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.

Because this is my own little nano-bully pulpit, I have to relate something I overheard at the grocery store the other day. I have been trying to come to terms with what was said and how I have been reacting to it, over time. This post is part of that process. Your comments will be an important further step.

I was dithering over some apples when I heard this 16 oldish guy (taller than me for sure) talking to his mom. He was trying to persuade her to let him buy a pineapple. She said that she didn’t want him to buy it and to buy the canned pineapple instead. He persisted, saying he wanted to try it fresh. She said, in an off hand and rather annoyed manner, that it is less expensive canned. He replied that it isn’t really and that the pineapple cost less. She said that it was just too much trouble, he replied it couldn’t be that hard to carve up and then he goes on to talk about how you should cut this and that part.

Finally, she literally pulled him away from the fresh fruit display into the canned and boxed budget isle.

I was struck dumb and felt so bad for that kid. Here he is, a guy who is a teen who actually WANTS to eat fresh food and who wants to actually get his hands dirty with the pineapple and his mother is telling him that canned is BETTER. Sure, the mom must have been in a hurry, didn’t want to clean up a mess, preferred canned ancient pineapple, whatever; she missed out BIG time on a teachable moment (hers and his).

She wasn’t listening to her child, in the least.

They could have bought that pineapple, just a few dollars. He would have had the opportunity to use a knife, in the kitchen, and learn a bit about the way of the pineapple – the spiky bits, the woody bits, the green top, the smell and flavor that does NOT exist with canned fruit. She could then have drilled home for him how to clean up afterwards (an extremely important skill that has to be taught). None of those lessons and experiences happened.

He learned one huge lesson: its OK to be virulently anti-fresh pineapple (fruit, food, what have you).

I hope that his personal lesson is to buy it later and do it for himself.

How many of us do not “like to cook” because there was some sort of gatekeeper who made the kitchen out of bounds or unpleasant? Eating is about as basic as you can get, to feel like cooking and creating in the kitchen is the domain of “others” is unfortunate.

I feel very strongly that we are all born with artistic talent as well as a proclivity towards cooking. Both of these interests are discouraged in so many of us. It is hard to overcome that.

It was just a shock to see this dynamic overtly displayed on an ordinary day in an ordinary grocery store.

Technorati Tags: teachable moment

Hmmmm, chocolate.

It’s likely something we all take for granted.

You might think that the definition of chocolate is an inherent thing and you might think that when you go to the store and when you buy something that is called chocolate that it would, indeed, BE chocolate. For the most part, that is what it is now.

Seems there are some who find that unacceptable and there is some nefarious behind the-scenes-activity with the FDA (THAT would never happen in this administration, right?).

In short, the FDA is considering changing the definition of chocolate to include those products that do not contain cocoa butter or even cocoa solids and that transfats and artificial sweeteners are mighty fine amendments to a Hershey bar.

Seems the big business organization behind this would be the Chocolate Manufacturers Association (instills a lot of confidence in their products doesn’t it). Who are some of the companies that are spear-heading this push for dumbing down chocolate and making it even LESS wholesome for our children?

“The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestle SA and Archer Daniels Midland Co., has a petition before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to redefine what constitutes chocolate. They want to make it without the required ingredients of cocoa butter and cocoa solids, using instead artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes and vegetable fats such as hydrogenated and trans fats.” (Adam Satariano for Bloomberg Press)

Thats right, you read it, none other than Nestle and Hershey.

I have to tell you. Before I learned about their push to degrade chocolate, I had a lot of good will toward these companies. I would have been positively inclined toward the Chocolate Manufacturers Association. But now, they have done some permanent damage in this household as I now do not nor can I trust these companies to provide a wholesome product that I can give to my children.

I can promise you that I will be looking for other REAL chocolate products from companies that speak up against this silliness.

You can have your say today and tomorrow by visiting the FDA’s comment site. You can give them your 2 cents worth on whether you think its right to allow these large multinational corporations to label a non-chocolate product as chocolate.

To do that visit the FDA’s site at: FDA E-comments Website

Don’t be confused by the oddness of the page, hit the “submit button” and you will be able to make your contribution.

For more specific information on how to do the FDA filing visit the “DontMessWithOurChocolate” page.

Learn more at “Eating Liberally“, get angry, submit your comments to the FDA.

Other Bloggers HEART Chocolate, why you should too

Cybele May, of the Candy Blog, has been quite vocal about this rear-guard attack on the American Way Of Life – I mean – chocolate.

Read her LA Times opinion piece “Hands off my chocolate, FDA!” on it, where she says, in part:

“The FDA is entertaining a “citizen’s petition” to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter. The “citizens” who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. (OK, I’m not sure what’s in it for them), along with seven other food producing associations.”

Other bloggers in the blogosphere who are trying to raise the ruckus on this issue include:

• Ed Levine at Serious Eats
• Chocolate Alchemy
• Crooks and Liars
• Chowhound
• and so many more

Technorati Tags: chocolate, definition, FDA, Chocolate Manufacturers Association, Hershey, Nestle, Food and Drug Administration

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

Technorati Tags: pregnant, crave, chocolate, krispy kreme, craving, tofu, beets, carrot, rice, mochi, homemade, chicken, soup, umami, phytoestrogen, receptors, regulatory, mechanisms, dysregulation, cancer, estrogen, phyto, Greek, plant, species, mimicry, isoflavone, scavenge, free radical, antioxidant, feminize, milk, puberty, physiological, effluent, farm, hormone, Science, synthetic, mimic

You may have read recently in the New York Times an article, “China’s True Dash of Flavor” by Fuchsia Dunlop, that tries to sooth readers into a laconic gullibility around the use and consumption of MSG or monosodium glutamate.

This article is so substatially unfortunate on various levels.

It suggests that, as many “good” chinese cooks use MSG, this highly processed industrial agent is good enough for you.

Tomorrow, I will be posting an article that gives you the facts about monosodium glutamate without insulting your intelligence or taste.

You can decide if you want to eat a neurotoxin, gain weight while eating even less, and whether you want to be feeding your babies formula with MSG, baby food with MSG, and snack and prepared foods with MSG.

Stay Tuned.

Technorati Tags: New York Times, article, China’s True Dash of Flavor, gullibility, MSG, monosodium glutamate, chinese, cooks, processed, industrial, facts, monosodium, glutamate

Today I read the article “He Cooks. She Stews. It’s Love” in the New York Times (online edition) and it had me thinking. The premise of the article is that often times a couple will have an Alpha cook and a Beta cook.

We all know what alpha means, its a play off of the concept of the primary or alpha animal in a pack. For example, the alpha female wolf does most of the hunting while the lower cast females care for her offspring and never have any of their own.

Its a simple equation: Alpha = enforced dominance.

The author of this New York Times article, Katherine Wheelock, seems to have bought into this concept and interviews several couples as examples in support of this idea.

Her couples, high speed New Yorkers, married and divorced/separated, are heavily weighted with dysfunction in the kitchen.

Regarding the ideal we are “suppose” to reach for and how we fall short of it, Wheelock writes:

It was a nice fantasy while it lasted: rather than letting the lady of the house bear the constant burden of cooking dinner, the modern couple would share the work. Husbands would take an interest in casseroles. Wives would slap slabs of meat on the grill. They would read cookbooks and watch the Food Network together. The kitchen would be a peaceful domain equally ruled by two people.

For many couples, this never happened. Instead, wedged there in the kitchen together, they fell into a power dynamic just as unequal and emotionally fraught as the arrangement that puts the female half in a frilly apron. Instead of a partnership, some couples say that their relationship in the kitchen more closely resembles a tiny dictatorship.

This sounds so sad to me. I think that this dysfunctional dynamic may be a good barometer for a relationship that is headed in a difficult direction. The article goes on to say:

“If there’s a power struggle, it will come out in cooking together,” said Dr. Marion F. Solomon, a couples therapist in Los Angeles. “If a person feels that they’re not recognized for their abilities in other areas, they can start to resent the partner who takes control in the kitchen.”

Yikes, thats major life and interpersonal issues being projected onto the act of cooking.

If this happened instead to the act of cleaning toilets or flushing out the gutters or taking out the trash, it would not be so sad.

Cooking and feeding your family is an activity that is fundamental to the family unit. Power play around that is reckless and quite regretable.

So, yeah, the idea of lording it over your partner in the kitchen is loathesome to me. My first reaction was to say “I would never do that and my husband doesnt either”. My husband does most of the cooking because for years I commuted 4 hours a day and by the time I got home every day I simply could not stand up to cook let alone want to cook.

He has always done a wonderful job of whipping together what was available in the fridge and serving it up without it being a major “voila” moment. Our own special sort of discord has always been about the cleaning, ancillary to cooking but also important.

Hey, I never said I was perfect!

In our kitchen, if either of us start a cooking project, like making stock or that night’s supper, the other stays out of the way and leaves it to the initiating party. There is gratitude that food is made and appreciation of it’s value. I think I would be quite miserable if it were all about power and dominance.

How is it for you? I have put up a poll at the bottom of this post.

Vote if you like (its anonymous!) and lets see how others feel about the power in their kitchens.

I suspect that most of us normal-speed foodies are not so parsimonious with our cooking “power” and, lord, who has time for all of that anyways!

Technorati Tags: New York Times, Alpha cook, Beta cook, primary, animal, dominance, Katherine Wheelock, married, kitchen, relationship, dictatorship, power struggle, issues

Carbon monoxide treated meat is pink and remains so, seemingly indefinitely. This is a treatment that does NOT prolong freshness or quality, it only gives the meat a permanent blush.

These are things you likely know. You likely also may have noticed that this same gas kills people every year when the winter season sets in. (40,000 people per year seek medical attention for carbon monoxide poisoning in the United States)

Often times what happens is a home is not being heated with approved systems (power goes out, owner/renter didnt pay bills so gas/electricity is cut off, etc) and someone decides to heat the place with a grill, inside, with no venting. What you get is dead people who are a very bright shade of red.

Why is it that your meat and those poor carbon monoxide victims are the same shade of red?

When hemoglobin has no oxygen, it is not red. When it has oxygen as a co-pilot, its a bright red. The same thing happens when CO kicks out that oxygen and it hogs the ride. Not only that, it doesnt know when to leave, it stays bound to the hemoglobin long after it’s welcome has worn out.

What that means to us carnivores eating unlabeled meat in the store is that meat (and blood), which would turn brown as oxygen releases from hemoglobins with time, remains permanently doped with CO. Humans, for 100s of thousands of years, have known intuitively when their meat has gone bad. Meat has a handy freshness indicator – the color red. When this is circumvented (not for safety or quality reasons but to fool you into thinking that the meat is fresh) we can not decide if meat is fresh or not.

As with many poorly understood legacy foodways, the use of red as an indicator of food quality may not be sufficiently appreciated.

Studies may have been done on the supposed safety of CO in meat but they did not assess real world realities like the importance of red as indicator to the consumer of product safety.

[Just FYI - the metric in these studies for safety was CO toxicity as it outgases from the meat upon opening the package and during cooking of the meat - dont take too close a whiff of your meat when you open it, let it out-gas for a few minutes before you figure out if its nice red AND slimey. Also try not to hover over your meat as it cooks, again with the outgassing.]

Studies by various meat industry positive researchers has suggested that CO treated meat doesnt go bad sooner or later than untreated meat. That is not the problem.

The problem liesin the fact that ALL MEAT will go bad, eventually. If you can not tell by using the color red then you have to wait until the putrefaction has advanced to the slime and stink stage.

There are no studies that I have been able to find that evaluate the advantages to the consumer of detecting early stages of putrefaction (and thus early significant health issues) through the red color indicator.

Putrefaction should be a consentual experience. If you want to age your meat, fine. You will also treat that meat differently than you would fresh bloody red meat. That is how you ensure your own health and safety.

If you have “fresh” bloody red meat and its actually several steps toward putrefaction further than you know, you might be in for a whole world of hurt when your GI tract reaps the benefits of poorly prepared aged meat.

The best way to get meat that has been treated the way YOU want it treated is to use an actual butcher who can tell you what you need to know about your meat (where its been and why).

When faced with the enormity of the blogosphere, it is human nature to project and fill in cracks; to assume that each blogger is kind, thoughtful, and open to trying new things.

Even with my jaded eye, this week I had an online experience that taught me that the food blogosphere is NOT a homogenous place; all singing kumbaya.

This experience also taught me something about myself and my assumptions.

What the heck am I talking about?

(I do not bring this up to trash a particular blogger so I will speak in non-specifics in terms of the blogger’s identity)

I visited a blog of a food blogger of some fame this week. It told of an experience this blogger just had regarding her being mugged. I have had a similar experience and can tell you it is infuriating and frustrating and can make you feel VERY vulnerable and emotional and falliable.

This blogger wrote about the details. She went further than a simple description of the event and made some race-based statements that were 1) not necessary for the reader to grasp her experience, 2) served to make me feel deeply marginalized (it was my race she was objectifying), 3) made me wonder why I should care what she writes and why that writing should bother me, 4) what obligation she has to any reader that reads her openly public blog, 5) what obligation she might have to the wider food community to moderate her character in the written word, and 6) whether this whole concept of the Food Blog Community is not just an extended illusion many of us care to share.

Lots of meta-issues. Lots to think about.

In my experience with racism, all my life, there is little one can do one-on-one with the racist because they are fully identified with that process; seeing the world in terms of race.

I don’t ask what that person can do to apologize for their world view. I do ask how I find myself vulnerable to it, again and again.

I even read some books JUST to get in touch with just how BAD published writing can get. Specifically, I read a lot of the Left Behind series for that reason. This stuff is such ATROCIOUS writing that it makes your eyes water. Stuff in the same vein and almost as bad is anything by Dan Brown of DaVinci Code fame. He doesn’t write literary fiction, he writes poorly worded screenplays.

For work, I do scientific and technical editing. With some of this one is reduced to a grammar-mistress, whipping the bones of the manuscript into shape so that the reader is not distracted from the data or technical specifications by the almost unreadable grammar that springs from some scientists’ and engineers’ minds. As a scientist, I can attest to how little training one gets in grad school on writing.

One could say that I have a good ear for BAD writing. Let me tell you (and here I am getting to my point that is relevant to this blog), there is much bad FOOD writing.

My biggest pet peeve with food writing is the use of “-ly”. Examples include meltingly, unconscionably, rapturously, spicily, uncannily, swoonily, unhealthily, and other crazy atrocities.

I think meltingly is especially bogus. When I come across this word it is like being snagged by sand burrs during a nice run on the beach. It brings the flow of the writing to a grinding halt. The reading experience is no longer about some delicate sliver of otoro. Now it is about that horrid “-ly” and then ponderings on what brings an author to the place where s/he needs to use this word and others with painfully applied “-ly”s.

As we food bloggists have mostly only two communication tools, writing and photography, we are all budding food writers to some degree.

Do yourself a favor (ok, me too) and read with a critical eye and ear. Do not just assume that the writing you see in the New York Times and other major publications is GOOD writing. Think about how it doesn’t serve your needs, think about how some of the word usage is unfortunate and how you might find better descriptive words and devices. Do not copy a style without a sense for whether it is a clear and productive one.

Above all else, do what ever you have to do to avoid the use of painful “-ly” words like meltingly!

Civilization may just depend on it.

Fishing for some clarity

After much hue and cry, the public has been left with a murky understanding of the key facts in this discussion. Environmental toxins such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are mainly relevant to women in their childbearing years, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, babies, and young children. Why? Because these compounds affect fertility, gestation, embryogenesis, and early childhood development.

In these at-risk groups, exposure to high concentrations of mercury or methylmercury (MeHg), both potent neurotoxins, can result in mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and seizures.

But outside of the demographic I mention above, these compounds do not significantly affect our population.

In the end, it’s about running the calculus of risk assessment. Pregnant women should avoid tuna and other fish from the top of the food chain. They should avoid wild fish native to the polluted fresh waters of the US and other countries. They should eat fish that are harvested at a young age, such as salmon. Fish such as tuna and swordfish are taken from the sea after years of exposure to and accumulation of toxins from the fish they eat.

Even following these guidelines (more can be found at the links below), pregnant women should eat these fish in measured doses, eat a wide variety of protein and omega-3 containing foods, and pay close attention to the source of their food.

If you want “cleaner” seafood, farmed fish can be a healthy option if you find a fishery that buys certified toxin-free fish feed, which is very expensive. Farmed fish that eat ground-up and toxin-rich fish-based feed, the majority of farmed fish aquaculture, become toxin sponges. Wild fish might potentially have fewer heavy metals but there is never a 100% guarantee that your particular fish didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. Fish-by-fish testing is just not available to the retail-level consumer.

If you are not a female of childbearing age, pregnant, or breastfeeding, eat that tuna without much guilt, but don’t feed tuna, swordfish, tilefish, shark, and other large fish to your kids. (See this link for a listing of fish and their mercury content)

Please wait until their little brains have had a good chance to develop properly. While it is not clear when neural development is no longer susceptible to injury due to mercury exposure, it is clear that critical development continues well into the teen years.

Do what you can to help young women, pregnant mommas, and children in your life move away from these food sources.

Resources for Learning:

Got Mercury?

FDA: Mercury Levels in Commercial Fish and Shellfish Updated February 2006

FDA: What You Need to Know About Mercury in Fish and Shellfish – 2004 EPA and FDA Advice For: Women Who Might Become Pregnant, Women Who are Pregnant, Nursing Mothers, Young Children

EPA: Fish Advisories

EPA: Mercury information site

Without getting too political about the effect that the current administration has had on the integrity of certain government agencies, remember to never rely on a single source of information.

Note that organic definitions don’t exist for fish. The USDA has not advocated for organic standards in the past, but policy makers have co-opted the term to ease the way for non-organic food producers to capitalize on this market niche.

A source for Organically fed Farm Fish:

Black Pearl Natural Choice brand (at some Whole Foods Markets)