I was lucky enough to be offered a free copy of the Vancouver Sun on the day (Friday) they published a long article about fortified/enriched “super foods,” the lead-off of which appeared on the front page. Now, I’ve always considered “Vitamin A & D Added” to milk to be a good thing. I have also noticed that (Lucerne) unsalted butter is, for some reason, a few cents more. It’s very easy to be seduced by products that boast health benefits. Do not be fooled by cereal boxes that boast about being made with whole grains and having all these essential nutrients if it’s packed with sugar! Admittedly, it’s better than cereals that are not, and have little to offer, and are still packed with sugar, but I digress…
The writers visited a downtown Safeway and found 12 “super foods.” Compared to their regular counterparts, they were either the same price or more expensive. The real debate is whether we need these foods. Basically the answer is yes and no. Yes if you’re anemic and need extra iron in your diet, or if you have other special circumstances. No, for everyone else if only we’d “do what we’re told” and eat a balanced diet! Of course, a balanced diet these days that is truly up to the recommendations would involve us having to eat about 5x as much fruits and vegetables as our predecessors 50 or more years ago due to the decline in vitamin and mineral content. (The report does mention the decline, and Thomas Pawlick’s book, but refers to the issue as “alleged,” essentially failing to acknowledge the fact that is also supported by federal food tables and books such as Randall Fitzgerald’s The Hundred-Year Lie.) At any rate, I try my best, but I’m still a little fuzzy about eggs. I’ve recently heard that the colour of the yolk is meaningless. I prefer to buy PC’s free run eggs because a) they’re free run (not the same as free range), b) they’re brown so I can distinguish shell from flesh easier, and feel like I’m eating something more natural, c) the packaging is transparent and brightly-labeled so I notice the carton in my fridge, and (best of all), d) the packaging is fully recyclable! Styrofoam is not, though it comes in handy at Easter.
Continue reading Fortified and enriched foods… are they really better? »
The last few days I’ve been feeling sick on and off. It may be a stomach flu. As such I have had little energy (or time, even, due to other circumstances) for writing here, but after a talk with a friend and a stop at the local market, I’m feeling rather energized.
It was quiet by the time I got to the market around 6:30 (and even quieter when I left!). It was just getting dark and they had the lights on outside. It was my first time being there or even seeing the place at night. It felt good, it smelled good, and the air was crisp and cool.
I was disappointed that the main item I was there for wasn’t there; organic golden nugget potatoes that smelled like dirt and made incredible mashed potatoes. I regret not buying more at the time. I got local grown yukon gold, though, so even while they didn’t smell like anything at all, I knew I was supporting a good venture. I did manage to get organic buttercup squash (to add to my organic kuri), and… ORGANIC TOMATOES!!! And they’re only 70c more than the ones we usually buy, but the difference is striking. We usually get a pint of “cocktail” tomatoes (one out of over 6,000 varieties of tomatoes that exist). They tend to be better than the larger ones, but don’t always taste great. Those are $2.29. Seems like a rip-off right? They last a long time, and are great for just throwing into your lunch box, so whatever. These organic ones are $2.99 (I didn’t notice the price at the time), and I got one that weighed more. I was eager to have one when I got it home. Here’s how it went.
Continue reading I found organic tomatoes! »
I delivered the first set of my neighbourhood questionnaire yesterday evening, while waiting for the rest of them to print off. (Might have taken longer than photocopying, but it was easier to read and not messy.) I don’t know how many responses I’ll get, but if you happen to be here because you received my survey on your doorstep, welcome!
This post will give you a bit more insight into my grad project and the issues surrounding the decline of food quality in North America, also called The End of Food, so named by Canadian author Thomas Pawlick. I stress that it is not a doomsday book so much as an encouragement to make changes in your lifestyle to counteract the changes in industry.
Continue reading Hello, Neighbour! + Grad project overview »
I was very pleased with myself to have been able to buy local, BC grown, and organic foods recently at my local farmer’s market. No hope of finding organic tomatoes this summer, but I did pick up organic potatoes, squash, and broccoli (all they had was organic!). They also had their own butter lettuce and corn, which I bought as well. The mashed potatoes we made with those organic potatoes (79c/lb, golden nugget) were SO GOOD! And the potatoes actually smelled like dirt, unlike the non-organic red ones (69c/lb.. they tend to be cheaper regardless) which… don’t smell like anything. The peppers are BC grown, grown without sprays, and not waxy like BC Hot House peppers. Earlier in the year, we figured the price difference between BC Hot House ($$) and farmer’s market produce (79c/lb for green up to $1.29 for red and yellow — red is on sale for 79c right now) was to do with having to pick through the not-so-good ones for the nice ones. Recently, however, they’ve all been spectacular! And they’re all light-weight.
Continue reading Yay for farmer’s markets! »
“It’s perfect on a cracker. Almost too perfect. Explore the secrets of one of the world’s most unnatural foods”, says Patrick Di Justo of Wired.
It’s squirt-on cheese from Kraft, called Easy Cheese. No kidding. Who needs a knife and a cutting block when you can squirt on cheese?
Read the short article which outlines its major ingredients, including “twice the sodium of typical organic cheddar.” Oh, and it’s an “excellent source of calcium,” too, but only because they added calcium phosphate… to make up for the effects of sodium phosphate.
From Kraftfoods.com:
Ingredients: MILK, WATER, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, WHEY, CANOLA OIL, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, SODIUM CITRATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, LACTIC ACID, SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, SODIUM ALGINATE, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), CHEESE CULTURE, ENZYMES.
By the way, annatto, a common food additive that produces a yellow colour, “often produces allergic symptoms like skin rashes and large wheals on the skin. In one patient written up in the Annals of Allergy, his morning breakfast of Fiber One cereal with milk produced these symptoms, plus severe low blood pressure. Annatto is also known to cause blood-sugar levels to rise precipitously, producing damage to the energy-production sites in the liver and pancreas.” [From The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children, by Carol Simontacchi.] The source she sites is from 10 years ago. Annatto is “extracted from the seeds of the tree Bixa orellana…” a reminder that not everything from a natural source is good for you.
Continue reading Cheese & crackers just got lazier »
I’m making my lunch.
Orange cheddar cheese — my favourite, but it’s dyed orange and I don’t know why.
White sourdough bread — I think you get the point.
Finnish mustard — really good.
Honey ham — sodium nitrate and smoke. Good luck finding any deli meat that isn’t.
Tomato — here’s the fun part.
I realised my tomatoes need to get eaten up. My boyfriend grabbed the usual, tomatoes-on-the-vine. That was on Wednesday. They’re… not as red as they should be, and still very firm after 3 days. I did a test and dropped one on the counter. I hucked it against the kitchen cupboard, and then it fell on the lino-covered cement floor. Not a bruise. It incurred a slight slit to its skin, but that was it. I cut it, and listened… a slight crunch as I broke the skin, then I looked at it… “Oh my god, he’s right,” I said out loud, referring to author Thomas Pawlick. “I have to photograph this.”
The Dole brand tomato has a thick, fibrous layer under the skin that is pale and gross-looking. Inside, it’s watery, not juicy. It’s big, and looks exactly the same as the other 3 in every regard.
Finally, a taste test: I bit into the beautiful red tomato from my boyfriend’s granddad’s home-grown tree. MMM… oh yeah. So good. Now for the other one… crunch, chew, chew… YUCK. It’s BITTER! Not sweet, not soft, not yummy.
And I’m having second thoughts about putting it on my sandwich.
Photo documentation
large Dole tomato versus small homegrown tomato
see all that pale pith? that’s not good.
less pith, darker. a RED tomato. juicy, not runny.
After lunch thoughts:
The Dole tomato’s “juice” ran down my arm… every single time. I wasted a kleenex just cleaning it up (I wasn’t about to drip all the way to the kitchen!). I enjoyed my sandwich with homegrown tomatoes much more.
I was just at Two EEs Farm Market getting my usual produce. It was raining and the water was dripping, or spraying, through the canopy, giving the produce a nice wash. I stocked up on apples (mostly golden delicious at 49c/lb and some gala apples), mostly for making apple crisp. I like having fruit for snacks at school as well, and grapes are good for that. I usually get green seedless grapes, nice and crispy and sweet. They were from California this time, so I eyed them suspiciously and decided to take a second look at the purple ones outside. The darker ones were from Arkansas… uh… I can’t even find that on a map. The other ones were locally-grown lighter purple grapes. Small and seedless, and round.
Oh my gosh.
Continue reading Locally-grown grapes a delicious treat »
I got an add on MySpace from Conspiracy Clothes, which makes t-shirts with messages the government doesn’t want you to know. One of them is about the dangers of fluoride, which I knew about, but the references outline way more problems than I knew.
Continue reading Why I use toothpaste sans fluoride »
Notice of Submission for Approval of Novel Food, Livestock Feed and Environmental Safety for Alfalfa Genetically Modified For Herbicide Tolerance from Monsanto Canada Inc. Date Posted: September 7, 2004
It was approved.
The CFIA and Health Canada (HC) have received a submission from Monsanto Canada Inc. seeking environmental safety approval, and livestock feed and food use approvals of alfalfa designated as Events J101 and J163, which have been genetically modified for glyphosate herbicide tolerance.
Continue reading Monsanto’s alfalfa »
I’m reading this article about efforts in Florida, and US-wide, to make children’s lunches more nutritious and (hopefully) reduce obesity. Well it sure doesn’t hurt, even if it’s not working that well.
It got me thinking, though, about kids whose moms or dads take them grocery shopping. Supermarket checkouts all have candy, gum, and chocolate bars from the floor to about 4 feet up — SMACK DAB in the reach of children’s hands. Even if parents try to raise their kids without candy and nasty chocolate bars, what’s to stop them from getting them with their allowance on the way home, or at friends’ places, or at school? (I remember spending $15 one month on a Reese peanut butter cup addiction in high school.) Anyway, it’s pretty easy for a kid, bored, waiting there for mom to finish up to just grab something and say “Pleaaaase can I have this?” or just put it right on the belt if they’re tall enough. If mom is distracted by the tabloids and magazines, she might just brush it off and say “mhm,” or maybe she’s not concerned about it at all. Maybe it’ll keep the kid occupied while she loads everything into the car.
Continue reading Supermarket check-outs & childhood obesity »
