Would You Drive A Car Made From Bananas?

Photo: Arif Ali, AFP / Getty Images

Proving nature is, in fact, often better than anything coming off a conveyor belt, we may soon have cars made from pineapples, bananas and coconuts. All of these fruits have fibrous cellulose (nanocellulose) which rivals widely-used Kevlar in strength, reports Wired. Plus, the nanocellulose plastic is lighter than many widely used materials and also biodegradable.

The material would be renewable and decomposable (as long as it's not combined with petroleum-based plastics) -- and a lighter car means a lower gas bill. (Ford is already hoping to slim their vehicles by 250 to 750 pounds, notes Wired.) In a statement, Alcides Leão, a researcher at São Paulo State University, says the material is "30 percent lighter and three to four times stronger." That's because a plant's main cell wall, where cellulose is found, can be processed to yield fibers so tight that 50,000 fit within the diameter of a human hair.

Leão and his team are still working in small quantities in the lab so there's no telling yet how much nanocellulose plastic will cost, but it won't be cheap. Though if it takes off in the automotive world, high production would knock down the price. And it's cost-effective: A pound of nanocellulose yields 100 pounds of plastic.

Once this technology catches on, watch out -- Leão says he's working on steel and aluminum alternatives next.

Top 10 healthiest vegetables

 

Must-Have Veggies 

 by Sarah Kelsey

Veggies are an important part of everyone's diet. They contain dozens of important nutrients and have loads of dietary fiber. And just by getting your daily quota of five to nine servings, you help build your body's immunity to things like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. So what are the top veggies you should be eating to boost your disease-fighting potential? Read on to find out.

Tomatoes

Though technically a fruit, tomatoes are most often served like a vegetable. Full of lycopene, these beautiful red orbs (and all tomato-based products) are renowned for their cancer-fighting capabilities. Not only are they chock full of vitaminy goodness (from vitamins A to K), they also keep our blood pressure in check and help to reduce the number of free radicals in our bodies.
How to eat them: Heirloom tomato recipes

Broccoli

Few foods measure up to the disease-fighting potential of broccoli. This cruciferous veg is packed with antioxidants that help reduce the risk of stomach, lung and rectal cancers. And because broccoli is rich in beta-carotene, vitamin C and folate, it is also good at boosting your immunity to colds and flus.
How to eat it: Sesame-Ginger Frittata with Broccoli and Shrimp

Brussels sprouts

These little green veggies are especially important for pregnant woman because they're packed with folic acid, a B-vitamin that prevents neural tube defects. Brussels sprouts are also packed with vitamins C and K as well as fiber, potassium and omega-3 fatty acids.
How to eat them: Stuffed Chicken Breasts with a side of Brussels Sprouts (cooking video)

Carrots

These orange-wonders are loaded with eye, skin and hair-enriching nutrients. They're also the richest vegetable source of some important antioxidants, like vitamin A. And because they're rich in vitamin C, carrots protect your cardiovascular system from damage.
How to eat them: Carrot Raisin Muffins

Squash

A good source of anti-inflammatory nutrients like vitamin C and beta-carotene, squash, especially summer squash, can help treat dozens of conditions including asthma, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Squash is also rich in potassium, magnesium and fiber.
How to eat it: Summer Squash Ravioli

Sweet potato

This root vegetable has dozens of anti-cancer nutrients like vitamin A, C and manganese. They're also a good source of fiber and iron, so not only do they give you energy, they can also help regulate your digestive system.
How to eat them: Sweet Potato Soup

Eggplant

High in heart healthy nutrients, eggplants are rich in antioxidants like nasunin (a unique compound that protects your brain cells from damage). And because eggplants are loaded with fiber and potassium, researchers believe they may reduce your risk of stroke and dementia.
How to eat it: Eggplant Parmesan

Bell Peppers

Whether you prefer red, orange or yellow, bell peppers are packed with dozens of heart-healthy nutrients like lycopene and folic acid. And recent research suggests digging into a pepper every day may lower your risk of developing lung, colon, bladder and pancreatic cancers.
How to eat them: Stuffed Roasted Bell Peppers

Spinach

This chlorophyll-packed type of produce is an excellent source of almost every vitamin and nutrient you need. Scientists believe a diet heavy in spinach may be able to prevent everything from heart disease to colon cancer, and arthritis to osteoporosis.
How to eat it: Spinach Salad

Onions

These pungent smelling veggies are particularly good for people suffering from (or at risk of developing) osteoporosis. That's because onions are loaded with a peptide called GPCS which scientists believe slows your body's loss of calcium. Onions may also be useful in the fight against heart disease and diabetes because they're loaded with vitamin C and folate.

Hot Dogs, Anyone?

 

Wienerschnitzel have dominated the fast food chain hot dog arena for years, but now Sonic, America's Drive-In, has stepped up their game with the introduction of four new premium hot dogs -- and you don't even have to leave your car for them. Here's how they rate:

The Claims: The frankfurters in Sonic's new lineup all start with a grilled, all-beef hot dog inside a "soft, warm bakery bun," and are each differentiated by their fixings: the All-American Dog has ketchup, mustard, relish, and chopped raw onions (386 calories); the Chili Cheese Coney is topped with chili and shredded cheddar cheese (420 calories); the New York Dog has spicy mustard, grilled onions, and sauerkraut (352 calories); and the Chicago Dog is topped with a pickle spear, relish, tomatoes, hot peppers, chopped raw onions, celery salt, and mustard, with poppy seeds on the bun (435 calories).

The Price: Each hot dog sells for the introductory price of $1.99, at participating locations.

  The Verdict: B. Sonic's press release claims they are "reinventing a ballpark classic" with their new premium hot dogs, but there's not much reinvention here. Each of them are well-established, classic hot dog and topping combinations, so don't expect something completely out of left field; Sonic is not following the recent trend of gourmet dogs with peculiar and innovative toppings. Not that I will hold this inaccurate claim against them -- they've delivered four satisfying fast food items (and right to my car, using a pair of roller-skates).

Sonic is no stranger to hot dogs, having offered the Footlong Quarter Pound Coney on the menu for quite some time now, but for this "premium" line they've reduced their franks' lengths by half and added fresh toppings. The naked hot dog itself is pretty standard; mildly salty with a firm texture and a soft casing. The bun is decent too; soft and chewy, like a good hot dog bun should be.

Some of the toppings are fresh, but not all them. For example, the raw onions and tomatoes seem freshly chopped, but the green sweet relish used on the All-American and Chicago Hot Dogs appears to be of the store-bought jarred variety, although I think that's excusable -- they're just hot dogs after all. This relish is abundant on the All-American, making it the sweetest of the four, while the seemingly store-bought, canned beef chili on the Chili Cheese Coney makes it the sloppiest. The garnish of shredded cheddar on the latter -- instead of a squeeze of gooey cheese sauce -- is a nice touch, and gives it a freshness edge over Nathan's.

As for the New York and Chicago Hot Dogs, they are formidable re-creations of each city's particular style -- only without any of the attitude. The New York is on par with the street cart variety (sans the lukewarm, questionably sanitary water they sometimes sit in) with spicy brown mustard, sauerkraut, and soft, sweated onions. As for the Chicago, it might have been on par with what I remember from the Windy City's famed The Wiener Circle, but at the particular New Jersey location I sampled it at, they forgot to serve it on a poppy seed bun (or simply ran out of them). In any case, the rest of the dog is very good; a medley of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy with the bite of sport peppers. All in all, Sonic's four new hot dogs are a tasty good value, and can be quite a mouthful -- it's a good thing you can summon someone to bring you a Cherry Limeade right to your car to wash them down with.

Radioactive Iodine-131 Found In U.S. Milk Samples

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Officials have discovered trace levels of radioactive Iodine-131 in milk samples from Washington state and California, but stress that amounts are still 5,000 times lower than the limit set by the Food and Drug Administration. That should easy worry for consumers concerned that radiation from the damaged Fukushima plant in Japan will affect milk produced in the U.S.

"We don't make light of radiation. People want more information, but it's important to put things in context," Al Lundeen, spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) told Slashfood. "We have had a positive sampling of Iodine-131, but it was minuscule. It's a trace amount compared to other things like watching TV or flying on a plane, where people are also exposed to radiation."

According to the Associated Press, the FDA and EPA announced they had found radiation in milk from Spokane, Wash. on Friday, while the CDPH announced they found similar results from milk obtained at a dairy in San Luis Obispo County on Monday.

"We are going to continue to monitor the situation," said Lundeen. "We test milk because that's the food where radiation can be detected most quickly, but we're testing air samples as well. What we know now is the amount of radiation detected should not force people to hesitate to drink milk or anything else."
The CDPH has posted a FAQ on their website for consumers who would like more information.

California milk producers Straus Family Creamery and Clover Stornetta Farms also posted letters to customers on their websites confirming their milk was safe for consumption.

"We've gotten some calls," said Rich Martin, spokesperson for Straus Family Creamery. "People just want to talk to someone from the company and hear firsthand the product is safe."

Veterinary toxicologist Michael Payne, DVM, PhD, of the University of California, Davis and the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security told Slashfood that the most important thing for consumers to know is the level of background radioactivity found in both samples were infinitesimally small and inconsequential to human health.

"The banana I had for breakfast this morning had 3,500 times more naturally occurring radiation than the extra radiation found in these milk samples," said Payne. "Could there be a concern later? The modeling the EPA and FDA have done show that even if a catastrophic failure occurred in the reactor vessel at the Fukushima plant, we have a 6,000 mile difference between Japan and the West Coast. That's more than adequate to dilute the radiation."

Caviar ATM Debuts In Los Angeles, Also Sells Truffles & Bottarga

The Huffington Post  |  By Anna Almendrala 

LA Restaurants, Video, Blini, Bottarga, Burbank Caviar Atm, Burbank Town Center Mall, Caviar, Caviar Atm, Caviar Vending Machine, Escargot, Gourmet Salt, Los Angeles Caviar, Mother Of Pearl Spoon, Truffles, Food News

We get it. You're a high-powered executive/European art dealer/insufferable foodie/socialite about town and you don't always have time for a leisurely meal at Petrossian, Los Angeles' premiere caviar restaurant.
Now your high-class cravings are covered with LA's first caviar vending machines, located in Westfield Century City, Westfield Topanga and Burbank Town Center.
Described as "caviar boutiques," the vending machines stock caviar from all over the world. They also offer other gourmet foods like truffles, escargot, bottarga blinis, gourmet salts and caviar accessories.
A sample of the wares include Imperial River Beluga Caviar, for $500 an ounce, and a pink mother of pearl spoon for $4, notes Los Angeles magazine.

Photo via Facebook: Gourme Tfood
Food blog Eater points out that Los Angeles is a little late to the party when it comes to caviar vending machines. They first popped up in Moscow over two years ago.
But the Southern California region boasts a few other unusual ATMs. Sprinkles Cupcakes launched a 24-hour cupcake automat in March of this year at its Beverly Hills location. A month later, some intrepid medical marijuana businessmen launched a pot vending machine in Santa Ana, Calif.

What Is "Natural" Food?

The word "natural" gets bandied about a lot these days. It's used both cynically, by corporations trying to promote processed foods by evoking imagery of simplicity and rustic good health, and sincerely, by food-lovers applying it loosely to mean anything from "hand-made" to "unprocessed" to simply "healthy."

But what does it really mean?

When it comes to FDA food labeling, not much. Except as applied to meat and poultry products, for which "natural" labels can only be put on foods not containing "artificial flavoring, colors, chemical preservatives, or synthetic ingredients" (whatever that may mean), the "natural" label has no official definition and can be used without any USDA approval.

So forget the FDA - what does "natural" mean to us, as it applies to our food? Does it mean that a food grows on its own in the wilderness, without human intervention? Does it mean the food can be grown by humans, but can't have anything added to it (pesticide- and wax-free apples, maybe)? Does it mean it can't be processed in a factory (nothing canned or frozen)? Does it mean it can be processed in a factory but can't include anything made in a lab (nothing containing flavorings, natural or artificial alike)?

The fact that food corporations use the "natural" label to sell anything from toaster pastries to salad dressing speaks to the fact that many many people take the word to mean "not man-made" which they take to mean "healthy." This is certainly not always the case. We can all agree that many things which occur in nature are unhealthy or even lethal for humans - arsenic (an element!), certain mushrooms, hemlock, etc. And all but the most extreme of us agree that many man-made things improve the lives of people all over the world - injectable insulin for diabetics, sewage systems for clean water, salt with iodine to prevent goiters. Some of these things - like the insulin - are even made in labs, a further step away from many common definitions of the word "natural."

My favorite book dealing with the natural vs. unnatural debates as they relate to food is sociologist Barry Glasner's The Gospel of Food, which discusses, among other things, just how strange and often illogical the laws over what can be called "natural flavoring" and "natural colorings" are, and how food companies often capitalize on the word "natural" to sell food that is more expensive and no healthier than similar products on the market.

What do you think "natural" means? Is it a meaningful designation? Should we come up with a more precise definition, or keep it off food labels entirely?

Children Could Benefit from Medical Research, Study Says

by Tom Henderson

Credit: Getty Images

You read about all these studies and research projects on ParentDish. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I wish scientists from Pennbrook University would do medical research on my child"?

Most parents overlook the possible benefit of children participating in medical research. How do we know? Guess what? There's been a study.

Researchers from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health surveyed parents earlier this year and found one in nine adults have participated in medical research -- compared with only one in 20 children.

A university press release also reports that 68 percent of adults are aware of medical research opportunities for themselves. However, 84 percent of parents are not aware of medical research opportunities for children.

So, c'mon, kids, who wants to play guinea pig? It's not as bad as it sounds.

"Medical research is the backbone of improving medical care. Without volunteers, medical research cannot move forward," Matthew Davis, an associate professor at the University of Michigan's medical school, says in the release.

Participation in research is essential to continued medical progress, Davis says.

Over the last 100 years, infant mortality in the United States has been reduced by 90 percent. Millions of deaths from diseases such as polio, diphtheria, pneumonia and influenza have been prevented by vaccines.

Children with life-threatening diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and diabetes now survive beyond childhood, into adult years.

All thanks to kids participating in medical research.

"Awareness about research opportunities, which is a necessary step before participation, is reasonably high among adults but strikingly low for children's research," Davis adds. "To improve participation rates among children, researchers and institutions evidently need to do a better job of getting the word out to parents."

Largest Baccalaureate Class Graduates from The Culinary Institute of America

 

 Info: The Culinary Institute of America 

165 Receive Diplomas in Poughkeepsie Ceremony

Hyde Park, NY, October 24, 2012 – In a commencement held off campus to accommodate 165 graduates and their families, Plate magazine editor Chandra Ram delivered the address to baccalaureate degree recipients of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) on Thursday, October 18, 2012. It was the 55th and largest baccalaureate commencement since the CIA began offering bachelor's degrees in culinary arts management and baking and pastry arts management in the early 1990s.
Ram, a 1999 CIA graduate, shared with her new fellow alumni some thoughts about how the role of a chef is changing and how their education enables them to be the next generation of leaders in the food world.
"When I started, it was thought you could only cook with a CIA degree. This group knows better than that," Ram told graduates at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. "I see future tastemakers and thought leaders. You can do more than blanch a tomato or fillet a fish. Chefs and industry professionals have an unprecedented power to use their position for good in society—to change the course of history, far beyond the walls of their kitchens.
"You don't have to be an overt advocate," she continued. "When you decide to serve strawberries only in spring, you say something about the importance of seasonality and using ingredients at peak flavor. When you remove a species of fish nearing endangerment from your menu, you are opening your guests' eyes to environmental issues. By cooking, by planning a menu, you are making a statement to the people who will follow your lead."
Ms. Ram, an Indian-American raised in Lexington, KY, is often a presenter at her alma mater1s Worlds of Flavor® International Conference and Festival at the CIA's Greystone campus in California's Napa Valley.
The CIA holds 16 associate degree and three bachelor's degree graduations each year. Large graduating classes soon will no longer have to leave the Hyde Park campus for their commencements. The on-campus Marriott Pavilion, to be completed in fall 2013, will include an 800-seat theater that will host all graduation ceremonies, along with industry conferences and other major events.

Challenging the Reputation of Hospital Food on a Rooftop Farm

Uli Seit for The New York Times

At Stony Brook University Hospital, a farm has been a team effort. Interns like Nadeem Marghoob plant and harvest the crops.

Cheryl McAndrew, seated, said she usually ate pasta but had recently enjoyed a serving of just-harvested turnips.

But this was not a hotel in the more trendy precincts of Manhattan or San Francisco. It was Stony Brook University Hospital, in the middle of Suffolk County, Long Island, where a rooftop farm is feeding patients and challenging the reputation of hospital food as mushy, tasteless and drained of nutrients. (No, Jell-O is not growing on the roof.) But the sick, who have bigger problems than whether their broccoli is local and sustainable, can be tough customers.

“Swiss chard went over well, kale maybe not so much,” said Josephine Connolly-Schoonen, executive director of the nutrition division at the hospital. “When people are not feeling well, they want their comfort foods.”

Hundreds of hospitals across the country host a farmer’s market, have a garden on their grounds that supplies fresh produce or buy at least some of their food from local farms, ranches and cooperatives, according to a survey by Health Care Without Harm, an international coalition of health care groups.

But hospital rooftop gardens are still unusual in New York, Eileen C. Secrest, a spokeswoman for the organization, said. “It’s really sweeping the country, but New York is kind of a dry zone for us right now,” Ms. Secrest said.

There is little scientific evidence to suggest that fresh vegetables can help sick people in their recovery, though Dr. Connolly-Schoonen and her colleagues say that their antioxidant properties might do so. But at the very least, she says, serving fresh food has psychological benefits and sets a good example for patients for when they go home.

The first spade of earth was turned in July 2011 on a fourth-floor deck of an academic building. Since then the farm, which can be seen from some patients’ rooms, has expanded to 2,200 square feet from 800, with an $82,000, five-year grant from the State Health Department, shared by several community gardens.

Faculty members and workers brought bags of earthworms from home. Farmers — interns from the department of family medicine, where Dr. Connolly-Schoonen is an associate professor, and the sustainability studies program, run by her husband, Martin Schoonen — hauled 70 bags of compost and 20 bales of straw up two flights of exterior stairs.

Interns like Michael Geddes, a 23-year-old from Flushing, Queens, harvest crops daily and carry them down to the hospital kitchen, where they are weighed and put in cold storage.

The farmers make a note of the day’s crop on a white board so the chefs can incorporate it in their menu. In keeping with the good-for-you theme, the newly hired head chef, John Mastacciuola, has banished bacon, soda (well, there was some ginger ale in cold storage), hot dogs and salt packets.

Stony Brook has room-service style dining, meaning patients can order meals from a menu between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. When they call, a room service associate tells them of any daily farm specials.

But some of the sickest patients are least likely to get fresh farm food: many are on restricted diets that have to be computer-coded for compliance with dietary standards. No one has yet figured out how to recode items for those diets. But they are working on it.

More than 550 pounds of crops have been harvested this season. Recently, Iman Marghoob, who is the head farmer and the farm’s only paid worker, walked among the plantings and pointed out hakurei turnips, red and yellow potatoes, cilantro, spinach, tender young collard greens and rows of broccoli. The broccoli was more stem than flowers, but Ms. Marghoob said the stems made a nice fall soup.

Sunflowers were planted along the borders to attract bees for pollination. Soon, Ms. Marghoob said, she will plant garlic to harvest in the spring.

The kitchen has used one day’s lettuce harvest in 225 salads and one day’s radishes in 521 salads.

Still, the farm has a long way to go before it can truly sustain Stony Brook’s more than 500 patients. Even at 500 salads a day, it accounts for only a fraction of the 1,200 to 1,300 meals a day that the kitchen produces for hospital patients.

“It’s creating a culture,” Dr. Connolly-Schoonen said. “We’re not going to meet the patients’ vegetable needs with our farm.”

The farm food seems to go over better with adults than children. In pediatrics, said Denise Malandrino, a sous-chef, “they love the personal pizzas with toppings and baked fries.”

The other day, the kitchen turned a bumper crop of turnips into whipped turnips to accompany grilled chicken with spinach as a special of the day. Ms. Malandrino sautéed the spinach (which was not from the farm) in olive oil. She mashed the turnips with some butter, milk, salt and pepper and scooped them onto plates with an ice-cream scooper. “Mashed turnips have actually been a favorite,” Ms. Malandrino said. “We get 25 to 30 orders of the turnips on a weekly basis, depending on the harvest.”

Two plates were ferried up to the cardiac unit, where Cheryl McAndrew and Barbara Ryder, roommates, had ordered the dish at the urging of a hospital dietitian.

“To be honest, I’ve been sticking with the pasta,” Ms. McAndrew said. Ms. Ryder said that she normally only ate turnips at Thanksgiving.

Yet after a cautious start, both women devoured the decorative dollop of turnip as if it were ice cream. “I did eat all my vegetables,” Ms. McAndrew said, pushing away her leftover chicken and wan-looking iceberg lettuce (not from the farm). “When they’re good, they’re good.”

Eating Food That’s Better for You, Organic or Not

 

Source:NY times

Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via Associated Press

GREEN THUMBS Workers at an organic farm in Carnation, Wash., tend to baby romaine lettuce.

MAINSTREAM More grocery stores are stocking organic foods.

“People believe it must be better for you if it’s organic,” says Phil Howard, an assistant professor of community, food and agriculture at Michigan State University.
So I discovered on a recent book tour around the United States and Canada.
No matter how carefully I avoided using the word “organic” when I spoke to groups of food enthusiasts about how to eat better, someone in the audience would inevitably ask, “What if I can’t afford to buy organic food?” It seems to have become the magic cure-all, synonymous with eating well, healthfully, sanely, even ethically.
But eating “organic” offers no guarantee of any of that. And the truth is that most Americans eat so badly — we get 7 percent of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables; the top food group by caloric intake is “sweets”; and one-third of nation’s adults are now obese — that the organic question is a secondary one. It’s not unimportant, but it’s not the primary issue in the way Americans eat.
To eat well, says Michael Pollan, the author of “In Defense of Food,” means avoiding “edible food-like substances” and sticking to real ingredients, increasingly from the plant kingdom. (Americans each consume an average of nearly two pounds a day of animal products.) There’s plenty of evidence that both a person’s health — as well as the environment’s — will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what might be called “real food.” (With all due respect to people in the “food movement,” the food need not be “slow,” either.)
From these changes, Americans would reduce the amount of land, water and chemicals used to produce the food we eat, as well as the incidence of lifestyle diseases linked to unhealthy diets, and greenhouse gases from industrial meat production. All without legislation.
And the food would not necessarily have to be organic, which, under the United States Department of Agriculture’s definition, means it is generally free of synthetic substances; contains no antibiotics and hormones; has not been irradiated or fertilized with sewage sludge; was raised without the use of most conventional pesticides; and contains no genetically modified ingredients.
Those requirements, which must be met in order for food to be labeled “U.S.D.A. Organic,” are fine, of course. But they still fall short of the lofty dreams of early organic farmers and consumers who gave the word “organic” its allure — of returning natural nutrients and substance to the soil in the same proportion used by the growing process (there is no requirement that this be done); of raising animals humanely in accordance with nature (animals must be given access to the outdoors, but for how long and under what conditions is not spelled out); and of producing the most nutritious food possible (the evidence is mixed on whether organic food is more nutritious) in the most ecologically conscious way.
The government’s organic program, says Joan Shaffer, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, “is a marketing program that sets standards for what can be certified as organic. Neither the enabling legislation nor the regulations address food safety or nutrition.”
People don’t understand that, nor do they realize “organic” doesn’t mean “local.” “It doesn’t matter if it’s from the farm down the road or from Chile,” Ms. Shaffer said. “As long as it meets the standards it’s organic.”
Hence, the organic status of salmon flown in from Chile, or of frozen vegetables grown in China and sold in the United States — no matter the size of the carbon footprint left behind by getting from there to here.
Today, most farmers who practice truly sustainable farming, or what you might call “organic in spirit,” operate on small scale, some so small they can’t afford the requirements to be certified organic by the government. Others say that certification isn’t meaningful enough to bother. These farmers argue that, “When you buy organic you don’t just buy a product, you buy a way of life that is committed to not exploiting the planet,” says Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance.
But the organic food business is now big business, and getting bigger. Professor Howard estimates that major corporations now are responsible for at least 25 percent of all organic manufacturing and marketing (40 percent if you count only processed organic foods). Much of the nation’s organic food is as much a part of industrial food production as midwinter grapes, and becoming more so. In 2006, sales of organic foods and beverages totaled about $16.7 billion, according to the most recent figures from Organic Trade Association.
Still, those sales amounted to slightly less than 3 percent of overall food and beverage sales. For all the hoo-ha, organic food is not making much of an impact on the way Americans eat, though, as Mark Kastel, co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, puts it: “There are generic benefits from doing organics. It protects the land from the ravages of conventional agriculture,” and safeguards farm workers from being exposed to pesticides.
But the questions remain over how we eat in general. It may feel better to eat an organic Oreo than a conventional Oreo, but, says Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University’s department of nutrition, food studies and public health, “Organic junk food is still junk food.”
Last week, Michelle Obama began digging up a patch of the South Lawn of the White House to plant an organic vegetable garden to provide food for the first family and, more important, to educate children about healthy, locally grown fruits and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become national concerns.
But Mrs. Obama also emphasized that there were many changes Americans can make if they don’t have the time or space for an organic garden.
“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.”
Popularizing such choices may not be as marketable as creating a logo that says “organic.” But when Americans have had their fill of “value-added” and overprocessed food, perhaps they can begin producing and consuming more food that treats animals and the land as if they mattered. Some of that food will be organic, and hooray for that. Meanwhile, they should remember that the word itself is not synonymous with “safe,” “healthy,” “fair” or even necessarily “good.”

Beyond The Border Deal Aims To Kill Meat Screening That Sparked XL Foods Beef Recall

 

Information source:   Althia Raj 

 

 

Under the “Beyond The Border” deal announced by Canada and the U.S. in December, duplicate inspections will be phased out to improve the flow of meat and poultry across the border.

OTTAWA — In the wake of one of the largest food recalls in Canadian history — which began when U.S. inspectors stopped a shipment of beef tainted with E. coli — the U.S. and Canadian governments face a growing backlash over plans to eliminate such secondary meat inspections.
Under the “Beyond The Border” deal announced by both countries in December, duplicate inspections will be phased out to improve the flow of meat and poultry across the border. A pilot project moving toward a streamlined inspection regimen began this week.
It was, however, just such a secondary inspection that first triggered alarm bells about beef from the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., after inspectors with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) flagged E. coli in a shipment at a Montana border crossing on Sept. 3.
Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed that they were alerted by the USDA and only found E. coli themselves when they re-tested the meat originally approved for export. But on its website, the CFIA insists it found E. coli during “routine testing” and delayed issuing a recall because XL Foods was slow to provide them with information.
Washington asked for an export ban on Sept. 13, three days before the CFIA issued the first of several product recall notices in Canada and two weeks before it revoked the plant’s operating licence for problems regarding the E. coli risk, maintenance and sanitation. More than 1,800 XL Foods products have been recalled across Canada, along with more than 1.1 million kilograms of beef exported to the United States and 20 other countries.
Critics of the Beyond the Border deal say the Alberta beef recall is proof the border inspection program is worthwhile and should not be scrapped.
“We objected from the get-go about how [the elimination of secondary meat inspection] was a stupid idea, and what’s happened with XL proves our point, ” said Tony Corbo, a senior lobbyist with Food & Water Watch in Washington, D.C.

“All the allegations and contentions that [inspections] are impeding trade are nonsensical. Food safety should not be trumped by trade.”
Corbo said he does not believe Canadian inspectors can be trusted with food destined for American dinner plates, and that U.S. officials too often turn a blind eye to health violations coming from north of the border.
“There is a history of USDA looking the other way whenever they review Canada’s food safety system,” he said. “Canada seems to get a pass every time they find violations.”
Chris Waldrop, the director of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute, told The Huffington Post Canada it has become “glaringly obvious” in light of the XL recall that border inspections serve a valid purpose.
“There have been multiple occurrences where a check at the border has found contamination or problems that resulted in products’ being sent back to the originating plant. So that says to us that border inspection is useful and does serve a purpose and to bypass border inspections and allow plants to ship directly to a receiving plant could raise some serious problems in light of safety,” he said.
The Food Safety Coalition, an umbrella organization representing some 300 U.S. consumer groups, recently sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, urging him to stop the implementation of the Beyond the Border pilot project for fear of compromising food safety.
For now at least, the pilot project will not decrease the number of microbiological or residue spot checks performed at the border — the type that found XL’s contaminated products — and which are conducted on approximately one in 10 trucks. It will, however, eliminate product and label checks that are done on each truck entering the U.S. market.
The Canadian government has moved slowly, selecting one pork company that operates plants on both sides of the border to take part in the pilot program (it hopes to select a beef company as well). The company’s trucks will be pre-cleared by CFIA officials in Canada and unless they are notified en route, the meat will bypass a product and label check — and the hours-long wait at an inspection house on the border — to drop their loads directly at a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspected plant in the U.S.
Wally Piatkowski, the operator of a meat and poultry inspection facility in Niagara Falls, N.Y., acknowledged that his livelihood is in jeopardy if border inspections are eliminated, but he insisted he does valuable work.
Pointing to photos of shipments he has taken of meat travelling next to toxic chemicals, beef with fecal matter and unpackaged ground meat spilling onto the back of a truck, he said all trucks should be inspected when they enter the United States.

Genitically Modified Cows Produce 'Human' Milk info from Jason Best

The U.S. has outsourced a lot in the past couple decades, but could breast milk one day carry a "Made in China" label?

This news comes not from the pages of the supermarket tabloids but from the online academic journal Public Library of Science ONE, where Chinese researchers have reported that they've produced human-like milk from genetically modified dairy cows.

"Our study describes transgenic cattle whose milk offers similar nutritional benefits as human milk," lead researcher Ning Li told the London Daily Telegraph. "The modified bovine milk is a possible substitute for human milk." He describes the modified cow juice as tasting "stronger" than regular milk (ok, gross) and says that some aspects of his team's research could go commercial in as little as three years. However, Li projects that it will take a decade or more before mothers start pouring his mutant concoction into their babies' bottles.

Human breast milk is chockfull of vital nutrients for infants, and so far Li's team has managed to create cows that produce both lysozyme (a protein that protects against bacterial infections) and lactoferrin (which increases the number of immune cells in babies).

Setting aside the "yuck factor," engineered breast milk could be a boon for mothers who have trouble breastfeeding. Despite widespread public squeamishness about so-called "Frankenfoods," scientists routinely portray such concern as misguided and misinformed.

"Genetically modified animals and plants are not going to be harmful unless you deliberately put in a gene that is going to be poisonous. Why would anyone do that in a food?" one British biologist told the Daily Telegraph. "Genetically modified food, if done correctly, can provide benefit for consumers in terms of producing better products."

But what's in it for the cows?

As animal welfare advocates point out, genetically modified animals often suffer from a host of health problems. Indeed, in two of Li's experiments, ten out of 42 cows died shortly after birth while six more died within the next six months.

Food Packaging Leads to Increased Levels of Harmful Chemicals

Every time you go to the grocery store, you probably spend some amount of time thinking about whether the food you're buying is good for you, but how much time do you spend pondering whether the food's packaging is good for you?

According to a recent report by ABC News, maybe you should.

At issue is the presence of certain chemical compounds that are used to manufacture plastic and other food packaging. A study by the Breast Cancer Fund and the Silent Spring Institute, an environmental group, found that when participants were restricted to a fresh-food diet for three days (meaning no packaged foods), the amount of these chemicals detected in their urine dropped dramatically, by up to 66 percent.
Of particular focus in the study were the chemical compounds DEHP, a plasticizer, and bisphenol A (aka BPA), which has come under increased scrutiny because of its possible health impacts on young children. When used in food packaging, including plastic wrap and even metal cans, these chemicals can be absorbed by the food inside and thus consumed.

While other studies have linked both BPA and DEHP to a variety of health concerns, ranging from interfering with normal brain development in fetuses to an increased risk for things like infertility, heart disease and cancer, there remains significant debate in the scientific community about the level of exposure necessary to cause harm as well as if these chemicals even stay around in the body long enough to have adverse health effects.

Indeed, the American Chemistry Council argues that the only thing this most recent study confirms is that consumers face minimal exposure to these chemicals through food packaging and, in any case, the chemicals are quickly excreted from the body.

But as the lead author of the study told ABC News: "There are outstanding health concerns about these chemicals, and while the health implications continue to be sorted out, there is an opportunity for individuals to reduce their exposure by making certain decisions."

These decisions include: avoiding packaged foods (no-brainer), preparing more meals at home, storing leftovers in glass or stainless-steel containers rather than plastic and never using plastic containers in the microwave.

Is the Food and Drug Administration preparing to change its position on artificial food dyes?

For years the FDA has maintained that the additives that give everything from Gatorade to Cheetos their distinctive hues are perfectly safe. Currently, there are nine synthetically produced food dyes that are on the agency's list of approved "certified colors."

But one public advocacy organization is asking whether the FDA has been looking at the issue of artificial food coloring through rose-tinted glasses.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest argues that there's mounting evidence to show that artificial food dyes cause behavior changes in some children, and FDA staffers have gone so far to prepare a report for one of the agency's advisory committees detailing a possible link between food coloring and children who have attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, as MSNBC reports.

"For certain susceptible children with ADHD and other problem behaviors, the data suggest their condition may be exacerbated [by certain additives in food including artificial colors]," the report says.

This week, the FDA advisory committee will meet to review the report and hear from outside experts, including the director of CSPI.

Any change in FDA policy would be significant. Although the agency's website admits that there have been concerns about the impact of food dyes on children's behavior since the 1970s, it maintains that science has yet to establish such a link.

Are raw-milk cheeses healthful? Recent findings of Listeria monocytogenes, the bacteria that causes Listeria, in cheeses from Montesano, Washington's Estrella Family Creamery in Missouri's Morningland Dairy unequivocally suggest the contrary. Both dairies, which were inspected by FDA (Food and Drug Administration) officials within the past few months, are going to have a particularly hard time defending their raw-milk cheeses, especially since it's just the latest raw-milk scare. Just last week, health officials found 25 E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to Bravo Farms' raw-milk Gouda being sold at Costco stores in Colorado.

When it comes to raw-milk, the conflict between cheesemakers and the FDA is not new. Many cheesemakers view the FDA as an organization of government officials with little or no experience on dairies. Sunday, the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project released a series of cheesemakers' reactions to the recent recalls of raw-milk cheese. One of them states, anonymously, of course, "I am concerned about any potential surprise investigations, because the investigators usually don't have any experience with farms at all," the cheesemaker told the Cheese Project. "The ones who recently visited here had never even been on a farm before; not a good thing in my opinion." Apart from revealing the incompetence of the FDA, their anonymous responses indicate that the health risks do not involve raw-milk, on its own.
"It is definitely possible to make [raw-milk cheese] safely, but you need very good controls all the way through the process," says another anonymous cheesemaker. "I think you would need to have your own milk supply and the raw-milk supply must be of top quality." Unfortunately, the FDA is not offering any advice as to how the cheesemaking process needs to be perfected.

Clearly, raw-milk cheeses are not inherently dangerous. Otherwise, most French people, who eat raw-milk cheeses on a regular basis, would be suffering from Listeria. The dangers have to do with its handling -- leaving it out in the wrong temperature and being handled by too many people in different environments. Even the FDA is starting to question the law that states that raw-milk cheeses must be aged over 60 days in order to be sold, legally. "In fact, scientists have since shown that some pathogens -- strains of Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli -- can survive in cheese beyond 60 days," says Janet Fletcher. Fletcher suggests that the FDA may be going after the wrong ingredient: "One recent study of European washed-rind cheeses found almost twice as much Listeria in the pasteurized samples than in the raw-milk samples."

The ACS (the American Cheese Society) informed us that they will release a statement about safe cheesemaking in the next day or so. Instead of focusing on raw-milk and the 60 day rule, the FDA should come up with clear guidelines for cheese handling and find a way to enforce them. After all, those of us who relish the taste of Vacherin Mont d'Or or Brie de Meaux, couldn't imagine a world without raw-milk.

Cheese enthusiasts have long lauded the benefits of raw-milk, from its rich, complex and creamier taste to its healthful enzymes. This past June, the FDA raided Venice, California, grocery store Rawsome Foods and found illegal cheeses from Morningland Dairy. (Check out Stephen Colbert's hilarious parody of the raid.) Hopefully, the recent health problems involving raw-milk cheeses from Morningland Dairy, Estrella Family Creamery and Bravo Farms will persuade health officials to reexamine the causes of harmful bacteria so that we can reap the same culinary benefits that the French have been enjoying for centuries.

Roasted Squash Seed Oil: The Newest Alternative to Olive Oil

      Courtesy: Stony Brook WholeHeartedFoods

Way before it's time to peel back the skins from the mushy goodness of steaming, roasted squash, the first step is removing those slimy seeds and, if you're a good recycler, dumping them in a compost bin. But to Greg Woodworth, saving those seeds is step one in producing a deep amber-colored, aromatically nutty, squash seed oil, a no-waste answer to upstate New York's abundant fall crop and an American alternative to olive oil.

Once a cookie factory in Boston, Woodworth's now repurposed, renamed, relocated Stony Brook WholeHeartedFoods in Geneva, NY -- co-owned with partner Kelly Coughlin, a public health advocate for water quality -- bottles 20 cases of spent seed oil each week from acorn, delicata, butternut and buttercup squash (and soon, pumpkin) to be shipped to culinary boutique shops, restaurants and grocery stores across the country, like Formaggio Kitchen in Boston and even Whole Foods Market in Dedham, Mass. and Portland, Maine.
Seth Colon, who runs the hyperlocal EAT restaurant in Brooklyn with brother Jordon, suggests adding the oil to whole grains and vegetable salads, like they do on their no-olive-oil menu. "It's very delicate," he says, so it's best not used as a cooking oil, but rather as a dressing. Ken Thomas, kitchen manager at Fore Street in Portland, Maine, agrees. He mostly uses it to build vinaigrettes and garnish soups, drizzling it over the top of squash bisques before sending them off to be swirled at the table. Same goes for Jody Adams, chef-owner of Rialto in Cambridge, who describes it as a great finishing oil that's rich like toasted sesame oil and bold enough to stand up to the restaurant's hearty grains salad with pickled apples, blue cheese and curried pumpkin seeds. Though, with a relatively high smoking point of 425ºF, Woodworth says it's also safe to use at the final stage of stir-frying with a quick toss, or to steam in a covered pan with Brussels sprouts.

Despite the amazing culinary discovery, there was no initial intention to find a viable source of local oil. Woodworth and Coughlin were simply content with their plan to relocate their cookie operation to the Finger Lakes in late 2006 to be part of the growing local food movement in the area. Woodworth had worked his way up the food chain from the back of the house at age 12 in his hometown of Brooklyn, to the front of the house, to a degree from Cornell's Hotel School and a job with top food contracting companies that serviced the likes of Grand Central Station's balcony pubs -- he was perfectly happy running his own cookie company.

But when Finger Lakes-area Martin Farms approached Woodworth about replacing the butter in their cookie recipe with oil from the 20,000 to 30,000 seeds the farm produces each year -- they pre-cut organic, non-GMO squash to be sold cook-ready at grocery stores across the Northeast -- Woodworth had a revelation: "We really saw it as a way to celebrate the regional agricultural efforts of our farmers and agricultural community, in the same way that Spain and Italy celebrates their olive harvest each year," says Woodworth, because "we don't have olive trees growing up here...squash is our celebrity."

Third-generation Martin Farms was in the midst of a research project with Cornell's Food Venture Center (the birthplace for most American apples), but they weren't sure what to do with the oil and weren't convinced people would buy it as a stand-alone product. But a small testing expeller press and nut roaster were on hand to borrow, so Woodworth set out to experiment, while still running the cookie biz.

About six to eight months later, he had convinced Martin Farms that this oil was worth more than a butter substitute; this was a culinary oil. After its first official taste-test around a butcher's block at Formaggio Kitchen in Boston, the manager turned to him and said, "If you have a case, I'll take one right now." Woodworth had made sure he did indeed have a case in his car, ready to go. Before he closed the door behind him and headed back to Geneva to share the good news, Formaggio was already making room on a shelf.

And that's just the half of it. After the seeds are roasted and crushed into oblivion, oil isn't the only extrusion; the process also leaves behind shell hulls formed into seed cake, something Europeans came to know as tubular, dry dog-food-like livestock feed that's high in protein (50%, in fact) and incredibly shelf-safe, lasting in dry storage through the winter. It's a perfect way to get protein into the winter diet of pigs on a neighboring pastured pig farm, The Piggery, which sells some of the finest charcuterie in the State to frequenters of the Ithaca Farmers Market and CSA members in New York City.

But for humans, if the golden, almost brown-butter-like aroma doesn't get you, or the rich and toasty, caramelized squash flavor -- much like the roasted slabs of gourd you sweat over as you strip and slice them into soup -- there's always the promise of 40 percent of daily recommmended vitamin E in every tablespoon.

The Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

Really, we all know the real reason why cupcakes are so popular. Cupcakes are basically an edible utensil for eating frosting, particularly when it comes to certain cupcake "flavors" like red velvet. What the hell is "red velvet?" It's nothing more than a fancy way to shamelessly eat a quarter- to half-cup full of cream cheese frosting.

Cream cheese frosting, you see, is the best frosting out there, and I have stumbled across the end-all, be-all recipe for it. Strangely enough, it's been under my nose this whole time in my trusty Joy of Cooking cookbook for years. I just never noticed it. At first I didn't trust it because it seemed way too easy compared to "fancier" recipes that make you think you need to be Ina Garten to make it, but this recipe is almost so easy, even Sandra Lee could make it. Ouch. Was that too harsh? See, that's how easy this recipe is.

Beat 8 oz. cold cream cheese (not rock solid, but it means you can use it straight out of the refrigerator) with 5 Tbsp. softened butter and 2 tsp. vanilla until combined. Gradually add 2 c. powdered sugar that has been sifted after measuring. Continue to add more sifted powdered sugar until you reach a consistency and sweetness that fits your taste.

No softening the cream cheese (though you do have to plan ahead with the butter). No whipping to a certain point that occurs for all of ten seconds before it's ruined. The hardest part is not eating the frosting straight from the bowl by the spoonful.

Year of the Goat: The Universal High-Flavor, Low-Fat Meat

Goat meat, also known as chevon or cabrito, is prized all over Africa, India and the Middle East for its lean, low-cholesterol meat which breaks down like lamb and tastes like a cross between lamb, venison and beef -- with about half the fat. That's because, unlike most livestock, they won't overeat.

The Vancouver Sun, which predicts 2011 was the the year of the goat on our side of the Atlantic, spoke with Chef Nico Schuermans, who says it's very flavorful. "[Goats] don't eat a lot, like sheep, which is why it's hard to fatten them up," he told the paper. "It's been hard to find but butchers are looking for it. It's getting more and more popular in New York and Montreal but we'll get it sooner or later."

Would you (or have you) tried a bite of goat? We already hold their creamy cheese, or chèvre, high on the scale of decadent dairy, and if this week's episode of Chopped, where chef contestants found goat brains in their baskets, is any indication of its acceptance into mainstream America, we could find it in our butcher shops and staple dining menus sooner than we think.

But trust, we won't be the first ones after the offal. Goat can easily be swapped for any dishes that use lamb: in stews, curries or slow-roasted with herbs to eat off the bone or slice into tacos.

Lion Meat Returns to Arizona, via Tacos

Boca Tacos y Tequila, a locally owned taqueria in Tucson, AZ, has announced that it will be serving lion tacos on February 16, a sort of belated Valentine's Day present for those who take their declarations of love with a side of grilled Simba. The tacos must be preordered (and paid for) by 3 p.m. on February 7, according to the Arizona Daily Star. They'll be served as Sonoran-style street tacos, available with cabbage, guacamole, pickled red onions, diced cucumbers and any of six house-made salsas, for $8.75 each.

The special is part of the restaurant's "Exotic Taco Wednesdays," in which owners Brian and Maria Jose Mazon appear to be cycling through a veritable Noah's Ark of meats. They've served python, alligator, elk and kangaroo, as well as frog legs, turtle, duck, Rocky Mountain oysters and the "most talked about" (so far) -- rattlesnake.

Arizonans who developed a hankering for lion meat last summer after a restaurant in Mesa offered
a one-day-only special on lion burgers will finally have a chance to savor the big-cat meat again.
While Il Vinaio, the restaurant that served lion burgers in June, billed its out-of-Africa special as a celebration of the World Cup and a chance for diners to broaden their culinary horizons, the owners of Boca Tacos y Tequila have no qualms about admitting what they're after: publicity.

"In all reality, what I want is just people to know that I'm here," Brian Mazon told the Daily Star. "That's the way to do it. You can't get these tacos anywhere else."

No doubt the animal rights activists who picketed Il Vinaio last summer are now eager to know where Mazon's restaurant is, too.

How to Know if an Oyster is Safe to Eat

Like so many things in life, oysters defend themselves against being desirable by being potentially deadly. The maxim used to be that it's safe to eat oysters in any month with an "r" in it -- i.e., September -- April. Well, January has an "r" in it, but after a recent mishap, I got curious: when, exactly, is it safe to eat oysters, when not, and what makes an oyster safe to eat anyway? Here is some information for molluskophiles, molluskophiliacs, and molluskophobes.*
What is an oyster? An oyster is an animal that belongs to one of the groups of bivalve mollusks which live in brackish marine habitats and belongs to the species Ostrea, Crassostrea or Saccostrea. From the human perspective, oysters are used as food or to grow pearls (though the oysters that do the one do not typically also do the other).

From the oysters' point of view, food oysters do not fulfill that office just for humans but also other marine life, which may be one reason oysters live in clusters called beds, some of which form reefs as long as fifty miles, and why they live in shells that they can clamp shut against invaders. As for pearl oysters, they have problems of their own and are not patient with hearing the complaints of the food oysters, and it is reaction to this and other irritations that causes the formation of the pearl. Biologically, oysters are a more complex form of marine life than you think when you find them embedded on shaved ice and bathed in mignonette: they breathe, eat, defecate, and reproduce sexually -- often performing that function solo not in the way you're thinking of but by the fact that some species can and do change sexes during their lifespan.
What is a food oyster? Food oysters belong to the family Ostreidae, or "true" oysters. They are harvested from beds simply: by hand, rake or dredge. The safest food oysters come from commercial beds, where, just as with other food animals raised for that purpose, conditions are professionally monitored and managed. To ensure that you are buying legally farmed and harvested oysters, ask your vendor -- whether fishmonger or grocer (see below) -- to see the shipper's tag. This will tell you if the oysters were harvested from approved waters, and list the names and affiliations of the harvester, processor and shipper.
What about an oyster makes me sick?* If you get sick from oysters, it is either due to allergy or bacteria, and be warned: either presence can manifest unannounced. Allergies first: along with nuts, allergy to shellfish is the most common food allergy. Shellfish allergy is divided into two classes: crustaceans (lobster, crab, shrimp, etc.) and mollusks (oysters, clams, mussels, etc.). Shellfish allergy is primarily due to an individual's reaction to tropomyosin, a protein present in shellfish. As a rule, people are who are allergic to one sort of shellfish are not necessarily allergic to all of them; i.e., if you're allergic to mollusks you may or may not be allergic to crustaceans. Further, the allergy may be individuated: i.e., if you're allergic to mollusks it may be only to raw while cooked is fine, or only to oysters but not to clams. Finally, food allergies ebb and flow as do the tides that feed the oyster beds. So the only way to know if you're a) allergic to shellfish and b) what kinds of shellfish c) prepared how is to d) take your allergist to dinner. Or at least make an appointment with one (an allergist, not a mollusk).
As for bacteria, that is vibrio vulnificus, a rod-shaped bacterium that, unlike most bacteria, tolerates salt, making it a natural inhabitant of the same marine environments that also host oyster beds. In healthy people, eating shellfish that hosts the vibrio vulnificus bacteria can lead to a nasty case of food poisoning that can feature vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain; but in people with compromised immune systems (especially those with chronic liver disease), the bacteria can infect the bloodstream, causing severe and potentially life-threatening reactions. In occurences of both allergic reaction and bacterial contamination, it is crucial to timely seek qualified medical attention.
How about eating oysters in restaurants or buying them at the grocery store? If you're not allergic to them, you should be safe ordering oysters on the half shell in a restaurant as the restaurant should have gotten the oysters from a reputable fishmonger and should be serving them fresh, discarding any that may be "off" (see below). If in doubt, ask to speak with the chef preparing the dish that night and don't order unless you feel sufficiently reassured. Also don't be shy about testing the oysters at table. You will not look any sillier sniffing a fresh oyster before you pop it into your mouth than you will as the thing, once it passes inspection, slithers down your throat while the liquor dribbles down your chin and the hot sauce makes your eyes water. If you're not allergic and if the oysters are cooked, then you should also be fine as the heat will have destroyed the bacteria if there was any to begin with.
At home, it is best to buy fresh oysters the day you plan to consume them. Buy them from a reputable fishmonger, who aside from speaking to the provenance of the oysters can speak to their qualities, a welcome conversation for the home cook. Oysters should be tightly closed but there will inevitably be a few in the pile that are slightly open -- for these, have the fishmonger or grocery store counter staff do the "tap test": upon tapping, any open shells should close. Don't buy oysters that fail the tap test, and don't buy oysters that are bagged together, as it is impossible to tell which are safe and which not. Keep the oysters ice cold on the way home, and store them in open air (still on ice) once there. Though you might think otherwise, it is harmful to submerge them in water, as they still require oxygen and unless you are a marine biologist you cannot reproduce at home the natural environment that allows them to breathe. Test them again (tap tap) before preparing. Do not serve or taste any that smell 'off' (see below).
How do I know if an oyster has gone "off"? Honestly? Common sense. But here are the details: for both restaurant oysters and those you prepare yourself, the oyster should smell clean and briny. The meat should nestle snugly in the shell, though a little professional loosening is acceptable to the diner if not exactly to the oyster. Both shell and meat should be clean white, with a little pink or gray highlighting being acceptable, beneath a glassy sheen. Any oyster whose meat or liquor looks cloudy, brown, gray, blackish or reddish, or which smells brackish, should be discarded.
So what about those months with the "r" in them? There are too many legends as to where this aphorism came from to identify its true source (my favorite holds that it was introduced by Native Americans, which does not account for the fact that coastal tribes who ate shellfish would have been doing so long before being introduced to the Julian calendar via invasion). The more basic truth is that, wherever it came from, the "month with an r" proverb developed because those months coincide with northern hemisphere summer. During those warmest months, a variety of changes occur in marine environments, everything from red tide to spawning. These phenomena would make food oysters less desireable both aesthetically and hygenically during this time. As you're now committed to eating only commercially grown and harvested oysters provided you're not allergic to them to begin with, the maxim doesn't really apply, as the dangerous or unappealing conditions of the months-without-an-r are premanaged for you by harvesters, processors, shippers, fishmongers, chefs and, presumably, the oysters. That said, though this is a point of debate, oysters are at their best during autumn, winter and early spring.
*Note: though the scientific information in this post was gathered from scientific and medical resources, it is not meant to be the advise or treatment of a medical doctor.

Man Sues Over Mouse in His Energy Drink Can

Ok, if this doesn't sound like an April Fool's Day joke, what does? "Man Sues Monster Energy Drinks for Putting a Dead Mouse in His Can."

We didn't want to end up with our, um, tail getting pulled, so we called up Reed Yurchak, who was reported as the attorney in the case, and asked him if it was true.

The short answer is...gross.

It turns out that Yurchak's client, 19-year-old Vitaliy Sulzhik, claims that he purchased a can of the hyper-caffeinated beverage last year from a local supermarket in Des Moines, Washington. (Not Iowa, folks, as has been reported.) Sulzhik was looking to get his Monster buzz on; instead, what he says he ended up with was a mouthful of...mouse.

The rigor mortis-ed rodent had somehow met its end at the bottom of the can. Sulzhik claims that he immediately lost his lunch; he eventually turned the can, mouse and all, over to Yurchak, who sent it to a local lab.
Yurchak says that he's spent almost a year trying to get the makers of Monster to own up to the dirty deed.

"It's one of those situation where you wouldn't want it to have to come to this," Yurchak tells Slashfood. "And it wouldn't have if we'd gotten any sort of response from the company. But they just kept stonewalling."

But the company has responded publicly, pointing out that Yurchak left the opened can unattended in his car, leaving plenty of time for a mouse to crawl into the drink.

The statement reads in part:
Common sense would dictate that if a mouse had been introduced into the can at production (a virtually impossible scenario given modern production technologies) which occurred months prior to Mr. Sulzhik's consumption of the product, the mouse would have deteriorated and the product would not have been drinkable from the very first sip.


The suit Yurchak filed on his client's behalf seeks "reasonable compensation" for the incident, though Yurchak wouldn't elaborate. He says that ever since Sulzhik found himself swigging the Mickey, he's developed a fear of packaged foods.

As he was preparing the lawsuit, Yurchak claims that he was contacted by a woman who said she'd discovered a dead mouse in her can of Monster a few years ago. The "reasonable compensation" she received from the company: a free case of Monster.

If claims like this keep piling up, at the very least it would seem it's time to change Monster's slogan. "Unleash the Beast," indeed.

Are Farm Animals Headed to Rehab?

Whether it was baked chicken or a grilled steak, it's likely that the meat you had for dinner last night contained an array of pharmaceuticals. Alarmed by potential drug resistance in both animals and in humans, on Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called for more judicious use of antimicrobial drugs in the production of animals raised for food.

Antimicrobial drugs were introduced to industrial farming more than 50 years ago as a way to prevent disease in animals. But the FDA is concerned that many of the drugs have lost their effectiveness due to the development of drug-resistant microbial strains. The government agency wants meat producers to stop using the drugs to boost production and promote growth.

"Limiting the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals only for assuring animal health. Unfortunately, many operations use antimicrobials to increase production, or to produce larger animals, which contributes to the misuse of the drugs and raises the possibility of antibiotic resistance," FDA officials said in a statement.
"The development of resistance to this important class of drugs, and the resulting loss of their effectiveness as antimicrobial therapies, poses a serious public health threat," the FDA said in the statement.

Not surprisingly, the meat industry is unhappy with the recommendations. The National Pork Producers Council said the FDA guidelines were too much, claiming they would keep the industry from using medications to keep their animals healthy.

"There is no scientific study linking antibiotic food use in food animal production with antibiotic resistance," the council said in a statement of their own.

Scientists at the Union of Concerned Scientists beg to differ. Margaret Mellon, a member of the organization, says the council's claim is "patently untrue."

"There is a mountain of studies linking the use of antibiotics in animals to the evolution of resistant pathogens that cause human disease," she told the Los Angeles Times.

Whatever the case, the brouhaha is all a little premature. The FDA document isn't a regulation or even a proposed regulation. The FDA will open a 60-day comment period on this issue, then decide on what regulations (if any) to impose. In the meantime, if you're concerned about what's in your meat, organic is always an option. It might be pricier, but it comes without the pill bottles.

So Where's The Good Beef? Five Labels For The Humanely Raised

Ever since man made the crossbow, he decided it a necessary evil to kill or raise an animal for food. It's not something most of us think about much since few of us need to do it ourselves. But the more that recalls, seedy reports and gruesome videos surface, like the recent undercover clips at Smithfield Foods, we're reminded that we very much need to be aware of where our meat comes from and how the animals are treated before they become ribs, steaks and drumsticks. Or how chickens are housed and treated while producing the eggs that will become tomorrow's omelet.

That's a lot easier now. There are at least five labels out there letting consumers know which meat comes from humanely raised livestock. And thanks to a new report (.pdf) released this week by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC), each organization's standards have been categorized in a comparison chart so we know exactly what conditions are factored in to warrant certification for cattle, chickens and pigs. This includes air quality, slaughter method and whether livestock are finished on feedlots. They even specify how many hours a chicken should have darkness (because under fluorescent lights, chickens continue to eat if they think it's day, and factory farms love to fatten chickens in a hurry).

HFAC/Certified Humane and Animal Welfare Approved require the most humane practices and are the most transparent (with no conflicts of interest) of the five labels, which also include USDA/Organic, American Humane Certified and Global Animal Partnership (that is, Whole Foods Market).
Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) is the only humane label that saves livestock from feedlots. An AWA farm can only use antibiotics if an animal is sick (same for HFAC) and must allow for a weaning period of at least 42 days, two weeks more than the other certifications. Length of time of transport to slaughter is also the most humane for an AWA animal: no more than 8 hours.

According to the chart, Whole Foods allows for cattle castration without anesthesia and apparently doesn't care how the animal is slaughtered (neither does USDA/Organic) or if chickens have access to the outside (neither does American Humane Certified).

It's easy to find your nearest AWA-certified farms (or apply for certification) through their Web site where they've also started adding full profiles of each farm, such as Finger Lakes Dexter Creamery. This particular family farm is home to a small herd of dwarf Irish Dexter cows raised for nutty pro-biotic kefir cheese, an American rarity derived from the European tradition of drinking raw kefir milk for its high nutritive qualities.

You can also search for AWA-certified products at your nearest Whole Foods Market, even if their own label doesn't satisfy every conscious carnivore. And for announcements like newly approved farms and market events, follow them on Twitter at @AWAapproved.