LILL's LIST

For years, I’ve compromised. I prefer organic coffee, but it’s always been so pricey that I’ve mixed it half and half with cheaper Fair Trade but not organic coffee. Every once in awhile, I’d check the prices of organic coffee, but every time, even the store brand was much more expensive than the generic non-organic.

That’s why I was stunned when I checked it a few days ago and found that the store brand organic was actually cheaper per-pound than the generic non-organic coffee I usually buy. What’s going on here, I wondered. Well, whatever is going on, it’s going on with other foods too. The organic cereal that Daughter loves is cheaper than the giant cereal conglomerate’s non-organic and so were dozens of other items.

I have no actual proof for why this is happening, at least here in the Northeast, but I have a theory. Organic food production doesn’t use chemical fertilizers. Most organic producers didn’t have to adapt their growing practices when prices started rising, because they’d started out with a business model that uses less energy than big agro-businesses.

I suspect that their delivery fleets are more fuel-efficient also, because the kind of business owner who believes that organically grown produce is better is generally more eco-conscious. So as fuel prices rise and chemical fertilizers and pesticides add to the cost of the corn in your frozen dinner, Annie’s macaroni and cheese dinners are priced to compete with that orange-colored competitor from the Big K.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

Food prices are rising, but unlike much of the rest of the world, most Americans have a variety of foods to choose from. Walk down the aisles of any supermarket in the US and you’ll see vegetables glistening with drops of water from the misters over them, rows and rows of red, juicy steaks, roasts and burger, fish from oceans, lakes and fish farms and canned and frozen meals and snacks. No wonder we’re so healthy with all this to choose from. But is this food as good as it looks?

Nutritionally, foods grown with conventional farming methods isn’t as nutritious as food grown organically. Chemical fertilizers deplete the soil. They don’t encourage soil organisms that promote the biodiversity of worms, nematodes, bacteria, minerals and enzymes that organic farming does.  Chemically fertilized soil is sterile soil. Not what you want your carrots and peas grown in.

Conventional farming also uses synthetic pesticides,  herbicides and fungicides. These chemicals remain in the soil for lifetimes and have adverse effects on our bodies. Although they’re regulated by the government, for the most part, they’re declared “safe” one at a time, not on the basis of how much of all of them someone would take in by eating the normal American diet. Babies and children, especially, with their growing bodies and higher intake of some of these foods (think apples, peanut butter and cereal grains) may be more affected by toxins.

Meat contains antibiotics and meat animals are often raised in horrible conditions, crowded together in their own filth and easy prey for disease. If cows aren’t fed on grass, their meat’s nutritional value is not as high and beef cattle (and sheep also) may be legally given growth hormones, which can act like estrogen on humans. These growth hormones have been linked to developmental delays in children and to cancer. And while growth hormones aren’t allowed in poultry-raising, low doses of arsenic are and chickens are often raised packed so closely together that some of them suffocate.

Then there’s the growth hormone, rBGH, they give milk cows that often gives them mastitis, a painful inflammation of their udders, which means they need antibiotics which show up in their milk. Another thing that shows up in milk from cows who are given rBGH is Insulin Growth Factor 1 or EGF-1, a hormone that is linked to colon, prostate and breast cancer in humans. Europe and Canada have banned rGBH, but until the US does, buying organic milk is the only way to know for sure that it’s not in the milk you drink.

Canned food almost always contains BPA that leaches from the plastic lining. Frozen food comes in plastic trays that also leach BPA and it almost all of it contains GMO (genetically modified organism) as does most processed food whether in bags, boxes, cans or bottles. GMOs are plants that have had a gene from another plant or organism “spliced” into their DNA. One problem with GMOs is that people who are allergic to something may unknowingly eat something that contains the gene from what they’re allergic to.

Another problem is that no one knows what effect eating GMO food might have on the unsuspecting people who eat it without realizing it. Because there’s no law mandating labelling of GMO food, there’s no way to tell if it’s in your food from looking at the label. There is a list of GMO and non-GMO food at The True Food Shopping List where you’ll also find more information about food safety.

So, enough with the doom and gloom. A person has to eat, so what do we do about all this? Well, we each have to decide to what degree we are willing and able to pursue safe food. Money, of course, is a factor, as is availability of organic, natural and locally produced food. In my case, I only buy organic meat, milk, veggies and fruit.  If I can’t afford organic, I don’t buy it. I usually buy organic bread, but sometimes opt for the store brand of sprouted grain bread. Once in awhile, I buy frozen food, even a frozen dinner, with the theory that “once in awhile” won’t kill me.

When it’s available, I buy local, organically raised food, but that’s not often for fruits and veggies in Maine. The only fish and shellfish I eat are wild-caught. Unfortunately, there are few organic restaurants nearby, so when we eat out, we just try to choose the most natural offerings. And, of course, we garden. Although my three-year trial of going vegetarian made me realize that I’m a confirmed omnivore, I love veggies, especially when we get to pick them fresh from our own garden. Just maybe, that’s the best way to be sure that your food is safe: grow it yourself.

My 17 yr old son is trying to eliminate artificial flavors and colors from his diet. He’s noticed that they aggravate his asthma and make it harder for him to focus. We’ve always read labels, but lately we’ve been poring over them like government lawyers looking for loopholes in fine print. After squinting at hundreds of bags, packages, boxes and jars, we’ve come to the following conclusion. The best way to get food that doesn’t have (as my son would say) that toxic crap in it is to get food in as close to its natural state as possible.

Granted, it would be best if we raised our own chickens and vegetables, kept our own milk cows, and ground our own grain and coffee. However, not all of us have the room, the time or the inclination for farming. So, short of cooking a chicken that was walking around in the henyard this morning, how do we get food in its natural state, not to mention not packaged in plastic?

One thing I’ve done is request freezer paper for my meat, rather than plastic film. Most supermarket meat departments have it. And if you ask them to, they’ll wrap your chicken legs or beef roast in it. If they don’t have it, ask them to stock it. You’d be surprised what supermarkets will do to retain a customer. They could even advertise that they have it for other eco-mindful customers.

Of course, the best way to be sure that your food is as pure as possible is buying organic. But what if, like us, you can’t afford the higher prices? Well, we compromise by buying our meat, milk and fruit organic whenever possible. My kids have grown up on organic milk and hate the taste of non-organic. I do too. It tastes flat, maybe because the cows have been eating grain, not grass. The milk we buy comes from cows who spend most of their time out to pasture and get silage in the winter, not corn. Actually, lately, organic milk isn’t much more expensive than non-organic.

For meat, we buy organic chicken, beef and pork, usually when it’s marked down on Sunday. Most supermarkets have a day when they mark down meat and will gladly tell you when that is. Just ask. If you’re lucky enough to have a natural foods supermarket nearby, they also mark things down, especially when they near their sell-by date. We don’t buy ham, bacon or hot dogs, except when the unprocessed ones are marked down. All of these meats are high in nitrates and salt.

Neither do we buy frozen dinners, chicken products like nuggets or patties or anything else covered in breading and fried. Have you ever looked at the list of ingredients in most processed frozen foods?  The picture on the cover shows a piece of chicken, some mashed potatoes and some green beans. Yet, the list of ingredients is ten inches long and you can’t even pronounce some of the words. Is it worth it for convenience, not to mention is it worth paying the high price of frozen dinners? I don’t think so.

Instead, we just overcook. When we make a meal, we make more than we need. The excess goes into our version of frozen dinners. Only, ours are more flexible, because we freeze the items separately in glass containers. So, one container will have four chicken thighs that have been cooked in BBQ sauce. Another container will have oven-browned sweet potatoes, onions and white potatoes drizzled with olive oil. Other containers hold rice pilaf, pasta with sauce or veggies, so that we can mix and match to our hearts’ content. Let’s see Marie Callendar do that!

It would be nice if we could buy local produce year-round, but in Maine, except for cold-weather greens, that’s not possible unless you have your own greenhouse. (Eliot Coleman, the author of several good gardening books, has one about growing your own veggies year-round, but so far we haven’t gotten motivated enough to do it. You might like to try.) So we try to buy veggies that have the least amount of pesticides used on them. Here’s a link to the Environmental Working Group’s list of veggies with the least and most amount of pesticide residue. You can even order a pdf file of it to take with you when you shop.

My shopping cart looks a lot different now. It has far fewer processed items in it and more fresh produce. Even with the many organic and natural items we buy, my costs haven’t gone up nearly as much as I thought they would. Actually, some weeks, we spend less, because we find bargains and mark-downs. What’s in your shopping cart?

Stevia has been around for a long time. So why is it that the FDA says it’s not a sweetener; it’s not been proven safe and it can’t be sold as anything but a food supplement? And if that’s all true, why are major soft drink manufacturers trying to get a patent on their version of it? After all, for years they’ve been telling us that aspartame and splenda are completely harmless, all the while using stevia in their products in Japan, Germany and many other countries. So why is (their version) of stevia okay for the US now?

Stevia was “discovered” in 1903 by an Italian botanist in the jungles of Paraguay where the native people had been using it for a sweetener. When it was grown commercially and introduced to the US a few years later, sugar producers were alarmed at the threat that stevia presented to their industry, but nothing came of it until researchers isolated stevioside from it, a pure, white powder with remarkable sweetening power.

Then, in the 1960′s, the Japanese, who had an aversion to artificial sweeteners, discovered stevia and started putting it into everything from drinks to gum. Their restaurants feature little green packets of stevia on the tables, the way ours have pink, blue and yellow artificial sweetener packets. Soon, other countries including China, Germany, Israel, Malaysia and others adopted stevia. Because it was used over several decades, stevia’s safety record was readily apparent. There were no side effects and it was not carcinogenic.

Stevia has a glycemic index of zero, so it doesn’t raise or lower blood sugar, which makes it ideal for diabetics or those on low-glycemic diets. (However, the American Diabetes Association won’t endorse it because they follow FDA guidelines and the FDA says it’s not safe.) It comes in both liquid and powder form – the powder has more sweetening power than the liquid – and a little goes a very long way. A mere quarter teaspoon is the equivalent of two tsps of sugar! Research supports the theory that stevia lowers blood pressure also when used on a regular basis.

I use liquid stevia in my tea and prefer Sweetleaf Stevia Products which doesn’t seem to have the licorice aftertaste which many stevia brands have. I buy it online at Drugstore.com. I buy a lot of things at Drugstore.com, because I like the 5% back I get in Drugstore dollars and I’ve always gotten excellent customer service and shipping from them. And, yes, I am an affiliate. For cooking, I use stevia in combination with other sweeteners such as honey and organic raw sugar and use the Sweetleaf Powder.

Whether or not stevia will catch on when the major soft drink manufacturers introduce it in their colas and other soft drinks, or whether it will be another “New Coke” debacle remains to be seen. I’m just hoping that the soft drink giants’ adoption of stevia will lead to its general use and acceptance in other foods and beverages. Now, that would be a sweet scenario.