more melamine

…On a more concrete note, melamine not only has widespread industrial applications, but is also used to buttress the foundation of American agriculture.

Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn’t regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil through which American food sucks up American nutrients.

A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last month in Hong Kong, for instance, contained elevated levels of melamine because of the melamine-laden wheat gluten used in the feed for the chickens that produced the eggs.

To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world, much less evaluating its quality, is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool.

More ominous, the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the F.D.A. reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat.

Only a week earlier, however, the F.D.A. had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil.

via The New York Times:

Our Homegrown Melamine Problem by James E McWilliams

Last Sunday’s NYTimes magazine was dedicated to examining issues around the international rising cost of (cheap) food and it’s consequences: obesity at home, and malnutrition abroad. There are a series of interesting articles about the broad topic,  everything from a letter from Michael Pollan to “Mr.President-Elect” about food policy,an article about the complexities, politics and implications of  “Vietnamese catfish”,  and a piece by Mark Bittman, who ruminates on a question I have been thinking a lot about recently: “Why Take Food Seriously?”. My favorite article so far is the interactive piece called Inside the Fridge of a Foodie, where “five food leaders talk about the eating habits that fuel their professional pursuits.” There’s also a related piece, Food Fighters, that showcases seven young food justice advocates.

In all, the articles are extremely timely and approach the issue of food justice from some unique perspectives. Definitely worth checking out.

see you there?

click for more info

i’m going to need this

“Frederick Opie’s culinary history is an insightful portrait of the social and religious relationship between people of African descent and their cuisine. Beginning with the Atlantic slave trade and concluding with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Opie composes a global history of African American foodways and the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.”

On a side note, I’m not sure what to think of the author’s name… Frederick Douglass. Is this some massive joke by white America or what????

I kid, I kid.

the michael phelps diet…almost

Tom Cowan–founding board member of the Weston A Price Foundation

DAY 3 – 4850 calories: 16% protein, 23% carbohydrate, 60% fat

Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs, 4 pieces thick bacon, 2 slices homemade sourdough bread with 3 tablespoons almond butter, 1/2 cup sauerkraut.

Lunch: 2 slices homemade sourdough bread with 4 ounces raw cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup sauerkraut, 1/2 cup pecans.

Dinner: 16 ounces steak with 2 tablespoons butter, 1 large sweet potato with 4 tablespoons butter, 1 cup steamed spinach with 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup lacto-fermented beets, 4 macaroons.

Sally Fallon–head of the WAPF

Day 3 – 2300 calories: 10% protein, 27% carbohydrate, 63% fat

Breakfast: 1/2 grapefruit, 2 fried eggs with 1 ounce sausage, 1 fried tomato, 1 cup whole milk, 1 cup beet kvass, 2 teaspoons cod liver oil, 1 teaspoon butter oil

Lunch: 1 cup cream of vegetable soup, 1 ounce feta cheese, 1 tablespoon butter, 2 whole grain crackers

Dinner: 2 1/2 cups salad with oil and vinegar dressing and 1 ounce blue cheese, 3 ounces pot roast (in sauce of beef stock, tomato paste and wine), 1/2 cup each carrots, turnips and parsnips roasted in butter and olive oil, 1/2 cup sauerkraut, 3/4 cup homemade vanilla ice cream, 6 ounces kombucha, 1 cup beet kvass.

From: How We Eat: Food Journals of the Weston A Price Foundation Board of Directors

bon appetit, eh?

there's a camera in that fish eye

REAL southern cooking?

I really want to know more about the history of food in the South. I think true “southern style cooking” has been  twisted beyond recognition. You know we’ve arrived when McDonalds now sells sweet tea and “southern style” biscuits, and KFC serves up a whole southern spread dripping in soybean oil, artificial flavorings, and E-coli.

I personally believe that one of the main reasons that Americans have such a problematic relationship with  food is because we have no personal connection to it; we have no specific regional styles, no ethnic ties to what we regularly consume. It’s not embedded in us. We grow Thai vegetables in California and then ship them to Kansas and bill them as “exotic”. We quickly whip up “cajun spiced” shrimp and buy “Italian herb blends”. Everything is generalized so that it is easy to swallow–what we eat not only lacks complexity, but also obedience– to seasonality, nature, and our bodily needs.  We have become spoiled, overweight pigs in our quest to taste the world without leaving our towns, and it’s really  taking its toll on us– both physically and mentally–the environment, and our society.

Chowhound.com videos

So I’ve just discovered my new addiction. Chowhound.com has a really extensive video section, detailing everything from how to get rid of fruit flies, how to peel ginger, and how to roast a red pepper over an open flame, just like Pa used to do. I watched the video before making my lunch this afternoon, and then did it; it’s so easy. Foolproof, actually. There are 7 sections: Chow Tips, Grab Bag, Cooking and Baking, Wine and Spirits, You’re Doing it All Wrong, The Perfect, and my favorite, Obsessives. This section is a random smattering of video interviews with people (mostly small-business owners, from what I can tell) who work with certain types of foods and know everything about them. It runs the gamut from coffee, to honey, to marmalade (…?), to bread to offal. I just watched the one on seaweeds, which was pretty fascinating, especially since I have been eating a lot of dulse lately. Now I’m watching the one on tea and will probably watch the honey one next

Oh god, this is bad, I have to wake up for work tomorrow. But I can’t…stop…watching.

happy sunday

Food Party

farming in NYC?

New York Local is an article from a 2007 issue of The New Yorker which details some of the urban agricultural initiatives in NYC. In the article, Gopnik details his adventures in trying to procure a chicken to raise in his backyard, as part of a week of ‘locavore’ eating. In his search for products from within the five boroughs, he meets “the originator and keeper of the rooftop beehives of New York City”, David Graves, forages for food in Central Park with ‘Wildman’ Steve Brill, ends up at a tilapia farm at Brooklyn College, and visits the only two working farms within the boroughs, Decker Farm on Staten Island and Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn.