The Cleaner Plate Club

1. Escarole Soup No-Go. That escarole soup that I have made several times with chicken broth? I tried it with vegetable broth. You would think that the two would be similar. You would think, “ah, no difference whatsoever!” or at least “any difference is miniscule! Tiny! Insignificant!”

You would be wrong. Do not make this recipe with vegetable broth. The chicken broth mellows the bitter flavor of the escarole; the vegetable broth enhances it. If someone could explain to me the scientific reason for this, I would be impressed.

Vegetarians, I’d do No-Chicken broth before vegetable stock. Consider yourself warned.

2. I’ll Take the Poop, But Not the Inflammation. The Dirty Jobs episode where they show tilapia eating fish poop wasn’t enough to scare me off of the mild, white, ubiquitous fish, but this might be. It’s long been known that farm-raised tilapia had low levels of omega-3s. But it apparently also has very high levels of long-chain omega-6 fatty acids. This combination (low omega 3s, high omega 6s) promotes inflammation, making the fish potentially dangerous for anyone at risk of heart disease, arthritis, asthma, or other health problems that are vulnerable to inflammation. Inflammation damages the blood vessels, heart, lung and joint tissues, skin, and the digestive tract. According to Floyd Chilton, professor of physiology at Wake Forest University, tilapia is even worse for your health than a big ol’ hamburger or bacon.

So what can you eat safely? Not much, says Chilton, thanks to a large-scale corruption of the American food chain with cheap corn feed. It’s the cornification of our diets that has altered the fats in beef, chicken, eggs and farmed fish. Good thing the government doesn’t pay farmers to grow even more of this crappy cheap feed. Oh, wait.

3. Apparently, God Didn’t Smite Nebraska Beef the Last Time. Are you all following the most recent e. Coli outbreak? 5.3 million pounds recalled? People sickened in five states? All because there was dirty, tainted poop in their meat? I just realized that it all came from Nebraska Beef. Now, how do I know that name? Nebraska Beef, Nebraska Beef, Nebraska Beef…oh, that’s right! They’re the group that sued the church last year, after a bunch of church-goers were sickened, and one killed, after eating dirty meat from Nebraska Beef! The company actually had the balls to sue the church for not cooking the meat to a high enough temperature. They should have known our product is filthy! said Nebraska Beef in so many words. Those stupid Jesus-lovers should have acted with more caution around our nasty product! Apparently, having avoided being turned into a pillar of salt after that incident, Nebraska Beef found no reason to clean up their act.

4. Oh, Just Lighten Up, Ali, Won’t You? Me? I can make salad people. Saxton Freymann, on the other hand, can make art. Check out his slide show, from the New York Times, for a little antidote to news about icky food. His food isn’t icky. It might even make you smile.

5. I never found my underwear. For those who are wondering.

Thank goodness someone was watching for that Rachael-Ray-Wears-a-Scarf thing. I mean, seriously.

(Oh, you live under a rock? One more impermeable than my own? Here’s the deal: Rachael Ray wore a paisley scarf in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. I mean…jeesh.)

Fortunately, some bloggers were all over that sh*t. They were like, she can’t wear a paisley scarf! No way, man! What is she, some kind of jihadist apologist? A cigar may sometimes just be a cigar, but a scarf? That’s, like, totally terrorism, man. Dunkin’ Donuts no likey-likey the pressure from these bloggers. They pulled the ad.

Now, we can all be grateful that we are that much safer…from paisley scarves.

There’s certainly nothing else worth discussing. It’s not, for example, worth discussing that a Vanilla Bean Coolata contains sodium benzoate, which is linked with ADHD, cirrhosis of the liver, and Parkinson’s disease. Or that a Dunkin’ Donuts jelly donut contains not simply sodium benzoate, but also TBHQ, a likely carcinogen that’s a major ingredient in varnish and laquer; Red 40, which researchers link with ADHD and behavioral problems and is banned in many other countries; and trans-fats, which the New England Journal of Medicine estimates are responsible for between 30,000 and 100,000 cardiac deaths per year in the United States. Or even the fact that Dunkin’ Donuts annual advertising budget alone is nearly eight times more than the annual 5-a-Day budget — used to promote food that doesn’t kill us — ever was.

And yeah, I know that Dunkin’ Donuts has done some good things recently, like going with Fair Trade espresso beans. But that’s not relevant either. None of these things are.

What matters is Rachael Ray’s paisley scarf. Because if we don’t talk about paisley, the terrorists will win. So we shall fight perky bosoms terrorism and henley T-shirts all who wish us harm and words like Yum-O, you. Yeah, you, too!  Just ’cause!

And we shall do it by talking about absolutely nothing paisley!

Seriously. I’m SO gonna’ go suck down some TBHQ and sodium benzoate now. And I’m gonna’ do it happily, knowing that, at last, I’m safe from paisley scarves.

Let’s start with the hypocrisy disclosure: I have purchased Vitamin Water. I have allowed my children to drink the stuff.

Now, the background:

A while ago, a friend emailed me, suggesting that I “do a little rant about the evil of crystalline fructose found in Vitamin Water.” Said she:

I started drinking that stuff as a substitute for regular and diet soda (my only real vice). I figured it was healthy (’cuz of the calories) and not evil (because it doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup). After drinking it for a week or so, I felt worse than if I had been drinking soda. I did some digging around the internet and discovered that “crystalline fructose” seems to be just a fancier form of HFCS. I feel duped! Honestly, a red flag went up once (the grocery store) started selling it for a buck a bottle. Anyway, I’m on a mission now to get the word out that this stuff probably isn’t as healthy as it makes itself out to be.

Ahh, she’s a girl after my own heart. Just look at how she packed all my favorite buzzwords — rant, HFCS, duped, mission, evil — into a single email!

So, let’s take a little look-see at the stuff, shall we?

Turns out my friend is not alone in feeling nasty after drinking Vitamin Water; scroll through the comments of this post, and you’ll note several people reporting feeling crappy after drinking Vitamin Water; icky after-effects include headaches, stomachaches, and, more commonly, the runs. Ew.

So what’s up with crystalline fructose, Vitamin Water’s sweetener of choice? According to the Sugar Association, crystalline fructose develops when you take a “fructose-enriched corn syrup” (sounds suspiciously like high fructose corn syrup, no?) and then allow this syrup to harden into crystal form. The result is a product that, according to fructose.org (PDF), is almost 100% fructose.

We’ve talked about fructose before, back when I started the high fructose corn syrup challenge, but the short story is that our bodies process fructose differently from glucose. From Dr. Andrew Weil:

The body doesn’t handle large amounts of fructose well. You can maintain life with intravenous glucose, but not with intravenous fructose; severe derangement of liver function results. There’s also evidence that a high intake of fructose elevates levels of circulating fats (serum triglycerides), increasing the risk of heart disease. I never use fructose in my home.

Researchers at the University of Florida and UF and the Baylor College of Medicine studied rats fed a high-fructose diet for 10 weeks. Compared with rats fed a control diet, those on the high-fructose diet experienced a rise in uric acid in the bloodstream and developed insulin resistance, a biochemical chain reaction that researchers say could trigger weight gain and other features of metabolic syndrome, the main precursor to type 2 diabetes. Other researchers have showed that unlike sucrose, fructose fails to prompt the production of the hormones that help us regulate appetite and fat storage.

Liver derangement. Heart disease. Insulin resistance. Weight gain. Metabolic syndrome. Type 2 diabetes. Such ugly words, these.

And while the most common form of high fructose corn syrup — which generally gets all the bad-for-you attention — contains 55% fructose to 45% glucose (compared with a 50-50 ratio of most table sugar), crystalline fructose is (I’m repeating for emphasis) 100% fructose.

And, um, here’s the kicker: crystalline fructose also contains arsenic. That’s not urban myth; check out Archer Daniels Midland’s little sales sheet (PDF) for the stuff. Arsenic is listed, right there in the chemical specifications. So are lead, chloride, and “heavy metals.”

Arsenic, lead, chloride, and heavy metals. Huh.

Suddenly, Vitamin Water is a whole lot less appealing. Turns out we won’t be missing much; Scienceline points out that although the stuff is colorful and fun, much like Vegas in a Bottle, it contains more sugar that’s good for you, and your body probably can’t even absorb some of the fat-soluble vitamins they’ve added, like A and E (maybe that’s why all those folks were experiencing Montezuma’s revenge after drinking the stuff).

Dr. Sears doesn’t like Vitamin Water either, noting that the stuff can damage teeth, depress your immune system, and teach your kids to expect their water to be colorful, sweet, and flavored like Jello.

Not to mention, bottled water in general? So bad for our country. Simply making those bottles burns 1.5 million gallons of oil annually — and that’s before you even transport them. And in 2003, nearly 40 million water bottles per day went into the trash or became litter.

All of this said, let’s return to my hypocrisy. Why — why, oh why, oh why — have I spent money on this product? Allowed my kids to drink it? The easy answer: because I wasn’t paying attention. And that’s true, but the slightly more honest answer is that it always seemed like such a benign alternative to sodas — a way to give the kids a colorful treat when when we’re on the road, or out-and-about. In a world where I feel like I’m always, always, saying “no,” it was refreshing to once in a while say “okay.”

Truth be told, if given a choice between soda and Vitamin Water right now, I’d still reach for Vitamin Water. But, man, that’s a hollow choice: will it be arsenic or benzene for you today?

Next time, we might work a little harder at the other alternative: neither.

Do you like stories? Because I’m in the mood for a story.

Once upon a time, there was a little chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. BPA was small and lumpy. It looked kinda’ like this:

Oh, sure, you know this story, right? We’ve talked about BPA before (here and here). Oh, but listen to this story, won’t you? It’s a good one.

Well, BPA may have been small, but it had a big impact. It was a boon to the multi-billion dollar plastics industry, for example. It was used in polycarbonate plastic — the hard, clear, shatterproof plastics that comprise water bottles, food packaging, and many infant bottles. It was also found in epoxy resins — the stuff that lines the tops of bottles, and many food cans and infant formula cans.

(Gosh, it sounds like it’s found everywhere! Why, yes, indeed! In fact a study suggests that it’s in the urine of 93% of the American population!).

This little ol’ chemical had a big impact in another way. Because it mimicked human hormones, it appeared to cause a whole host of health problems, including developmental toxicity, neurological damage, early onset of puberty, cancer, obesity, diabetes, fertility problems, and other nasty things.

Fortunately for BPA, it had friends in very important places. And I’m not just talking about the American Chemistry Council, who assured for years, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, that BPA makes our lives “healthier and safer, each and every day.” I’m not just talking about the manufacturers, either. Let’s meet some other friends of BPA — also known as The Villains of Tonight’s Story.

Enter Villain #1

This is the Washington DC home of the Weinberg Group (boo! hiss!) which was hired by Sunoco, a BPA manufacturer, to help defend the product against all those loonies who don’t like carcinogenic, fat-boosting, fertility-messing, brain-damaging chemicals. The Weinberg Group is a self-declared “international scientific and regulatory consulting firm.” The company’s clients include such winning products as Agent Orange, tobacco, and highly toxic pesticides.

The Weinberg Group knows all about public relations science. For example, they know that good public relations science isn’t about whether the product you sell is actually hurting anybody. Rather, good public relations science is about convincing people that the product you sell isn’t hurting anybody. That’s why, in a letter to another client, they said “[W]e will harness, focus and involve the scientific and intellectual capital of our company with one goal in mind—creating the outcome our client desires.”

(Science: it’s whatever our clients want it to be.)

They once even bragged on their web site about how they kept a harmful pharmaceutical product on the market for an additional 10 whole years after the FDA proposed cancellation (they’re that good). Apparently you can know good public relations science and still not be smart enough to keep that kind of thing off your web site. (more on that here, including the original page, if you want to see for yourself).

Enter Villain #2:

This would be the home of Sciences International (boo! hiss!), a contractor hired by the National Institutes of Health’s Center for the Evaluation of Risk to Human Reproduction. In 2003, the NIH hired Sciences International to evaluate BPA as a reproductive and developmental toxin. Sciences International performed a literature review for BPA toxicity. They chose and summarized studies for an expert advisory panel, who — based on this work — said, “No problem! BPA is safe! So safe!”

Unfortunately, it was later revealed that Sciences International had also been hired to work for Dow Chemical and BASF — both of which manufacture BPA! This called their findings into question. Just a little bit.

Oh, but come on. What’s a little BPA among friends? After all, scientists are most concerned about BPA’s impact on children! And the world has so many children! Besides, I believe children are the future. But the plastics and chemical companies are the now! Why don’t you get that?

Just to put this little story in context: there’s not much controversy about BPA’s health impact, even at low levels. Unless, say, you work for the plastics industry. As Grist reports, independent science tips heavily to the “not-safe” category. A survey reported in Environmental Health Perspectives reviewed 115 studies of BPA; of those, 94 (82%) show harmful effects. Yet another survey shows that while all 11 plastic industry-funded studies on BPA conclude that it poses no danger; 90% of 104 government- or university-funded studies say “Uh huh! Oh, yes, it does!”

Enter a Hero

If you’re like me, you’re looking for a hero right about now. I like to imagine him. I picture that he works for one of the chemical companies, or perhaps one of the Science-for-Sale contractors hired by the chemical companies. Our hero stands up at one of the strategy meetings — the one where they’re talking about how many more years they can suck out of this nightmare of a product — and says something dramatic, like “But the children! We must think about the children!”

He’s handsome in a skinny sort of way, our hero is. Glasses, dark brooding look to him. He’s an unlikely hero, speaks in a British accent perhaps. Maybe he looks a little like this:

Unfortunately, despite any resemblances to anyone else, this lone voice of reason has no special powers, and he totally sucks at quidditch — so much so that their company has lost the annual Really Bad Dudes quidditch tournament (to Monsanto, of course) three years running. So instead of letting him wage battle on behalf of consumers everywhere, his colleagues decide to poison him and he’s never, ever heard from again.

(Joke! That part of the story is totally made up! Lighten up, people! This is an industry that poisons people slowly, not quickly! Everyone knows that!!).

Enter Hero #2

Oh! Here’s an idea! The FDA can be our hero! Isn’t that part of their job, to make sure that products on the shelves aren’t hurting American consumers?

Wait. What? You’re telling me that when the FDA considered whether BPA was safe in infant formula cans, they ignored 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories? And they based their position on just two studies? And that both of these studies had been funded by the American Plastics Council? And one of them wasn’t even peer-reviewed? So now the agency is being investigated by Congress???

Okay. Forget the FDA. They totally suck at the hero thing.

Enter Hero #3

Don’t worry, folks! We do have a hero, and he looks like this:

Stop laughing. This is Tony Clement, Health Minister of Canada. Tony! My Man! My Main Maple Leaf Man! He’s the guy that announced that BPA would be officially listed as a toxic substance in Canada, a step that would allow Canada eventually to ban the manufacture, import or sale of baby bottles made with polycarbonate. That was a shot heard ’round the world. Within days, Wal-Mart announced they would pull baby products that contained BPA. So did Toys R Us. And Nalgene. And Playtex. among others.

(which is great, but just for the record, I do not put these companies in the “hero” category. Not like my unlikely stud-muffin of a conservative politician, Tony Clement!!! The reason? This issue started getting coverage five freakin’ years ago — five years during which my kids drank from BPA-leaching bottles, sucked on BPA-leaching pacifiers and consumed foods that had been in BPA-lined cans. Patagonia phased out BPA three whole years ago. These companies? Nope. They just kept making toxic products for me to put in my kids’ mouths, until my studerooni Tony told them it was time to cut the crap).

Now, thanks in part to my cute-n-cuddly lover-not-a-fighter brand new boyfriend Tony Clement, this whole BPA thing is finally getting mainstream coverage — like here and here and here and here. Even the U.S. government, our shamed Un-hero, is paying attention. The U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program (of the National Health Institutes) has officially declared that there is “some concern” about BPA, and the FDA is at last reviewing the chemical again. (hey, guys, here’s a tip: this time don’t just rely on 2 industry studies. Take a look at the other hundreds of studies, too, ‘kay?)

For all of us parents, there’s now a whole web site dedicated to BPA free kids products — bottles, dishes, sippy cups, pacifiers, spoons, you name it.

For your food storage needs, check out Culinate’s nice, simple overview of food storage options that won’t kill you or the planet.

Some other tips: wherever possible, buy foodstuffs that are packaged in glass instead of plastic (or better yet, buy fresh). Don’t drink anything hot from plastic. Avoid #7 plastics like the Plague. And for your own drinking needs, go for one of these water bottles.

And they lived happily ever after…

Tony and I did, that is. In our BPA-free little world. Now how long does it take for that stuff to leave our pee?!!

I know, I’m all like “Blah blah blahbity blah blah Monsanto blah blah blahbity Additives blahbity blahbity blah blah More vegetables blahbity blah blah My house is a mess blah blah blah Cook more blah.”

But as long as I’m on a roll….

Over in Britain, they’re phasing out a bunch of food additives that are damaging childrens brains. Apparently the damage to children’s brains caused by these additives (about 5.5 IQ points) is as bad as the damage caused by lead in gasoline before they phased it out. They’re thinking that this move will cut the number of hyperactive children by a third.

Over there, the suspect additives are food colors: tartrazine (E102); quinoline yellow (E104); sunset yellow (E110); carmoisine (E122); ponceau 4R (E124); and allura red (E129).

Don’t recognize them? Don’t feel reassured. Three of the banned additives are approved and widely used in the U.S. — their more familiar names to us Yanks include: FD&C Yellow 5; Yellow 6; and Red #40. Now you recognize ‘em, right?  Sigh.

Just another reminder to blah blah blahbity buy foods that are as whole as possible blah blah blah blah stay away from foods with ingredients that you don’t recognize blahbity blah blah farmers’ markets blah blah nutrition blah blah blah.

Many thanks to Jack from Fork and Bottle for the link.

It’s no secret that I think that Monsanto, the fat-@$s agricultural giant and GMO-maker, is kind of…um… suck-worthy.

They are suck-worthy because they work so hard to deny me information about my food.

They are suck-worthy because they earned almost $4 billion in the first quarter of this year alone and yet they still take time out of their busy schedule to sue small farmers.

They are suck-worthy because they engage in flip-floppery that puts even the most audacious politicians to shame. Like “oh, hey, we believe in local laws!“ and also “local laws! Yeah, that’s a bad idea!“ depending on whatever works for them at the moment.

They are suck-worthy because every time I hear the tune from the Sound of Music that goes How do you solve a problem like Ma-ri-a? How do you catch a cloud and pin it dowwwwn? I now reflexively think How do you solve a problem like Mon-san-to….Taking away our right to know our foooood? Which pretty much ruins a classic show tune for me (and — still — no one is paying me to write the Real Food Rock Opera, which I’m quite certain would be a cult off-Broadway hit).

And they are suck-worthy because I have way burned too many meals because I got distracted reading about all of their nasty deeds.

Yeah, yeah. I know all about what GMOs could do — like vitamin-enriched rice for developing countries. But even if I were convinced that poor farmers in the developing world could be lifted out of poverty and hunger by purchasing patented seeds from a multi-national giant, that’s just not the reality of how GMO’s are being used. Check out this UNESCO map to see the difference between where the technology is planted, and where hunger really lies.

With that as an introduction, I invite you to a little light weekend reading — this great piece in Vanity Fair that might just make you think that I’m being gentle when I use the word “suck-worthy.” (or is “suck-worthy” two words?). While you’re over there, be sure to check out Madonna’s photo spread. It will make you say, “wow, that almost-fifty year old sure has a rockin’ bod” It will also make you wonder, “why does she look like a completely different in every photo she takes? What does she actually look like? And if she showed up at my doorstep today, would I even recognize her?

Happy weekend, my un-suck-worthy pals.

Friends, there are many, many things that I’m willing to discuss. Many. Sure, there are some things that are just too troubling. But personally, I like to push these too-troubling things out of my mind altogether…simply make them cease to exist.

Poof! They’re gone! Except, perhaps, in the deepest recesses of my mind.

Exploding pig brains causing mysterious diseases!

Shut up, deepest recesses. Please sit down now, deepest recesses.

I’m willing to talk about all kinds of disturbing things, mind you. Let’s wander off the food subject for a moment, and talk about UFOs. Yes! UFOs! Why not?

And pig brains! Remember, you’ve got to talk about those pig brains!

Are you guys aware, for example, that dozens and dozens of people in a small town in Texas independently saw a UFO last month? It was bigger than a Wal-Mart (there’s a joke in there, somewhere), and it was outrunning fighter jets. And that it’s just one of many, many similar sightings — including sightings by, like, actual British Airline pilots?

But the pig brains! It’s important, Ali! Talk about them! Talk about how sick the folks who work at the Quality Pork Processors Plant in Minnesota got! Talk about this weird, behind-the-scenes glimpse at what it takes to butcher 19,000 hogs a day!

So, these UFOs. It’s pretty wacky, actually. There’s a whole organization dedicated to tracking UFOs. And this group? It claims that “scientific data shows that our planet is being visited by other intelligences on a regular basis,” and that each year, there are over 70,000 sightings. Dude, even Dan Akroyd — Beldar Conehead himself — supports this group.

But really, Ali, don’t you think you should tell them about how a bunch of the workers responsible for cutting up pigs’ heads came down with a rare immune disorder that attacks the nerves? And how these factory workers are cutting up a whoppin’ 1,100 pigs’ heads an hour?

No, deepest recesses! I keep telling you. It’s just. too. horrifying. Please — I’m begging you — go away now.

Okay. The UFO thing. I can talk about it. I’m brave. I really am. I’m also brave enough to face other things. Like the fact that Britney Spears is helping boost our faltering economy to the tune of $120 million a year.

But what about the fact that these workers are processing meat for Hormel, one of the biggest names in pork products? And what about the person who came up to you after reading the article, saying, “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t believe what people have to do for a living in these meatpacking plants?” Doesn’t her shock warrant even a comment?

There are other things, too. Like, say, the giant blob that started taking over the sewers of Lewiston, Maine. That’s troubling stuff, especially if you choose to look at the photo.

Come on. It’s such a window into life in a meatpacking plant. You’ve eaten Hormel before! Don’t you think you should know about what’s behind those vacuum-packed loins?

Or how about the gender-bending barnacles that grow enormous ding-dongs in rough waters? Or even the fact that by this point in my life, it seems that I’ll never, ever be rich enough to buy a Boy Toy?

Okay. Okay. I’m going away now. I get it. It’s just too gruesome. Fine. Heading back to the deepest recesses. I tried, though. I did.

And, oh yeah! There’s the fact that NASA appears to have gotten a photograph of bigfoot on Mars. So…see? I’m brave. I can talk about lots of creepy things. Lots of them.

Just not everything, it turns out.

(with a shout out to Paul Slanksy for the inspiration…)

1. Who is Van Miguel Hartless?

a. The customer of a Fair Haven, Vermont, Burger King who found an unwrapped and possibly used condom in his Southwestern Whopper sandwich, and filed a complaint in Rutland Superior Court after the restaurant’s manager laughed off the incident

b. The groom at the October 13 catered wedding held at a North Carolina museum, where nearly 25% of the 110 guests were poisoned by E. coli H57:07, leading to 2 guests being hospitalized, one of whom suffered acute renal failure.

c. The employee at a Calgary McDonalds who was diagnosed with Hepatitis A, prompting fast food customers to overwhelm a nearby clinic where vaccinations against the disease were offered.

d. The Canadian health economics professor who proved that for every extra fast-food restaurant per 10,000 people, a city’s obesity rate goes up 3%.

e. The Chairman of the House of Representatives agricultural committee, who said “for whatever reason, people are willing to pay two or three times as much for something that says ‘organic’ or ‘local’. Far be it from me to understand what that’s about, but that’s reality. And if people are dumb enough to pay that much then hallelujah,” and then later backpedaled after receiving thousands of letters from angry consumers.

2. How many pounds of beef products were recalled this year due to E. Coli?

a. 4.2 millionb. 10.8 million

c. 13.9 million

d. 33.3 million

3. According to a USA Today analysis of recall data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, what percentage of recalled meat is typically never recovered and likely eaten?

a. 5%b. 18%

c. 39%

d. 56%

4. The same analysis showed that for five of the most recent meat recalls that actually left people sickened, the percentage of meat that was never recovered was closer to:

a. 30%

b. 44%

c. 63%

d. 80%

5. By summer 2007, how large was the oxygen free dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico — the part of the ocean that supports no marine life as a result of fertilizer runoff from U.S. industrial agricultural practices?

a. 7,500 square miles, an area nearly the size of New Jersey

b. 1950 square miles, an area nearly the size of Delaware

c. 22 square miles, an area the size of Manhattan

d. 4100 square miles, an area the size of Los Angeles County

6. After the melamine-tainted pet food scandal broke in early 2007, approximately how many reports did the U.S. Food and Drug Administration receive about animals who died after eating contaminated food?

a. 14 reports of pet deaths

b. 69 reports of pet deaths

c. 762 reports of pet deaths

d. 8,500 reports of pet deaths

7. When the tainted vegetable protein at the center of the pet-food scandal entered the human food chain, how many people in the U.S. did the FDA estimate had consumed chickens that had eaten tainted feed?

a. between 250 - 300

b. between 2500 - 3,000

c. between 25,000 - 30,000

d. between 2,500,000 - 3,000,000

8. Which of the following are actual new food-related products introduced in 2007?

a. Batter Blaster, a pancake batter in an aerosol can (just shake, point, and press!)b. “Energy-boosting” Phoenix Fury Potato chips, containing caffeine, taurine, and B-vitamins

c. Subtle Butt, a “fart neutralizer” in the form of an activated carbon fabric pad that adheres to the inside of your underwear with adhesive strips.

d. Flavor cartridges for the Pur Water Filtration System, so that your tap water can have fruit flavors

e. Dirt-flavored soda

f. all of the above

9. Which of the following statements about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is true:

a. She appointed Joy Phillipi, former president of a the National Pork Producers Council — the main trade group representing nasty CAFO operators — as the co-chair of Rural Americans for Hillary.

b. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2007-2008 election cycle, she was the #1 senate recipient of donations from all of the following industries: agribusiness, food and beverages, food processing and sales, food stores, crop production, sugar cane and sugar beets, restaurants and drinking establishments, and lobbyists

c. Her campaign recently held a “Rural Americans for Hillary” lunch and campaign briefing at the Washington, DC offices of Troutman Sanders, the lobbying firm of agribusiness giant Monsanto.

d. All of the above

10. True or false:
When presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani was Mayor of New York City, he tried to sell off hundreds of community gardens that had been officially sanctioned by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, telling critics that “the era of communism is over.”

11. After Nebraska Beef, a meat processor, was linked to E. Coli- tainted ground beef that sickened 17 members of the Salem Lutheran Church in Longville, Minnesota — and killed one member of the congregation, Carolyn Hawkinson — how did Nebraska Beef respond?

a. Sent flowers to Hawkinson’s funeral, along with a note of apology to her family

b. Went on record to say that conditions at their plant — and indeed the majority of meat processors nationwide — are in serious need of change.

c. Shut down their plant and refused to start operations again until the situation was resolved

d. Sued the church, claiming that Salem Lutheran was in fact responsible for the outbreak because they hadn’t cooked their church supper to an internal temperature of 160 degrees

12. True or False:

in 2006 and 2007, Monsanto spent $2,930,000 on lobbyists.

13. According to a 2007 anthology, which of the following were actual article titles published in the trade magazine, Meat Processing Global?

a. Up yours Upton!b. The Vegetarian Mind: A voyage into madness

c. sauSAGE words from an industry veteran

d. all of the above

14. When the Topps Meat Company went out of business following their recall of 21+ million pounds of E. coli-tainted beef — the second-largest recall in history — company officials held a barbecue at which Topps burgers were served. How did Evelyn Hildago, a human resources manager, describe those burgers?

a. “Shit-filled”

b. “A damned unfortunate product that sickened 38 people in nine states”

c. “The mother-f*&#in’ patties that put me out of a job.”

d. “Delicious”

Answers
1. a, but all of the other folks exist, too.
2. d
3. d
4. d
5. a
6. d
7. d
8. f
9. d
10. true
11. d
12. False. They spent twice that: $5,860,000
13. d
14. d, but the other descriptions would have been accurate, too.

My cultural isolation is sort of profound. We don’t have television, just some old videos and a Netflix account. We still use dial-up connection at home (laugh if you will; we get by). We have extremely limited shopping in these parts — some supermarkets, convenience stores, a handful of boutique retailers, and a Wal-Mart that I avoid like the plague. Otherwise, it’s an hour-plus drive to anything resembling a Gap store. As a result, I sometimes miss out on cultural trends, like new blockbuster pharmaceutical products.

Like alli. Surely you’ve heard of alli (small-case intentional; it’s very trendy that way), the new weight-loss drug. I recently made a trip to the mall, and kept seeing these happy-looking colorful displays for alli. Colorful, so colorful, that the signs made me want to laugh with glee. No, wait. That’s not right. I laughed, because I had had already seen this hilarious and horrifying post about the drug. You want to read this post. That is (and here’s where the lights should be flashing WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!), you want to read it unless you are offended by foul language and graphic imagery, repeated over and over and over. And you know what? If you’re even considering taking alli, even just once, just to try it, you should read the post anyway, even if you are offended by foul language and graphic imagery repeated over and over again. Consider yourself warned: it’s hilarious, it’s horrifying, but you’re going to see some bad words while you’re there.

When you’re done, let’s think about what a bass-ackwards world we’re living in that we take it as normal that junky food should be so ubiquitous that our only salvation is a pill that requires we carry spare changes of clothing, since it’s highly likely we’ll poo ourselves after taking it (yeah, you read that right). Oh, and by the way, if soiling yourself isn’t enough of a troubling side effect, it might also block your ability to absorb vitamins, and it’s linked to colon cancer. But, you know. At least the displays are colorful.

If you’re looking for a less horrifying alternative, you might find some relief at the One Local Summer web site, where folks are showcasing some of the great foods they’re making with local ingredients. This is where you’re going to find real color. I’d post to One Local Summer, but lately all my entries would be the same: salads. Lots of them. Greens are in season, so our default meal are salads, filled with cut-up turkey breast, roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, crumbled cheese, you name it, and served along side heaps of bread from our CSA. Simple? Yes. Delicious? Yes. An alternative to fast-food-followed-by-poo-inducing-diet-pills? Oh, I hope so. But…worth posting about week after week? Maybe not.

Regrettably, many of the posters to One Local Summer are not providing the recipes they used required to create such delicious stuff (Local Summer folks! I hereby respectfully request that you give more directions, on behalf of kitchen dense folks like myself). Nonetheless, I’m gonna’ do my best to recreate some of these yummy-looking things, starting with the Squash Fritatta that Molly tried. We’ve got piles of zucchini, and we’ve got great local eggs, and can make this one, like, tonight. Or at least tomorrow morning.

No matter what, I’m not gonna’ try alli. Nope. Not me. I don’t do laundry frequently enough to be able to handle those kinds of side effects…

There’s a great article in today’s Times (”Don’t Point That Menu at My Child, Please“) about one of my biggest pet peeves: kids’ menus at restaurants. As a (slightly obsessive) parent trying to instill in my kids a love for good food — real food — kids’ menus make my job harder. Much harder.

Marion Nestle, who gives a separate quote in the article, is unequivocal about what kids should be eating (this via her great book, What to Eat):

Children are supposed to eat the same foods their parents eat. Dietary recommendations…apply to everyone over the age of two. Once children are past infancy and can chew and swallow foods without choking, they should be eating the same healthy foods that everyone else in the family is eating…

She also notes that the diets of up to 80% of today’s young children are considered “poor” or “in need of improvement.” It’s not surprising. What do we think of as “kid” foods? Mac and cheese. Chicken fingers. Grilled cheese. French fries. Cheeseburgers. Fish sticks. Almost all heavily-processed, with extremely limited nutritional value. If eaten only occasionally, maybe it wouldn’t matter. However, with 30% of American meals eaten outside the home, these items can form a huge percentage of a child’s diet. (and, thanks to “advances” like Kid Cusine dinners, more of this stuff is being consumed in the home).

I agree with the author of the Times article, when she says that while the children’s menu has depressing nutritional implications, she’s even “more rankled by its palate-deadening potential.”

Now let there be no doubt: my problem with kids’ menus is my own weakness. I hate to argue with my kids about food…especially when we’re dining out. I know. I know. It’s my job. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to argue. I don’t feel like that’s a healthy way to instill good food values, either. So, when the waitress hands my kid a colorful menu that features french fries, chicken nuggets, and more fries, my normal response is to grimmace, while silently fuming.

And, of course, to avoid that restaurant whenever I can.

Think you’re okay because you don’t visit the Golden Arches? Alas. Kids’ menus in sit-down restaurants may be no better than in fast-food joints.

I don’t want to be preachy about what you should do, so I’ll close with a little more Nestle:

It is perfectly possible to teach kids to like adult food. I’ve seen it done. It just takes some persistent action by adults who care about kids’ health and want to make a difference. The best way I can think of for you to get kids interested in real food — the fruit, vegetable, meat, and dairy foods that you buy along the peripheral aisles of supermarkets — is to teach them how to cook such foods. Even better, teach them how to grow vegetables; radishes growing in a pot on a windowsill can change a child’s relationship with food forever, and much for the better.

Hear! Hear!