- you are the most pervasive condiment of the American palette, and you're the quintessential example of the what's wrong with the American diet
- you bastardize my favorite fruit, the tomato, into a sludge people slather on greasy fast food
- people put you on all manner of food soon to be ruined; really if you put ketchup on eggs, you must be eating really bad eggs to start with
- you make the awful, palatable
Why the rant? Well I've grown increasingly suspicious of what's in our food and have been researching a number of pervasive ingredients. It seems the food industry is getting better in some areas thanks in part to the California food movement of years past which gave way to the increasing availability of organic ingredients. But let us not confuse the small artisanal organic suppliers with the industry heavyweights. Organic and All Natural labeling is just starting to have to mean something under FDA guidelines, and in the forefront there are a plethora of processed foods. Now ketchup may not have been the first or most egregious example of processed food, but it's a shining example of the “Burger and Fries” Americana I am gradually opening my eyes to now. The brilliant documentary Super Size Me showed in gross detail what fast food, soda pop, and the need for instant gratification will get us healthwise. Ketchup is univerally associated with BOTH the burger and the fries, so thus this post asking you to think about what Ketchup really represents.
Five things that scare me about the food industrial complex:
1.Our meat supply – check this out, or this lawsuit against the USDA, and see if you still want to eat that burger; I believe ground meat is the most likely to be contaminated in mass quantities due to cross contamination; after watching these videos, I vowed to only serve my children freshly ground meat (95% we grind ourselves, 5% from very reliable small businesses). Sure I like a good burger, heck I can usually taste if they used sirloin, chuck, round, or “other”. But the “other” scares me enough that from now on I'm applying that rule to myself anything I cook. What's next? How about cloning.
2.Our milk supply – Europe has completely banned the use of Bovine Growth Hormone, yet it is a major factor in the production of milk in the United States. Look here on how it is marketed to farmers. In the documentary The Corporation, allegation were made by two reporters that a story on the use of BGH by Monsanto was quashed by Fox News due to Monsanto's advertising relationship; the reporters claim to have been also eventually fired over being unwilling to change the findings of the story. BGH can cause serious infections in the dairy cattle, and it is believed that these infections, and potentially other hormonal effects, can be present in the milk produced.
3.Corn – Cattle are fed corn to increase the marbling of fat in the meat; it is believed that heavy use of corn in cattle feed can compromise the steers immune system, necessitating additional need for antibiotics. I'm not qualified to discern what effect there may be from ingesting lots of meat that has been treated this way, but there is evidence to suggest principally grass fed beef has a completely different nutritional profile of the fat it contains. Corn oil was recently cited in an FDA report as having health benefits, and in the same citation, it was stated that there was no scientific evidence to support this. It's used to produce high fructose corn syrup which is in an alarming number of foods, and has been linked to type-2 diabetes and may also be carcinogenic.
4.Soy – There is a lot of attention as to the benefits of eating soy, heart health among them. There has also been a report on the scientists who authored a key report for the government on the benefits of soy, saying that a lot of information and warnings they had produced on potentially negative consequences of soy were quashed from their original report. Notably, they believe that the high levels of female plant hormones in soy can be very damaging to men, possibly resulting in a higher incidence of cancer. Soy is in so many things it's mind boggling. On a recent trip to the grocery store, my wife asked me to pickup mayonnaise. After looking at the label of every major manufacture and all the store brand / generics, I was stunned to learn that soybean oil was the the FIRST ingredient in every one of these. Even the Olive Oil Mayonnaise listed soybean oil alongside olive oil as the FIRST ingredient. The only mayonnaise to not have any soybean oil was one claiming no cholesterol content, which instead used canola oil and xanthan gum for binding (both ingredients pass mustard with me). I think we really need to take a closer look at the dangers of soy. The FDA has recently been petitioned to reexamine it's conclusions on heart benefits.
5.Carrageenan, MSG, Palmitate, and other mystery ingredients – Carrageenan is a seaweed that can be used to emulisfy and thicken. In its basic form it would seem fine for consumption. However, when exposed to high heat, it becomes carcinogenic. Many processed foods go through high heat cooking processes, and many also go through pasteurization. Pasteurization typically involves the use of heat, and ultra pasteurization uses very high heat. Makes me think that at least some of the carageenan out there is not so good to eat, and it is increasingly used in processed foods, including those claiming to be organic and all natural. MSG, despite causing allergic reaction-like symptoms, is still prevalent in many foods without a warning and FDA labeling is again in question. Palmitate is actually vitamin A, though it has been linked to toxicity and osteoporosis, and is a danger to the fetus during pregnancy. When you go buy vitamins, look on the back and see if the vitamin A is coming from palmitate or from beta carotene. I was shocked how hard it was to find a children's vitamin that did not contain palmitate. After searching the shelves of two different conventional grocers, and three different “organic” grocers, three hours later I was able to identify only two brands of children's vitamins that were free of palmitate.
I guess the theme of this post is to wake people up. Don't trust the big public companies stocking the shelves at the grocery store to do the right thing, seldom will the right thing be the cheapest, most profitable, or easiest thing to sell. I'm not anti corporation at all, but I do think the bottom-line thinking can lead to sacrifices in quality, shortcuts, and some criminal greed that's obfuscated by the corporate entity and possibly political agendas in government. If nobody dies tomorrow, it's probably ok must be the thinking. There are some of the big guys who are in it for the long-haul, and make tough decisions to change. But sometimes it takes science time to catch up with the accidents and willful disregard present in the food industry. So drive past the drive-thru tonight, go buy some fresh ingredients, and take 30 minutes to cook damn it.
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