Eating in the Dark

Dangers of pesticides (again)

2010-05-17T12:34:00.002-05:00

I was about to reference my older posts where I discussed pesticides, but then I realized how many there were. I've talked about this a lot, and it's really obvious to some extent, but I am still amazing how many people have no real concern about pesticides. Few people remotely consider this when popping huge juicy conventionally grown strawberries in their mouth (one of the most heavily sprayed crops out there).

Now a new study that made the front page of cnn.com today discusses the link between pesticides and ADHD. While scientists cannot exactly find a cause and effect connection, studies are showing that higher amounts of pesticide by-products in children essentially doubles their risk of ADHD. As studies consistently show and as I have consistently written here, everything is worse the smaller you are. When you give something unhealthy to an adult (pesticides, chemicals, etc.) to a child or god forbid an infant, the effects are dramatically worse. It is clear from studies that children who consume conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have far higher levels of pesticide and chemical residue in their systems. We are only figuring out all the harms these cause.

All you can do is to try and eat organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible, wash your fruits and vegetables fully regardless, and to the extent you can eat some but not all organic, prioritize your purchases as I've previously written about here. And if you have growing children, their consumption is far more of a concern than yours. Additionally, farmers markets are already opening across the country. You can ask the farmers about their pesticide use. Some are organic, others are essentially organic but not certified as such, others use limited pesticides on some products, and others are really no different than any other conventional farmer. In Chicago, the french market in the train station downtown offers organic fruits and vegetables that you can buy in bulk and take back to your office.

Local Food + Beer

2010-05-13T10:55:00.004-05:00

Anyone in Chicago who likes to eat local and is a fan of good beer should check out the Locavore Dinner at Hopleaf this Monday, May 17. It's a bit pricey ($75/head) but should be worth it. I'm trying to make it. I'd also love to make it to their beer pairing dinner two days later on Wednesday, May 19th but I'll be out of town (please no one rob me now that I've made this known). That one's $50/head. All beers are from Half Acre Brewery, which is local to Chicago. Hopleaf is at 5148 N. Clark (way north almost at Evanston). If anyone does make it to either/both I'd love to hear what you think.

Ethical wording

2010-05-04T21:48:00.004-05:00

I have previously discussed here the problems I see with companies who love to tell you how many servings of a certain vitamin they have in their cereal, or how their bottled drink provides multiple services of fruits and vegetables (V8 is probably the worst at this). (And while not a matter of wording so to speak, a related issue is serving size -- which I always find fascinating going from a traditional grocery store, where I seem to eat 4 servings of everything possible, to a Whole Foods or similar, where I seem to actually eat 1 serving of most things. So serving size is also purposely misleading. You want to see how much that fat is in that individual size frozen pizza to find that it has 117 calories per serving but then see that there are 3.5 servings per container. You're standing in the grocery store holding the freezer door open -- are you about to do the math or just decide based on something else? And I know I already ranted about that here.)

In any event, not everyone is in the wrong here. I picked up an Izzie the other day and noticed that it said it provided nearly 3 servings of fruit -- but suggested right there that the USDA suggests eating whole fruits, so be sure to eat your fruits too. V8 practically comes right out and tells Americans who don't know any better that they can just drink a couple V8s a day and they don't have to worry one lick about eating fruits and vegetables. But Izzie take a more responsible approach. I was just buying rolling papers (long story, and entirely unrelated to my last post) from an online discount store and right on the front page in bold all caps it says:

SMOKING WILL KILL YOU. IF YOU HAVE NOT STARTED, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. IF YOU CAN, QUIT. YOUR HEALTH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR BUSINESS.

Not many businesses in this country would agree with that statement. (My much repeated outrageous and liberal theory that government should be watching our health -- and environment and safety and on and on -- to counteract business' single-minded motive: profit at all costs, would apply nicely here.) This has become a bit of a rant, but I wanted to do a shout out to Izzy, and rollingpaperwarehouse.com and all the businesses that realistically show serving sizes so we aren't misled by how many calories or how much fat is actually in something, and to all the other businesses that do one thing they don't actually have to do by regulation or law, and don't actually choose to do based on a desire for more sales, more profits. If anyone has more I'd love to continue the shout out. Feel free to comment.

Rx Weed

2010-04-09T16:38:00.004-05:00

Not many educated people I come in contact with in my rough age group oppose the legalization of marijuana. Its use for medical purposes is currently permitted in 14 states and there is a decent chance it will be legalized for the same limited purposes in Illinois within the year (the bill passed in the Illinois Senate a few weeks ago and now need only pass in the House to take effect -- currently only THC pills and injections are permitted). I'm also surprised at how many conservatives support its legalization (for medical purposes at the very least) when you ask them.

There are really two issues: medical use and general legalization. General legalization is something I firmly believe makes sense but that is a recreational activity I won't discuss here. More importantly to the purview of this blog is its medical use. Pot is of substantial benefit to a huge list of diseases and ailments. It has been found to help of course with nausea and loss of appetite associated with cancer treatments, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's, arthritis, Crohn's, epilepsy, glaucoma, migraines, MS, tourette's and a variety of other terminal illnesses and symptoms including chronic pain. It is, quite literally, a natural medicine. Rather than a pill that is developed in a laboratory, made of synthetic materials, tested on mice, apes, and human test groups, approved by questionably independent governmental agencies, guarded by BigPharma for patent value, sometimes dangerous when we have had a chance to actually view its long-term effects, and not infrequently having such bad side effects it trades one problem for another, here you have a natural product that has withstood the test of time.

Cannabis is a natural medicine. Just as aloe has distinct medicinal properties, so does cannabis. Adderall, pain killers, muscle relaxers and other prescription drugs are widely abused. Yet Adderall and similar drugs are being prescribed at record rates every year. The fact that weed it is not utilized and encouraged for medical purposes is a shame. It further emphasizes that this country's priorities are not proper. We do not effectively value nature and we do not appropriately distrust human intervention in nature. Weed is the tea and prescription drugs are the red bull.

Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime

2010-04-07T09:43:00.003-05:00

Mighty Monsanto recently indicated declining profits, primarily due to prices falling for its Roundup herbicide (Monsanto invented the weed killer but its patent expired a decade ago). Since then Monsanto has been focusing on seeds. It developed genetically engineered crops to resist its own toxic product (so called "Roundup Ready" plants), that allowed farmers to spray liberally and only kill what they want to kill (never mind that the underlying chemicals, called glyphosate, have been found throughout freshwater bodies, in ground water, etc. -- with non-Monsanto sponsored studies showing that even low concentrations on glyphosate have drastic health implications for pregnant women, among others). This started with soy but has expanded to include corn, cotton and a variety of others. Many more are in development.

This is the future for Big Agra: seeds. Indeed, Monsanto has indicated taht herbicides such as Roundup no longer play a pivotal role in the company's future growth. R&D investments are now focused instead on its "seeds-trait business to develop next-generation corn, soy and wheat crops that can withstand droughts, pests and herbicides, as well as provide greater yields." Today Monsanto is the largest seed supplier in the world. But its profitability thus far and its future profitability, relies on highly questionable practices. For instance, Monsanto acquired the companies developing seeds with gene use restriction technology -- the "terminator gene". These are seeds that are genetically modified so that any seeds in the crops are sterile. Great news for the world's largest seed company as a farmer would then be required to buy seeds every year. Luckily, outrage from farmers and some third-world governments have thus far kept terminator seeds from being sold, and India and Brazil have banned the technology. However, a company like Monsanto is perfect poised to get them adopted in countries throughout the world. Never mind the risk of cross-pollination with non-terminator plants (resulting in further sterilized seeds), the risk of starvation as farmers and families in third-world countries can no longer be self-sufficient, and so on.

The sad thing is that the U.S. government was essentially responsible for the development of this technology. Monsanto is in bed with the U.S. government more so than any other company. It now controls the technology. It is the largest seed manufacturer and distributor in the world. And it needs new ways to remain highly profitable. This is something we as a society need to continue monitoring to ensure that it remains in the lab.

Coconut water

2010-03-30T11:46:00.003-05:00

I see more and more about coconut water lately and I felt compelled to write about it. A coconut (not a nut) is the world's largest seed. Hundreds of people die each year from falling coconuts. But on the flip side, a coconut is one of the most amazing foods. Coconut water has similar properties to human blood and has been used for plasma transfusions on the battle field as it is nearly identical in property. It has been gaining popularity because it is a natural electrolyte-dense liquid. After a workout it is about the best thing you can drink. Its levels of sugars, salts and vitamins, potassium make it just about the perfect liquid.

Brands like Vita Coco, Zico, O.N.E. Coconut Water, etc. Vita Coco alone sold $20 million in coconut water last year. But let's be clear -- you need to drink coconut water from a coconut. The moment that coconut water is exposed to air, it quickly begins to lose its nutritional benefits. Even worse, most companies pasteurize their products to improve shelf-life -- which amounts to heating the products to high degrees and can also significantly reduce health benefits. Some companies now use a cold sterilization process, but this only helps with the problems of pasteurization, and not with oxygenation.

People are very intimated to try and access coconut water through a coconut. It is not all that tough and the benefits are worth the trouble. Look for the white coconuts in grocery stores. These are called Thai coconuts or young coconuts, and will have a cone shape, somewhat soft to the touch. Avoid the hard, brown, totally round coconuts. Young cocunuts should cost in the neighborhood of $1.50/$2.00 each. They will keep for a bit in the fridge but I find that they don't last all that long. It takes a decent amount of force to penetrate the inner shell of the coconut. Once you do this once or twice it will be easy but it is intimidating and potentially dangerous.

I open coconuts pretty much the old fashioned way -- I place it on the counter, flat side down, put my left arm far away from the coconut (or a good way to do this is to put your left arm behind your back), take the largest, thickest knife I own and use it like a hatchet using the force of the knife swinging down to break through. You won't see anything happen exactly, but turn the coconut so that when you do this a few times you connect the lines from your knife around the top of the coconut. You can do this fairly high up on the cone. Then, carefully, stick the corner of your knife into one of the cuts you made and try to pierce through (if this doesn't work on that cut try another as some will be deeper than others). Then continue to wedge the knife in as you lever it up to pop open the coconut. You can then insert a straw or pour it into a glass.

There are other ways people open coconuts that are safer, and more creative (such as using a screwdriver and a hammer), but I find this old fashioned way pretty easy once you get it once. Just be sure to keep your other hand way out of the way. If you hold the coconut when you do this, for instance, you are asking to lose a finger.

There is a small amount of meat inside the coconut. This effortlessly scrapes off with a spoon -- you don't need to open it any more to access the meat. Enjoy, and be careful!

Prarie Fire & Taxim (Eating Well in Chicago)

2010-03-23T15:00:00.005-05:00

In the past I've tried to spotlight places that serve grassfed beef or go out of their way to focus on local produce and pastured meat (such as Burrito Beach's Tallgrass beef burrito and DMK Burger Bar). I've neglected to write about one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago (Taxim) and a pretty new restaurant near downtown (Prairie Fire).

Taxim is a (gourmet) Greek restaurant in the Bucktown/Wicker Park area of Chicago. It is on Milwaukee right by the North/Milwaukee/Damen ("Six Corners") intersection. Everything at Taxim is homemade. They make their own pita bread for their homemade chickpea and eggplant dips, their own phyllo dough for their version of spanakopita (it's made with leeks and dill instead of spinach and it's quite literally amazing), and so on. They source their vegetables locally as well as their meat -- local farm-raised chicken, lamb from Mint Creek, and so forth. The menu also features plenty of vegetarian and seafood dishes (without question the best octopus dish I've ever had in my life). They also feature a 100% Greek wine list. I have been there many times and consistently love it. Numerous people I've taken there have said it is among the best meals they've had in Chicago. They also feature different size courses (small, medium and large) so if you're in the mood to try a bunch of different things they're already set up for that. Definitely check it out! (And invite me!)

Newly opened Prairie Fire is the sister restaurant to Praire Grass in Northbrook. The West Loop restaurant near Clinton and Lake focuses on comfort food but uses only local, seasonal ingredients. They feature dishes using Bill Kurtis' Tallgrass beef, Mint Creek's lamb, etc. (I'm a big fan of both and have previously written about Tallgrass here, here, here and here, and Mint Creek here and here.) Vegetables are from local farms and taste like it. I've been a couple times. The first time I had the "#1 Sirloin Burger" which had a thick amish blue cheese crust on top of a good size grassfed beef patty with no bun. It was good. The second time I split two dishes: the moussaka with Mint Creek Farms lamb and the phyllo strudel with spinach and feta. I thought the moussaka was just OK and the phyllo strudel didn't do it for me at all. Then again I had a cold so perhaps my taste buds were less than perfect. I can say their desserts all look amazing. I've had their homemade cookies with homemade ice cream and it is hard to eat either anywhere again as nothing compares. They also have a small but interesting cocktail list using local liquors and other very interesting ingredients (I have yet to try any though). But regardless of some of my hesitations, many people I've talked to who have dined here really like it and I commend them for what they are trying to do. Maybe they haven't quite got it all right yet, but I think they're on their way. (Right now they are also participating in Chef's Week.)

If anyone has tried any new restaurants that make an effort to feature local produce or animal products, I'd love to hear about them here. Please leave a comment or get in touch with me and write a guest post!

We are fat

2010-03-22T13:57:00.003-05:00

It is no secret that obesity in America is a huge problem. It should still be less of a secret though. We talk about terrorism constantly, people who die from car accidents, cancer, etc. But obesity kills well over 100,000 Americans every year. This happens through coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other health risks. Obesity also drastically complicates recovery from medical procedures, dramatically increases overall health-care costs and has all sorts of quality of life issues.

According to figures from the CDC, 25 years ago, 8 states had obesity levels between 10 and 14 percent (the highest reported). Five years later the majority of the country hit that level (still the highest levels reported in any state). By 1995, the CDC had added a new category for states that had obese populations between 15-19 percent -- and half the country met that higher threshold. In just 5 more years (now 2000), the CDC had added yet another category for states where obesity levels were over 20 percent of the population. By then only one state in the entire country had less than 15 percent obesity. Another 8 years later (now 2008 -- the last year statistics were gathered), TWO more categories had to be added to reflect states where obesity now affected between 25 to 29 percent of the population and for states with over 30 percent obesity. The vast majority of states, five years ago, had obesity rates between 20 and 29 percent. Reports today put about 1 in 3 people as obese, though the CDC reports that the rate of obesity may finally be slowing. In summary, in the past 30 years, obesity has more than doubled in the United States.

Obesity is more likely to affect lower income people and minorities. Blacks are most likely to be obese, followed by Hispanics, followed by whites. People are more likely to be obese in the South and Midwest than the West or Northeast. Over 40 percent of blacks are obese in at least 5 states. Compared to whites, blacks have a 51 percent higher prevalence of obesity and Hispanics have a 21 percent higher prevalence.

Obesity is also a major concern for our youth. About 1/5th of America's children and adolescents is obese. Business Week recently reported that about 7.3 percent of boys and 5.5 percent of girls are classified as extremely obese in California -- as state with below average obesity. A 10-20 year lifespan reduction is expected for these children, helping contribute to the risk that the next generation may be the first in history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

While obesity can be dramatically impacted by genetics, metabolism, environment and culture, there must be some reason our country has seen the trends it saw in the last 30 years. Food consumption and exercise are certainly two large issues. But what does bother me is the emphasis of exercise as the government and food companies continue to make the problem one of personal choice. That is really a separate discussion but I for one believe that diet is far more to blame than less exercise.

What could have changed? For one thing we work more. Americans have consistently worked longer hours and moved towards a two-income household over the decades. For another we eat worse. Much worse. Papers in Phoenix show that readers consistently rank the best Italian restaurant as the Olive Garden, the best Chinese restaurant as P.F. Chang's and the best French restaurant as La Madeline. Really? Every day, about 1/4 of adult Americans will eat fast food. Over the period we saw obesity rates skyrocket, so did the availability of fast food. 40 years ago there were about 30,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S. Today there are about 250,000. About 15 percent of our schools have fast food chain outlets. Studies in California show a higher likelihood of obesity if a fast food restaurant is located within close walking distance of a school. At the same time we have seen a dramatic increase of so called fast casual restaurants and low-priced full service restaurants (some of which our friends in Phoenix so adore). The problem is that these types of places make their offerings appear healthy when they can contain more calories and fat than a typical fast food meal.

Of course access to fresh fruits and vegetables is also a large issue as I have written about before in this blog. Initiatives are underway to continue to incentivize grocery stores to enter lower income markets. Unfortunately, we still face a situation where calories about about 2x more expensive for produce than processed foods.

The solution is very complicated because it must be workable for low income and minority individuals. It must also be workable for our youth who are bombarded with advertisements for a largely impulse driven industry. But at the end of the day the solution will rest in increasing access to healthy foods, reducing availability of fast food options, decreasing consumption of soda, and emphasizing the need to be active. Just as credit card companies must now show you how long it will take to payoff your balance with minimum payments, I'd love to see a world where people understand just how much it will take to work off that Big Mac combo meal (1300 calories and 55 g of fat). (It's about 3 hours on a stairmaster.)

Soda

2010-03-16T14:30:00.000-05:00

Pepsi recently announced a plan to remove sugery drinks from schools. This follows the 2006 adoption of guidelines for the same purpose, that have so far seen little progress from my understanding. Of course, this is only one element of the problem as intense marketing to children is a huge factor in addition to access at school. It will be interesting to see where this goes, if anywhere but in the PR mill.

Everyone knows soda is bad for them. It's no secret. But just how bad for you is it? A can or regular soda has approx. 9 teaspoons of sugar -- so that 24 ouncer from the drive-thru has a full 18 teaspoons. This isn't natural sugar but usually high fructose corn syrup -- a byproduct of corn. Of course, regular soda can also make a big impact in your daily calories. Diet soda has neither of these vices -- its sugar is artificial and it contains very few calories. This leads many people to believe that diet soda isn't really bad for you. I used to have a boss that drank about 9 cans a day. Coke has started to advertise this way -- two cans of Diet Coke = a two hour meeting. (This phenomenon is seen everywhere with "diet" foods -- people eat substantially more of them when they believe they are lower in fat, calories, etc.)

It is hard to take a strong stance against artificial sweetners. Americans consume more than people in any other country (we're also the fattest and have the highest levels of degenerative diseases). And scientific research is unclear. What worries me first off are the historical problems with artificial sweetners. We keep realizing that certain ones aren't so good for you, come out with new ones, and then trust that they are safe when the message comes from the exact same people who said it before. (Food companies' influence has dramatically increased over the decades -- not the other way around.) Aspartame alone is considered safe, but it is 180x sweeter than sugar, and high consumption of sweeteners have been linked to brain tumors and other cancer in rodents. Certain side effects of aspartame are well documented: dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, memory loss, and mood swings.

But let's look at some of the studies that suggest artificial sweetners aren't so harmless. Studies of people drinking regular and diet soda have shown that risk of obesity increases with diet soda. One study of 1500 people, for instance, found that the risk of obesity increased 41% for every can of diet soda consumed in a day. It is unclear exactly why this happens, but likely that artificial sugars confuse the brain and alter the body's normal satiety triggers, causing people to then eat more. So much more, apparently, to make up for all the calories and sugar in regular soda and then some. (This alone says a lot as your average regular soda drinker would lose a pound a week on average if he gave it up.)

Both diet and regular soda have ingredients that deprive the body of nutrients such as high sodium levels and phsophoric acid -- which leaches calcium from the body and can alter pH balances to an unhealthy level. I have never tried this but apparently soda will eat away at metal in a surprisingly short period of time. Pretty scary thought. Some holistic practitioners believe that diet soda has a corrosive impact on the GI tract when consumed in excess. Like almost everything unhealthy I have ever mentioned on this site, the same applies here -- it is particularly damaging to growing children. Another problem is what we're really getting from soda. Does it really quench your thirst? Soda contains high levels of sodium which makes us thirsty and caffeine that acts as a diuretic.

So where do you go? Well natural alternatives are there and more are coming our or becoming more widely available all the time. Some contain xylitol, others stevia, etc. (xylitol comes from trees and stevia from plants). Tea contains caffeine that may otherwise be missed, and also contains antioxidants and a variety of other benefits (depending on green or black).

Soda companies also recently experimented with their "throw back" products that contained all natural sugar -- a decent step forward. But these were mostly temporary promotional products. I'll be very interested to see how much soda actually leaves schools.

Missouri residents win suit against hog farm

2010-03-05T14:09:00.003-06:00

As you may know if you read this, as unsurprising as it is, I am very much against so called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These are large scale industrialized farming operations that facilitate the breeding, raising and slaughtering of large numbers of animals in the cheapest way possible for the company. And I say "the company" because it is well known that CAFOs are quite costly, just that most of that cost is externalized. We pay for it with our health, with our environment, with our tax dollars, and so on. Few CAFOs are not directly or indirectly linked to Big Agra, which has its hands so deep in the pockets of all levels of government in farm states that it is difficult to even notice anymore. That influence has helped the building of more and more CAFOs in states across this country for all sorts of animals, reduced power of local governments to impact locations based on zoning restrictions or otherwise, and made it pretty much guaranteed that no elected official will take a stand against them.

Thankfully, we have a taken one step forward against CAFOs. A group of 15 Missouri residents recently filed a lawsuit againt the owners of a hog-based CAFO in Berlin, Missouri, owned by Premium Standard Farms. The CAFO produces about 200,000 hogs annually. The stench from the CAFO was too much for local residents to handle. Unlike any remotely sustainable agricultural practice where manure is used to fertilize fields and crops, as part of a natural cycle, CAFOs accumulate massive amounts of manure in an unnatural density, that tends to sit on the floor of the CAFO and is ultimately channeled to a nearby area essentially creating a pond or lake of manure. Yesterday, a jury of other Missouri residents awarded the plaintiffs $11 million. A previous lawsuit brought in 1999 by all but 1 of those plaintiffs yielded $1.4 million against Premium Standard Farms.

Suits such as this are not unprecedented. A couple in another area of Missouri filed a suit last year against another hog farm and won a $1.1 million settlement. The attorney who represented the couple claims to have filed about 350 similar cases against CAFOs throughout Missouri.

What is interesting here is that the CAFO was technically in compliance with state environmental laws, but was found to violate other standards required when dealing with neighbors through their rights of enjoyment over their own properties. But we already see signs of Big Agra trying to exact its influence. Premium Standard Farms did not hide its message when it said that the verdict gave the company "serious concerns" about making any future investments in Missouri. On top of that, I would only be surprised tohear that Big Agra is NOT already taking steps to change laws in every farm state to prevent any such future suits from prevailing anywhere. All it takes is for a little exception to be carved out for CAFOs.

Premium Standard Farms is owned by Smithfield Foods (of Virginia). Smithfield operates under that name (known mostly for spiral sliced hams) as well as Butterball (turkey, etc.), Farmland (hickory smoked bacon), John Morell (cocktail weiners), Carroll's Foods (turkey), Amrour, Curly's, Patrick Cudahy, Cook's Ham, North Side Foods and Stafano Foods (as well as numerous international only brand names). In addition to Premium Standard Farms, Smithfield operates domestic CAFOs under the name Murphy-Brown LLC and international CAFOs in Poland, Romania and Mexico under the names AgriPlus, Smithfield Ferme, Granjas Carroll de Mexico, and Norson.

Natural products

2010-02-24T10:12:00.003-06:00

My co-worker, Pamela, was asking me about natural cleaning products the other day and suggested I write about them. I've mentioned some of these ideas before but the basic premise I go by is that we live in a world full of toxins, from pollution to chemical cleaners, to fire retardant chemicals in your chairs, mattresses and airplanes, to fluoride in your toothpaste (yes, it is a toxin), to pesticides in and on your produce, to growth hormones in your meat, and on and on. I live in Chicago, I sleep on a regular mattress (though I plan to buy a chemical-free one soon), I fly on a lot of airplanes. I'm exposed to a massive amount of toxins. So I try and limit what I can. In my home, I don't use anything unnatural. From what is used to clean my floors, bathrooms, dishes, laundry and windows, to what I use in the shower, on my toothbrush and in my hair -- it's all natural. This is better for me and it's better for the environment. It also all works essentially just as well. Yes, it is more expensive, but to me it is worth it.

Another very important reason to do this: my pets. Cats and dogs lick their feet and put toys in their mouth that have been washed or been on the ground or fell in the toilet (gross, but it happens). They tend to be much smaller than us, and therefore their tolerance for chemicals is much less. If you use chemicals to clean your carpet or your wood floor, your cat or dog is literally ingesting those. (Yes, I also feed my cats $5/day organic, human-grade food, but that's a different story.)

Babies are of course a similar issue. They crawl on the ground, touch everything, then stick their hands in their mouth. Look at what your baby may actually be sticking in his/her mouth. A lot of traditional cleaners are extremely toxic. If you swallow any you need to go to a poison control center. My natural cleaners just suggest you drink a glass of water. That makes me a lot more comfortable if I had a little bugger crawling around.

Now what to buy and where to buy it.... This is of course a personal thing, but I'll be presumptuous enough to share my thoughts. Whole Foods has everything you need in this department. But it is expensive and the variety may be limited. Though now many of the larger Whole Foods have a decent selection of 2-3 brands of anything you need and they have their store brand. I've had pretty good experience with the store brand and it's relatively cheap. Your regular grocery store will have some items. Clorox now sells a line called Green Works. I have never used it and would prefer not to give my money to a company that is a main purveyor of toxins generally, but it is available. Target sells Method. I have had decent experiences with this brand. They also are one of the few to offer a natural air fresheners like a Glade Plugin but with essential oil. I always have one plugged in by my litter box. But my favorite place to buy natural products is Drugstore.com. They have one of the widest selection of natural products I have ever seen, all at prices that match or beat what I've seen elsewhere. If you spend $50 shipping is free (and that's pretty easy to do), you get 5% cashback towards future purchases and if you go through the United or American Airlines online "malls" you can rack up the miles. From recycled napkins and trash bags to natural cleaners, hand soap, toothpaste and sunscreen to multivitamins, I buy all my natural products there.

People have asked me what products I like best. My personal view is that Mrs. Meyers is one of the worst. Seventh Generation is usually pretty good. I really like Earth Friendly Products, Ecover, Jason, Kiss My Face, Avalon Organics, Dr. Bronners, and a few others. If you don't know whether you'll like the smell of certain products or you don't want to mix scents, almost every natural brand has unscented products -- that's what I always use. Below I've listed what I actually use in a bunch of categories for those who care :)

Dryer/fabric softener sheet: Seventh Generation (free & clear)
Laundry detergent: Seventh Generation (free & clear) / Earth Friendly Procuts ECOS
Dishwasher rinse aid: Earth Friendly Products WaveJet
Dishwasher detergent: Ecover Ecological Dishwasher Tablets
Kitchen trash bags: Glad 65% recyled (all fully natural brands leak)
All purpose cleaner: Bi-O-Kleen Super Concentrated All Purpose Cleaner
Toiler cleaner: Ecover Ecological Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Counter-top cleaner: varies but de-luxe all-purpose spray
Glass cleaner: Better Life Window Cleaner
Air freshener: Methood Aroma Pill (Sweet Water)

Shaving cream: Avalon Organics (Aloe, unscented)
Aftershave: Origins Fire Fighter
Hand lotion: Burt's Bees shea butter hand repair creme
Hand soap: Jason Natural Cosmetics Satin Soap (Tea Tree Oil)
Bath soap: Dr. Bronner's All-One Hemp Pure-Castile bar soap (peppermint)
Shampoo / Conditioner: de-luxe
Deoderant: Kiss My Face Liquid Rock (fragrance free)
Hair gel: Modern Organic Produts orange peel modling cream
Toothpaste: Jason Natural Cosmetics Powersmile, All-Natural Whitening (peppermint)
Toner: Kiss My Face Balancing Act
Face lotion: Zia Skin Basics (with spf)
Body lotion: Kiss My Face Olive & Aloe Mosturizer (fragrance free)
Face wash: Origins Mint Wash
Travel face wash: Frownies Complexion Wash
Acne: Kiss My Face Break Out, Botanical Acne Gel
Sunscreen: Kiss My Face Face Factor / Kiss My Face Sunspray Lotion

Peanut butter

2010-02-11T11:16:00.004-06:00

I think it's interesting how people who watch what they eat and care about their health sometimes just assume some things are healthy -- basically things they've eaten their whole lives and never thought otherwise. Like peanut butter. Peanut butter and jelly is a comfort food to a lot of people (Americans eat 800 million pounds of peanut butter a year). It's basic, and most people would say it's either healthy or at least not unhealthy. Anyone who pays attention to food should at least be aware of natural peanut butter today considering it's available at literally any grocery store. Unless you buy your peanut butter exclusively at Walgreens you're passing over it to hit up the original stuff. And a lot of people are grossed out by the oil sitting on the top of the peanut butter. Pretty gross looking, I have to admit.

But there's a reason of course that natural peanut butter's oil separates and unnatural peanut butter's does't. The difference is hydrogenated oil. Most of us are familiar with "partially hydrogenated oil" -- that's used here though not uncommon is the use of fully hydrogenated oil. If added to the peanut mixture during the grinding process, it prevents oil separation when the product is at room temperature. The problem is that this is an unnatural substance and our body really doesn't know what to do with it. It is undisputed that partially and fully hydrogenated oils are partly or fully to blame for many leading health risks.

Natural peanut butter needs some marketing help. When Silk wanted to make its soy milk appear as a true milk alternative rather than a health food, it changed the placement of it's cartons from the shelves to the refridgeration aisle -- right next to the milk. While natural peanut butter does "separate" at room temerature, it looks just like unnatural peanut butter when refridgerated (anyone who buys it knows they need to take it home, stir it like a maniac and then pop it in the fridge from then on). What amazes me is that no one sells natural peanut butter refridgerated. Either move it to the refridgerated aisle, or find some way to have a refridgerator in the peanut butter aisle. People just need to start thinking of peanut butter as a refridgerated food.

Or there's the new trend that I am undecided on: natural no stir peanut butter. Jif Natural is one example. It has nothing but peanuts, sugar, palm oil, salt and molasses. This leaves out the fully hydrogenated vegetable oils and the mono and diglycerides. What is Jif's secret to creating peanut butter that doesn't have any stabilizers but also doesn't separate at room temperature? Well I've never actually tried this but to my comfort, reviewers have noted that it does need to be stirred and that it will continue to separate at room temperature -- though not as much.

If you actually want peanut butter and don't understand why a company needs to add sugar and extra oil to it, check out any other natural brand or even Smucker's version of natural peanut butter where you find nothing more than peanuts and salt. (PS. Smuckers owns Jif.....)

The Budweiser bull

2010-02-08T10:48:00.004-06:00

Watching the Superbowl yesterday, one of my favorite commercials was definitely Budweiser's commercial portraying a friendship between a Clydesdale horse and a bull. The Clydesdale and the bull apparently run next to each other when the bull is very young, then again 3 years later -- this time the bull has grown substantially, has huge horns (appears to be a longhorn) and plows through the fence (which does not appear to bother the horses). People around me also liked it and I saw on the news this morning that it was perhaps the most well liked commercial by the public in general.

But I couldn't help also feel as I watched the commercial, and even more after seeing the general public's response, how sad it was. We read these books as children about cows roaming around pastures with roses all around and are inundated with similar images all the time -- I saw the pilot of This American Life from Showtime the other day and it included a story about a bull who napped in the son on the front lawn of his owner's house all day -- or how about the California cheese commercials where we get the image of these happy cows roaming the pastures in beautiful sunny California weather and we're told that better cheese comes from happier cows. On the other hand reliable evidence indicates that literally 99 PERCENT of all animals on farms in the United States are confined in so called factory farming system where they receive no natural light or access to pasture for the vast majority of their life -- and I could go on and on but is it really necessary?

Obviously bulls do not usually become friends with Clydesdales, and so we know this is fiction, but that's the extent most people will write off as silly in their head. To me, far sillier is the notion that bulls or any cow or other animal used in the production of edible meat lives in humane conditions. We know this is not true. It is overwhelmingly well documented and accepted. It seems to be one thing to just keep from thinking about how these animals are treated, but it's completely another to make little plays about how their lives are the opposite of reality and then to sit around and chuckle at them. Maybe one day we'll wise up and revise our flawed system enough so I can watch that commercial and not feel guilty

New books

2010-02-05T10:56:00.004-06:00

There are a few new books out about food I am hoping to get to soon but thought I'd mention them here now. One is by someone I've written about so much people probably could call it a crush: Michael Pollan. He recently came out with Food Rules: An Eater's Manual (actually came out the end of last year -- check it out on Amazon here). The books is very brief and goes through 64 principles of good eating rather than the style of his more in depth works (like The Omnivore's Dilemma) . Reviews have praised it for providing great guidance on shopping and eating habits. There is just something about Michael Pollan that makes you believe and trust him. It is hard wading through the thick crap of advice and mixed messages we get on food, shopping, general nutrition, etc. Pollan provides some trustworthy guidance from someone who is not himself a scientist of any kind, but just a great researcher, digester of material, finder of truths under many layers of b.s. and a trustworthy conveyor of those messages in a clear format.

Another recent book I'm excited to check out is Jonathon Safran Foer's Eating Animals (this came out in November -- check it out on Amazon here). Safran Foer is the amazing and very young author of Everything is Illuminated (since made into a movie starring Elijiah Wood) and to me the even more impressive Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Eating Animals is his first non-fiction book, and as I understand it is as much a memoir as anything else -- or at least goes through his own personal investigations into the subject. I recently saw a few people reading this poolside in Miami. I have a feeling it will bring the discussion to groups who will read anything by Safran Foer but otherwise might never approach the subject. But we'll see. Guys like Peter Singer may be brilliant and more informed, but it probably takes someone in their 20s or early 30s with a pen perhaps one day worthy of a Pulitzer to get the messages across to our generation and those below. Here's an article he wrote for the NYT Magazine shortly before the book was published: The Fruits of Family Trees.

Starting over again

2010-01-11T17:03:00.002-06:00

This has been a sad long gap in my blogging and I wouldn't be surprised if no one even comes to this site anymore as a full month has passed without me adding anything at all. I also began that month-long gap on a negative note, last discussing how I've fallen off the path I set out for myself (eating worse and worse, gaining more and more weight, feeling more and more fatigued). (And I'm aware that I started writing more about myself and less about food.) But though it may be trite, I am happy to say with a new year can come positive changes, and I'm focused on making some of those in my life.

When I left the rigid rules of my makeshift pesca-veganism (absent a few slips while traveling, I was fully vegan in diet but would eat any type of seafood), the slippery slope began and raw cheese turned into any non-processed cheese turned into any cheese I felt like eating. Eating a bit of grass fed or pastured meat once a week I bought at the farmers market from researched farmers and cooked myself turned into eating anything I deemed ethical as often as once a day turned into that plus me eating other meat when I was in the mood. Where I was slipping, was back towards the so called Standard American Diet. But I finally woke up and I'm actively seeking the middle yet again. Being vegan is not for me anymore. I want to consume some animal products because I believe I feel better when I eat that way and I no longer buy the logic of veganism. But there is no question that fruits, vegetables and grains should make up the fast majority of the human diet unless your geographic of personal health limitations dictate otherwise.

So I now start over again. Trying to limit the intake of animal products has the tough but welcomed result of literally forcing me to eat more fruits, vegetables and grains. There are ways to do this without eating anything fresh of course. I can eat my organic instant oatmeal for breakfast, a Chipotle veggie burrito for lunch, and an Amy's cheeseless pizza for dinner. But with just a bit more advance planning and effort I can incorporate more and more living foods. The easiest for me was always breakfast -- to start the day with anything but a piece of fruit is silly. Fruit is best eaten alone anyway. When I'm hungry I can down a grapefuit, orange and banana throughout the morning without the slightest sense of guilt.

Lunch and dinner are harder, but my goal, as I set out to get my diet right again, is to make just one of those meals vegetarian and not processed. I consider the Chipotle burrito processed (the flour tortilla, the canned beans, the guacomole that never turns brown). The Amy's pizza is certainly processed -- though you could easily find worse. But one would be fine -- each day. Today I'm being ambitiout (after all I just started) so I had a blood orange for breakfast, a salad I made myself for lunch and dinner will be self-made miso soup with mushrooms and asian stirfried spinach, kale and broccoli.

My energy levels are currently terrible, so that's high on my radar to watch. My weight is something I'll just be patient with for now and see what happens. I think I've already lost about two pounds but we'll see if that really amounts to weight loss.

Thank you to everyone who has read this and continues to pay attention to their diet. I am finally back to eating and thinking about food the way I want to be eating and thinking. I've got a lot of food-related movies I've been meaning to watch, piles of food related books I'd love to get into again, and lists of blogs that I've fallen behind on. My mild obessession with food through these avenues and this blog, if nothing else, helps remind me how important food is and how dangerous one's diet can be. And helps keep me focused on just how easy it can be to eat well (particularly at a time in my life when I have no financial constraints).

The bigger picture

2009-12-07T12:20:00.003-06:00

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm fairly obsessed with chemicals in general -- yes, in my food for sure, but also in my home (where I can also control them to an extent). I accept that we are exposed to a large amount of chemicals in the world that are mostly out of our control. You could avoid planes where the seats and interior is packed with fire retardant chemicals, or you could never eat or drink from plastic containers, but these become both impractical and somewhat pointless. Impractical because I live in a large city, work full time, and can't spend all my time trying to avoid every possible chemical. Somewhat pointless for two reasons: (1) most people agree that the actual chemicals we are exposed to are far less relevant that the amount and duration of exposure -- thus why it may make more sense to focus on where you really can reduce exposure, and (2) because you really can't avoid them regardless -- the best example is the polar bear. Polar bears have no real predators besides asshole humans, and they obviously live in some of the remotest areas of the world -- far from civilization, tourism, etc. Yet many chemicals have been found in polar bears from fire retardants to PCBs to pesticides. All of human origin.

As a recent NYT article a friend passed along points out, over 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since World War II. We are developing them far faster than we can test and fully appreciate their impact. What works is often not worth the cost. We are now realizing that these chemicals don't go away, they simply build up and up and up. Some never leave the body and others never leave the soil. Very smart people have come up with some pretty terrible solutions. Heroin was a pretty bad solution to cocain addiction.

What I try to do, just to throw it out there, is avoid chemicals in my home whenever possible. From floor cleaners to counter cleaners to bathroom cleaners to soap, shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream, hair gel, dishwasher tablets, laundry products to air fresheners and on and on there are now excellent alternatives to virtually every home product. If you have a growing child or a pet, it is infinitely more important. I'm always amazed when I hear people talk about a pet having health problems or tumors and they never seem to consider that pets walk around on floors and counters and lick their paws. So do infants with their hands and feet.

The same NYT article discusses how 200 years ago girls started their period at 17 on average -- it's now 12. Most companies and government agencies would say there is no problem and no risk. But do we want to wait another 200 years and see our daughters begin menstrating at 8? Not only are chemicals insufficiently tested as to their impact on children, but they are far too often tested in isolation. Again, amount and duration of exposure is everything. The safety of a fire retardant in our mattress is irrelevant without factoring that many of us spend enough time on planes to throw those studies off considerably.

And we're realizing more often that what we do with something might matter. Most plastics are fairly safe, but some are less safe and almost all plastics become more dangerous when heated (microwave, dishwasher, etc.). Non-stick coatings are pretty safe, but when they start to get old or chipped they are not so safe at all.

The least we can do is control it in what we eat and in our homes. I find that drugstore.com has a great selection of natural products. Its one of the largest out there, and its reasonably priced. If you buy a decent amount shipping is free and you get money applied to your next order. There are a lot of new natural products out there. I've tried a ton that I love and a lot that I hate. Happy to recommend anything at all if asked.

Slipping

2009-11-30T13:44:00.003-06:00

Being vegan was tough, but it created some pretty strict rules that I just couldn't break. I could adjust the rules -- such as when I added seafood into my diet -- but the rules were equally strict, they just changed. When I started eating some meat (and writing this blog) I tried to keep those rules strict and just adjust them the same way I did with seafood, but once I could eat any kind of meat, etc. under the proper conditions, it becomes so much more fluid and subjective. It has partly depended on my own judgment, somewhat unclear information, and largely my own discipline. And that just hasn't worked as well as I hoped. It has resulted in me occasionally eating pretty much anything I want: regular burgers (though never fast food), ribs or steak at restaurants, ice cream and cheese that I know nothing about, etc. (It is worst with cheese.) And this has also lead me towards eating much more meat and animal products. Where I started out with the intention of adding some meat to my diet (such as a couple times a week), it is not infrequent that I eat some form of meat daily and it wouldn't be that rare for me to eat it twice a day. This is exactly what I should not be doing and what I hoped I never would fall into.

There are far too many variables out there to know the truth, but I can say that as I've fallen down this worse path of eating I have continually gained weight, I have less energy, and I certainly feel unhealthy. Gone are the days when I diligently made my own salad with my own dressing every single day, or made large batches of soups and stews over the weekend to chip away at all week or pull from the freezer anytime I wanted. Now my freezer is filled with Amy's frozen foods and hemp milk ice cream, and my my cabinets are filled with cans of soup and pasta sauce. I managed to eat fruit for breakfast every weekday and even had my homemade dried fruit to take on the plan when I traveled. My intake of fresh fruits and vegetables has fallen to dismally low levels. I have bags upon bags of all sorts of varieties of whole grains, lentils, etc. that go completely untouched for seemingly seasons. This all sounds a bit dramatic and as though I am perhaps too hard on myself. I've always described food and eating as a journey as we discover what works and doesn't work well with our bodies, how we value ethics and other factors in our food products, and so forth.

For me I have certainly taken a turn down the wrong road. I think where I really fall flat is when I'm longing for comfort food like the orange chicken I used to love or the amazing knife and fork ribs I haven't had for so many years. But it consistently leaves me feeling worse -- guilty for my lack of willpower, disgusted by my lack of health, embarrassed that I spend so much time reading, thinking and talking about these topics but can't even follow my own logic. Hopefully this is just a stray path and I'll find my way back soon enough. That is my new goal. I'm confident I can make it back but will do so through a minefield of temptations.

Burrito Beach!

2009-11-23T21:33:00.004-06:00

As a continuation of my last post, namely the idea of affordable grass fed beef, I have another happy announcement. Walking through the O'Hare airport last night, something caught my eye at Burrito Beach in the foodcourt where the H and K concourses split off. Burrito Beach, a local Chicago (healthier) fast food joint with a mere 7 locations, has teamed up with Bill Kurtis to offer his grass fed Tallgrass beef in one of its burritos: the Barbacoa Burrito, featuring only Tallgrass Beef. In addition, the company will donate a portion of the sales from each Barbacoa Burrito to the Green City Market in Chicago's Lincoln Park. And the price of all this? $6.79. Burrito Beach is partly advertising this as the next step in healthier options, emphasizing, for instance, that grass fed beef has as many as 100 fewer calories as the same portion of traditionally raised beef and lower saturated fat and cholesterol. I didn't happen to have one but hope to on one flight soon. (But note that Burrito Beach has only committed to carrying the Barbacoa Burrito through the end of the year -- so it may ultimately only be sold for about 2 1/2 months).

UPDATE: OK, today I finally got my hands on one of these and while I don't want to discourage people supporting grass fed beef, I don't want anyone to get their hopes up without reason either. The burrito was very mediocre. Worth a try if you have nothing better to eat.....

Amazing grass fed burgers on Chicago's northside

2009-11-11T11:05:00.004-06:00

I've been bad about posting lately. Thanks to those who haven't given up on this blog and continue to check it. I do have a lot of new thoughts on some issues I just need to get them down in writing.

For now I wanted to mention a great new place I went to last night called DMK Burger Bar. It's owned by Michael Kornick of MK and David Morton of Pompei. I happened to go on its opening night due to a helpful hint from a "friend" and I have to report it was great. As the name suggests, it is essentially entirely a burger joint. But it's no ordinary burger. All of the beef is grass fed (there are about 9 different beef burgers but a few aren't available yet). Then there's turkey burgers, lamb burgers, etc. All from entirely naturally raised turkey, lamb, and perhaps something else on four legs I'm forgetting. They also have homemade veggie burgers that are self-proclaimed as the best in the city (I have yet to try them but plan to soon and will report). All of the cheese is "artisan" according to the menu -- which to me would mean that it's not from large food companies and likely as minimally processed as possible. No word on the eggs you can (and I did) add to any burger, but with their approach to other food I'd find it hard to imagine they just buy eggs from any old supplier. They also have about 5 kinds of fries (we had the amazing sweet potato ones).

While I didn't get a chance to try any of the mixed drinks, I was incredibly impressed that they used local products whenever possible. Half the specialty mixed drinks on the menu used one liquor from North Shore Distillery, which is a local Chicago distillery that makes a few hand crafted, small-batch spirits. Their products are certainly more expensive then your traditional large-batch premium stuff yet DMK's prices don't really reflect that. Can't wait to try some of them. (Last night the nice size and pretty good selection beer list had my eyes).

I also want to just discuss the prices for a second. They are incredibly reasonable: $8 for any burger that might come with natural bacon, artisan cheddar cheese, homemade sauce, etc. This at a sit down restaurant in a fairly expensive area. So how can they do it? It seems clear that grass fed meat does not need to be reserved for the affluent who shop at Whole Foods or have the leisure time to wander through farmers markets often reserved for areas like Lincoln Park or Andersonville. Instead, DMK is showing that grass fed meat can taste amazing (many out there still wonder) and that it can be affordable. I was thoroughly impressed and I went on a hectic night when they were still figuring things out.

Oh, and my "friend" had a salad (there's only one meal sized salad) filled with fennel, hearts of palm, and other goodies.

I'll be back VERY soon.

Eat This, Not That!

2009-10-26T14:48:00.005-05:00

My old boss used to mention this handy little book he got called "Eat This, Not That!" -- by now a bit more hyped up and well known. It helped him make manageable changes. For instance, he wasn't going to avoid Chipotle, but he could handle getting the salad that left out the tortilla and rice (which have 290 and 130 calories, respectively). That's exactly the original point. It was developed by Men's Health to help guys make some healthier choices without going on a diet so to speak. I've stumbled upon their website since then and I have to say I really love it. I have not really looked into their methodology yet, but regardless, this is a feast of helpful information and it is incredibly comprehensive.

The site is a great resource for the Eating in the Dark mentality. Take lunch for instance. Lately I've been eating out almost daily (unhealthy, I know). It's tough to really know what is in different foods, and whether Cosi is the same as Au Bon Pain or if one is substantially healthier -- or more personally for my choices, Chipotle vs. Baja Fresh. You can easily see how they compare off the "Restaurants" tab on the website. Cosi gets an overall B grade while Au Bon Pain overall gets an A-. Chipotle gets a C- and Baja Fresh gets a D-. Feel like diving deeper? The description on each indicates that the authors really don't have a problem with Chiptle outside of the rice and the tortilla, whereas they pretty clearly recommend entirely avoiding Baja Fresh. Additionally, every item gets a separate grade, calorie count, etc. The bad news is you actually have to add it up if you want a truly accurate count (salsa, cheese, meat, etc.) but the good news is you can easily get a ballpark (a steak fajita burrito has 900 calories before the salsa, cheese, sour cream, etc.). I know plenty of people who will eat something like a Chipotle chicken burrito at least once a week. Knowing what you stuff in your face 52x a year might be useful information.

Other tabs show individual grocery items (click on Dannon's All Natural Lowfat Vanilla yogurt to see that it gets a C+ because it reportedly has as much sugar as a Kit Kat bar -- but Stonyfield's whole milk plain has even more), tips and advice, kids foods/menus, and more.

So I must have something critical to say, right? My overall complaint is that the focus is largely on calories, fat and sugar. But if you dig deeper you get more facts and you can decide for yourself. For instance, at Jimmy Johns, the whole grain bun has about 130 more calories than the french roll. Is it worth 130 more calories to avoid refined flour? Sounds like they are adding sugar, and the like to the whole grain. But now you know a bit more and can decide. So I'm a huge fan of this site, and more information is ALWAYS better so long as it is not overly misleading and this certainly is not. The site is really focused on what to avoid, and I doubt anyone will be worse off for following their advice or making up their own mind with some added facts.

PS. there is actually a pretty cool application for the iphone/ipod touch from these guys that costs but would be very worth the money if utilized....

Fasting

2009-10-22T16:10:00.004-05:00

I know this is supposed to be a blog about eating, but I thought I'd talk about not eating for once. Talking to a beautiful girl about Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar where Muslims fast -- and refrain from certain other activities -- from sunrise to sunset) reminded me that fasting is an important part of life for many raw foodists and others as part of a healthy lifestyle.

To start, what is fasting? Well it's not just about not eating -- it's about not eating for at least about 24 hours (or at least about 16 hours). At that point your body begins efficiently using carbohydrate stores in the body for energy. If you fast for long enough without break, your body will begin using protein stores for energy. At this point fasting actually morphs into starvation -- a transition that obviously should be avoided.

I don't pretend to really understand the meaning of Ramadan, but one aspect of the holy month is certainly related to purification and cleansing. So is the act of fasting for non-religious reasons. One argument is that humans were never meant to eat as much and as consistently as we do. There were always periods of time under almost any conditions globally that humans went periods of time without eating. The human body would use these times to eliminate and neutralize toxins, and rejuvenate. Rejuvenation and healing during fasting may seem counter-intuitive. We think of food as energy and therefore as the best thing for the body when it needs to be fighting disease, healing itself, etc. But the fact is that digestion is a very energy intensive process and takes a lot of the body's focus (just think of your post-lunch afternoon slump). When people are sick, controlled fasting can be the greatest cure as it allows your body to focus all of its energy on the problem. But regardless of your health, fasting diverts digestive energy towards the immune system, and many believe cell rejuvenation is facilitated and expedited. This could also explain why fasting is attributed to a slowing of "aging" and extended life expectancy. When fasting is incorporated into one's lifestyle, people experience a reduction in their metabolic rate, more efficient protein production, improved immune functioning, and increased growth and other hormone production. This attribute is what many "detox diets" have seized upon. Indeed, studies on mammals and other creatures (particularly earthworms) have shown that life expectancy increases with fasting -- so long as fasting is controlled and does not involve malnutrition. One study on worms showed that controlled fasting allowed an isolated worm to outlive its relatives by 19 generations -- which is the equivalent of a human living between 600 and 700 years. The same worms exhibited much more prolonged youthful traits as well -- whatever exactly that means for a worm.

Fasting also causes the body to use fat stores, etc. that may be holding certain unnatural environmental chemicals. Burning those stores releases the chemicals and allows them to pass through the body. This is one reason that water should never be avoided and it helps the body flush itself of toxins (same idea after a massage when muscles release toxins and drinking water is critical). Overall, fasting is a cleansing process. The body cleanses itself in every manner -- waste, blood, and on a cellular level if maintained long enough. "Juice fasts" are often utilized to aid in this function.

Many degenerative diseases have been shown to decrease with fasting. Tumors, for instance, begin a process of self-destruction during extended fasts. Some holistic practitioners also swear by fasting as a way to help aid with diabetes and a variety of other health problems. Can't hurt to try.

But it goes without saying that fasting should be done carefully and always in a controlled manner. Just as Muslims made exceptions to fasting (such as for travel), non-religious fasting should be done in moderation, and you should not exert a lot of energy during periods of fasting (such as sports, etc.). Depending on how long you fast, you should ease back into eating. Raw foods and a vegan diet are the best way to begin, adding heavier foods and animal products later on.

Interestingly, I'll just add that fasting has been attributed to a higher spiritual awareness. Perhaps this is why Muslims are encouraged to fast during their holiest month, and perhaps why agnostic raw foodists I know are nearly addicted to controlled fasting as a slowing down of their life and a time for reflection. Sadly I have to admit I've barely ever attempted fasting. But this has motivated me to try and work it into my life a bit :)

On serving sizes and dairy (less random than they appear)

2009-10-15T13:26:00.006-05:00

Riding the train home from work the other day I noticed an add targeted towards reducing child obesity. The organization called Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC) is promoting its message during the month of October called "5-4-3-2-1 Go!" that calls for 5 servings of fruits/vegetables, 4 servings of water, 3 servings of low-fat dairy, 2 or less hours in front of the TV or computer and 1 or more hours of physical activity.

First of all, I always find anything that discusses servings interesting because no one has a clue what a serving is. Most processed and packaged foods provide misleading servings. A candy bar that is clearly intended to be 1 serving is often listed as multiple servings so if you glance at the fat content you rarely notice that you need to multiply it by, say, 3x to get the accurate amount right before you crumple up the empty wrapper. I actually use this as a sign when I buy packaged foods. You'll notice that your average product on the shelves of Whole Foods has a much more honest serving size calculation than your average product at a traditional grocery or convenience store. If a product is clearly designed to be eaten by one person at one sitting and it is listed as having multiple servings, this is a red flag to me. But let's take things that aren't packaged and so don't have clear serving sizes. Fruits and vegetable serving sizes are usually set at about 1/2 cup for most, but a full cup for stuff like lettuce that takes up a lot of space. Many fruits are a single serving: bananas, apples, peaches, etc. An apple is a good marker to use for other fruits -- an apple size handful of grapes, berries, etc. is about a fruit. Vegetables are roughly the same. Of course the less that is edible the larger the serving -- like for corn an entire ear is one serving. While personally I don't think it really counts unless its truly freshly squeezed or juiced, 1/2 cup to 3/4 of a cup of fruit or vegetable juice is also considered a serving.

But what also bothers me about CLOCC's message is the diary emphasis. I think it is a wide misconseption that humans need to consume dairy. I have relaxed from my earlier in life viewpoint that diary is necessarily bad for you. I do not believe that is true for the right people and the right dairy (milk from cows given rBGH, for instance, is always bad for you). I also still believe that the emphasis on dairy from cows is a silly product of industrialized farming considering cows to be more economical. Humans, however, have a much easier time digesting sheep and goats milk. But steping back, why would dairy be a necessary element of our diet? No other animal drinks the milk of another animal (and no animal drinks the milk of their mother past their youth). Humans have certainly lived in areas of our planet for centuries without access to dairy. Indeed some ethnicities do far better digesting dairy than others. For instance, virtually all Asians are lactose intolerant. Even Asian-Americans are about 90% lactose intolerant. African-Americans, Mexicans and American Jews are also largely lactose intolerant, while Northern Europeans and their decendants have almost no lactose intolerance and the American children of each group tends to be less intolerant than the previous generations. (This all began with the domestication of animals about 10,000 years ago and shows how different groups evolved depending on their use of dairy. Groups that used dairy more exhibit less lactose intolerance.) So for starters, this shows that we can't all be expected to consume the same amount of dairy in the same forms. Serving milk to kids in schools may not be such a good idea (though children as a rule exhibit less lactose intolerance than adults).

But we need milk and dairy for healthy growth, strong teeth and bones, and so forth, right? Not really actually. Studies have shown that milk doesn't improve bone integrity in children or reduce fracture risks in elderly adults. Yes, calcium is important, but it can be found in small doses in all sorts of foods that build up, and those foods tend to provide far more digestible calcium than dairy. Indeed, the famous nutritionist Marion Nestle points out that rates of bone density loss (osteoporsis) are highest in countriest that eat the most dairy. This is of course more complicated than I lay out. Americans also consume the most meat which is known to reduce calcium levels in the body. Perhaps our foods are so lacking in nutrition today will all of our processed crap that we lack sufficient vitamin D, magnesium and potassium to properly absorb the calcium in dairy and other foods. What remains clear is that dairy is not necessary. If you love milk in your cereal or a kid needs a glass with desert, most people wouldn't say that's a health risk. But to say it's a requirement for good health is a leap that is totally unsupported by scientific research. This leaves us with my largest frustration: the fact that non-profits and government organizations that either really intend (or pretend to intend) to help us live and eat healthier are spreading false messages.

Personally I think it is more important to focus on what NOT to eat. Focus on avoiding soft drinks, limiting processed foods, eliminating all fast food, and reducing animal-based proteins. People will still be thirsty and will still be hungry. If they can be convinced to avoid soft drinks they will be more likely to drink water. If they can be reminded that fast food literally kills you in the same way as a pack of cigarettes they will seek out alternatives rather than go hungry. If they decide it may be a good idea to eat a smaller portion of meat at dinner they will be more likely to eat more vegetables to fill themselves up. Is this really that complicated? Can't someone compile this into a cheer as catchy as "5-4-3-2-1 Go!"?

Going global

2009-10-14T15:38:00.003-05:00

The focus of this blog is really how I try and approach food and information about food, and how we can all find our path in this mess of misinformation and lack of disinterestedness all the way up the chain. But once in a while I think it's important to recognize just how relevant food policies are to the world, and how people who can't afford computers to read a blog like this and certainly don't consider shopping at Whole Foods, are often the most devastated by food policies. (Of course the poor are generally the most vulnerable to any policy shifts.)

Bangladeshi Nobel prize winner, professor and micro-finance inventor Muhammad Yunus has written about international food policies and their impact on the poor in less countries. What is happening is incredibly tragic. Food prices are going through the roof. As we focused our attention on a worldwide financial crisis, an equally or more dangerous food crisis was occuring. Wheat prices increased 200% in 8 years and many other staples were close behind. It is not unusual for the poor in developing countries to spend as much as two-thirds of their income on food. (As I've discussed before, Americans spend under 10% on food.) Increased oil prices leads to more expensive fertilizer. Changes in trade policies can result in the flooding of markets by foreign produce. Policies favoring ethanol and the like make less room for edible crops driving up the prices of crops like corn -- as even if the type of corn used for ethanol is essentially inedible for humans, it is taking up space that was otherwise used for edible crops. The grain used to full an SUV's tank could feed one person for a full year. And of course meat consumption has increased as billions of people have gotten a bit richer year after year. Animals are an inefficient form of food as it takes thousands of pounds of food to make a couple hundred pound cow. (Some estimates claim 1/3 of all grain production and 1/3 of all fish catch globally is used to feed livestock.) At the same time as billions eat more meat, the bottom few billion are increasingly vulnerable to huger and malnutrition.

Further, small scale farming is simply being unsustainable in these area, largely due to the influence of multinational corporations and countries such as the United States. When international loans are made or aid is given, it often comes with conditions. Such conditions would not uncommonly require the opening up of markets, particularly agricultural markets. Multinational corporations have also attempted push farmers towards seeds and planting that requires fertilizers and pesticides, while the supplies of such products increase. Fertilizer has increased in price by approx. 150% over the last 5 years alone according to the World Bank. Small farmers are also increasingly unable to compete with large-scale operations, often partially foreign owned.

Farming has become so difficult that one study indicates over 25,000 farmers committed suicide in India alone in the year 2007. Just consider that for a moment. After all, farming is one of the oldest professionals on earth, and one of the few that can truly lead one to be self-sustaining.

And global warming (or just current climatic shifts if you're a Glenn Beck fan) just makes everything worse. More and more certain crops sensitive to sun, rain, and otherwise are having terrible seasons around the globe. Changes in temperature and damage caused by drought and deforestation is estimated to turn an area the equivalent of the Ukraine from farmable to unfarmable land every year. Pesticide resistant bugs are further concern, as is the impact on third-world countries from genetically modified organisms -- such as GM corn, soy, wheat and rice. (I have discussed that more in depth here.)

So where does this leave us? Depressed, I suppose. But beyond that it leaves me further convinced that food matters. Food choices and food policies are really the stuff of life. When we give aid to Pakistan and add some language about trade that could impact their agriculture, perhaps we should be more skeptical of how great this will be for both the Pakistani people and our farmers. And certainly companies like Monsanto need to be kept in check. Their ties to the highest levels of the U.S. government (luckily less so under Obama) run deep, and their international and legal influence is massive. They will, in searching for further profits, literally be resposible for the death of millions (god forbid billions) of people if we continue down our current path. To that end, pesiticides and fertilizer for more dense farming are not the answer. And while it is possible that GM crops hold some promise where a simple change in a rice gene could cure a disease affecting millions of people (and I don't want to jump on organizations like the Gates Foundation for pursuing their use), the current risks far outway any possible gains.

So if nothing else, I can go to bed thankful that the most I have to worry about on a daily basis is whether my plum is organic and if my beef came from an industrialized farm.

Rose Veal

2009-10-09T11:53:00.004-05:00

Veal is well known as one of the cruelest practices to animals (though you could argue that egg laying hens is even worse largely b/c it's so bad and so much more pervasive). I personally have given up the idea that people will give up meat. The only thing we can hope for is that people will eat meat in moderation, and will actually care how their meat was raised. Veal is one of the most important places to focus. And time has shown that perception (and perhaps reality) matter. Animal rights boycotts a few decades ago brought photos of confined calves drinking formula and horrified much of the public. In the past half-century, while consumption of meat has increased, consumption of veal has dropped from an average (in America) of four pounds per year to only about 1/2 a pound a year. There have been advances in the treatment of calves raised for veal. Some veal producers keep calves in pens away from access to their mothers' milk but able to roam somewhat freely. Certain countries ban the insanely small confinement that was the standard practice for these calves and require minimum space at least (otherwise the animals cannot even turn around). But a newer, more sustainable and far more ethical form of veal is slowly gaining popularity: rose veal. (Read more about it here, here or here.)

Traditional veal is white colored. It is considered tender but many view it as lacking much flavor. The white color comes from iron deficiencies in the calves. When a calf has healthy iron levels, its meat is a pink color. Calves traditionally consume milk from their mothers. Traditional veal is deprived of this entirely. But there are other options. Sustainable farmers are increasingly offering veal calves raised on pastures with their mothers, consuming their mother's milk and grasses as nature intended. They live a natural life as a young cow normally would. Yes, their lives are cut short, but all animals are slaughtered the moment they reach a marketable weight, often very early in their lives (though still short -- often not longer than 6 months). The meat is considered extremely tender and significantly more flavorful than traditional veal. Additionally, as with any beef raised on pastures versus industrial farming, the pastured meat is much healthier (among other reasons, it tends to be raised without chemical additives in food, steroid use or antibiotic use absent medical necessity). If you want to eat veal, this is a good choice. Rose veal can also be called meadow veal, red veal, suckled veal, or any name that indicates that the calf was pastured (pastured veal, grass-fed veal or even free-range veal). While not necessarily so trustworthy, some encouragement can be gotten from labels that have developed such as "certified humane". In reality, you'll be able to find this at some restaurants, but for now mostly at farmer's markets or places that specifically cater to customers looking for pastured meats.

From soy to hemp

2009-10-05T09:50:00.002-05:00

As I eat my breakfast today I thought I'd write a quick note about hemp milk. You can't be conscious in America and be unaware of the rise of soy milk (or soy generally). Many people think that soy milk is a healthy alternative to milk (for intolerance issues, fat, etc.). Others think that soy actually provides health benefits over alternatives. Soy milk has been pushed big time and Americans have drank it up. Soy milk had sales of about $2 million in 1980, and currently posts sales over $300 million a year. The truth is that soy milk is not healthy (nor is any fermented soy). And like anything dangerous to eat, it is far worse for growing children. Plus, soy eaten as part of a omnivorous diet is not great, but eaten on a vegetarian diet it is particularly unhealthy and damaging, as people count on it to provide what they miss from meat, and yet it often fails to provide those nutrients and hurts the bodies ability to get them elsewhere, as is shown below.

The list of what's wrong with unfermented soy is pretty long. Here's a few: it blocks protein digestion (what you eat isn't necessarily digested) that also can cause problems with amino acid uptake and other nutrient deficiencies including calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc in the intestines, it promotes clotting that causes the clumping of red blood cells, it acts as a growth inhibitor, it depresses thyroid function, and contains isoflavones that are estrogen-like compounds that are widely believed to increase cancer risks, particularly amongst women and even more particularly for post-menopausal women (many people actually take these isoflavones in pill form as a supplement). Further, any health benefit of soy is really unclear. Some studies show that soy reduces certain types of cancer, while others show that it most likely increases the risks of other types. Some women look to soy to help reduce their chances of breast cancer, but as Marian Burros of the New York Times has discussed, some studies show that soy reduces breast cancer risks and others show that it increases it. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, for instance, reported over 10 years ago that soy increases breast cell proliferation in women -- and the greater the cell proliferation the greater the chance of breast cancer cells developing.

To me, the message here is fairly clear when you look past Silk's health claims: avoid it. Unfermented soy at most has unproven health benefits, and at worst is a cause of significant diet related problems and even cancer. Yes, the Japanese consume soy. But they consume it primarily in FERMENTED form. Fermentation largely reduces or eliminates every health concern listed above. Further, the Japanese on average consume small amounts of soy with meals. Americans think there is no such thing as too much of a good thing. Well there just might be. (I'll also add that there are particular types of cancer that the Japanese have higher rates of, and some attribute this to soy intake.)

So what should you do about your cereal and your coffee and your smoothie? While Starbucks may only offer milk or soy milk, even regular grocery stores now often offer numerous alternatives. The most popular are almond milk and rice milk (and some people will also drink oat milk). However, both offer almost no health benefits. So you're better off using either to soy milk, but I want to suggest a better alternative: hempmilk. Hempmilk is taking on in the health food community. I have been drinking it for years now and recently realized on a trip to a primarily organic grocery store that the soy milk consumed a tiny amount of shelf space, while hempmilk was offered in three different flavors from multiple brands. This has clearly become the preferred alternative to those who have become well informed on soy. Hempmilk has more calcium that cows milk, and is packed with Omega 3s and 6s. It contains a good amount of digestible protein, amino acids, and numerous minerals. Hempmilk is pretty darn good for you. Give it a try -- I personally love Living Harvest Hempmilk's vanilla flavor. You can certainly get it at Whole Foods, health food stores, Green Grocer in Chicago, or online here. (Oh, and for those of you who may think this also gets you high, it doesn't. Hemp food products are all THC-free. Though unfortunately the wise government of the United States does not allow the growing of hemp seeds, so these are usually imported from Canada or other more progressive countries.)

EU gets smart on food health claims

2009-10-01T18:10:00.003-05:00

I've written many times about the absurd claims processed foods make to lure customers. The food industry has made no secret that whole foods are not very profitable. The key is to break foods down, process them, and sell them for value added -- enhanced by making nutritional claims. I have made no secret about my disdain for this practice as it is flawed on so many levels. One problem is that it encourages a mentality that we can break our foods and needs as living creatures down into nutritional components. Rather than eating a carrot, you can eat a piece of white bread enriched with vitamin A. But this is not the same. Baby formula is the best example of a constant failed attempt by food scientists to dissect beneficial components, add them to the synthetic product, and never reach the same benefits as the original nature produces.

I've mentioned before that the idea to add nutritional claims to product advertisement started with cereals and has been utilized aggressively in that industry ever since. It started in America and has been embraced in America by governmental agencies such as the FDA and private organizations such as the American Heart Association (few people know that companies actually pay to put that on their product -- how's that for unbiased?).

This is all a long introduction to my happy announcement that today, EU authorities rejected dozens of health claims made by food companies. This was hailed as a sign that the EU will begin to use tougher scrutiny in evaluating claims by food companies without sound scientific backing. Many of those rejected will sound familiar to people used to walking around a grocery store or familiar with many of the "trendy" products being pushed these days. For instance, the EU rejected claims that special bacteria (so called probiotics) aided digestion and boosted the immune system (a claim that is reported to have led to billions in sales by those able to properly capitalize on the claim) -- largely yogurt companies. Danone's Activia brand claims it contains beneficial bacteria to aid in digestion, and its Actimel brand makes the same claim about boosting the immune system. These claims were actually subject to a successful $35 million class action lawsuit in the U.S.

Claims based on vitamin and mineral content, high fiber, etc. were largely left intact, however. So while I personally think more emphasis should be made that vitamin A isn't the same from a carrot or a piece of white bread, at least food companies (who are more often than not part of a multinational corporation with large European operations) are getting the message that if you're going to say something, you need to be able to back it up with some hard science. A step in the right direction I think.

Prioritizing your organic purchases

2009-09-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

My brother in law recently asked me which foods I'd most want to be organic. I've written about this idea before less directly, but it's a good question. While eating mostly organic foods is obviously a great choice as it dramatically reduces toxins in your body, improves soil conditions and the environment generally, tends to provide better lives for farmers and workers, and is less likely to put your money in the hands of multi-national corporations, sometimes you just have to prioritize. So let's assume all you care about is your health -- or your kid's health, and you aren't going to buy 100% organic fruits and vegetables. What should you be sure to buy organic and what can you forget about?

A good reference guide is here. I've compared this list to others and overall the most important produce to buy organic includes (starting with the worst): peaches, apples, peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, grapes, carrots pears, spinach and potatoes. Some of the produce that you can buy conventional and sleep well at night include (starting with the least dangerous): onions, avocados, pineapple, mango, asparagas, kiwi, cabbage, eggplant and watermelon. And just to scare you a bit more about just how dangerous and unpredictable pesticide use is, check out this recent article on peaches from the Chicago Tribune.

I would just note a couple other things. One is GMOs. While corn and soybeans don't top the list when it comes to pesticides, they do for GMO use (the VAST majority of corn and soy in the U.S. is genetically modified). GMOs cannot be certified organic. And of course, there are other items to worry about besides produce. To this list I'd say baby food, if relevant (presicides are exponentially more dangerous to small children), milk and dairy (or at least hormone free), and eggs (organic chickens are not given the doses of antibiotics and hormones normally used, and require a slightly better life -- also look for all vegetarian diets).

What's in a name?

2009-09-22T10:46:00.006-05:00

Researcher Brian Wansink has written about how test restaurants clearly show that adding a description to a menu item can dramatically increase sales. People don't just want a fish; they want a wild Eskimo line-caught fish. And often people want to feel good about what they are eating when it comes to meat and fish. I'm sure you've noticed how pervasive a practice it has become for restaurants to add the name of the farm before a cut of beef, pork or chicken. The problem, is that people are being tricked. The idea is that you're getting meat raised on a small farm, perhaps a local farm, where the animal is fed a healthy diet, maybe sees a lot of grass, is slaughtered humanely, and so forth. Maybe these don't all go through your head, but that's the general idea. The problem is that we're judging these farms based on nothing and we're really eating in the dark.

I often have the problem of wanting to eat meat only from small farms that raise their animals on pastures. Seeing that something comes from such and such farm in Wisconsin is somewhat reasuring, but how can I tell? You can ask the waiter, who will ask the chef, who will usually say (from my experience) that he isn't sure. And sometimes things are just down right misleading. A friend of mine recently recommended a Mexican restaurant near me called Fuego. They have organic fish, "Amish chicken" and White Marble Farms pork chops. Pretty smart description. I'm sure it ups sales on that item and it might have gotten me to order it. Thanksfully I viewed it in front of a computer and found that White Marble Farms is a division of Cargill and sold through Sysco -- one of the largest food processors and food sellers in the world, respectively. Reports on White Marble Farms indicate that the pigs are confined to industrial farm-like quarters, have their tails painfully "trimmed" and their diet includes the unpiglike diet of corn and soybeans, in addition to pig byproducts: yummy blood plasma and white grease. (Another report is here.) Needless to say, I wouldn't go near this product and it makes me sad just knowing it exists.

After all, it exists to trick you. Cargill knows that consumers will pay more for a product that appears to be more then a simple pork chop, and that restaurants want to be able to say something nice on the menu. Sysco helps sell the lie to restaurants as was shown in the above-cited article where Sysco pitched White Marble Farms to a San Fran restaurant that specifically tried to carry sustainable and natural products. Consumers cannot be expected to pull out their internet devices and google every product. And the minute companies know they are doing that the PR curtain would be pulled over our heads in any event. It is up to restaurants, chefs, advocacy groups and others who can be in the middle to keep us from being tricked everywhere we turn. I fear that this trend will continue, perhaps with large producers buying up some small farms and then using their established name on tens of thousands of confined animals. Or more of these made up names that sound so innocent.

USDA shows support for small farmers

2009-09-18T13:44:00.003-05:00

The New York Times recently discussed how the USDA is moving to support small farmers and encourage eating locally -- the opposite of the mentality that supports large producers. The USDA is throwing a lot of money behind this. Money will support small farmers and help connect them with people who want to eat locally, focusing on a campaign called "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" that is backed by a $65 million budget. Special focus will also go to improving locally produced food options in food cafeterias, as well as grants to states to assist local business cooperatives (which are clearly one of the most successful mechanisms through which small farms can compete with larger producers by offering more variety, scale, etc. -- such as by pooling resources to provide 30 kinds of produce to a grocery store that would get its attention, or by pooling 50 small tomato farms together to get a Wal-Mart contract that otherwise would be impossible). The USDA's press release on this initiative has an interesting quote from the the initiative's chair, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan: "American people are more interested in food and agriculture than at any other time since most families left the farm. 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' seeks to focus that conversation on supporting local and regional food systems to strengthen American agriculture by promoting sustainable agricultural practices and spurring economic opportunity in rural communities." This is very good news.

Organic milk

2009-09-17T12:33:00.000-05:00

I've written before about milk -- about the risks of bovine hormones that boost production and the absurdity of our laws that require milk to be pasteurized (and the common misconception that "raw" milk is unsafe). You can usually find milk that is "homone free" or "rBGH" free and that's a good start. Additionally, organic milk has become widely available and will continue to be more available and more affordable (for better or worse is a whole other topic). Organic milk must come from "organic cows" just as with organic beef. This requires certification and compliance with USDA rules. Organic cows cannot be injected with hormones, and cannot be given antibiotics except sometimes in limited situations where the health of the animal is truly at issue (this is a point that has developed some controversy as without some flexibility a cow would either have to be left to suffer and die as an "organic cow" or given the necessary drugs and then perhaps sold to a factor farm now that it lost its organic status or separated from the organic herd for at least a year).

Additionally, organic cows must have access to pasture. They truly need to be able to walk around and eat grass when possible. This can be difficult depending on the season and geography, and certainly favors smaller farms as requirements of rotational grazing, herding, etc. clearly become more problematic when you go from 300 cows to 1,000 to 5,000. The good news is cows like to graze. It's in their nature. Farmers report that cows run to the pasture enthusiasm (for a cow) -- not unlike a dog that gets excited to go outside. And as I've discussed so many times, grass is what a cow is meant to eat. When you feed an animal its natural diet it will be healthier (thus the significantly reduced need for banned antibiotics, etc.) and it will produce healthier food for humans. Organic milk has been found to produce as much as 500x more beneficial fatty acids (particularly conjugated linoleic acid or CLA), anticarcinogens and vitamin E as conventional milk where cows are fed a "grain diet" (corn). Other benefits include 75% more vitamin A and 2-3x more antioxidants. And of course there are no traces of those hormones and antibiotics, which are significantly more dangerous to children than adults.

There are many concerns as the industry develops. The nation's largest producer of organic milk is Aurora Organic Dairy. They have been a center of controversy from the start, as chronicled in Samuel Fromartz's book Organic, Inc. And they remain representative of the problems in this industry. Aurora Dairy is huge. Unlike most organic dairy farms, they operate on a huge scale and use industrial-scale dairies more like massive conventional dairy farms. They are one of the primary suppliers to Wal-Mart, Target, Safeway and Costco, among others. Unfortunately, they have always had a problem with the grazing requirements. In 2007 the USDA found them to have "willfully" violated numerous USDA organic regulations. Earlier this month they made negative headlines again when The Cornucopia Institute filed a formal complaint with the USDA that Aurora was failing to comply with USDA organic guidelines in at least one dairy.

While perhaps technically in compliance, you may also want to avoid the largest brands in general. Horizon is owned by Dean Foods, and has been found to also represent much of what is wrong in the direction of organic milk today. They pioneered ultrapasteurization that heats milk to even higher levels to increase shelf life for distant transportation, but exacerbates the problems of pasteurization. Also at the bottom of organic milk surveys are most store brands (with the notable exception of Whole Foods 365, which has been deemed "excellent").

How can you call that syrup?

2009-09-13T10:21:00.004-05:00

I recently took an early morning flight and was starving at the airport. I went into Chili's and got what seemed like the least offensive thing on the menu: pancakes with potatoes. I opened the little syrup package that they gave me and started eating. While chewing, I happened to notice the label on the syrup package, showing the following ingredients, in this order: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, artificial flavor, salt, caramel color. Wow. I guess I'm still pretty ignorant. I thought the only options in syrup were PURE maple syrup, and diluted maple syrup. Apparently corn byproducts is also a category. Even more offensive is that this was made by (BigAgra) ConAgra under the Knotts Berry Farm label. Sounds like some sweet little homemade brand, right? According to Knotts Berry Farm's website, it started as a roadside stand, with Cordelia Knotts making homemade jams, jellies and preserves. Now the same family recipes and farm-fresh fruit are used today. Really? Interesting to think that Mrs. Knotts had access to a chemical lab was was so transparently concerned with using up the excess of corn in this country. Shame on the company for selling out so pathetically, and shame on Chili's for supporting such crap. ConAgra has no shame left so I can leave them out.

Profiling an organic shopper

2009-09-09T10:30:00.005-05:00

We often think of organic food as expensive, as a luxury, as something associated with Whole Foods where it is difficult to walk out and not drop a couple hundred dollars. But that isn't the whole picture by any means. Studies, such as one from The Hartman Group profiling organic consumers in the U.S., or another from the Food Marketing Institute, show that income is actually fairly irrelevant amongst organic consumers. An organic shopper's median income is within $2,000 of the U.S. median income -- essentially identical. Some of this is due to increasing organic selections at traditional grocery stores. Much at the lower income levels is also due to amazing work of various non-profits that make fresh produce, including organic produce, available in low income areas traditionally overrun with fast food and convenience stores. Age is also pretty irrelevant, though elderly people are a little less likely to buy organic, and those around 30-50 are more likely. Interestingly, the so called Generation Y (18-27) are at the low end of the spectrum (only about half of them regularly buy organic). The only factor that seems to stand out is the presence of children. This is often cited as a motivational factor for people to purchase organic, or as the motivation for someone first organic purchase.

Now a few fun facts...

The vast majority of organic shoppers report choosing organic because they believe it is more nutritious (perceived "freshness" and promotion of longevity also top the list). Fruits and veggies top the list by far, but also high is dairy, and bread/cereal/pasta. Eggs are still pretty low on the list. Packaged foods (a polite way of saying processed foods) are gaining and are now 1/4 of the organic market. There is still a lot of room to grow in availability to consumers - almost a third of retail food stores still lack a single organic product. Only 19 percent of organic purchases are done at Whole Foods and other "natural and organic markets".

The long and the short of it is that over half of all U.S. shoppers regularly purchase at least some organic foods. With few exceptions, this holds true across income and age. Across the board, from rich to poor, people are choosing what is often not the cheapest, most easily accessible option. To me, this is very good news. Now I'm off to egg a McDonalds.

Forget the vitamins -- eat your cereal

2009-09-08T09:31:00.004-05:00

Kellog's has recently ramped up its nutritional claims on Rice Krispies (the original and -- though I had never before heard of these -- Cocoa Krispies and Jumbo Krispies). In words larger than the name of the product, the box promises that the cereal will now support your child's immunity by providing 25% of daily antioxidants and nutrients -- notably vitamins A, B6, B12, C and E. Interesting, cereal was really the first mainstream "health food". Cereal companies were mostly started by strange nutritional "pioneers" like Dr. Kellog, and began by marketing forms of pulverized wheat and other styles of "granula" later dubbed granola. Cereal companies were the first to realize the marketing power of adding health claims by convinving the American Heart Association to certify certain products as beneficial for your heart and cholesterol levels. (As I've discussed before, studies to support something like this are invariably paid for by the industry that hopes to gain from the outcome, and the desired results are so likely that these are almost unquestionably skewed.) Cereal basically never looked back. Now you walk down the aisle of your grocery store and cereal promises to fix your heart, make multivitamins obsolete, provide probiotics normally found in yogurt, omega 3s, and so on.

Of course this is a pretty transparent cycle of ruthless marketing to children and then making parents feel good about letting their kids eat what they want to eat. Unfortunately, food isn't so simple. I won't go on here as I have multiple times before on this, but it warrants repeating that foods are meant to be eaten whole. We know this because when they are eaten whole they provide benefits that can never fully be achieved by isolating what we think is beneficial (say omega 3s), sticking just that part in a pill or other food, and consuming it that way. Of all the things we don't fully understand in this world, nutrition is one of them. There is something in the flax seed, the hemp seed or the salmon that helps our bodies fully appreciate the omega 3s. Strip that out and you'll get your omega 3s, but they won't be equally beneficial.

A serving of rice krisipes now gives you 25% of required nutrients? Serve your kid 4 servings a day with water and lets see how long he lives.

L.A. bans fast food

2009-08-27T10:28:00.005-05:00

South Los Angeles has recently banned the opening of any new fast food restaurants for a year. The measure also includes an emphasis (and funding) to encourage the opening of grocery stores and sit down restaurants (both are historically far less prevalent in low income areas). You can read the NYT's report on it here. This is, to say the least, excellent news. It shows the next step in understanding just what fast food is: a huge part of the problem with our current health failures, and just what it's not: the entire problem. Fast food, as some well educated and articulate writers love to point out, provides a service to people who want it. You can get fast, cheap food, often feeding a family for about the price of one person's meal anywhere else. But part of the problem is the lack of alternatives. This measure helps ensure that more grocery stores are built while fast food restaurants are frozen. (I'm far less excited about the sit down restaurant part as most low-end sit down restaurants are not much better than fast food, and sometimes actually worse as they give the perception of health without any improvement.) Access to grocery stores is very important as it in turn provides access to whole foods -- fresh produce being the most important.

But to me, another incredibly important aspect of this turn of events is optics. Finally we are starting to call fast food out for what it is. Laws throughout our country protect fast food regardless of how dangerous it has proven to our health. But as communities target transfat, deceptive calories, soda, and other health concerns linked to food, it is finally time to turn our gaze towards what represents the worst of the worst and to start to hold such companies responsible for the damage they cause. This is the first step -- acknowledging that fast food companies are an enormous part of the problem, and that we won't just sit back and let it continue.

GMOs (part II)

2009-08-26T18:09:00.004-05:00

Earlier this week I touched on some of the primary concerns with GMOs (both widespread concerns and personal concerns I have ). Here I'm finishing off the last three areas: corporate dominance, laws, and impacts on third world countries/peoples -- plus a bit on what you can do about it all if you decide you share my fears. As I said in my first post, this barely does justice to any one concern, and simply lays a quick foundation that I hope to build on later.

Corporate dominance -- we are seeing a handful of companies dominate what we eat. As I've talked about before, this is becoming a huge and hidden problem. About 80% of beef in the U.S., for instance, comes from one of five companies. We are moving towards a world where a handful of companies will own the seeds to everything that we grow. They will literally own and control the food supply. We need to stop worrying about the Microsofts and Googles and start focusing on the Monsantos and ConAgra's. Why don't we? As The Future of Food points out, the penetration into our government and revolving door by and with BigAgra is simply amazing. BigAgra is essentially governing themselves. And even believing a handful of companies will control our seeds may be optomistic. Some put Monsanto as controling over 90% of the GMO market.

This brings us to laws. Patent law now allows companies to patent seeds and genes. People can patent life. When a patented GMO seed is accidentally mixed with other seeds, it contaminates the entire "population" and the farmer who accessed the GMO seeds through bad luck when it fell off a truck onto his land, is liable to the patent holder. Really. I can't even talk about this one right now. It defies logic so greatly it is upsetting. What we need is a sense that certain things are too important to be "owned" by any company. But instead of fighting for us, the government is fighting for BigAgra, and in some cases taking ownership interests in certain patents.

Third world countries -- all around the world, people grow food for themselves or buy locally from farmers. People in third world countries don't drive to Wal-Mart nearly as often as they eat what is around them. This last topic maybe sounds a bit boring but get this: GMO seeds have a so called "terminator gene" that makes them sterile. Imagine if from now on men were born sterile. A man could still marry a woman and have a baby with her, but to do so he'd have to BUY sperm from a sperm bank. And 5 companies control every sperm bank in the world. Really, imagine that for a moment. That is what we're moving to in the world of food. GMO seeds produce plants that produce seeds that are useless. A farmer in India (or America) who has always grown plants, planted the seeds from those plants and grown more, is inching towards a world where every single year he has to buy his seeds from BigAgra. Can't he just "opt out" of GMOs? It's not that easy. Countless stories are reported of GMO seeds contaminating seed batches, contaminating fields and so forth. This is marketed as a way for a country to control its product. Sort of like if songs bought of iTunes and if it was downloaded to another computer it would require you to pay a fee everytime you wanted to play it. Reasonable enough. But what if that song would automatically jump to any computer within 100 yards of where it was being played -- and instead of making you pay everytime you wanted to play that song, it infected your whole library, making you pay everytime you wanted to play any song? That is more like what we have here. Something that sounds reasonable in a shiny pamphlet but that is incredibly scary and indefensible. Again, we're talking about food here. This isn't just another product for a company to control like online music. And by the way, the US government owns a large portion of the patent for the terminator gene.

What can you do about it? Well I'll talk more about that later, but for starters, eat organic. Organic food cannot contain GMOs. That means buying organic veggie burgers or soymilk is a better idea than conventional. You can also try and avoid processed foods. While whole foods are increasingly genetically modified, you're more likely to find GMOs today used as fillers in hotdogs, margarine, cookies, etc. You may also want to try and avoid fried foods. We think that eating vegetable oil is healthier, but most vegetable oil is from soy or corn, and most of that is genetically modified. There are some serious health concerns that would not be present with much higher fat oils like olive, nut oils, or even animal-based fats. Finally, to all those out there who try to avoid meat, it is becoming increasingly known that health food's dirty little secret is how much of it contains GMOs. Mostly this is in the form of genetically modified soy. Look for brands that specifically say they contain no GMOs.

If you really want to know brand by brand, check out this useful guide here. It will tell you what doesn't contain GMOs, what does (though in more PC terms it claims they "might"). By way of example -- want to know what brands of infant formula are for sure GMO free? It's right there (Gerber, for instance, is one of them). Energy bars (which contain a lot of often GMO soy)? Clif, Luna and Odwalla are all clear. Be careful of Balance Bars, Nature Valley and PowerBars.

GMOs

2009-08-26T17:01:00.003-05:00

I know this blog has been entirely neglected as of late. I apologize for that and appreciate any readers who have bared with me and continue to view this blog. Here I've kicked things off again with a topic that's become pretty important to me.

I used to think the genetically modified organism (GMO) "scare" I hear and read about was just a bunch of people paranoid about innovation. I've since realized I was falling for BigAgra's marketing campaigns and there is actually quite a bit to be scared of. GMOs are incredibly scary and shockingly evil in really every way. I hope to touch on these issues separately more in depth but just to run through some of them here, the issues come down to secrecy, health, environment, corporate dominance, laws, and third world countries. I'll talk briefly about secrecy, health and the environment here, and cover the rest later this week.

Before I go through them, them, I wanted to note that an amazing but scary movie that runs through the issues of GMOs is "The Future of Food" -- as recently recommended by a friend of mine and available off Netflix. This film touches on the scariest aspects of GMOs. I highly recommend it.

Let's start with secrecy -- genetically modified foods are all over the place. You probably had no idea. Soybeans, which have increased their presence both prominantly in foods that try to capitalize on the belief that soy is healthy (partly true) and as a cheap protein filler in everything from animal feed, to processed packaged foods to Arby's roast beef. Reports from articles a few years ago claimed that US soy production was 80% dominated by GMOs. Now reports put it at more like 95%. At least 1/4 of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, as well as most of our cotton. What makes the U.S. so crazy, though, even more then the dominance of GMOs in some of our major crops, is that we don't require disclosure. You can find products that actively disclose they are "GMO-free" but the government does not require any disclosure of GMO in ingredients. Most developed countries either ban GMOs or require disclosure.

Health -- this is a big one and I'll only touch on it briefly here. The health implications of GMOs are massive. Altering the genes requires companies to essentially insert bacteria and/or viruses into other organisms. We are only beginning to understand the implications of this, and the possible negative effects of random, out of place genes (such as a flounder gene in a tomato). Studies are few and far between as they are opposed with massive funding from BigAgra, but they have shown incredible mortality rates from bugs eating such crops (studies with Monarch butterflies showed massive mortality rates), very disturbing health issues on rats fed genetically modified produce, and so forth. To ensure that the genetic modification "takes," companies will insert an "antibiotic resistance marker" into the food. Some scientists have been incredibly concerned of the implications this has on already troubling antibiotic resistance in our lives. Further, genetically modified foods have been shown to cause allergic reactions in some people -- sometimes as severe as potential death. One theory of why companies like to keep the presence of GMOs secret in food is so that it becomes very difficult to track allergic reactions and so forth back to GMOs. Pretty scary stuff.

Environment -- crops grown from GMO seeds have some serious issues not fully tested and publicized by the companies that market them. Some of these include shorter root systems that can cause flooding issues and other problems. But more importantly, our environment benefits from diversity. We already -- as I have blogged about before -- seen a terrible reduction in diversity, with most fruits and vegetables being grown from one or two varieties. GMOs threaten to further destroy biodiversity and turn every corn seed in the world, for instance, into the one marketed by Monsanto, for instance. This can lead to the development of so called superweeds that destroy such crops with efficiency, and no fallback. Ireland's potato famine is an interesting example of what happens with less biodiversity. A further problem for the environment (and certainly our health) is pesticides. The companies who make the pesticides, are now the main companies that market GMO seeds. These are marketed to go hand in hand. The most famous being the "Round Up Ready" seeds, that are designed so as not to die when sprayed with Round Up. This is a chemical that kills everything living. But now it won't kill your GMO plant. Sound healthy to you? Companies are even developing seeds that won't germinate unless they come in contact with a certain external agent -- so for instance a soybean seed would be worthless unless sprayed with Round Up. We need less pesticide, not more.

Organics

2009-07-30T12:55:00.003-05:00

In an attempt to present a balanced view here, I'm posting about a recent article a friend sent me that claims, based on a large spread of studies on organic foods, that there is no nutritional benefit to eating organic vegetables or animal products. Of course, even if that is true, there is still a significant benefit to avoiding harmful chemicals and promoting practices that are environmentally sustainable. You can check it out here.

Certainly this is not the overwhelming consensus. Numerous studies here and abroad have found that organic food is better for you. A Danish study, for instance, found that organic foods have increased antioxidants -- which makes sense when you consider that organic foods have to create stronger, self-sufficient defenses when fields aren't sprayed. Other studies, for instance, have determined that organic milk, grains, etc. are significantly healthier. The only honest truth is that it's probably too early to tell, but if you focus only on nutrition, you lose sight of the dangers that added chemicals pose both to your health and our environment.

It's been a while since I've written about anything that interesting on here. This weekend I plan to write about the benefits of eating fermented foods :)

What's my reward for an "A"?

2009-07-24T15:24:00.003-05:00

It is very common to give rewards and punishments for jobs well done or to discourage undesirable behavior. While the news keeps talking about Hillary Clinton offering North Korea the stick or the carrot, but most kids, it's the cupcake, cookie, ice cream, Coke or trip to McDonalds instead of a carrot. And while we frown on sticks these days in child-rearing, and don't tend to use food as punishment, so to speak, things like eating your vegetables are often attributed to something you do against your will -- like work, if you will. The scientist and author, Brian Wansink discusses the deep roots this all leaves in us for life in his book: Mindless Eating (Why We Eat More Than We Think). (First, I will say I totally disagree with his views on fast food, etc. -- basically that they give us what we want and if everyone wanted to buy fresh fruit McDonalds would be lining up to sell it. What we're forgetting is that they prey on our natural taste for certain things (salt, etc.), hook us in through arguably unethical advertising and product placement to children so young they cannot differentiate ads from non-ads, and god could I go on.)

But more on point, Wansink shows us that a food used as a reward -- let's take ice cream -- is always going to have a special place in our hearts. Foods that we felt forced to eat -- let's take broccoli -- is always going to be dreaded and resented. We may not realize it, but his studies are pretty overwhelming. This is something that should be in our parenting books and in our teacher's training sessions. It seems to make sense then that if you need your kid to eat his greens, give him less food and then tell him he can't have more until he finishes his plate, and if you want to give rewards, make them unrelated to food. The sensitivities we have to food growing up go on and on. Deprive someone of something and they crave it. The theory being that those of us who are always raiding (or wanting to raid) the cookie jar were kept pretty locked down on sweets growing up.

I think we're far from the answers to how to perfectly integrate food into the lives of our children, but we should at least be aware that we need to be very careful -- that everything we do to make a food seem good or bad is absorbed and retained, whether we know it or not, for the rest of our lives.

PS. I have nothing against ice cream -- so long as it's all natural (go on, eat the full fat stuff). If it's made from the milk of grass fed cows then you're really going to heaven. Check out Nice Cream from Green Grocer, Black Dog Gelato at the Logan Square Farmers Market or served at a number of restaurants in the Chicago area (they have an amazing spicy Mexican chocolate), or an artisan producer near you.

Who doesn't love 100 calorie snack packs?

2009-07-22T11:53:00.004-05:00

I have been really bad about keeping up postings here. Work and travel have really kept me busy and I'm trying to keep this going at a sustainable pace. Just thought I'd leave you with a little thought today.

If you eat real, full fat natural food, you won't need to eat as much. You can enjoy amazing real food, in smaller quantities. I remember in college when I would eat the fat free snackwells cookies half a box to a sitting. They were fat free right? Well it doesn't work that way of course (I may have been drunk at the time as well). Studies show that people eat significantly more food when they believe the food is lower in fat or calories. This makes sense if you're eating a salad of vegetables and oil and vinegar -- life goes on if you stuff a few more mouthfuls in. But what about cookies, ice cream, packaged salad dressing, stuff from your freezer? This stuff is terrible for you to begin with. Now you're eating more of it because you think it's lower in fat or calories. Even when we don't believe that's the case, studies overwhelming show it is.

One trick is to switch over to the real stuff. Only eat full fat, real ice cream for a couple weeks, real creamy dressing, all natural cookies made with real butter and all the fat. One benefit is you may realize how much better this tastes and realize that with full fat, you find yourself needing less (fat makes you feel full). Another is, should you switch back to the fat free ice cream (how exactly do they do that?) you'll remember that when you ate the real stuff you only had one scoop -- now you're having three.

Real chocolate

2009-07-16T14:28:00.003-05:00

I just finished my Gnosis Chocolate bar (pronounced "nosis") and thought I'd drop a little note about it here. Gnosis is a New York company started by the beautiful Vanessa Barg. All of their chocolates are handmade (meaning they use absolutely no machines whatsoever), raw, and vegan. Even those fancy chocolate bars you find at Whole Foods will often be filled with emulsifiers, have unnecessary dairy added, etc. None of that here. It's pretty well known now that chocolate is extremely good for you in moderation. The issue, though, is what's chocolate? A Hershey's bar is not, if you get my drift. Gnosis' products are. This is one of those things where we ate chocolate, industry and food companies took over and gave us a watered down, artificial version, and companies like Gnosis are giving us options to eat the real stuff. I highly recommend you seek it out, which is available at some Whole Foods, Hanna's Bretzel in Chicago, and on their website here.

Grass fed -- will it take on?

2009-07-15T09:47:00.005-05:00

Let me begin by acknowledging that my posts have been less frequent. One every weekday was probably never sustainable and that certainly caught up to me. I do hope to keep this going though and still encourage comments and discussions so this isn't a one-sided conversation. If anyone out there would like to write a guest post, I'm always interested in those too.

As a second prong of disappointment to my self I must admit that I broke my diet recently. I took an out of town guest to Gibson's -- the famous Chicago steakhouse. They certainly only serve corn-fed beef (who knows how it's raised -- they say it's prime, meaning it's a higher grade then about 98% of beef out there, but that doesn't say much for the life it lived). The steak was excellent -- I had the fattiest one on the bone and there was a lot of flavor (and still a lot of fat that hadn't cooked off) when it got to my plate. I wanted to try it -- see how it compared to the grass fed steaks I've been eating. What's interesting, though, is the way the steaks are marketed. They are brought over table side -- you can examine them raw the way you could in a grocery store, see the marbeling and the grain. And while a filet (amongst the leanest possible cuts) is always a popular item at steakhouses, the marbeling is what you're being sold on. And as I've discussed before, marbeling is a product of corn fed cattle. It is actually a concept we've been convinced reflects the quality of a steak to encourage corn feeding cattle.

So how can grass fed beef take on if there's all this emphasis on marbeling? Part of me wonders if it really can. But then again, popularity of lean cuts like the filet are encouraging as they are more comperable to a grass fed steak (though cut to cut grass fed is always going to be leaner). Also encouraging is how it is becoming an option at some high end restaurants. In planning an upcoming trip to Vegas, I discovered some interesting stuff. At Craftsteak (Tom Colicchio's place for your Top Chef fans) you can choose cuts such as the New York Strip in grain (corn) fed or grass fed. Mario Batali's Carnevino offers "source-verified" grass fed beef . Canyon Ranch serves nothing but grass fed beef.

Of course taste is another issue and some think grass fed tastes too much like, well, grass. Interestingly, Gourmet magazine recently discussed on a television show that taste tests show many people prefer grass fed. Batali's Carnevino does not even mention on the menu that the beef is grass fed (though I haven't been there to know whether the server pushes that point). I once blogged about stealth organic and vegan food -- it makes people scared it's weird if you call it vegan, for instance, so that's just left off. This is what happened with organic food at the movement's early stages, according to Samuel Fromartz in Organic, Inc. Chefs wouldn't label things organic because they were concerned people would think it was "health food" and would presume it tasted bad.

I guess we'll see where grass fed goes. It is encouraging to see that it is taking off at the higher end spots. From there we may see trends beginning. The day I see a fast food restaurant advertising about a new grass fed burger will be a very sad and very happy day.

Spending more on food (Part II)

2009-07-09T11:27:00.002-05:00

I previously discussed that we can afford to spend more on food then we may think. Indeed, the diminished percentage of our income spent on food is unprecendented certainly throughout history and even throughout the world today. Small family farms often cannot compete with large commercial ones and therefore you may find that you can justify paying a premium to support a family farm. The good news is that family farms are more likely to treat their animals better, care for their crops more, and produce healthier food. Family farms are also more likely to sell locally, meaning that your supporting your community, and you're eating food that was probably harvested more recently (= healthier and tastier). Family farms are also more likely to pay their workers a better wage.

Wages are important as there is no point in supporting an unsustainable system. And each time you use your dollars for industrialized food you do that. Farming is a dying industry for all but the biggest. According to Samuel Fromartz in Organic, Inc., 90% of farms earn less than $50,000 a year. Many of the people who actually harvest the crops, slaughter the animals, and so forth, are migrant workers (often "illegal"), live in absurdly terrible conditions and earn incredibly low wages. You can take this for what it's worth, but my sense from all that I have read and seen is that family farms prefer not to exploit their workers. Indeed, if they could afford to, they would pay liveable wages, provide decent living accomodations (and even transportation as necessary). But they also want to survive, and when you're earning less than $50K for a family of 4, it's pretty hard not to pay the minimim you can get away with.

So to me, paying more for my food makes most sense when I'm paying it to a family farm. The money usually stays local, it supports hard working farm owners who deserve a decent income for raising the food we rely on, and it is more likely to be passed on as a liveable wage to laborers who are otherwise shamelessly expoited (most notably in California). And again, you can afford to spend more on your food -- trust me.

New food safety regulations

2009-07-07T10:46:00.004-05:00

Those of you who follow the news may have seen that the Obama administration is pushing for revised food safety regulations and the FDA is moving down that road. Concerns are obvious -- mad cow, salmonella, E. coli, etc. The fact that swine flew wasn't transmitted through eating pork was a disaster averted for the food industry (but, just like avian flu, it seems pretty clear that the disease originated and spread due to the absurd confinement and treatment of pigs and chickens in industrialized farms). And of course part of the scare is that the taint goes to more than just milk, eggs, and products that have traditionally been risky. Getting a potentially deadly disease from a peanut, a jalapeno, spinach or a scallion just seems to bring our confidence in food safety to its knees. So now your government is stepping up. It's unclear how this will be approached but sadly it is unlikely to be anything short of more of the same.

What's more of the same? Standards that fit in with the industrial system and provide oversight and band-aids rather than true, sensible solutions. It's well known that keeping animals in industrialized farms makes them sick and is a breeding ground for aggressive diseases. The new regulations are unlikely to try and change this -- rather perhaps we have to pasteurize our milk at higher temperatures, irradiate our meat further, and so forth. Diseases in vegetables usually stem from spreading un-composted manure on fields (composting heats the material to a sufficient degree to kill all bacteria). This is one attempt by industrialized farms to cheaply use excessive manure that is causing environmental headaches, to say the least. But done incorrectly, as it often is, it spreads the diseases from the diseased animals all over your vegetables.

The funny thing here is that we know the problem. The solution then has to be to fix or improve the problem. We'll see what happens but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.

(Another time I'll discuss further how regulations are debilitating to small farms -- as standards for large industrialized farms are applied without flexibility across the board even when the make no sense for small farms that invariably produce fresher, healthier food).

Your trendy farmers markets

2009-07-06T17:18:00.002-05:00

Farmers Markets clearly seem to be increasing in trendiness. Of course they have dramatically increased in numbers over the past few decades -- Chicago now has 3 downtown during the week and at least one if almost every major neighborhood. Those who can't make the markets can still hit up stores like Chicago's Downtown Farmstand or the Green Grocer. But what really strikes me as proving how trendy these markets have become is how restaurants have latched on to local, seasonal and family farming. Last night, for instance, I ate at Chaise Lounge in the Bucktown neighborhood. Their ingredients are almost exclusively sourced from local producers, including as much as possible from the Green City Market. Unfortunately, their servers and chefs working that night did not know whether their meat was pastured -- which further leads me to the "trendy" part -- it all sounds good but the people there don't really know what it really means. A number of restaurants have really gotten into this, but the lack of knowledge by anyone other then the chef may mean that the patrons don't really cares about the details. Of course part of what drove farmers markets has always been the chef as customer. High end chefs thought the freshest, best tasting food came straight from local farms and used that to meet their high standards. But you were never told that a tomatoe at Charlie Trotters came from a local family farm. Now you have more and more restaurants that advertise the source of their ingredients. I think this is great -- I just wish customers and restaurant personnel were more concerned and aware of what it all meant. Sure it's great that your pork comes from such and such farm in Wisconsin, but what does that really mean (other than that it doesn't come from China)?

What's wrong with water?

2009-07-01T09:07:00.002-05:00

I've never really understood the whole "Gatorade" idea. What exactly is wrong with water? When you get off a treadmill, your body needs water. It doesn't need electrolytes. Are you an Ironman triathlete? If your body needs more than water you can always eat after your workout. But drinks like Gatorade, Poweraid, etc. mainly provide you with sugar, artificial flavors and colors, and a few other things. They advertise that they provide you with what your body lost. But since when is that a problem? Trust me, your body can produce more of what it needs if you give it water and natural foods. Consider this, those drinks mainly provide you with sugar. They have small amounts of other ingredients but you're maily drinking sugar and water with chemicals. They also have calories. A person will burn in the neighborhood of 10 calories a minute in a fairly strenuous exercise. That sports drink will often have nearly as many calories as a regular soda. So those 300 calories you just burned in a half hour of jogging? Say hello to half of it again with a small bottle of virtually any sports drink. So this leaves me back where I began -- what exactly is wrong with water? Seems like it's just missing all the marketing.

Listening to your body

2009-06-30T11:53:00.003-05:00

My constant mantra on here is that natural food is all that matters and if you eat natural you will be fine. Michael Pollan discusses groups in Africa that eat virtually nothing but meat, Pacific Islanders who eat nearly all seafood, and certain groups who have eaten a nearly entirely vegetarian diet for centuries -- all with the result of being virtually disease-free. The lesson put forth is that you can eat anything so long as it is natural. What can be important to keep in mind, however, is that you can't necessarily just switch the pescatarian islander with the carnivore land-locked African. We are all different, and it is important to listen to our bodies. Some of use may be intollerant to gluton, others lactose, still others may need to eat a low-fat diet due to genetics (does your body process fat differently than it should?).

What I think may be the best approach if you think you have any issues with foods or nutrients (such as fat), is to first try to eat all natural. You may find that raw dairy does not have the same effect, or truly whole grains. But they still may, and you'd need to adjust accordingly. People often don't pay much attention to their body. If you're riding a bike and it's squeeking or clicking as it rolls along it is telling you something. Something needs to be adjusted. The human body is no less capable of giving us signs that this or that isn't working -- we need more of X and less of Y. It pays to take some time and nail down on the issues. No matter what anyone suggests, we're all different and we figure that out through trial and error.

How organic is that?

2009-06-29T09:32:00.002-05:00

Forgetting the sometimes misguided backlash against organic foods, it helps to know what organic is all about besides a word. There are 3 regulated terms that deal with organic foods: "100% organic", "organic" and "made with organic ingredients". Of course these are only applicable to packaged goods as organic produce is organic produce. 100% organic means what it sounds like. Organic means that a food contains 95% organic ingredients with the other 5% made up from a list of permitted non-organic ingredients (not anything can be swapped out in that 5% but some of what can might surprise you). Made with organic ingredients means that a product must be made with 70% organic ingredients. The ingredients that can make up the 30% non-organic list is not regulated like the term "organic".

The concept of a food being "organic" has certain defined FDA properties but more practically it means different things to different people. Particularly in these summer months, it can be important to keep in mind why you value organic products so that you can seek out and enjoy products that may be not technically be "organic" but still possess what you're looking for. For instance, organic berries cannot be grown with artificial pesticides. Yet the berries you'd find at Chicago's Green City Market are not raised with artificial pesticides. They are not organic, but they have that benefit which is of most importance to me. Similarly, organic milk cannot be from cows who were given rBGH or other hormone injections. Yet you can find cheese, milk and yogurt most any grocery store today that is rBGH-free (Oberweis, for example). If that is your primary concern then you're covered. (Oberweis also claims to pay its suppliers a premium, indicating that the higher price of its milk is passed on down the line -- an important claim in an industry where many farmers struggle to break even and farmhands make an average of $10,000 a year.)

Of course, if you care about other aspects of the "organic" concept or the USDA regulated term you may only seek out authentic certified organic products. But I think there is something beneficial to understanding why you value organic products, and then to vote with your dollars for anything that picks up those elements. It is often extremely expensive and cumbersome for a farmer to go truly organic. And at the end of the day, it is often just a label with watered down standards. The entire system is lifted up when we are more knowledgeable about our purchases and realistic about when we do or don't care if something actually carries one of the three regulated terms discussed above.

Wal-Mart organics

2009-06-26T10:43:00.004-05:00

Some of the concepts I struggle with when it comes to organic and healthy food include that it's inherently pretentious. There is a sense that rich people sit around wondering where there food comes from while poorer people don't have the time, money or options in the areas they live to have such luxuries. Then there is the all or nothing idea. A world with McDonalds bothers me daily but it's not going anywhere. Should its efforts to improve the treatment of animals from which it sources its meat be praised? That's a topic for another day.

Wal-Mart -- yes, the company that is most commonly associated as the evil empire of corporate America -- quickly became a major player in organic foods. As of this summer it's been selling organic products at some stores for three years. Walk into a Wal-Mart today and you'll find organic produce, milk, cheese, yogurt, packaged goods, and even organic cotton clothes and mattresses. They are in the game. This is pretty amazing as for the first time organic foods are being made available and affordable to America's working class. (Estimates suggest that Wal-Mart customers earn an average of $35,000.) To anyone who thinks the world should be eating organic this is a massive victory. But few are cheering. How much of the hesitancy and pessimism is due to this being the evil empire and how much of it is true cause for concern?

The main issues here are the source and the price. Much of Wal-Mart's organic produce comes from large industrialized farms in third-world countries, primarily China. This isn't necessarily that novel though when you realize that Silk Soymilk and other brands of organic foods source their organic ingredients from the same place (Silk sources it's organic soybeans from third-world countries). And I don't kid myself that the cucumber or tomato I bought at Whole Foods didn't come from Chile. The problem here is scale and a general race to the bottom. When Wal-Mart gets involved we know one thing for sure -- price is king. If anyone anywhere in the world can sell a cheaper organic product (no matter how they treat their workers, how they treat there animals, etc.), Wal-Mart would likely be interested. This is the antithesis of the organic movement, which relies on a general approach for sustainability -- for workers, animals, land and communities.

In the end, I think that this is a good thing when I consider that now a lower-income mother can choose to feed her child organic yogurt or choose to eat organic vegetables when she is pregnant. And the small farms in American and elsewhere will still be there to supply Whole Foods and Green Grocer and so forth. Most people believe in organic foods because they care about their health, the environment, and the treatment of the animal. This is a victory for the health of Wal-Mart shoppers -- not much more and not much less.

Finally, there are accussations that Wal-Mart misleads its customers into thinking that a variety of non-organic items are indeed organic through its signage. This has yet to be fully investigated.

How about a little variety?

2009-06-25T11:04:00.002-05:00

I was in New York this past weekend and a few friends were talking about this imported Spanish ham they love from a particular type of Spanish pig (which is apparently found in one region in Spain). Most Americans don't realize that we used to have some variety here at home. There was a time when there were different varieties of pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and so forth (just like there were different types of strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables). It's sort of like apples today. Imagine if the powers at be in the food industry realized that one type of apple was superior in how large and quickly it grew, how well it handled chemical fertilizers and pesticides, how much it still survived no matter how crowded the apple trees were, how shiny it looked when they applied the wax before the supermarket, how well it could be transported long distances and still look and smell fresh. In response to all this, BigAgra would promote these seeds, farmers would grow these crops, and in however many years and apple would be an apple would be an apple. If someone asked you "what kind of apple?" you'd look at them like they're crazy.

But that's where we've gone with a number of fruits and vegetables, and much of our meat and poultry. Virtually all meat comes from one type of cow and almost all milk comes from one type of cow and almost all pork comes from one type of pig and so on and so forth. This was of course done to maximize profit. The healthiest cows weren't chosen -- they chose the breed that fattens up fastest on a corn and grain diet. The turkeys that were chosen are the ones that can maximize breast meat (for our society that believes they can eat only the parts of the animal they prefer).

There is still some variety out there. After all, there are pigs in a certain region of Spain that differ from the pigs in your bacon. And is it the end of the world if only one breed of pigs is still around in America? Probably not. But this happened under our noses -- our variety went out the window in a country that loves variety. It's something to be aware of and, if you so choose, to seek out farmers that raise different types of animals -- or those strawberry varieties that are nearly extinct.

Please don't lace my food

2009-06-24T10:18:00.004-05:00

I read every label of every food I buy off the shelf and I am often shocked at what I find. The other week I desperately wanted bread late into the evening (long story) and was right by a 7-11. I was happy to find whole wheat bread but it contained high-fructose corn syrup. Why? Why add sugar to a loaf of bread that someone assumes would not have sugar? This is a problem we have in all packaged foods. Someone expect it to be one thing and yet it is another. There are basic goods that we should be able to buy and ASSUME contains what we think they will contain. Bread, for instance, is water, yeast and flour. Grape juice is the liquid squeezed from a grape. It probably wouldn't surprise anyone to find a few additives -- something allows that bread and juice to sit on a shelf for 3 months when yours goes bad that week. But these additions of ingredients that have no place in a product and are not announced (like if it said sweetened wheat bread, that's a different story) are found all over the place. Pay attention and you'll be very surprised. So my request for all you food companies out there is simply this: please stop lacing my food.

Reading food packages in the dark (Part II)

2009-06-23T11:14:00.004-05:00

Anyone who reads this blog knows I don't have much respect for the FDA. I actually think that a fair amount of the time they mean well, but it still doesn't work. One issue I have is with food labels, including the regulated terms the FDA uses. Almost anything I told the average person on the street about any term would probably surprise them. The terms simply don't mean what you think they mean. Most of the terms related to calories, fat, sodium, etc. refer to foods that are specifically formulated or nutritionally altered to produce a different result (read: processed).

No truly natural food will have the term "low" "reduced" "light" (or "lite") or "free". Each of these is restricted for use on foods that are specifically altered or formulated to be low calorie, reduced fat, and so forth. Indeed, a food that is naturally low sodium cannot be labeled low sodium. The FDA thinks it is protecting the consumer but is it? If you were looking in the dairy aisle and you saw three kinds of cows milk and two kinds of soy milk, the soy milk -- while significantly lower in fat than the whole cows milk -- could not be labeled low fat unless it was lower in fat relative to the other brands of soy milk on the market. (We'll ignore the fact that I am a firm believer in full fat products just consumed in moderation). In other words, salsa, which is fat free, would be restricted by the FDA in how it communicated that fact since essentially all salsa is fat free.

The good news here is that you can use these types of terms as red flags in the grocery store and restaurants. Reduced fat ranch or fat free balsamic are products I desperately try and stay away from. What is that fat free balsamic using as oil? Olive oil (by far the healthiest non-animal based fat) certainly contains fat -- so do you want some natural olive oil fat on your lettuce or something processed to be fat free? (Keep in mind all those europeans who eat tons of olive oil and never get fat -- it's not the fat that makes you fat). Or reduced fat ranch. Perhaps eating ranch less often and in a smaller amount would be better than eating the fat free stuff as much as you want. How exactly do you make a fatty dressing like ranch "reduced" fat or "light"? Do you really want to know?

If you want to eat natural foods, then you must avoid these terms. If you don't care, then at least you're not eating in the dark.

What did your dinner eat for dinner and where did it live?

2009-06-22T10:26:00.007-05:00

I often have to remind myself to focus on what my dinner ate for dinner or what my lunch had for lunch. This is of course another way of saying you are what you eat. But you are what you eat eats and here I'm not just talking about a cow or a chicken but also about a carrot and a stalk of wheat. And we are also all the products of our environment, so it is not surprising that our food is too. We are where our food comes from. So the two questions I try to ask myself before I put something in my mouth is: (1) what did it eat and (2) where did it come from? Most of the time, if you're eating the best you can eat (pastured meat, organic or fully pesticide-free produce, etc.) you don't have to worry about the second question. But short of that they both matter. Let's briefly look at this for an animal and a vegetable.

An easy example to start with is a cow. As we know, cows eat grass. Most of the cows we eat in America, however, eat corn. Often they also eat other cows and/or other animals. When you see that your cow at an all vegetarian diet you know what it ate for dinner: it ate corn and perhaps other grains. You also know what it did not eat: other cows (and probably grass). So at least your cow was a vegetarian. But it did not eat what it was designed to eat, so it will be less healthy and it will in turn be less healthy for you. We now know what it ate for dinner. But where did it come from? Did it live on a field or a feedlot (also known as a confined animal feeding operation or CAFO)? If it lived on a field it will be leaner and healthier on its own without the need for drugs and so forth. If it lived in a CAFO the meat will have antibiotics in it. How do you feel about taking unnecessary antibiotics? If you don't care then there is no issue.

The same is true of a dairy cow. If the cow ate grass the milk will be healthier as a cow's milk is the product of its diet no less than a mother's breast milk is the product of hers. If the cow did not eat an organic diet or was not eating grass, there's also a likelihood of it having been given growth hormones. Milk does a body good. Or does it?

Or take a vegetable. When it comes to a tomato, for example, if that tomato was grown in organic soil it ate the nutrients of soil as it was designed to do. If it isn't organic there is a good chance it was grown in soil with chemical-based fertilizers. This will feed the tomato like corn will feed a cow -- quicker, bigger but less healthy. So many studies have concluded that organic methods produce healthier produce that they are becoming difficult to ignore. Here's just one. And where did the tomato live? If it lived on a farm that did not use pesticides (or at least that only used plant-based pesticides) it had to develop its own defenses. This is kind of like the difference between growing up in the city and the suburbs. Were you being driven around in a Volvo when you were 14 or were you taking the subway by yourself? One toughens us up a bit more than the other. A tomato is no different. If it has to fend for itself it will develop defenses that have significant health benefits for anyone lucky enough to eat it.

I am confident that we will only continue to understand how dangerous it is to ignore these questions. What did your lunch eat for lunch? And where did it live? These are tough questions for most of us to answer even when we make our own food -- virtually impossible when we don't. But at least if we eat naturally we can avoid the third vital question: what has been done to it after it was killed? The moment the cow is slaughtered or the tomato is picked, there is a grave danger that it will be processed, preserved or otherwise messed with to make it loose its healthfulness, make it harder for your body to process, and make it the perfect vehicle to deliver unhealthy ingredients into your system. If we don't ask these we cannot possibly know what we are eating.

Friday thought

2009-06-19T09:48:00.003-05:00

The concept of a diet (in the sense of restricting your eating for a particular goal -- weight loss, improved cholesterol, etc.) rarely works. People resent the diet, have a poor relationship with food, less enjoyment in life, and so forth. People also statistically tend to keep the diet for a pretty short period of time before moving back to their old way of eating or trying yet another diet, and tend to reverse their "gains" fairly shortly thereafter (many in the industry cite statistics such as 90% of people who will revert back to eating as before and put the weight right back on, etc.). It would make more sense for us to once and for all throw out that meaning of the word diet.

Diet comes from the latin word "diaeta" which means way of life. That meaning makes much more sense and is a sustainable view on food. Reserving constant room for improvement and tweaking as we are all unique, the diets we choose must truly work for us day in day out year after year after year. The one that works for me is to embrace all foods as good, but to only eat naturally (or another way to view this is to say that all foods are good but if it's been heavily processed, contains artificial ingredients, etc., it ceases to be "food" really). In doing so food has once again become something I love, something that keeps me healthy, and something that makes my life better. This is a way of life -- and a good one.

Pasta whore

2009-06-18T09:48:00.002-05:00

Last night I had fresh pasta from Pasta Puttana -- or Pasta Whore. This is a small business started by Jessica Volpe (not a Chicago native but living here now). She makes a few varieties of pasta and sells them at the Edgewater Farmers Market, the Green City Market, and at Green Grocery (where I got mine last night). The pasta was different in texture and flavor than I am used to. It also cooks in 10 seconds. How's that for fast food? It's $8 for what amounts to a serving for two people -- if it's not all you eat for dinner this really is for two people -- so it's not that expensive. The ingredients are not 100% organic but many of them are, and with one or two exceptions all are locally sourced. The pasta can be frozen and just dropped into boiling water to cook still in 10 seconds (otherwise it spoils quickly). You can read more about Jessica and her company here.

This is the sort of business that deserves supporting: quality artisan products but someone who loves that type of food so much they want to dedicate their life (or at least their free time) to making it. This is also the type of product you'll never find at a Whole Foods or a Trader Joes with a national buying system. Shops like Green Grocer bring things products within our reach. They spend the time finding them, and all we need to do is find the shops. I know there are more artisan food shops near me. I just need to find them now!

Office surprise

2009-06-17T12:12:00.004-05:00

Many people who read this know me and know where I work, but regardless, I'm going to keep this vague. Nonetheless it is important that I begin by saying I work at a major international law firm -- one of the largest in the world. We are moving offices in Chicago over the weekend and our new office will have a "cafe" -- basically a subsidized restaurant/cafeteria for employees only. They could have taken a lot of different approaches to this and frankly I was expecting it to be convenient but a place I'd only go in an emergency. Well low and behold today they send around a brochure and I was VERY pleasantly surprised. The space will be managed by Flik. Everything is made there -- and made without trans fats, using only dairy that is growth hormone free, using only cage free eggs, using only sustainable seafood (according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's guidelines), focusing on local ingredients grown within a 150-mile radius, with numerous vegetarian options and using approx. 95% certified organic ingredients! Wow. Who could have expected that? All of a sudden our "cafe" just became the most appealing place to eat in all of Chicago for lunch. Let's just hope the food tastes good :)

POST SCRIPT:

I've been thinking about this post since it went live. What we have here is a company that has chosen policies and standards well above the industry standard and a law firm that has chosen to pick such a company to manage its employee restaurant (and implicit in that is that attorneys, support staff, etc. appreciate those heightened standards to such an extent that they are more likely to spend their dollars there). These are the facts that I wanted to point out and to praise.

Are things perfect? They are not. As I wrote to the President of Flik, while I commend the choices that they have made, one thought they should consider is incorporating grass-fed meat and pastured poultry (and/or eggs from pastured hens which goes a large step beyond cage free). Nonetheless what you have here is a massive improvement over the alternatives. Further, and even more simply, you have a company that CARES. Do they care because of the bottom line (these policies will bring more dollars) or because they really care? It doesn't matter. What matters is that a company has decided, for profit or otherwise, that healthier food from more responsibly treated animals (here just the egg-laying hens) is the right move. And through those choices the "fan base" is perpetuated. Anyone who reads that brochure and hasn't truly considered local produce may start to think about the benefits. Or may see that they only use hormone free milk and consider the benefits of that next time they hit the dairy aisle in the grocery store. People respond to the messages around them (just look at the response to "cage free" eggs today or the response to veal before that). Thank you Flik. Keep it up and keep trying to be better.

Grilled cheese is delicious

2009-06-16T09:50:00.005-05:00

I ate a grilled cheese on my deck last night and it occurred to me -- where have our taste buds gone? I'm living in a country where most kids would love to have a grilled cheese -- so long as its American cheese on white bread. American cheese, of course, really has no taste except of a sort of scented rubber and plastic. White bread also has no taste, no smell, what is it but a filler? Most of these same kids would find what I was eating disgusting. My grilled cheese consisted of two raw milk cheeses: a blue and an asiago-style, locally baked whole grain bread, French dijon mustard and pure fruit plum preserves (and since I rarely have butter I pan fried it in olive oil which worked just as well). It was out of this world.

If you presented Wonder Bread or a Kraft single to anyone who appreciated food (which would include most Europeans for instance), they would taste them and look at you like you must be joking. So where did this come from? Are kids born not liking wheat bread? Do they develop a liking of rubber and plastic with a faint cheese scent as they start kindergarden? What bothers me is not as much this idea that our kids have no sense of taste or quality -- preferring a fake manufactured product over one that has been cultivated for centuries and often made by hand with care and attention. No, what bothers me is that this is engrained in us for the rest of our lives. Kids may never grow up to appreciate bread that tastes like bread or cheese that tastes like cheese. This isn't anything new. We were once these kids. One of the biggest problems with our eating is that we have no appreciation for quality -- no care for the difference between processed and real. And little concern for the difference between something that tastes faintly like a hamburger -- such as McDonalds -- and a true hamburger like the grass fed beef one sold at Big Jones (sure it's $14 but you'll make it back on reduced medical bills later).

And forgetting that many people might think it's odd to put preserves and mustard on a grilled cheese (again, it was amazing), I can't imagine most American kids (Americans?) would like either under any circumstances. The dijon mustard was a pure, authentic variety from France. It tasted much stronger than the bland yellow mustard we are more accostomed to. The perserves were not as sweet as the jelly we tend to buy in the grocery store (there was no sugar added) and it certainly wasn't as smooth -- there were large chuncks of plumbs.

There are other benefits to quality as well. Some writers argue that where we eat quality food full of flavor (and much more full of nutrients), we feel the need to eat less of it. Part of this may also be because we eat it slower and savor it -- appreciating each bite and hoping it won't end rather than just stuffing it in our facehole. You also couldn't eat my grilled cheese in the car or on the run as it would be dripping all over the place. Cheese drips -- that's what it does. American cheese doesn't because it's not cheese. Oh and there would be bread crumbs all over the place from the crust. Ever wonder why these problems don't occur with processed foods? They were engineered, in part, to eat on the run (often in the car).

I fear I am rambing so let me bring this back. What I wonder about is how we got here. How did this country full of immigrants from places that truly appreciate food find themselves in a country that has no appreciation for quality? I hope we can someday reconnect to some appreciation of food because the benefits could be great. We'd eat less, pay more for our food (enriching farmers and producers of quality over quantity), spend our money at shops more than mega stores (no more buying your food at Costco), and the food we would consumer, of course, would be much better for you -- food the way nature intended. After all, how often does a processed imitation truly taste better than the real thing? And the next time someone offers you something with American cheese you'd sit back and take offense to how our country's eponymous cheese became a fake rubber imposter. Grilled cheese? That's not cheese.

Spiritual gardening

2009-06-15T10:14:00.002-05:00

I noticed some activity on my rooftop garden this weekend. Right now I have two types of tomato plants, hot peppers, sweet peppers, two lettuces, rosemary, basil, peppermint and parsley. One of the tomato plants is starting to show itty bitty little green tomatoes and the sweet pepper plant has decent size green peppers hanging (these should turn red). I was shockingly excited to find this and it reminded me that there's something special about growing your own food. Next year will be cheaper because I have the pots and I'll buy seeds instead of seedlings (except perhaps for the tomotoes) but even then -- the time and work to water them, move them around, etc. is fairly high. But there's something there beyond the cost/benefit. I almost want to say it's spiritual. But while I can't quite put my finger on it I can say there's a therapeutic element to working with your hands, gardening and growing your own food the way someone might outside of a big city -- the way humans have and still do all over the world -- and a certain excitement to eating the fruits of that labor. Soon I'll taste homegrown tomatoes -- scratch that -- MY homegrown tomatoes.

Green Grocer (check it out!)

2009-06-13T17:30:00.003-05:00

I finally checked out the Green Grocer in Chicago's west town neighborhood. This is definitely going to be my "go to" store once the farmers markets shut down (and a great store even while they're open). The shop is small and the staff are extremely friendly and very knowledgeable about the products. Some of the packaged goods are sort of a mini-Whole Foods or more akin to Olivia's Market in Bucktown, but here either organic or local. Then there are some very unique packaged goods that are locally produced or just a bit more special than you might find elsewhere. They have a pretty good cheese selection and a good amount of raw cheese. Not as many blues as I might like but that's just me. All of their meat is pastured and local -- no Argentinean grass fed beef here. I know this from recognizing farms I am familiar with and otherwise from asking them. Most is frozen as I expected but they did have fresh whole chickens from T.J.'s (which I mentioned in a previous post -- I've had their chicken legs, turkey legs and pork tenderloin and loved all of it). Green Grocer has pastured chicken, lamb, pork and beef (and perhaps more that didn't catch my eye). They also sell Blue Marble dairy which I hear is amazing (and I've seen them at the Green City Market). I haven't brought myself to actually drink milk yet but if you do I recommend trying this, which they also have in chocolate (as well as yogurt products from Blue Marble). Finally there's a good wine and beer selection for a shop of this size -- with much of the wine being organic and the beer being local and/or craft beer. In short, I definitely recommend checking it out all year round, and consider it an indispensable resource for pastured meat in the spring, fall and winter.

Food, Inc.

2009-06-12T08:32:00.004-05:00

Just a brief Friday thought here -- if you live in New York, L.A. or San Fran I'm jealous because starting today you can go see the new movie: Food, Inc. Click here to see more about it or watch a trailer. Eric Schlosser co-produces (the great writer behind Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan is featured along with some of the people he features in The Omnivore's Dilemma (and mentions briefly in In Defense of Food). I'm really excited about this movie. The initial reviews have been execellent (still very early on Rotten Tomatoes but it's at 96% as of today). And there's a companion book that contains about 12 essays on topics covered in the movie. Mine's in the mail and you can get yours here. I just hope it doesn't remain an indy gem and that people actually get out there and see it.

Thanks everyone for your support. Have an excellent and healthy weekend.

Why charge more for brown rice?

2009-06-10T10:55:00.003-05:00

Anytime I ask for brown rice at a restaurant they tell me it'll be extra. But shouldn't it be the other way around? So called "brown rice" is what rice would look like if you just prepared it and served it. "White rice" is brown rice that's been polished. In polishing it, virtually all of its nutrients are stripped away. So shouldn't brown rice be cheaper?

I've always been a big fan of ethnic food as it is almost always healthier (and many authors point out the virtues of eating traditional ethnic foods for a variety of reasons). Many cultures eat polished rice, however -- the so called "white rice". It is probably the one oddity and "error" I suppose of those cultures in their food.

To juice or to blend...that is the question

2009-06-09T10:23:00.004-05:00

I think there is a lot to gain from different styles of eating. And by "styles" I don't mean Italian or Greek but "isms" such as vegetarianism, raw foodism, veganism, etc. This post may seem irrelevant to anyone who doesn't juice or blend vegetables, but I think the issue goes to something larger and is important to everyone.

One of the key elements to most raw foodists is juicing or blending green vegetables (particularly dark leafy greens). Both are certainly very healthy -- as would any way of helping us consume more dark leafy greens. I juice when I have the produce and the time and when I do, I am able to really boost my intake of vegetables that day. In 10 minutes I'll down a couple classes of juice that's the equivalent of eating half a bunch of kale (one of the most nutrient dense foods on earth), lettuce, carrots, celery, beets, apples, lemon, and who knows what else. It would take 3 meals and a lot of chewing to get what I can down in not much pure liquid. But is it the same?

There is an internal debate within raw foodism as to whether juicing isn't cheating nature -- those who feel it is blend. What's the difference? Well juicing strips the juice of the fruit and vegetable (which contains the vast majority of the nutrients) from the fiber (which is nutrient poor and highly filling). Blending keeps it all intact. Green smoothies as they are called, are shockingly delicious if made correctly. There's a place by where I live called Doc's Juice and Smoothies that makes excellent ones that work as a great meal or a snack (packed with kale, spinach, bananas, apple juice, and often one or two other things like frozen mango).

The question is really whether you need to consume the juice with the fiber. If not, it just gets in the way. But isn't it unnatural to juice an apple? If you want it's juice should you eat it? Isn't there a good chance that something about the skin, the flesh, the juice all together makes it healthy? A recurring theme in non-reductionist nutrition is the belief that we do not fully understand how everything works together.

One of the more annoying health attributes you will see on packages is "contains 2 servings of fruit" or the like. But does it really? Veryfine's Fruit2O flavored water claims exactly that. Drink this bottled concoction and you'll be hydrated and well on your way to eating your fruits and vegetables. But is anyone that naive? Have scientists figured out a way to extract the nutrients of fruits so effectively that we can just drink Fruit2O and be all good? Of course not. You have the FDA to thank for allowing them to make such an absurd claim. Juice companies often claim that drinking one of their bottles gives you a few servings. To me it comes down to this: if I eat apples and you drink bottled apple juice, who will end up being healthier? If it's me, then drinking the juice can't count. I wish I lived in a country where that was made clear by those who are supposed to look out for us. Instead I live in one where people figure they can just grab a Fruit2O.

But seriously -- try Doc's green smoothies!

Who needs dentists?

2009-06-08T10:04:00.004-05:00

I just came back from the dentist. Because I can be lazy and irresponsible I hadn't seen the inside of a dental office in a good two years. Good news is all is fine. Is this luck, due to my personal cleaning habits, or what? Actually, it could be due to what I eat. We think of dentists as a necessary evil -- if you want to keep your teeth for even most of your life, you better get a cleaning and check-up twice a year, right? What if you heard that dentists are actually only necessary because of our diet?

Indeed, the dentist Weston Price went around the world looking at the teeth of people in developed and undeveloped countries and areas. Where people ate a "Western diet" their teeth were decaying and required consistent dental help. Where people were walled off from the "Western diet" and therefore ate traditional, nutrient rich diets, their teeth were entirely free of decay. So this gets even more interesting -- not only are dentists unnecessary, but so are toothbrushes -- though they do a good job of keeping teeth white and improving our breath.

To me this helps show the continued value of eating a nutrient rich diet. What you eat and what you don't eat impact not just whether you're fat or skinny or whether you get colon cancer or not, but also whether you keep those pearly whites healthy for the rest of your life.

Weston Price was also very cautious of certain modern dental procedures -- most notably the root canal. Root canals can breed infection (as can normal fillings). Bacteria present in the root of a tooth is trapped there but when when a root canal is performed it becomes exposed to the rest of the body and can cause significant health problems. Weston Price firmly believed this and there is growing concern -- though most modern dentists and the American Dental Association seem to firmly deny this. I believe it enough that before any major procedure I would consult a holistic dentist.

The last thing I'd note on the subject of teeth is fluoride. Besides the fact that the addition of fluoride is absurd when you look at how many developed countries have investigated the costs and benefits and decided not to add it to drinking water (or to stop adding it such as with Canada) due to a lack of evidence that it helps and growing evidence that it hurts the prevention of tooth decay, fluoride may be a lot more dangerous than you think. I use a fluoride-free toothpaste and refuse to use a fluoride rinse at my dentist's suggestion. Why? Because fluoride is a toxin. We think our bodies can handle it and that it helps us more then it hurts us but how many times have we been wrong about toxins in the past? Why does your tube of toothpaste say not to swallow? Because of the fluoride.

Every time you drink tap water in this country and ever time you brush with fluoride in your toothpaste you are adding a toxin to your body. If you spit out that toothpaste you've still absorbed some through your gums, swallowed just a bit, etc. And some studies show that about half of the fluoride we ingest never leaves the body -- it just builds up year after year. Doctors and dentists recommend that babies avoid fluoride -- it's too toxic. If I want to brush my cat's teeth I need to be sure and use fluoride-free toothpaste according to my dentist because their system's can't handle it. But mine can? I, for one, think I'll pass.

End of the week thoughts

2009-06-05T09:54:00.004-05:00

Just a quick thought to end the week. Sorry it's a dark thought but I'm a dark guy. These statistics are not new news so you may have heard them before -- but its helpful to remember when you're in the mood to grab a Coke, or in a hurry and feel like running into Subway.

The majority of the people you know will die of a diet-related illness. Know any kids? They will more likely than not get type II diabetes during their life due to how they eat. Any of them black or hispanic? Their likelihood of diabetes jumps to roughly 2/3rds simply based on diet.

Go Catabolic

2009-06-04T12:09:00.003-05:00

Apples burn fat. I remember this every time I bite into one (as I did this morning -- breakfast is the easiest time to get fruit in on an empty stomach so I try to do it as much as possible). It's funny, really. An apple actually burns calories. That means that your body uses more energy to digest an apple than it gets from digesting the apple. In a way it is the antithesis to the Western diet which attempts to provide the body with as many easy and cheap calories as possible (and why we're all fat and on the verge of type II diabetes). Think about this next time you're watching the calorie counter on that treadmill: every apple you eat burns in the neighborhood of 100 calories. Foods that burn more calories than they supply the body through digestion are called catabolic.

The good news is there's lots of them and if the apple example excited you get this: it's actually considered a "low grade" catabolic. Even better ratios are obtained from berries, citris, asparagas, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, etc. Truth is that tons of fruits and vegetables are catabolic. You probably already eat a number of catabolic foods without even knowing it. This brings us back to the beginning and why I only remember that apples are catabolic when I'm actually biting into one.

The lesson to me is simple -- forget about catabolic foods and just remember that this is yet another reason why people should be eating a varied diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables. But if you're really concerned about calories and weight, forget diets and special low-cal foods. Eat some stuff that's good for you and burns more than it provides.

Berry Chill

2009-06-03T10:59:00.003-05:00

I had to try Berry Chill last night when a group I was with headed that direction with a purpose. Apparently this is the new craze. I'm usually the last to know about such things so I'm behind the curve I guess but at least I can say I tried it now. Part of the craze appears to surround claims that this is healthy. It's advertised as all natural yogurt with no artificial chemicals and live active cultures, infused with various probiotics. Unfortunately, the website and stores contain "nutritional facts" but omit the ingredients. Is this suspicious or just thoughtful protection of a secret recipe?

A few interesting things though. First off, a serving size to Berry Chill is 1 ounce. Odd then that a small is 5 ounces, and the medium I saw half the people in there eating is 8 ounces (those of you that are hungry can get the large for a full 12 servings). Therefore, your fat free dessert actually contains 20 grams of sugar in the small alone -- your Berry Chill is nearly 20% sugar. A "typical" non-frozen yogurt would contain less than 8% sugar, though many flavored yogurts come closer to Berry Chill levels -- Dannon's Activa yogurt in innocent vanilla flavor is over 15% sugar. Sugar is a healthy necessary component in one's diet but is the sugar refined? What exactly is added? We can't know.

Berry Chill also claims to be lactose free. This helps them overcome all those lactose intolerant people out there (and I'd argue that's partly genetics and largely due to the pasteurization of milk) who can't eat normal frozen yogurt or ice cream without getting stomach aches (read = bad for business). Oddly, though, yogurt is normally far from lactose free (though more digestible due to live cultures, etc.) So how does Berry Chill make lactose free yogurt? Probably by starting with lactose free milk (interestingly, the beneficial bacteria in yogurt requires the presence of lactose, so Berry Chill either lacks much of that bacteria or is just adding it back in with the probiotics at the end). But what of this lactose free milk? It can't be natural. Is it rice-based? Soy-based? Curious but we can't know since we can't see the ingredients.

My last comment on Berry Chill goes to the toppings. Most people I saw go with a combination of fruit and sweets (some go all fruit). Most nutritionists would agree that fruit is best eaten on an empty stomach. Eating it any other way causes digestive problems including fermentation. Berry Chill is often eaten as a dessert and therefore the worst time to eat fruit (plus even if you're eating it on an empty stomach you're not eating it alone -- as recommended). I don't need to go into the health implications of the other topics but to note my disappointment that we can't see what's IN them. Why does a company that's so concerned with showing itself as healthy list nutritional facts for a plain 1 ounce cup of frozen "yogurt" when most people in there are eating 5-12 ounce cups piled high with chocolate chips, girl scout cookies and canned fruit?

This is a good idea I suppose and a great marketing feat, but people are eating it in the dark spoon by spoon.

To each her own

2009-06-02T10:32:00.004-05:00

As much as I've begun to embrace the idea of eating grass-fed and pastured animals (and began doing so with shocking ease), what comforts me about this way of eating (and killing) doesn't comfort all. For one thing, I have vegetarian and vegan friends who simply cannot get comfortable with the concept of eating an animal. The very idea of flesh grosses them out so much that it's a non-starter. Most of the people I can think of do eat fish, so the line is drawn further out than a true vegetarian or vegan, but it is drawn. To this I can only say: to each her own. You have to do what works.

Welcome to American -- I hope you have health insurance

2009-06-01T09:43:00.003-05:00

I was recently discussing someone who came over to America from a large Asian country and immediately started to eat like a good old American (hot dogs, etc.) If there's one fact that should resonate with us as to how unhealthy our food is, it is that time after time when observing people who go from a traditional, ethnic diet to a "Western diet" or an American style of eating, they begin experiencing all sorts of health problems. You might say this is related to smog, different chemicals we use to clean, etc. But much more likely (based on the diseases and health problems I'm referring to: type 2 diabetes, blood pressure and heart problems, etc.) the issue is diet. We think of ourselves as so advanced and the protections offered by the USDA and FDA so superior to that of some developing country, but the people without those protections are far healthier than us and the worst thing they can do for their health is move to America and start eating like an American. So if you come here, before you load up on refined carbohydrates, processed sugars, hydrogenated vegetable oils and all the great things that Americans munch on three meals a day, go get some health insurance. You're going to need it.

(As an aside, I have been thinking about downgrading my health insurance considering I have not been to a doctor in about 5-6 years, wouldn't take medicine they gave me unless I was convinced my life depended on it, and would pursue all other remedies before considering the advice of an M.D. How would you feel if your doctor was a chain smoking alcoholic? Would you question his advice? What about if he ate a diet you were convinced is the root of most of the problems he deals with in patients on a daily basis?)

Reading food packages in the dark

2009-05-29T10:39:00.002-05:00

I've already expressed my utter distrust for the USDA (and related agencies). And anyone who cares enough about what they eat to read this probably knows to take certain "labels" and claims on packaging with a grain of salt. Many already know, for instance, that "free range" doesn't really mean that Sally the Chicken is out there living her life under the sun, stretching her talons into nice grass. Rather it means that Sally probably lives in a pretty awful, dirty, cramped building, that has a little door in it that leads to a patch of grass. If Sally wanted she could go out that door and chill for all long as she wants. But she has never been out there and she will never go out there.

What does all this mean? That "free range" is a bunch of b.s. If you want to know that your chicken lived its life as a chicken (meaning it will produce tastier and healthier meat and eggs) then you want it to have lived in a pasture -- "pastured chicken" or "pastured eggs" so to speak. But perhaps more importantly you want to know where it is coming from. The risk here is that so many people realize the virtues of pastured eggs that the word is used inappropriately. Every claim on a package must be read with a massive grain of salt. (Take "all-vegetarian diet" for instance -- it's nice to know that your chickens weren't fed other chickens and may not have some future mad chicken disease but does it mean? Chickens eat worms and worms are not part of a vegetarian diet. From that alone you know it makes no sense. Other reasons we can leave aside for now.)

The concern overall is that people react to what they read and hear. These terms are often not regulated and when they are you can believe one thing: that the big companies will convince the USDA to stretch the regulation to include them. When that happens it has no meaning anymore. Your free range chickens are exactly the same as your not free range chickens.

Advocates and fans of the grassfed or pastured movement are now concerned that it is picking up enough that it will be next. When I think of grassfed cattle I think of a cow who lives its entire life on a pasture eating grass. This would be overseen by a farmer who never injects the cattle with antiobiotics and never feed anything but the grass on the ground or natural hay when the grass isn't growing (and careful here of the "grain finished" meat -- as it's a way a farmer can fatten up its cow at the end of its life using corn). But the USDA doesn't see it that way. As I understand it, grassfed beef farmers (the so called true "grass farmers") have been continually lobbying the USDA to restrict use of related terms to only the meaning as I understand it (as everyone who knows the term understands it). I am not aware of exactly how successful or unsuccessful that lobbying is but I don't have my fingers crossed. If you can make an "organic" twinkie using the USDA's regulated term (you can) then you will someday be able to buy a "grassfed" steak using the USDA regulated term from a cow that never lived on a pasture, was injected with antiobiotics, and who knows what else.

The good news is that we aren't there yet. The most prevelant grassfed beef available in my area is Tallgrass and it is true, 100% grassfed beef. Whole Foods won't buy lamb that is not 100% grass fed in the true meaning (access to pastures its entire life). But the day may come when this ends and it goes back to knowing what you are eating. Much of the beef, lamb, goat, chicken and turkey I've encountered that claims to be pasture-raised comes from farms that have websites where you can read all about the philosophy of the farm and the way the animals are raised. They are also sold at farmers markets where you can meet their representatives and look them in the eye, or at boutique shops that buy directly from the farm and you can look that person in the eye. I have found that such shops know I am serious about my inquiry and will not just say something to shut me up. Provenence in Logan Square (also has a Lincoln Square location) for instance, told me that they did not believe their poultry was pastured. I asked if their grassfed ground beef was grain finished and they looked up the farm on the internet and called them for me before answering.

Now not everyone will go to such lengths and most Americans need to go to Jewel, not Provenence, to buy their meat. But these stores don't change out brands that often so you can do your own research quite easily with a few Google searches and be the educated consumer that helps raise the quality of our food. And I always try to remember that no matter how bright it is under those supermarket lights, it's really dark in there and I can't really see what I'm looking at.

Dissecting a rat

2009-05-28T11:16:00.003-05:00

My favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, once wrote that the moment you begin dissecting a rat it ceases to be a rat. For a rat is not an approximately X ounce creature with Y organs and skin of Z density. It is more then it's parts and it is more then what we understand enough to test, measure and calculate. So goes the carrot, the broccoli, the beef, the salmon and the shiitaki. And, of course, the homo sapiens. We readily admit our lack of understanding of certain complex human processes (how exactly does memory work?) but we are quicker to claim victory over digestion and nutrition. In truth, of course, you cannot put the beneficial elements of a carrot into a pill and digest the healthfulness of a carrot. For like the rat, a carrot is more then X percent water, Y percent vitamins like A and Z percent antioxidents like betacarotine. As time consuming and frustrating as it is to us wealthy Americans in such modern times, you just can't get the same benefits with a pill -- never. Sometimes it's because a pill gives you so much of a good thing it becomes a bad thing (it's hard to overdose on vitamines or antioxidents on carrots because you can only eat so many). Other times it is because we fail to appreciate how everything comes together. Yes, we need vitamin A, but is it also the presence of the fiber or something else (perhaps something we have yet to even discover) that allows us to absorb it properly? As Michael Pollan says in In Defense of Food, this is not a concern to the carrot eater. If there is one thing that is assured, it is that we will continue to realize our failure to appreciate the full complexity of food and digestion and as we continue to correct and alter our news stories, our supplements, our multi-vitamins (do we buy the ones with or without iron now?) we have to wonder -- why not just eat a freaking carrot? That's what the rat was doing before you started dissecting it.

Blueberries are good for you? Oh my!

2009-05-27T09:50:00.004-05:00

I remember about a year ago standing in the elevators of the Sears Tower (it's still called that) and reading the little TV when a nutrition update popped up: Blueberries Are Good For You. Apparently they are high in vitamins, antioxidants and help reduce aging, improve urinary tract function, and a host of other things. How remarkable! Next thing you know we'll find out that bananas and apples are good for you too. How dumb are we as a country that we fall for this? That we are suddenly convinced that we had no idea blueberries were healthy and that now we know. You would be irresponsible not to eat them now I suppose. People may not ordinarily eat a lot of blueberries. They are highly seasonal and expensive in season -- very expensive out of season. They spoil easily. So now more people eat blueberries. One can only wonder who paid of this study. (A note on blueberries and pesticides: blueberries are actually one of the less plasticized fruits -- particularly berries -- and therefore if you're going to buy some fruits organic but not all you might skimp on these and get some fresh ones from Michigan. This isn't to say I wouldn't recommend buying organic (see more here). Pesticides associated with blueberries include known carcinogens and have been linked to reproductive and developmental effects -- think of little Johnny. More on that here.)

The truth is, or course, that we know fruits and vegetables are good for you. We know they provide varied health benefits, and because we know this, the only recommendation that stands up is to eat them when we can and to vary our diet. (Again on pesticides, keep this in mind with fruit -- peaches and strawberries are the two worst. A quick list is here.)

Now you might say we need help with this because some foods are better for us then others. Well this isn't really true when it comes to fruits and vegetables. Let's take two quick examples: avocados and iceberg lettuce.

Avocados are humorous for being the focus of a short-lived diet encouraging people to focus on eating avocados. This was until people realized an average avocado has 30 grams of fat (by comparison, an average tomato has about 3/10ths of a gram). People then decided it's best to avoid avocados. But then we were told it's not that simple. The fat in an avocado is a GOOD fat. Okay, so we can eat them but not only them. It took a lot of science and a lot of time to come back to the obvious common sense approach -- eat fruits and vegetables when you can and eat a varied diet. I'll ignore for now that links between high saturated fat diets and health problems have pretty much been proven to be bogus. (Shocking, I know. More on that another day.)

Iceberg lettuce hasn't made avocados come back. I actually feel bad for him. Iceberg has no nutritional benefit, right? That's common knowledge now. Well it happens to be wrong. Iceberg contains high levels of fiber, iron, B6, K, A, C and others. Sure, a leaf of kale will kick its butt any day in a spectrogram but that's not the point. We know kale is great for you but how often do you eat it? The point is also not to sit here and lecture with food science. Quite the opposite -- to show that food science is bogus. If you think iceberg tastes good you'll likely eat more of it and you'll likely be healthier for it. As we all know, eating a varied diet of fruits and vegetables is the key to health. Who could dispute that? But allow ourselves to be tricked by media outlets flooding our senses with nonsense.

Just remember, iceberg isn't quite as healthy in the wedge salad where it's drowned in creamy dressing.

Goat Stew

2009-05-25T12:25:00.002-05:00

After eating fully vegetarian meals since going to the farmers market (not all vegan as I enjoyed some of Saxon Homestead Creamery's amazing green fields cheese -- you can taste the grass!) I had to try some of the meat I bought from Mint Creek Farm. I made some goat stew with Mint Creek's goat kabob meat. This is a very cheap cut and reminded me that those who complain of grass fed meat's prohibitive cost should consider that those who can't afford a filet from a grass fed steer don't need to buy a filet from a corn fed steer -- they could buy the cheaper cuts which, prepared properly, are in my opinion sometimes better. The meat was certainly "gamey" and I do believe I could taste the grass. Michael Pollan meets a farmer who raises cattle, pigs and chickens in the Omnivore's Dilemma who calls himself a grass farmer. Healthy grass is the key to it all. Well Mint Creek seems to agree. What's the first thing they discuss on their website? Nothing short of the types of grasses on their fields that their sheep and goats are eating. There's no discussion here of marbeling, tenderness, cheap prices, or other descriptions of the end product (the butchered meat in your fridge or freezer). Instead Mint Creek discusses the individual types of grasses their animals eat, and mentions what this means: simply healthy animals. From that the rest follows.

I have to say that my mood and energy levels have been up and I noticed it considerably throughout this holiday weekend. While there may be other explanations, I am so far convinced that eating some meat is the right move.

I perhaps prematurely defrosted the lamb kidney so I'm going to have to find a good recipe for that and freeze the finished product.

Farmer's Market!

2009-05-23T19:12:00.004-05:00

One of the best things about summer is the farmer's markets. Most of the Chicago neighborhood farmers markets have not started yet (they will open in early June), but some of the ones downtown and a few others have been open for weeks now. I went to the one at the Daley Center on Thursday and was a bit disappointed as I remembered that the ones downtown are often more fairs then farmer's markets (ad of course you have to be pretty strategic about what you buy). Today I hit up a little market off Armitage just east of Halsted, and then the mega Green City Market. I'm embarrassed to say this was my first time at the Green City Market. It's on Clark just north of North Ave. GCM is huge with a tremendous variety, including all the grass fed and pastured dairy, eggs and meat you can imagine. I walked away with two types of raw cheeses from Saxon Homestead Creamery (these are full milk fat from grass fed cows -- you can't get more authentic than this), goat meat, lamb kidney, lamb liver and lamb chorizo sausage from Mint Creek Farm (all totally free range grass fed) and turkey drumsticks from T.J.'s Free Range Poultry (completely pasture raised). (I realize not everyone finds the thought of organ meat apetizing, but it is believed to be extremely healthy for human consumption -- something I'll talk more about another time.) Mint Creek and T.J.'s also sell eggs from pasture-raised chickens and other vendors were selling milk from grass-fed cows (sadly it was all pasteurized but it's illegal otherwise). I also picked up some amazing foraged mushrooms, farm-made pasta sauce, and some veggies.

The meat was all frozen, which in some ways was unfortunate, but the only way to be able to buy any type of meat any time of year is to buy it frozen or to buy it from around the world. Of course this is local, seasonal eating. Asparagas was all the rage with things like tomatoes (that don't get going until later in the season) hard to come by (and not very good looking when you saw them).

One of the things I was surprised to learn recently is that just like vegetables are seasonal, so are animals. Farmers only slaughter certain animals certain times a year -- due to the times when they are born and then reach proper size and maturity for slaughter. So if you want fresh chicken all year round, it can come from down the street when chickens are "in season" but 6 months later they will be coming from New Zealand. So the freezer may be a decent compromise.

I'm really looking forward to checking out the Green City Market in the future and exploring the neighborhood farmers markets as they begin to open over the next few weeks.

Spending more on my food

2009-05-22T11:41:00.004-05:00

I'm looking forward to checking out a little shop in Chicago this weekend called the Green Grocer by Grand and Ogden. From what I understand they've got grass-fed meat, raw cheeses and a host of great stuff (who wouldn't want an organic locally made doughnut?!). Places like the Green Grocer (sort of the anti-establishment version of Whole Foods) and Whole Foods itself, are certainly for the wealthier residents of this world. Particularly in our current times, spending $9 for a jar of pickled tomatoes or $3 for an avocado is nothing short of comical to most Americans (who are of course overall some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world -- or dying middle class aside). It is not hard to spend $300 on a 45 minute trip to Whole Foods or spend $150 filling up a little basket at a place like Provenance, Olivia's Market, etc. Yet perhaps it is not that simple. There is some evidence that we has slowly but surely been spending less on food (as a percentage of our individuals incomes) as each century and decade goes by. Indeed, we spend less on food than anyone in the history of the world (or anyone else in our current world) -- that comes out to less than 10% of disposable income. Just in America, in the past 35 years, we have gone from spending on average just under 13% of disposable income on food to just under 10%.

What does this mean? I don't know if it means more of us are taking our families to McDonald's instead of Chili's or if it means that we buy the same eggs and bread at the same stores but the prices have overall come down relative to inflation. Maybe it means that we reach for the cheaper brands and economize on the bulk stores that let families pretend they are readying a bunker. Or maybe it means that we just don't consider food as much of a priority. That bread over there is certainly better for us and tastes better, but it's literally twice as expensive -- so this bread will be fine for little Jimmy's lunches. Have our taste buds been dumbed down to enjoy what's cheapest? Kids want white bread not some artisan whole grain loaf, or bologna over real prosciutto, American cheese over fresh mozzarella, Sunny-D over fresh squeezed juices, a Snickers bar over Dutch chocolates.

It's a complicated issue but it brings up one important point in my mind -- I can justify spending more on food. I can make high quality food a little bit more of a priority. Spending a couple hundred dollars at "Whole Paycheck" hurts, but gosh it tastes so much better and I believe it will pay for itself in the long run when it keeps me out of the hospital (though I'll ignore that dying prematurely is probably the best way to save money). My grass fed steaks from Tallgrass were pricey -- about $26/lb, but they are FAR healthier than the ones right next to them from corn-fed cows for $9/lb. If we want, we can make food more of a priority in our budgets and our calendars (I acknowledge that these little shops don't sell everything I need so the idea of one-stop shopping goes out the window). I look forward to spending some good, hard earned money at the Green Grocer tomorrow.

Raw dairy

2009-05-21T11:52:00.004-05:00

If you talk to me about food for more then 2 minutes you'd probably think I'm a conspiracy theorist. This is because I basically believe the USDA (and the FDA, among others) is out to get us. They are tasked with making sure the food we eat is safe, but what they really do is promote policies with not food safety in mind, but trade, Big Agra and and public opinion. A perfect example of this is rBGH -- a bovine growth hormone that is outlawed in virtually every first world country due to links to various cancers and other health risks (not to mention making cows very sick) but the USDA seems to think it's fine. This could have something to do with Monsanto making the stuff (call me crazy). But that's a conversation for another day. Even when rBGH is not used (such as in organic milk, or one of the thousounds of milk and cheese processors that refuses to use it -- pay attention and you'll see "hormone free" or "rBGH free" on all sorts of dairy products) the dairy is still pasteurized. A movement has been growing, however, that appreciates "raw" milk products. This really just means unpasteurized (a/k/a the way dairy was consumed for thousands of years).

I won't get into the various arguments for or against raw milk, but suffice it to say that pasteurized milk is considered by many to be unhealthy, and it's only getting worse. To facilitate the transport and shelf life of milk, much is now being "ultrapasteurized" -- including the major organic milk brands like Horizon. This means the milk is now heated at even higher temperatures and therefore more dangerous -- depending on your view. The arguments essentially point out that pasteurization was implemented to help keep milk healthy as we started to produce it in great quantities and ship it all over. But if you drink milk locally, from someone who cares for their cows and the milk they produce, pasteurization is unnecessary. And with raw milk you get the health benefits of milk without the lactose intolerance and other health issues. More on that here.

I live in Chicago, and in the state of Illinois (and most U.S. states with California as a notable exception) it is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk (you can sell raw cheese but not raw butter). One way people get around this is by owning part of an animal. The logic goes that the government cannot (or at least doesn't) prevent you from drinking the milk of your own cow or goat however you want -- so people will be a 1,000th of a goat. These are sometimes called "dairy shares" and one such farm by Chicago is the James Family Farm.

Cheese is permitted to be raw -- and you can actually find raw cheeses in a lot of grocery stores in nice neighborhoods now (one or two at least), at Farmers Markets (a company may not be all raw but might have one or two that are), and then there are the cheese you can find in stores all over that don't advertise that they are raw but they are. Here I'm talking about types of blue cheeses which are not infrequently raw. Check the label -- if the milk is pasteurized it will say so.

Processed vegetarian/vegan food

2009-05-20T15:53:00.006-05:00

I promised to write more about Veggie Bite today (the vegan "fast food" two store chain in Chicago). The reason I want to talk about Veggie Bite has less to do with the "restaurants" themselves and much more to do with what they represent -- and that is a belief by vegans and vegetarians that when they cut out flesh (or all animal products for vegans) they are eating healthier no matter what. I never bought into that mentality entirely, but I certainly found myself filling half my cart from the frozen section in Whole Foods. That meant I had fake chicken nuggets, vegan TV dinners, soy ice cream sandwiches, vegan meatballs, and who knows what else. I started to realize how absurd it was that I could believe I was eating healthy. Above all else, our bodies cannot handle processed foods. I am a firm believer that processed foods are the cause of so many healthy problems today. Maybe my foods lacked processed (a/k/a hydrogenated) oils, or some of the worst of processed corn byproducts (like high fructose corn syrup) but they still entailed an ingredient list that took up the entire side of the box and contained few items I recognized or could pronounce. This cannot possible be healthy. Indeed, research has shown that unfermented soy products are not only a poor source of nutrition as they are not very digestible, but they can wreak havoc in other ways -- even impeding the bodies ability to absorb protein. (Note that soymilk is one type of unfermented soy product).

This goes back to the basic and sensible thought that natural is better then processed, no matter how bad you think the natural is. The butter v. margarine issue provides perhaps the best example. Margarine is clearly worse for you overall. Making the same spread contain less fat is to ignore the terrible things that the processed ingredients in margarine will do to you over time. This is the same with vegetarian and vegan meals. Vegetarians often think that now their diet lacks unhealthy meat so they can eat as much cheese and milk as they want (which in their current form in America is usually a poor choice for a meal -- more to come on that another day). And together with vegans, we reach for fake chicken nuggets and the like. Besides the soy argument, believe it or not, the unhealthy thing about a chicken nugget is not just the part about the chicken.

I'll end by admitting that I know when vegans and vegetarians reach for these foods at times. This comes down to comfort and convenience. We remember eating them as kids, etc. and the only way we can eat a ruben again is to eat one made out of fake ingredients so it takes and feels like the real thing. We also can't always have a fridge full of fresh veggies and the time to wash and prepare them all so sometimes you need to pull something out of the freezer.

I think we just need to be aware of how unhealthy these foods can be, and that there are alternatives. Seitan (the wheat gluten byproduct) for instance, is much healthier than unfermented soy (so long as you don't have any gluten intollerance). And there are plenty of all veggie dishes that don't require fake meat. Wendy's serves chili -- why hasn't Veggie Bite thought to add a vegan chili that would be filled with vegetables, protein-packed beans and great flavor without any health issues? The reason seems to be that they blindly subscribe to the idea that as long as their food can be made without harming an animal (besides those who digest it) and without any ingredients of or from an animal, it can be deep fried in oil, made of unfermented soy, filled with processed ingredients, and still do a body good.

PS. I do not want to give the impression that unfermented soy should be avoided at all costs. As I understand it there are some benefits to soy regardless of fermentation -- the point is to be aware of what you are eating and to eat certain items (such as unfermented soy) in moderation. Some nuitritionists recommend no more then two servings of soy per day -- and we're talking 1/2 cup servings here (not a Texas lunch). So if you're worried that you're killing yourself with your daily Starbucks venti soy latte, my personal advice would be to take it down to a tall and avoid unfermented soy the rest of the day.

Stealth organic and vegan

2009-05-19T10:54:00.005-05:00

I ate at a quick lunch spot in Chicago yesterday where I've been many times before called Hannah's Bretzel. Last time I went I forgot the actual cross-streets, looked it up online and saw from the website that it was 100% organic. I was pretty surprised considering I don't recall any signs pointing this out loud and clear like at Chicago's first all organic restaurant, Crust. I find this interesting and wonder if they don't think that people who care will know or figure it out, and people on the street are just looking for quick, tasty, "healthy" food -- which Hannah's clearly is. They actually have one sandwich, the Veggie Bomb, that's completely vegan (though it doesn't say so) and tastes amazing. The stealth nature of Hannah's organic status reminded me of a little juice shop that opened up near me in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago called Doc's. Doc's served a few kinds of soup and they were usually vegan, but they stopped pointing that out on their menue board because Mike, the owner, told me it scared people off. To a lot of people the idea of "vegan" is something strange -- something that requires seitan or boring tofu or weird healthy grains. Of course in truth tons of foods are vegan.

On the other side of the spectrum (I don't think Crust comes close to this side), you have Veggie Bites in Chicago. I'll write more about them soon as they represent a side of veganism that really defies logic and nuitrition.

Grass fed beef: Part II

2009-05-18T12:57:00.002-05:00

My second experiment with grass fed beef occurred last night when I ate grass fed steaks with my parents. They live on the "northshore" of Chicago, which is sufficiently wealthy to have some specialty stores and grocery stores that care different products then many others in the Chicago area. I bought last night's meal at Sunset in Highland Park, where you can get a variety of different steaks, roasts, and ground meat. It is apparently not too difficult to find one brand of grass fed beef that has really done a great job infiltrating grocery stores and restaurants in the Chicago area. While I have yet to find it at any normal grocery store in Chicago, it is sold at Fox & Obel. The brand is owned by newsman Bill Curtis: Tallgrass. You can also read a NYT article on it here. My parents each had a strip steak and I had a boneless ribeye. Grass fed steaks cook a good 30% faster due to lower fat content. I was very worried I'd overcook them but overall they turned out well (the ribeye cooked a little slower as it had a little more fat). The meat had a bit of a gamey taste to it and I felt like I could taste the grass though my father disagreed. The steaks were not cheap (about $14 for a steak not much over half a pound) but no one at the table could eat more then half of theirs.

Tallgrass is available at a variety of nice to very nice restaurants in Chicago. Their website lists most of the restaurants that carry their product. Some grass fed beef is "finished" with corn (sometimes called "grain finished" or the like). This helps fatten up the cows before slaughter. It does, however, pose some of the very same problems with feeding cows corn their whole lives. Tallgrass, like many but not all grass fed brands, is 100% grass fed. Just something to keep an eye out for if you care.

How did I feel? Well I did have a lot of trouble falling asleep. I found this particularly ironic since raw foodists often say that when you eat your first big raw dinner you can't sleep because you have so much energy from all the nutrients. Well that never happened to me when I went raw but it did when I at a big steak. I take no pleasure in admitting this as someone who believes there are many benefits to raw and vegan diets (and few to carnivorious ones). Nonetheless the point of this blog is to be honest during this journey. Today I feel pretty good. Maybe a slight noticable increase in energy but honestly difficult to tell considering I didn't sleep well as I layed awake for hours.

The last thing I'll mention is how it felt eating it. Some vegetarians have commented to me that they couldn't get themselves to eat meat again because any "flesh" makes them nauseous. The burger was easy as it was hidden in bread and covered with condiments, lettuce, tomatoe and onions. I was worried about the steak. Frankly, it was easy. I didn't have any negative reaction and it brought back not so distant memories of what a good steak tasted like. So while everyone's different, I apparently can go back to meat pretty easily.

The Paleolithic Diet

2009-05-16T21:36:00.003-05:00

My brother-in-law recently reminded me about the Paleolithic Diet -- or the diet of humans as hunter/gatherers. This has interesting parallels with the idea of pasture-raised animals. Essentially, grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured poultry and pig (and wild fish) all raise and treat animals the way they have been raised and treated since man learned agriculture, but before man industrialized it. Therefore, in a pasture system, the animals are living as they were meant to live -- in as close to the "wild" as these animals would ever get. Of course the idea here is that when we started industrializing farming, when we moved the cows inside to pack more of them into an industrialized system, or stuffed our chickens in cages in a building, we did more than make it easier for us to raise the animals cheaply and uniformly -- we also made significant changes to their lifestyle and diet. These changes meant that the animals gained weight too quickly, ate food their bodies were never designed to process, and created density problems that promoted the spread of disease -- disease and health of the animal being the main issue as it requires counter-action of antibiotics, hormones, etc. Treatment of the animal is also a concern to many but that's a separate issue.

There are those who believe we should look back even further, to the Paleolithic age, to before man began cooking food. Cooking opened up huge possibilities -- food that was inedible became edible. All you have to do is think about what you wouldn't (or even more accurately, what you couldn't) eat raw -- beans, for example, grains, and all sorts of random things. I'm looking at a plantain in my kitchen right now. You can't eat plantains raw -- or at least I wouldn't. Beans are toxic raw. Grains are inedible raw. Believers of this diet simply think that humans are not engineered to process these foods properly (and that other risks exist such as the presence of toxins as cooking does not always fully remove toxins in foods that are inedible raw). Followers of this diet also want us to take a step back to before we started using certain minerals (like salt) and stimulants (like coffee or tea). I think this logic is highly questionable, but what I find most interesting is the parallel to the grass-fed/pasture-raised idea. The Paleolithic diet encourages the eating of meat -- firmly believing that man is a solid omnivore -- but would certainly prohibit the eating animals that live in environments and are fed foods that differ from the Paleolithic times. If you buy true grass fed beef or pastured chickens, for instance, you're eating the way someone would have eaten a cow or chicken 15,000 years ago.

There is one MAJOR difference of course and that comes back to cooking. We don't really eat raw animal flesh anymore. It is possible and if the meat is fresh and local it is probably safe, but it would repulse your modern pallet. Therefore, like with all their foods, the Paleolithic diet has no problem with cooking so long as you're cooking something that you could have eaten raw -- something that your cousin 15,000 years ago might have eaten raw. Part of the appeal to me is that the diet looks to the way tribal people still live today. Many of the tribal people around the world today are amongst the healthiest alive -- with essentially no heart disease, no cancer, pretty high live-expectancy considering the lack of modern medicine, no diabetes, and so forth. It is popular for educated Americans, from my experience, to look to the Japanese as the longest living industrialized people on earth, and try to increase fish intake, fermented soy, etc. believing that their diet must play a large role in this phenomenon. But few look to tribal people who are really healthier. I am confident that if these tribal people could eat what they eat and live where they live, but be afforded non-invasive modern medicine, they would live substantially longer than the longest living Japanese. It is an interesting thought and one that is given surprisingly little attention amongst people obsessed with looking young late in life and extending life as much as possible.

One last thought is the interesting difference on dairy. Those who believe in the pasture-raising of animals would often agree that dairy is good for humans, but that the industrialization of dairy is what's caused problems. Therefore, humans should eat RAW dairy -- or milk, cheese, etc. in unpasteurized forms. I'm going to discuss this more in the future, including my recent attempts (and failures) to get these products in Chicago.

Here's a summary of the "essentials" of the Paleolithic Diet: (you can also learn more here)

Don't Eat: Grains, Beans (including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas), Potatoes, Dairy products, Sugar, Salt.

Eat: Meat, chicken and fish, Eggs, Fruit, Berries, Vegetables (but not potatoes or others that require cooking), Nuts (but not peanuts or cashew)

Try to increase your intake of: root vegetable, organ meats (liver and kidneys)

Day 2

2009-05-15T09:28:00.002-05:00

Just checking in to say that I still feel increased energy on my second day after eating meat. I have not eaten meat since then but still feel lingering effects. I am curious how much protein I got from the meat. I have begun to believe that the protein I think I got from beans and soy products may be overstated. Certainly some evidence shows that protein absorption is blocked with unfermented soy. When I ate the hamburger, for instance, I made sure not to eat a soy-based desert (I, like most good vegans, have a freezer full of them thinking they are healthy and a good alternative -- but this may not be true at all). Needless to say, for my "flesh" experiment part I, I left out soy products.

My experiment with grass fed beef

2009-05-14T09:37:00.002-05:00

As I indicated in my first post, I have been a vegan of sorts for a few years. I say "of sorts" because I have been eating seafood at least a few times a month for nearly the past year. I have been constantly thinking about nutrition and food, researching on the internet and reading books on related subjects, and talking to like-minded people (like-minded not because they agree with me but because they too struggle to find foods that are healthy and that their bodies respond well to). A few things shifted recently that made me once again consider eating meat. Among those was a long-time friend and vegetarian who began eating meat and found that her energy levels were significantly increased (a problem I have been struggling with for some time), and another friend recently lent me The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which eloquently discusses the virtues of grass fed animals and animal products (some refer to such products as grass fed beef and dairy, pastured chickens, etc.). I am a firm believer that you need to listen to your body and an equal believer that you must constantly try to improve -- the latter can only occur with change and surely requires some experimentation including trial and error. So I decided to expand my diet and incorporate some animal products on a limited basis. Thus began my experiment with grass fed beef.

This experiment began about 12 hours ago when I ate beef for the first time in years. I purchased about 1 lb of grass fed ground beef from a boutique shop in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago called Provenance. I'll write about the long and absurdly difficult process of finding grass fed beef in Chicago another time. The point of this post is to discuss how I feel. I felt fine eating the burger. I made sort of a half-portion burger and made sure to eat plenty of veggies with it. It tasted good and I never had any adverse reaction. Today I feel pretty great, I have to admit. I woke up this morning an hour early feeling like I must have overslept by hours as I was wide awake (something that NEVER happens). Turns out I woke up an hour early. I had tea this morning because it has become a bit of a ritual lately but I really didn't need it. I probably have more energy today (so far at least -- day's only half over) then I have in a long time. Do I feel completely and uterly rejuvinated? No, but I feel better then I have in a long time and I can't ignore that the meat is probably a huge part of it. So step one in my new experiment with animal products (albiet grass fed pastured animal products) is looking good.

Eating in the Dark

2009-05-14T09:19:00.001-05:00

This is my first post. A quick attempt to explain where I am coming from and why I am writing here.

Food has always been something I think about carefully and choose diligently. This most likely started before I can remember when my mom never let me eat fast food as my friends all dug their teeth into happy meals and the like. More recently, I can recall a desire to avoid processed foods -- chemicals I didn't recognize, high fructose corn syrup (that always struck me as suspicious), and so forth. I began thinking about meat and animal products really seriously in my mid-20s and by my late 20s I decided to become fully vegan. I was a strict vegan for a while and even attempted to pursue raw foodism. But strict veganism was exacting a cost too great at the time -- among the problems were that no one wanted to eat out with me, I found myself massively struggling to eat a decently healthy meal while traveling, and I was starting to not enjoy food since great restaurants were surefire disappointments when all I ended up with was some boring bowl of steamed veggies and rice. I decided to incorporate fish when eating out. If there was a vegan option I usually took it but more often then not at fancier restaurants I found my fork digging into fish (hopefully wild, but I don't pretend it always was). Then talking to other vegans and vegetarians, and continuing to read up on the subject, I decided to do some further experimenting. My energy levels were low and everytime someone asked: "So do you feel amazing eating vegan?" I'd hesitate, wanting to say yes but only able to answer: "Not really." So I came to the conclusion that I might try eating some meat again. Not any meat and not like before. But once in a while, being extremely picky about how I do it, I'd try it out, listen to my body, and go from there.

This started last night -- my teeth chewed beef for the first time in years.

I thought that at the very least I should pay close attention to myself and take notes. More substantially, I should probably make the time to keep a journal of sorts. And then it dawned on me -- I have spent so many hours looking into where to find the foods I want in Chicago, what to eat generally, and pursuing countless other related questions, that perhaps my journal should be public. Maybe someone else will hear my struggles and give suggestions -- or perhaps someone will read this and find it helpful. After all, with few exceptions, we never precisely know where our food comes from, or what went into growing and raising it, how exactly it was killed, and so forth.

Those of us who pay attention to food the way I do know we try to shine as much light onto the subject as possible -- or at least our plates -- but it never seems enough. Add to that the problem of living in the real world: big cities, long hours, travel, budgetary constraints. We are doing our best but we are all eating in the dark. Come sit in the dark with me.