HOW DID WE GET HERE? 

Large percentages of the population overweight, children experiencing higher than normal incidents of childhood diseases, Mad Cow...The changes in food production and delivery in the past 15 years have certainly affected your lifestyle and diet today.

According to a recent Newsweek article a cake prepared at home contains 6 ingredients, but Twinkies have 39.

Why is that?  To stay fresh the pastry cannot contain anything that will spoil, like butter, milk or eggs.  These ingredients have been replaced with things like cellulose gum, lecithin and sodium stearoyal lactylate.  It may taste like cake, but what is it, really?  

I would worry about giving these to my children but would have no problem with chocolate muffin prepared at home.  

Over the past 15 years there has been a revolution in the eating and nutrition habits of the entire world.  Just-in-time delivery and factory farming has changed the way everyone eats and prepares food.

What has been seen in restaurants has of course been translated to the home kitchen.

It used to be that many restaurants and hotels made their food from "scratch"; or basic ingredients.   Now skilled chef's are rare and most restaurant workers are opening boxes and heating up microwavable containers.  This secondary level of processing requires less skilled labor; since qualified chefs, like anyone else deserve to be paid a decent wage and are hard to retain.  No longer do you have to make your own gravy; but we think you but you should at least be able to cook the roast.

Changes in Base Ingredients like Oil and Sugar over the past 15 years

The move to cheap corn syrup sugar by major producers has led to a sharp decrease in the price of sugar.  

This allows the fast food companies to serve larger portions of soft drinks for a very low price, for example.  But do you really NEED a super-sized drink; which may contain up to 10 TEASPOONS of sugar? 

Or are you drinking it because it's 'included"?  If 10 teaspoons of sugar is the sugar content of your drink ALONE, what if you add any sauces on your dinner or the dessert you may have later?  How many unwanted calories have you just consumed?? 

TransFats 

Another big change was the use of hydrogenated oil in the place of butter.  This is the classic change to the common use of Hydrogenated Fat (Transfats) in food processing.  Fat, usually in a liquid form at room temperature, can be difficult to work with in a food production environment.  The prepared food industry has migrated to this pliable and stable fat created by infusing the oil with hydrogen.

This change from basic oils to this complex substance has also seeming contributed to the cholesterol and obesity issues struggled with by so many people these days.

Why would people ingest something that was potentially so harmful?  It was unknown at the time that the body could not properly digest these fats.  And while considerably cheaper than butter; in most cases it is the consumers themselves demanding the extended shelf life and low price afforded by the use of this process.  Until recently most pastry, for example, was created on the same day, using butter or lard.  But in today's world of "processed" pastries each product must have a shelf life of at least 3-5 days; sometimes longer depending on the type of package.

Change from local food production to foreign production and just-in-time delivery

There is no doubt the shift towards "factory farming" has created some of the problems we are seeing in the food chain today.  Small, regional producers have been consumed by large agricultural conglomerates hoping to achieve economies of scale in production.

This, combined with the emergence of cheap, fast transportation of fruits and vegetables from foreign lands has changed the North American palate to such a degree that we expect to have all varieties of fruits and vegetables from around the world available year round.

 

The concentration of distribution has further consolidated a few players control on the diet of millions. Within this aggressive, production driven "mono-culture" some seemingly disturbing trends are emerging:

• *  Food has become more "processed" and contains higher amounts of sugar and salt and fats.
• *  Everything is "super-sized".  Think about the eggs you use today; they simply were not available years ago.  Advances in chicken selection and diet have made the enormous, thin shelled eggs possible. 

We are being assured that all is well regarding the food supply, but recent events may be showing otherwise.

Emergence of Mad Cow Disease. Years before it was in the mainstream media I first heard Michael Moore that some forms of Alzheimer's disease may be in fact a human strain of BSE.  Blasphemy!!! Seems like he may have been right.  This is a serious issue and should be addressed.  In North America we verify a ridiculously small number of cattle per thousand.  The Japanese check every cow.  Pressure from industry groups has delayed the implementation of this type of program.  Perhaps we are not finding more evidence of the disease because we are not adequately testing enough animals?  This is a valid concern and we suggest you cook your red meat thoroughly and choose quality cuts.

Excessive use of growth hormones in livestock   Many cattle are raised and bred for milk production and given large doses of growth hormones and antibiotics to increase production.  Once these cattle could no longer produce large amounts of milk they were slaughtered and mostly became hamburger.

What is happening to all the hormones these animals have ingested? It certainly looks like they would make their way up the food chain to us.  Cheaper beef comes from ex-dairy cows; and this makes an even better case to move towards complete cuts and roasts instead of hamburger. 

Concentration in production stresses the food chain and reduces diversity.  Large factory farms seem to make sense on paper but can be devastating on many other fronts.  The consolidation within the food production industry has overall lowered prices, making it more difficult for the average farmer.  This has closed many a family farm and depopulated large areas or opened them up for residential development.  This has in turn seemed to promote a type of "mono-culture", where every cows in your barn may be inseminated by some bull far, far away.  Yes, the quality of the milk may be good; but if one cow is susceptible to one type of disease, they all get it and it spreads rapidly.  There is no "bio-diversity" to assure that some may survive; a frightening scenario if one of the influenza strains jumps from animal to human.  

TOO MUCH TV HAS MADE US DOCILE

Let's face it.  We all watch alot of TV and like to take the car instead of walking to the mall.  This was not an option 30 years ago; you had to walk or read or do something else (like cooking dinner) to pass the time.  Life was more difficult but we did not seem to suffer from as much obesity and other food-related issues.

 

So what do you do?  We suggest you create healthy meals for your family  Use food basics and cook at home.   We show you how

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