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You’ve heard of pink slime. You know trans fats are cardiovascular atrocities. You’re well aware that store-bought orange juice is essentially a scam. But, no matter how great of a processed-food sleuth you are, chances are you’ve never set food inside a processing plant to see how many of these products are actually made.

Writer Melanie Warner, whose new exposé-on-the-world-of-processed-foods book, Pandora’s Lunchbox, is out this week, spent the past year and a half doing exactly that. In her quest to explore the murky and convoluted world of soybean oil, milk protein concentrates (a key ingredient in processed cheese), and petroleum-based artificial dyes, she spoke to food scientists, uncovered disturbing regulatory loopholes in food law, and learned just how little we know about many of the food products on supermarket shelves.

After reading Pandora’s Lunchbox, I sent Melanie some burning questions via email. Here is what she had to say:

Q. The term “processed food” is ubiquitous these days. The food industry has attempted to co-opt it by claiming canned beans, baby carrots, and frozen vegetables are “processed foods.” Can you help explain why a Pop-Tart is years away from a “processed food” like hummus?

A. You have to ask yourself, could I make a Pop-Tart or Hot Pocket at home, with all those same ingredients listed on the package? How would you even go about procuring distilled monoglycerides and BHT, for instance?

Yet it is possible to make your own black beans at home by soaking and then cooking them. You could even attempt a rudimentary canning operation to preserve them. You can also make hummus by grinding chickpeas with a few other ingredients like lemon juice. The “processing” these foods go through is minimal and not disfiguring.

Q. Many people are put at ease when government agencies and the food industry state that controversial substances are “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS). Why is this not as comforting as it sounds?

A. The GRAS process, as it’s known, is one of self-regulation. If a food-ingredient company wants to introduce a new additive, they — not the FDA — hire some experts or a consulting firm to make the determination about whether this new ingredient is safe. Sometimes you’ll hear that company X has been awarded “GRAS status” for its new ingredient, but the FDA doesn’t award anything. The agency merely has the option to review what companies tell them.

Except when they don’t. In a glaring regulatory loophole that dates back to 1958, the GRAS system also happens to be voluntary. It’s perfectly legal for companies to keep the FDA in the dark about new additives, and consequently there are some 1,000 ingredients the FDA has no knowledge of whatsoever, according to an estimate done by the Pew Research Center.

So although the FDA seeks to reassure us they are keeping a close watch over our food, the job of rigorously regulating thousands of food additives is simply too big for an underfunded agency. Brominated vegetable oil, for instance, the subject of a well-circulated petition by a 15-year-old in Alabama, was flagged for further study in the ’70s, testing that was never done. And BHA, a “probable carcinogen” according to the Department of Health and Human Services, is still allowed in food.

Q. The food industry has often reacted to nutritional concerns by fortifying nutrients into their products. What did you glean from your research about the way these synthetic vitamins are created, and how are they different from the nutrients intrinsically found in foods?

A. Many of the vitamins we consume, whether in supplements or a box of cereal, come from China. They are produced in enormous factories scattered throughout the eastern half of the country, and these factories account for at least half of all global vitamin production.

Sometimes it’s assumed that vitamin C comes from maybe an orange or vitamin A from a carrot, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Vitamin C starts with a corn ingredient and then undergoes a complex, multi-step bacterial and chemical process. Vitamin A comes from acetylene gas, a chemical derived from petroleum refining.

The most obvious way a nutrient made in Shenyang differs from one engineered by Mother Nature is that nature’s vitamins always come packaged with all sorts of other helpful stuff, like fiber, additional nutrients and antioxidants. And this synergy may be the key to vitamins really helping us stay healthy.

Q. You investigated how soybean oil is made. Can you explain why calling it “natural” is a complete misnomer?

A. It’s not easy getting mass quantities of edible oil from soybeans, which are small, brittle beans containing less than 20 percent oil. First you have to drench them with hexane, a toxic chemical solvent that is known to cause nerve damage in humans. The hexane percolates through the soybeans several times and is then removed from the oil (any residues that remain are small.) After that you have to treat the oil with sodium hydroxide and phosphoric acid, then bleach it with a filter, and deodorize it under heat and an intense vacuum. Then often the oil is hydrogenated or interesterified, allowing it to be more stable for frying or other high-heat conditions. Calling any of this “natural” is a farce.

Not to mention the fact that 93 percent of all soybeans are genetically modified, a technology most people think doesn’t deserve to go anywhere near the word “natural.”

Q. On the topic of dairy, milk protein concentrates are a rather controversial ingredient many people are unaware of. What does the inclusion of milk protein concentrate in a food product say about it?

A. It says that the manufacturer is trying to cut corners and save money, which is understandable since all large publicly traded corporations are constantly under enormous pressure to cut costs. Milk protein concentrate can help replace the cheese that goes into boxed macaroni and cheese or the milk in processed cheese slices. If you see milk protein concentrate in your Greek yogurt it means the manufacturer has skipped the expensive step of straining the yogurt and has added milk protein concentrate, or MPC, to boost the protein levels (they’ve probably also added in some type of starch to thicken the yogurt).

Milk, regardless of what you think of its nutritional merits, is a real food. MPC is not.

Q. What is your answer to those who think “better-for-you” processed foods (such as fiber-enhanced protein bars and Omega-3 fortified cookies) are “a baby step” towards better health for Americans?

A. One word: Snackwells. In the early ’90s, at the zenith of low-fat mania, Kraft introduced these “healthier” cookies. They had only 55 calories per cookie and much of the fat had been taken out (and replaced by emulsifiers, starches, and gums). Eager for a hall pass on guilt, cookie lovers went nuts, buying up multiple packages and probably eating more than they would have otherwise, erasing any calorie reduction advantage. It’s a case that illustrates how “healthier” processed foods often don’t promote health; they just end up confusing people.

All these refurbished, less bad products only keep us tethered to a merry-go-round of inferior choices. The answer is making real food the foundation of our diets.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Food, Living

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Photo by Shutterstock.

I have discovered the last stronghold of processed food. Even after we’ve rooted out high-fructose corn syrup from our school lunches and vanquished preservatives from our weeknight dinners, even when whole carrots and fruit salad reign as the snacks of choice, processed food will still cling desperately to one last dominion: the on-the-go market.

When we’re strapped for time, the kids are shrieking, and we’re starving, is it any wonder that we become vulnerable to some of the food industry’s most bizarre convenience products? I’m looking at you, Go-Gurt.

On my mission to remove processed foods from my diet, travel-related consumption has been the toughest. (My other challenges tackled desserts/restaurants and dinner parties.) It’s the one that requires the most planning and offers the fewest easy alternatives. But of course, if you can dream it, you can do it. These hard-won lessons prove it:

Road trips

I ran up against the full range of healthy food challenges on several trips over the past two months: A drive + ferry journey to a friend’s wedding, a four-hour train ride, and a three-hour bus trek. It became clear that, whether you’re traveling by plane, train, or alternative-fuel automobile, you’ll face some of the same food limitations. Namely, your options are restricted to whatever the gas stations, roadside joints, and onboard cafes can offer (can you believe I’ve yet to find a decent lentil salad?).

Now, I see some of you waving your hands high in the air, eager to share a solution. What’s that? Just pack your own food? Very good! Pre-packing a cooler or backpack full of healthy munchies is indeed the easiest way to ensure the integrity of your foodstuffs. You run into the slight hiccup of how to stash said foodstuffs, however. You have only limited space for food storage, especially on public transit, and perhaps no capacity for cooling perishables.

Wrappings create a conundrum, too. Disposable baggies, foil, and plastic wrap are the popular way to go — light, and won’t weigh you down when you’re done — but of course, they involve creating trash. On the other hand, hauling a stack of dirty reusable containers in your suitcase doesn’t exactly qualify as packing light. My best compromise has been tucking the après-snack baggies and foil into a pocket and reusing them at home ad nauseam.

Once you’ve solved the wrapping dilemma, the sky’s the limit in terms of unprocessed road-trip foods. Try sliced-up veggies, mixed nuts, crackers, cheese slices, whole fruit (especially berries), natural-peanut-butter-and-homemade-jam sandwiches on whole-grain bread, and popcorn. If you really want to be the envy of everyone on the peace train, you can even prep crazy stuff like turnip chips.

In theory, that would be the way of things every time. But let’s be real: There are times when shopping, chopping, and packing in the madness before a trip just aren’t gonna happen. Though you might be stuck relying on convenience-food joints, all is not lost. On my various trips, I scouted fruit cups, hard-boiled eggs, string cheese, dried fruit, vegetable juice, bananas, apples, pears, and Larabars (ingredients: dates, nuts, fruit) in our country’s bastions of processed foods. We’re making inroads, people.

Backpacking

Sad to say, not even foot travel is safe from the invasion of processed foods. When you’re physically hauling your own sustenance through the wilderness, you want foods that are light, nonperishable, and convenient, in that order. For me, this usually translates into a pack full of sugary instant oatmeal packets, store-bought trail bars, and packaged pasta dinners, with a few sausages and pepperonis thrown in for protein. Not quite living off the land.

I knew I could do better. So when my boyfriend, Ted, and I set out on a weekend trip through the North Cascades, I announced the following unprocessed menu:

Instead of our usual instant oatmeal, we’d start the day with quick whole oats from the bulk bin with brown sugar* and coffee. Lunch typically features sausage and cheese in a tortilla; luckily, Ted could be persuaded to cook up a batch of his homemade beef jerky in our dehydrator to replace the old indestructible meat stick. I decided to hit the kitchen myself to whip up homemade cherry trail bars (recipe follows); additive-free dried mangoes filled out our snack roster. And in place of the ultra-easy, powdered cheese-heavy pasta pack, we’d feast upon couscous with tuna, dried mushrooms and mixed veggies.

We hardly noticed the swap at breakfast. Lunch, however … “This is kind of tough,” Ted said as we gnawed our jerky rolls overlooking a deep mountain valley. “Really tough,” I agreed. “Maybe jerky just isn’t meant for wraps.” A moment passed. “Wait, was it supposed to be totally unprocessed? Because I marinated the meat in Worcestershire sauce,” he said. Another pause. “Well, it was organic Worcestershire sauce.”

(Better unprocessed lunch options: peanut-butter-and-dried-apricot wraps with a  splash of honey or anything tuna-based.)

Our snacks fared better. “Best I’ve ever had,” Ted enthused as we busted out the trail bars on a rocky ridge. And they were: Sweet, chewy, and richly flavored, the fruits of my kitchen beat the soy protein isolate out of every store-bought bar I’ve tried. My victory was even sweeter because I’d successfully caught an emulsifier trying to sneak into the batch by hiding in some organic chocolate chips. “Aha! Out with you!” I’d muttered, putting the chips back on the shelf and replacing them with a bar of straight-up dark chocolate.

And dinner? The freshly rehydrated mushrooms and veggie pieces melded with protein-rich tuna into a pleasing medley. And with grated real cheese on top, we didn’t even miss the powdered stuff.

So is it possible to thrive on a totally unprocessed diet? It sure is. Just know that it requires a lot of home cooking, a keen eye for ingredient labels, dedicated menu planning, and a serious examination of your relationship with our old pal sugar. As we move into the annual October Unprocessed challenge, I offer you this blessing: May your back never lose the strength to turn on a Dorito, your heart never melt for a Twinkie, and your belly never lack for a decent lentil salad.

Chocolate-Cherry Peanut Butter Trail Bars

Makes 6

Adapted from Laurie March’s A Fork in the Trail

1/3 cup honey
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup natural peanut butter
2 cups natural flake cereal
½ cup dried cherries
1/3 cup slivered/crushed almonds
½ a high-quality dark chocolate bar (Green & Black’s Dark 85% passed my criteria)

Heat the honey and brown sugar in a saucepan and simmer one minute (not longer, or bars will be brittle). Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine well. The chocolate will melt to form a coating.

Coat the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square pan with vegetable oil. Scoop the mixture into the pan and pat down evenly. Freeze for 30 minutes. Transfer the pan contents to a cutting board and allow to return to room temperature, then cut into bars.

*Brown sugar’s degree of processing is debatable, but hey, it’s less processed than regular sugar. Honey would have been even less processed, but the entire honey bear is too damn heavy.

Filed under: Living

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By Erin Sirianni

Photo by Masa Assassin

The meat industry has fallen on hard times. After a steady decline in meat consumption in past years, it took a couple of hard hits last month, with the breaking of the pink slime scandal, followed a week later by the publication of a Harvard study linking red meat to a higher mortality risk. If you’re feeling a little less hungry for a burger these days, it’s no wonder.

Pink slime aside, does red meat really deserve such a bad name? Or is it what’s added to red meat that’s to blame? The Harvard study was not the first to suggest that red meat is bad for us, but it was the first to differentiate unprocessed and processed red meat and identify a relatively greater risk involved when eating a processed product than, say, pure, unadulterated steak. What makes processed meat worse? The study authors surmise it’s the additives and preservatives.

You probably noticed the headlines that followed the Harvard study’s publication: “All Red Meat is Risky, a Study finds” and “Eating All Red Meat Increases Death and More Reasons to Never Eat Meat.” And yes, the authors who evaluated the health and diet of over 120,000 health professionals between 1980 and 2006 did find that study participants who ate a daily serving of unprocessed red meat (a three-ounce serving of beef, pork, or lamb as a main dish, mixed dish, or in a sandwich) had a 13 percent greater chance of death during the study.

Part of the issue is quantity. A daily serving of red meat, seven days a week, 365 days a year — not surprising to anyone — is going to be risky. The authors also note that the participants who ate the most red meat were less likely to eat healthier alternatives, such as fish, poultry, and whole grains, which are all foods associated with a reduced risk of death.

“We know that variety is the spice of life,” said Joan Salge Blake, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietics, who was not involved in the study. “A high intake of red meat is going to displace more nutritious foods in the diet that are correlated to reducing disease.”

The source of the meat may be an issue, as the study did not differentiate between grass-fed and free-range meat from industrially produced meat. “This is still an open question,” study co-author and professor of medicine at Harvard, Frank Hu, said in an email. “It is possible that grass-fed and grain-fed beef have different health and environmental effects, but there is no data at this point whether the grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef would have different effects on long-term chronic diseases and mortality. Certainly, more studies are needed to look at this issue.”

On her blog Summer Tomato, scientist and health writer Darya Pino points out that we can probably assume that the participants were eating industrially produced meat. She writes:

Given the time during which the study took place, it’s unlikely that any of the participants were eating non-industrial, grass-fed and pastured meat. I think this is an important point, particularly when considering cancer mortality, since toxic compounds tend to accumulate in the fat of animals.

Considering all this, a more apt headline may have been: “Eating Industrial Meat with No Moderation is Madness.” So it’s possible that lean, grass-fed beef, which has less saturated fat and more omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidant vitamins, may actually have a place (once in a while) in a “heart-healthy diet.”

This may be the type of red meat that An Pan, the study’s lead author and research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, is eating once or twice a week, a frequency he admitted to the Los Angeles Times. Though he did say that he’s forgoing bacon and other processed meats all together.

Based on the study results, it’s not hard to see why. In addition to finding that a daily serving of unprocessed red meat increased participants’ mortality risk by 13 percent, the authors found that those who ate a daily serving of processed red meat (i.e., two slices of bacon, one hot dog, a piece of sausage, salami, bologna, or other cold cut) had an increased risk of death of 20 percent. Furthermore, the study found that hot dogs and bacon are associated with a higher risk than other processed red meats.

So what does “processed” mean as it applies to meat? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), meat becomes processed when it undergoes a processing technology (grinding and mixing, heat treatments, drying, etc.) as well as treatment (salting, curing with nitrites, etc.) for taste, texture, and preservation. There are all kinds of processed meats, and the FAO groups them into six broad categories according to processing technology. If you look closely at the categories, it’s apparent that some processed meats are more processed than others.

Sausage, which falls into the category of “fresh, processed meat products,” is less processed since it remains “fresh” or raw throughout processing. A hot dog undergoes more processing, as a “raw, cooked-meat product because it undergoes a heat treatment that gives it its “firm-elastic texture.”

Bacon receives more processing as a “cured cooked meat product.” Unlike sausage or hot dogs, bacon is an entire piece of muscle meat. It’s cured with a nitrite solution and then undergoes a heat treatment to reach “the desired palatability.” The most processed meats of all are products that fall into the “pre-cooked, cooked meat product” category, which undergo two heat treatments and include products such as blood sausage, liver pate, and corned beef in cans. (And don’t ask, because I have no idea where pink slime fits into all this.)

Why does processing make red meat worse for us? The study authors point to additives and preservatives as likely suspects for the “additional harm.”

Suspect No. 1: Nitrites: added for flavor and to preserve meat’s pink color and extend shelf life. The authors cited studies linking blood nitrite levels to a disorder affecting the inner lining of the blood vessels and impaired insulin response. Nitrites can also convert to carcinogens, but the addition of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or ethyorbic acid inhibit their formation. You can find uncured bacon in the grocery store, though these products still contain naturally derived nitrites. And since the carcinogens form during high-temperature cooking, it’s best to avoid charring your hot dogs or eating very well-done or burnt bacon.

Suspect No. 2: Salt (sodium): added to meats as a preservative and as a powerful flavor enhancer. High sodium intake is linked to high blood pressure, which increases the risk for heart disease and stroke. Two slices of bacon can contain as much as 460 milligrams of sodium, 19 percent of the recommended daily intake. A bun-length frank can contain up to 550 milligrams of sodium, amounting to nearly one-quarter of the recommendation. Add a bag of potato chips, and you can easily eat half the sodium you should eat in a day in a single sitting.

With suspects No. 1 and No. 2 operating side-by-side, it’s no wonder they’re exacting a high cost on health. The irony of this bad news about bacon is that sodium and nitrites are industry additives — the meat itself is innocent. (Well, not really: Bacon’s still got ne’er-do-wells saturated fat, cholesterol, and heme iron lurking around.) But what seems clear is that we’re making red meat worse for us by processing it.

So, if you must eat red meat, the latest science says, eat it unprocessed, and in moderation (once or twice a week at most). The healthiest red meat is most likely from the happiest animals — raised outside confined animal feeding operations, and on pasture. And in the mean time: Why not eat more plants?

Filed under: Food

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by Tom Laskawy.

I want to draw
attention to an eye-opening investigative report on school lunch that has gotten a
bit lost in the holiday shuffle. In a collaboration between The
New York Times and the Investigative Fund, reporter Lucy Komisar delved into the billion-dollar business of the national school lunch program
and found some unsettling news.

Komisar looked at
two less-examined aspects of the school lunch program. The first is the
practice of taking up to $1 billion of “surplus” fruits, vegetables,
and meats that the USDA supplies to the program and, rather than cooking them
into healthy meals, turning them into high-fat processed foods. The second is
the surprisingly inefficient economics of outsourcing cafeteria services to
private companies like Sodexo or Aramark.

As for the first practice, about $1 billion of surplus
foods like apples, potatoes, and chicken are transferred from the USDA to
schools for free every year. Only most schools don’t prepare the foods in their
own kitchens—they pay processing companies, as Komisar says, “to turn these
healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza, and the
like.”

And, of course,
french fries.

Schools across the
country have shut down their own kitchens in favor of facilities that can
reheat and serve these processed foods. The logic was supposed to be
irresistible—it combined the efficiencies of centralized food production with the simplicity of easily trained workers.   

However, as Komisar
observes, turning chicken into chicken nuggets isn’t all that cheap:

The
Michigan Department of Education, for example, gets free raw chicken worth
$11.40 a case and sends it for processing into nuggets at $33.45 a case. The
schools in San Bernardino, Calif., spend $14.75 to make French fries out of
$5.95 worth of potatoes.

… Roland
Zullo, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found in 2008 that Michigan
schools that hired private food-service management firms spent less on labor
and food but more on fees and supplies, yielding “no substantive economic
savings.”

Komisar also quotes
another study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which determined that this practice transformed perfectly good ingredients into
foods that “have about the same nutritional value as junk foods.”

As one principal
Komisar spoke to put it, in the wake of her district switching to management
company Sodexo, “the savings were paltry … You pay a little less and your kids
get strawberry milk, frozen French fries, and artificial shortening.” Every day.

But what really
gets me about all of this isn’t just the fact that we’re willingly shelling out
serious money to turn healthy ingredients into junk, but that we’re also taking
good jobs out of communities that need them:

School
kitchen workers are generally unionized, with benefits; they are also typically
local residents who have children in public schools and care about their
well-being. Laid-off school workers become an economic drain instead of a
positive force. And the rebate deals with national food manufacturers cut out
local farmers and small producers like bakers, who could offer fresh, healthy
food and help the local economy.

Talk about a
double whammy. And this being corporate America, there’s a healthy dose of
corruption to go along with it. Last year, private cafeteria companies were caught paying illegal rebates to food processors—rebates that weren’t passed on to the school districts. As then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stated in a comment on a $20 million fine
paid by Sodexo in New York for the practice, “This company cut sweetheart deals
with suppliers and then denied taxpayer-supported schools the benefits.”

Shockingly, Komisar
has discovered that these illegal rebates have crept back in the form of
“prompt payment discounts”—a form of kickback that is, under USDA rules,
legal.

Is it any wonder
that Congress has fought the USDA’s attempt to reform school lunch in the form
of the much-mocked and maligned Defense of Pizza and Potato Acts? It would be funny if not for the
fact that so much money is riding on these ridiculous laws.

This battle by
corporations and Congress to keep our schoolkids eating junk food comes
even as the scientific evidence piles up that school is the best place to battle
obesity—both through increased exercise and healthier food. In fact, this study out of Australia, published in Cochrane
Library, indicates that school-based programs that try to
increase activity levels among kids aged 6-12 may actually reduce obesity—which is impressive since research suggests that exercise-based interventions
are not particularly effective in other age groups. And the study goes on to observe that the
U.S. lags behind most other countries in adoption of such school-based interventions.
Apparently, we do crony capitalism really well, and that’s about it.

There are some
amazing school lunch reforms going on, thanks to movers and shakers like Ann Cooper and organizations like Food Corps. But Komisar’s article reminds us
that when billions of dollars are sloshing around the system, even the best
reforms can seem like small potatoes.

Related Series

Cafeteria confidential: Behind the scenes in school kitchens

Related Links:

Livestock handouts in Africa: More complex than you’d think

Sorry Mrs. O, but jumping jacks aren’t enough

Whippersnappers unite: Young farmers work to change 2012 Farm Bill

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by Claire Thompson.

Looking to purify before we move into the season of discount
Halloween candy, food-focused family gatherings, and holiday parties? Andrew
Wilder’s Eating Rules blog invites
you to take part in October
Unprocessed, an experiment in ridding your diet of all processed
foods for an entire month.

Wilder uses the “kitchen test” to explain what he means by
unprocessed: “any food that could be made by a
person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available,
whole-food ingredients.” In other words, if a food’s label lists long, scary-sounding,
unpronounceable words that bring back bad memories of high school chemistry, it probably doesn’t
count.

But that’s just one way to classify the term; Wilder invites other
definitions and interpretations of the challenge — whatever helps people feel
comfortable participating. (He also encourages people to take the pledge now, even though it’s a
week into October.) “This is about awareness,” he said. “Just thinking about
what you’re eating and where you’re getting your food is a place to start.”

Wilder stresses that he wasn’t always a “health nut.” Rather,
after tumult in his personal and professional lives, he had a series of “aha”
moments in 2009 (like reading Michael Pollan’s books) that led him to make
changes in his eating and exercise habits. He started the blog as an outlet
after his friends got sick of hearing him yammer on about the joys of a
healthier lifestyle.

The idea of going a month without processed foods was a
personal challenge at first, a way to take his new healthy diet one step
further. He posted about it on Facebook two years ago, inviting friends to
join. Two did — and to their surprise, the month of cooking and eating together
brought the three friends closer. In 2010, Wilder happened to be at a blogging
conference when he floated the idea for a second October Unprocessed on Twitter
and got enthusiastic responses from fellow attendees. He lined up a series of
guest bloggers for the month, and by the end of the challenge 450 people had
taken the pledge. So far this year, almost 2,500 have signed up.

“Clearly this resonates,” says Wilder. “I didn’t want to be a
stunt blogger … It’s really about working together to have a conversation
about food.”

Wilder acknowledges the difficulty of the task, which is why
his series of guests posts will start with recipes and time- and money-saving tips, before tackling
the deeper issues surrounding our food system and
politics. And his philosophy toward both October Unprocessed and eating in
general is refreshingly lenient — his healthy eating plan allows
for one “cheat
meal”
a week. “There is no such thing as … perfect food,” he says. “If you think in
black and white, you’re setting yourself up for frustration. I slip, too. It
takes work. Thinking about your meals before it’s time to cook is really
helpful.”

And, of course, October Unprocessed, like Slow Food
USA’s $5 Challenge last month, serves the meta-function of calling
attention to the fallacy of its own existence: Cooking and eating unprocessed food should not be a special occasion.

Because eating well doesn’t just make us healthier, it makes us happier. “It feels really good,” Wilder said. “Physically, yes, but emotionally, too. I can’t think of a better way to
have good relationships with people than around the dinner table.”

Related Links:

Is Walmart allergic to Pollan?

Food Studies: Can we prove Malthus wrong?

Kickstarting on-demand heirloom produce

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by Umbra Fisk.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

Sooo….. I noticed in your column today that parabens should be avoided to keep breasts healthy. I also noticed parabens are an ingredient in KY personal lubricant! So I tossed mine, headed on down to the drugstore, and checked out the personal lubricant section. None that I found were paraben-free. Suggestions?

Sarah
British Columbia, Canada

A. Dearest Sarah,

Thank you for reading and taking care of your breast friends. No doubt you are referring to the warning, “Beware of parabens!” in my column on environmental links to cancer.

Your conscientious personal lubricant consumption is inspiring and important for more reasons than you may know. Why dare to beware? Let’s talk more about parabens. Parabens act as hormone or endocrine disruptors, meaning they mimic estrogen in the body—which can lead to health problems. Endocrine disruptors are associated with endometriosis, infertility, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer. And it’s not just women who are impacted. Men are vulnerable too, as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and decreased sperm count are also the byproducts of hormone disruption.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t seem very concerned about parabens, and has been critical of research that raises concerns. Of one such study, published in 2004 by the Journal of Applied Toxicology, the FDA said this:

[The study] detected parabens in breast tumors. The study also discussed this information in the context of the weak estrogen-like properties of parabens and the influence of estrogen on breast cancer. However, the study left several questions unanswered. For example, the study did not show that parabens cause cancer, or that they are harmful in any way, and the study did not look at possible paraben levels in normal tissue.

As has been noted before, pinpointing the exact cause of cancer is difficult when an array of chemicals all act as variables over a lifetime of exposure. This is why organizations like the Silent Spring Institute advocate for the Precautionary Principle. This principle states “evidence of harm, rather than definitive proof of harm, should prompt policy action.”

So how do you exercise your own precautionary principles? You can tell if a product contains parabens by reading the ingredients label. Anything that ends in –paraben, well, it’s a paraben. The most common parabens are these six: methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, isobutylparaben, butylparaben, and benzylparaben. But you already know that, Sarah. What you may not know is that parabens are in tens of thousands of things, including processed food! (All the more reason to follow the good guidelines set out by our friend Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”)

Parabens are used as inexpensive preservatives acting as antimicrobials. Here’s a short, not nearly complete list of the many places you’ll find parabens:

Processed food
In higher concentrations in cakes, pie crusts, pastries, icings, toppings, and fillings
Jelly coatings of meat products
Dried meat products
Cereal- or potato-based snacks
Coated nuts
Confectionery (excluding chocolate)
Liquid dietary food supplements
Pharmaceuticals
Personal care products
Soaps
Shampoo and conditioners
Hair and shaving gel
Lotions and creams
Toothpaste
Cosmetics
Hair dye
Personal lubricants

A good way to avoid parabens and other questionable chemicals is by reading the ingredients label or looking products up on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database or on the Good Guide.

Now, back to your personal-lubricant-procuring question, Sarah. As you discovered, the drugstore often leaves much to be desired in finding paraben-free products—even first aid creams have parabens in them. How’s that for irony?

There are companies out there that make paraben-free lube. There’s Babeland Organic Lube, Good Clean Love, and Yes! Lubricant. You can order them online or find them in kinder, gentler stores.

An even better approach is to make your own DIY lube with flax seeds. You can learn how in my instructional video:

Now that’s love juice you can use, Sarah! Here’s to happy hoohas everywhere!

Saucily,
Umbra

Get off your ass alert:

Speak to your local drug store manager and make a request for paraben-free products. Contact your local representatives and encourage them to reform the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act in 2011. While you’re at it, let them know you’d like to see them support the Safe Cosmetics Act too.

Related Links:

Fast food wrappers and popcorn bags leach fire-fighting chemical into food

Feeding the world means hogging less grain

The Times exposes the craziness of the junk-food industry/USDA alliance

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

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