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Meat glue — smart or yucky?

In Food, Food Politics, Food to Avoid, In the News, Toxins and Pesticides, Uncategorized,
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  • Posted on May 16, 2012
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Not since kindergarten, when some of us ate the library paste, has a more yucky food ingredient been brought to our attention, with the obvious exception of pink slime. (You’ll recall that pink slime is made of the sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, washed in ammonia, and mixed with ground meat). This newly revealed substance is called “meat glue” and has been around for a while. A powder made of transglutaminase (an enzyme) and beef fibrin can be used to stick together odd bits of meat to form them into apparently whole prime cuts.

It may surprise you to learn that I don’t totally condemn this practice – in concept, anyway. Waste is a terrible thing to do to food, and anything that can reduce food waste is worth considering. On the other hand, meat itself is a huge waste (of grain, water, land, etc.), not to mention the cruelty involved, and if the concept of meat glue turns you off eating meat, that is a good thing!

Of course, when meat glue is used deceptively, to falsely upgrade less desirable parts of the carcass, that is dishonest and should be stopped. There’s another problem: bacteria from the surface of different pieces of animal flesh are now in the middle of the final product and less likely to be killed during cooking, possibly causing food poisoning.

What do you think?


GMO is getting even more dangerous

In Food Politics, Food to Avoid, GMO's, In the News,
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  • Posted on May 2, 2012
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Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s excellent reporter Carolyn Lochhead published an article on genetically engineered food crops  (GE, also called GMO for genetically modified organism).  She pointed out that GMOs have been linked to human diseases and environmental damage, including catastrophic losses of monarch butterflies. It’s gotten so bad, she writes, that even the food manufacturers are worried that the latest “improvements” to corn planted for biofuel might ruin their own GMO crops!

Did you know that Dow wants to start selling a corn variety bred to be resistant to a pesticide that contains an Agent Orange chemical? In case you’re too young to remember the Viet Nam War, Agent Orange was sprayed widely over that country to kill its rainforests, to make its soldiers easier to target. Besides inflicting unthinkable environmental damage, Agent Orange harmed many Vietnamese and Americans.

The chemical (2,4-D) has been implicated in cancer, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, reduced sperm counts, endocrine (hormone) disruption, and damage to nerves and the immune system. Its makers hope growers will buy tons of it and spray it on their crops to keep bugs away.  I don’t want it used to produce my food. Do you? Personally, I’d rather eat a bug.

Besides, bugs evolve (whether creationists like it or not) and have become resistant to pesticides, so more and stronger pesticides are applied, creating the well-known “pesticide treadmill” that farmers can’t escape once they’re on it. One expert quoted by Lochhead calls it “a chemical arms race.” Fortunately, lots of people are not fooled – over 140 groups and over 360,000 citizens stated their opposition  to 2,4-D during the public comments period during the approval process.

And in more hopeful news, in California we will soon have a ballot measure that requires food makers to label their products that include genetically modified organisms. So get ready for November and cast your vote FOR freedom of information

A t-shirt I saw at a recent Earth Day event said it all:  GMO?  OMG!


Raising chickens at home

In Animal Cruelty, Antibiotics, Food to Avoid, Food to Try,
  • Posted on April 20, 2012
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Raising chickens at your own home is a hot trend. It’s part of the urban farming movement highlighted in a recent New York Times article, and being adopted by people who are avoiding chemicals and people who are appalled at the horrors of factory farming. One Texan who keeps hens in her back yard was profiled. “Her roommates are all vegetarian or vegan, she said, but even the vegans eat the house-raised eggs because they know that the birds are healthy and well cared for. ‘They are like pets who happen to bring us breakfast,’ she said.”

In Lafayette (CA), John Kiefer, who has raised chickens for decades, is now teaching other people how to create a home-based chicken ranch, where you can keep hens in safe, humane housing you built yourself. In the last few years, John has held half a dozen workshops, and they’re always sold out.

It’s only fair to warn you, though, that in addition to organic eggs (of course you’d give them organic food to eat), chickens produce what let us delicately call “waste.” For those who have two or three birds in their back yard, not much of a problem. But those horrible factory farms I mentioned are polluting the nation’s waterways.

A report from the Pew Environment Group sums up the depressing picture:

  • “In less than 60 years, the number of broiler chickens raised yearly has skyrocketed 1,400 percent, from 580 million in the 1950s to nearly nine billion today.
  • Over the same period, the number of producers has plummeted by 98 percent, from 1.6 million to just over 27,000 and concentrated in just 15 states.
  • The size of individual operations has grown dramatically. Today, the typical broiler chicken comes from a facility that raises more than 600,000 birds a year.”

The Pew report recommends restrictions on factory farming – but I wish they would simply be outlawed. It’s cruel to the animals to stuff them by the thousands into huge warehouses – and dangerous, since operators, knowing that thousands of chickens would die of the conditions, dose them with antibiotics. Tom Philpott, a great Mother Jones blogger, recently summarized some studies showing how common salmonella is in factory farms and how resistant to antibiotics (because of the excess precautionary dosing). Yuck!

If you eat eggs and don’t have time to raise your own chickens (humanely and organically, natch), try to find someone near you who is. According to the New York Times article mentioned earlier, he or she has plenty of eggs to give away.


Safe food is packaged without BPA

In Food Politics, Food to Avoid,
  • Posted on April 14, 2012
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Sustainable means safe for humans, too. BPA (bisphenol-A) is a chemical that goes into making hard plastic. 6 million pounds a year are produced in the U.S.  and used to make CDs, DVDs, and eyeglasses. It wouldn’t be a direct consumer threat if those were its only uses. But BPA is also used to line food containers and to make water bottles. BPA is an endocrine disruptor, which interferes with  our hormones and also contributes to diabetes and heart disease.

Late last month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to ban BPA from food packaging, despite plenty of evidence that it’s harmful. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which supported the ban, was shocked. Dr. Sarah Janssen, one of NRDC’s senior scientists, stated, “BPA is a toxic chemical that has no place in our food supply. We believe FDA made the wrong call. The agency has failed to protect our health and safety — in the face of scientific studies that continue to raise disturbing questions about the long-term effects of BPA exposures, especially in fetuses, babies and young children.”  The Breast Cancer Fund blog also deplored FDA’s ruling.

Another branch of government, though, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is carefully offering advice about how to avoid BPA and revving up to support regulations, if they’re ever passed. HHS advice is available here. 

So once again consumers can take action when our regulators (FDA, in this case) won’t. Luckily, some companies are taking action voluntarily, removing BPA from their food packaging. Campbell’s Soup, for one.  And makers of beverage bottles are touting their BPA-free wares — just google it. So help the earth – and your own health—by purchasing food and drink that comes without this dangerous chemical – especially for babies and young children, whose bodies are still developing.


GMO food — boon or bane?

In Food Politics, Food to Avoid, GMO's, Take Action,
  • Posted on March 23, 2012
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Sustainability means living so that future generations have enough to live on. As it happens, a billion people today don’t have enough to eat. Advocates of biotechnology say that we can’t feed the hungry of the world without using genetically modified foods that are engineered to withstand droughts and other unfavorable growing conditions. This is hotly disputed by other people. At any rate, the GMOs we hear most about in this country are engineered to withstand pesticides – so that more pesticides can be applied to the fields they grow in. did you know that a large percentage of pesticides end up in soil, waterways, and our bodies?

The GMO science is complex, but if the products are safe to eat, perhaps the manufacturers should just label them. They have so far refused. Until April 22, you can add your name to a California petition to require labeling of GMO foods. That’s it – just label it so we know what we’re choosing to eat.

 

 

We need citizen action because of the famous “revolving door” – government officials can get lucrative jobs after their public service, or even before. Monsanto is one of the biggest chemical companies and fights hard to push its products. Is it a coincidence that so many Monsanto executives have gone into government – or vice versa? See this astounding chart. A few examples: William Ruckelshaus was the first Chief Administrator of the EPA – and one of his other resume items is Member of the Monsanto Board of Directors. Carol Tucker-Foreman was a Monsanto lobbyist and became a consumer advocate in the Clinton White House. Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State, worked at the Rose Law Firm, Monsanto’s counsel. Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court, worked for Monsanto as an attorney. The list of these people, representing both political parties, is very long.

In the meantime, you can choose organic food, which is not allowed to have GMO, and check out the Non GMO Shopping Guide for additional tips. It’s regrettable that an article about food has to deal with politics — but that’s where the future of sustainable food is taking place.


Good news on food and health

In Food to Avoid, Take Action,
  • Posted on February 8, 2012
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Trans fats are laboratory creations (few exist in nature) that extend food’s shelf life, which made them immensely popular with makers of processed foods, especially baked goods. We’ve known for a decade that in fact, they’re dangerous, raising levels of the “bad” cholesterol that can contribute to coronary heart disease. In 2003, the FDA required that food labels include them (“partially hydrogenated” is also a term used for trans fats). Health organizations worked hard to publicize the problem and people began avoiding these fat bomb ingredients.

So did it work?

Today the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a food industry watchdog, publicized some encouraging research which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published here.A WSJ blog also took note. Bottom line: bans, labeling, and “voluntary” industry ingredient switches have succeeded in lowering the levels of the four commonest trans fatty acids in several hundred research subjects, by a collective 58%.

But don’t stop being watchful. CSPI also warns that some corporations are still selling trans fat-laden food. A report last month called out Sara Lee, Pepperidge Farm, and General Mills as some of the product lines to be wary of. Second, the FDA has a loophole: if a food has less than half a gram of trans fat per serving, it can be labeled as having none. Let’s hope that Girl Scouts really do get trans fats out of all their cookies, not just off the label. (And while they’re at it, get out the palm oil, which is responsible for environmental damage overseas.)

Sustainable food is healthy food, which supports life rather than undermining it. The CDC puts their advice to choose “foods free of synthetic sources of trans fats” right on their same page as enabling sustainability practices.


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