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individually wrapped and padded produce by oceandesetoiles, on Flickr
A recent article over at The Atlantic about food packaging caught my eye. It starts out with the oft-discussed problems of food packaging: how to create a method of food packaging that protects food for longer times, mechanical handling and further transport without creating a nuisance in the landfill or increasing our dependence on fossil fuels. One possible answer, the author poses, is edible food packaging.
The article takes a sharp turn, though, and raises very serious questions about the form this edible packaging will take. Will the American public be made aware that the packaging they are expected to eat contains nanotechnology? Will proper testing take place?
As Geoff Fary, of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, explained on Australian television news, “We just don’t want to take the risk of having these particles released in industry in a fairly unregulated way, only to find that we have reaped an awful harvest 30 years down the track.”
Does all this sound unsettlingly familiar? It should.
Even now, with almost 90 percent of U.S. soy, corn, and cotton grown with genetically modified seeds, skeptics maintain that a creepy technology has been shoved down our throats without proper oversight.
Consider, also, the food safety angle. The more hands processing a food, the more dangerous it tends to be. So your apple leaves the orchard and instead of being shipped to a store distribution center, is sent to a packaging facility. That’s one more step, and several more hours to days of freshness loss. The edible packaging is applied, and the food leaves the processor for the store distribution center. From there, the apple follows the normal course of preparation for sale, with multiple stops and manipulating hands along the way. Even once it reaches the store, unpackers, produce managers and other consumers handle this packaging. And you are going to put that in your mouth? Would you lick the outside of a bread wrapper?
Have you ever heard someone sneeze in a produce department? Okay, the food scientists will say, we’ll add a germ-killer to the packaging. Even if someone sneezes on our food packaging, the germs won’t survive because our super kill-em-all package will render them harmless. Feel better? I don’t. That kill-em-all tech is going into my mouth? My stomach? My gut? What about the good bacteria that lives inside me to help me digest and fight hostile germs? Will that be killed off, too?
Surely, not every food producer will have their own edible packaging facility. This is one more tech that needs to be centralized, thus increasing the danger of terrorism and insecurity to our food supply.
If you hear the caution in my writing, you are hearing correctly. Nanotechnology makes me extremely uncomfortable. Rather than going the route we took with genetically modified foods (that is, “Hey, why not?! Looks good to me!”) to find that we have unleashed a genie into the world we can’t force back into the bottle, we need to approach this new technology with great respect and excessive testing performed by disinterested third parties. That last part is crucial.
In the meantime, while scientists and researchers whose pockets are lined with cash from nanotech companies perform the most possibly skewed testing, throw out negative results and push this new tech into our food, may I offer a suggestion? If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you already know what I’m about to say:
Know your farmer, know your food
Eat food without packaging that you purchase from a source known to you personally. Or, if you’re really a crazed radical (wink, wink), why not try growing your own? Think you don’t have room? How about some inspiration from this Urban Organic Gardener?
I’ll be keeping an eye on the nanotech scene, so drop by again if you’re as fascinated as I!
And if you don’t know why I’m so up-in-arms about nanotech, here are a couple of my past posts on the subject:
Nanosilver: In with the old, in a new way
Lung damage from nanoparticles
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
ICK01-at244by-Anna Sattler on Flickr
Stop making that face. Do you want your face to freeze like that?
No, I’m not talking to you, I’m quoting my mother’s response to my face every time she said liver was planned for dinner. Mom* made liver no one could love. First she fried the onions. Then the liver hit the pan and didn’t come out until it was black through and through, curled up like a dessicated jellyfish and about as tasty as shoe leather. Just the smell of it cooking was enough to send us on bended knee to beg Daddy for a special trip to McDonalds.
Now, you gotta give me credit: I’ve made and enjoyed raw meat, beet kvass, beef tongue, all manner of sprouted, soaked, fermented things with odd rubbery-mushroomy-scobys floating on top. I’ve even made pate with chicken liver that was scrumptious. But evil, maroon, stomach-churning beef liver? EEK!
But, still it’s a powerhouse of a food. Few food sources can compete with liver in the nutrient density arena. If I could only find a way to cook it…
When Kimberly of Hartkeisonline came for dinner, she told me about her mom’s liver recipe. It went something like this:
Fry up a package of bacon, remove from pan. Fry a sliced onion or two in the bacon grease, add chicken livers that have first been dredged in flour with salt and pepper added. Fry until brown and crispy on the outside, still pink on the inside. Remove liver and onions from pan. Add slices of fried pineapple to the pan and fry both sides until browned. Serve fried pineapple with the liver and onions and squeeze fresh lemon juice on top of the liver.
The idea of pineapple with liver intrigued me. I mean, sure, liver and onions is classic. And there are few in our family who can contain themselves when bacon is frying. But sweet and tart pineapple (with all that great bromelain for digestion) alongside? I made a few little adjustments to the recipe and came up with Our Liver Experiment:
3 slices grassfed beef liver
4 organic lemons
1 pound uncured pastured bacon
1 whole organic pineapple
2 organic sweet onions, sliced into rings
3 tablespoons sprouted wheat flour
Juice three and a half of the lemons and pour over the liver slices in a shallow dish. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Turn partway through the marinating process if the liquid doesn’t cover the slices.
Slice the bacon into 1-inch wide pieces and fry until crisp. Remove from the pan and pour off (and reserve) most of the fat.
Slice the pineapple into half-inch thick rings, 
removing rind and core, 
and saute in bacon fat in the same pan over medium heat until just browned on both sides. 
Remove from pan.
Add back half of the reserved bacon fat and toss in the onion rings. 
Saute the onions until just browned and remove from pan.
Dry off the liver slices and dredge them in the sprouted wheat flour. 
Add all the remaining bacon fat and cook the liver just until browned on both sides. Plate the liver, topped with onion, pineapple and bacon. Pass with big smiles, the remaining lemon half for squeezing a tad of juice over and “YUM!” noises.
How did we like it? Well those of us who love liver (me) thought it was fantastic and had two pieces! Those of us who enjoy strongly flavored foods (Rose) said it was not bad at all! Those of us whose palates are less refined (Blair, Kate and Christy) ate three bites each, the required minimum, and begged off gracefully. The boys? Hubby was out of town and John was at work. Little do they know I saved them some…
*Not MY mother. MY mother is a gourmet cook and would NEVER overcook liver.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop
I’m guest blogging today at Hartkeisonline. My post is about the Olympics, sports injuries, home remedies, a gold medalist and…cheese!
But to see how the puzzle fits together, you have to come visit the Natural Cures Blog Carnival! Hope to see you there!
I’m plugging right along on the Real Food Challenge! This week focused on fermented foods, and the proper preparation of nuts, seeds and legumes.
Day #15: What’s a SCOBY? After several months making kombucha, I’ve more or less abandoned it. I am the only one drinking it, so I’m focusing now on water and milk kefir instead. Almost everyone will drink water kefir double-brewed into something resembling grape soda, and if I want a special treat, I’ll make some coconut kefir with coconut water. I was very relieved when I listened to Cheeseslave’s podcast with Julie Feickert at Cultures for Health. I didn’t know if I could use raw milk to make kefir, or if it needed to be heated first. But, she reassured me that I don’t need to heat my milk to kefir-ize it! YAY!
Day #16: Get Cultured (Veggies) We are still working on training our palates for cultured veggies. Right now I have pickled red peppers, fermented turnips and rutabagas and sauerkraut in the fridge. I’m so glad that all I need is a forkful for the beneficial bacteria to get into my diet! We’re still working on the kids. Usually the conversation goes like this:
“What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Something from a jar.” (That’s what we call our ferments)
“What ELSE?”
“AFTER something in a jar? We have meatloaf, mashed potatoes and salad.”
I’m trying to encourage them to remember the ferments once a day, but sometimes even I forget! I’ll know I’ve reached my goal when the kids remind me that there’s nothing fermented on the dinner table!
Day #17: Yogurt and Cultured Dairy I love mesophilic yogurt. Between heating the milk and keeping the culture at a certain temperature, thermophilic yogurt can be a real pain. But adding the culture to the milk then setting it on the counter? That I can do.
Day #18: Cheesemaking for Everyone I like substituting yogurt cheese for cream cheese. It has a good consistency and flavor. When cucumbers are in season, one of our favorite ways to use yogurt cheese is filled between rings of cucumber! Yum!
Day #19: Nuts & Seeds We use nuts and seeds very sparingly here. I do soak and dehydrate them because even though the jury is still out on the phytic acid debate, we have a history of the dental problems that Rami Nagel says can be worsened by phytic acid intake. It’s just not a big deal for us to soak or sprout anyway, so I usually do.
Day #20: Preparing Beans & Legumes I almost always sprout beans and legumes. I find that sprouting them makes them far, far less “gassy.” The only reason I wouldn’t sprout them, but only add an acid when soaking, would be if I didn’t plan right and I didn’t have the lead time to sprout them. But I’m definitely getting better about that!
Come check on all the participants’ progress and see what’s shaking next on the Real Food Challenge over at Nourished Kitchen!
Stanley Tucci by califrayray, on Flickr
If I were to make a movie, there are certain actors that would be my first choice. Stanley Tucci is one of them. When I think about his ability to disappear into a role and make it his own, I’m amazed. I remember seeing him first in “thirtysomething,” a TV show I watched every week. But it was his portrayal of Lucky Luciano in “Billy Bathgate” that really got my attention. I saw him again and again in small roles in “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” “It Could Happen to You,” and “The Pelican Brief.” His role in “Big Night” next to Tony Shaloub was painfully sweet, and his slick but evil “trust me” character in the television series “Murder One” was very complex.
I could go on for pages, but I’ll spare you and fast-forward to “Julie and Julia” in which he plays the patient, loving, silently-strong husband of Meryl Streep’s Julia Child. He is earning critical acclaim for this role, and not only on the coattails of Ms. Streep and Amy Adams.
In a recent interview with Brad Balfour at the Huffington Post, the following exchange takes place:
Q: What would you have asked the people you played in this film if you had the chance?
ST: I’d like to ask them how they lived so long eating what they ate. I’m convinced that they both had two livers. I’d just be curious.
I had to laugh when I read his response because it is a common response to the real food diet espoused by the dietary guidelines of the Weston A. Price foundation. Many people are shocked by the amounts of saturated fat, cholesterol and dairy in the guidelines, but don’t read on to the details of the recommendations.
It’s saturated fat from grassfed herbivores, not herbivores fed inappropriate diets and held in captivity with no light or fresh air. It’s not just cholesterol for the sake of cholesterol, it’s eggs from pastured chickens on grass, synthesizing vitamin D in their own bodies and passing it down to their progeny without the need for prophylactic antibiotics. It’s not just dairy, it’s raw milk, unpasteurized, fresh, from trusted sources who know what they are doing.
Take a copy of Nourishing Traditions to a mega-grocery-store and purchase eggs to consume raw, dead milk from which to ferment kefir, ultrapasteurized cream to make creme fraiche, and antibiotic-laden meat to consume regularly and occasionally raw, and you have a nutritional and culinary recipe for disaster. Absolutely, eating eggs is important, and if pastured isn’t available, a grocery store egg is better than none, but there is no way I’d recommend anyone eat one raw!
To me, the dietary guidelines of WAPF require careful consideration, thought and planning and not a laissez-faire attitude toward food. The good news is, once you’ve acquired the knowledge and made the leap from CAFO to grassfed, ultrapasteurized to raw, processed to fresh, the learning curve smooths out considerably.
Mr. Tucci, you don’t need two livers to eat the traditional diet of your forebears. You don’t even need an extra trip to the gym. You’re already a food-lover, would you be interested in a role as an advocate promoting real food? Have your people call my people. Let’s do lunch.
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.
I’ve been making the Winter Root Soup recipe from Nourishing Traditions a couple times a month since the winter root vegetables became available at the Farmer’s Market. Hubby wasn’t thrilled, so I’ve been tweaking the recipe. I haven’t been able to get the flavor right, though. So today I tossed out the recipe and started from scratch.
First, I used roasted veggies that I had cooked last time I made a roast chicken. (I try to combine oven uses, and fill the oven to make use of the heat, rather than heating it up twice or three times.) Roasting the veggies instead of boiling them intensified and sweetened them. I used a different set of veggies, different seasonings, different just about everything! Hubby gave it a thumbs up, even though he does not like some of the ingredients on their own. Tip: if someone in your family is anti-beet, try using a golden beet. The tell-tale deep red won’t be there to clue anyone in to the sweet, mellow flavor they can’t quite put their finger on!
Roasted Winter Root Soup
5 large roasted organic carrots
2 roasted organic potatoes (I used small russets)
4 roasted golden beets
1 quart homemade chicken stock
1 orange
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon black walnut oil (optional)
fish sauce
Parmesan cheese
Puree the roasted vegetables and stock in a blender or with an immersion blender, warm gently in pot and thin with water if desired. Grate a tablespoon of orange peel into soup. Add vinegar and oil and continue heating until hot. Remove from heat and let cool a few minutes, then add the juice of the orange. Add a dash of fish sauce to each serving (it takes the place of salt and doesn’t taste fishy at all) and top with a grating of Parmesan cheese. Makes about two quarts of soup.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.
If you’re ever stuck in our local airport and can’t get home, I’ll take you to a local health-food spot known worldwide! To hear the name of this amazing restaurant, and see a video about my wonderful decline in joint pain, please come to the Natural Cures Blog Carnival over at Hartkeisonline.
Ya’ll come!
iq 37 by Daniel Semper, on Flickr
A Reuters article appeared on February 10, 2010 which read (in part):
Research by Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) found that lower intelligence quotient scores were associated with higher rates of heart disease and death, and were more important indicators than any other risk factors except smoking…
The researchers, led by David Batty of the MRC and Social and Public Health Science Unit in Glasgow, Scotland, said there were “a number of plausible mechanisms” which might explain why lower IQ scores could raise the risk of heart disease—in particular a person’s approach to “healthy behavior.”
A New York Times article then disseminated the information and expanded the information:
“Scores on those kinds of reaction time tests are also predictive of heart disease,’’ Dr. Batty said. “If you have a better functioning brain, you may have a better functioning heart — physiologically, maybe the integrity of the whole body is superior.”
In thinking about this study, several things occurred to me. The correlation of IQ to heart disease could have a common beginning: poor nutrition in childhood. We know, for example that mother’s milk provides nourishment to the brain of the exact right sort at the exact right time. A malnourished brain will not function as efficiently as a well-nourished brain, and the same is true of the heart.
Cholesterol, a critical nutrient for the development of the brain, is being restricted in diets from infancy on. In the US, an estimated 20% of infants per year receive soy formula. Soy formula does not provide critical nutrition for normal brain growth. Many sources are still recommending low-fat diets in infancy, including egg substitutes and margarine, and more serious restrictions after the age of two. The American Heart Association recommends non-fat and low-fat dairy for all children, once weaned.
I am greatly disturbed by comments on the reports of the study’s findings that seem to find causality between low IQ and heart disease, as if heart disease is a problem of the “feeble minded.” The reasoning seems to be that person scoring lower on a thinking skills test is too dumb to know not to smoke or how to eat right, and therefore is more susceptible to heart disease. The focus then turns to “dumbing down” health education rather than providing nutritional support for those most in need: be sure the pamphlet on preventing heart disease is written to a third-grade reading level when you recommend margarine and vegetable oils. It’s almost like seeing a big, red fire truck at the scene of several fires and therefore coming to the conclusion that the big, red fire truck somehow starts the fire. To this nonsense, I simply say, “Prove it.”
The fact is, thousands of years of human history stand behind butter, eggs, animal fats and full-fat dairy. If these are the “killer foods” some would have us believe, how would the human race have survived to this day? Why is it that the exponential rise in heart disease correlates so closely to the rise in vegetable oils and sugar consumption and the reduction of animal fats?
We could wait for more studies, more evidence, more money to pour down the drain, or we could act. My family is acting. We’ve switched to raw, full-fat milk, butter, coconut oil and unprocessed food. This blog is my journey on that path.
This post is part of Prevention Not Prescriptions, a blog carnival guaranteed to raise your IQ at least a point!
There was little for me to do this week, as my Real Food kitchen is in pretty good running order and these kinds of things I do on a regular basis.
Day #8: Fats for High Heat
I’m all set up with my coconut oil and butter and lard. I don’t cook over high heat often because my stove vent is very inefficient. Anything putting up much steam or smoke tends to activate the smoke alarm! We have a joke: “Mom, is dinner ready yet?” “Did you hear the smoke alarm go off?”
Day #9: Fight Against GMOs
Ah, a subject near to my heart. I struggle with believing the torturous route regulators and industry in this country have taken in order to perpetrate this massive experiment on unsuspecting citizens. Every time there’s a new challenge to the GMO status quo, I’m there signing whatever petition I can, making phone calls, writing letters, tweeting and retweeting. If Europe can get GMOs out of their food supply and the US can get rGBH out of our milk supply, GMO regulation is not a lost cause. I’m SO there, as my kids say.
Day #10: Fats You Shouldn’t Cook
Back during our allergy days, I made ghee regularly. Now that my youngest’s gut has healed to the point she suffers few allergies (almonds most definitely, the rest are nearly gone) I don’t bother anymore. We are stocked with flax oil to add to smoothies, fermented cod liver oil in supplement form and olive oil for salads.
Day #11: Bake Some Sourdough
Not yet, but I can’t wait to try the No-Knead Sourdough recipe once our starter is ready to use!
Day #12: Find Real Milk
I have and we love it! It was a bit of a challenge at first, but my WAPF area leader was able to point me in the right direction. It’s called “pet milk” here because raw milk is considered unfit for human consumption. I have done my homework and have found a reliable producer that really knows her stuff when it comes to safety. I’ve weighed the benefits and risks and I come down squarely on the “raw milk heals” side of the line.
Day #13: Get Your Bacteria
When we first started out, this was a difficult step—not because of the process of fermentation, I caught on to that pretty quickly, but because of the taste. Fermented foods taste, well, fermented! Sauerkraut takes bitter cabbage and turns it bitterly sour. Kombucha takes sweet tea and turns it sour. Kefir takes sweet milk and turns it tart. These are flavors my spoiled American palate took a while to accept. It’s no problem now, though. Starting with smooth creme fraiche, refreshing water kefir and flavorful fruit chutneys, we made the transition and now we can enjoy the more tangy flavors fermentation produces. Also, I stress with my family that these are relishes, only a small spoonful is needed. So this week I used this recipe to make sauerruben, a fermented rutabaga condiment.
Day #14: Happy Valentine’s Day
Jenny suggested today we indulge in a little fair-trade dark chocolate. I found a brand that I dearly love, and will be blogging about it (as soon as I confirm that the sugar used is non-GMO.) It’s organic and fair-trade, and locally ground and mixed! There are exactly three ingredients on the label and I even know what they each are! I’m very excited about this find.
If you’d like to join us, just come to Nourished Kitchen. The 28-day Real Food Challenge is on Jenny’s navigation bar at the top of the page. You can also catch up here and watch the goings-on from Facebook or Twitter!
O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not. I cannot endure my lady Tongue.
Clearly, Benedick from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is referring to the acerbic wit of Beatrice and not the tender delicacy we ate tonight! We’ve been branching out a bit in recent days, and tonight’s experiment was beef tongue.
Okay, it was a little unnerving to pick up the tongue from its package and see how much it looked like…a tongue! Tastebuds and all. I called Rose, my little scientist, to come examine it with me. She was enthralled!
I cooked it slowly for about two and a half hours with onion, celery and carrot. The skin turned a very unappealing gray, but peeled off easily. Under the skin was meat that separated into strings, rather like a skirt steak that’s been pulled apart with a fork. I took this meat and diced it and put it in a skillet with a cup of water, a half cup of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of Rapadura. The liquid boiled off and left the meat so incredibly delicious. Biting into the meat was like biting into a forty-dollar filet. I served it over noodles and the sweet/sour of the meat was a wonderful foil to the bitterness of Brussels sprouts cooked with cream and shallots.
And lest you think I’ve lost my mind, tongue is a fatty part of the meat, and a traditional food. Tongue sandwiches were popular during the Great Depression, when muscle meats were hard to come by and expensive. I paid about $8 for a grassfed beef tongue that weighed in at just less than two pounds.
I had to add some other meat to stretch the meal in the photo for guests, so you’ll see in the photo two distinct types of meat. The tongue meat is the lighter brown with fewer “lines.” By the way, for those of you who cook for the very young, very old or otherwise dentally challenged, tongue meat is very easily chewed.
So, try some tongue, as Psychic Lunch said in a recent Twitter post, “It’s the meat that licks you back!”
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
