Tag Archives: Nutrition

Chemistry in the food supply

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Ask any veterinarian what you’re supposed to be feeding your dog or cat, they’ll tell you dry food only, and water. So perhaps people poisoning their pets with wet canned meals have achieved their result, more recently accelerated by the accidental Melamine additive in wheat gluten imported from China.

The FDA has been reluctant to reveal the companies behind the wayward toxin, even as the public grapples with the possibility that the plastic derivative may have reached the human food supply. Naming names reveals not just the corporate logos but also the extended interweaving of chemical companies in the food industry.

Did you have any idea the can of Alpo held by Mr. Publishers Clearinghouse contained Wheat Gluten from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. or partner Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co. of Jiangsu, China; imported by ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas, Nevada; sold to pet food giants Nestle Purina, Del Monte, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and behind-the scenes giant Menu Foods Inc. of Canada which makes 100 of the different smaller pet food brands? Whatever are you deliberating in the pet food isle, which TV commercial will best please your domestic companion?

You knew pet food wasn’t made by Keebler Elves or the Jolly Green Giant, but did you suspect the truth was so sordidly mundane? Nearly all people food passes through the chemical fingers of Archer Daniels Midland or Monsanto or both. Wait until the FDA tries to keep their names out of the spotlight.

Just how stupid is the American public?

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A recent Washington Post poll reports that over half the US public believes that in the last 4 years of war waged by the US against Iraq, that only 10,000 or less Iraqi civilians have lost their lives!

True, polls often claim to be accurate opinion takers when they are not, but this one seems to ring true. The poll goes on to report, that now, still less than 6 out of 10 believe that the US made a mistake by assaulting Iraq with its troops, which would make sense if over half of Americans also believe that less than 13,000 people (Iraqi civilians and American military personnel combined) have lost their lives, in 4 years of a war that has blown away more than a trillion dollars of US and Iraqi money when combined resources are put together. Or maybe they think that there have been ten to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi combatants killed, while all the civilians got off relatively Scot free? This illogic is not ignorance, but stupidity.

This is more than willful ignorance, too, but actually is just pure gross stupidity. Actually willful ignorance as Americans practice it routinely, over the long run will produce pure stupidity over time. How on earth would any rational person believe that so much money for war making could produce so little civilian casualties? It’s not like the money was going towards Iraqi reconstruction, because it is widely known that nothing works there. Not the oil lines, not the potable water, not the hospitals, not the electrical power grid, not the sewage systems. It takes pure stupidity to believe that all that Pentagon power only killed less than 10,000 civilians in 4 years. Not even Bush and Cheney would state that! So we are left with a population where over 1/2 of the people are even stupider than are the lies they receive from the charlatan liars in the highest offices.

What can we ever do with such a stupid population at hand? It’s not as if we can give half the US population brain transplants. to remedy the situation. It’s not mathematical ignorance that leads so many to add up 2+2 and not get 4, but rather it is lack of any brain power at all. And how many in the US believe the world is only 10,000 or so years old? How many believe in ghosts? Just how stupid is the US public? PLENTY.

Pizza Patron shows that Tancredoista Right Wingers have no good taste

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Patron means bossThe Right Wing are such ignorant nuts. Any decent red blooded American would be rushing down to the local Pizza Patron restaurante and trying out their chain’s pizzas with flair. Where else can one get a barbacoa pizza, a chorizo pizza, or chicken wings with limon y queso?

Hey! What about the one I make at home, too, with hamburger, tomates, onions, and nopalitos? And I suggest for all the nutty Right Wing racists now aghast with rage at Pizza Patron for accepting pesos when their pizzas are bought… How ’bout a pizza con sesos in the barbacoa for you taste-retarded, racist gringo types? They should give that one out free even, and help get y’alls, Conservative, gasoline powered brains recharged some! You dittoheads are in dire need for sure. Hey! Free pizza for the Gavachos, please!

Pizza Patron is even receiving death threats, and other assorted attentions from all the usual Right nutter sources. Not only are they accepting pesos, printing their menus in both Spanish and English, and sponsoring good Hispanic causes, but the owner also has an Arabic last name (he’s half Lebanese)! Now that’s just too damn much for the idiot American nationalistic Right to take. Right, Sir Tom? (Tom Tancredo is Colorado’s Congressional HouseNut serving his patria sin sesos.)

Let’s pass a law where only hamburgers can be served in restaurants for Homeland Security reasons, of course. And only if any vegetables are deep fried Tancredo style. I think even Taco Bell is too spicy and unAmerican for our Zieg Heil Right. Poor people. They are so challenged about everything, it seems.

Draft the poor

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The two biggest Democrat- led events in this past century were the New Deal and the War on Poverty, and a lot of liberals say that these were the true glory days of Saint Franklin and Saint Lyndon, heir apparent to Saint Johnnie.

Fact of it was, even though Roosevelt did do a massive restructure of wealth, and the very richest condemned him roundly as a traitor to his class. They did in fact retain the vast majority of their wealth. And the main focus of the New Deal was buying off a pending revolution which would have made Red October seem more like a delicate shade of pink. The Communist party was extremely strong and organized. The anarchists were extremely strong and not so well organized. There had recently been an election where the Socialist / IWW leader Eugene Debs, campaigning from prison, had garnered enough votes in a presidential race to be included in the next election cycle.

The United States Army had recently been involved in a shooting scrape where they fired on a march on Washington of World War One veterans, who were airing their grievance that the US government had fucked them without grease. (This one I learned from that well known liberal hotbed, the VFW and American Legion)

The country was in ruins, financially and spiritually, people were starving in the streets.

People were so very pissed off they were on the verge of storming the mansions of the mighty and dragging them out, and hanging them in their immaculately trimmed trees, by their own intestines, while they were still alive. Saint Franklin saved their sorry asses.

And Saint Lyndon with the Great Society, the so called liberal handout programs the R’s whine about so much today? The ones which collectively wouldn’t amount to the amount of debt accrued just in the afhani/Iraqi conflict, yeah those programs… They were sold to the R’s as an investment in a future draft.

Yeppers. Seems the poor kids the Army depends on to go and secure the money fields for the rich kids, they had some massive health problems that caused a panic amongst the Draft ‘em All crowd. Problems that could be fixed by a comparatively small increase in nutrition and health care and education. Eighteen year old boys who didn’t have enough teeth to pass the physical. Scurvy and rickets, underweight. Poor eyesight from a lifetime of eating trash food. Ok so it wasn’t really trash food, more like just trash.

Now they are babbling about reinstating the draft. stupid stupid stupid.

Don’t they see, can’t they understand, the money the rich have today is phantom cash? Interest paid on the interest from loans made against the interest of IOUs. What are they going to buy the poor off with this time?

The Borriello Brothers secret ingredient

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The best pizza in Colorado Springs is made by the Borriello Brothers at the foot of General Palmer’s statue, on Platte Avenue between Nevada and Webber, across from Palmer High School.

I followed some fans from a YMCA basketball game and was warned that addiction would ensue. I can report only that they were right, and I have no idea as to the secret ingredient. I think it’s cheese. I felt like a loser not knowing which delicacies to request for the toppings, but I followed the youngsters’ request for plain cheese pizza. Now there’s no turning back, it’s plain cheese for me, and from nobody but the Borriello Brothers.

Now if they could use only non-BGH dairy products and whole grain ground wheat, I could feel good about my new diet.

Saying grace

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Is grace recited before meals anymore? It seems the bigger the dinner, the more preparation or participation that goes into the repast, the greater is the sense that something is missing if we omit the prayer to dive into our food. A private reflection might be payed during the erstwhile silent moment but a word spoken of spiritual thanks seems no longer apropos in this secular thinking child’s age. Religiosity abounds still of course, but it is separated less from state and education than from the other aspects of daily life with which it also conflicts, such as buying and selling, lending and consuming, trading upon the disadvantage of others. End of the lineI too wonder if giving thanks for our abundance need be directed to God or divine provenance in appreciation of our predatory advantage, before a meal or after. For myself I have found a better occasion.

Driving on the highway every once in awhile I encounter a cattle truck, the trailer sides simple sheet metal grates behind which one can see the fur of livestock. You can only see the bodies standing steadily at the edge in semi darkness and apparent silence. I search to catch their eyes but the metal bands seem positioned to obscure our visibility or more probably theirs.

I used to entertain fantasies of derailing their voyage, stopping the driver to offer the animals a reprieve, however futile. But we’ve got a pretty principled meat processing company on our side of town, and I have come to accept the inevitability that mankind wants to domesticate some mammals to eat them.

When you see those large cattle trucks in non-rural areas, there’s little question as to where they are going. It is rare that cattle would be traded between ranches, or taken to the veterinarian, or sent to a State Fair to be exhibited as 4-H pets, or being put to pasture, as happens to horses no longer either. As much as you would like to think otherwise, the cattle in those trailers are being delivered to the slaughterhouse. When you see the unfortunate cows, they are only hours -perhaps minutes- from the ramp which leads to the aboitoir, to a violent ignoble death at the hands of a harried production line.

I remember reading about traditions surrounding the slaughter of pigs. The human-like cries of pigs have always wreaked psychic damage on the men who have to kill them. Some farming villages have ceremonies to ritualize the process. In many cases, a single person is given the responsibility of dealing the fatal blow. The Kosher tradition of food purity comes not from concern for regulating the quality of a meat source, but insuring rather that the animal was properly killed. Again, not by public health standards but spiritual.

When I find myself passing a truck carrying cows or domestic buffalo to their demise, I try to linger beside the trailer for a moment, long enough to give a thought to the beings inside. But I lack for what to say. To hope that their death will be as painless as possible, to pray for their understanding, to give thanks for their stoic, if involuntary, contribution, to thank them.

The price of chicken

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Child laborers at the looms making affordable fabric
The American high standard of living is built on economies of scale, predicated on cheap supplies on terms usually detrimental to the suppliers. In materials, this means exploiting the environment, in manufacturing it means cheap labor, in food it means industrialized farming.

It’s an oft repeated mantra, and counter to a consumerist imperative, but this dilemma can be addressed by showing restraint, even in light of growing populations. It’s resource conservation.

If we can’t afford a fairly traded commodity, we should perhaps consider going without it. We could make do with fewer consumer goods for example. or less meat and more beans and rice maybe. We would not need to subject animals to factory farms if we could reduce our demand; not going without, going with less. If range fed beef is indeed a luxury, couldn’t we consider not having a feast of it everyday? Just because a substitute can be had for cheaper doesn’t mean we have to indulge yourselves. Especially, I would think, if the cheap price means inherent harm on the other end.

A free-range. grain-fed chicken costs $2.85 per pound to bring to your table. Not $0.89 per pound, or $1.99 for the whole chicken, but $2.85/lb, or $7.30/lb for the boneless breast fillet. That’s what it costs to raise a chicken in conditions that wouldn’t turn our stomach or haunt us if we were really knew. Priced any lower and the chicken supplier has to cut corners and mistreat the animals in ways you would never willfully approve. Instead of three cheap chickens in every pot, how about buying one humanely raised chicken instead? Permit yourself the luxury of feeling good about the demands you are making on the food supply, about the sacrifice being made by others to sustain you.

A healthy-raised pig costs $8 per pound. Anything less comes from a place you don’t want to get within 20 miles downwind, much less see. Same deal. If you are now eating cheap bacon, pay more for an honorable source but buy less.

Range-fed beef costs upwards of $8 per pound. You’ll be doing yourself a favor avoiding the mad cow disease of factory abused cows and calves. $8/lb. Any less and it’s packing the trauma of its final breaths into the flesh you think you are enjoying. Plus the antibiotics pumped into the cow to enable it to survive the cramped unhygienic conditions of feed lots.

Wild salmon costs $12 per pound. It’s good for you, one of the best sources of nutrition this side of broccoli. But that’s not true about farm grown salmon. Now the domestic stocks are contaminating the natural fisheries. Stop encouraging the aquaculture robber barons. Don’t eat their salmon or their shrimp, they’re killing the environment and the local fishing communities.

The price test works for everything that’s unbelievably cheap. What? Were you thinking it was the miracle of modern capitalism? Goods available for less than the cost you would think they could be made? If it wasn’t affordable to you before, the company has now found out how to steal it from someone to bring it to you.

If you see something you never thought you could afford, and its price is too good to be true, it is for someone. The true cost is being born by someone else, maybe a pre-teen indentured servant, maybe someone who works a 12 hour shift sharing a bunk with the person who handles the other 12 hours, maybe someone who’s been incarcerated for the sole reason that their governor needs a low-wage labor pool, maybe it’s someone working off a debt which just keeps growing, maybe it’s an immigrant living in a special economic development zone from which one may neither move in nor out, maybe it’ll be you in a few years, without options in our race to the bottom global economy.

Exit 41 on the road to Mumbai via New Hampshire

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So what is the fast food management mindset that has led to Taco Hell having to close 4 restaurants, this week, in response to an E Coli outbreak? Well, take Exit 41 in New Hampshire to find out, but first, let this company’s website load. It takes just a couple of seconds. Exit 41

Yes, Big Dave, your company has gone totally mad since you passed away from an excess of fat. Wendy’s management is now outsourcing skilled labor, lol, to New Hampshire! But I doubt that it will stop here. Why not follow Dell Computers and others, and outsorce to India as well?

“Hi, this is Patel. That will be one Holy Cow square burger and a Mango Lassi. Will that be all?”

Can capitalism get any more efficient at alienating the Hell out of us all? Are you still listening to the.. uh.. music at Exit 41 and watching the little cars drive thru? Kind of captures the Milton Friedman essence of the thing, doesn’t it? And global warming be damned, too! Let’s get them cars moving, shall we? We need to speed up labor, and speed up consumption! Let’s turn people into little programmed consumer machines!

The ecology of America’s rotting food

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A lot has been written about the ecology of America’s rotten food. The book and movie, Food Nation, for example centers in on this American phenomena of bad factory food, leading to bad American taste, leading to bad American health. Fat city. If we keep gaining weight at the present rate our country’s population is doing, one perhaps can figure that the per capita weight per American will be about 10,000 tons apiece in the year 10,000. Holy hippopotamus! But what about the ecology of America’s rotting food? Just how much food does get thrown out? Here is what the food industry itself has to say. Half of US food never gets eaten.

If one looks closely at these statistics, we can see that the majority of the food waste does not come at the family table. According to this study, only 14% of what is bought gets wasted here. A family of 4 spends over $4,000 a year, and could save almost $600 in food costs, if only none of it went to waste. But since the supermarket actually passes much of its waste to the family home, really 14% is not that bad to throw out. Don’t blame the consumer then.

So how does the supermarket force waste on the consumer? Answer; by its constant promotions. For example, why buy 3 lbs of potatos at $0.59/ lb, if the grocer is pushing for you to buy 10 lbs for $1.29? What often happens, is that the consumer buys 10 lbs, then overeats to keep from throwing the food out. So he eats 5 lbs, and then tosses the other half of the then rotting remainder of potatos into the trash. Do we call all this efficiency of the capitalist system, liberty ,and democracy? Or do we call it a big rotten, rotting shame?

So where is all the other waste happening? When I lived in Oregon, I was amazed at how much rotten fruit was hanging in so many trees. At one time, the small family farm had produced orchads all over the state. But all those farmers got driven bankrupt, so their trees still produced fruit, but nobody was around still to pick it. Even the highways had both sides filled with ripe blackberries when in season. The bears were all bankrupt, too, so these delicious berries everywhere just rotted in the sun. All throughout the countryside, food is left to rot.

And look at our public schools. The kids get served about 3 times they could possibly consume, so that food gets thrown out in bushels. All under the guise of making sure nobody goes hungry. Yeah, but then again, all the kids grow fat. And they grow wasteful and slovenly, too.

Have you ever looked at the grocers themselves. High prices everywhere, but is it because what you consume is expensive? It’s more like what they throw away is what costs. You pay for the grocers’ inability to manage the transport of decent food at a decent price. Ever gone into Whole Foods on Academy Blvd.? Look at how many shopping carts are mostly empty. Why? Simply because the prices are too damn high. What do you think happens to all that unsold, high priced ‘organic’ food then? It just gets tossed into the garbage can. You pay for that with their higher prices. It’s all organic, though.

What a disaster all this is ecologically. The liberal sites were all carrying an article last week about the problems that high tech waste was causing ecologically. Computers, cell phones, compact discs, sex toys, tvs, etc. True enough. But to not eat half of the food produced in America is quite an ecological tragedy, too. The soils get worn down, blown away, and the rivers fill up with pig poop. And as grandma used to say,

“Eat all the food on your plate. There is a kid in India that is starving.”

I care, but I don’t think your average American business man gives a damn. He’s proud thinking about how efficient ‘free enterprise’ is in America, for making all of us grow so fat and growing mountains of food in double quantities we don’t really need.

Japanese Pizza

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Tired of the same junk food pizza? Tired of the same old ingredients? Here’s a site to help you out if you decide to make your own pie. Three whole pages of recipes at the Japanese Pizza Page

Most popular add on ingredient in Japanese pizza? Corn. I also like the tater tot pizza and the squid ink ones, too. So how can you go wrong here? Move over sushi, I want some Japanese pizza instead! Hold the mayonnaise though. Please.

Crying while eating

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images2.jpgYou’ve done it. I’ve certainly done it. Sitting down for a bite to eat, suddenly overcome by emotion. “My GOD. What has my life become?” Or “Why, oh why, are we fighting WARS when we should be MAKING LOVE?” Or, in my most recent case, “Why the HELL do I spend half my life doing things I HATE?”

Perhaps you were already crying but, through your tears, saw last night’s leftover lemon chicken and could not resist.

Do not despair. We are not alone. Plenty of good people, people just like us, cry while they eat. The difference is that they have the presence of mind to capture it on video.

Red Tennis Balls

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Is it an artifical vegetable or an artificial fruit?Move over Fast Food nation. I just picked up a new book (2006 publishing date) from the liberry, and the first chapter is titled Red Tennis Balls. Ever since my job as a carrot juice maker at a health food store when I was 16, the whole US ‘natural’ food thing has fascinated me. In those long ago days I used to grind carrots and then squash them for 6 hours a day. The rest of the time I made things like beet and parsley juices for our local gourmets. I even tried all those soy ham and soy hot dog things, and even today I got some veggie burgers in the fridge waiting to be charcoal broiled! But what to do for toppings? That’s what me laugh most about this book titled The End of Food. The chapter on the tomatoes!

Well the author says he totally lost it and started to study the food world of corporate science, when all he could find for his simple salads were red tennis balls. He discovered that once there had been over 6,000 varieties of tomatoes available to the North American consumer. But now, sad to say, the typical factory mart has us down to a choice of about 3. Three red types of tennis balls, that is. So he set out to further study just how all this had happened?

He studied USDA statisitcs on the matter. He found out that one pound of tomato in fresh, sauce, and ketchup form had all lost nutritional value since the beginning of USDA record keeping time from what was currently being distributed. When he studied other foods, he found yet the same. He studied pig shit too. He studied chicken eggs, and he studied apples. All foods had less vitamins and minerals in them than from before. All had less taste. Hey, all of it was getting pretty nasty, too. Since we didn’t have so much pig shit everywhere back in the Old McDonald had a farm time, only the pig shit now entering our human food supplies actually was ‘nutritionally’ increasing in volume It was adding things like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide into our living areas, and some locales were literally wallowing in it, so to speak.

Back to the tomatoes of Chapter One though. The author decided to go to grocery stores, farms, and corporate offices to ask folk just what exactly in their learned opinions were the characteristics of a good modern day tomato. Lo and behold, not one group of modern engineers of tomato production mentioned either taste, nor nutritional value, to be on their top seven important items on their lists. Thickness of tomato skins, appearance of being ripe while not, ability to go on long distant trips, etc. were all there, but not taste or nutritional value! In conclusion, the modern day American factory tomato cannot even be productively used to throw at the emperors of our land. They are like dull red tennis balls, and will not splatter. Better to hit them with the eggs from factory chickens, whcih due to less calcium now in their shells will actually help them splatter yet better. Go for it.

And Bon Appetit!

Starbucks vs. the birthplace of coffee

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Oldest coffee in the worldWant an afficionado’s tip? The mother of all coffees is Ethiopian Harrar. Literally. The insight is as olfactory as it is scientific. History records that the first coffees were cultivated in Ethiopia/ Abyssinia on the Red Sea. Every current variety of Coffea Arabica is believed to have originated from those plants. Colombian Juan Valdez picks coffee beans introduced to the New World by the Spaniards. Indoneasian javas were planted by the Dutch. Each of those famous varieties were transplanted Arabica. Starbucks wants to transplant the names.

It might be fitting now that Ethiopian farmers are asking for the right to control their unique varietal names. Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe are considered premium coffees and refer to the regions of Ethiopia where they are grown. It is estimated that trademarks could generate an additional $90 million for impoverished Ethiopian growers who currently receive just three cents per cup of coffee. The problem is from whose profit they would have to wrestle the extra money: Starbucks.

Starbucks has been opposing Ethiopia’s trademark applications on the grounds that giving a higher value to the farmers would result in a decreased demand for the premium beans. Do you buy that? Even if Starbucks passed the increased cost unto the customer, would a few cents deter their caffeen addicted connoisseurs from the world’s most potent coffee? Ethiopia’s control over the branding of their product is likely only to increase their coffee’s visibility and prestige.

Bean counters versus the bean growersStarbucks denies having asked the US National Coffee Association to block the Ethiopian trademark bid. But in fact Starbucks has been trying to trademark Sidamo for itself.

I can’t find an etymology record to link the term bean-counter with coffee beans. In any case the expression denotes someone who values quantity over quality. I’d say they have the wrong beans.

Update: Le Monde article translated at Truthout.

Best cookie ever

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All your bases are belong to usWhen Consumer Reports Magazine set out to rate commercial chocolate chip cookies against each other, they needed a benchmark. To that end they hired professional bakers to optimize a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Because the cookie itself was a cultural convention, it was perhaps no surprise that reverse engineering backed them into the conventional Tollhouse Cookie recipe. But with a couple twists.

First, the use of dark brown sugar as opposed to regular, second, the addition of vanilla extract, third, unsalted sweet butter, and fourth, particular care in mixing the ingredients.

It wasn’t as simple as throwing everything into the bowl. Each addition would be mixed at slow speed for a specified time with a high speed burst at the end. Texture seemed to make the critical distinction. If you’re going to start now, you’ll have to wait until the butter is room temperature.

What follows is the CONSUMER REPORTS recipe, first published in 1982.

We wanted a cookie with a chewy interior, crunchy edges, well-blended flavor, and a high overall chocolate impact . –Consumer Reports Magazine

2-1/4 Cups Flour
1 level Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 level Teaspoon Salt
3/4 Cup White Sugar
3/4 Cup Packed Dark Brown Sugar
2 sticks (1/2 pound) Sweet Butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 Large Eggs
12-ounce Semisweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside.

Use a stand-type electric mixer to mix the two sugars briefly at low speed.

Add the butter in small gobbets, mixing first at low speed and then at high. Beat the mixture until it’s pale, light, and very fluffy. Add the vanilla at the mixer’s lowest speed, then beat at high speed for a few seconds.

Add the eggs, again at the lowest speed, switching to high speed for the final second or so. The eggs should be well beaten in, and the mix should look creamed, not curdled.

Add the flour mixture, a half cup at a time, mixing at low speed for about one minute, then at high speed for a few seconds.

Scrape down the bowl’s sides with a spatula, add the chocolate chips, and mix at low speed for about 10 seconds. If need be, scrape the bowl’s sides again and mix for a few more seconds.

Put tablespoons of the mix on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake until the cookies are pale golden brown (nine minutes in an electric oven, 10 to 11 minutes in a gas one).

Remove and let cool on a rack.

Makes about 30 medium cookies.

NFL Chunky

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For the NFL BellyOn TV and radio ads, they’re calling it Campbell’s NFL Chunky Soup, for the NFL Appetite.
 
Really now. NFL players are well tuned physical performers. Do you think professional athletes can afford to pump that much sodium, MSG, empty carbohydrates, and bad fat into their bodies? NFL players earn multimillion dollar salaries. Think they’re eating canned soup?

Do you think this might be false advertising? Campbell’s NFL Chunky is for the NFL Appetite. For the chunky NFL couch eater.

A sea salt taste test

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I bought some sea salt the other day. Dead Sea Salt no less. I’d heard a commentary extolling the delicacy that is yuppie salt. Who knew you could spend more on salt?
 
Sea salt costs quit a deal more than ordinary umbrella-girl salt. But consumers spend almost nothing for salt to begin with, probably why working the salt mines is not considered a great job. So the price of gentrified salt is half of a passible bottle of olive oil. Anyway I got the sea salt on sale and I was determined to hold a taste test.

I heard there was a texture difference apparently, and I could see that was going to be true. Sea salt was like so many little crystals compared to refined white sand of table salt. But a taste difference? Malarkey. Salt and pepper is like hot and cold or sweet and sour, absolutes. When something tastes salty it doesn’t taste sea-salty, it’s salty or too salty.

As near as I could recall, mother’s home-ec theory taught that salt was what we added to enhance the taste of a meal. We didn’t taste the salt, we tasted the enhanced food flavor, or we had used too much salt.

But that principle never rang true to me actually. It was like having us kids believe that there was more nutrition in the crust of the bread as opposed to the center. My sisters helped mom bake and noticed that the outer edge of the bread was of the same lump of dough. They called her on it when she insisted they eat the crust. Mom’s salt edict seemed more dictum, this time anti-sodium.

What are we TALKING about, pretending that salt’s a secondary enhancement of flavor?! When we put salt on popcorn, we do it to taste the salt! When we put salt on corn, cornflakes, cabbage or cantaloupe, (I don’t put salt on any of those, I mean when you do) we don’t do it to enhance their flavor, we do it to enhance our eating enjoyment because we enjoy salt.

So let me tell you, when I sprinkled sea salt over steamed spinach like so many croutons, and took a bite, I knew I would never go back. Olive oil and sea salt is all you need to eat anything. I’ll keep table salt to cook the noodles, but I won’t eat it. To eat table salt now, to me it tastes like iodine. Or like drawing a thread up your throat. Or like the second day of an oxygen tube blowing into your nose. Unbearably piercing. Common table salt tastes like poison, and I’m glad to hear people are catching on. No Hellman’s? Forget the sandwich. Or was that Miracle Whip? No matter, imposters all. No sea salt, postpone the meal.

Good food owes everything to context

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The best anything I ever had was a can of soda, thrown to me in the water where I’d been diving for the better part of a day. My mouth was salty from the seawater taste of my mouthpiece and the dry air from my regulator. The cool sweetness of the soda pop was an olfactory relief never to be rivaled. Ask me now, treading water next to an outrigger, negotiating the waves of the South China Sea, and splashing a Sprite over my mouth, nothing better.

I came to understand this context principle later while camping in the Ozarks with my uncle. After a long hike, making chicken and rice soup over the fire, by combining every freeze-dried ingredient we had, made the best meal I’d ever tasted.

This principle explains man’s imbibing of alcohol entirely. Drinking wine is nothing but context. Alone, wine is a tartish experiment. With a meal it’s chemistry. Ice water is irrigation.

I’ve since improved upon the ultimate repast. Spaghetti with olive oil and fresh Parmesan, shoveled into your mouth from a mixing bowl on your chest as you recline watching a film. I foresaw my destiny as a bachelor when I admitted this was my Saturday Night ne plus ultra.

How to improve upon such elevated culinary expectations? I tried that once too. Unfiltered pear juice, in a hot shower, while peeing. Probably it was just too easy to orchestrate.

One Cow

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Thinking about our food supply,
specifically the masses of cattle
in feed lots and dairy stalls,
enduring our degrading stewardship
in silent anonymity.
 
Thinking about how we’ve been
breeding the ideal domestic cow
through cloning, thinking that
there may perhaps be by now
only one cow.
 
Is it possible the collective conscious
of a same cloned individual
works something like the minds of twins,
not so strangely, as one?
 
I awoke from a dream of this cow.

Berries

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Not a berry sorryHaving a predeliction for juices and jams, I thought I’d read about berries. Here are the edible berries in relationship to one another, approximately:
 
RUBUS: (Bramble berries)
Blackberry     Chehalim
    Loganberry   Phenomenal Berry   Black Logan
Red raspberry     Marionberry
    Nessberry     Olallieberry
Dewberry     Boysenberry     Youngberry
    Tayberry
Raspberry Gold   Fall gold
Black raspberry/Blackcap Mysore/Hill
Artic raspberry
Cloudberry
Wineberry/Wine raspberry
Salmonberry
Thimbleberry
Whitebark raspberry/Blue raspberry/Blackcap raspberry
 
MISC.:
Wolfberries/Goji berries
Nannyberry/Sheepberry/Sweet Viburnum
Honeyberry/Blue-berried honeysuckle/Sweetberry honeysuckle
Pyracantha berries
Elderberry
Hackberry
Barberry
 
RIBES: (Ribena!)
Blackcurrant   -illegal to grow in US until recently
Redcurrant
Whitecurrant
Gooseberry
Zante currant   -actually a dried grape
Ocean Spray “Currants”   -actually dried cranberries
 
VACCINIUM:
Cranberry Southern Mountain Cranberry/Bearberry/Dingleberry
Blueberry   Northern Highbush   Rubel
    Southern Highbush/Darrow’s/Evergreen
    O’Neal Cape Fear Blue Ridge Georgia Stem Legacy Summit Ozarkblue
    Lowbush
    Rabbiteye blueberry
    Sparkleberry
    Elliot’s
    Canadian/Sourtop/Velvetleaf Huckleberry
Bilberry/Whortleberry
    Blaeberry Whinberry Myrtle blueberry Fraughan Black-hearts
Lingonberry/Cowberry/Partridgeberry/Mountain cranberry
Crowberry/Rockberry
Bearberry Alpine/Red Arberry Foxberry Kinnikinnick Mealberry Sandberry
Huckleberry Red Huckleberry Box Huckleberry
 
A Box huckleberry plant in New Bloomfield PA is the oldest living thing in the world. Locals call the nine acre colony the Jerusalem Huckleberry and it is estimated to be 13,000 years old.

Our prison system

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Returning home from Aspen recently, I drove by the state correctional facility in Buena Vista. My blood sugar was a bit low at the time and I had an epiphany of epic proportions. The individuals incarcerated in those ugly buildings aren’t criminals. No, not at all. They are simply victims of POOR NUTRITION! Show me a man who ate lots of Wonder Bread as a kid and I’ll show you a serial killer. Too much soda pop and Mike and Ike’s? A bank robber. Not enough cruciferous vegetables? Most likely a white collar criminal. Show me a young girl who doesn’t get her full complement of leafy greens and I’ll show you a young girl who has a lot of speeding tickets. And cake eaters? Well, I haven’t been able to discover a direct crime link but I think we all agree that they are, by and large, angry and annoying people.

WHAT? Yes! Trust me on this. It’s all about brain chemistry. It’s about neurotransmitters, chemical substances that cause our brains and our bodies to feel good and function normally. It’s about serotonin and epinephrine and dopamine and adrenaline. They regulate our moods, our thoughts, our sleep, our impulses. When certain substances are in short supply or are overabundant, it is IMPOSSIBLE to be a decent human being. Frequently, those that we lock up are drug addicts and alcoholics. Why? They are self-medicating! They know that they don’t feel quite right, and they are trying to fix the problem. But it’s not the right solution.

So how DO we stay healthy and happy? PROPER NUTRITION AND EXERCISE! This leads me to my proposal. Instead of incarcerating individuals who perpetuate wrongs on the American public, let’s send them to nutritional camps. They can eat the proper foods, get moderate cardiovascular exercise, lots of quality sleep. . .maybe we’ll even throw in a couple days of weight training. As a special treat, probably on Sundays, we’ll bring in a cute Pilates instructor so they can work on their core strength and develop flexibility.

Of course, the retards at the FDA can’t be in charge of my revolutionary program. They, after all, are the douche bags that gave us the food pyramid. Nor can any nutritionist who graduated from the General Mills College of Bullshit (it’s everyone’s alma mater. . .ask ’em). No. I’m going to call my friends, Dr. Julian Whitaker and Dr. David Williams, the most awesome health gurus in the country. They can come up with a diet that includes freshly-milled whole grain products, raw organic produce, hormone-free lean proteins, and lots of distilled water. I’ll call Kathy Smith to put together an exercise program. THE FIRM can be in charge of the weight training. We’ll get these “criminals” put back together in no time flat! We’ll educate the heck out of them and when they’ve completed the program we’ll drop them off at the local Whole Foods market with a couple of crisp $20s. The 400 employees of the prison (a career choice, by the way, which is also closely related to a paucity of necessary neurotransmitters) can run the program, under close supervision.

If you really think about it, you know I’m right. You know that certain foods make you feel great, others not so much. You know that a lack of sleep can leave you unable to cope with the stresses of the day. A nice hike on a beautiful afternoon is a fantastic tension buster. Shouldn’t we give these people a chance to experience all that life has to offer? Is it really their fault that no one taught them how to stay sane and healthy? I think not. I think they are victims.

Most days I’m just one Hostess HoHo away from committing an unthinkable act. There, but by the grace of God, and the power of sensible nutrition and moderate exercise, go I.

The dark side of white music

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What’s insidious about Country & Western Music? I’ll tell you. I thought I was just incensed at its hypocrisy because it rewards multimillionaire entertainers for talking like hicks. Country singers pretend to be simpleton hillbillies, possessed maybe with down-home smarts, but really they are finely-honed corporate media assets.

That used to just burn me up. The lying tight-jeaned shits, selling America on poverty vices like alcohol, tobacco and firearms while appearing to champion the little man. Honoring the blue-collar joe while keeping him down.

The worse consequence of Country Music has not shown itself until recent times, now that we have conservative hayseeds -or appear to have- good ol’ boys in charge of everything. Pretty abruptly we can see the danger of idolizing dim-witted cowpokes.

Country Music elevates and ascribes a kind of wisdom to dumb in-bred kids who eschew school lernin. To them it’s all about thinking from your gut, hell, thinking while drunk. It’s drinking wisdom, commonsensical wisdom, the wisdom of seeing no further than your own holler, of black and white issues and ass-kicking diplomacy.

That’s the damn insidious result of worshiping a west that never was, and a motto that is not real. That’s the uncomplicated, eternally pubescent world of Country Music.

America is a nation dominated by a low common denominator. It gets lower every day as people grow dumber from pellagra malnutrition and being left behind by our education system. That denominator has an anthem: Country & Western Music.

It’s the same melody, the same guitar riff, the same build, the same harmony. You can hum it the first time you hear it because it’s the same song. And it always says:

I’m proud to be a [dumbshit],
Where at least I know [what do I know?]
Bla bla bla [we’ll shit on whoever we please],
Bla bla bla God Bless the [arian nation of dumbfucks]!

The Taco Bell Fourth Meal gambit

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for insomniac fatsosIn case we’re not getting fat quickly enough. Taco Bell is trying to schedule a fourth daily meal -the 24 hour day that is- somewhere in the vicinity of MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.
 
And a meal of junk food at that. What do they take us for- big fat idiots?

As if we need to break up our sleep time (bad health and weight-loss planning), stick a meal immediately between sleep times (very very bad for digestion and weight-loss), add another full meal (three full meals a day is already unwise nutrition, better to eat small meals between activities), and again it’s high-fat, high-colesterol, hi-sodium fast food.

When Morgan Spurlock of SUPERSIZE ME took a wide-ranging survey of nutritionists to ask what would be a safe percentage of fast food meals which could be incorporated into a balanced diet, the consensus was: “ZERO.”

Go to Hell.

Organic food judged by the label

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You can judge a book by its cover if the book’s edible and the judgement has to do with how it tastes.

Detractors of organic products like to criticise the label as if it’s some sort of scam. And they’re right, organic labels are hard to enforce. And getting harder. Big agra wants a piece of the organic produce market, and they’re fighting to dumb down the regulations so that they can label their usual crap organic.

But the argument that you cannot trust the organic appelation only flies with a dumbed down public. An organic apple tastes organic. That’s really a lot of the point. It’s healthier, yes, and it tastes quite a bit better.

The general public needs to be told it seems what a food is, because food no longer tastes much like it used to. You have to look at what it says on the bag for example to identify a red delicious.

It occurs to me that Koolaid presented an early challenge like this. You could only taste that it was red. You had to look at the package to see if it was cherry, strawberry, rasberry or none of the above.

Crappuccino

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pictureWhat’s a coffee-free coffee? Does it say on the bottle it’s a “Crappuccino?” What is that? It’s not a milk-frapped espresso. Is it a strawberry milkshake? Is it a smoothie? A Yoo-Hoo? A DQ Freeze? Maybe it’s Pepto-ccino.
 
When Starbucks begins to sell burgers like Dairy Queen too, and when their customers begin avoiding Mad Cow foods, Starbucks can sell hamburger buns without the hamburgers [burger-free hamburgers] and call them crapwiches!