Our Dependence on China

Here is an interesting article from NPR about Chinese imports. First it was pet food and now it's toothpaste and children's toys. China turns out a great number of the goods that we consume here in the States and apparently quality isn't the top priority. In an increasingly global society, it is impossible to avoid some imports without going into a cave and hunting and gathering your own food. But you can minimize your exposure to some of the dangers of consuming goods from countries where regulations aren't quite as strict as they are here. For one, you can support your local farmers at the farmer's markets in your area, sticking tofresh, seasonal foods as much as possible.

Here are a few thoughts about some of the things coming in from China.

Last month, FDA inspectors blocked 257 food shipments from China, according to the list.
....
In the past year, the FDA rejected a higher proportion of food shipments from China than from any other country.

China is increasing the number of food products exported to the US every year, while also having products fail the tests more than any other country, even after taking into account the higher volume of shipments.

When Hubbard was at the FDA, he heard all kinds of stories about foreign food processors, like the one a staffer told him after visiting a Chinese factory that makes herbal tea. "To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out," Hubbard says. "And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves."
....
The FDA normally inspects about 1 percent of all food and food ingredients at U.S. borders. It does tests on about half of 1 percent.

How does that make you feel about eating imported food products?

Now, I'm not anti-globalization. I am a big believer in a free-market economy and in a capitalist society, what a business values first and foremost is money. Producing value for shareholders is the number 1 goal of a corporation, for better or for worse. We as consumers have to demand that our corporations give us safe products and if you are interested in stopping the flood of imported products, stop buying them (which can be very difficult). Remember that in an economy where money talks, voting with your dollars for the companies that take consumer protection into account is the strongest statement you can make.

Prolonging The Magic

I came across the picture above and this link, which give good descriptions of proper storage for various fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The Periodic Table of Produce above is a real gem. It tells where, how, and for how long to store numerous items. For instance, a quick glance reveals that Broccoli should go in the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic, for up to 5 days. Onions, cool dry place, unwrapped, for up to 2 months with a few exceptions. Winter squash is good for a month in a cool dry place. Strawberries go in the fridge in a vented container for 3 days. As the table says in the upper left corner, this would be a great item to print out and hang on the front of the refrigerator for a quick reference guide. I can attest that putting my fresh basil (see Herbs, leafy in the lower right corner) in a damp paper towel in a plastic bag allowed me to use it for a good 6 days instead of the usual 3 days max before it dried out.

One of the things that can make a high-quality nutrition plan even more prodigiously expensive is waste. Throwing away fruits and vegetables, especially if they're organic, can add quite a bit to your food bill. Now that I have this list, that will help me reduce my waste some, but I also have another method of saving produce before it turns into mush: the freezer! When I get down to the last ribs of celery or have a few leaves of basil left or a couple carrots that are going to go bad, I throw them into a Ziploc bag and freeze them and when the bag gets full, I make vegetable soup with whatever else is in the fridge working through its useful life.

And here's a chance for me to talk about farmer's markets again. One of the really beautiful things about reputable farmer's markets (the ones where the farmers actually grow the produce locally) is that the food is much fresher than that at your local grocer. The produce that I get from my local growers was all picked within the last few days and was picked when it was ripe. In The End of Food, Thomas Pawlick talked about the method of picking conventional produce before its ripe so that it doesn't go bad during shipping, then artificially ripening it with acetylene gas to make it look like an apple or a peach is supposed to look, although this method doesn't make them taste like a truly ripe apple or peach.

So there you go. Now you can store your produce with impunity.

More Farmer's Market Goodness

Today's Farmer's Market trip cost me $39 and netted me:
3 zucchini
1 Magda squash
4 cucumbers
5 onions
1 quart of blackberries - $6
1 pint of Brussels sprouts - $3
1 canteloupe
1 watermelon - $3.25
1 bunch of basil
Kale greens
Green beans
2 dozen free-range eggs - $6
1 small bunch of colorful flowers (maybe 8 flowers) - $3

Unfortunately it's been too hot here for anyone to grow lettuce, so I had to get that conventionally grown at the grocery store. If I were to avoid the higher priced items like the blackberries that I'm really enjoying right now, I could walk out of there for a significant amount less. But I figure I am quite frugal in other areas, so spending a bit on food doesn't bother me.

This Week's Farmer's Market Trip

As usual, I hit the farmer's market again this past Saturday. If you live in Louisville, get down to the Bardstown Rd Farmer's Market ASAP (The picture is not of my farmer's market). If you don't live in Louisville (most of you), find your local farmer's market and go. You'll find some really excellent stuff there. Here is a rundown of my take from this week:

Stand #1 - $4
- A big bag of kale greens
- Grapes (real grapes with seeds)
- 1 cucumber (still have some leftover from last week)
- 1 zucchini (still have two leftover from last week)
- 1 yellow squash
- 2 apples

Stand #2 - $13 (blackberries and blueberries are expensive)
- 1 pint of Brussels sprouts
- 1 quart of blackberries
- 1 pint of blueberries

Stand #3 - $8
- 2 heads of lettuce
- 1 bunch of basil
- Something else that I seem to have forgot

Various other stands
- A dozen free-range eggs with the orangest yolks I've seen - $3
- A bunch of green onions with the biggest bulbs ever - $1
- 1/3lb of raw blue cheese - $5
- 1 sunflower stem that contained about 6 sunflowers and really brightened up the house - $1

And the real gem of the trip:
- 2.xx pounds of rabbit for $4.50/lb - $9.50

I don't know the exact quantities of most of the stuff, nor was it all priced separately. Prices are approximate. Regardless, I know that I walked out $45 lighter, but 5 bags of food heavier! If you take out the rabbit and cheese, both abnormal purchases, the cost was really very low for a week's worth of produce.

My farmer's market has several people selling pastured chicken, grass-fed meats, free range eggs, and excellent raw cheese. You can't find that in the big box grocery, although most of these farms do sell through the local health food stores. The eggs are even cheaper than getting the good Omega-3 eggs from the grocery. One thing that is really cool at the farmer's market is seeing food that would NEVER be sold in a grocery store because it's too ugly. Grocery store tomatoes are all perfectly red and about the size and shape of tennis balls. The guy selling the berries had the craziest looking tomatoes. One of them was literally about 8" in diameter with a hole through the middle. It had actually grown into a ring. The rabbit/sunflower seller had two butternut squashes that were easily 1.5-2 feet long, one of which was a perfect U-shape. Because these items wouldn't pack well, nor are they pretty, they wouldn't be sold in a grocery store. Of course, the bulbous, ugly tomatoes are usually the most flavorful, but unfortunately, grocery store produce is all about yield and durability, not flavor and nutrition.

So why shop at a farmer's market?

• Variety: Note the ugly (probably more flavorful) tomatoes and squashes mentioned above; can't find that in the grocery.


• Freshness: Most of the food at the farmer's market was on the vine/in the ground just a few days before; most of what you purchase in the grocery has been picked before it's ripe (probably at least a week in advance) and artificially ripened (which helps to explain why it isn't as flavorful).


• Local: Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.


• Pollution: Whether you believe in human-caused global warming or not, we can all acknowledge that bringing organic grapes from California spews more pollution than bringing grapes from 75 miles away.


• Seasonality: What better way to eat seasonally than by buying from people who can only grow what is seasonal to your area.


• Price: With the exception of a few items, my bill from the farmer's market was very low. I don't normally purchase rabbit and cheese, so that's $15 I wouldn't have spent and the berries are probably similarly priced at Meijer.


• Meet the growers: You can actually talk to the people that grow your food, ask them about their growing methods, and make friends with them. It is nice to know that a human is at the other end of the food chain.

Book Review: The End of Food

I finished The End of Food: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Food Supply-And What You Can Do about It by Thomas Pawlick last night. This is a solid book that describes everything from how our food is raised to how our food is packaged. The first chapter runs through the lack of choice that we as consumers are given, limited to only a few out of thousands of varieties of tomatoes, apples, and other produce. Food growers and supermarkets select the most hearty and most profitable varieties, rather than the tastiest or most nutritious. Chapter Three runs through the cornucopia of additives, preservatives, and other crud that gets into pre-packaged foods, or as Pawlick calls it, a "Witch's Brew".

You'll also get a glimpse into the factory farms that produce the beef, chicken, eggs, and pork that are found in every supermarket and will most likely walk away vowing to eat only grass-fed, sustainably raised meats and eggs. Reading his account of how egg-laying chickens are treated assures me that I won't be eating any of the chicken that ends up in cans of soup and processed into other forms that make it impossible to see the abuse these animals endure (after they're depleted of egg-laying potential, they are chopped up for soups and such). I stick to grass-fed beef and antibiotic/hormone-free chicken, veal, and pork and since I don't eat much in the way of prepackaged foods, it's easy for me to avoid stuff like canned chicken soup. It was disturbing nonetheless. Hopefully this book turns you on to farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture, grassfed meats and chickens, and possibly even prods a few of us into planting our own gardens and raising some of our own food.

The book is only ~240 pages and is a pretty easy, but informative, read. I went through it in about 5 or 6 days of reading. The last chapter is actually just a list of resources for people wanting to plant their own gardens, get into farming, etc. I haven't read many of the books on his list, so I can't vouch for the quality of them, but I can say that it's at least 10 pages of further reading.

Bonus review: Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill - I finished this book right before I started The End of Food. It's not really a health-related book, but it is a good read into how epidemic viruses and plagues shaped history and helped lead us to where we are today. He examines both macroparasites (such as government taxes, barbarian hordes, and wars) and microparasites (measles, smallpox, etc) and how a shift in the level of stress caused by either can destroy a population. For instance, the government must be sure not to overtax their citizens so as to make it worthwhile for the citizens to keep working and growing the population. Similarly, what works today from a macroparasitic level may not work tomorrow when smallpox is ravaging through a country. The writing is dry, but I found the subject matter quite interesting.