What are we really eating and who’s watching it?

Yet another wave of food recalls has food safety, food additives and FDA’s changing role in food enforcement in the news.

The argument for real food just keeps getting stronger. On March 4, Daily Kos reported that “the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] announced a recall of 30 processed foods containing HVP—hydrolyzed vegetable protein—a widely used flavor enhancer, due to ‘possible salmonella contamination.'” As of noon on March 8, the number of recalled products had risen to 108.

But what is HVP and why is it in everything from salad dressings to soups, potato chips, hot dogs, dips and even ready-to-eat tofu dinners? Wikipedia says that the flavor enhancer “is produced by boiling cereals or legumes, such as soy, corn, or wheat, in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide.” And as Helene York reports in an article for The Atlantic Online, “HVP could be in almost any food.” The term food industry suddenly sounds especially appropriate. Continue reading “What are we really eating and who’s watching it?” →

Hunger in America 2010: A major hunger-relief charity delivers a troubling report

In its first comprehensive report since 2006, Feeding America shows how the economic downturn is increasing risk of hunger for a growing number of families and creating pressure on relief organizations.

The French have a saying: Jamais deux sans trois—never two (catastrophes) without three. There is certainly no shortage of catastrophes, disasters and ongoing problems in the world today. The latest to capture world attention is the devastation created by the earthquake in Haiti.

And just this month, Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity organization, issued Hunger in America 2010, “the largest study of domestic hunger,” according to their website. The report shows that hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States. Continue reading “Hunger in America 2010: A major hunger-relief charity delivers a troubling report” →

Winter’s seasonal pleasures: Braised Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Golden Raisins and Linguine

Many flavors come together to create a complex, satisfying and surprisingly mild seasonal pasta dish. Recipe below.

Brussels sprouts get a totally undeserved bad rap. I think much of it comes from our national suspicion of vegetables in general. And much of that stems from bad or at least unimaginative cooking. Too many cooks treat vegetables as an afterthought, something to be boiled beyond mushy and then seasoned with a little salt and pepper. Of course many of us learn to fear vegetables from our parents. They hated them as kids and expect us to hate them too. So we do.

Whatever the reason for this collective aversion, hiding vegetables has become an industry all its own. Campbell’s V8 Juice first turned them into juice, so you could drink them. Now they’ve launched V8 Fusion, which hides vegetables in clear fruit juices.

Jessica Seinfeld wrote an entire cookbook, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, based on the premise of sneaking vegetables and other good things into kids’ meals. Continue reading “Winter’s seasonal pleasures: Braised Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Golden Raisins and Linguine” →

Four ways to help the people of Haiti

The food blogging community has proven itself time and again to be generous, warm and caring, always ready to share. The people of Haiti are in desperate need of your generosity right now.

Living in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians face daily struggles in the best of times. But the devastating earthquake has left many of them injured, homeless and without food or water. According to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as much as a third of the nation’s population—about 3 million people—has been affected by the quake.

The best way to help is money. Donations in whatever amount you can give. Here are four organizations that will put your generosity to good use. Continue reading “Four ways to help the people of Haiti” →

Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010

A quick round-up of ideas for healthy eating and drinking, including fighting diabetes with small changes, more reasons to drink coffee, reasons to drink and not drink wine and an excuse for pregnant women to eat bacon.

‘Food Rules’ from someone who should know

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Michael Pollan

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Michael Pollan has written definitive tomes on food and health—the health of those who eat it, those who produce it and the planet we live on. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is the best known, weighing in at nearly 500 pages.

His latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, is a lot slimmer, a pocket-sized 112 pages. But in its own way, it’s just as full of useful information. In it, Pollan lays out 64 rules to help us eat smarter, eat healthier. In a piece he wrote for Huffington Post, he tells how the list came about and gives us a small taste of the list. Here are a couple of samples:

#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

Pollan recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He entertainingly but forcefully makes the point that the way we eat is responsible Continue reading “Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010” →

The face of hunger is changing—so is fighting it

As the effects of a sagging economy continue to spread, an ever-growing number of Americans face “food insecurity,” a newly coined euphemism for not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Hunger.

According to Daily Kos, the PSA above featuring President Obama is sadly already out of date. It says that one out of eight Americans is at risk of hunger. The number is now one out of six. According to a new report by Feeding America, more than 49 million of us are at risk for hunger.

A recent article in the New York Times delivers more sobering numbers. Food stamps, once scorned as a failed welfare scheme, now help feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. More than 36 million people “use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.” Continue reading “The face of hunger is changing—so is fighting it” →

If you can’t stand the heat, take care in the kitchen: 10 Thanksgiving fire safety tips

Cooking fires are twice as likely to happen on Thanksgiving as any other day of the year. Here are some tips to keep your kitchen safe—on Thanksgiving and every other day.

The people at Underwriters Laboratories have the coolest jobs. They get to break things, start fires and make things blow up, all in the name of safety.

Underwriters Laboratories is an independent product safety certification organization that has been testing products and writing standards for safety for more than a century. Each year, the Northbrook, Illinois-based UL evaluates more than 19,000 types of products, components, materials and systems. The UL Mark signifies that a product has undergone rigorous testing to assure that it meets UL’s standards for safety. You’ll find the UL Mark on some 72,000 manufacturers’ products in 98 countries.

Where you won’t find the UL Mark is on one single turkey fryer. Not one. All are deemed far too unsafe. Which leads me to safety tip number one:

1. Don’t deep fry your turkey. Seriously. The video above shows clearly all the ways this novel [read idiotically dangerous] approach to preparing your turkey can go wrong. And this is under laboratory conditions that don’t involve beer or wanting to hurry back to televised football.

But turkey fryers aren’t the only source of accidents. According to UL, “nearly 1,450 residential structure fires Continue reading “If you can’t stand the heat, take care in the kitchen: 10 Thanksgiving fire safety tips” →

Healthy choices and the power of fun

We all know that healthy living includes not just eating right, but exercising too. And many of us try to cajole, bribe and browbeat ourselves [and sometimes, our loved ones] into “burning more calories than we consume.” This sensible balance is an easy concept to grasp, but not always so easy to live up to.

But what if we could make doing the right thing fun? Would we do it then? That’s the question The Fun Theory has set out to answer in a number of ways. In this charming video, you’ll see how they tested whether fun could motivate people to exercise a little more.

How do you motivate yourself to get more exercise? Do you have a secret for making it fun? Continue reading “Healthy choices and the power of fun” →

Blog Action Day 2009: Global warming and the meat of the matter

Nearly 10,000 bloggers around the world are taking part in Blog Action Day 2009, discussing this year’s topic, Global Warming, from the perspectives of their individual blogs. Here are my thoughts on meat’s giant carbon footprint.

Mae West once famously said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” Unfortunately, just about everywhere you look these days, the opposite is proving to be true. Take meat, for instance. America’s growing love affair with meat [and more recently, the developing world’s increasing infatuation with it] is having dire consequences for our health and the health of the planet.

How big is the world’s love of meat? In his 2008 article “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” New York Times food writer Mark Bittman said, “The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. [In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.] World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050.”

What makes these numbers so scary? Consider this. According to Livestock’s Long Shadow, Continue reading “Blog Action Day 2009: Global warming and the meat of the matter” →

Accidentally vegan: A quick, satisfying lunch of fresh corn, cannellini with tomatoes, rosemary

Ingredients from the garden, the farmers market and the pantry come together for a lunch of fresh corn and Cannellini with Cherry Tomatoes and Rosemary. Recipes below.

corncanellini

A recent Saturday found us in the kitchen with random produce and the need to be eating lunch right now. Marion had picked up some fresh ears of corn at the farmers market in Daley Plaza downtown, and there was a bowl of freshly picked cherry tomatoes from our yard on the counter. And even though we are decidedly not vegans [as even the most casual Blue Kitchen reader could tell you], a quick vegan lunch seemed just the ticket.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t a conscious decision. Seeing the tomatoes reminded me that I had recently been doing versions of my Tuscan beans, minus the mirepoix, but with tomatoes, either canned or fresh. I knew they’d be delicious with the wonderful yellow and red cherry tomatoes Marion had been getting from our yard this year. For her part, Marion was eager to show off an amazingly simple way to prepare fresh corn, making it so juicy and sweet you didn’t need butter or even salt. The whole lunch came together in under fifteen minutes. And it was only as we sat down to eat it [devour it] that we realized it was totally vegan. Continue reading “Accidentally vegan: A quick, satisfying lunch of fresh corn, cannellini with tomatoes, rosemary” →