The consumer watchdog group CSPI published [PDF] a provocative list of 10 healthy foods that have been involved in large scale contamination in the past few years:

1. LEAFY GREENS: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness
2. EGGS: 352 outbreaks , 11,163 illness
3. TUNA: 268 outbreaks , 2341 illness
4. OYSTERS: 132 outbreaks , 3409 illness
5. POTATOES: 108 outbreaks , 3659 illness
6. CHEESE: 83 outbreaks , 2761 illness
7. ICE CREAM: 74 outbreaks , 2594 illness
8. TOMATOES: 31 outbreaks , 3292 illness
9. SPROUTS: 31 outbreaks , 2022 illness
10. BERRIES: 25 outbreaks , 3397 illness

The group is not trying to scare us away from these foods, it is simply pointing out a fact that the FDA must do a better job of enforcing safety regulations on growers, shippers, and manufacturers. The FDA should be given the tools by law:

the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws

What you need to know:

Food Safety is something we take for granted when everything is OK. But a rushed trip to the emergency room, fevers, cramps, bloody stools, or worse remind us how fragile we are vs tiny contaminants that find their way into our food. And the grave responsibility of the entire supply chain in providing us safe food.

While we believe that most companies try to maintain high standards of safety, there is always room for improvement. Unfortunately, many times the pressure to cut costs is at odds with additional safety measures.

Just this past January the great peanut butter recall exposed how easy it is for one bad apple (or in this case peanut) to infiltrate hundreds of food items.

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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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Salutations, today is Cinco De Mayo. Originally a Mexican holiday commemorating a great military victory 150 years ago, it has come to symbolize, especially in the US, Mexican heritage day. A very important piece of that heritage is the scrumptious Mexican food so abundant here, especially in the southwest.

Today we’ll take a look at guacamole, Aztec for “Avocado Sauce”. The classic dip is composed of very basic ingredients – ripe avocados, onions, lime / lemon juice, salt and pepper. Additions include chili, tomatoes, and herbs and spices. (see our easy recipe below).

So how different can a supermarket guac dip be from the basic configuration described above?
We were S H O C K E D when we laid eyes on Dean’s Guacamole Dip.

Here’s a look inside the label. Read more…

Kitchen Gardeners International

These tight economic times may lead us to opt for low cost “bargains” when it comes to our food choices. Especially susceptible are fresh fruits and vegetables that sometimes come at exorbitant prices. Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International has posted a great summary of how he saved over TWO THOUSAND dollars by growing food in the 1600 sq ft of his backyard:

By the time we had finished weighing it all, we had grown 834 pounds and over six months worth of organic food (we’re still eating our own winter squash, onions, garlic, and frozen items like strawberries, green beans, and pesto cubes). Once we had the weights of the 35 main crops we grew, we then calculated what it would have cost us to buy the same items using three different sets of prices: conventional grocery store, farmers’ market and organic grocery store (Whole Foods, in our case). The total value came to $2196.50, $2431.15, and $2548.93 respectively.

Read the entire post…

There are million households in the US that can do this now, according to Roger. There’s plenty to like about this idea:

- You get fresh, organic produce for practically free (seeds and compost are very cheap)

- The physical work will help slim you down.

- It’s a fun family activity if you get your kids excited and involved.

Obviously, not everyone has a suitable backyard, or a backyard at all, but community and school gardens are also growing in popularity. Check to see if there are any where you live.

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This is the second of a two part post.

In the first part, we explained why it is cheaper to gain weight than it is to lose it. The price of taste and convenience has fallen mightily to unprecedented levels in the past 50 years. As a result people are now fatter than ever.

Today we’ll show you that it’s not necessarily more expensive to eat healthy.

If you can’t pay more, and don’t want to sacrifice taste, yet still want to eat healthy, you will have to inconvenience yourself just a tad. You’ll have to invest more thought and time into food than you do today. But heck, if you have time for 3 hours of TV and 2 hours on the web daily, surely you can find some time to take care of your body.

Here are some strategies to eat more healthily and pay less. (Annual savings are for  a family of four). Read more…

The American Dietetic Association’s Annual Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo is a launchpad for companies’ new nutritional products and findings. Here are two additional announcements.

Beech-Nut, the baby-food underdo, has pledged it’s commitment to babies’ nutrition and health by rebranding it’s labels and messaging. Strict standards include 3 pillars:

— All natural: all natural ingredients, no added sugar, no artificial colors or flavors, no preservatives, no trans fats, no modified starches, and no harsh spices.

— Essential nutrition: A balanced ratio of protein, carbohydrates and fats for optimum nutrition, along with the enrichment of vitamins and minerals as needed for healthy development.

— Proactive nutrition: Enhanced benefits to support learning, growth, brain and eye development, and digestive health, including nutrients such as DHA omega-3 and prebiotics.

Con-Agra wants to make sure we are aware that canned tomatoes may help us ward off heart disease. They  funded a 5 year study with 14,000 adults to prove it (previous studies have shown that tomatoes in almost any form are high in nutrients that can help fight various diseases). And of course Con-Agra’s Hunt’s Canned Tomatoes should be a part of everyone’s diet.

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