrity of the label "organic" on the milk carton. It's up to us to help keep small farmers on their land in the face of the almost overpowering clout of agribusiness.

As Cornucopia's report says,

. . . consumers should also recognize that an increasing amount of milk used in certain organic dairy products is coming from factory farms that are employing suspect practices that skirt organic regulations and negatively impact human nutrition and the health and well-being of livestock. Nearly 20% of the name-brands now available on grocery shelves scored a substandard rating. And a growing number of new factory farms—housing thousands of cows in confinement conditions—are in development because of strong organic commodity prices, growing consumer demand, a shortage of certified organic milk, and a reluctance by federal regulators to enforce the current organic rules.

In other words, some so-called organic milk comes from factory farms.

For the Cornucopia Institute, the two biggest issues in judging the integrity of the organic label on dairy products are whether the animals are really pastured, and whether calves are raised on the farm or are brought in as conventional animals

that might have been managed using prohibited materials (milk replacer/cow's blood, antibiotics, conventional feed containing potential pesticide contamination, genetically engineered feed, poultry manure, etc.).

If replacement calves are brought in, the organic regulations say that these animals "should be certified and managed organically from the last third of gestation." Alas, the factory farms don't really care what the regulations say.

The five-cow rating goes to those brands that come from farms that maintain complete control over their products and receive 100% of the profits from the sale of such products. These farms adhere strictly to sustainable, organic practices. The four-cow rating goes to excellent products marketed by larger companies who nevertheless buy from small farmers or from a supplier who deals directily with small organic dairy farms. Companies in the lower ratings have a questionable commitment to organics.

Forget about Aurora and Horizon--but then, you knew that, right? I switched from Meijer organic milk once I saw the ratings. The milk I last bought doesn't appear on Cornucopia's list (Grass Point), so I'd really like to know more.

You can see the ratings here. Check them out, and see whether your organic milk purchase really supports small, ethical dairy farmers--or some soulless CAFO somewhere.

[I have no idea why the font has deviated from the usual. Sigh.]

 

Farm-to-School gets a boost in Michigan

Here's a welcome bit of news: my state, Michigan, recently took steps to make it easier for schools to purchase locally grown food for school cafeterias. In doing so, the state joined 16 other states that already have taken steps to encourage farm-to-school programs.

Agriculture is an important sector of Michigan's economy, but small farmers, like their counterparts throughout the U.S., have a tough time surviving in this era of mega-farms, CAFOs, and globalization. If schools use local foods in their cafeterias, not only will children have healthier options, but farmers will also benefit by having a new source of income.

House Bills 6365, 6366, and 6368 promote farm-to-school food by (1) relaxing bidding regulations so that schools can more easily obtain local foods; (2) directing the state Departments of Education and Agriculture to facilitate connections between farmers and school food programs; and (3) encouraging planned construction of new schools to consider including kitchens capable of producing fresh, healthy meals and also accommodating hands-on learning.

There are many more details included in the bills--do read the article linked for more information. It's very exciting to me that Michigan is finally getting serious about farm-fresh foods for its school kids.

Funny honey, honey laundering, and other crimes against nature

If you like honey--and many of us have switched to honey for baking and other sweetening needs--you need to be aware that not only is there some counterfeit honey being sold in the U.S., but also honey that's been "laundered"--like drug money--and honey containing banned antibiotics.

As usual, China is the major culprit in all cases. Honey from China may contain traces of chloramphenicol, an antibiotic Chinese beekeepers use in their hives to prevent disease. Chloramphenicol has been banned by the FDA for use in any food product. Two other antibiotics, iprofloxacin and Enrofloxacin, have also recently been the cause of import alerts issued by the FDA.

Knowing that the U.S. has rules in place against the use of chloramphenicol in food products, and also desiring to avoid U.S. tariffs and inspections, China often "transships" honey: honey is shipped from China to another country and then from that country to the U.S., with bogus papers and export labels.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,

honey brokers, bee experts and foreign customs officials say they're suspicious that seven of the top 12 countries appear to be exporting far more honey than their domestic bees produce or their export agencies acknowledge. These countries include Vietnam, India, Thailand, Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia.

[snip]

Countries that have few if any commercial beekeepers, such as Singapore, are now exporting significant quantities of honey, records show. That includes the Grand Bahamas, which has been listed as the country of origin for honey shipped into Houston, authorities say.

"I have a difficult time seeing the Grand Bahamas as a major honey producer," said David Westervelt, a Florida state apiculture inspector. "It's an island. You move bees on there and they'll die."

And then there's the question of what's actually in the bottle that's labeled "Honey." If it came from China or India, it may not much resemble honey after having been

put through an ultra-filtration process that is meant to remove contaminants. Honey is heavily diluted with water, then repeatedly boiled and filtered until it returns to a more natural consistency. Those who have tested and tasted the filtered brew said the process can completely remove all traces of contaminants, "including the color."

But there's a downside.

"In the process of taking out the chemicals, they also take out all the good qualities of the honey. What the consumer is left with is a very low-quality, sweet product -- but certainly not honey," said Mark Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association.

"If it is cheap and packers can use it to blend into other dark, cheap honey to make it lighter in color and taste a tad better, the ignorant general consumer is none the wiser. Caveat emptor," he warned.

Additionally, the honey may be adulterated with sugar or syrups. Unfortunately, the U.S. has no standards as to what constitutes honey, so it's impossible to take legal action. Got that? No legal definition or standard as to what constitutes honey.

You should also be aware that there is no such thing, according to those in the honey business, as U.S. organic honey. Honey bees travel far and wide, up to two and a half miles, so that they are pretty much always in the vicinity of pesticides and other pollutants. It IS possible to buy organic honey produced in Canada or Argentina, but the U.S. is too heavily developed for organic honey to be a possibility outside of, one imagines, some isolated area that would yield only enough honey for a few local people.

Also, "U.S. Grade A" and other such claims on the label are completely meaningless, as the USDA does not grade honey nor have any such standards. 

So, caveat emptor, honey-lovers. Your best bet, of course, is to buy honey locally. You can usually find locally produced honey at farmer's markets--I'd want to speak to the seller and get a feel for whether the honey is really produced locally--and sometimes from local stores or farm stands that stock local produce and items like locally collected and processed maple syrup and honey. We buy our honey from Honeyflow Farm, where a customer can actually see a glassed-in hive with the bees hard at work, and where the honey comes out of a big barrel and flows into the container the customer brings. (The Farm has a mail order business, as well, offering containers of honey.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I want to know where my food comes from, and I want to know what's in it. That's why, wherever possible, we're locavores, and that's why we cook from scratch. When people mess with a natural ambrosia like honey, you know we're living in a really dysfunctional world.

Michael Pollan on how to eat well

Michael Pollan, who wrote the excellent and eye-opening The Omnivore's Dilemma, has a new book out: In Defense of Food, and I can hardly wait to read it.

Pollan has famously summed up his advice on eating in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Now he goes on to explore the question of just what food is in our food, or should that be "food"?

Here are his 12 Commandments on eating healthfully, courtesy of my Food First newsletter (so no link, alas):

1. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce.
3. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot.
4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5. Shop the outside isles of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmers' market or CSA.
7. Pay more, eat less.
8. Eat a wide variety of species.
9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook, and if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals, and eat them only at tables. And
12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

Now here's an eating plan I can get behind! I especially like commandments 1, 3, 9, 10, and 12.

We Americans are pitiable when it comes to food. We treat it as if it's not important, happy to have so much cheap "food" compared to other industrialized societies, ignorant of what we're doing to ourselves. As a people, we obsess over food, yet can't seem to find our way to eating a reasonable, health-promoting diet. We diet and then gain the weight back without ever deeply changing our eating habits and routines, only to go back to some fad diet or other.

And I think our disrespect for our food goes hand in hand with disrespect for the land we're also ruining with our huge factory farms. The two seem to me to be inseparable. We need to learn respect for the basics: soil, water, ecosystems, because those things need to be in good condition in order to grow the nutritional necessities of human beings. When we cavalierly buy our meat from CAFOs, we're guilty of contributing to some of the worst practices, the worst crimes that can be committed against land and water. And we're buying "food" that doesn't meet our human needs, whether it's grain-fed beef or vegetables and fruits grown in depleted soil that lacks nutrients. (In this regard, do read Freelearner's terrific post "A disease of malnutrition.")

I know that too many Americans cannot afford truly good food. But many can, yet they don't--or won't--pay the higher price for the better foods. Whether this is out of ignorance, miserliness, or lack of conviction that food really matters all that much, I don't know; I suspect all three are at play in the population as a whole. Making the situation worse is the lack of a national cuisine, I suppose, and the concomitant lack of the French or Italian citizen's reverence for food and food traditions.

In any case, if you yourself want to eat better, do keep in mind Michael Pollan's twelve commandments. You can't go wrong, and your body will thank you.

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 View from the Loft]

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 to View from the Loft]

Further adventures in locavorianism

About six months ago I wrote about locavorianism, the practice of eating only or mostly local foods, and our attempts to seek out local foods.

It's time for an update. How have we done? Where have we succeeded or failed?

To begin with the failures, we still have not gotten into the habit of buying local milk, and it's hard to come by locally produced eggs consistently. I'm making an effort in that department, though, having put our name and phone number on the list of a local organic farmer should he ever have extra eggs.

On the other hand, we have locally raised free-range organic chickens in our freezer now, and we had a local turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner. In all honesty, the turkey was very expensive and didn't taste all that different from the turkeys we've had in the past that purported to be Amish (or Amish "style," perhaps, whatever that means). The chickens, however, are excellent, and it will be very difficult ever to eat another supermarket chicken. I promise you that if you search out free-range chickens, you'll be forever glad you did.

We also have half a side of grass-fed beef in our freezer, minus a couple of packages we've already used. We drove a couple of hours one-way to pick it up at a small meat processor's, where we met Melvin, the grass farmer who raised the beef. Before we parted ways, Melvin told us he wanted feedback, as he is always trying to improve his product through selective breeding; he also wants to know what the consumer wants, what satisfies or disappoints. When I ordered the beef, he wanted to know if we preferred "lean, less lean, or fat." From what I'd read of grass-fed beef, I couldn't imagine that "fat" would be that fat, so I went with that. But he told us that one customer had found the beef too fat and took advantage of Melvin's buy-back policy. When we loaded the beef into the car, I couldn't believe, looking at it, that anyone could find it too fat. It's quite lean, actually, although some of it did have some nice, though I would say minimal, marbling.

Melvin's other concern was that we knew how to cook grass-fed beef properly. Because it is lean, and because the cattle actually use their muscles to walk around while grazing, rather than standing in their own waste all day, grass-fed beef requires different cooking strategies than grain-fed. We assured him that we had read the information he'd sent us and would treat the beef with care. You can't blame him: one of his customers wanted his money back for the round steaks he'd ordered because they were tough. It turned out he'd treated them as if they were porterhouse steaks! That's just plain foolish.

You can imagine that, having spent hundreds of dollars on this beef, we were eager to try it. We selected a round roast and slow-cooked it in liquid for several hours. When we sat down to eat it, we were immediately struck by how much more flavor it had, a richer, more complex flavor. It tasted like beef, the way I remembered my mother's pot roast tasting. Jim said it reminded him a little of buffalo; I wouldn't know, as I've never eaten buffalo. All I knew was that it tasted like the beef of my childhood and youth, when my dad bought locally raised and processed beef for his grocery store. It was so delicious and quite tender. We ooh'ed and aah'ed over it the whole time we were eating. Jim thought it was a little chewier, but I didn't find it much different from the last roast we'd gotten from a local store.

After being dry aged for two weeks, the flavor was much more concentrated than it is in "wet aged" beef. Dry aging evaporates water from the meat and gives certain enzymes time to develop, so that you end up with a more tender, more flavorful product. Contrast that with the usual commercial practice today of vacuum packing and "wet aging" the beef so that no weight is lost. Dry aging is rarely done these days and is usually available only at upscale restaurants and groceries, so we're fortunate to have dry aged beef.

Anyway, we were smitten. Over Thanksgiving weekend, when my daughter and son-in-law were here, I made the leftovers into hash, and you should have seen it disappear! Hannah was happy to have a chance to taste the beef (her half was still in our freezer; she was taking it home that weekend); after all, she too had laid out a lot of money. Her first taste made her exclaim, "Well, that ruins every other kind of beef for us." We're hooked!

We also learned of a local hog farmer, and while we wouldn't want half a hog, this particular farmer offers variety packages of pork weighing about 25 pounds. Many stores around here stock this farm's products in small freezers, so we bought some pork chops the other day to check them out. They were good! They tasted like actual pork! So we may very well be ordering a package.

Of course, in addition to the meat and poultry, we've got lots of veggies in the freezer, grown right here on our land. We've got jars of salsa, tomato juice, jam, and applesauce in the pantry. We've got dried herbs, tomatoes, scallions, and leeks. We bought half a gallon of locally produced honey earlier this fall. And we've got our locally grown wheat and rye berries; buckwheat and barley; black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and a couple of varieties of heirloom beans (most of these we grew ourselves) on our pantry shelves as well. So we're pretty well stocked up for a winter of eating lots of locally grown foods--meat, veggies, grains, and legumes.

That feels pretty darned good. I know where the food came from; I know that it's safe to eat; I know that it's not adulterated with all kinds of additives or tainted by pesticides; I know that I'm helping local farmers remain on their farms. Best of all, I get to eat food that tastes really, really good!