The Cleaner Plate Club

Wish me a happy anniversary. I’ve been blogging for a year now. A year! And I haven’t been chased out of the blogosphere by an angry, pitchfork-wielding cyber-mob! Not yet, anyway!

How shall we mark the occasion, friends? How about we celebrate by returning to the original purpose of this blog: a healthy, fast recipe that my kids will actually eat?

Let’s start with this one, which I call Merrie’s Chard Feta Pasta, With or Without Meatballs. Recently, I was experimenting with swiss chard, which I happen to think is about the prettiest vegetable ever, even if it does have a really ugly Latin name: Beta vulgaris. Who thought of that one?

Ruby red stems, vibrant green leaves….i’s a spinach-meets-beet kind of vegetable, which the World’s Healthiest Foods calls a “vegetable valedictorian.” Says they:

If vegetables got grades for traditional nutrients alone, Swiss chard would be one of the vegetable valedictorians. The vitamin and mineral profile of this leafy green vegetable contains enough “excellents” to ensure its place at the head of the vegetable Dean’s List. Our rating system awards Swiss chard with excellent marks for its concentrations of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, magnesium, manganese, potassium, iron, vitamin E, and dietary fiber. Swiss chard also emerges as a very good or good source of copper, calcium, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, protein, phosphorous, vitamin B1, zinc, folate, biotin, niacin and pantothenic acid.

At the time, I’d been trying to make a chard pizza on a baguette, which didn’t turn out exactly as planned. It was edible, but not great. Except that Merrie, my six-year-old, couldn’t get enough. She just kept scraping it off of the bread, eating it, and asking for more.

In the immortal words of Jiminy Cricket: I’m no fool, no sirree. My kid asking for seconds, then thirds, of one of the most healthful veggies out there? We’re going with it. In this case, we’re putting it into pasta.

As far as I can tell, there are two key things you’ve got to do with swiss chard: wash it effectively, and separate the stems and leaves. Washing it correctly is particularly important when you’re getting it fresh from the farm - like spinach, it can get a little gritty. The best strategy I’ve found is just to let it soak in a big thing water for a while, swishing it occasionally. Any grit falls right off:

Separating the stems is important, because the stems cook more slowly than the leaves. Note, I cooked the leaves a touch too long - you can remove them from heat before they’re completely wilted. In a perfect world, I would recreate this recipe and take new photos, but…perfectionism? Not for me.

Here’s what you do:

Ingredients:
1 bunch of chard
3 cloves garlic
Olive oil
Half teaspoon dried basil (fresh would be better, but it’s mid-winter here, and — drats! — I haven’t yet planted my aerogarden)
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 small can garbanzo beans
A few ounces crumbled feta
Salt and pepper to taste.
Pasta (I used about three-quarters of a spaghetti packet)

Directions: Start on pasta. Chop garlic, and sautee in olive oil until soft (not brown). Add chard stems and sautee for about 4-5 minutes. Add balsamic vinegar, basil, and chard leaves. Sautee another 3 minutes or so.

Oh, heck, add a splash of wine, because, let’s face it: you’re drinking as you cook (relax, the alcohol gets cooked out).

Add garbanzos, and heat through:

Remove from heat. Crumble feta over chard. Add salt, pepper, and mix. Drain pasta, add chard, and crumble just a touch more feta so it looks pretty:

Serve to your child. Note it is served here with two meatballs, only because she really wanted them. The recipe is plenty hearty by itself. No meat required.

Watch it disappear. Mostly.

Merrie declared it delicious, and Blair (who ate it happily without meat, even though he tends to be suspicious of all meat-free meals…AND who doesn’t particularly care for pasta) noted without prompting, “hey, this is really good.”

The baby? Well, she put the meatball in her ear:

And threw the spaghetti at the dog:

But she does that sort of thing all her meals, so I don’t consider her a credible judge of taste. The rest of us considered it a fine meal to celebrate a year of cooking and blogging.

For Pete’s sake, why do I write these things? Double-dipping? Ten-thousand bacteria?

Forget that last post. Did you know that your body has 20 times more microbes than it has cells? Apparently we need not fear most of them. Instead, we should embrace them. Not all of them. Just most.

(think of all that time we spend trying to scrub the microbes out of our kitchens, off our floors, out of our lives! What a relief to think that maybe we don’t have to!)

Read the Fruitless War on Germs, from Newsweek, and you will begin a loving relationship with the microbes in your life. You will learn all about how microbes act almost as an extension of our own genes — a kind of “virtual organ” — warding off diseases like cancer, regulating our appetite, and even improving our moods. It’s some crazy, heady stuff — they are saying that the germs around you are like a virtual organ! A virtual organ! It is still hard for me to conceive of my own skin as an organ, though they tell me it’s true, that my skin is a weird, stretched-out, organ, roughly 20 square feet in size, constantly shedding to form 90% of my copious household dust. That’s hard enough to think about. But now this! Microbes, these things we try to kill by dousing ourselves with Purell and Germ-X! Microbes serving really important functions. It’s mind-blowing, I tell you.

Then? When you are done with that, jump to this article, Is Dirt the New Prozac?, from Discover Magazine, and you will be convinced. Not only do they help our bodies, they can make us happy, too.

You will want to head outside and dig your fingers deep into the soil. You will want to rub your naked body in mud, porcine style. You may even want to eat from the communal bowl this Sunday. Or better yet, lick the whole thing.

At the very least, you will fear a little less the dirt that clings to the carrots you get at the farmer’s market.

So, I think one of my favorite things that someone has said about stuff I’ve written here is as a comment to the Our Family Happenings blog (she makes chicken carcass soup, also!). She had linked to my Old Boss post, and called it disturbing; Yondalla responded with this comment: “Um…I’m not going to look at something if the only motivation I have is that it is disturbing. I mean that is right up there with, ‘Oh. The milk has gone bad, smell it.’”

Which made me laugh. Because sometimes I feel the same way.

In that vein, I thought I’d offer a couple more cartons of spoiled milk. Not too spoiled, mind you. Just a little…off. The kind that some might not even notice.

I probably would, though.

First: You remember the Seinfeld episode where George double-dipped-the-chip? Sure you do. But go watch it anyway. Oh, go ahead. Your boss won’t notice. Swear.

Well, just in time for Superbowl Sunday, a new study has confirmed that double-dipping is as gross as the Seinfeld episode implied. Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, did a study at Clemson University on double-dipping in the community bowl. Just a few double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip. The bottom line? As Dawson puts it, “before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”

(if I were at a Superbowl party with all of you, however, I wouldn’t fear. You all seem very kissable. All of you who are visible, anyway. You lurkers remain a mystery, your kissability still in question).

Second: Are you a fan of sugar-free gum? I am, as it saves my breath without ruining my teeth. But apparently, sorbitol — the main sweetening ingredient in sugar-free gum and snacks — is a laxative. And it can cause bloating and abdominal pain. It can even cause irritable bowel syndrome. Bottom line to this one? If you’ve got funky symptoms going on down there (no, not down there! North of there. Your abdomen, friends. Jeesh.), you might consider cutting back on the sugar-free goodies for a bit. Lest you get too bloated. Or bowels that are a little too irritable. Or, you know, the usual effects of laxatives.

But we don’t need to talk about those effects here. Because that would be kinda’ gross.

Kinda’ like sniffing old milk.

Here’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to accept since I started cooking: sometimes my intentions are far grander than my reality. I hate to admit it — it genuinely causes me some pain to admit this —but I sometimes wind up wasting food. I buy a bunch of potatoes for a lattke kind of thing that I’m just certain everyone will love…then, by the time I actually get around to making it, the potatoes have become sad, soft, shriveled, little things covered by gnarled eyes, utterly beyond hope.

Like turning chicken leftovers into soup. The concept is so easy: roast a whole chicken one night (sprinkle some spices over the top, then bake in a 425-degree oven until until a thermometer inserted through thickest part of breast to bone reaches 170°, or 180°, roughly 20 minutes a pound), then boil up the carcass the next day for a fabulous soup.

Except…I’m not always so good with the follow-through. My intentions: so good, so good, I tell you. My reality until recently went more like this: Blair tries to throw the carcass away, and I shout, “No! I’m going to make soup from that!” He eyes me skeptically, but obliges. Then I put the carcass in the fridge, and I leave it there. Eventually, the refrigerator smells just a little funky. If I leave it long enough, it smells beyond-funky, and Blair asks kindly, “are we really going to do anything with this?” and I have to reply, sighing, “it’s probably too late now…”

Not anymore. Because I have learned two key things:

1. Timing is key. You gotta’ bake the chicken on a Friday or Saturday, so you can let the soup simmer away on a Saturday on Sunday. On a week night? It’s just not going to happen.

2. I have been stymied by an actual understanding of how to effectively use the carcass. I mean, yes, there’s great meat on those bones, but boiling a carcass also releases all kinds of tiny, unidentifiable bones, and mysterious chewy parts that feel all wrong in your mouth. What’s the best way to keep the good stuff, without fearing the bad?

There are lots of options. This gal, who reminds us that looking at a carcass is like being jilted by a bad lover that maybe you don’t want anyway, says to boil up the carcass with veggies for an hour - the good stuff will have been released, the bad stuff remains behind. This recipe, on the other hand, say to boil the carcass for three hours, then strain, discard everything that remains behind in the strainer, and cook the veggies in what remains. This cook says to boil the carcass for an hour and a half, then add veggies and boil for 30 minutes more.

Whatever you do, it’s worth it. Because it’s kind of like a free meal. The carcass? Free. The veggies? Face it: you’ve got a bunch of veggies lying around that you might never use if you don’t throw them into the pot. Out these two things together, and you’ve got a soup that is cost-free and guilt free. Free soup! You waste nothing! You spend nothing! All you’ve gotta’ do is embrace that carcass.

Here’s what I did: I boiled the chicken in water, plus I threw in an unopened boxed chicken stock that was ever-so-slightly expired. Only ever-so-slightly, though. Weeks. A month, tops.

I also added a touch of vinegar, as the Weston Price Society tells me that vinegar helps pull valuable minerals from the bones. I’ve read that elsewhere, too. I boiled for a little over an hour.

Then I strained it using a colander (don’t forget to put another pot underneath!) picked off the chunks of chicken, and added that right back to the broth. Here’s a photos of the leftover bones I admit that it’s not as pretty as some other photos I could paste here, but we’re embracing the carcass, folks, and I want you to see the reality. Plus, there is something about Elmo’s face sticking out beneath these bones that really sort of appeals to me (what is wrong with me?):

Meanwhile, I fried up those veggies, along with a teaspoon or so of thyme, and a bay leaf. In my case, the veggies were 2 mega-leeks, garlic, and carrots:

The carrots were from an old bag that’s been in back of the fridge for too long:

Oh, and don’t I have an old rutabaga lying around somewhere?

And how about some potatoes before they become unrecognizable:

Once the leeks are soft-ish, pour the broth back over the veggies, add kosher sea salt and pepper to taste, with maybe a tad more vinegar, and simmer away, about a half-hour:

Then serve-’er-up:

Try it. You will find that you have just made your best soup ever. It was the leeks, you’ll think! No, wait, maybe it’s the rutabaga (such an underrated vegetable, the rutabaga)! Maybe it’s the mineral-rich broth, so very nutritious and tasty. Or maybe, it’s that wallet of yours, which — for once — you didn’t have to touch to make a meal.

Whatever the reason, the soup is good. Like, really, surprisingly, unbelievably good. So good, that your family will finish every single drop:

And you can feel great. You wasted not. You want not. You are happy and satisfied. And you no longer fear the carcass.

Apparently the City of New York is abuzz, and not happily, since a Times investigation showed toxic levels of mercury in sushi. Not the hamachi! Please, not the hamachi or the spicy tuna roll! Oy!

According to the report, sushi from 5 of the 20 places they tested had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market. Six pieces a week would exceed EPA safe levels.

This probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Environmental Working Group has for years been warning people about high levels of methylmercury in fish, particularly tuna. Many different environmental groups have offered safe-fish lists, like this one, and tuna is always, always at the “highly contaminated” end of things. I guess it just hurts. Because I happen to really like sushi.

(Back in our younger, trimmer-hipped days, Jenn and I used to fantasize about what it would like to be “discovered,” to become the next Minnie, or Winona, or Cate. We didn’t want the fame, and we weren’t even thinking about the money. We were just thinking about how the studios might pay for us to go to a spa to slim down, pre-filming, and we could eat nothing — nothing! — but sushi for weeks).

So, yeah. I like the fish. I really like the fish. And it hurts my heart to think that something I love so much could contain a toxic byproduct of industrial waste that apparently causes neurological damage to developing fetuses and adults alike. And — oh, hey! look! — it apparently damages our immune systems, as well.

But that’s the deal-io (”deal-io.” I’ve gone from Snoop Dogg to Ned Flanders in one post flat).

Methylmercury is all over the planet, and a big reason for that is industrial pollution. It used to be released in the making of chlorine and mining. These days, the problem is more coal combustion and incineration of consumer-products like batteries, thermometers, and fluorescent lights (so, please…dispose of those things properly, and fight for clean energy. Please. Because I like the fish). Once released into the environment, methylmercury sticks to algae, which absorb the molecules. The algae are eaten by tiny aquatic grazers. The grazers are eaten by small fish, which in turn are eaten by larger fish. Methylmerecury binds with tissues and accumulates in animals as it continues up the foodchain…which is why large predator fish, like bluefin tuna, are the most contaminated.

Yes, yellowtail tuna (hamachi) is better than bluefin (maguro). But you’re actually best off with small fish, that haven’t bio-accumlated all those toxins.

Like…sardines. Yes, sardines. A number of sushi restaurants have embraced sardines (they’re apparently not even that fishy-smelling when they’re raw). And you should probably embrace them in your own kitchen; they’re are an eco-best list, they’re filled with omega-3s and other good stuff, and they can replace tuna in recipes like this highly rated tonnado spread, from Epicurious. This Atlantic article says of sardines that “it’s time to rediscover and embrace an indispensable staple.”

But sushi? What about regular sushi? What about my nigiri? My maki? My oshi, and my chirashi? The NRDC lists the following as best-and-worst choices when you’re gettin’ your sushi on. A few of my favorites are on the good list - unagi and sake and ikura. Some of the others…well…let’s just say that my heart is a little broken today.
LOWER MERCURY

Akagai (ark shell) 1
Anago (conger eel) 1
Aoyagi (round clam)
Awabi (abalone) 1
Ayu (sweetfish)
Ebi (shrimp)*
Hamaguri (clam)
Hamo (pike conger; sea eel) 1
Hatahata (sandfish)
Himo (ark shell) 1
Hokkigai (surf clam)
Hotategai (scallop)*
Ika (squid)
Ikura (salmon roe)
Kaibashira (shellfish)
Kani (crab)
Karei (flatfish)
Kohada (gizzard shad)
Masago (smelt egg)
Masu (trout)
Mirugai (surf clam)
Sake (salmon)
Sayori (halfbeak) 1
Shako (mantis shrimp)
Tai (sea bream) 1
Tairagai (razor-shell clam) 1
Tako (octopus)
Tobikko (flying fish egg)
Torigai (cockle)
Tsubugai (shellfish)
Unagi (freshwater eel) 1
Uni (sea urchin roe)

HIGH MERCURY

Ahi (yellowfin tuna)
Aji (horse mackerel) 1
Buri (adult yellowtail) 1
Hamachi (young yellowtail) 1
Inada (very young yellowtail) 1
Kanpachi (very young yellowtail) 1
Katsuo (bonito) 1
Kajiki (swordfish)*
Maguro (bigeye*, bluefin* or yellowfin tuna)
Makjiki (blue marlin)*
Meji (young bigeye*, bluefin* or yellowfin tuna)
Saba (mackerel)
Sawara (Spanish mackerel)
Seigo (young sea bass)*
Shiro (albacore tuna)
Suzuki (sea bass)*
Toro (bigeye*, bluefin* or yellowfin tuna)

* Fish in Trouble! These fish are perilously low in numbers or are caught using environmentally destructive methods. To learn more, see the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute, both of which provide guides to fish to enjoy or avoid on the basis of environmental factors.

1. Mercury levels specific to these fish were not available and instead were extrapolated from fish with similar feeding patterns.

Blair’s out of town right now, and I’m flying solo. So far, the dog hasn’t gotten a horrifying intestinal bug, like he did during one of Blair’s more recent business trips (Blair was in Hawaii. I was scrubbing really nasty stuff off the walls). But still, any solo-parenting is surprisingly hard — I gotta’ give my props to any single parents out there.

(do I sound hip saying “props?” I just wanted to try it on for size. I’m a fly mamma, dogg. That’s right, I am OFF the HEEZY. I might even work the phrase “fo’ shizzle” into this post somewhere, too. Keep a lookout).

During times of crisis like this, I’m not above throwing cheese puffs and spoonfuls of ice cream at my children and calling it dinner. But last night, I turned to Expat instead, looking for kid-friendly foods that are fast, fast, fast. I opted for garlicky white beans and kale and honey spice roasted cauliflower.

(You might not know this, but considering any kind of roasted cauliflower these days makes me a wee bit brave — or foolish, perhaps. See, the last time I roasted cauliflower, we had an unfortunate incident. It was a Tuesday night, and Blair and I had decided to eat in front of a new-to-us episode of the Sopranos, courtesy of Netflix. I was afraid that our naughty, snarfy dog would jump up and eat the pan of cauliflower off the counter when we weren’t looking, so I turned off the oven, and placed the leftover cauliflower inside. We watched Tony Soprano get his freak on with Bada-Bing dancers, then we put our dishes in the sink and went upstairs to bed…leaving the cauliflower sitting in the oven. This was a Tuesday. My mother-in-law arrived the next day, and we spent a couple of days dining out with her. By Saturday morning, something was clearly very amiss in our kitchen. We weren’t sure what it was — had the dog gotten sick in some remote corner? Was something rotting in our garbage? Did we only smell it when we opened the refrigerator? Perhaps a mouse had died in our walls? Then we remembered: the cauliflower. I gagged and retched when we took it out of the oven, I felt a deep and abiding sense of shame on behalf of my mother-in-law about the kind of wife her son had chosen, and I was quite certain that I would never, ever eat cauliflower again. Thanks to Expat, I was wrong.).

Anyhow, the steps to each are pretty simple. Check out her site for the precise proportions, as I tend to be wildly inexact.

Expat’s Non-Rotting Honey-Spiced Cauliflower:
Mix honey, olive oil, kosher sea salt, a lemon’s worth of juice, cumin (I couldn’t find my cumin, so I put in a dash of curry)…

Update: Expat says that the cumin is important. Do as she says, not as I do

…plus bit o’ pepper, plus zest (not sure what zest actually is? Neither was I. It’s just a fancy way of saying peel) in a bowl.

Pour and rub it into a head of cauliflower, both top and bottom. Put cauliflower in a pan, flower side down, with a touch of water:

Note: I’ve been reading a bunch about cauliflower, and I left on too much of the stem. It apparently would have been even better if I cut out a big chunk o’ the stem.

Roast in pre-heated 400-degree oven for 15 minutes, then turn it over (flower side up), and roast for another 15 minutes until golden brown.

The kale-bean recipe is even easier:
Chop a couple of cloves of garlic. Heat some olive oil, add the garlic, and as much red pepper flakes as you think your kids can tolerate (for me, it was about a shake). Gently heat garlic, but don’t let it get too brown. While it’s cooking, remove stems from kale:

Chop roughly, add to olive oil, and cook until it’s starting to wilt but is still bright green. Remove kale, put it in a bowl, and dump a can o’ white beans into the pan.

Bring to simmer, add the kale, and mix until it’s all evenly heated. Add salt and pepper to taste.

And? While I made these things? I also cooked up some catfish (just a little olive oil and lemon, cooked side-by-side with cauliflower until ever-so-slightly browned). So, in the end, my kids’ plates looked like this:

(the true foodies and locavores among you will give me a hard time about the baby carrots. They’re organic, but hardly local. Apologies).

The question is, did they eat it? These children of mine who are members of the Cleaner Plate Club only under protest?

The answer? FO’ SHIZZLE.

Huzzizle, my friends. The child with words called the beans “delicious” (she ate every bean on her plate, a little less of the kale, but I can tell you I saw some green sneaking in there). She declared the cauliflower “yummy. Really yummy.” And, okay, she dipped them in the ranch dressing I’d set out for carrots, but she also ate every single bite.

The child with far fewer words said only “Mo? Mo’? Mo bean? Mo’ shish? Mo’?” (actually, she sounded surprisingly hip herself, didn’t she?). And on this night — why is this night different from all other nights, asks the Mezinikel? — this child of few words actually ate her food before throwing it on the floor or spitting it out.

I’d be feeling a bit more like Supermom, if only my older child hadn’t been watching TV as I cooked, and my younger child hadn’t been discovered standing on top of the dining room table only when I heard her throw a mug full of orange juice on the floor, breaking it in the process (because that, friends, is how she rolls). Here’s the dining room I found — and believe me, it’s nothing compared to the playroom:

Update: For whatever reason, the problem is Safari. Firefox is my new best friend.

So, I’ve got kind of a funky thing going on with WordPress. It no longer recognizes paragraphs. I used to be able to just hit enter, and wordpress was smart enough to know that it was a break. No longer. I’m working on it. I’m infuriated, but working on it.Perhaps WordPress recognizes that my brain is merely one big jumble. Perhaps technology has reached the point where it can take signals telepathically, and demonstrate what it reads directly from one’s mind. In that case, WordPress is doing a good job. Here I am, world! Stream of consicousness! Nothing to break up the connections. I’ll go from food to children to dirty socks to space travel to the lost city of Atlantis to why ficus trees die so easily to fair trade coffee to why I still haven’t read The Idiot, to gosh my stomach is rumbling, and there will be nothing to help you understand when you are done with one thought and onto the next. You will get blog whiplash, and so will I, and we will be put in traction in side-by-side hospital beds. Or maybe your traction will be on top of my traction, who knows in this topsy-turvy paragraph-free world. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of punctuation! I forgot to bring that manila folder with me and I made some good veggies last night and mmm mmm this ginger scone is tasty and whydoweneedwordspacinganywayIlikefoodhelpmewordpressplease

Guess who got an Oscar nomination?  No! Not me! But close!  My sister Cynthia got the nomination, with her film, Freeheld. It’s a beautiful film, and you should see it when you get a chance. But in the meantime, you know which box you should check in your Oscar pool.

Can I take a moment to tell you about my first boss? It was the early 90s, I was a recent college grad, an even more recent grad-school-dropout. There was a recession on, the job market had imploded, and I was knocking about Chicago with no practical experience and a liberal arts degree. I needed a job.

The job I snagged: an administrative assistant to a vice president of a health care software firm. If I recall correctly, my annual salary was $18,000. My boss was a tiny powerhouse of a woman in designer grey flannel suits. She didn’t interview me — she was too busy — so the first time we met, we realized that we had attended similar liberal arts colleges. She asked me what I majored in, and I thought this is good. We’re bonding. This is gonna’ be great!. “Anthropology,” I answered, excitedly. “How about you?”

She looked me right in the eye and answered, deadpan, “In my family, we were taught not to take the easy way out. I studied history.”

Another story: she had me drive to northern Michigan to pick up her family’s new puppy from a breeder, about 7 hours each way. To make the drive a little more pleasant, she let me take her Lexus, and she agreed to borrow my beloved car, a bright blue Acura Integra that I had bought, with the help of a tiny loan, for $2,500. When I returned after 14 hours of driving with her new family member, she handed me the keys to my car and said simply, “your car’s a piece of shit.”

But this boss of mine — this sometimes nasty, and (I suspect now) deeply unhappy little shark of a woman — did have an impressive, almost encylopedic knowledge of the health care system. She knew how many beds would be owned as a result of the Human-Galen merger, and she could speak fluently about CHAMPUS reimbursement at Columbia-HCA hospitals. I once asked her how she did it — how did she keep all of those facts in her frosted head at once — and she answered: it’s about trends. Paying attention to trends will give you the framework to digest what is happening in the world.

So I was thinking about her when I saw the news that the FDA determined that dairy and meat from cloned animals is safe to eat, and it probably won’t be labeled. I’ve talked about cloning before, and my stand today is basically the same as it’s been: I think there are valid animal welfare issues at stake, the whole notion makes me squeamish, and the word ‘clone’ never fails to make me giggle. I’d prefer to avoid cloned animals. So, by the way, would the majority of Americans. But, if they’re not labeled, I won’t be able to avoid them, and neither will you.

Which brings me to back to my boss, and her advice to look at trends. There’s a trend at work here, and I don’t like it. We have:

1. Dairy and meat from cloned animals, as described above. Bottom line: a majority of Americans don’t want it. But not only will we get it, it won’t be labeled, so you won’t be able to choose.

2. rBGH, also called rBST, also discussed in these pages. It’s illegal in virtually every developed country with the exception of the United States. Plenty of Americans, too, have preferred to avoid the stuff, and there has been a huge debate about whether and how dairy products can be labeled so that Americans can avoid it. A few years ago, the FDA brokered a fragile peace, wherein products could be labeled as rBGH-free, as long as they followed that label with a statement that the FDA finds no difference between milk from animals treated with rBGH vs. those not treated with rBGH). Since then, companies like Starbucks, Publics, Kroger, Dean Foods, and even Wal-Mart has chosen to buy their milk from dairies that are rBGH free. Now, ticked off that they’re losing the battle for milk-drinkers hearts and minds, Monsanto has tried to make even these labels illegal. Individual states — like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio — have recently considered making any labels illegal. Just yesterday, Pennsylvania lost this battle — the labeling can remain. But the bottom line? Concerted efforts remain to stop this labeling. If these labels are lost, then you won’t be able to choose.

3. Creekstone Farms and their mad cow battle: I haven’t talked about this one much, but after mad cow disease was found in the U.S., little ol’ Creekstone Farms, a meat processor, invested in equipment that could test every one of its cows for mad cow disease — so that you, the consumer, could be guaranteed, without a doubt, that your burger isn’t from a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (which, by the way, is a really horrible disease). But the USDA told Creekstone that they were not allowed to test their cows. Mind you, Creekstone paid for the testing equipment with their own money — they wanted nothing from the government. And, mind you, there are many consumers out there who would like to have this confidence. But, claiming that it would make non-tested meat seem unsafe, the goverment said they weren’t allowed. Creekstone sued and won, the USDA appealed, and President Bush himself has said that he’ll fight to block Creekstone from doing this testing. Bottom line: Creekstone Farms is being kept from providing information that at least some Americans want.

4. Genetically Modified Foods: okay, this issue is deep, and huge, and too much to cover in a paragraph. But: 70% of the foods on your grocery store shelves have genetically modified ingredients. According to the most recent survey by the Pew initiative, only 27% of people actually support having these ingredients in the food supply. The same survey suggests that most people are unaware that they’re eating these foods daily. Why? Because they’re not labeled. Bottom line: although many consumers would like these products labeled, they’re not. So you can’t choose.

So what’s the trend? The trend is about information, and whether or not we as consumers can have it.Now, it’s true that some people like to pay more for things, just because it makes them feel like they’re getting more value. And perhaps those who are trying to limit testing and labeling are legitimately concerned about protecting us from ourselves. But there are compelling reasons that people might want all of the above information. Some people — like one recent Pope, for example — take issue with GMOs for religious reasons. Religion might also prompt people to be troubled by animal cloning. Some might be concerned about rBGH’s impact on animal welfare. Others may learned that although mad cow disease has been found in this country, the USDA tests fewer than one percent of slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease and decided, “Whoa Nelly. I want to be sure my burger doesn’t have any of them nasty science-fictiony mad cow prions.”

Whatever the reason people want information about how their food was produced, let’s give it to them. I mean, it’s information. Information about food, this thing that they’re putting into their bodies, and that through all of human history has had tremendous religious and family meaning. I’m not alone in my thinking; at least one bioethicist has said that society has a moral and ethical responsibility to make sure that people aren’t forced by the marketplace to eat foods that they are opposed to.

The interesting thing here is the role that organic food has taken in all of this. The organic label has become a de facto clear-cut way of avoiding things like cloned food, GMOs, and rBGH — under organic labeling rules, these things simply aren’t allowed (there’s no hope for the mad-cow-testing issue short of legal victories).

But I will remind you that consumers can win this battle. They just did in Pennsylvania. It’s a huge victory, one that caused Lustybit to post a picture of Kool and the Gang, claiming that “this really is a stinging rebuke to what I still contend was some highly dubious and downright slimy actions.” So, yes. Consumers can win.

Anyhow, I’m thinking about this trend on a Friday afternoon, which is making me think about that boss of mine…. Are you out there, Ann? How did that puppy work out for you? Do you still making cutting comments to your employees? And most important, do you want your cloned meat labeled?

The New York Times had an interesting article about Robyn O’Brien, a crusader-mom who is spreading the word about what she sees as a link between our increasingly corporate food supply and the dramatic rise in food allergies.

Now, maybe some of you out there — like one skeptical fellow I talked with recently — may doubt that the rise in peanut allergy is real, believing that the increase in diagnoses results from hyper-attention to the issue. I don’t agree. Sure, some of us are paying more attention to the issue, but that’s probably because we suddenly know real children who have gone into anaphylactic shock after eating a piece of fudge at a holiday party. Did these events happen when we were kids? Sometimes, probably. But seriously - I know several kids who are not just a wee-bit allergic to foods, not “what’s-this-little-rash-it-must-be-food-allergies” allergic, but like severely, deathly allergic. Like, they-can’t-ever-eat-at-a-bakery-or-coffee-shop allergic. It’s serious stuff, and it’s very, very frightening.

The FDA says that food allergies are skyrocketing, noting that peanut allergies doubled in children under 5 between 1997 and 2002. Got that? That’s doubled, in a five-year period. And this article from Newsweek notes that allergists are seeing more children with multiple allergies than ever before, not just to 1950s staples such as milk and wheat—but to global foods we have adopted since, like sesame and kiwi. And allergies that kids have traditionally outgrown — like those to eggs — now linger longer than they did in the past.

(”linger longer.” I like how that sounds.)

The prevailing theory about why this is happening is the hygiene theory: that thanks to antibiotics and antibacterial cleansers, we’ve gotten so clean that our children’s bodies don’t have enough exposure to germs…in other words, our bodies don’t have enough exposure to germs that are actually harmful, so they turn against things that they once wouldn’t have made the effort to fight. This theory is based partly on studies showing less allergy in third world countries.

obyn believes differently. She thinks that it’s because our food supply has been so manipulated with additives, genetic modification, hormones and herbicides that we’re seeing increases in allergies, autism and other disorders in children. She’s got some heavy-hitters on her side, too: Dr. Sears (if you’ve had a baby, you know him) is on her medical advisory team.

Robin notes that there is a strong correlation between genetically modified ingredients and rise in allergies. Genetically engineered soy was introduced in 1996, and within that first year, there was a 50% increase seen in soy allergies. Within the first five years of the introduction of genetically engineered soy, there was a doubling of peanut allergy.

Now, we all know that association does not mean causation — and as far as I can tell from some quick Google searches, those dates also coincide with the dates that antibacterial liquid soap and Purell became mainstays among American families.

But Robyn points to her personal experience: once she started offering more whole foods and organic foods, her children’s health problems — which her doctor had attributed to allergies to milk and other foods — cleared up. I’ve heard stories like this before, and the parents’ conviction is compelling. Robyn encourages people to do what she did: ditch the processed food, eat as much organic food as you can. Avoid genetically modified foods, artificial foods, or foods from animals raised with artificial hormones. And best of all, don’t eat any food with ingredients you can’t pronounce.

Kat from Eating Liberally followed up this article by asking Marion Nestle about food allergies. Nestle was careful to distinguish between real allergies — an immune reaction to a protein — and food sensitivities, which don’t involve the immune system. She notes that feeding a relatively simple diet might help, stating “if this means avoiding junk foods, that sounds just fine to me.”

Nestle also notes that this area screams for more research, and Robyn’s efforts might just prompt more folks to look into the issue.

Anyhow, I’m not sure — I can’t possibly know — if the specifics of Robyn’s message are correct. What I can say, with a fair degree of confidence, is that she’s on to something in thinking that the big food companies don’t actually care much about the health of her children…or my children…or anyone’s children. Sure, they don’t want to kill anyone, so they label potential allergens (oh. Wait. They have to do that). But their day-to-day activities are far more driven by marketing concerns and quarterly earnings statements than what your kid actually requires to be healthy. Sure, they’ll tell you that Disney Princess fruit snacks are fat-free, but they probably won’t mention that one of the ingredients, Yellow #5, has been linked with a host of nasty reactions, including anxiety, migraines, clinical depression, blurred vision, itching, general weakness, heatwaves, feeling of suffocation, purple skin patches, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder and sleep disturbance.

Anyhow, at the very least, Robyn has given us all food for thought.