aHA!

Organic is better. Big Agra LIES.

How serious are you?

How serious are you about changing your eating pattern?

Growing your own food?

Eating better? Eating more humane?

Shrinking your carbon footprint by going local?

Then it’s time to subscribe to one of the best magazines out there. Your local Edible.

Check out Edible communities to see if there is a local magazine for your city. You’ll find everything from farmer’s markets to recipes. If you like it, tell your friends. Give gift subscriptions.

Your city isn’t listed? Well, maybe you’d like to start an Edible magazine for your community. The information is all there.

What are you?

You are what you eat.

It’s like sex. You’ve had sex with every person who has had sex with your partner.

Well, you’ve eaten whatever what you eat has eaten.

Do you really want to live on a diet of corn, soy, garbage and antibiotics?

Well, a lot of what you’ve eaten has. If you’re buying cheap beef, pork, chicken and milk at your local large chain grocery store, that’s what you’re eating. Dairy too. You want grass fed pastured dairy, not factory farmed. Find a local dairy if you can. And beware the produce. You don’t know what polluted water it’s drinking or pesticides and chemicals they’re bathing in.

“…cattle, pigs and poultry raised on their natural pasture and grass-based diets yield meat that is lower in total fat and calories, and food that is higher in good fats like Omega 3’s, more concentrated with antioxidants such as vitamins E, C and beta-carotene, and with increased levels of other disease-fighting substances.”

Eating Kosher or Halal isn’t enough either. Because that just governs the way the animal is slaughtered. The underlying philosophy is that the animal is respected and is treated humanely. There are some suppliers that are going beyond the prayers and slaughter. They are raising their animals humanely and with respect by allowing them to graze in pastures and eat what God intended them to eat. They are providing them a life of Kosher/Halal. Is it pricey? You bet. Regular Kosher and Halal is usually double the cheap grocery chain stuff. Adding the organic respectful humane layer adds another 50% to the cost.

The answer?

Eat less meat and poultry. Face it. Americans eat too much protein anyway. Eat more fruits and vegetables. (From local farms, farmers markets and co-ops if you can). And start your meal with soup. Be sure you have a salad and some bread (but not too much and whole grain. Home made if possible.) You’ll find your entreé is much smaller by the time you get to it. So instead of buying a huge cheap, crappy steak, you are satisfied with a small, pasture raised, grass fed expensive steak that is much healthier for you.

It isn’t just where your food comes from. It’s also what your food eats.

There is no such thing as a salmon filet

Just so you know.

They may call it a filet, but I have yet to eat any piece of salmon that doesn’t have at least one bone in it.

This is what I hate about salmon.

But meatless Monday progresses.

Today I had orange juice and Cream of Wheat for breakfast, tuna salad on home made whole wheat bread for lunch, with some mandarin oranges and for dinner baked salmon, peas and basmati rice.

Tomorrow I may have the left over salmon for lunch. Or I may make myself a tuna sandwich. Or I may have a Cornish Pastie. Or pesto deviled eggs.

I went to the store and spent $28.70. (I have $5.00 and change still in my wallet.) Nothing pre-processed (except the orange juice). I had to tell the cashier that is a turnip, that is a leek.

I bought a leek, a turnip, celery, a white rose potato, some beef and pork to go with the lamb I thawed out, a dozen eggs, orange juice and Gladware for storage.

I’m taking the Huffington Post Week of Eating In Challenge.

Don’t eat out for a week. It actually starts next week, but since I’ve been avoiding fast food and pre-processed food, cooking is now what I do pretty much.

I’ll be making soup later this week. The broccoli is still good and I have split peas and lentils in the cupboard.

Even more to avoid.

Plastic water bottles and canned foods. Then again, you’re not eating preprocessed canned foods anymore anyway, are you?

BPA. Looks like it may turn out to be pretty nasty too. It’s been dropped from baby bottles. But now it’s been found that the cans of canned foods are lined with it. And it’s used in plastic water bottles. Even the kind you buy to refill with tap water. And it’s used to line metal water bottles. Basically you can’t avoid the stuff unless you use glass.

Eating responsibly

In a nutshell, this article from Huffington Post lays out simple ways in which we can eat a healthier diet while at the same time eliminating support for factory farming.

I’m lucky. I have access to Straus Family Creamery products in California if I look hard enough.

Putting it together

In defense of Food by Michael Pollen

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

“Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.”

You might say Julia Child planted the seeds for Slow Food in the U.S. At a time when fast foods, TV dinners and convenience cooking using pre-processed foods was on the rise, she was encouraging cooking good meals using real ingredients.

Eat Food.

Sounds simple. But do you have any idea how much food Americans eat that isn’t really food?

You’ve heard it before. Processed foods contain a lot more salt than we need. They contain a lot more fat than we need. The dangers of hydrogenated oils. They contain a lot less nutrition due to over processing. They contain ingredients we can’t identify and can’t pronounce. And they contain ingredients that aren’t food. If it’s boxed, bagged, canned or jarred and has a list of ingredients on the label, it’s processed.

Methods used to process foods include:
* Canning
* Freezing
* Refrigeration
* Dehydration
* Aseptic Processing

Processed foods have been altered from their natural state for “safety” and convenience reasons. And scary as it seems, about 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed items.

Sugar is sucrose. High Fructose Corn Syrup has been processed to combine fructose and glucose. HFCS is up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds, such as methylglyoxal, than a diet soft drink control. Carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage. Consumption of fructose is more likely to lead to obesity than consumption of sucrose. There are some indications that HFCS turns off our body’s ability to sense when it’s full and stop eating. Large quantities of fructose stimulate the liver to produce triglycerides, promotes glycation of proteins and induces insulin resistance. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics. In a 2007 study, rats were fed a diet high in fat and HFCS and kept relatively sedentary for 16 weeks in an attempt to emulate the diet and lifestyle of many Americans. The rats were not forced to eat, but were able to eat as much as they wanted; they consumed a large amount of food, and the researcher, Dr. Tetri stated that there is evidence that fructose suppresses the sensation of fullness. Within four weeks, the rats showed early signs of fatty liver disease and type II diabetes. Some HFCS manufactured in 2005 contained mercury. In 2009, trace amounts of mercury were still being found in a wide assortment of products containing HFCS.

Some people are more sensitive to fructose. They include hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic, hypertriglyceridemic, non-insulin dependent diabetic people, people with functional bowel disease and postmenopausal women.

Sugar glossary and list of hidden HFCS and amounts HERE.

To spot fructose on a food label, look for the words “corn sweetener,” “corn syrup,” or “corn syrup solids” as well as “high-fructose corn syrup.”

Other “non-foods” to avoid are:

Trans Fats, “partially hydrogenated,” “fractionated,” or “hydrogenated” (fully hydrogenated fats are not a heart threat, but some trans fats are mislabeled as “hydrogenated”). The higher up the phrase “partially hydrogenated oil” is on the list of ingredients, the more trans fat the product contains. Olive oil good. Palm kernel oil, bad.

Refined Grains, white bread, rolls, sugary low-fiber cereal, white rice, or white pasta. That includes refined white flour and even unbleached flour.

Salt, otherwise known as sodium. Your limit should be 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, about the amount in three-fourths of a teaspoon of salt. (Table salt, by the way, is 40 percent sodium, 60 percent chloride.) Only the “Nutrition Facts” panel on a food package will give you the real sodium count. Don’t believe claims on the package front such as “sodium-free” (foods can still have 5 mg per serving); “reduced sodium” (it only means 25 percent less than usual); or “light in sodium” (half the amount you’d normally find). In fact, between the nutrition information and the ingredients list, you’ll be able to cut a lot of unhealthy “food-like products” out of your diet.

Or you can follow Michael Pollen’s guidelines:
Avoid foods that are:
1. Unfamiliar
2. Unpronounceable
3. More than five in number
4. Include High Fructose Corn Syrup

Not too much.

Portion control. Sounds simple. But in fact isn’t that easy. Do we weight it? How many of us have food scales in our kitchen weighing grams of this and grams of that? Or do you to volume? Nothing bigger than your clenched fist. Remember that one? Or how about calorie counting? Or Richard Simmon’s “food wallet” with the cards. How much is too much. Not realy my problem. I did Nutrisystem for a year and my problem was not eating enough. After I reached my goal weight I had a cupboard full of “snacks” and some breakfasts left. So “not too much”. Well , I’m still working on that. In my lastest quest to try to portion (eat enough of the correct thing) I have found….Bento.

Bento boxes are portion sized and intended to be used for brown bagging lunch. Most work out to about 600 – 800 ml. There are some larger boxes for men and even family picnic sized bento sets. There are smaller boxes for children’s lunches. You can tell them by the anime and cartoon characters that decorate them and their bright colors. There are thermal ones with seals for transporting soups or liquids. Once you get used to the size of a bento lunch, portioning for breakfast and dinner becomes easier. You can bento a breakfast too. And there are open bento trays designed for dinners.

And even though there is no research supporting it, you’re still going to want to avoid HFCS in case that contributes to over eating.

Mostly plants.

Sounds simple. Until you’ve priced fresh produce. And what if you’re trying to eat green. You can’t grow enough to provide all of the fruits and vegetables you really need. You want to eat local. You also want to eat as organic as possible to avoid chemicals and keep your carbon footprint low. Locavore. Urban gardening. Edible Landscapes. There is a huge movement to replace lawns with edible gardens. Fritz Haeg wrote Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. Front lawns came into vogue after WWII. With the advent of the middle class and boom in housing, people wanted to display their prosperity in the same way the rich have on their estates: with a huge, wasteful, high-maintenance lawn.

At the extreme there is Urban Homesteading. This isn’t for everyone and is definately time consuming. You’ll also have to check local codes to see if you’re allowed to have urban chickens or other livestock as “pets”.

Can’t grow your own? You can still eat local and organic. Just find a farm near you that will allow you to join their co-op. You can have fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables year round every week, or every other week.

And for those that don’t have their own yards, there are community gardens. No community garden to join? Well, there’s always…guerilla gardening.

Adventures in eating.

I know it is illegal to sell raw milk in some states, but not in mine.

Tonight I had a bowl of cereal with raw milk. I didn’t notice much difference since the cereal pretty much flavored the milk. But I’m giving it a try. The local healthy grocery store stocks it and it isn’t much farther than the cheap grocery chain. And for now, I have money to pay more for quality food. For some things, I’ll hit the cheap store. But the healthy store has products with no high fructose corn syrup so I’ll be going there a few times a month probably.

At any rate, I am keeping a close eye on the expiration date of the milk and keeping it refrigerated properly. No BGH. I haven’t checked their eggs or asked about free range chickens yet. I didn’t ask if they had grass fed beef either but I will the next time. The local butcher has free range chickens and their eggs but no grass fed beef. I’ll have to go to Henry’s for that if the healthy store doesn’t have them.

Oh, and regular Cheerios? No HFCS. Yay!

And I’m starting to feel better. Don’t know if it’s just psychological or because I’ve been off HFCS for over a month.

I will miss my favorite crackers.

No more Ritz buttery crackers. They have high fructose corn syrup.

So do Keeblers Town House.

So I am reduced to putting Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers in my chili tomorrow. The chili is fine; my Mom made it from scratch.

Adieu to my beloved Wheat Thins too. I haven’t checked Triskets yet. I sure hope they’re OK. Mom’s cheese ball will never be the same without Wheat Thins but if I have to give up Triskets too, I don’t know what I’m going to spread her cheese ball on.

Does Julia Child have a recipe for wheat crackers?

Oh! Bento!

From Wikipedia:

“Bentō (弁当 or べんとう^?) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. Although bento is readily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops (弁当屋, bentō-ya^?), train stations, and department stores, it is still common for Japanese homemakers to spend considerable time and energy producing an appealing boxed lunch.

Bento can be very elaborately arranged. Contests are often held where bento arrangers compete for the most aesthetically pleasing arrangements. The food is often decorated to look like people, animals, or characters and items such as flowers and plants. This style of elaborate bento is called kyaraben.

There are similar forms of boxed lunches in the Philippines (Baon), Korea (Dosirak), Taiwan (Biandang), and India (Tiffin).”

I’ve decided to start making Bento. There are several reasons. One is…well, they’re so darn cute. So much more attractive than the typical brown paper bag or most of the commercial lunch bags and boxes you find. I have two that are both promotional giveaways so I’m advertising on my lunchbag. Not attractive. Another reason is interest. A sandwich, chips and fruit every day gets to be downright boring. Then there is health. I am really trying to cut out high fructose corn syrup and the best way to do that is to make food. That means cooking meals and eating leftovers. Those leftovers will go into my bento. I’ll also be making bento from scratch. Westernized at first. But I have a great rice cooker I love and am going to learn how to make sushi rolls. I can get sticky rice and nori sheets easily locally. There are five Japanese markets close to my parents’ neighborhood so shopping will be easy.

I’m making the small sideboard I’m using as an island in my kitchen into a bento station. I’m moving the canned goods I store there to the bookcase I use as a pantry in the garage. That will free up space for my bento boxes and drawers for my accessories. The top is my workspace.

I’ll take a few pictures of my better attempts.

In the meantime, check out the links on the side: Just Bento, Lunch in a box and Kitchen Cow.

You’ve got to eat lunch. No reason why it can’t be fun.