Eating well is up to each of us. photo by Karin Lau from Fotolia

There has been much written about the frightening aspects of fast food meat, from how the animals are raised to massive amount of antibiotics and hormones these animals are given, not too mention the massive amounts of polluting waste coming from these large factory farms, also known as CAFO’s (concentrated animal feeding operations). Did you know that 80% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to livestock? And these are used for “prevention” leading to antibiotic resistant organisms not only in livestock but humans as well.

But now there is even bad news about the soda being served. Treehugger ran this story on fecal bacteria and E.Coli that was found in soda being served at fast food establishments (I can’t even call them restaurants). So if you are still drinking sodas this may be a good reason to at least not buy them from any fast food stop…besides dangerous amounts of sugar or sugar substitutes (even more dangerous to your health) you may be getting  more than you expect in your soda.

Treehugger also reported today that a recent study indicates that diet drinks may be contributing to a 61% higher risk for strokes as well. Just a little more incentive to stop drinking this stuff. Not to mention all of the water used to produce soft drinks and the huge amount of plastic bottles and aluminum cans that wind up in landfills and the ocean.

Maybe if more of us were drinking water we would be demanding cleaner water from our faucets. And just as a reminder bottled water is less regulated and tested than what you get from the tap. For more on bottled water you can check out this post about the film Tapped and World Water Day. By the way some of the most popular brands of bottled water like Aquafina and Dasani come from municipal water supplies, another reason to demand clean water from our cities and to stop buying bottled water. Annie Leonard also has a great video called The Story of Water if you want to learn more.

The bottom line is we need to see how far away our food has gone from really feeding us, and how damaging to our bodies, the environment and animals it has become. Shopping local and buying organic, or growing your own food are great steps to take to reverse these dangerous trends. What we eat and drink really matters.

A real pizza made from fresh ingredients and not loaded with fat. At Delfina-San Francisco

Over the weekend the New York Times ran a story on how the government is helping to increase cheese sales by promoting a new line of Domino’s pizza with 40 percent more cheese, since more cheese on products has been shown to boost sales.

You might be asking why is the government promoting Dominos’s pizza (and using $12 million to actually pay for marketing their campaign) while at the same time supposedly trying to reverse the growing problem of obesity in America. This is like offering chocolate cake to a friend who is on a diet. Talk about mixed messages.

How is the government involved in this? A marketing creation of the USDA, Dairy Management works to promote greater consumption of dairy products, and cheese is an easy way to accomplish this and use the full fat milk that people are drinking less of. According to the Times article, “Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry, [which you can bet is passed along to consumers in dairy prices]. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.” So make no mistake the USDA is supporting Dairy Management in many ways.

Maybe if we stopped the use of hormones and brought milk production back to healthy levels for the cows we would not have an industry producing more than there is a market for. Why is it the government is so involved in supporting industries (like Big-Ag and the dairy industry) that are contributing to many problems such as obesity that leads to health issues, and then rising health-care costs, or polluting ground water and rivers from the use of hormones, antibiotics, herbicides and pesticides, that we all then have to pay for?

These are important questions to start asking especially as funding disappears for important programs (how about education, reasonable health care or feeding and sheltering our fellow citizens many of whom have hit hard times from the loss of savings and retirement funds as the banks collapsed and we bailed them out, but not the everyday people effected?) that could create a better future for all of us, not just a small segment of society. How about using USDA funding to promote organics and hormone/antibiotic free products that do not cause health problems and excessive production of food where demand must then be manufactured through more marketing. We are also paying to subsidize the massive production of corn not for eating but for creating sweeteners that further contribute to obesity-you can read more about this here.

Cheese consumption in the US has almost tripled since the 1970’s according the NY Times article. It is no coincidence that mozzarella accounts for nearly a third of US cheese consumption since it is the most commonly used cheese on pizza.  I lived in Europe for many years where they eat a lot of cheese, more than here in the US, but somehow it is not such a problem. My guess is that in general Europeans are enjoying a better quality of cheese, usually without hormones and antibiotics, and they do not consume as much “fast food” that is often loaded with cheese. Unfortunately this is changing too as obesity rates start to rise in Europe as well; I am sure it is no coincidence that this has paralleled the rise in fast-food outlets.

We can see how it is the system itself that is creating many of the problems that we are facing today. Massive, large scale agriculture and raising animals in factory-like settings just doesn’t work (except perhaps for stockholders) and we need to change this system.

How can we do this?

We can write or call our representatives letting them know that we want more funding for health-promoting programs, not ones that encourage eating food that is clearly unhealthy and not meant for regular, habitual consumption…If you eat pizza, and I do, make it a healthy one and really enjoy it. It is up to us to make our government responsible to us the voters, not lobbyists with deep pockets who represent a small segment of society.

We also have an opportunity every time we shop and eat to show what we want on our plates and in our bodies. If enough of us stop buying this sort of food (and other products that are harmful) business will respond-after all they are in business to make money so they will give us what we want, if we let them know.

Remember that you vote with your fork three times a day so make your vote count for something positive.

What is really in your corn?

Just saw this wonderful five minute video of what is wrong, and also what is right about our food system at Civil eats (a great web site).

What makes it even more extraordinary is that it is given by an eleven year old at a TEDx event.

This is all so obvious that a child can recognize why we need to make a change in our agricultural systems and food culture in general… if we can call if a “culture”.  The good news is it really is this simple to change it. It is up to us to demand the kind of food that nourishes us rather than make us sick, and recreate a system that is not dependent on fossil fuels and pollutes the earth and local communities.

Just stop buying food that is genetically engineered and that will make a huge difference. Tell your grocer that you want to know what you are putting in your body.

What is really in your food? We have a right to know if it's GMO. photo by moxduul from fotolia

Here are 12 facts about food that you may or may not want to know, but you really should be aware of. This comes from The Ecologist magazine that is published in the UK and the information was taken from a book called The Little Book of Shocking Food Facts by Craig Holden Feinberg and Dale Petersen.

I knew that artificial sweeteners were bad for us but did not realize that aspartame once ingested converts to formaldehyde, a toxic and carcinogenic substance that then accumulates in the liver, kidneys and brain.

Globally there are 3 million cases of acute pesticide poisoning each year resulting in 220,000 deaths. So the next time that you have a conversation about organic vs. commercially grown food, or are trying to decide if organics are worth the cost, keep this in mind. These chemicals do more than just kill weeds and insects, they are making us sick, destroying our topsoil and creating polluted runoff water that in turn is creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, and other waterways.

The news is not all bad. In 2006 purchases for FairTrade certified products increased 42% from 2005. This benefited over 7 million people in developing countries…our dollars do make a difference for positive or negative change.

These are just three of the “facts” from the magazine and the book. If you would like to learn more you can order a copy of the book from your local Independent bookstore at the link below. And keep in mind, if the statistics quoted are regarding the UK you can bet it is worse in the US.

Real food or manufactured food. It's up to us to say no to GMO

Going GMO free….

After reading about the possible health effects of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn April Dávila did some research and then decided to go “Monsanto-free” for a month. You can read her story at Yes magazine (a great magazine if you don’t know about it).

What she discovered was that this was not such an easy undertaking. I’ve written a number of times about Monsanto and how prevalent they are in the food supply, and now we learn not just the commercial food chain.

Even eating strictly organic may not avoid Monsanto’s reach. Monsanto owns the majority of seed lines and this includes organic seeds…shocking I know. So trying to go Monsanto-free posed a challenge since Monsanto’s organic seed could be the source of prepared organic food, or even fresh organic produce. There are still a few brands of organic food that remain independently owned and they seriously scrutinize their supply chain. Here is an amazing chart from the Cornucopia Institute that shows who really owns many of the most common organic prepared food products.

Did you know that Muir Glen and Cascadian Farms are owned by General Mills?

Or that White Wave and Silk soy products are owned by Dean foods?

Check out this chart it is pretty scary that the majority of organic food products are actually owned by commercial food mega-corporations.

In a recent story along these lines Seeds of Change, a very cool company that produces organic seed had its New Mexico offices and farm closed and the staff that was asked to stay, and chose to stay, are moving to the California headquarters of their parent company…Mars Candy! What will now happen to Seeds of Change seed line remains to be seen, but their farm here in Northern New Mexico is definitely being shut down.

We are exceedingly vulnerable when so many organic product companies have been acquired by mainstream corporations where the bottom line is what motivates, not a desire to really go organic and create all the benefits that can go along with that-cleaning up the environment, the water, providing good, safe jobs and creating community.

Eating commercial meat can also lead back to Monsanto. According to this article sixty percent of genetically modified corn goes to feed cattle. Monsanto patented and produced recombinant growth hormone (rBGH), which is used to increase dairy production, but there had been such a public backlash against it Monsanto had tried to sell this division in 2008 and they finally found a buyer …Elanco, a division Eli Lilly. Yup the pharmaceutical company now sells the growth hormone and you had better watch your ice cream, if it isn’t organic it may still have rBGH in it. Click here to join the rBGH boycott.

Take a peek at this good read that includes four basic guidelines for avoiding Monsanto products and that means avoiding genetically modified organisms. We don’t have to be a part of this human experiment…say No to GMO

Here is a great article fresh from the Huffington Post by John Robbins on rBGH in ice cream and more about Monsanto. It is a bit shocking when you get to the part about the man who worked for Monsanto, and then he worked for the FDA and just happened to approve rBGH for cows, and then he went back to Monsanto. And did I mention he is now back at the FDA…something’s fishy here.

Eating eggs shouldn't be like playing Russian Roulette

The egg recall of a half billion eggs (that is a lot of eggs to collect) that is just winding down will hopefully be a wake-up call to the realities of industrialized, factory produced food and the dangers of large, concentrated food producers who supply the entire country…not to mention companies that have repeatedly violated food safety standards yet are still in business.

Over the last year there have been so many food scares involving food recalls it is becoming common place. Does this remind you of some science fiction movie? It does me.

The good news is that over the weekend sales of eggs at farmers markets were a farmers dream come true. This MSNBC article talks about farmers markets from coast to coast that had record days with their eggs. Many egg sellers sold out before noon and had new customers, as well as many buying more than just one dozen.

This NY Times article from yesterday points out how this salmonella outbreak brings to light the flaws in our commercial, industrialized food system and the governments food safety system. We can see how the system broke down and much of that was due to lax regulations and a strange division of responsibilities between the Dept. of Agriculture and the FDA. It is a system that has not been modified to protect the public given today’s industrialized food model.

Hopefully many will realize that even with better regulation, which surely is needed, the system as it functions just doesn’t make sense. Industrialized factory food creates more pollution than smaller scale production of chickens, cows and even produce. When animals are allowed to exist as they do in nature with room to roam, cow or chicken, what creates a toxic pond at a factory farm can now fertilize the land and improve it. With smaller production more jobs are created and more humane ones. The film and book Fast Food Nation is a journey into the world of industrial farms and our food system.

Smaller but more numerous farms and ranches also means shorter drives to market. Just two factories distributed all of these tainted eggs from coast to coast. Imagine how much fuel it takes to transport a half billion eggs. When you buy local you are helping to conserve oil and reduce the pollution from all of those “food miles”.

Another problem with this system is that so much of our crops need to go to feeding livestock. Over 75% of all corn grown in America is used to feed livestock not people. On the open range cows graze, and supplementing their diet with hay is much better for the land and especially for the animals. Cows were not even meant to eat corn, it actually makes them sick, so then they need to be given antibiotics…it goes on and on and a cycle is created from this crazy food system that takes a bad situation, so many animals crammed into awful conditions and makes it worse.

And imagine the life that chickens have living in confined cages where they cannot even sit compared to animals that are outside and leading relatively normal lives. The question of even eating meat is one that many people grapple with, but whether you chose a vegetarian lifestyle or not the bottom line is our system of factory farms is really awful for everyone involved, except the top management and stockholders of these companies. So if you do eat meat support local, sustainable, humane producers-they are out there and they need our support to survive.

The current laws and regulations have been created amidst an environment of lobbyists who have had the government’s ear, and politician’s pockets, more than we the people, but this scare could be an important part of changing this. We need to speak out louder and let our elected officials know that we demand something different. It is important to show that we mean this by shopping at farmers markets, local coops, buying pesticide and antibiotic free, non-GMO food and humanely raised, grazing animals. Here is a link to Local Harvest, an organization that lists farmers markets across the country in case you don’t know where one is nearby.

It is up to us to act. So let this most recent salmonella outbreak be the straw that breaks the camels back and start shopping local if you don’t already. Not only will you protect yourself and your loved ones from future outbreaks, you will make a big step in protecting the environment and your health and you will be eating much better quality food.

Not long ago I was returning from L.A. where I had attended ExpoWest-the largest trade show for the natural and organic food & products industry -and at the Albuquerque airport I saw a couple carrying a bag from the Expo. I walked over and asked if they had been at the show, obvious since they had the bag, and of course they had. Well it turned out they were the owners of the Flying Star Cafe and talk about committed and knowledgeable, they could give lessons in what it means to operate a food business that is always trying to be as sustainable as possible.

I had a chance to sit down with Jean Bernstein, one-half of the couple that own the Flying Star Cafe, at the Santa Fe location to learn about the cafe from its beginnings in 1987 when they started as a Double Rainbow ice cream franchise, to now with nine Flying Star locations and nine Satellite Coffee houses. It has been a long road for the Bernstein’s but some things have not changed and that is their love of food and their commitment to bring the best, and that means healthier, products to their customers.

Not only do they care about how the food tastes but they are relentless in finding the cleanest, sustainable products and have gone to great lengths to source products and influence the industry wherever they can. Their web site lists where products come from and they are committed to organic, natural and local products as much as is possible, and this means organic tofu and soymilk (even moving away from Silk to Pacific Naturals!), rBGH-Free milk, organic rice, oatmeal and peanut butter. Many items are coming from local food producers including honey, tortillas, pecans, milk, green chiles and even the turkey sausage.

Jean and Mark were instrumental in getting an experimental program started with one of the largest egg producers in the US to produce Certified Organic/American Humane Certified eggs. The experiment has been a great success and eggs at Flying Star Cafe only come from the two dedicated farms with these certifications. There are advantages to being a big company, they have 750 employees, and that is when you say you want something large suppliers listen.

I loved it when Jean told me they don’t want food in the cafe that has any “creepy stuff” in it, that is speaking my language. These owners are creating changes within the food industry. Buying from Sysco was limiting in many ways but through their perseverance products that had not been available through them now are, and that means they are also available for other businesses. Another example of a change that they were able to make is in the cage-free, vegetarian feed and drug-free chickens that they buy. Initially a regular chicken farm Springer Mountain Farms converted most of their chickens to a clean diet. They are the only poultry company in the US that is American Humane certified. This change was initiated after meeting the Bernstein’s at a trade show. Their products are now available through Sysco which means a larger distribution for hormone and antibiotic free, humanely raised chickens.

Now I know that some may argue that any animals raised for slaughter cannot be humane, but as long as there are meat and chicken eaters out there if we can improve how animals are raised and slaughtered this is progress. The pollution generated from large scale factory farms is worsened by the medicines the animals are given, which is now showing up in groundwater across the country, so eliminating this is a big step in the right direction. If people choose a vegetarian or vegan diet it is a personal choice and thank goodness places like Flying Star Cafe offer these options that are sustainably produced and often organic as well. It is often these big players who can make a real change that then benefits smaller businesses too.

Jean told me that Sysco has instituted a green initiative that includes integrated pesticide management-IPM, which has brought a 90% reduction in pesticides used, and the installation of solar panels on long haul trucks has led to reduced diesel consumption for refrigerated trucks. While these changes may be saving Sysco money and that may be their main incentive to make these changes, customers like Flying Star Cafe who keep coming back with more requests for greener products also drive corporate change. Just imagine if McDonald’s suddenly demanded humanely raised, hormone and antibiotic free meat and pesticide free potatoes what an impact that could make….anyone out there from McDonald’s reading this?

Jean told me that they use a matrix for their buying criteria which makes sense for their business. Each business is different and this is important to keep in mind, for in the end you can’t make an impact if you go out of business. They have been trans-fat free for a long time, and they use only non-bromated flour. Did I mention that almost everything is made from scratch and this includes salad dressings, baked goods and even the buns for their burgers. This is a company that is big enough to move the big players, like Sysco, to be transparent and play nice.

As we consumers demand clean, sustainably raised food it will become more available. Ask at your favorite restaurants where the produce comes from and what is in the meat they are serving. I have walked into restaurants and before I am seated ask what the animals were fed in the meat they serve. The answer that I get determines if I stay or walk out. It is up to us to let restaurants know that this matters and now so many healthier products are available so there is no excuse to not serve clean, sustainably raised food in restaurants, and not just high end ones as Flying Star Cafe proves.

The menu includes breakfast, lunch and dinner with a range of items that will appeal to everyone, carnivores and vegetarians alike. The approach is not to emphasize that ingredients are healthier and sustainably raised but rather to offer traditional food with authentic, homemade ingredients (as it should be). This approach reflects the owners values, and obviously the public is reaping the benefits getting great tasting food that uses ingredients that are so much better for them and the environment. It is a formula that is working with nine locations from Albuquerque to Santa Fe

A quick word about their Satellite Coffee Houses…”Passionate about what they serve”. The same commitment that goes into everything at the Flying Star Cafe exists at their coffee houses. Their slogan is “Procurement with a Conscious. Use without Guilt” and they mean it. On their website they list all packaging products used, and the companies that they buy from. They roast their own coffee and it is organic and fair trade as much as possible, supporting smaller family and cooperative farms. Since I once had my own coffee house and lived in Italy for a few years I will admit I am pretty picky about my coffee. I haven’t been in a Satellite Coffee house as yet, but the cappuccino that I had at Flying Star was impressive and my next trip down to Albuquerque will include a stop at one of the many Satellite Coffee locations…watch out Starbucks I think that you might have some real competition in New Mexico.

Here is a list of the locations for the Flying Star Cafe and Satellite Coffee

A similar story followed when Target used an image in a flyer from an organic Silk product when in fact it was selling the new ‘natural’ version, which was made from conventional soybeans.

An investigation by the USDA’s National Organic Program was triggered after The Cornucopia Institute filed a complaint. You can read the entire story about how Cornucopia brought this to light and helped to expose this deception.

But it goes even futher…the web site for WhiteWave, owned by Dean Foods just like Silk, identified products as organic that no longer were organic. Did such a big corporation just forget to update their website? It is also interesting that the Silk web site says that their parent company is WhiteWave.

I bring this up not to belabor an old issue, but to illustrate how important it is that we let our representatives, and individual companies, know that we demand protection for organic standards and organic labeling. It is exciting that the organic food industry is growing at a tremendous pace due to consumer demand but we need to be sure that the acquisitions by major corporations of what were initially, very committed, smaller scale organic businesses do not alter the standards we expect when we buy something labeled organic.

We are all busy and do not necessarily have time to investigate what corporation has taken over what other company in the corporations growing ‘family tree’ but it is important. The larger the corporation the more lobbyists they have protecting their interests, which unfortunately for many is just generating profits.

Not all businesses are engaged in trying to deceive the public. The Cornucopia story tells how Heinz helped fund tomato growers to switch to organic production when they began their organic label line. Also, when Stonyfield yogurt was acquired by group Danone of France many were worried about what would happen. Stonyfield has remained committed to buying all of their milk from family-scale organic farmers. This is in contrast to Horizon, also owned by Dean Foods, who relies on factory farms more and more for its milk, and many Horizon products are no longer organic as we have seen happen with Silk and WhiteWave.

There still exist independently owned companies that are doing well and growing, so maybe when you are shopping give their items a second look. Some of these are Eden Foods, Nature’s Path, Organic Valley, Lundberg Family Farms, Alvarado Street Bakery, Cedarlane, Golden Temple, and Newman’s Own. You can find really helpful charts of who owns what at Cornucopia’s web site I was surprised about many of them. Now, independently owned doesn’t necessarily mean that all of their products are organic and being part of a mega-corporation doesn’t mean that they are not organic, but I think that this is something important to many of us and surprising as well.

It is a challenging world out there to maneuver through but the more we stand up for organic the more our voices will be heard and real standards will be set and enforced. The next time you visit Whole Foods or any other so-called natural foods market, let the manager know that it matters to you that organics are available…not just ‘natural’, which means nothing. The market is responding to our demands, we just need to be sure it is done with integrity and not deception.

Can you imagine the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations committee has introduced a bill that calls for the creation of a Special Coordinator for Food Security (and authorizes $500 million in funding for 2010) that includes the clause that the U.S. must fund GMO’s and biotechnology. Don’t get me wrong I believe in helping to solve the issue of Global Hunger and Poverty, this is an something that we all need to be concerned with, but it has been shown that GM seed causes more hardship on small farmers than it does good. In fact quite often farmers in poorer countries (and in the U.S. as well) wind up losing their small farms since the costs escalate using these seeds….but this is another story.

The main point of the treehugger article is that other countries around the world from India to Egypt, as well as the EU have imposed strict rules on the use and labeling of GMO’s. The main reason is that there is not agreement among scientists on the effects, long or short term, on the safety of genetically modified food and they will not allow their citizens to be guinea pigs. To add insult to injury there is not even evidence that there is more productivity, or nutrition, with these seeds. In fact with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn crops more of their herbicide is used, since it kills everything else but the corn, and it has caused “soil erosion, nitrate leaching and water contamination”.

Here in the U.S. there is not even a mandate for labeling GMO products but here are some facts about how common they are from the treehugger.com article:

More than 9 out of 10 soybean seeds are genetically modified AND they come from Monsanto. So chances are good that if you are eating any product with soybeans and it is not organic, it is probably genetically modified.

The same holds true for corn with the numbers just a bit lower, but corn is in so many products in one form or another that if you are eating almost anything commercially processed it probably has corn in it.

Maybe it is time for us in the U.S. to insist on what is becoming commonplace in many countries around the world….Our Right To Know What is In Our Food. If it isn’t so bad why are these corporations afraid to have these products labeled? In the meantime to protect yourself buy local, and ask your farmer how they grow their food (they will appreciate your interest) and organic whenever you can.

Michael Pollan’s newest book Food Rules, An Eaters Manual is out. This book offers 64 simple rules for eating healthier, for our bodies and for the planet.

If this became required reading for everyone in school, at all levels, we would take a huge step forward in reversing America’s health crises, and the problems of agricultural pollution.

Michael Pollan’s most basic rule for eating is, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. But for many who have been eating the typical American diet this is not enough guidance since they have never experienced a healthy diet.

Where to start?

In this very short, very easy to read, and quite charming book the new rules for eating are broken down into three sections:

Part I: What should I eat?

Part II: What kind of food should I eat?

Part III: How should I eat?

Some of the rules are:

“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

“Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.”

“Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.”

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you will be dead.”

“Pay more, eat less.”

“Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.”

“Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot…There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food.”

“Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.”

Pretty simple and straightforward.

Whatever “junk” food you eat, cook it yourself. So if you can’t live without french fries, make them yourself-you definitely won’t eat them as often and at least you will be starting with fresh potatoes.

This book is not a diet, but rather guidance for a new way (for most Americans) of eating sustainably. A way to eat that nurtures good health and helps to heal the planet in many ways…less travel miles for food to arrive at the market, less packaging, cleaner and more intelligent agriculture, more bio-diversity in crops,  better health leading to more productivity and less pharmaceuticals taken, which are now finding their way into our water supplies, a reduction in factory farms that are polluting the air and waterways.

The benefits to following these rules are monumental and go very deep and wide. So if you are looking for some guidance for healthier eating this book is just what you have dreamt of,  and if you are a Michael Pollan fan it is a must read.

You can order it here from an independent book store

By checking the side panels  ”Inspiring Books”,  Michael Pollan’s other books are also just a click away.

Here is a nice overview from the NY Times Health Column on Feb 2, 2010