Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Current Events: GMOs like woah.

So Micheal Pollan was on WYNC yesterday talking about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and explaining the government's position on allowing GMOs without labeling. It's pretty scary stuff actually. Monsanto and other big agribusiness companies develop GMOs, mostly soy and corn, to be more resistant to pesticides, leading to MORE pesticides in the food system. Although most of the GMO corn and soy is fed as livestock feed, they may ave negative impacts on the animals which get passed down. In addition, any non organic food that you eat with corn or soy as an ingredient is most likely GMO. Now we have the addition of alfalfa, sugar beets, and perhaps the introduction of a new freaky fast-growing salmon to be raised on farms. This has not yet been approved in Washington, but it is well on it's way.

Old way to eat salmon

New way to eat salmon!
There are a huge amount of problems with eating farm raised-salmon in the first place (a post for a different day) but adding a GMO factor to the awful mix does not seem like a good idea to me.

The only real requirement to having a GMO enter the market (as a new form of alfalfa, sugar beets just entered the market) is that the foods have to just be "not harmful" to the environment. This is sort of subjective because they only look at the crops on their own, not the new amounts of chemicals that get applied or the fact that it contaminates organic crops and other non GMO crops through cross pollination. Also, they are looking at very obvious short term impacts, no one knows how GMOs will effect us or the environment in the long term. The way that we farm industrially is already pretty awful for the environment, so I guess "not harmful" to the government really just means "no worse than it already is." Go figure.

Amber waves of genetically modified corn commodities




Unfortunately, both republicans and democrats are pretty friendly with these big GMO companies. This is not surprising because Monsanto is so scary. One of the most memorable parts of the documentary Food Inc. was the defeated, deflated, and scared appearances of the farmers who had upset Monsanto in some way. They are just huge companies with tons of money behind them and can easily ruin your life if you cross them. These are the people who are lobbying in Washington for GMO foods to not have to be labeled in the food supply. Even if they are not harmful, shouldn't we have the choice to not eat GMO food? It seems like an obvious thing, however, the companies argue that labeling them would cause confusion and undue fear in people. That is pretty funny since food companies seem to use confusion to their advantage when it comes to nutrition data and ingredient lists (If you are a dedicated shopper, you might spend hours in a grocery store trying reading labels trying to figure out anything you might want to buy outside the produce isle). Right now, the only way you would have the choice to not eat GMOs is to only eat organic. Not that bad of an option in general, but it's still messed up. However, this really mostly applies to processed food, since there is really no produce right now that is being genetically modified (yet). Also, Pollan pointed out that when Obama ran for president, he said that he supported the labeling of GMO products. However, now he seems to be okay with not labeling them.

Anyway, I guess this is just another reason to eat organic produce, and watch out for those farm raised salmon!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Sorry, you are all just wrong!



Recently food author Marc Bittman has started his opinion column in the New York Times titled A Food Manifesto for the Future. I read it last week and thought that it was pretty good. Admitedly it was somewhat unrealistic and even Bittman admitted via twitter that there were giant holes in some of the things he was saying. However, the American political food set up is SO complicated, a real description of the exact steps the American government should take to fix the food system would fill several sets of encyclopedias (if you are interested in this topic, a good place to start is Nestle's Food Politics).


Anyway, as expected one of the major industry representatives took issue with what Bittman said about what needs to happen in regards to the way that meat is produced in this country (basically that it needs to be made more sustainable, humane, and safe). In this case, it was The National Pork Producers Council who wrote a letter to the editor saying that "Modern livestock housing is temperature-controlled, well lighted and well ventilated. It keeps animals safe and comfortable and protects them from predators and disease. That's why the incidence of key food-borne illnesses in this country is going down, not up." Whatever. Everything that I have read tells me that this is a big fat lie. However, this was not what really got my blood boiling. I fully expect the huge industries in this country to try to defend themselves when they are attacked by people who can influence consumer's decisions in the supermarket. What really got my attention was a comment on the article about the letter.....

the comment read:

The pork producers shouldn't get so peeved at Bittman, they're taking him much too seriously.
Obviously Bittman's just blowing smoke up all of our skirts. That, or he's a stunning hypocrite...just have a look at how his 'healthy' recipes stack up:
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/4377-test
No wonder the Times moved him to the opinion section.

When you click the link, it is the center for consumer freedom (who I have read ridiculous articles from in the past) trying to claim that because STOUFFER'S meals have less calories than some of Bittman's recipes, they are BETTER for you than his home cooked meals. This was the craziest quote from the article: "On almost every count, the microwavable meals are healthier than Bittman's homemade fare. And they often contain substantially fewer calories and fat grams."

This article represents pretty much everything that is wrong with America's perception of food and how we value foods. Here is why in my humble opinion....

1) If you look at Bittman's recipes, they are not all nutritionally perfect. However, you can easily make them better by replacing things as you wish, and they are HOME COOKED with real ingredients. The Stoufer's microwaveable meals have a crazy amount of processed ingredients 

Here is the list from the Fried Chicken entree.
Another funny thing is this image right next to the list of ingredients:
What a consolation!
 2) The calories listed of the packages are for 1 serving. Often the family sized microwaveable meals will advise you to eat a small amount, making the calorie count looks small. But honestly how many people do you think go by the serving size? This is a way that food marketers make their foods look healthier than they are. 

3) The meat used in these products is probably the cheapest and worst of the worst if you care about the environment, humane issues, and antibiotics/hormones in your food. It is also often injected with water and other weirdo science stuff to make it more tender and palatable.

4) This article also illustrates the common misguided idea that low in fat & calories = good for you. Although calories do count, there is so much more to good nutrition than calories in vs calories out. I do not recommend eating the types of fats listed on the fried chicken label (HYDROGENATED SOY AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS). However, It is ridiculous that people seem to think that if they lower their fat intake they will be automatically healthy. Often options that are higher in fat are healthier if they are from quality good fats that will keep you full and happy.

I could go on and on but I will leave it there! I know that a lot of this post is preaching to the choir, but it is just so crazy what people say sometimes! 

Happy eating!


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Back to school, Back to soup!

So this week we started school again, and this draws my culinary vacation of being able to cook whenever I want to a sad close. However, it also challenges me to be more inventive and look for recipes that are more specific for what I need.

I know I have blogged about soups that I have made in the past, but I just think soups are great. Especially because they freeze wonderfully, and you can then have them at any time.



This time I heard a great recipe on The Splendid Table.  Now we all know that shrimp is not super cheep (especially nice shrimp raised without pesticides), so what I really liked this recipe is that you use the shells to make your broth and it really comes out great. Before this recipe I didn't even think about shrimp shells being USED for something, but I will never be able to throw out the shells again without feeling guilty!

Here is a link to the recipe

I would walk you through it myself, but they did a really good job at explaining everything. I personally didn't have pernod on hand, but everything still came out really good.


What I also really liked about the recipe was that it really served as an outline for anything you want to do. For example, I didn't have celery or leeks, so instead I used carrots and red potatoes. This also makes the soup a little heartier so it really was enough for entire meals.