Monday Moaning

This is not so much a ‘Moan’ as something to think about even though it may go against the grain.

We have it drilled into us that fresh produce is the best, and nothing else will suffice.

But is it?

I read this article on NerdSteak last week, and it set me to thinking.

Reblogged.

Frozen Foods Can Be Fresher Than Fresh…

Some times you gotta be fresh…and other times, frozen may be fresher than fresh.  Some studies have shown that frozen fruits and vegetables can contain higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants compared to the fresh varieties from stores or farmers markets.

This is due to the fact that many frozen fruits and vegetables are processed and frozen right at the source, from minutes to hours after being picked or harvested during their peak ripeness.  On the other hand, fresh produce maybe be held for days, weeks, or even months before being sold to consumers, then held at the home for even more time before being used. When these products are held at ambient temperatures or even refrigerated, they slowly and naturally lose some of their healthy properties over time.  When product is frozen, it inhibits the loss of these volatile compounds, and provides more health benefits.  Some fresh produce is also picked before being fully ripened to handle the delay in consumption, which reduces the overall health advantages even more.

Supermarkets and even farmers markets have a list of ways to make their foods look fresh, such as water misting and trimming.  While these practices are normal, the overall health profile of these foods can often time be less than the frozen counterparts. There are even instances that refrigeration will INCREASE degradation of healthy compounds in certain food items, specifically soft fruits.  It is still recommended that foods picked right from the ground are the best, but frozen can be just as good of an option.

And as a side note, if you do want to cook your fruits and vegetables while keeping the most nutritional value in the products, steaming is the optimal way to insure the least about of benefit loss.  This is of course second to eating them raw.

Opinion:

This post ticked off a long lost story.

Millions of years ago, when I had hair and didn’t have a beer pot, wasn’t married and my kids were still just a distant gleam in my eyes, I worked in a Bird’s Eye factory. I was the night shift supervisor, which is a fancy title for anyone stupid enough to do permanent night shift.

We processed peas, principally, then French beans, asparagus and broccoli.

Take the peas for example. Harvested by machine and transported in big bins direct to the factory where they were processed within an hour of harvesting.

Our best peas, export grade, were  the aim. When the peas arrived we put samples through a ‘tender-o-meter’ to measure their hardness. Every half hour delay, the peas became harder, so reduced the grade, white, green, then orange which was considered ‘commercial grade’. White and green being for domestic sales. The peas were washed, cooked and inspected in twenty minutes, before going through the blast freezer and being snap frozen. and bagged in bulk for later domestic packaging.

So the frozen peas you buy in the supermarket were in the same condition as they were two hours from harvesting.

Now when I see fresh peas in the supermarket, I wonder how long since they were picked, one day, two days, more? How long did they stay in the field before being transported? How long between the grower and the market? How long between the market and the supermarket? How long in the supermarket before they went on display in the vege section?

The above post rings true.

In some cases, frozen can be better.

Of course, if you have peas in the garden, picked and within minutes in the pot is always best.

Change the World Wednesday – 15th May

NZ even has a stamp to commemorate early in the morning, I’m sure that’s a photoshop job

I am normally up at ‘sparrow’s fart’, but this morning they haven’t even started yet.

I’m up early because I was listed MIA last week when I hadn’t posted by midday.

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Temptation

This week is a beef-week, but I am doing penance… I was invited to a BBQ on Saturday (beefless week) and I succumbed to temptation… Sometimes it is good to sin.

On Monday, I bought another shark, so Tuesday – Friday, I will pay for my sinning.

I know, I am a terrible person.

Another update.

My goiaba tree growing where it shouldn’t

When I first moved in here and made my little gardens along the fence, a stray goiaba (guava) seed sprouted. I love to watch things grow, so I didn’t yank it out even though it was growing in the wrong place. I let it grow.

It is now quite a healthy brute, and I suspect it will fruit for the first time this season. I am watching for flower buds to form.

Goiaba is a wonderful fruit, it can be eaten, skin and all, straight from the tree, or put in the blender to make a great natural juice that needs no sugar. You must use the filter in the blender because the rock-hard seeds get shattered and make the drink gritty. When you eat the fruit whole, you just swallow the seeds… you’ll only bite them once; it feels like you’ve broken your teeth.

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This week’s CTWW.

It’s a toughy!

Level 1 (The Green Grasshopper) – Eliminate plastic bags. Refuse them at the store and opt for reusable bags instead.

 

OR …
Level 2 (The Green Warrior) – Refuse plastic bags at the market, find alternates for lining trash bins and refuse any food packaged in plastic.

 

OR …
Level 3 (The Green Ninja, Amazing Eco-Superstar and Environmental Hero) – Refuse to bring ANY plastic into your home … no bags, no packaging, no plastic personal care items, no plastic furnishings, tools, etc. The exception will be items purchased for health (e.g. medicines).

I’m more like The Green Worm, some levels below a grasshopper. Plastic bags in the supermarket are unavoidable here in most of Brazil. São Paulo, biggest city, has made moves to ban them, it hasn’t reached Rio de Janeiro yet.

When I am doing a small shop, I take my reusable bag, which also gets used at the local shops. But a big shop, if the supermarket is busy they get annoyed when I asked for a carton/s, so I have to accept plastic bags.

The bags here are of dubious quality, sometimes they are strong, sometimes they bust open under load. This requires the bags being doubled up for security. I am constantly berating the baggers for doubling up unnecessarily, like two loaves of bread in a double bag, the bag is not likely to fail under that load; or using bags when other bags aren’t full, or worse, putting one item in a bag. I hate that.

Trash ready for collection

I do use the bags for my trash, our trash collection system doesn’t have an alternative. If I have an alternative, or a carton, I use it. But if you do have a trashcan, they chuck that in the truck too, nothing is sacred.

Our trash is left on the street. In my block, we have a collection point at either corner. We used to have two wheeliebins, but through rough handling by the collectors, two became one, which became none. This is pretty much standard practice throughout the country. So the plastic bags do get reused, but ultimately end up in the landfill, which is the problem.

The other recycle use, is I give them to Raimundo at the botequim (neighbourhood bar) for people to takeaway bottle purchases.

So at least my bags get double use. Which I know is not ideal, but as Brazil is third world, we don’t have the facilities of the first and true ‘greenery’ is made difficult.

Last week I bought a hammer. I was offered one encased in plastic, I refused it and asked for the one hanging on the display without plastic. They appeared to be the same quality tool, the one in the plastic was double the price of the other. Pay for annoying unwanted plastic… é ruim (like hell).

My new shelves

In a rare fit of madness this week, I bought a new set of shelves for the living room.

I don’t usually buy new furniture, I do with secondhand or makeshift stuff. But I took a fancy to this one and have a corner of just the right dimensions to accommodate it. I love the rusticky finish to it.

It will arrive on Friday as a package, almost guaranteed to be wrapped in plastic with each piece separated by bits of polystyrene.

The assemblers will come on Saturday to put it together.

In Brazil you can’t buy ready-assembled furniture, it all comes in kit-set form and assembled at home, so you have no choice. If the furniture is not wrapped in plastic and polystyrene, the chances are high (given the lack of work ethics of the average Brazilian labourer), that your goods will arrive damaged.

So, I can’t claim Grasshopper, Warrior or Ninja status, I am destined to remain a lowly ‘worm’.

Horsemeat and Codswallop

One amongst many tainted brands

The current horsemeat scandal does not surprise me.

It was inevitable.

A number of factors caused it, principally the need for cheaper meat and those willing to subvert the law to provide it. The EU (European Union) and it’s method of supplying products freely over borders. Governments cutting costs with less health inspectors and monitoring. The decline in local butcher’s shops in favour of the corporate level supermarket.

We need to buy frozen meals at the supermarket

Lastly, and probably the biggest factor, our need to have meals prepared and frozen…

…because we are to damned lazy to cook at home!

Largely, we ourselves are to blame.

I have touted, for a long time, the need to return to the old ways. This is a prime example of why.

The governments have regulated that you can only buy meat from corporate slaughter houses and abattoirs. Another case of the ‘milk’ story, it’s because of your health.

Codswallop!

It’s because of corporate wealth!

For centuries we have grown our own animals for consumption and survived; and now the government comes along and says you can’t.

I know that because most of live in cities, it’s impractical to raise big beasts for the household, but we can seriously look at supporting our local butcher. Most are pretty reputable types, those that aren’t soon lose their custom.

We have been eating horsemeat for years. There is nothing wrong with horsemeat. The problem is that horses can/may have been treated with phenylbutazone. Therein lies the problem.

“In the United States and United Kingdom, it is no longer approved for human use, as it can cause severe adverse effects such as suppression of white blood cell production and aplastic anemia.” – Wikipedia

If horses were raised for human consumption, then they would not be treated and the meat itself perfectly okay, apart from peoples’ aversion to eating such a ‘noble’ animal.

We eat almost anything else, but suddenly the world starts gagging collectively over horsemeat.

We call meat from cattle beef, sheep meat is called mutton, pig is pork, deer is venison; if only we had a fancy name for horse, would it be more acceptable? Perhaps if we used the French, viande de chevaline, there’s a nice name, it would lessen the stigma.

Change the World Wednesday – 12th Sept

These do NOT make coffee, they produce dirty water

A week ago, I started my CTWW with coffee and no teeth, today, I have neither, but the pondering continues.

I am waiting for the water to boil for my coffee, and before that, you’re not going to get a lot.

People in the First World need gadgets. They have machines to do everything. If everybody just spent 10 minutes more of everyday in the kitchen and made coffee the old fashioned way, straining water through ground coffee beans you wouldn’t have the millions of coffee makers that are around the world. Now you add up all those coffee makers, all that plastic, metal, elements and glass that would never have to be mined, manufactured, transported and eventually thrown away.

That equals a lot of raw materials never extracted, refined and processed. All that petroleum saved, all that electricity never produced and used.

Fresh ginger

My kitchen smells deliciously of ginger this morning. Yesterday I marinated my steak in soya sauce and coarsely grated ginger root and today the kitchen still smells  fresh and clean.

I have a clump of ginger rhizomes in the garden, every now and then I break off a hunk for the vege bowl.

I must break the clump up and spread it out so that it will grow again this season.

My compost tomatoes haven’t ripened yet, but a couple are showing that yellowish tinge, so it won’t be long now.

My passionfruit vines had their first flower during the week, so hopefully they will be more successful and I will have passionfruit for this season.

Change the World Wednesday for this week is a great one. Apt for today because I am off to the supermarket after class.

This week, pick a food item which you normally buy in a package (especially a plastic package) and find a better alternative. For example, rather than buy beans in a plastic bag, look for them in the bulk isle of the market and fill your own container. Rather than buy produce in plastic “clam shells”, see if you can find them loose, without packaging. If you typically shop at a supermarket (where almost everything is packaged in plastic) consider shopping at a farmer’s market, food co-op, wholesale market or organic food store for better options. The idea, here, is to find at least one “green” alternative to plastic packaging … and, while doing without might be an appropriate alternative, we’re more interested in finding the food in acceptable/no packaging for this challenge.

 

Or … If, in your area, you find it nearly impossible to buy food which isn’t packaged in plastic, please speak to your market’s owner/manager to see if they can offer any alternatives. Talk to neighbors and members of the community to search out options.

 

Or … If none of the above works out, please write letters to your government officials and/or start a petition asking for plastic free food packaging.

Farmer’s markets, etc are the answer, but I have explained that is not feasible for me, so I am stuck with the supermarket.

They have many products prepackaged in polystyrene with wrap. For example they have shredded cabbage, I prefer to buy a small cabbage and it takes about 30 seconds to shred enough to use, so I wouldn’t even entertain the idea.

I have managed to get the fresh produce guy to put fruit in a simple plastic bag for me rather than buy a tray with wrap. But it’s got to be in a bag for ‘security reasons.’

These trays are really so unnecessary

They have prepackaged meat as well, but I always go to the counter and get my meat in a simple plastic bag, or get my bacon cut fresh and not use their cryo-vacced stuff, besides it always looks pale and insipid. A hunk cut fresh from a side is much more appealing.

So that takes care of the second part of the challenge. I am always on the look out to at least reduce packaging if I can’t eliminate it.

Today I will check around and see what else I can reduce, and then I will do an update.

Update

I failed.

Apart from the fact that the supermarket didn’t have many of the things I wanted, which is becoming all too often these days, I saw some wonderful filled pies, they were open topped, sort of like little 4″ quiches. The soft pastry would have been destroyed if they had been packed in anything but a polystyrene tray and covered in plastic wrap. There were four different fillings, I just had to have one of each… I felt so guilty when the girl in the deli section wrapped them.

But I managed to assuage my guilt over morning coffee…

They were scrumptious!

I’m off to the other supermarket in a couple of days, I’ll try again then.

Monday Moaning

Supermarket meat crawling with bacteria

Overall, food poisoning sickens up to a quarter of all Americans every year

Sell a little healthy raw milk to a willing consumer, and you can expect cops to burst through the door with their guns drawn — but you can pass off tainted meat on unsuspecting customers all day long, and the feds won’t do a thing about it.

Case in point: The latest study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, which showed that up to HALF of all supermarket meat is contaminated with bacteria — and half of those are resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Researchers bought 136 packages of beef, chicken, pork, and turkey from 26 supermarkets in five cities — and what they found would even make someone with an iron stomach a bit queasy.

Tests revealed that 47 percent of the meat was contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus. Nearly all of the samples were resistant to one antibiotic, and 52 percent were resistant to at least three different drugs.

And believe it or not, that’s not even the worst news — because S. aureus doesn’t even make the Top 10 list of the U.S.’s leading pathogens.

Americans are routinely infected by campylobacter from poultry, toxoplasma from pork, and E. coli from beef, just to name a few. All told, the top 14 pathogens are responsible for nearly 9 million illnesses a year, including 55,678 hospitalizations and 1,322 deaths.

But wait — because that’s STILL not the worst news.

Overall, food poisoning sickens up to a quarter of all Americans every year –- leading to some 325,000 hospitalizations and up to 5,000 deaths that we know of.

Who knows how big the real numbers are.

You may call it “contaminated meat,” but I call it “biological warfare.”

This is a bigger national crisis than airline safety, terrorism, or natural disasters — and the FDA and USDA won’t do a thing about it.

But you can.

Many of these diseases and infections begin at factory farms — festering stinkholes where animals live in filth, eat filth, and die in filth.

Along the way, they’re pumped so full of so many drugs that you get a dose with every bite.

If you can’t get your meats direct from a small farm, find a good butcher who does. Going organic is often a waste of money with many products — but in this case, it’s worth every last cent.

Source: The Douglas report

Is Supermarket Meat Safe to Eat?

Going grocery shopping today? You may want to think twice about buying meat or poultry.

A new study of 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey purchased from grocery stores in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Flagstaff, Ariz., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., found more than half contained Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause food poisoning, The Associated Press reports. And half of the contaminated samples had a form of staph that’s resistant to at least three kinds of antibiotics.

“This study shows that much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with multidrug-resistant staph,” Paul Keim, one of the study’s authors at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona, said in a statement.

Among the types of drug-resistant germs the researchers found, one was methicillin-resistant staph, or MRSA, a superbug that can be fatal, according to the AP. They found MRSA in three of the 136 samples.

But don’t panic. Staph germs are commonly found on the skin and in the noses of up to 25 percent of healthy people. Hand-washing and proper cooking are the best ways to kill the bacteria, and federal health officials estimate staph accounts for less than 3 percent of foodborne illnesses.

“Despite the claims of this small study, consumers can feel confident that meat and poultry is safe,” James H. Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute, said in a statement on Friday.

Do you believe him?

Source: SodaHead

Opinion:

I don’t believe anything they say. They say want they want us to hear so they can continue making a profit.

The passing of the local butchers shop in favour of the supermarkets is a sad thing. Once we could believe in the safety of buying meat, today there is no knowing what goes on behind the swinging doors of the supermarket meat department.

I have bought ground beef from the supermarket and the next day it was unusable. When I buy from the butcher it is ground in front of me, I know that it’s freshly ground and hasn’t sat around all day sweating in a plastic wrap allowing the bacteria to multiply.

When you read reports like those above, then you see statements like this:

Supermarket meat CANNOT be considered safe for human consumption. According to a Government Accountability Project (GAP) White Paper dated November 1997, consumers today pay for USDA Approved fecal-soup and other filth, when they think they are buying meat stamped as wholesome. What’s worse…Consumers are being victimized by a new food chain, foisted upon them by an uncaring, greed motivated industry.

It’s enough to make your stomach turn.

The time has come when we must pressure politicians to allow farm meat production, return to the old ways.

Grass fed meat, milk and eggs need to be a right, not the whimsical choice of some politician who wants to get reelected.

The status quo is totally against the health of the nation and responsible for much of the government over spending on healthcare.

Get the corporations out of our kitchens because they are poisoning us in the grab for profits. The corporations don’t give a shit about your health or well-being, as long as their CEOs get their obscene paychecks and bonuses.

 

 

Shelf-life and Beyond

What Happens To Old And Expired Supermarket Foods

Image via Wikipedia

As darkness falls, your local supermarket becomes a hive of activity. From canned vegetables and salad dressings to fresh vegetables and deli meats, countless items are removed from shelves by night staff. Approaching their expiration dates or because they are no longer at their peak quality, most stores consider them unfit for sale. With 15,000 different products in an average supermarket and 25,000 in a superstore according to the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), retailers in the US are lumbered with endless pounds of past-their-prime items every year.

So what comes of all of this food? Fresh vegetables and meats, are often cooked up for in-store deli and salad counters before they spoil, says supermarket consultant David J. Livingston. A portion of it is inevitably thrown into the garbage and ends up in landfills. But surprisingly much of it finds a second home. Some is given away to food banks, some sold to salvage stores and the rest taken by people who scrounge outside supermarkets.

With the current economic troubles, expired foods are increasingly becoming a part of America’s diet. Salvage stores are seeing a steady uptake in business from cost conscious consumers. Similarly food banks across the country have reported an increase of up to 40 percent in the demand for emergency food assistance in the last year, according to a survey by Feeding America, a network of over 200 food banks.

Source: Forbes Read more