Pantry clear out: Throw out your processed food and don't buy any more, because Big Food won't guarantee it's safe to eat
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And then sell your microwave [or at least don't use it to nuke processed food].
Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show.
Yet the supply chain for ingredients in processed foods — from flavorings to flour to fruits and vegetables — is becoming more complex and global as the drive to keep food costs down intensifies. As a result, almost every element, not just red meat and poultry, is now a potential carrier of pathogens, government and industry officials concede.
Urk.
The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.
So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”
Yay!
Here is a map of where to buy local food. I know it's not perfect, and not everyone can participate, but it is a start. And you've got a garden, right? All these are good things, because they cut Big Food's margins, exactly like banking at a local credit union is good, because it cuts Big Money's margins. And if they're less profitable, they can do us less damage -- unless Obama throws the Big Food zombies a trillion or so, of course.
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Comments
sell my microwave?!
why ever would i do that?! this is florida, turning on the oven, or even the stove, for at least 6 months out of the year, just heats up the house. not worth it.
microwaves are plenty useful for heating up home-grown, home-canned, home-frozen foods.
keeping my microwave until somebody can explain to me why not
There's a lot of pseudoscience out here, what with members of my own family insisting I should get my colon and other body parts "cleansed" with their so-called herbal and natural products, "cleansed" of impurities they cannot even define by means they are unable to describe.
So far, and I've been listening carefully, although not going too far out of my way to research it myself, I have yet to hear a rational explanation of the contention that microwave ovens change food in ways that are harmful. I mean regular cooking changes food "on a molecular level" too. So does my pressure cooker, indispensable for boiled peanuts, a delicacy I've become addicted to since moving to the South. Good for one's prostate health too, I understand.
Just how is this "microwaves mess up your food and endanger your health" any different from the non-evidence based crap about herbal concoctions ridding the body of alleged impurities? for all I know, I may need these damn impurities almost as much as I need my expresso machine.
Ha
Great analogy. I guess I was being a Luddite. Heck, I'm sitting next to a big server all say, no doubt that's sending off more powerful waves than a microwave does!
BruceDixon: the microwave's a good thing; overexposure to
any radiation should be avoided as / if you can do so though (hence long sleeves and sunblock when skiing or fishing, etc., although demonstrably you need up to 15 minutes a day in the sun for Vitamin D production at optimum levels; also, hence not living underneath high-voltage transmission towers, and so on).
Those "cleansing" herbal things? It's the NEW Corporate "health kick" that suggests if you don't have low-grade diarrhea (either induced by yoghurt or by some 'herbal tonic') you're not "healthy". Alli / Olestra / "bifidaris regularis" and so on -- what Leno describes and then explains the solution to as "buying brown pants".
Very low-grade diarrhea is an effective weight-loss strategy, and our national obsession with being "stick thin and ripped" means it's a money-maker. That's all.
A healthy digestive system is regular -- for you that might mean a daily or every-other-day emptying. You don't need to have difficulty controlling effluviate to be healthy, no matter what Jamie Lee Curtis is on TV selling.
Keeping my microwave
But will definitely be blowing the dust off our food thermometer. Whether using Big Food convenience, or re-heating one's own home-cooked goodies, hitting that 165 degree sweet spot is critical.
Shoudn't be up to me to do my own food safety testing
Bottom line is that they can't control their supply chain. OK, the product is worth less. So, will the price drop? Rather unlikely.
here, fixed it for ya:
Bottom line is that they
can'tmake more money if they don't control their supply chain.Why not, lambert? Aren't you going to eat the food?
Don't you give it a visual and smell test before deciding whether it's still ok or has been in the fridge so long you should pitch it?
That's a level of responsibility (like the one you should use in deciding for whom / how to vote) you owe it not just to yourself but your community to employ all the time.
Well, sure
Giving the meat a sniff is one thing.
Regulating the cooking of processed food with a thermometer -- especially with a product that's marketed as being fast and convenient -- is quite another.
well, here's my take on that, stolen straight off Good Eats
old appliances (like mine) may be unreliable (like mine) so a good thermometer used often is a must. Of course, if (like me) you're old-fashioned enough, you can use visual cues too (like boiling water or a rising batter-bread).
A sniff of the meat? Dude, if you're waiting for it to smell bad you're courting ptomaine regularly. Meat that has that "rainbow-scale" look is spoiled already.
The "sniff test"
isn't necessarily going to catch these contaminated foodstuffs, either.
Forget ConAgra
Avoiding processed foods because they're processed is a reasonable goal on its own. They're lower in nutrition, invariably not local, high in additives, and use wasteful packaging. If you have to shop in one, buying only from the outside edges of a grocery store is a good general guideline. These days everything I get comes from fresh produce, a bulk bin, the meat counter, or the dairy and eggs section. I'm pretty sure that I get more calories and nutirition/dollar spent than I ever have.
Concerning microwaves, their radiation destroys nutrition in food. Almost a year ago I moved, leaving the microwave behind, and I haven't missed it all.
ConAgra's Victim-Blaming was just soo fabulous!
From the Times article cited above:
"The pot pie instructions have built-in margins of error, Mr. Seiple said, and the risk to consumers depended on “how badly they followed our directions.”"
American mega-agriculture, in the mold of
American capitalism, will not let human life get in the way of making a buck. Case in point:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries...
Larger meatpackers have opposed Creekstone's push to allow wider testing out of fear that consumer pressure would force them to begin testing all animals too. Increased testing would raise the price of meat by a few cents per pound.
A few years ago I bagan googling all ingredients for some processed foods I was consuming. Like every American, I like hot dogs, and stumbled onto Jennie O's Turkey Franks. Googling the ingredients I found
Sodium Diacetate: "also inhibits Listeria bacteria...." and Sodium Nitrite: ...also inhibits botulism..."
Listeria is one bad dude, as is botulism. So they're doing pre-emptive strikes agains what they know will be there.
There are a few processed foods that aren't half bad, but they're getting pretty rare.
unless Obama throws the Big Food zombies a trillion...
The jury is still out on that.
Politifact is a website tracking 450 Obama campaign promises and his progress on them. They list promise #407 as Limit Subsidies to Agribusiness as 'stalled.'
I'm not sure I agree with them on their ratings on or which items they've chosen to track, but the website has some interesting information.
Well, you chose to live where farming's illegal
so the least you can do is reconsider how you shop.
Look, even in my "omg, I'm not home, gotta make this fast and simple mode" I can do three things to help ensure the safety of my food:
1. Read the label.
2. Choose the less-processed option.
3. Have a 2nd or 3rd choice to take advantage of what's in season / on sale / locally available.
Microwaves have their place. A couple of other appliances are as good/better, IMO, especially if you're limited financially or spacially for your kitchen. I use a microwave every day -- it reheats leftovers and makes hot water. You need a toaster oven big enough to hold a 9x11 pan, though, worse than you need a microwave. A microwave is faster, a toaster oven more versatile. You need a coffeemaker worse than you need a microwave, too.
a woman after my own heart
You need a coffeemaker worse than you need a microwave, too.
Microwave ovens are convenient? It's a convenient killer!
For good reason, the Soviet Union has banned the use of microwave ovens since 1976. I do not understand therefore, why the West chooses to ignore the longterm detrimental health effects of this method of cooking. What difference does it make to the food conglomerates whether food is microwaved or cooked in a conventional oven? If using the microwave is unsafe for baby's milk and if microwaved blood kills patients, it is clear that something is wrong with it.
Check out the data.
Microwave research conclusions:
"The following were the most significant German and Russian research operations facilities concerning the biological effects of microwaves:
The initial research conducted by the Germans during the Barbarossa military campaign, at the Humbolt-Universitat zu Berlin (1942-1943); and,
From 1957 and up to the present [until the end of the cold war], the Russian research operations were conducted at: the Institute of Radio Technology at Kinsk, Byelorussian Autonomous Region; and, at the Institute of Radio Technology at Rajasthan in the Rossiskaja Autonomous Region, both in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
In most cases, the foods used for research analysis were exposed to microwave propagation at an energy potential of 100 kilowatts/cm3/second, to the point considered acceptable for sanitary, normal ingestion. The effects noted by both German and Russian researchers is presented in three categories:
Category I, Cancer-Causing Effects
Category II, Nutritive Destruction of Foods
Category III, Biological Effects of Exposure"
More info
using Mercola as a source?
Please... he consistently and notoriously cherry-picks studies of poor quality to back up his pseudoscientific theories.
I don't have time to go through the article you've linked in detail, but two of the studies he mentions are critiqued here:
It appears the research is on your side
I agree, Mercola was a poor reference. The research supports your view. But that doesn't mean we should stop asking questions.
I admit, I'm a bit of a purist. I eat only organic and believe that the less food is handled, the better. I also believe that cooking should be a family activity. What better place to gather than in the kitchen to discuss the day's affairs. However, in today's society cooking is considered a chore hence the popularity of the microwave. But I'm getting way off topic so back to the also off topic topic of microwaves.
A microwave oven creates a lot of lot of bumping, rubbing, agitation, and friction between the food molecules. It's a bit of an assault, if you ask me. I prefer to steam my veggies gently on low heat. But that's just me. To each her/his own.
My microwave oven shall remain in the basement where it is occasionally used to dry flowers.
Bad use of snark on my part
I meant to highlight the shifting of risk -- again! Just like health care! -- from the corporations to the citizen. They no longer think it's profitable to control for safety in their supply chain, so they're shoving that burden off on us. (As if everybody rushing to cook processed food is always going to use a thermometer.)
That's the point of the post. The snark on microwaves obscured the point.
Point taken
I placed my comment in the wrong place - I was responding to brucedixon.
Microcosm of our national situation
a bit of snark and a technicality = total distraction from the original point.
Good catch!
Indeed it is.
[As I pull myself back from being distracted...]]
Between my allergies and migraines
I rarely buy processed food for fear they might have put in something I would have a reaction to. I had to learn to cook for that reason.
Actually, if you do things in big batches and freeze or can the leftovers for later, you can fake the speed and ease of frozen foods.
I used to love the pot pies decades ago, until they started putting in things I couldn't pronounce much less know what they were. By-by to the pot pies!
Our microwave does boiling water, rice, and maybe heating things up. I make sure to stir and reheat several times to make sure it's safe. All else gets cooked with our stove.
It seems to me that all these problems stem from the more principle: We must make more and more each year, or we are dying! (cue gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair)
I have a friend (Rick Kincaid if he is reading this) that wrote a song about that:
More, more, more, more, more,
I must have more of the very best!
Don't give me less!
More more more more more!
Or something like that...there's much more. :-D