Tag Archives: Food

Non-Fat Meat and no Dead Animals – Really!

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Best selling Author, Paul Shapiro – “Clean Meat” (courtesy photo)

Best selling Author, Paul Shapiro – “Clean Meat” (courtesy photo)

Many of us have cut off the fat on meat.  I did as a kid.  Some of us go further, and cut out meat entirely.

It may be because it has fat you don’t like or because you dread to kill an animal to eat its meat.

You can’t ask an animal, for example, to contribute only, say, his leg because that’s all you want, begging the question whether we must waste the whole animal for some small part of the evening repast.

There is also a drain on our limited natural resources, on our eco-system, and, to choose a simple example, consider what it takes to make a single egg or a gallon of milk.

Paul Shapiro, the former head of the Humane Society of the United States, wrote it takes fifty gallons of water to make a single egg – “enough to fill your bathtub to the brim.”

As for our bovine bounty, Paul wrote, it takes “nine hundred gallons of water needed for every gallon of cow’s milk…”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has famously said that the compromised purity and shrinking inventory of the world’s water supplies will be the oil crisis of this century.

In 1932, the famous WWII PM, Winston Churchill, predicted, “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

Paul has now written a best seller, titled, “Clean Meat,” that describes a “suitable medium” to escape Churchill’s attack on his observed wasteful “absurdity.” Continue reading →

Eat local

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Paul Mock's Lettuce

Paul Mock’s Lettuce

Increasingly, folk want to eat local, safe, fresh, organic greens and meats with no additives or pesticides or antibiotics or GMOs for fear of what is known and yet unknown about their effects.

While runaway development everywhere threatens this effort to go green and fresh, pricing small farmers out of the market, nevertheless, the public appetite for good and better food is growing, and people are prepared to pay more to eat better.

At a Rural Innovation Confab in Winchester last Thursday, Lovettsville’s goat cheese meister, Molly Kroiz, said “real cheese tastes better, and people are tired of eating Kraft singles.”

Molly said cheese is a “combination of science and art” and allows for experimentation that lends a pleasurable flavor from how you make it, and where it’s made. Molly’s place is a farmstead meaning that she milks the Alpine goats, who forage on her rich pasture, and at this same farm, her husband Sam and she make the cheese. Molly said, “This quality is called, ‘Terroir,’ the taste of place.”

Some talk as if California is a “local” market, but a market truly local allows a farmer who favors craft to produce food that can be distributed close to the farm and consumed fresh. Continue reading →

E. coli – Another Reason to Buy USA

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[This post is by a local blogger, who has blogged for a while under the radar. I’m promoting this for a wider audience -Liz]

My April 3, 2011, post to this blog was about the dangers of consuming food and drugs from foreign countries (see “Eat At Your Own Risk: Foreign-Made Food and Drugs.“) This week, a particularly virulent strain of E. coli appeared on the scene, as people in Europe (and four in the US who recently returned from Germany) came down with nasty symptoms, including stomach cramps and bloody diarrhea. Currently, 1,833 cases of the E. coli infection have been confirmed, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. What makes this strain of E. coli even more dangerous is that it attacks not only the digestive system, but also produces a by-product called the “shiga” toxin that may damage the kidneys. Reports indicate that this strain of E. coli originated in produce, primarily bean sprouts, grown in northern Germany. However, sprouts, cucumbers, and tomatoes grown in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain are also suspect.

What exactly is E. coli? It’s a bacteria (Escherichia coli) that is commonly found in our intestines, and helps our bodies to break down and digest food. Certain strains of E. coli, however, move from the digestive system into the bloodstream, where they can cause serious infections. E. coli can contaminate crops when manure is used to fertilize crops, or if water contaminated with E. coli is used to irrigate the crops.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),the government recently has stepped up testing of food from Germany and Spain, although very little in the way of produce is imported to the US from those countries or from other European countries. (I have found a lot of produce sold in US grocery stores from Mexico, and Central and South America.)

Be aware that meat and produce from the United States is not 100% safe from E. coli contamination either. There was a small outbreak in the US (145 reported cases) of a similar E. coli strain reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2010. That outbreak originated from US-produced shredded romaine lettuce. In general, however, according to Don Kraemer, deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the United States has “one of the safest food supplies in the world.” Reported outbreaks of E. coli worldwide are evidence that this is true.

Treatment for the present outbreak of E. coli is primarily accomplished by keeping patients hydrated with water, and by dialysis, which is used to scrub the blood of patients with infected bloodstreams. In the case of E. coli infections, antibiotics don’t help, and may make symptoms worse because they may increase the release of toxins into the bloodstream.

Precautions that we can take to protect ourselves from E. coli contamination are: (1) eat meat that is cooked well – not red or pink; (2) wash produce well (I use a vegetable and fruit spray) before eating, even if wrappers or labels say the produce has already been washed; (3) wash hands well before preparing food, and (4) wash countertops where food is prepared.

The final precaution that we can take to protect ourselves and our families against E. coli is to buy food and produce made and grown in the USA. With fewer E. coli outbreaks from USA food, buying food and eating “grown in USA, and “product of USA” food just makes good sense – not to mention that it helps our economy. This summer, buy locally grown produce, shop at community farmers’ markets, and look for “Made in USA,” and “Product of USA” labels on food and produce.
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This week’s recommended products:
•Fruits and vegetables that are “Product of USA,” including “locally grown” fruits and vegetables (as they come into season.)

•All Natural Veggie Wash Fruit and Vegetable Wash – Made in USA by Beaumont Products, Inc., Kennesaw, GA
Sources :
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/04/earlyshow/saturday/main20068944

http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2010/ecoli_o145/index.html

http://kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/ecoli.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-03/water-dialysis-only-treatments-for-deadliest-european-e-coli-outbreak.html

Crossposted at usabuyusa.blogspot.com