Some eye-popping food-safety stats from the Economist:

1. There are 26,000 food poisoning cases per 100,000 Americans, every year!

2. Compare that to only 3,400 cases in the UK, and just 1,200 in France (about one tenth, and one twentieth, compared to the US).

3. Every year 76 million Americans become ill with food poisoning. That’s 25% chance each one of us will get sick this year.

4. Of those contracting some ailment, 325,000 end up in a hospital, while most others get over it in a day or 2.

5. However, five thousand Americans die every year from food poisoning.

6. Insufficient food safety is a $35 Billion drag on the US economy.

Why is the US a tenfold more dangerous place to eat than Europe?

Some of the reasons offered in the article are “less eating out, less prepared meals, and less hamburgers” in the UK, but the real reason may lie elsewhere.

This is because the top products involved in food poisoning are actually leafy greens and several other unprocessed foods consumed at home.

There is hope, both on the regulatory and the entrepreneurial fronts. The FDA may soon be empowered by Congress to perform more routine checkups on producers and packers. And companies like Yottamark and FoodLogiq are creating barcodes that enable consumers to trace the route of their spinach all the way back to the farm where it was originally grown.

What to do at the supermarket:

Always thoroughly wash your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before serving. If you prepare meats often, invest in a food thermometer to make sure your cut gets hot enough at the center before serving.

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A growing number of foodies are looking to the Internet to discover and order tasty gems. These are artisan food products that are manufactured in small batches, usually from organic, local ingredients. The mom&pop operations are very small, will never reach national distribution, and at best are sold at supermarkets in the close vicinity of the producer.

Though some artisans have an online website and ecommerce platform, many don’t have the time or tech savvy to manage such a geeky operation. Another problem they face is marketing. How do you get the world to know you make the best darn beef jerky, or that your organic boysenberry preserves are comparable to ambrosia?

The solution of course is online marketplaces. There are several websites operating online to choose from. Three of the more popular sites are Regional Best, Foodoro, and Foodzie. All three focus on non-perishable items and allow sellers and buyers to interact directly for a cut of the sale and/or a flat fee from the sellers. Another newcomer, Local Dirt, connects buyers and sellers of locally-grown produce and meat and dairy products.

We interviewed Marsha, co-founder of Regional Best to learn more about this growing segment. Read more…

The terms “Natural” and “Naturally Raised” ring an assuring tone when affixed onto meat labels at the supermarket. Who wants to buy an artificial chicken. “Natural” conjures images of endless plains where cattle roam freely, and open ranges where hens peck and scuttle about to their heart’s content.

Wake up! There is currently no textbook definition for these terms. Nor is there a proper USDA definition:

Natural:

1. A product can be called Natural if it contains no artificial flavor or flavoring, coloring ingredients, chemical preservative, or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient, AND

2.  the product is not more than “minimally processed”:

Minimally processed = “traditional processes used to make food edible or to preserve it or to make it safe for human consumption e.g., smoking, roasting, freezing, drying, and fermenting, or those physical processed which do not fundamentally alter the raw product and/or which only separate a whole, intact food into component parts, e.g., grinding meat, separating eggs… and pressing fruits to produce juices.”

3. All products claiming to be natural should be accompanied by a brief statement which explains what is meant by the term natural…

Naturally Raised:

The naturally raised marketing claim standard states that livestock used for the production of meat and meat products have been raised entirely without growth promotants, antibiotics (except for ionophores used as coccidiostats for parasite control), and have never been fed animal by-products.

This rather loose definition means that animals raised in huge factory farms, with no access to pasture or open air can still be considered naturally raised. Poultry can be called natural, even when injected with a saltwater broth to increase weight by 15%.

The USDA is aware of the situation and through its Food Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) arm is inviting the public to weigh in on the matter.

Want your voice to be heard? Here are the instructions for going online and submitting your suggestions:

Federal eRulemaking Portal: This Web site provides the ability to
type short comments directly into the comment field on this Web page or
attach a file for lengthier comments. Go to http://www.regulations.gov
and, in the ``Search for Open Regulations'' box, select ``Food Safety
and Inspection Service'' from the agency drop-down menu, and then click
on ``Submit.'' In the Docket ID column, select FDMS Docket Number FSIS-
2006-0040A to submit or view public comments and to view supporting and
related material available electronically. This docket can be viewed
using the ``Advanced Search'' function in Regulations.gov.
    Mail, including floppy disks or CD-ROMs, and hand or courier-
delivered items: Send to FSIS, OPPD, Docket Room, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, 5601 Sunnyside Avenue,
Room 2-2127, Beltsville, Maryland 20705.
    All submissions received by mail and electronic mail must include
the Agency name and docket number FSIS-2006-0040A.

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Neither. The top spot goes to Prime Beef.

Followed by Choice, then Select, then 6 more levels.

The USDA defines 9 quality levels for beef. They are stamped on the carcass but by the time you buy your cuts at the butcher counter, you’ll only know by examining the sticker pasted onto the plastic packaging.

From the USDA:

• Prime grade is produced from young, well-fed beef cattle. It has abundant marbling and is generally sold in restaurants and hotels. Prime roasts and steaks are excellent for dry-heat cooking (broiling, roasting, or grilling).
• Choice grade is high quality, but has less marbling than Prime. Choice roasts and steaks from the loin and rib will be very tender, juicy, and flavorful and are, like Prime, suited to dry-heat cooking. Many of the less tender cuts, such as those from the rump, round, and blade chuck, can also be cooked with dry heat if not overcooked. Such cuts will be most tender if “braised” — roasted, or simmered with a small amount of liquid in a tightly covered pan.
• Select grade is very uniform in quality and normally leaner than the higher grades. It is fairly tender, but, because it has less marbling, it may lack some of the juiciness and flavor of the higher grades. Only the tender cuts (loin, rib, sirloin) should be cooked with dry heat. Other cuts should be marinated before cooking or braised to obtain maximum tenderness and flavor.
• Standard and Commercial grades – are frequently sold as ungraded or as “store brand” meat.
• Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades are seldom, if ever, sold at retail but are used instead to make ground beef and processed products.

Want to take a guess what’s in your TV Dinner, hot dog, or burger?

What to do at the supermarket:

We used to never remember what the top 3 grades where. A friend suggested remembering the acronym PiCkS when buying beef. good luck.

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A) Strawberry ice cream

B) Chicken

C) Plastic foam

D) None of the above

Answer below

Read more…

David Brancaccio of PBS’s Now show interviewed filmmaker Robert Kenner, the director of “Food, Inc.” a few days ago. The movie takes a very critical look at the modern food industry and helps viewers better understand why supermarket fare for the most part is crap, and why 67% of Americans are obese or overweight. The full interview is 24 minutes long. Here are some good tidbits:

1. 90% of supermarket food has corn or soy products in it. (That’s because soy and corn are subsidized by the government, making them cheap to produce).

2. Fast food chains were the original drivers of the industrialization of food. McDonald’s is and has been for years the largest buyer of ground beef, pork, chicken, potatoes, and tomatoes in the US. And it will only work with suppliers than can provide a steady, uniform, reliable product 24/7/365. Real food doesn’t work like that

3. Candy and Soda are cheaper than fresh fruit and vegetables. What do you think poor people will choose to eat?

4. Food industry claims that consumers should show personal responsibility when choosing what to eat are insidious.

5. Food has not gotten safer over the years. Not if a single burger can have meat from one thousand cows in it.

6. Really sad – the federal government does not have the right to recall contaminated meat off of supermarket shelves.

7. A ray of light – consumers, through personal preference, convinced Wal-Mart to switch to milk from cows who did not receive growth hormones.

8. Watch out for “food libel laws” – Industry will sue you if you don’t talk nice about food products. Example: Oprah Winfrey was engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the meat industry for saying she’d consider abstaining from burgers at the height of the mad cow scare a decade ago.

9. The legal fees for the movie were 3 times higher than all his previous films combined.

What to do at the supermarket:

Your choices are what ultimately fuel the food industry. By buying unprocessed foods, mostly from the supermarket perimeter, you will avoid many of the pitfalls of modern industrialized food-like substances.

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Did you know that antibiotics are regularly added to livestock feed in the US?

This may change if California’s State Senate passes a bill…

…that would bar ranchers and farmers, starting in 2015, from giving feed containing antibiotics to healthy animals to promote growth and ward off disease.

The bill would also prohibit schools, starting in 2012, from serving students meat from animals that have been routinely treated with antibiotics and would require state and local government facilities to try to buy antibiotic-free meat for their kitchens.

read the news item from KCRA…

What you need to know:

Antibiotics help stave off illness, but when constantly provided to healthy animals, may result in mutated strains of bacteria that are more powerful and harmful to both animals and humans.

Just as you wouldn’t give a healthy child antibiotics on a daily basis, there should be no reason to do so with bovines. So why do growers do so?

Unfortunately for most cows, they aren’t born into an ideal farm surrounding where they graze merrily in open pasture.They lead a short and miserable life in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) which are more like factories than farms. The animals are held in very close quarters, with little room to move and exercise. As a result, they are more prone to illness, and receive daily preventive doses of medicine.

What to do at the supermarket:

Today the only way to get antibiotic free meat and poultry is to buy organic or from a trusted local farm. It’s much more expensive, mind you, than “regular” beef, but for many people it is the only logical choice, from a health perspective as well as a moral one.

And who says we gotta eat meat every day?

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Image via Wikipedia

Whether beef or poultry, you’ve probably seen various claims on the plastic wrapping your meat. Women’s Health Magazine published 10 Meaty Secrets Revealed and

decoded the claims on packaged meats to reveal what really matters when you’re scanning the butcher case.

Here are ten popular claims and their meanings:

What you need to know:

No matter how much regulation is enacted upon manufacturers, they will always find clever ways to market their products within the limitations set by the USDA and FDA. As consumers, we must be vigilant and understand whether a message is mere marketing or truly represents a special benefit.

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It’s been almost 20 years since the nutrition label as we know it was introduced. The intent was to empower consumers to make more informed (read: healthy) purchasing decisions. Unfortunately, the labels have not helped, as America continues to grow, and not in a good way.

While blaming the inadequacy of the nutrition panel is a naive approach to America’s relationship with its food, there are certain oversights or loopholes in the way packaged food information is provided to consumers today. For example, health claims or nutrient claims, which appear in large font on the front of package, embellish one positive trait, say “low-fat”. The nutritional cost may be a product high in sugar content as compensation. But such details appear in the side panel (the nutrition label is never up front), and consumers don’t always bother to check.

We’ve compiled a list of improvements that can make labels and packaging even more informative, hopefully providing consumers with  better tools to make a decision. Consumers will benefit from increased transparency of nutrition and ingredient information. Read more…

The USDA on Friday approved the use of a new marketing claim for livestock – “Naturally Raised”. Here’s the beef from the USDA press release:

The naturally raised marketing claim standard states that livestock used for the production of meat and meat products have been raised entirely without growth promotants, antibiotics (except for ionophores used as coccidiostats for parasite control), and have never been fed animal by-products. The voluntary standard will establish the minimum requirements for those producers who choose to operate a USDA-verified program involving a naturally raised claim. USDA analyzed over 44,000 comments from producers, processors, consumers, and other interested parties in the development of this standard.

Consumer advocacy groups Consumers Union (CU) and Food & Water Watch (FWW) are all over this:

“This regulation will allow an animal that has come from a cloned or genetically engineered stock, was physically altered, raised in confinement without ever seeing the light of day or green of pasture, in poor hygiene conditions with a diet laced in pesticides to be labeled as ‘naturally raised.’ This falls significantly short of consumer expectations and only adds to the roster of misleading label claims approved by USDA for so-called natural meat,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst at Consumers Union.

Their recommendation:

CU and FWW said, aiming to ban antibiotics, animal byproducts, and growth promotants are all important practices that should be labeled specifically and discreetly and not couched under a vague and misleading term that does not address how the animals were raised, their main diet, treatment of animals, space requirements and other concerns.

What you need to know:

Is this a last minute directives published by political appointees just prior to becoming unemployed? We hope not.

The USDA has been working on this issue for some time. However, that does not turn this directive into something in the best interest of consumers.

People want to know they are eating food that is good for them. The terms “natural” and “naturally raised” are supposed to reassure us that a product is better, safer, and perhaps healthier. Marketers know that, and have been pushing to get approval for such claims for quite a while.
The problem is that it is impossible to define today what naturally raised means. Contrary to the image above, most animals grown for slaughter, live in cells, and eat corn instead of what their ruminant stomach was designed for (grass). However, they are now considered naturally grown by the USDA.
There’s a whole bunch of other unnatural things done to animals so we can enjoy our steak, ham, or lamb chop. Most of us are totally unaware of what goes on behind the scenes.

Without getting in between PETA and the cattlemen’s association here, one thing is certain – marketing hype sells.

What to do at the supermarket:

Do yourself a favor and don’t be bothered reading marketing labels. In processed meat products, stick to the ingredient list and the nutrition panel. There may probably be worse things lurking in there than traces of this or that antibiotic (high levels of saturated fat and sodium, for example). And when buying a cut of meat labeled “naturally grown”, keep in mind that this is not the “nature” type of “natural” we like to imagine, but more of a marketing shtick.

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