THE OMNIVORE'S DIALOG

Organic Truth or Sustainable Consequences

I want to share an article about organic food gleaned from my browser home page, but originating, it turns out, from an educational program of the Mayo Clinic. The article was from MSN Health and Fitness, and was entitled “Organic Foods: Are they safer? More nutritious?” There is no author, other than MayoClinic.com, which makes them pretty safe from hostile rebuttal. And for those of you who feel agrobiz, the government and the medical establishment are all in some sort of evil conspiracy, well, draw your own conclusions. It said in part:

Many factors may influence your decision to buy — or not buy — organic food. Consider these factors:

• Nutrition. No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food. And the USDA — even though it certifies organic food — doesn't claim that these products are safer or more nutritious.
• Quality and appearance. Organic foods meet the same quality and safety standards as conventional foods. The difference lies in how the food is produced, processed and handled. You may find that organic fruits and vegetables spoil faster because they aren't treated with waxes or preservatives. Also, expect less-than-perfect appearances in some organic produce — odd shapes, varying colors and perhaps smaller sizes. In most cases, however, organic foods look identical to their conventional counterparts.
• Pesticides. Conventional growers use pesticides to protect their crops from molds, insects and diseases. When farmers spray pesticides, this can leave residue on produce. Some people buy organic food to limit their exposure to these residues. Most experts agree, however, that the amount of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables poses a very small health risk.
• Environment. Some people buy organic food for environmental reasons. Organic farming practices are designed to benefit the environment by reducing pollution and conserving water and soil.
• Cost. Most organic food costs more than conventional food products. Higher prices are due to more expensive farming practices, tighter government regulations and lower crop yields. Because organic farmers don't use herbicides or pesticides, many management tools that control weeds and pests are labor intensive. For example, organic growers may hand weed vegetables to control weeds, and you may end up paying more for these vegetables.
• Taste. Some people say they can taste the difference between organic and nonorganic food. Others say they find no difference. Taste is a subjective and personal consideration, so decide for yourself. But whether you buy organic or not, finding the freshest foods available may have the biggest impact on taste.

Whew, this is a tough crowd. For starters they don’t talk about sustainability or carbon footprints, perhaps because the government doesn’t have programs to prove advertising claims about these issues, but perhaps also because they can’t imagine a person spending food dollars with more than narrow self-interest. That grocery shoppers could have an interest in the future of the planet may be beyond them. The Mayo Clinic isn’t likely into politics, other than more government spending for health care.

 

Next, they gloss right over all the previous government mistakes about product `safety, from Thalidomide to sodium cyclamate (a carcinogenic sweetener once as ubiquitous as HFCS) to the gas tank of the Pinto, and then say “most experts agree pesticides are a very small risk. Small? If they are so small, why tell people to peel everything in the next paragraph, after lamenting that much of the fiber and nutrition lies there. And then they say nothing about antibiotic residues, colonization with antibiotic resistant bacteria, growth and sex hormone residues, etc. This is certainly damning with faint praise.

 

The point is that the American food buying public is a pretty tough audience. When the economy tightens, people will want to see more evidence that their money is well spent than described above. Hard evidence, not a religious belief that what’s good for nature is good for your stomach, or some other platitude.  Not even "eat only what your grandmother would recognize as food". Mark Philpott has his finger closer to the public pulse than Alice “let them sell their Nikes” Waters. I’ve eaten at Chez Panisse, thank you Alice, and my Nikes wouldn’t cover three scoops of passion fruit ice cream.

How Far Will They Go to Profit?

This article needs little introduction, it speaks for itself.  Agribusiness will go to any length to increase its profits at the expense of our food system and our small farmers.  A very surprising and thorough entry by Vanity Fair.  Bravo!

Warped Pasta Prima Vera

While we’re discussing convenience, I’d like to suggest a minor convenience that surprised me by being economical, organic and nutritionally superior to other similar non-organic products. To begin, I want to confess that slow food to me is like crossing starvation with an early death. With the commute, I work from 6 AM to about 5:30 in the evening, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is spend any time in the kitchen. I might tinker around with red beans and rice on an occasional weekend, but I normally rely on restaurant shortcuts and sauces made in the pan; things cooked at high heat for short periods and finished with reduction.

 

So when I get a craving for something more complex, like a pasta dish, I resort to ingredients tossed in a sauté pan, with a bottled marinara added at the last minute. Zucchini, leek, onion, mushrooms and maybe shrimp or sausage for variety, whatever wasn’t eaten earlier, and then a thin layer of marinara with the usual acid aftertaste of these sauces covered over with some ripe cheese. I don’t like most of the sauces, which generally contain too much tomato paste made from unripe tomatoes, and then a clumsy balance of the acid with sugar, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. The Barilla brand comes closest, if you can’t afford the more expensive (and refrigerated) Contadina, but there are a variety of other brands. I look for the ones with recognizable pieces of vegetable floating in a fairly liquid base, and avoid the pureed ones.

 

In my recent comments on prepared organic convenience food, I came across a pasta sauce organic brand called Muir Glen (www.muirglen.com) distributed by Small Planet Foods in Washington.

Believing, as does Foodmuse, that organic tomatoes have the most obvious superiority over their grocery store rivals for taste and texture, this seemed like a good place to see if the superiority would carry over into an organic convenience product. First let me say I was happily surprised to see the organic sauce was the same price as the other recognized brands, like Newman. Next, I discovered from the label that this stuff, with 60 calories per half cup, including only 5 calories from fat overmatched my usual brand, which was 90 calories per half cup, with 25 from fat. The ingredients were almost identical, except for herbs, and the main difference was the amount of sugar and olive oil added. That, and the use of ripe tomatoes in the organic product. This really came through very clearly, that there was less acidic aftertaste from the organic brand.

 

So you’re right, Foodmuse, in that tomatoes are the best place to look to see the superiority of organic farming. I think this shows up, even in a bottled tomato sauce.

Check Out Talking Turkey

Check out the article over on The Omnivore's Solution about a visit to the Ayrshire Farm in Loudon County, VA for a turkey tasting event sponsored by the wonderful American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Modern Organic Chemistry

I found where all those “organic” ingredients go, once they are concocted together into various gourmet blends resembling restaurant dining fare. I say resembling, because packaged food at the grocery has to meet a lot of standards for shelf life and storage that don’t apply to a restaurant kitchen.  Think of salad dressing. In a restaurant it is made right before your salad is served, or it would separate into layers in minutes. Not so those plastic “dressing on the side” cartons that come with a grocery store salad to go. They keep for days, which means an emulsifying agent, a soap-like chemical that dissolves oil in water, was added.  (A book about the physical chemistry of food called A Cookbook Decoder by Arthur Grosser is a very helpful and entertaining read for those with no college chemistry, or who slept through theirs. He explains how mayonnaise and Hollandaise work, as well as why boiled eggs turn green.) Of course if these artificial chemicals are extracted from organically grown plants, by a transmogrification of USDA rules they become organic products themselves, and may be legally included.

 

To get back to the original topic, I searched for processed organic prepared food in my grocery (Lucky’s) as well as a similar chain (Rally’s) and a Safeway. All these big chain stores have lots of organic produce (Lucky’s organic section is larger than the standard section, and a lot of products are only carried as organic, like the bean sprouts and salad greens), but I found very few examples of canned or frozen organic products, and no boxes of organic snack treats, cereals, etc. (In fact a total absence of canned organic vegetables says a lot about the demographics of organic shoppers, but another time…) I did find a couple of organic spaghetti sauces mixed right in with Barilla and Prego, which seems like a reasonable alternative, given organic tomatoes are supposed to be better. One of the brands was the same price as the premium Barilla and Newman brands, which surprised me, but it didn’t look as good. I’ll let you know.

 

So where are all these organic prepared food products hiding? I figured I’d check out a store catering to up-market shoppers interested in gourmet specialty services and convenience shopping. That’s right, Whole Foods is where it’s at. This (my first time, and I’m still in awe) is a temple dedicated to fine eating, and offering all the rare and exotic ingredients needed to make that special moveable feast. Whole Foods is about half restaurant/delicatessen for eating in or to go, and half specialty gourmet products store.  Surprisingly little of what they sell is what your grandmother would think of as groceries, but if you need powdered sand flies from  Sri Lanka to complete that special curry from the travel magazine, this place will have it.  And it is replete with floor to ceiling shelves of microwaveable pre-packaged dishes, duly sealed in plastic like military ration packs and kept refrigerated or frozen. About half of this stuff claims to be organic, or natural or in some way healthier than regular food.  A very large pastry shop advertises all goods baked on the premises are organic.  Yes, even the cheesecake, 500 calorie zucchini muffins, Valentine’s Day cupcakes, and egg and ham croissants are organic. More telling, the lactose free and soy substituted variations are still supposed to be organic – organic cheesecake with no dairy products – rriiigghht.

 

If you wonder whether I’m poking fun at this yuppie institution, the answer is “maybe a little”. Whole Foods knows my demographic, the Frazier/Niles wealthy baby boomer, and it lures us in like dog pheromones. I’m not immune, and I was very glad I hadn’t brought a credit card, just a notebook. It’s a farmer’s market bazaar at a world’s fair, but with a planet sized environmental footprint to match, and the emperor is missing a few other garments as well. There is way too much emphasis on letting Whole Foods do the cooking, and the prices, starting with the $9 premixed salads, single serving with 300 calories, are beyond restaurant outrage. They choose to put very odd weights in their packages (e.g. 12 ½ oz) to discourage price comparisons, and prices vary from slightly higher for vastly superior goods, to outlandishly higher for the same goods, which are displayed with more attention to detail than a cruise ship buffet line. You really feel like you are shopping in a restaurant (or Candyland or Willy Wanka’s). But they still have a lot of great stuff, especially specialty meats and exotic fresh produce. We just need someone to drive the money changers from the temple.

 

Warning - this is the market place where Joel Salatin meets Wall Street, and it is an uneasy partnership. 

 

 

Organic Insanity

I came across an interesting article about organic food ingredients that demonstrated important differences between the thinking at the USDA where they certify things organic, and the kind of food philosophy epitomized by sustainable agriculture and traditional cooking methods, as advocated by this blog.  This came from another food blog called TheDailyGreen.com, and was submitted by Karen Berner on 1/24/08.  The article was entitled 38 Non-Organic Ingredients Found in “USDA Organic” Foods, and listed 38 exemptions from the usual organic rules that have been granted to food processing companies.

I reviewed this whole list, which was pretty technical and boring, because none of the exemptions was truly a food.  All were organic alternatives to “traditional” food additives including colors, preservatives or nutritional additives, and were for use in precooked or prepared organic snack foods, cereals, pizzas, baby foods, etc. I actually had no idea that these sorts of products were ever considered organic, and I certainly plan to check this out more carefully, but there is supposedly a booming market in organic junk food, candy and even organic health food, which seems like a double entendre. 

I’m going to mention just a couple of USDA exemptions to convey the flavor, and then back to the point, which is ‘what is the point to organic food, anyway”:

1. Celery powder – this is a wholesome sounding extract of celery, which currently has no producer using organic celery as the starting material.  I was shocked to see this was not a cooking herb, but a “natural source of nitrate for curing meat” and used in the manufacture of organic hot dogs, which are clearly labeled “nitrate free”.  Is this a sleazy loophole, or what?  The FDA lets them use non-organic celery as a starting material, but more to the point, lets them extract and use a preservative without telling the buyer.
2.  Sausage casings from natural mesentery – there is currently no manufacturer of these from organic cows, so they can use non-organic ones in the meantime. Why not, if they let them use nitrate… 
3.  Chia – the seeds of Salvia hispanica. There is not currently an organic grower, and this product is needed as a supplement for omega-3 fatty acids, to make organic health food.  What?
4. Fructo-oligosaccharides  -  you guessed it, Greensgal, this is an “organic” version of HFCS, and is made by a slightly less chemical “fermentation” process, but not yet from organic vegetables.  I suppose if we have to have organic health food, they have to put organic corn syrup in it.

So what is the point?  The point is, organic food is not supposed to be about processed, pre-cooked, convenience oriented junk food, made to look and taste exactly like bad commercial food but somehow “healthier”.  There are not supposed to be organic hot dogs, frozen pizza, Fruit Loops, Snickers, cheesecake, Power Bars, or for all I know, Big Macs. So all these companies asking for exemptions are attempting to recreate all the worst things in American grocery shopping; an entire organo-alternative to exactly the same thing that’s wrong with traditional food. They add calories, preservatives, sweeteners, texture enhancers and even nutrients to “improve” a starting material that was once wholesome and nutritious. There is something deeply wrong with making baby food that involves vegetables “sweetened” with an HFCS substitute, to make it especially attractive to an innocent child, but destines him to have weight problems, lousy teeth, and even lousier food habits. The people who turned away from Gerber for just that reason don’t know that their organic alternative is made the same way.

And I refuse to say more about a company that wants to add omega-3’s to organic vegetables “for the health conscious”. That’s for the health plain crazy. And the USDA.

Rule of Thumb Turns Green

There’s an old rule of thumb that suggests that unless we pay for things -  we don’t value them.  Therapy comes to mind. Anyone who has been around children can testify that they can be pretty cavalier about some of their “stuff” unless they have paid for it.

Well, maybe the same holds true regarding food. Meaning – unless we  cook and/ or grow food, in effect pay for it with our attention and labor,  we won’t know the value of food. This begs the questions: How has the abundance of fast and easy food impacted what and how much we eat? And what are the ramifications on our personal health and our culture?

To counter the explosion of fast and easy food, cooking is being mandated as part of the educational curriculum for children aged 11-14 throughout Britain. The cooking program aims to teach children about healthy foods and how to prepare them in an effort to curb the rising obesity rate. Eight hundred teachers will be trained to instruct the courses.

Read more here:

 

What's in Your Omelette?

Here we go again!  Know your source is becoming a mantra among those concerned about healthy eating.  Many farm markets, CSA's, and co-ops have eggs from local producers: farms you can visit, watch chickens roam and peck on organic land, as Joel Salatin might say "doing the chickeny thing", look the farmer in the eye when he tells you why he raises pastured chickens and shuns hormones. 

Once you taste these eggs with their golden fat yolks and viscous whites, you will never look back at a caged chicken egg from a battery farm - tastless, watery, and pale.  Now we have another reason never to look back - salmonella!  A new study shows that salmonella rates are over 5 times higher in factory-farmed eggs compared to organic pastured eggs.  Yes, indeed, organic eggs ARE more expensive - you decide if they are worth it.  One large pastured egg is twice as satisfying as 2 large commercial eggs.

Farm to Label

Food labeling has long been with us, and has always been driven by the forces of commerce and trade and public health. The FDA  started as a scientific institution in 1862,  when chemist Charles M. Wetherill, set up a laboratory in the new Department of Agriculture to analyze samples of food, soils, fertilizers and other agricultural substances. The first reported project was a study of grape juice for winemaking  to explore, among other topics, whether adding sugar to increase the alcohol content would constitute "adulteration." It was concluded that the practice was legitimate. (Forty-six years later the first Notice of Judgment under the new 1906 Food and Drugs Act reported a court ruling to the contrary. Cider made harder by adding sugar was found adulterated.)

The US has long been slow to enact national food and drug laws.  The FDA expanded into federal rulemaking as a result of the Pure Food Movement- a grassroots phenomenon that germinated in the 1870’s  which was the original and principal source of political support for the Food and Drugs Act of 1906. Up till this time  there were a variety of State laws dated from colonial times mainly to serve the needs of trade, regarding establishing standards of weight and measure, and for inspections of exports like salt meats, fish and flour, to promote foreign sales. ,There  were also  local bread inspection laws to insure consumer protection as well as fair competition between bakers. States had been passing intra state laws in support of their own interests, which had encumbered the great expansion of interstate commerce after the Civil War.  It was convoluted and cumbersome for food merchants who had to follow different codes for different states.

Labeling today has gotten a bit convoluted  for the consumer– it’s as if you need a decoder ring to  distinguish between accurate information, advertising, hype and downright lies. I received this in an e-mail, in true decoder ring style. Haven’t tested it  yet . Let me know if it proves true.

Look for the labels stuck on your fruits and veggies:
A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's GM.

To see a timeline of the evolution of the FDA at this site:

What is in Your Child's Dinner?

A new study out of Emory University cites an experiment in which children's diets were replaced with organic food for only a few days.  The levels of organophosphorus pesticides in the urine of these children significantly decreased.  Take this one step further into the myriad of conventional processed and restuarant foods that our society consumes.  Imagine what the results of long term exposure to these pesticide residues does to all of us?  This is the first time such a study has been undertaken.   It is encouraging to note that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was involved the project.  Bravo!