Category Archives: Food Safety

Forks over Knives and Portlandia

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

No, they’re not really related, but both are great viewing material. Forks over Knives is sobering and reminds us all to eat our vegetables. Portlandia is just plain hysterical — skits riffing on all the outrageous people in Portland and beyond. BTW, the Mayor of Portland portrayed in the skits has an uncanny likeness to Linc Chafee. He is seen bouncing on his exercise ball, working on his “core” while chatting with young musicians about writing a song to promote about Portland.

Here’s the trailer for Forks and Knives:

One of the 8,000 Chemicals You Should Definitely Avoid

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

There is a growing awareness, particularly in our younger generation, that we need to do something about the 8,000 chemicals in our environment that are floating around unregulated. I am hoping for a generation of young warriors who will bring some level of safety standards to our environment and make sure chemical companies pay their fair share for the do-over. One particular chemical that I am joining Dr. Mercola in focusing on is an “anti-foaming agent” that is put on McDonald’s Chicken Mcnuggets. From the good doctor:

Do you put dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent made of silicone, in your chicken dishes?

How about tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a chemical preservative so deadly that just five grams can kill you?

These are just two of the ingredients in a McDonalds Chicken McNugget. Only 50 percent of a McNugget is actually chicken. The other 50 percent includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.

I will admit to eating my share of chicken McNuggets over the years, and I’ve noticed that they have a weird bitter aftertaste, particularly when cold. Well, just one more reason to try to avoid fast food and processed foods whenever possible.

Free Range

Posted on by ninjanurse

So now we are expecting flocks of East Side chickens. They’ll strut around picking at organic wheatgrass, clucking about the young chicks and their ways, laying artisanal eggs and performing on youtube.

I guess we have to live with it– a sign of the times. I saw a contraband chicken in a coop in a back yard in Fox Point some years ago. Will the eggs taste as good without the spice of the forbidden?

Laboring for Health

Posted on by David Jaffe

Since it’s Labor Day, it seems only fitting to share a news item relevant to those who truly know what it is like to endure labor, mothers. The article, which is a couple of weeks old (making it ancient in the Information Age), concerns a potential link between prenatal exposure to pesticides and the future development of attention deficit disorders. That such a link may exist is not entirely surprising. But it is alarming nonetheless. We live amid a multitude of toxins, which individually and in combination may impact the most vulnerable among us in ways that we cannot always imagine or appreciate. At least, not until the body of scientific data and the resulting public uproar become too powerful to ignore. In the meantime, it pays to be attentive and cautious.

From U.S. News & World Report:

Pesticide Exposure in the Womb Increases ADHD Risk

Exposure to pesticides while in the womb may increase the odds that a child will have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health. Combine that with research published in May in Pediatrics finding that children exposed to pesticides were more likely to have ADHD, and it’s enough to make parents wonder how to reduce their family’s exposure to pesticides.

The California researchers are studying the impact of environmental exposures on the health of women and children who live in the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region with heavy pesticide use. They tested the urine of pregnant women for pesticide residue, and then tested the behavior of their children at ages 3½ and 5. The 5-year-olds who had been exposed to organophosphate pesticides while in the womb had more problems with attention and behavior than did children who were not exposed. What’s more, the heavier the pesticide exposure, the more likely that the child would have symptoms of ADHD . The results were published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

This isn’t proof that pesticides cause ADHD, but since organophosphate pesticides are neurotoxins that kill pests by disrupting neurotransmitters that carry signals though the brain, it’s easy to imagine that exposure to organophosphate might interfere with brain function and development. [full article]

Fear of Eggs

Posted on by ninjanurse

Megafarming is showing its scary side in the recall of eggs that may be tainted with salmonella. The number of eggs recalled may reach half a billion. Gods, where will they put them all?

Factory farming makes it inevitable that animal diseases will spread and affect the food supply.

This egg disaster goes hand-in-hand with industrial food production, some experts insist.
Years ago, communities would get eggs from nearby farms, so any outbreaks would be geographically localized, says Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Today, if there is a problem in some early stage in the distribution chain, it spreads quickly over a very large geographic area and involves a very large number of people, he says.

Is it the price we pay for a cheap breakfast? Not all experts agree.

“Yeah, when there are more birds, there will be more problems,” says Jeff Armstrong, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University, “but there is no clear data on whether one system of housing birds is more or less likely to encourage disease. The bottom line is that we can and have been producing eggs safely and economically in confinement.This unfortunate problem is not an indictment of the system.”

With thousands of people feared sickened, it seems that the arguments are destined to continue.
As for Nestle, she shops for eggs at her local farmer’s market. They cost more, but she says she knows how they are produced.

I don’t have any worries about it because East Side Pharmacy sells eggs from Stamp Farms in Johnston. There are a number of chicken farms in Johnston and around the state. I don’t know how freely the chickens range inside that big red barn at Stamp Farms, but at least I know where the eggs come from, and they’re not expensive like pretentious organic eggs from New Jersey, or Idaho, or wherever.

In honor of all things Rhode Island, here is the local list.

Me Vida Local List–
Acme Video
Silver Star Bakery
United BBQ
Stamp Egg Farms
East Side Prescription Center
Yacht Club Soda
Mangiarelli’s Fruitlands
Four Mile River Farm

Follow the above links to local providers. Keep our economy from tanking any worse.

Willpower

Posted on by ninjanurse

Are we just losing our willpower year by year?

About a third of people in nine states were obese in 2009, a dramatic increase from 2007, when only three states had obesity rates that high, a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

USA Today has a frightening map of obesity rates by state and year, and the CDC has the same map with more detail.

Were we all more virtuous thirty years ago, or has our environment changed? Certainly there are more temptations to be sedentary, and activity is being squeezed out of our daily routine. Cuts to public transit, to physical education in public schools, and lack of walkable communities all play a role. But what is happening to our food?

Between 1970 and 1990 the use of high-fructose corn syrup increased 1000%.

Corn is subsidized by the government, but people don’t eat that much fresh corn. The money is in the refined product. It’s cheap, it’s plentiful, and it’s not only a sweetener, it’s a preservative. The industry says there’s no difference between one sweetener and another, but recent research suggests otherwise…

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

“Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said.

Correlation is not causation, but a grocery list of new, refined additions to our diet and an increase in obesity and diabetes is suspicious.

As bad as this is, it could get worse. A study shows a link between high fructose corn syrup and the growth of cancer cells. Business journalist Dana Blankenhorn asks if corn syrup will become the new tobacco.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), a corn-based sweetener developed in 1957 and engineered into a wide range of food starting in 1975, looks headed to becoming a major health concern of this generation.
In the process Archer Daniels-Midland may become a one-company “big tobacco.”

And just as tax money intended to supply our soldiers with food in WWII was diverted into big tobacco– resulting in addiction and lung cancer for many veterans of that war, industry lobbyists succeeded in changing regulations so that food stamps could be used for soda. It’s a diversion of money that is supposed to be used to aid farmers and improve nutrition for low-income people.

What would ADM do with all that corn syrup? One answer is found on the ingredients list of almost any processed food– it’s in thousands of foods we don’t even think of as sweet. Read the label. And there’s another business plan. Send it to the second most obese nation–Mexico.

Mexico lost a trade dispute that had protected its domestic sugar production, and a flood of cheap corn syrup from the USA will displace sugar in their soft drinks. Meanwhile, some health-conscious Americans are buying Mexican soda sweetened with sugar to avoid the scary HFCS.

I have to say that this just plain sounds like evil product dumping. Nothing good will come in the long run if we export something that Americans have come to believe is unfit to eat. There is even evidence that people of Native American descent have a higher risk of health problems from a diet high in refined carbs. Ten percent of Mexicans are indigenous, and the majority of the population have mixed ancestry.

So we’re talking about dumping a cheap sweetener that Americans are getting leery of on to a poor nation whose people may be especially vulnerable to the health risks.

Why are our tax dollars subsidizing corn anyway? It’s not the most nutritious food crop. Why can’t Archer Daniels Midland GROW SOMETHING ELSE?

Obesity and being overweight are complex problems, with many causes. Willpower is one factor, certainly. But human nature can’t have changed so drastically in thirty years that we’ve all become gluttons. What has changed in thirty years is our environment, many small losses of activity and nutrition, many new chemical pollutants in our air and water. We’re all subjects in a global experiment in unnatural living and the results are starting to come in.

One great accomplishment of our time was getting the lead out of our gasoline and cleaning up our housing. Another was getting cigarette smoking out of the workplace and educating people about secondhand smoke.

Fixing our national obesity and diabetes epidemic will take more than slapping a ‘natural’ label on a box of donuts. But for the most part we know what we need to do. My neighborhood farmer’s market is open tomorrow. They take food stamps, and not everything there is expensive. They are part of the solution. It’s a start.

MORE: Here’s a link to this week’s news on HFCS and cancer. Kraft and Coca-Cola are fighting a tax on soda. There’s no hope that one person can get around corporate lobbyists, but you vote with your dollar every time you go to the store. Yacht Club sells a nice sparkling water and it’s local.

DRUNKARD AMERICA: Michael Pollard in ‘The Omnivores’s Dillemma’ recounts a fascinating historical episode of widespread alcohol abuse and cheap corn whiskey. The dynamic is the same– lots of corn and the advantage of creating a processed, indestructable product that people will crave and buy—

As it is today, the clever thing to do with all that cheap corn was to process it — specifically, to distill it into alcohol. The Appalachian range made it difficult and expensive to transport surplus corn from the lightly settled Ohio River Valley to the more populous markets of the East, so farmers turned their corn into whiskey — a more compact and portable, and less perishable, value-added commodity. Before long the price of whiskey plummeted to the point that people could afford to drink it by the pint. Which is precisely what they did.

Prohibition was a disaster, but it was an attempt to solve a real social problem. One parellel here is that most people can handle alcohol in moderation, but most people can’t drink a pint of whiskey every day without becoming dependent or addicted. Most of us like sweets, but a highly refined sugar added to almost everything we eat is a diet that is addictive and unhealthy for anyone with a tendency to put on weight. When did you ever go to the store and buy a bottle of high-fructose corn syrup? The sixty pounds a year the average American consumes are added to other foods we buy. And some foods are so salted you don’t even know it’s sweetened unless you read the label.

Local Tomatoes at Pawtuxet Village Farmer’s Market

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

From Steve Stycos:

TOMATOES

Tomato season is beginning at the Pawtuxet Village Farmers. Real tomatoes are an unmatched summer treat, whether cooked or fresh.

In recent years, supermarkets have presented vine ripened tomatoes year round. A March New York Times article detailed how they are grown. Quaint sounding Backyard Farms in Maine grows its tomatoes for the New England market in two greenhouses that cover 42 acres, or roughly the size of 32 football fields. The greenhouses are heated to 70 degrees year round with propane, filled with carbon dioxide to encourage plant growth and lit with 20,000 lights in the winter to provide enough sun light.

This is typical of the industry which provides consumers with all types of produce, regardless of the time of year. A 2005 British study found that greenhouse tomatoes grown in England caused four times as much greenhouse gases as field tomatoes grown in Spain, even when transportation of the fruit 700 miles to market was included.

Eating local produce cuts greenhouse emissions. So does eating in season.

When you bite into that juicy tomato from Longentry Farm, Moosup River Farm, Pak Express or Zephyr Farm, during July and August, credit yourself with helping combat global warming.

OUTDOOR CONCERT

The William Hall Library outdoor concert series continues Thursday July15 at 6 PM with the band Irish Express. Bring a blanket or a lawn chair.

See you Saturday at the market.

Chipotle Chips in For Better School Lunches

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

One of the better food places to locate in Cranston of late is the Chipotle in Garden City. So imagine my delight when I heard that they are sponsoring a campaign to give $50,000 to a fund to improve the quality of school lunches. From a blog called Love and Trash:

“We don’t like junk. Not in our inboxes and not in our food.” – that’s the campaign slogan. Participation is simple: when you get a junk email, you forward it to nojunk@chipotlejunk.com. For every 100,000 emails they receive, they’ll give $10,000 to The Lunch Box to advocate and educate for better school food. Their top limit: $50,000.

Sounds good to me. I would LOVE to see the quality of school lunches improve — there is so much long-term value in feeding our children well.

Arsenic, Lead, and Cadmium in “Healthy” Protein Shakes

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

Here is some news from Consumer Reports on the quality of drinkable meals out there. The full report is available to subscribers (click here to go to Consumer Reports’ preview of the article). Here is a little more information from Web MD:

Consumer Reports says these three products are of special concern:

EAS Myoplex Original Rich Dark Chocolate Shake has an average of 16.9 micrograms of arsenic in three servings — more than the 15 micrograms a day that is the proposed USP limit. It has an average of 5.1 micrograms of cadmium for three servings — above the USP limit of 5 micrograms a day.

Muscle Milk chocolate powder, at three servings, contained all four of the metals, and three metals were found at a level that was among the highest of all 15 products tested. Cadmium levels were 5.6 micrograms — above the 5-microgram limit. Lead was 13.5 micrograms — above the USP limit of 10 micrograms. The arsenic averaged 12.2 micrograms — near the 15-microgram daily USP limit.

Muscle Milk vanilla crème had 12.2 micrograms of lead per three servings — above the 10-microgram daily limit. It has 11.2 micrograms of arsenic — close to the 15-microgram daily limit.