A gift from dear foodie blogger friend Mardi of eattravelwrite. If you haven’t signed Jamie Oliver’s petition to revolutionize school food, you can do so here.

While there is debate out there (i.e. T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study – good read if you haven’t yet) about cow’s milk and its benefits and dangers, a lot of us drink milk or at least give it to our children. But do you know where your milk comes from? If you said, cows, you are right. But do you know where those cows come from and how they are raised?

Many of you are familiar with CAFOs and “drugstore cows” and many of you are not. CAFOs are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, where animals are pretty much confined in small places where they eat, urinate, defecate, and often die all in the same place with little or no grass or vegetation. There are many resources out there (look them up!) and these factory farms are perfect breeding grounds for bacterial growth and who knows what else. According to the CDC, over 75 million Americans get sick from the food they eat.

Note: these pigs are NOT from a CAFO – they are being humanely raised by a local farmer.

Drugstore cows are cows raised with unnatural diets and pumped with hormones and antibiotics to speed up their growth, which also speed up the possibility of illness (I actually had an argument recently with a woman who swore that a cow’s natural diet is corn and that the “media” was trying to lie to us that cows ate grass…did she think cows shucked corn with their hooves?). Most Americans are directly and indirectly affected by these hormones and drugs that have longer-term consequences than just a bad stomachache.

According to The Ecologist, the chemical pollutants passed from mother to child through the placenta or breastmilk can last decades…or even a lifetime. The EWG (Environmental Working Group) noted that it takes this long for a child to get rid of 99% of inherited pollution (note: that is not 100%):

• Phthalata platicisers (flexible plastics, etc.): 1 day
• Mercury: 1 year
• Flame retardant and stain-proofing chemicals: 12 – 60 years
• Lead: 166 years

This means generations of your children good be affected, causing permanent genetic changes. Does this mean simply not eating meat or drinking milk? But vegetables are not immune to bacteria and toxins. Recall outbreaks of E.coli in bagged spinach or the recent studies linking pesticides and ADHD. Check out this blog, Are You Sure You Want to Eat That?, for more information. Or what about the scandal of corporate greed and bribes and the sale of tainted foods?

So who is responsible for ensuring the safety of what we eat, meat or vegetable? In 2007, the FDA turned to states to step up their food safety programs. There is an ongoing debate whether federal or state control is more effective at ensuring the food safety of large national and multinational food companies.

Rather than getting caught up in this debate and risk harming ourselves and our families, it’s time that we recognize we are responsible for our food safety…as much as possible.

Buy local. Know where you food comes from. Better yet, know the person who grows or raises your food. If your food is not factory-produced or overly processed, the chances of these contaminants become lower. We cannot rely on some federal or state government regulation to do this for us. We have to take charge of our own lives.

Let’s start with our milk since many of our children drink it daily. where is my milk from? is a great website where you can source most of your dairy products.

Source: where is my milk from?

PS June is Dairy Month! For more and an insightful video, check this out.

A drug-free glass of milk and one of ZomppaPatty’s Whoopie Pies. Now that’s something I can get behind.

BPA, or Bisphenol A, is an organic compound, a chemical that is used in many food packages, such as the lining of cans, baby bottles, and water bottles. It’s used because it’s lightweight, durable, and versatile. But BPA has been suspected of being bad for humans starting in the 1930s. Since it mimics the body’s hormones, research over the decades have found correlations between exposure and negative health effects, from infant brain development, obesity, cancer, sexual dysfunction…and also bad for the ecology. In Japan, industry VOLUNTARILY (strange concept, eh?) removed BPA lining 10 years ago.

Source: Wikipedia

Prior to January 10, 2010, the FDA assured the public that there was no risk to human. In On January 10, 2010, the FDA announced:

“on the basis of results from recent studies using novel approaches to test for subtle effects, both the National Toxicology Program at the National Institutes of Health and FDA have some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children.”

SOME concern? Yikes! Even if you don’t care about the environment, maybe you care about pregnant moms and babies? OK, maybe you don’t care about babies, how about getting fat? OK, how about messing up your sex lives?

What can you do?

• Educate yourself about what companies are doing to ensure your foodstuffs are BPA-free.

Stay up to date with sites like the Bisphenol A Free with news, product reviews, and downloadable guides to protect you and your family. Whole Foods has been blogging about their efforts to ensure transparency. Bloggers like ZRecs review baby-safe, BPA-free prodcuts.

• Stay away from #7 plastics (look at the bottom), including food containers and water bottles (buying bottled water is another issue for another time).

A couple years ago, I started hearing about this, recycled any plastic bottles, and switched to SIGG bottles. I spent a nice little chunk of change for my pretty little bottle and even bought Cake Mountain Man his own.

Then last year, reports came out that the original SIGG bottles weren’t safe. Now they have come out with BPA-free bottles and I’ve heard they even replace your old ones. I admit, though, mine now sits in the back of my shelf because I bought it before 2008.

• Find out which companies are or going BPA-free. Use glass jars rather than plastic or canned, especially for tomatoes.

ZomppaPatty uses the Lucini brand and has a great recipe for pizza sauce here. My parents always told me to avoid canned tomatoes, but they never had an explanation other than it’s “bad for you.” Guess they may have been on to something. The high acidity of tomatoes can lead to greater leaching of BPA. Glass tomatoes are hard to find, but if I can’t use fresh or frozen tomatoes (ones that I do), I use bionaturae. Yes, it’s more expensive, but I figure I might as well spend a bit more now than pay thousands of dollars in medical care later on.

• Don’t microwave plastic containers.

I recycled all my plastic containers and use Pyrex to cook, freeze, heat my food. Yes, they’re heavier than plastic, but they don’t get that funky smell or that discoloration.

• Carry your own utensils – especially for infants.

I carry around these fabulous collapsible bamboo chopsticks. Granted, I don’t always use them, but they fit in my little bag (I don’t carry a purse, so yes, they’re small).

Are the studies conclusive on BPA? No. But now the FDA is serious about investigating it. In the meantime, stay aware and the results? TBA.

Today is World Food Day! Topic for the 26th annual day is: Global Food Crisis: Opportunities, Responsibilities and Solutions.

Join a live Teleconference information for today from noon to 3:00PM EST.

This time I volunteered at SEEDS in Durham, NC, a wonderful non-profit that focuses on teaching the young people of the city to “care for the earth, themselves and each other through a variety of garden-based programs.” About 12 high school students from the Durham Public Schools receive small stipends to work after school, learning to farm, run a food business, and participate in leadership development. They learn about issues of social and economic justice, food safety and security, and environmental sustainability.

On this day, they served as impressive tour guides for visitors from around the state.

SEEDS is more than a urban garden for youth, however; they actually sell their produce at the Durham Farmer’s Market every week. From giant peppers to luscious lettuces to succulent eggplants, these youngsters grow, harvest, and sell their produce grown from their own Durham Inner City Garden located right across from their educational garden space. The students even manage their own bee apiaries to make their honey.

Every Friday evening, instead of hanging out at the mall or watching TV, these young gardeners also share their week’s lessons and discuss issues of relevance at the fire pit. A program called SEEDlings reaches out to even younger children with an afterschool program that teaches them how to care for the earth, grow and enjoy food. There is even an outdoor clay oven where the youngsters make their own pizza with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, and herbs grown with their own hard work.

In a time when we hear about the terrible, horrible state of our youth, it is so heartening to know that if the young people of SEEDS are the stewards of our Earth, we might be OK after all.

Source: CNN

Ah, yes, the outburst heard ’round the world. What is it about health care that leads our politicians, who are supposed to be erudite, well-behaved, and level-headed (stop laughing), to act like 3-year olds in the sandbox? Make that 2-year olds.

Unless you haven’t turned on the news or been traveling, you probably cannot ignore the recent debates/fights/nasty fights over our health care system. I don’t think anyone – Republican, Democrat, Alien – can argue with a straight face that our health care system doesn’t need some overhauling. But what and how are other questions.

I don’t purport to know all the details, but I have been reading some of the op-eds and comments. One of the most popular articles that have been circulating is by one of my favorite heroes, Michael Pollan.  In his piece, he writes that we are arguing on the the wrong premise: while we fight about health care reform, we continue to promote a food system that encourages fast food and poor diets, “probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system.”

My interpretation of his essential argument is that without bringing into the national debate FOOD SYSTEM reform, health care reform is like putting on a bandaid over a scab you just keep picking at. Bigger scab, bigger bandaid. Scab is still there.

But not everyone agrees with this interpretation. The Center for Consumer Freedom posted a short response accusing Pollan of “fuzzy math” that misleads readers, raising alarm where alarm is not warranted.   Others, such as Don Hoyt Gorman, argue that pesticide issues aside, there is no nutritional difference between organic and conventional foods.

So who is telling the truth? Is Pollan just a fanatic who is freaking us out to sell books? Is there really no linkage between the American diet and food system and our health care system?

Well, while the debate on organic versus conventional and what our health care reform should look like rages on, my little brain reminds me of the adage, “You are what you eat.” Intuitively, I strongly believe that eating healthier, having more accessibility to organic foods, and living more actively can prevent many conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension. Granted, much of this is hereditary, but I’m not so sure I want to think that the guy-who-eats-a-Big-Mac-a-day-and-has-a-cholesterol-level-of-a-20-year-old is the rule and not the exception.

Not to mention, I would rather have my funny-looking, juicy tomatoes that taste like tomatoes from my local farmer than to eat a perfectly round, red, tomato-like tomato from who-knows-where.

While the country is mired in angry lies and arguements born out of fear of the unknown, I hope that my own little mission to eat productively, locally, and healthily (most of the time) will help me to be less of a burden to our health care system – however it will end up looking like. Inshallah.

Like many of you who support eating and living healthier while supporting community, shopping farmer’s markets or looking for that “local” stamp in supermarkets on a bushel of cherries or tomatoes have become necessary habits. For me, one of the people who played a role in instilling this habit was Michael Pollan. Pollan’s famous The Omnivore’s Dilemma changed my life and the way I eat and the way I shop; the way I engage with food.

While I have since read his other books, this one still remains a turning point for me. Now many of you may have read it, and may have or have not had a similar reaction to it as I did. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it. His observations and stories about farming underscores the reliance we have on oil…and on corn…corn in everything, and not always good for your health. When he talks about how distant we have gotten from our food, I’m ready to get up, and rally and protest against all big, industrial farms.

But are they all really awful examples of corporate greed?

This interesting article by Blake Hurst, a farmer in Missouri, was recently published in The American (supported by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute). His article, The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals, gives a stern admonition to people like me (I suppose) who spew about the big bad farms but don’t farm for a living. As a farmer, he discusses the realities he has had to face, from economic factors to animal nature (i.e. the stupidity of turkeys). He argues that many parts of industrial farming are owned by family farmers. He also argues that:

“Pollan thinks farmers use commercial fertilizer because it’s easier, and because it’s cheap. Pollan is right. But those are perfectly defensible reasons.”

Source: The American

While I am not wholly convinced, I do think Hurst raises some critical questions (i.e. how do you feed the world non-industrially?) and about the need to listen to all sides and perspectives, lest we all run around like stupid turkeys (I happen to love turkeys).

In the meantime, I’ll continue to ponder these questions as I shop at the farmer’s market, support my local farmers, and look out for unnecessary pesticides in my food.

Let’s look at the market economy and our farmers. In 1790, farmers used to make up 90% of the labor force. In 1990, farmers made up 2.6%. What happened? Is the decrease in farms a natural result of the market economy? Is it the role of the government to prevent the destruction of all farms? Which types of farms get help and which ones don’t?

On the one hand, farm bills and subsidies that “help farmers” sound wonderful, but what type of unintended consequences do they have on on whom? Government subsidies (and some would argue, natural market competition) have favored large companies such as Mansanto and Cargill. The growth of these businesses have changed the industry: aspiring students of agriculture study agribusiness, not farming. As consumers, we tend to still reach the prepackaged chicken nuggets because of ease and convenience and price rather than the fresh, locally-grown whole chicken.

Meanwhile, federally-funded programs that aim to help preserve farms do not always result in their (original?) intentions. According to Timothy Egan, up to $20 billion a year of federal money goes to farms, yet these farm subsidy systems often go to the richest farmers who are industrial farmers. These subsidies also go towards large commodity crops such as corn and soybeans to help produce more corn syrup and processed foods, rather than to small farmers who grow fresh vegetables and legumes.

Who is responsible for real change of our current food system? Is it a political issue? Economic? Social? Does it ultimately fall on us as consumers? As it is said, we pay with our feet.

Two new friends of mine, Sam and Will, have decided to not get caught up in the politicking and fighting about this bill and that bill, and act. Several months ago,  Sam (who is not a farmer) decided to purchase a house and some land, invited Will (who is an experienced farm manager) to join him, and started the Ever Laughter Farm. I remember the first day I saw it, there was a lot of grass. Lots of grass. 7 short months later, the Ever Laughter Farm has an abundance of greens (known for their leafy delicious lettuces that defy the oppressive Southern heat), chickens, goats, and even a few large pigs. They sell their produce at the South Estes Farmer’s Market in Chapel Hill, NC and the Eno River Farmer’s Market in Hillsborough, NC.

I am thoroughly amazed at their determination and their focus to walk the walk. There are others too. Recently, some folks from Crop Mob, a group of small farmers and farmer-wanna-bes, went to Ever Laughter for a day to support Sam and Will’s enterprise. In return for a day’s worth of work, a communal dinner and a date to help a neighboring farm.

With the world’s population pushing past the limits of the earth’s capacity, our food and people crises are very real for all living creatures. Climate changes, desertification, and lack of fresh water are all symptoms of a world in danger. Malnutrition is occurring under many forms, from overfeeding processed (and unhealthy) foods to cooking leather chairs as ‘lamb stew’. Using these crises to promote political interests – be they conservative, liberal, national or foreign – seems extraordinarily and dangerously short-sighted.

There will always be unintended consequences to even the most well-intentioned policies. But folks like Sam and Will at Ever Laughter remind us that sometimes, it simply takes real human beings to act and effect change through action, and perhaps then, we can move ever closer to Happily Ever Laughter.

More on FarmBill and subsidies.

Why?

It doesn’t have too nice things to say about big agribusiness and Monsanto.  With the recession and everything, I admit I sometimes have wavered – is it REALLY worth that extra several dollars per pound to get that word “organic” or “herbicide-free” or “bovine-growth-hormone-free” on my food package label? Do I really know what that means or does it make me feel better just because? Sometimes when I see how much the organic product is over the non-organic, I forget about the truth, such as Monsanto’s use of RoundUp Ready to kill weeds, which also ends up changing the actual genetic makeup of the crops such as soybeans, and in turn ultimately impact us.

This documentary is worth a look – the stuff about cows and soybeans are scary, especially for those of you trying to add soy and dairy to your or your family’s diets. I grew up during a time when milk was pumped with hormones. My sister and I drank gallons of it every few days, and it’s scary to think that my body will probably end up paying for it as I start to age. Check out Treehugger’s interesting question on bovine hormone here.

Photo source: Treehugger

Why are these videos so hidden away from the American public? Let’s start paying closer attention and remember – yes, hormone-free foods may cost an extra dollar or so, but if that means one less cup of Starbucks coffee or fewer junk magazines, I’d rather put those extra dollars into my food now than thousands later into healthcare with regret when it’s too late.

Take contol of what goes into your body.

Apparently, there is all sorts of hype about this resolution and it’s hard to find out the facts. Some have accused Monsanto of sponsoring this bill which, in the guise of food safety, will put an end to organic, family, and backyard farms.

Before you get yourself into a tizzy about losing your favorite jam-maker at your Farmer’s Market, take a look at KCRW’s Good Food‘s interview with Tom Philpott of Grist.org who has written a nice piece to outline the key issues. He also links to Food & Water Watch‘s efforts to debunk the myths floating out there.

We definitely need better food safety measures.

We also need measures that protect the public and their access to safe, healthy, nutritious, local and organic foods.