You have likely heard about the hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) shenanigans afoot.

A company that makes HVP – Basic Food Flavors – found that its product was contaminated with the pathogen Salmonella Tennessee (thats a specific flavor of salmonella easily ID’d by genetics and the SAME strain that was involved in a similarly ethically challenged peanut butter processing plant in Georgia that killed many – CDC link). It proceeded to ship its product anyway, to food manufacturers (assemblers?) across the US (and where else?) even though this company KNEW their product was contaminated with this pathogen that can kill you.

When did this company know? JANUARY 21 on HVP made and shipped out since SEPTEMBER 17 2009

When the FDA found out (FEBRUARY 12), they did not (do not) have the authority to FORCE a recall of a substance that can KILL us, no they had to request and then to BEG this ethically impaired company to do a voluntary recall .. the company ignored these requests for WEEKS.

FDA did NOT issue a recall notice until MARCH 4th.

What about all of this reassures you about food safety? Nothing at all. The FDA is toothless, no doubt from all that HFCS they love so much.

If you take a look in your pantry at just about any label of processed food you WILL find hydrolyzed vegetable proteins.

Like I mentioned in the title of this post, you already know what HVP is.

HVP is a legal euphemism for MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE. Our political representatives are not ours, they are wholly owned by corporations and the legality of calling MSG by alternative terms is pure proof of this reality. So is the toothlessness and impotence of the FDA.

I have blogged about the atrocity that is MSG, see that here: Monosodium Glutamate: Bad for your brain, your figure, and your health.

Do we all REALLY need even more reason to avoid MSG? Seriously? People?

So what the heck is HVP or rather, how is it made, you may be asking (well, some of you).

You fill a ginormulous vat with waste proteins (waste and low quality cereals, soy, wheat, corn), you bring it to a boil and you pour hydrochloric acid all over this stew. You let the acid eat on this until the proteins are broken down into amino acids (lord only knows what sort of carcinogenic reactants arise in this process, its not tested properly).

Once you have what must be a gruesome snotty mess that would be considered a biohazard, extremely caustic sodium hydroxide (lye) is poured onto the toxic gloop. This neutralizes the acids.

What happens next?

You eat it.

Why do they add MSG to so many foods? Because without it you would taste the reality – that you are eating food utterly devoid of nutrition and flavor. If these manufactured high throughput foods were not spiked with this neurotoxic excitotoxin – you would likely never ever eat it and the food processing industry would wither.

Its all about making money at the expense of YOUR health, it is definitely not about real actual bonafide nutritious life sustaining non-toxic delicious food.

[Follow this link for a recipe for Whole Wheat Cheddar Cheese Kefir Irish Soda Bread]

St. Patrick’s day is almost here and I feel like I am getting whiplash with how fast this year is passing already! The stores put out St Patrick’s day decorations right after Christmas so by now, all that Chinese import crap is in the clearance bins which makes it seem like the holiday never had a chance!

Here in New England, St. Patrick’s means something more than green beer, crappy bar food, bar crawls, and green dye dumped in midwestern rivers. Here it is actually linked in with an authentic memory and nostalgia for Ireland. The traditional meal eaten for this holiday is the New England Boiled Dinner: boiled cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and a spiced but boiled corned beef brisket. This is traditionally served with a side of strong mustard or even horseradish (I adore this meal with sour cream and horseradish, I almost like that part more than the rest, just like I am with wasabi and sushi, I prefer the wasabi! Same with oysters and red sauce – LOVE the horseradishy red sauce).

This is not to say that this meal is traditional for Ireland. Not at all. But it IS traditional for New England for this holiday. We also enjoy it with soda bread which IS traditional and authentic to Ireland. I will blog separately about the Whole Wheat Kefir Cheddar Cheese soda bread I made later.

Today’s corned beef brisket is all about method.

I had a 2 week opportunity to test out the Sous Vide Supreme, a consumer level self regulating hot water bath that is the same as that used in a huge range of food provider settings from haute cuisine restaurants to crap food high throughput food companies.

Here it is opened up to show the inner chamber where the hot water and rack is.

Sous Vide = under vacuum and refers to the use of food grade plastic bags into which your food goes and then most if not all the air is vacuumed out. It was “pioneered” by the French in the 1970s as a method used in the food production setting.

The vacuum packed food is then put into a hot water bath.

As a scientist, I have used circulating hot water baths for many things including making nucleic acids, precipitating proteins, etc. This sort of water bath is common in the lab. It used to be the only way to do PCR (polymerase chain reaction) which meant a lot of futzing with little microfuge tubes floating on little styrofoam rafts on the surface of the hot water. Sometimes these baths were even behind radiation shields when the stuff being heated was radioactive. Nowadays, much less radionucleotide is used and PCR is done in cute little benchtop thermocyclers.

Water bath manufacturers probably freaked when this change came. I am guessing that is when they started to market heavily into the restaurant and molecular gastronomy spheres.

So, my experience was that these baths were nasty contaminated in a food sense (you could not SEE any contaminants but you sure could imagine it) – it took a bit to reorient my brain to using hot water baths for cooking in.

There is no reason to think this water bath will be anything but super clean! You really should use distilled water so that you do not get water scale build up on the walls of the bath interior. You should also dump the water after each cooking session and clean the bath with non-abrasive means.

The key reasons to cook this way:

• NO juices lost to cooking water or as steam or roasted off and are left to reabsorbed into meats
• Very little fat needed to cook moist foods
• your food is infused with the seasonings you added (dont add too much!)
• you set the water temp to the desired end temperature – your food will not burn or over cook if you set it to the correct end temp!
• you can put in collagen containing meats like short ribs and allow it to cook very slowly for DAYS so that at the end you have almost completely solubilized the collage which = tender tender TENDER meat
• you can cook temperature sensitive things like fish and shrimp to the very minimum temperature needed and loose NO moisture (dont leave seafood in for long – doesnt help it and might lead to possible protein degradation = drying out)
• you can par-cook foods to almost done and then put the food in the fridge to be ready to be warmed for later
• you can cook meat to the PERFECT internal doneness – you will then need to char the outer surface to get your maillard reactants that we perceive as delicious on meat

I made quite a few different recipes (even bread!) but today I am writing about using the Sous Vide to make corned beef. I can attest that the corned beef we made in the sous vide was the very best we have ever had – so moist, so tender, just amazing.

Note that at this time of year we get corned beef with spice packets. I used those spices in this recipe.

You simply remove the corned beef and the spices to a bag, seal it, stick it in the sous vide at 175 F for 10 hours, remove, cut, enjoy!

I served it with boiled potatoes and carrots, no cabbage, and on top of some of the whole wheat kefir cheddar cheese soda bread I made. Also, horseradish sour cream and some mustard.

I made the left overs into corned beef hash the next morning. Explosively delicious. I could recommend making this corned beef JUST for corned beef hash alone!

We loved our experience with the Sous Vide Supreme and regretted having to return it after our loan period!

Product Details:

Specifications:

• Model SVS-10LS
• Water Baths 1
• Total Volume 11.2 liters
• Capacity 10 liters (Max Fill Line)
• Power 120 Volt 850 Watts @ 60Hz

Dimensions (w/d/h):

• Overall 11.5″/14.2″/11.4″ (Metric 290mm/360mm/289mm)
• Bath 9.9″/12.6″/6.8″ (Metric: 252mm/320mm/173mm)
• Weight (approx.) 13 lbs (5.9 kg)

Temperature:

• Display Digital LED 0.1°F (0.1°C)
• Range 41°–203°F (5°–95° C)
• Sensitivity 1°F (0.5°C)
• Over-temperature Alarm +5°F (+4°C)

Timer:

• Display 1 minute resolution
• Settings Variable 0—99hr:59mins
• Cycle End Audible buzz & “end” message

I had the most brilliant Sunday at the Canning-Across-America Canvolution event with a group of people who were so fantastic and so interesting I didn’t want to leave.

But we worked so hard canning so many things and the kitchen was such a BEAST that by the time that things were winding down, I was utterly wiped, and starved, and freaked out because I had a long ride ahead of me and I still had to milk the goats! All this conspired to make me zombie-like at the end of the day and totally forget to go back into the restaurant and thank everyone for coming and get emails etc.

Lets back up and start from the beginning as I share snapshots and a report from the day.

As you know from this post (“Join the Canvolution!“), the objective for the day was to share canning skills with others. This was done in Somerville but also across the US as the meme of the Canvolution spread like wildfire!

I think that you can simply switch out food preservation for “canning” throughout because actually the topics were not just about canning. Other than my demo on pressure canning, we had Alex who spoke on lactofermentation. You can see the lacto-fire in his eyes! Reminded me of Sandor Katz who is ablaze with the lactofermentation affliction.

Alex blogs at FeedMeLikeYouMeanIt on topics of wholesome nutrition as well as lactofermentation. I have only taken a tiny peek at his blog but plan on poking around more!

Linsey, the woman who made this event possible with her amazing hard work, organization, and positive attitude, did an extremely thorough overview, demo and hands on experience for all 20 in attendance (max number!) of boiling water bath canning. She just blogged about it in her post “The Can-o-rama Cantacular! We Can, and We Did!“.

She had roasted plum tomatoes to loosen the skins (better than blanching them!!) as well as some garlic.

The structure of the day was adapted to deal with the time taken up by actual canning in the hot water. This meant that we started with some great canned vinegar dill pickles.

We cut organic pickling cucumbers into quarters or smaller and then in groups of 5, people went into the commercial kitchen with Linsey and stuffed the cucumbers into hot jars.

We then filled the jars with hot dill brine, sealed the jars, and then Lindsey put the jars into the hot water to process them.

While the pickles were doing their thing, people got to work skinning the plum tomatoes that Linsey had roasted before we all got there, early in the morning!

Did I mention that Lindsey is amazing? This would not have gone off so well without her hard work.

The skinless tomatoes were then crushed and put on to simmer and reduce a bit. Linsey added salt, garlic, ad lemon juice as she explained to the group about how the pH, even for tomatoes, must be at or below 4.6 to be able to use the boiling water bath method. (The low pH inhibits growth of nasty bugs!)

Next came the crushing of an impressing amount of blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Linsey must have bought out all the farmer’s markets in a 100 mile radius!

Mixed in between all of this crushing and simmering and jarring Alex held forth on lactofermentation and got everyone shredding cabbage, salting it, and crushing it into pint jars to take home with them.

I think a lot of people learned some new principles especially regarding the beneficial bacteria in ferments and how store bought pasteurized pickles are dead, not living like the sauerkraut everyone was making.

Somewhere in there, I shared (without really doing anything formal) some of the foods I have been dehydrating to show people just a hint of what they might be able to do in terms of dehydrating foods.

Excalibur dehydrators should have paid me for the day cuz I have a feeling a few people might be checking out their goods after Sunday!

I did a demo on the pressure canning with just jars filled with water. I brought some sample jars with food but we didn’t can anything because it takes so very long by this method that it wasn’t practical to can actual food. People got to see how the pressure canner is constructed and also how it behaves as its being used. They learned about the importance of venting the canner for 10 minutes before putting the regulator on and then how to handle the very hot canner when its time to let it cool.

I brought two jars of colored water that I had canned to let people open them to see how much of a seal forms and also how much of a vacuum develops inside.

All the while, berries were simmering on the hot beast of a stove in the kitchen. Linsey showed people how to watch for the proper amount of time to boil the berries (she was using no pectin) so that the syrup was just right for proper gelling of the jams!

At this point, my brain begins to fuzz over! I had the opportunity to chat with such interesting people about local and sustainable foods, canning, fermentation, cheese making, our goats and chickens, homesteading, renewable power, finding ways to afford solar panels, and dehydrating food. What a day!

I know that Linsey and others chatted a bit, after I had to leave, about future events. I look forward to them and getting to know everyone better!

I will let you know when I hear about more events and if you live in the New England region, try to make it!

Melamine is the scourge that was completely optional; it really didn’t have to happen. It’s all about greed and industrial food gone wholly amok.

Melamine poisoning spans animal feeds, pet foods, milk, baby formula, fish, wheat gluten, and now EGGS.

Wheat gluten, eggs and milk are everywhere. If you think you can protect yourself from tainted dairy and egg products from China, think again.

This post is all about melamine: what it is, how it hurts you, how it got in your food.

What exactly is Melamine?

Melamine is an organic compound (learn more) that is a key component in fire retardants and it is also a pesticide (this sets off major flags for me, more later).

It can be combined with formaldehyde to make a plastic compound and a foaming polymeric cleaning product. It is a primary component of a colorant in inks and plastics called Pigment Yellow 150.

A specific type of melamine is added to cement to make it hyper-plastic, flexible, so that it can have more attractive structural qualities.

In the 50s and 60s there was some use of melamine as a fertilizer but it proved to be inefficient as it would crystallize into salts and not be available to plants.

The thing about melamine that made people interested in using it as a fertilizer, the nitrogen aspects (amines), is what brings us closer to the current problem.

Plants need nitrogen to make proteins.

The use of melamine as a NonProteinNitrogen (NPN) in animal feeds was tested back in the 50s but it was shown that the cows didn’t use this sort of nitrogen very well.

Melamine is not that great for helping plants or animals make protein BUT it fools low-cost testing methods into thinking that it IS protein. (tests like Kjeldahl and Dumas tests estimate protein levels by measuring the nitrogen content, so they can be misled by adding nitrogen-rich compounds such as melamine. See note at bottom of this post).

Melamine itself is relatively low in toxicity but it becomes quite lethal when made into melamine cyanurate.

IMG pending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Melamine-cyanuric_acid_chemical_structure_color.png

What the Chinese are putting in food, milk, feed and lord knows what else – Melamine Cyanurate

The kind of melamine implicated in the Chinese scandals is called melamine cyanurate (learn more), a chemical that is commonly used a fire retardant (as with straight melamine). It is considered more toxic than melamine or cyanurate, from which it is made.

When melamine cyanurate is ingested by mammals (those poor dogs and cats in the massive melamine Chinese pet food scandal (learn more)) it hurts the kidneys and throws the animal or person into acute renal failure.

LD50 in rats and mice (ingested):

• 4.1 g/kg – Melamine cyanurate

From USA Today’s article “Poison pet food woes seem to hit cats harder”:

“FDA scientists explained that when melamine and cyanuric acid are absorbed into the bloodstream, they concentrate and interact in the urine-filled renal microtubules (sic), then crystallize and form large numbers of round, yellow crystals, which in turn block and damage the renal cells that line the tubes, causing the kidneys to malfunction.”

Besides renal failure (which is seen in the recent baby formula scandal – something like 94,000 children hospitalized and 4 dead from melamine poisoning Learn More), melamine has been implicated in possibly causing kidney stones, bladder cancer and reproductive organ damage.

For recent information on the scale (94,000!) of impact of the tainted milk scandal read this October 8, 2008 report from Reuters “China milk victims may have reached 94,000”

The government has not updated figures issued on September 21, when it said that 12,892 infants were in hospital, 104 with serious illness, and close to 40,000 others were affected but did not need major treatment.

But reports from local media across the country compiled by Reuters suggest the number of affected children has risen to nearly 94,000, although most are not in a serious condition.

China Floats in an Ocean of Melamine

China is one nexus in the coming and current collapse of food production (fertilizer, falling acres of non-toxic land, water shortages, etc). They, like the rest of us, MUST find a way to boost soil fertility even though they (nor any other large concern) is going about it in a rational way, only in an industrial, non-sustainable way.

To this end, China has been deliberately pushing to increase it’s melamine production (from coal gasification) in recent years. Coal gasification is used to make urea – the key nitrogen component in plant fertilizers around the world. Urea, being derived from a non-renewable resource that is under massive demand pressures, is becoming more and more expensive. Because of this, many melamine manufacturers and suppliers outside of China have found it too expensive to make locally and so chose to source this from China’s growing surplus of melamine.

Even though melamine is a poor fertilizer, it is also a pesticide, so it “seems” it is attractive still. This may be scary, true, but this may be NEXT WEEK’s scandal as the melamine outbreaks we have been suffering through in recent times is due to something else.

As I mentioned, melamine can be used to dope foods so that they can LOOK protein rich while being very weak knock-offs of the original. Its like a sick pathetic rational extension of the piracy ethic in China, “fake it till you make it” no matter the costs. The same thing happened with the Baxter Heparin scandal, exact same sort of doping only with different chemicals for a different use.

The contaminant has been identified as an “over-sulphated” derivative of chondroitin sulfate, a popular shellfish-derived supplement often used for arthritis. Since this “over-sulphated” variant is not naturally occurring and mimics the properties of heparin,the counterfeit is almost certainly intentional as opposed to an accidental lapse in manufacturing. The heparin was cut from anywhere from 2-60% with a counterfeit substance due to cost effectiveness, and a shortage of suitable pigs in China. (SOURCE)

It’s the Eggs, kids. Its in the eggs, in China. Are we next? Is it already happening to us?

The New York Times reported on 10/26/08 in an article “Tainted Eggs From China Discovered in Hong Kong” by David Barboza:

SHANGHAI — Hong Kong food inspectors have found eggs imported from northeast China to be contaminated with high levels of melamine, the toxic industrial additive at the heart of an adulteration scandal in Chinese milk products.

and

The discovery of contaminated eggs in Hong Kong was announced Saturday by the Center for Food Safety, a Hong Kong government agency, which said the eggs had been imported from a farm in the city of Dalian, in northeastern China. The center reported that the melamine level was almost double the legal limit for food sold in Hong Kong.

The general wisdom is that the melamine gets into the eggs because the chickens are fed feed doped with melamine (by feed producers to fool the farmers or is it farmers who are desperate for any nitrogen in the feed – I am guessing the former).

This phenomenon is called bioaccumulation (learn more) of toxins in eggs and tissues of animals fed a poison (think about how DDTs were making some birds go extinct due to DDT buildup in scavenger birds leading to egg failures). Its also known as Biomagnification (learn more)

An article out of China on two possible sources of melamine in chicken feed (“Melamine Scandal Hits China’s “King of Eggs” October 28, 2008 at Chinastakes.com):

According to Wang, two reasons most probably account for the melamine in eggs. Feed producers may add melamine directly into chicken feed, or the feed may contain overdue milk powder with high level of melamine content. “Either can lead to melamine residue in eggs.

“Many illegal additives, appearing as “new technology,” have brought an unprecedented crisis over quality to China’s feed processing industry,” said an expert of a national research institution to China Business News.

This is why we grow our own chickens for our own eggs and drink milk from our own goats in our backyard

You can learn a whole lot more about the Chinese and US FDA inaction on the problem of toxic eggs from Chinese and potentially US producers by a former emergency programs specialist with the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) on DailyKos at this diary “Melamine just reported in eggs…as I warned in 2007” and this diary “The ominous silence about eggs from gluten-fed chickens”

Is there an even larger crisis “we” are not talking about?

I am just going to throw this out for those of you who have had the tenacity to read to this point. This may be an algebra that will become critically important to the entire world as time passes.

- If we know that melamine has some nominal and sub-par attraction as a fertilizer
— Then it may be being used in China (elsewhere?) as a fertilizer

- If it is known that melamine falls out of solution and accumulates as salts in soils
— Then misguided use of melamine as a fertilizer and pesticide will lead to increasing retained toxin loads in soils across China and the world (3rd world countries?)

- If China has a melamine surplus
— Then China may be channeling that into even more melamine for local and misguided global use as a fertilizer, pesticide, and dope for feed stock (land and water livestocks such as fish farms that under massive pressure to source cheaper and more abundant protein)

- If there is a growing soil toxicity with yearly added melamine
— Then more and more crops will become and maintain dangerous levels of melamine toxicity
It seems to me that this is MUCH more relevant and dangerous than any GMO crop yet this crisis is flying totally under the radar.

To me, that is a global malfeasance on the part of all countries.

In one of those Daily Kos diaries, the comment stream reveals these nuggets:

The FDA, USDA, and the EPA is not our friend in these matters, especially Bush’s FDA, USDA, and EPA. For example, in 1999, the EPA tolerance level for melamine was lowered after a request by Novartis.

Melamine is also a breakdown product of cyromazine (pesticide) which bioaccumulates. It seems that (all?) the testing (ever?) done on cyromazine was done by Ciba-Geigy.

And there is this comment:

A few months ago, the Admin made subtle changes in oversight requirements for regs. If you aren’t familiar with reading this sort of language, you would not see flashing red lights – assuming you stayed awake past the first few lines.
Among the agencies affected was the FDA. Here are a few links to posts on these changes:
The Executive Order’s Effect on Regulation: Science & Technology Hearing;
White House Power Grab by OMB Regulation

Bottom Line(s):

• DeGlobalize/ReLocalize your food, take it back America
• Need I really say it? – EAT LOCALLY, ALWAYS
• Eat NOTHING from China
• Find out if your favorite prepared foods or even your fresh veggies and fruits are sourcing from China, they way well be
• the FDA has grown VERY lax under the Bush administration and is not protecting us from this grave Chinese-related risk
• Melamine contamination (and what else?) should be considered potentially widespread throughout our food system and that of others
• The ubiquity of gluten, dairy, and egg products almost ensures widespread and nonconsensual exposure to these tainted source proteins in prepared foods and infant formulas
• Be vigilant

Resource Pages:

• Melamine – Wiki
• Melamine Cyanurate – Wiki
• 2007 Pet Food Recalls – Wiki
• Chinese Protein Export contamination (wheat gluten)
• Baxter’s Heparin Contamination recalls – Wiki
• Chinese Milk and Infant Formula Melamine scandal – Wiki

About the Kjeldahl and Dumas tests:

Traditionally, food protein is measured by a method developed by Danish brewer Johann Kjeldahl in the late 1800s. In this analytical technique, a strong acid digests a sample, breaking down the organic matter and releasing nitrogen, which is then converted to ammonia. The amount of ammonia indicates how much nitrogen was in the original sample and, hence, the amount of protein. This “proved to be a robust, precise method,” says Julian McClements, a food scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It is attractive because it can be used for a variety of products and protein types. Another, similar nitrogen-based technique, called the Dumas test, is also popular with industry. It relies on burning the sample to release nitrogen. The Association of Analytical Communities (AOAC) International, a scientific association that sets standards for analytical methods, lists the Kjeldahl and Dumas techniques as the standard methods for measuring protein in food.
(SOURCE)

Who has not stood before a pile of organic vegetables or fruits and compared their price to the price of the conventionally grown ones next to it? Who has not asked, on some level, is there some real qualitative difference? You likely appreciate the lack of chemicals used to grow it – artificial fertilizers and pesticides made from petroleum.

This question – “Are organic vegetables BETTER than conventional ones?” can catch you because there are several assumptions that are meant to trip you up.

Not all organic growers are the same, what the USDA means by Organic may not square with your idea of it, the USDA is known for letting certain things slide for Big Ag, and many other system issues that have been purposefully institutionalized.

You may also assume that “Organic Food” is more wholesome too.

Merriam Webster defines wholesome this way:

• Pronunciation: \hōl-sÉ™m\
• Function: adjective
• Date: 13th century
• 1: promoting health or well-being of mind or spirit
• 2: promoting health of body
• 3 a: sound in body, mind, or morals b: having the simple health or vigor of normal domesticity
• 4 a: based on well-grounded fear : prudent -a wholesome respect for the law- b: safe (it wouldn’t be wholesome for you to go down there — Mark Twain)

Unless you are standing in a farmer’s market where the veggies or fruits are honestly sourced from a local small holding organic farm, the organic items in question – in the big box grocery store – are likely to have MUCH more in common with the conventional ones.

How is this possible?

Big Organic growers grow their plants with the same industrial model as Big Agriculture – huge carbon foot print and constant destruction of the soils.

Depleted Soils

Soil, or dirt as some may think of it, is not just powdery minerals. It is a complex mixture that includes those minerals from long eroded rocks but also organic residues from all the activity that has happened in the soil.

Those organic residues can include:

• Living and degrading plant debris
• Living and degrading insect and animal bodies
• Living and degrading bacterial populations
• Living and degrading mushrooms (mycelium –mushroom roots-, and mushroom fruiting bodies, even spores)

The activities of these living things lend structure to the soil (different zones of life, mineralization, compaction, oxygen levels, nitrogen levels, moisture levels) and also help by making certain compounds, elements, minerals, available, things like:

• Plant-usable nitrogen (nitrogen fixation via bacterial-root-rhizome symbiosis)
• Vitamin production
• Plant-usable forms of elements like calcium, phosphates, and other more rare types.

When soils are plowed, the structure is obliterated and whole communities of plants, mushrooms and bacteria and insects are disrupted, killed, inhibited. They can no longer transmute atmospheric nitrogen and soil-locked minerals and organic debris into nutrients for plants.

The good stuff in the soil is also exposed to the harsh sun, rains, winds – all depleting the soils even further.

Our present day industrial Big Agriculture requires MASSIVE amounts of oil, mechanical toil, and amendments (also dependent on oil for their very manufacture) to compensate for the damage that plowing does to the soils.

Consider these stats:

Raw Broccoli

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 103 mg/100g sample down to 48 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 382 down to 325 mg/100g sample
• Water content went from 89.1% up to 90.6%

Red Tomatoes

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 13 mg/100g sample down to 5 mg/100g sample
• magnesium went from 14 mg/100g sample down to 11 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 244 down to 33 mg/100g sample

Raw Carrots

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 37 mg/100g sample down to 27 mg/100g sample
• magnesium went from 23 mg/100g sample down to 15 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 341 down to 323 mg/100g sample

On top of this soil holocaust, you have genetically modified plants (via breeding and the lab) that have been optimized for the industrial method and which are able to grow in depleted soils.

What you get are vegetables which LOOK like a carrot, a cabbage, a head of broccoli, corn, cucumbers, etc but if you were to measure the mineral and vitamin contents you would find something closer to a wet soggy sponge.

Let me repeat: Big Organic growers grow their plants with this same Big Ag industrial model – huge carbon foot print and destruction of the soils.

What this means to you at the store, is that when you buy Organic, you are buying a compromised promise of pesticide purity but not wholesomeness. You are buying simulations of vegetables.

Taking vitamins will not solve this problem because they are based on a false premise. Many vitamins are not absorbable by the human body unless they are embedded within the context of food (be it plant or flesh).

The only way to resolve this issue (and just how many diseases arise from our bodies being depleted almost from the moment of conception) is to buy veggies from small farms that are practicing permaculture and organic gardening methods.

Better yet, learn how to get your own permaculture and organic garden beds going so that you can eat REAL vegetables with actual vitamins and minerals.

What a concept

If you are interested in learning how, visit my garden blog at Humble Garden and also ask me in comments.

I am going to take a break today from food porn and food photography and not even talk about molecular gastronomy as you have read me do before (Essentialism and Authenticity in Food: Molecular Pablum, Molecular Gastronomy 101: Part 2 – The Nose and receptors, Molecular Gastronomy 101: Biology Basics – Part 1, Molecular Gastronomy for the masses? (A Rant)) but, rather, I am going to talk about the real molecular universe of what we eat and how food becomes us and how that integration changes our bodies.

I am going to introduce you to a bleeding-edge scientific topic called Nutrigenomics.

“Nutri” comes from nutritional (relating to food) and “genomics” is a term we use to refer to the global study of the molecules that hold the information that becomes our bodies and minds (your genes or DNA, RNA, and other heritable and informational chemical structures).

You may or may have not noticed, in 2001, that the Celera based Private Human Genome Project announced that it had completed a good portion of the sequencing (chemical deciphering) of the entire human genome. Last year (2007), the founder of Celera, Craig Venter, published the sequence data from his own DNA, presenting the 6 billion letter genome of a single person for the first time.

Lots of this information is like an undecorated Christmas tree, lacking ornaments and meaning. It is through the combined study of the genomic data paired with information about a disease state or some other function that the true promise of all these billions of dollars of work is met.

These days, genomics is paired with super dense information about the proteins that your genes make and also ways that your genes are regulated (systems biology, pathway analysis, proteomics, etc) to help scientists understand to the molecular level exactly what is happening in your cells.

Nutrigenomics is a common-sense next step and is fantastically important for our way of life and that of our children for generations to come.

Nutrigenomics is determining how your body (your specific body, one day in the future) uses the food you eat. It is going to help us understand how the food we eat impacts our chemistry and the way our genes behave – why some of us get fat, some of us get diabetes, some of us get alzheimers, some of us get allergies, some of us grow larger others short, some of us are predisposed to heart attacks, etc.

Our nutritional state can make some genes be read abnormally and others not read at all (think autoimmune disease and cancer). Food that you put in your mouth has a direct effect on your genes and your genes have a direct impact on the way the food you eat becomes your body.

More important though, it will help us get molecular and get honest about the effect of the types of foods and the quality of that food has on our bodies.

The Chinese and other ancient cultures have known this simple truth for millennia – food can be medicine. Food can be medicine because what we eat BECOMES us.

(Erlenmeyer flasks from the Argonne National Laboratory glass blowing shop. source)

Today’s article, “The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop“, by Harold McGee in The New York Times, has me thinking on what what we might call “real food“, authenticity, essentialism, and molecular gastronomy.

You likely know that Harold McGee is a food science writer who’s book “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen” is a core primer on food science for non-food scientists.

In this article, McGee talks about a “new” method of making flavored liquids or essences by a “gelatin clarification” method.

The basic overview of this method is this:

• Prepare a liquid from desired food (lobster, peaches, carrots, spirulina, chicken, hog toenails, whale mesentary, simply anything at all)
• If the liquid was made without bones or some cartilage, add a small amount of gelatin, dissolve
• Freeze preparation
• Place frozen block in strainer (with cheese cloth?) in bowl in the fridge
• Allow ice crystals to slowly melt over days and release into bowl (be sure to seal up this assembly otherwise it will pick up other odors in the fridge)
• Use what drips from the matrix (gelatin, fats, proteins, etc) as an essence.

What is happening here is that the gelatin forms a matrix or net into which everything is bound. As is the wont with all things fluidic, upon freezing, the water portion of the fluid is excluded from the gelatin matrix as it freezes into crystals, leaving behind particulate matter. Water soluble components travel with the water.

When the frozen block is slowly thawed at temps that are too low for the gelatin and fats to become fluid, the ice crystals melt and water and water soluble fractions drip away from the matrix.

The molecular gastronomists like to call this an “essence”. With this, you have purified the water soluble flavors. You have also left behind fat soluble flavors which can be extraordinary.

The “novelty” here is that the water soluble essence may deliver a different and perhaps more intense flavor because it is no longer combined with what ever flavors may have been in the fat soluble fraction.

Those fats may have served to mask, dampen or modify the water soluble flavors.

Fat and water soluble favors have become uncoupled in an “un-natural” or not naturally occurring way that will usually not be present in legacy preparations, recipes, foods, or cuisines.

These clarified essences have become faddish. (Actually, I think they were “conceived” in such a way that faddism was a foregone conclusion.)

Chefs who strive for “fame” and profit jump on the essence bandwagon and deliver victual conceits such as lamb loin flavored with pretzel elixir, a creation by Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 in NYC. I have not had this dish but I suppose I would consider trying it if I were in a “gee wiz” mood.

I think I would know I have lost my way if I had to start a $500 meal (gratuity, alcohol, parking, and bathroom usage not included) by signing a non-disclosure agreement, be frisked for a prohibited camera, and eat crappy photos of sushi printed on oddly favored “food product” paper sheets while sniffing aerosolized “ocean” and watching hypodermic needles being used to extrude lyophylized clam deoxyribonucleic acid noodles that are then infused with cotton candy essence, incubated in fluorescein dye and all the lights doused while I am spoon fed the glowing concoction while being irradiated with a UV light by an unpaid intern wearing UV safe goggles and a meat jerky flavored gel bodysuit.

(Fluorescein dye)

I would much prefer to try such a meal prepared by a passionate food hacker (for a modest fee and at an ad hock food hacking party – all in the spirit of fun, experimentation and “science”) than as a status meal in an expensive restaurant served with considerable self-importance.

With respect to “authentic” food and whether pretzel essence infused lamb loin is authentic in any way, I think we need to stick a definition on that word.

From Merriam-Webster Online:

“Main Entry: au·then·tic
Pronunciation: &-'then-tik, o-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English autentik, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin authenticus, from Greek authentikos, from authentEs perpetrator, master, from aut- + -hentEs (akin to Greek anyein to accomplish, Sanskrit sanoti he gains)
1 obsolete : AUTHORITATIVE
2 a : worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact <paints an authentic picture of our society> b : conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features <an authentic reproduction of a colonial farmhouse> c : made or done the same way as an original <authentic Mexican fare>
3 : not false or imitation : REAL, ACTUAL <based on authentic documents> <an authentic cockney accent>
4 a of a church mode : ranging upward from the keynote — compare PLAGAL 1 b of a cadence : progressing from the dominant chord to the tonic — compare PLAGAL 2
5 : true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character “

Authenticity is not the impetus or motivation in “gee wiz” victual conceit molecular gastronomy. Innovation may be a motivator but I think that the vagaries of ego and business capsize that noble though misplaced ambition.

No, I fear that most of the commercial molecular gastronomy pablum we are “fed” would be better defined as “derivative”:

“Main Entry: ²derivative
Function: adjective
1 : formed by derivation <a derivative word>
2 : made up of or marked by derived elements
3 : lacking originality : BANAL“

I would prefer unadorned roasted marrow bones or a slice of headcheese with a side of just picked calabash tomatoes sprinkled with chunky sea salt to some expensive overwrought pseudo-imaginative and derivative essence delivered with pomp and circumstance.

(yawn)

Related posts:

• Molecular Gastronomy for the masses? (A Rant)
• Molecular Gastronomy 101: Biology Basics – Part 1
• Molecular Gastronomy 101: Part 2 – The Nose and receptors

Technorati Tags: The New York Times, real food, authenticity, essentialism, molecular gastronomy, Harold McGee, food science, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, food, science, gelatin clarification, method, Freeze, ice, crystal, matrix, essence, soluble, water soluble, fat soluble, legacy, clarified, faddish, victual conceits, pretzel, elixir, Wylie Dufresne, WD-50, pablum, marrow, bone, headcheese, calabash, sea salt

Make no mistake, this post is absolutely for the beef lover and especially the connoisseur of the highest quality aged beef.

Most of us know what non-aged beef tastes like, somewhat homogeneous or one dimensional in it’s flavor. Some people experience non-aged beef as slightly metallic in flavor (the iron in the hemoglobin?), not a very appetizing characteristic. I have always eaten fresh beef (unless you count the hamburger that has been in the fridge for a day too long which does have a different flavor indeed) and I have never had an experience with aged beef that I am aware of. Some people will eat only aged beef, having converted from the more mundane.

I think that we eat what we like but also what we can get a hold of. I also think that many of us really never have access to aged beef as an ingredient but perhaps have access to it in a fine steakhouse setting. The restaurant experience separates us from the reality of the ingredient so I thought today’s post would be of interest to all of us.

This post will cover:

• Why age beef?
• What is wet aged beef?
• What is dry aged beef?
• What does the dry aging room at Dole & Bailey look like?

Why age beef?

The goal of aging is several fold:

To tenderize

• muscle fiber relaxation
• connective tissue breakdown

To concentrate flavor in the meat and the fat

• microbial action on tissues
• water loss

Muscle fiber relaxation is a physical process that occurs after the animal has met it’s demise. First, the muscle fibers seize up for half a day or so and then the pH changes in the muscle fibers after which they slowly begin to relax (wiki). This occurs in all animals with muscle fibers, including fish.

Connective tissue (collagen in the tendons and other connective structures) breakdown occurs for different reasons, at different rates in different muscle groups, to different degrees, and at different times throughout the aging process.

What is wet aged beef?

Wet aged beef is usually large “primal” cuts of high quality beef that is vacuum packed in tough plastic bags and allowed to sit at cool temps for a desired period of time. This meat passes through the tenderizing process and then begins to develop flavors based on the anaerobic (oxygen-hating) bacteria (L. sakei and L. curvatus – link to paper – PDF) that reside inside the bag. These bacteria help to breakdown various components of the muscle tissues and the breakdown products impart the characteristic flavors to the meat.

Because the meat is sealed away from air, it does not lose moisture and thus there is not an appreciable loss of product over time. This makes this method very attractive to producers and steakhouses because it makes for a less expensive yet delicious product.

People say that wet aged beef has a distinct “aged” flavor without the potential “gamey” or “musty” flavor some report with dry aging.

What is dry aged beef?

Dry aged beef (which may have been wet aged previously for a mixed type of aging) is also done on the larger primal cuts or even a whole side of beef. It is done in a climate controlled room with constant air exchange, bug and bacteria lights, constant temperatures (34 – 36 F) and a constant controlled humidity to control moisture loss. The bacteria that are doing their work in this setting are both the aerobic types (on the exterior) and the anaerobic types (on the interior).

As with cheese caves where the population of specific bacterial and fungal species are unique to each cave and which give the cheese the unique flavor profiles and textural characteristics, so too does the beef dry aging room have a unique bacterial ecology which has a unique impact on the beef aged therein.

I may be wrong but it seems to me that with dry aging, the process that is key and unique is the moisture loss and flavor concentration. Both the meat and the fat loses water over the 14-30 day period (or longer, time period is up to you, there is no hard and fast rule about what is the “best” length of time). Beef is something like 70% water and during the dry aging process it can lose something like 30% of the total moisture. I see it as if the meat were “distilled” to a more essential “beefiness.”

What does the dry aging room at Dole & Bailey look like?

Recently, I had the privilege of walking through the facilities of Dole & Bailey, family-owned purveyors of fine meats, pantry items, dairy, exotic spices and ingredients, seafood and fresh produce. This walk-through included a chance to walk into, experience, sniff, oogle at, and photograph their 20 year old dry aging room (vault, cave, piece of paradise, what have you).

To enter the Bos taurus inner sanctum, you walk through this heavy sliding freezer door. When opened, the positive pressure of the room billows out the distinct aromas of a well seasoned dry aging room. It is hard to articulate really what it smells like. It is certainly not like a room where fresh meat is stored, it smells like meat but nothing at all like off-meat. You can tell from the aroma alone that something special is happening to these slabs of beef.

Big Ed (Ed Brylczyk, Regional Sales Manager at Dole & Bailey), was my guide that day. He was fantastically knowledgeable about the entire company and was quite passionate about each food that he showed me. He took me into this dry aging room and explained the process and also talked about how and why he likes both wet and dry aged beef.

You can see the various types of steaks here, end on. Dole & Bailey (Big Ed, and others) have standing and special orders from area chefs for certain aging protocols (wet for so many days, dry for so many days) on certain kinds of custom cuts. At any given time, you will see a completely unique set of cuts being aged in this room. According to Big Ed, the summertime is high season for these kinds of orders so I got to see the room well stocked.

The name of the client is printed on a tag and attached to their custom ordered dry aged beef.

Here you can see that the type of cut is also labeled. Notice how this looks very different from fresh beef. I didn’t touch any of this but it certainly seems like it would be firm on the exterior and also you can see changes to the fat.

Also, notice how its not brown but quite red, a dark red.

Notice how different the meat looks on the exterior of the dry aged meat compared to an end that has been cut. The interior meat is still red and this particular shot shows a well marbled one.

Makes you hungry huh?

Make mine medium rare!

Bottom Line:

Aging beef, dry or wet, tenderizes and boosts the depth and complexity of the flavor profiles in beef. You can not go wrong with giving this a try. I know that it is something that you find in a more expensive restaurant but if you find yourself presented with the opportunity, be experimental, try it. I plan on it.

Big Ed made a very important comment about aged beef and especially theirs. When you eat this meat in the restaurant, you will notice how fantastic it tastes. One huge reason you will find this difference compared to the steak you find at the grocery store or lesser restaurants is that the beef used in dry aging is of the highest grade. Often, one can not even find this grade of beef in the grocery store. Starting with such exemplary beef, the outcome is sure to be a steak that is magnitudes better than what you are used to. People just do not dry age poor quality meat so choosing dry aged beef will ensure a high quality steak, a priori.

Related Posts:

• Behind the Scenes: The prep kitchen at the Dole & Bailey Maine Roadshow
• iTasting: Elevages Perigord – Duck Foie Gras
• iTasting: Vermont Butter & Cheese Co. – Creamy Goodness
• Local Food: Northeast Family Farms
• Convivium: Les Dames d’Escoffier at Sandrine’s (Cambridge, MA)

Learn More:

• Aging Beef – U of Minnesota

Technorati Tags: wet aged, dry aged

If you choose to read The Glycemic Index site, you may briefly run across something called the Second Meal Effect (SME).

As I understand it and in short, if one eats a low GI food at one meal, there is a carry over effect to the next meal in terms of “buffering” the impact of eating sugar during that second meal.

This has actually been known for some time. In 1982, Jenkins, Wolever, and Taylor reported this in their seminal paper “Slow release dietary carbohydrate improves second meal tolerance” (Jenkins et al. Am J Clin Nutr 1982 35:1339–46).

This phenomenon was further explored in 1988, in a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating a low GI meal (even mixed with other higher GI foods) at dinner improved carbohydrate “tolerance” at the following breakfast.

“We conclude that the difference between the glycemic responses of mixed meals at dinner can be predicted from the GI of the individual foods consumed. In addition, breakfast carbohydrate tolerance is improved when low-GI carbohydrate foods are eaten the previous evening. This provides evidence for a sustained metabolic effect of slowing the absorption of carbohydrate.” Second-meal effect: low-glycemic-index foods eaten at dinner improve subsequent breakfast glycemic response.” Second-meal effect: low-glycemic-index foods eaten at dinner improve subsequent breakfast glycemic response Wolever TWS., et al. Am J Clin Nutr 1988 48: 1041-7.”

The mechanism for that effect has not been well understood until recently, when in 2006 Brighenti et al found:

“In conclusion, our results show that fermentable carbohydrates, independent of their effect on food GI, have the potential to improve postprandial responses to a second meal by decreasing NEFA (nonesterified fatty acids) competition for glucose disposal and, to a minor extent, by affecting intestinal motility. The potential of fermentable carbohydrates in the management of metabolic disorders linked to insulin resistance may warrant further study.” Colonic fermentation of indigestible carbohydrates contributes to the second-meal effect. Brighenti et al Am J Clin Nutr 2006 83 (4): 817-822.”

This is great news because it tells us that fermentable carbohydrates, whether low, medium, or high GI, have the ability to support a better insulin response in those experiencing insulin resistance.

What are “fermentable carbohydrates”? Foods that contain high-amylose starch are “slowly digested, some … starch would escape small-intestine digestion and be fermented in the colon.” (Ibid) Things like apples, broccoli, other fiber rich foods.

Its the fermentation in the colon that is important. Fiber that just goes right through you will not have this effect. The starch needs to be digested in the colon and thus some time AFTER the meal has been eaten, resulting in a longer period of sugar delivery and the minimization of a spike in blood sugar.

There are likely other effects, other mechanisms, that are yet to be discovered.

References used:

• The diabetic diet, dietary carbohydrate and differences in digestibility Jenkins et al. Am J Clin Nutr 1982 35:1339–46
• Second-meal effect: low-glycemic-index foods eaten at dinner improve subsequent breakfast glycemic response Wolever TWS., et al. Am J Clin Nutr 1988 48: 1041-7
• Colonic fermentation of indigestible carbohydrates contributes to the second-meal effect. Brighenti et al Am J Clin Nutr 2006 83 (4): 817-822

Technorati Tags: Second Meal Effect, GI, sugar, paper, low GI, meal, carbohydrate, glycemic response, mechanism, fermentable carbohydrates, postprandial, nonesterified fatty acids, glucose disposal, intestinal motility, metabolic disorder, insulin resistance, blood sugar

There are only a few foods that I crave. Crave, in my case, is not a constant background desire but rather a sudden basic need. If you have ever been pregnant, you likely know what that feeling is, its very hard to articulate. I do not crave chocolate although I adore it. I do not crave krispy kremes, love those.

I do crave tofu.

I will be minding my own business, going through a normal day and, bang, I will have a powerful craving for tofu out of the blue. I do the same thing with beets, carrots, rice, mochi, and homemade chicken soup.

The soup is an umami thing, no doubt.

The rice and mochi, I still have to figure that out.

The beets and carrots? That is related to the tofu and thats all about phytoestrogens, specifically isoflavones (a type of flavonoid).

What, in the name of all that is good and wholesome, are phytoestrogens and isoflavones?

Our bodies have evolved a whole host of receptors and regulatory mechanisms (some involved in regulation and dysregulation in cancer) that respond to estrogen. Phytoestrogens are found in plants (phyto is a Greek prefix that implies a plant origin) and they are active species in our bodies. Phytoestrogens can and do act like estrogen, although with likely important differences. In addition to its estrogen mimicry, isoflavone scavenges free radicals like reactive oxygen species (in other words, its a strong antioxidant).

I can not stress strongly enough how immensely complex our bodies are, especially the regulatory mechanisms that relate to growth and development. You can not do one study to determine the effect of estrogens and phytoestrogens on people and say anything meaningful. Its like a very big bowl of tightly tangled noodles. You have to tease out unconfounded data and form new hypotheses constantly.

What do I mean by that?

Estrogen, phytoestrogen, and tofu will have a different effect on you if you are:

• young
• old
• female
• male
• prepubescent
• fertile
• menopausal
• postmenopausal
• low on thyroid
• high on thyroid
• low on testosterone
• high on testosterone
• low on estrogen
• high on estrogen
• of any particular race
• naturally skinny
• naturally overweight
• immunocompromised
• alcoholic
• drug user
• and just about any combination and variation thereof

Estrogens are nothing to mess around with. It can feminize men into testicular infertility and can energize primary and secondary cancers that arise from estrogen-responsive body tissues.

Estrogens are used to pump-up that plump chicken you bought yesterday or to boost milk output in the cows that were milked for that cup of milk you gave your kids this morning. Estrogen-doped foods such as chicken can have a profound impact on the developing bodies of little girls, pushing them into very early puberty (menstruation and breast development).

You may think, hey, those hormones were used up by the animals and cant possibly pose a risk to me. The food industry dopes the animals so FAR IN EXCESS of anything physiologically relevant that even the effluent from farms (water run off) will have quite measurable levels of hormones.

The effects of estrogens and phytoestrogens can be counterintuitive as well. Science is learning that phytoestrogens and synthetic estrogens can interact with different parts of estrogen receptors in ways that are different from “human estrogen.” For this very reason, one can have one estrogen mimic promote cancer growth and another mimic inhibit it. Phytoestrogens have been described as protective against certain cancers in some patient populations. Some studies suggest that flooding the body with phytoestrogens that do not have a stimulatory effect (cancer wise) would block the estrogen receptors and thus some of the action of estrogen.

Yes, its confusing. Thats what makes Science so fascinating to us scientists. Its also what can be so frustrating to consumers who think that they can demand a one-size-fits-all answer.

You can not.

Bottom line

Be aware that soy containing foods can be a source for phytoestrogens. Try not to get all your protein from soy sources and do not raise your children on pure soy. Eat a variety of protein and vegetables. If you obsess on ingesting a narrow set of foods, you can run into trouble with unknown aspects of those foods and unknown interactions.

(pull)Our bodies have not evolved to be pure, they have evolved to interact in complex ways with a complex and diverse world.(/pull) Honor that with healthy diverse wholesome foods and you will be healthy.
Bibliography:

• Phytoestrogens activate estrogen receptor beta1 and estrogenic responses in human breast and bone cancer cell lines. Chrzan BG, Bradford PG. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2007 Feb;51(2):171-7.
• Differential activation of wild-type estrogen receptor alpha and C-terminal deletion mutants by estrogens, antiestrogens and xenoestrogens in breast cancer cells. Wu F, Safe S. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2007 Jan;103(1):1-9.
• Flaxseed and its lignans inhibit estradiol-induced growth, angiogenesis, and secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor in human breast cancer xenografts in vivo. Bergman Jungestrom M, Thompson LU, Dabrosin C. Clin Cancer Res. 2007 Feb 1;13(3):1061-7.
• Plasma phytoestrogens and subsequent breast cancer risk. Verheus M et al. J Clin Oncol. 2007 Feb 20;25(6):648-55. Epub 2007 Jan 2.

Learn More:

• Phytoestrogens and breast cancer–promoters or protectors? Rice S, Whitehead SA Endocr Relat Cancer. 2006 Dec;13(4):995-1015.
• Foods with phytoestrogens and their concentrations
• Role of estrogens and mimics in obesity regulation
• Cornell University fact page on Phytoestrogens and Breast Cancer

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