What's in a name? Part 1: "Natural"

I have an experiment that I'd like you to try. Go to your kitchen, and look for items that have the word "natural" somewhere on their package (preferably the front). Check high and low; in the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. I'm willing to predict that you'll find a fair number. Next, take each product that calls itself "natural" and read the list of ingredients. Are there any that strike you as... well... unnatural?

I've just tried this experiment here at home. Here are three of the products I found, and my thoughts on each of their claims. (Note that the boldface is my own emphasis.)

1. Barbara's Puffins (Original flavor). Claim: "100% Natural Crunchy Corn Cereal"
Ingredients: Yellow Corn Flour, Corn Bran Flour, Unsulphured Molasses, Oat Flour, Expeller Pressed High Oleic Oil (Canola and/or Sunflower), Salt, Baking Soda, Natural Vitamin E, Vitamin C.

My thoughts: I had to look up what "high oleic oil" was. Basically it comes from rapeseed (canola) or sunflower plants that have been selectively bred to contain higher levels of monounsaturated fats (such as those in olive oil) and lower levels of polyunsaturated and saturated fats. So this is a case of selective breeding, which I admit is natural, and I suppose most people would agree with me, except perhaps creationists. Regarding the Natural Vitamin E: although it may be natural, apparently it is not naturally-occurring in the other cereal ingredients. So Barbara decided to add it to her Puffins to enhance their nutritional profile, even though some scientists question whether isolated vitamins perform as well out of their original context.

2. Brummel & Brown (buttery spread).
Claim: "Made with Natural Yogurt"
Ingredients: Water, Vegetable Oil Blend (Liquid Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil), Nonfat Yogurt (Cultured Nonfat Milk), Salt, Gelatin, Vegetable Mono and Diglycerides, Soy Lecithin (Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Disodium Edta) used to protect quality, Lactic Acid, Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A (Palmitate), Beta Carotene (for color).

My thoughts: While it may be true that the yogurt component of Brummel & Brown is "natural," this point seems moot, given the predominance of unnatural ingredients in the spread. Partially hydrogenated anything is neither good for us (trans fats! banned in New York restaurants!), nor is it naturally occurring. Soy lecithin, used as a non-spattering agent, must be hydrolyzed enzymatically or fractionated in order to be used in foods. Definitely unnatural. I'm a bit embarrassed that I have this in my fridge.

3. Dr. Praeger's All Natural California Veggie Burgers.
Claim: "All Natural"
Ingredients: Carrots, Onions, String Beans, Soybeans, Zucchini, Oat Bran, Peas, Spinach, Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Broccoli, Textured Soy Flour, Corn, Oat Fiber, Red Pepper, Arrowroot, Corn Meal, Corn Starch, Garlic, Salt, Parsley, All Natural Vegetable Gum, Black Pepper.

My thoughts: "Vegetable gum" was the only ingredient that stood out to me as possibly a hoax. Trusty Wikipedia tells me that "natural gums are polysaccharides of natural origin... used as thickening agents, gelling agents, emulsifiers, and stabilizers." So I guess vegetable gum, although sort of revolting by name, is natural after all.

By now, you may have begun to sense where I'm headed: the word "natural" on food and beverage packaging is largely unregulated. The USDA, under its Food Safety and Inspection Service, issued a memo in 1982 that explained their definition of "natural" in its use on meat and poultry labels. Here's an excerpt:

"The term natural may be used on labeling for meat and poultry products provided the manufacturer of the products bearing the claim demonstrates that the product does not contain artificial flavor or flavoring, coloring ingredient or chemical preservative or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient, and the product and its ingredients are not more than minimally processed." FSIS' Food Standards and Labeling Division, published Policy Memo 55, dated November 22, 1982

As you can see, there are loopholes galore in this policy, most of which have been exploited in some way or another by manufacturers who are eager to capitalize on growing public hunger for "natural" foods. For instance, many processed foods call themselves "natural" even though they contain high-fructose corn syrup (which is not derived "naturally"). Chicken can be labeled "natural" even if it has been bulked up with a saline solution. Is that really natural? Shouldn't natural mean... occurring in nature?

A year ago, the USDA invited interested parties to share their opinion of how "natural" should be used on food labels; however, as of this writing they have not yet changed the 1982 regulations.

So back to the experiment. Try it, and let me know what you turn up in your kitchen. If you find some unnatural-sounding "natural" foods, let the rest of us know by posting a comment.

If you'd like to read more, CNN has a good article about the war among manufacturers over "natural." Dad, they talk about Tyson. Check it out.

easing into organic foods

I'm a realist. I know that eating organic foods almost always means spending more money, and that as Americans we are very sensitive to the price of our food. (Did you know that, as a nation, we spend a lower percentage of our income on food than nearly any other industrialized nation?) Most of us are not going to wake up tomorrow and start eating all organic foods, all the time- if for no other reason than the sticker shock. So how best to ease into organic foods? Are there certain foods for which it makes more sense to buy organic than others?

There are several different answers to this question, depending on the reason(s) you wish to go organic. Is it to reduce your chemical (pesticide, fungicide) intake? For better nutrition? For taste? For the environment? I've combed the research, and here's what I've come up with.

Pesticides

The USDA and the FDA regularly test produce (as well as soybeans, dairy, animal products, etc) for pesticide residues. According to their most recent findings (from samples taken between 2003 and 2004), the following fruits and vegetables are the most pesticide-laden among conventionally-grown produce. (The Environmental Working Group has labeled these The Dirty Dozen.)

1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Lettuce
9. Grapes - Imported
10. Pears
11. Spinach
12. Potatoes

In these tests, 73% of all fruits and vegetables tested showed detectable pesticide residues. On peaches, the worst of the bunch, pesticides were found on 97% of the samples. Note that the USDA washed and peeled produce such as apples and potatoes before testing them. Imagine how high the levels are for those of us (me) who regularly eat the peels. Yikes!

Fortunately, the news is not all bad; there are some fruits and vegetables that have low levels of residual pesticides, even when grown conventionally. These "cleaner" foods include: onions, avocados, pineapple, mangoes, kiwi, bananas, asparagus, cabbage, and broccoli. For example, only 0.2% of the onions tested showed residual pesticides. I guess there's some relief in that.

(Note: if you're looking to reduce your pesticide-intake level, another good solution is to eat local foods. These foods are much less likely to have been treated with post-harvest pesticides than the food that has to travel 1,500 miles to reach you.)

Health/Nutrition

Aside from the benefits of not ingesting all the chemicals stated above, there are some other nutritional benefits to choosing organic.

• Organic produce contains up to 50% more antioxidants (read the findings here)
  


• Organic milk has 50-80% more antioxidants than conventional milk, as well as higher levels of Vitamin E (Ibid)
  


• Organic produce has higher levels of a variety of vitamins and minerals (Organic Retailers and Growers Association of Australia, The Soil Association of the United Kingdom)

Taste

Consensus on the web seems to be that, in blind taste tests, most organic foods taste about the same as conventional foods. The exceptions seem to be:

• Eggs. But often these are not merely "organic" eggs, but cage-free, free-range, life-loving eggs. Still, they seem to beat conventional eggs hands-down.


• Peanut butter: here, the main taste difference is between natural (sometimes organic) peanut butter, i.e. roasted peanuts and salt, vs conventional, Skippy-style peanut butter, with the partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats!) and high fructose corn syrup.

In my opinion, if taste is your main reason for going organic, then you'd be better served by choosing local, seasonal foods, whether or not they're organic. Maybe some time soon I'll conduct my own taste test to pit conventional vs. organic foods vs. local foods. If and when that happens, I'll share the results in this blog.

Environmental Impact

If you're concerned about the environment, then you want to give up those foods that do the most harm on a macroeconomic scale (in terms of acres planted, or quantities consumed). In other words, nectarines may be "dirtier" than potatoes, but potatoes cover thousands of times the arable land that nectarines do. Based on this thinking, then your organic choices might include:

1. Organic milk
2. Organic potatoes
3. Organic apples
4. Organic peanut butter
5. Organic beef

(Read one doctor's opinion of why these organic choices are important.)

As a final note, the research seems to agree that if there's one time in your life that it's most important to consume organic foods, it's from birth to age three. This is because carcinogens (including the pesticides applied in conventional agriculture) are up to 10x as potent in babies than in adults. So if you have an infant or toddler, your best way to ease into organic would be to choose organic for your child.

Good luck and let me know how "easing into organic" goes for you!

confusion about eating seasonally

I went to the farmer's market on Thursday with a list of several vegetables that I needed for a recipe. I know, this is exactly what I said not to do in an earlier post: don't have an agenda when you go to the farmer's market- just let the food speak to you. Well, as with most things in life, this is easier said than done (although I commend Alice Waters for working in that way.)

In my defense, the recipe I had in mind was chicken pot pie, which I consider to be an appropriate seasonal dish in late autumn. I was sure that I'd have no problem finding the vegetables I was after: celeriac (aka celery root), parsnips, and sweet potatoes. These are all root vegetables, and to my thinking, root vegetables are ripe in the late autumn and winter months.

You can imagine my surprise when, instead of finding the root vegetables I desired, I instead encountered fresh, beautiful strawberries. In November! How could this be? I grew up in Virginia, where strawberries have a very definite 4-6 week season, usually lasting from early June to mid-July. I imagined these were hydroponic strawberries (if such a thing exists), or that the wool was being pulled over my eyes in some fashion. First, I tasted a strawberry. Delicious! The very essence of a fruit at the height of its season. So I asked the farmer, (a gentleman from Lucero Organic Farms in Lodi), "How is it that you have fresh strawberries in November?" He told me that in the Central Valley, the strawberry season typically lasts from March through December, or until "the first really bad weather." Amazing!

Knowing which fruits and vegetables are in season is undeniably challenging in 21st century America, when our grocery stores stock the same produce year-round, often failing to mention the geographical origin of that produce. Our best strategy, then, is to have a general sense of what should be in season at what time of year, and then seek information that confirms the produce was not shipped from across the globe. Right now, for instance, the heirloom tomatoes at the Berkeley farmer's market are still seasonal and locally grown, as hard as it is for me to believe that a tomato can be fresh and ripe in November. At my Safeway, on the other hand, the only heirloom tomatoes to be found have two critical pieces of information on the label: "Emeril's" and "Mexico." The first piece tells me that these tomatoes are caught in a large corporate supply chain, which at some point included allowing Emeril Lagasse to brand its tomatoes. The second tells me that those particular tomatoes are neither local nor seasonal in Northern California.

(As a quick aside: in researching the origin of the Emeril's heirloom tomatoes, I couldn't find anything on Emeril's website. I did learn, however, that Emeril was the first celebrity chef to have his food consumed in space. I guess he's not too concerned about the local foods movement!)

In a future post I plan to give a "seasonality chart" of fruits and vegetables in North America, to be used only as a rough guide. The best guide, of course, is the farmers and growers from your region.

P.S. I found the sweet potato at the farmer's market, and I ended up substituting turnips for parsnips. I found some California-grown celeriac at the Berkeley Bowl, but I'm still not sure why none of the growers at the farmer's market had any to sell me. Oh well.

rBST follow-up: Starbucks and Chipotle go hormone-free

I thought I'd let you know, as a follow-up to an earlier post, that Chipotle has stopped using rBST in all their dairy products. (Chipotle has long been a leader in the fast-food industry in terms of ethical treatment of animals. All of their pork and much of their chicken/beef is naturally raised, without hormones or antibiotics, and with plenty of room to roam or graze.) Read the article about Chipotle's decision.

Starbucks has also caved to consumer demand and committed to going 100% rBST-free in all of its "core dairy products" (which they define as "liquid milk, half and half, whipping cream and egg nog) by the end of 2007. Read Starbucks' letter to Food and Water Watch. (As an aside: who knew that egg nog was a "core dairy product"???)

Hurray for consumer activism!

more ethical-eating books

In reviewing my posts, I realized that I hadn't mentioned two of the books that have been most influential both in my own eating choices and in my decision to start this blog. You've no doubt heard of both of them, as they were both bestsellers.

The first book, which I absolutely think you should read if you're at all interested in this subject, is The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

I read this book last year, and it changed how I think and feel about almost everything I eat. Pollan examines the people and processes behind every step of our food chain. The "four meals" of the title are fast food, organic, locally farmed, and hunted/gathered. Among the information I learned from this book includes:

-Over 25% of the SKUs (items) in a supermarket contain corn or a corn-based derivative

-"Organic" foods do not always deserve a place on the righteousness pedestal (more about this in a future post, I promise!)

-Many small farmers do not use pesticides, antibiotics, or other chemicals, and yet still cannot (or choose not to) be labeled "organic."

Aside from being chock-full of great information, this book is a captivating read. Michael Pollan teaches here in Berkeley- you can learn more about him at his website. If you don't have time to read the book and would prefer just a few of his articles, my favorites can be found here and here.

The second book, which feels a little less like a research paper and more like a good ol' fashioned ethical-food yarn, is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. She describes a year in which she, her husband, and her two daughters commit to eating only locally grown/raised foods. Her book really made me think about what it means to eat seasonally, and how difficult (but noble) it would be to be a locavore. Her book even includes recipes, and her husband and older daughter contribute to the writing. It's an easy, enjoyable and enlightening read.

And there you have it- few recommendations for Christmas presents or for your next trip to the library.

sustainable foods search engine

Hey folks!

I just wanted to tell you about the newest feature of my blog- a search engine from the good people at Eat Well Guide and Sustainable Table. Look to the right hand side of the page (at the top of my blog) and you'll see the orange search box where you can search for restaurants, stores and farms in your community that offer sustainable foods. Just enter your zip code and voilà! You'll have a list of places in your neighborhood where you can purchase or eat ethically-grown (or raised) foods. I'm excited because my search turned up a restaurant right near me that I didn't even know about, that apparently offers comfort food from happy cows and pigs. Pretty cool.

I hope you find the search engine as useful as I do. Let me know how you like it!

dairy products demystified

If you're a label-reader, as I am, then you may have come across the following message on one of your dairy products: "Does not contain the growth hormone rBST." This message is generally followed by an asterisk, with a fine-print footnote that says, "Federal tests have proven that there is no significant difference between rBST treated milk and non-rBST treated milk."

This message strikes me as fairly cryptic. If there is no difference between treated and untreated milk, then why brag about it? But can it be possible that there is no difference? What is rBST, anyway? Should I be avoiding dairy products from rBST-fed cows?

rBST stands for recombinant bovine somatotropin. It's also known as rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone. Basically, it's a synthetic version of a naturally-occurring growth hormone that aids cows in lactation. Cows that are administered a synthetic version are able to lactate longer and thereby produce more milk over their lactation cycle than cows that rely only on the naturally-occurring BST. If you are beginning to think this sounds like a clever way for industrial agriculture to increase their yields, you're onto something. In fact, rBST was developed by Monsanto and sells under the brand name Posilac.

With rBST, as is so often the case with industrial agriculture, steps taken by large corporations to increase yield and productivity on the farm run counter to basic concerns about animal welfare, human health and environmental protection. Let's take these concerns one by one.

Animal Welfare

Cows treated with rBST are up to 50% more likely to develop "lameness" (hoof problems), mastitis (inflamation of the udder), and failure to conceive.

Human Health

Monsanto goes to great lengths to convince consumers that there is no difference between rBST-treated dairy products and untreated products. However, concerned citizens' groups such as The Center for Food Safety point to research that shows that rBST-treated milk demonstrates higher levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Higher levels of IGF are correlated to higher incidence of breast, prostate and colon cancers.

Environmental Concerns

Every time we administer antibiotics, artificial hormones or other chemicals to livestock, residual amounts end up in our water supply. (This concern was one of the leading drivers of the original "organic" movement.)

Other food for thought

No other industrialized country in the world allows the sale of rBST-treated dairy products.

So where does that leave us? Industrial agriculture's (read: Monsanto's) argument is that rBST increases milk yield, which is good for farmers (they make more profits) and good for consumers (the cost of milk is kept lower). I think these claims should be taken with a grain of salt. Monsanto is the entity that stands to profit the most from sales of rBST. When an equation exists that says farmers must increase production so that consumer prices stay low, then the only farmers who stand to gain are the largest farmers, not the small or medium-sized farmers. Finally, if we take costs to human health in consideration, then the true price of rBST-treated dairy products is much higher than the sticker price we face at the grocery stores.

For those of us living in Northern California, it seems that most of our milk is already rBST-free. Indeed, Trader Joe's, Safeway and Whole Foods (my main grocery stores, when I'm not shopping at the farmer's markets) have all banned rBST milk (at least in my region). (Read the Chronicle article here.) But when I'm in other parts of the country and have to decide between milk from treated or untreated cows, I'll gladly spend the extra few cents to keep the artificial hormone out of the cows' diet and thereby out of mine.