The Goods Are Odd

Two products have recently fallen out of favor in our house due to their being less “real” that we had previously thought. By real I just mean whole and tested through long term human consumption (think centuries). There are clearly some product that don’t fit this description that I still occasionally buy or eat- like gummy bears or cliff bars. But the following two products got the boot because they marketed as whole foods and there are plenty of alternatives that are just as satisfying.

The first was a goodbye to Nancy’s whole milk yogurt. (sigh) I love Ken Kesey, I love Oregon, I love their containers. What I don’t love   is explained in the letter below that I sent through their website. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Unless they can prove some careful way of preparing their powdered milk I will stick to Straus, which uses just whole milk and cultures.

Dear Nancy’s,

I am confused about discrepancy between the statements on your whole-milk products and your website which denounce the use of thickeners and your ingredient list which has non-fat milk powder as an additional ingredient to whole milk and cultures.

After years of eating your yogurt I have now switched to Straus Yogurt, who has nothing in their whole milk yogurt but whole milk. I eat whole-fat products because we need the fat to absorb the calcium and other nutrients and because low-fat products are processed foods which I stay away from. A main ingredient of low-fat foods I am interested in avoiding is powdered milk, used often to add body and flavor to a depleted product. Milk should not be subject to high heat as it damages the fats. As explained by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food “powered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol.”

So, why on earth do you add powdered milk to your whole milk products? And even more confounding, why do you say in multiple places that you only use “pure milk” or that “Because we take the extra time to fully culture our products, they are naturally thick and creamy. We never add ingredients that are meant to stabilise or thicken dairy products.” While non-fat milk powder isn’t artificial, it is still a processed food that hardly qualifies as pure. You may be following the letter of your statements but not the spirit.

I have shared the switch to Straus yogurt on my food blog, www.mindtomouth.org, and would welcome your comments if you care to explain the reason that you use non-fat milk powder and whether or not you have an explanation as why its use is consistent with your statements about not adding thickeners and only using pure milk.

Regards,

Sage

Okay, the second one is tricky, and honestly I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough good information to make a really informed decision about the use of this product. But I feel like the lack of consistent information is what has made me decide to just avoid it.

I was attracted to agave because it is cheaper than maple syrup and, honestly, I was being well-marketed to. Lots of natural processed foods had agave on the label and that made them easier to buy (like ketchup or cookies). I was eating it on waffles and yogurt (Nancy’s whole milk at that point…).

The Weston A Price foundation recently published a piece about agave in their journal that explained agave’s high fructose levels as just as detrimental to the body as the High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both were explained as subject to industrial processing and should be avoided. You can see that report here (its a pdf).

But I don’t like to just follow WAPF blindly, and after looking into the brand I bought (Madhava) it seemed like there might be two different products, the syrup from the Blue Agave, same as tequila, and the syrup from the Salmiana agave, and two different processing methods, Blue agave using heat and possibly chemicals to extract the syrup and the Salmiana syrup is apparently processed using ” gentle enzymatic action”.

So the controversy actually gets a bit weird and comes down to two or three people with known and unknown special interests. There is not a lot of neutral information about agave and quotes from various sources (health blogs etc) about its production seem too come back to the same two sources (see articles below). The biggest problem I couldn’t solve is whether or not agave contains starch. That seems like a pretty straight forward inquiry.

Natural News published two articles that cover the question of the quality and healthfulness of the syrup (everyone agrees that it is not a traditional sweetener as the process for extraction was developed in the 90’s, and I think this is ultimately why WAPF is opposed).

One, the anti-agave side, is written by Rami Nagel and based on information largely from this guy Russ Bianchi (who has some company, adept solution inc. that has no website…). Nagel was the co-author on the WAPF article which is also dependent on a good deal of information about  agave processing from Bianchi. (It was a bit frustrating to see a lack of more rigorous fact-finding on the part of WAPF who I depend on for reliable information, just goes to show to always check out multiple sources).

The other article is a rebuttal to Nagel’s piece written by the owner of Madhava. He seems to know Bianchi personally and have some negative feelings about the problems Bianchi’s opinions about agave has caused to the industry. His information is convincing, but vague- things like “enzymatic processes” are not explained in a functional way, so it leads me to feel there is more marketing involved than education.

At this point the whole thing became too much. I tried to parse out whether or not what I had been dripping on waffles was really going to hurt me, which seemed to come down how bad high level of fructose are for you, which seemed to come down to starch. Again, this could not be verified as there was too much conflicting information. The most consistent info did seem to come down in favor of agave, particularly on the glycemic index measure (which I think is misleading because it only looks at glucose, not fructose). I decided that just on the basis of it being a new process and a weird three-guy controversy I was just going to avoid it. (Not to mention the politics involved, and use of indigenous land and labor…)

Ultimately, I decided to put my mouth in charge and when I really really tasted the agave it just seemed a bit too intense. So raw honey and maple syrup it is. There is a positive side to these good sweeteners being expensive- forced moderation. I think that the taste-test is the ultimate lesson because many foods, not just agave, are mired in controversy (traditional fats for one) and it just doesn’t seem worth precious time to get caught up in the back and forth on the ever un-verifiable internet. I know that Straus tastes better than Nancy’s and Agave tastes processed and super sweet.

I think having good information about a product provides us with a much needed limit in choice when it comes to packaged food, but just a quick glance at the back of a product is revealing- if you need to research it, it is probably best avoided.

This summer I spent a lonely week with a terrible cold. I passed the time watching the first three seasons of Bewitched, the old sixties sitcom. I got through so many episodes because, as the show progressed, I felt like I was getting a different impression of Samantha Stevens than I had ever before (since watching Nick at Night as a kid, that is).

I think we now have something to learn from Samantha and her struggle with the instantaneous rewards of her magic. As a witch, Samantha has the ability to conjure up whatever she would like, anytime, anywhere. Her magic makes life fun and easy, and who would give it up? Many critiques of the show lament that in a burgeoning feminist era Samantha is forced by her husband to give up her magic, and thus her independence, to be the picture perfect suburban housewife. This point fails to give Samantha agency over her promise to stop using magic for everyday things.

As I lay on my couch sick as ever, home alone, wishing I hadn’t made so many dishes fixing myself chicken soup from scratch, I saw that Samantha (magically immune to mortal sickness) wanted to work, she wanted to do things by hand with her own skill and body. By (trying to) give up her magic she was claiming her independence from her mother, her upbringing, and- importantly, from the instant, no effort life that sixties consumer culture was selling to women.

There is an interesting mess of consequences that came from the post-war production of consumer goods and technology and the intense marketing of these products to women. This marketing, combined with women being interested in, and allowed to, or obligated to work outside the home, successfully undermined the skill of the domestic realm while also allowing women to expand outside of it (the home that is). It is relevant to us now because most of us are living without necessary skills to live a life that is not dependent on consumerism. We have to buy things from other people, usually large companies to cover our most basic needs.

Knowing the role of marketing, pushing tv dinners and touting new gadgets, in the Bewitched era I think it is commendable for Samantha Stevens to pursue a more hand-made life. Granted, at those time she back-slides and does up a whole clean house, new dress, and elegant dinner in one nose twitch, the audience was more entertained and probably reassured knowing that, while maybe eating their tv dinners, even the best wives wouldn’t do all the work if they didn’t really have to.

Is Samantha Stevens a good example of how we should live today, no. But I think she is an unexpected reminder how liberating and often positive it can be when we don’t always take the easy way in life, especially when it comes to our kitchen and our food. We are happier people when we put time, effort, and skill into basic tasks and the fact that we do very little of that puts us in an interesting mess indeed, and the history of all that is something I plan to explore/discuss further (sneak preview…new book called the Radical Homemaker, learn more here).

Challenges make a thing use its greatest capacity to complete a task or, even, to fulfill its purpose. Lacking a challenge, the thing might change its function or go away entirely, leading me to suspect that challenge is crucial to purpose.

Humans’ inclination to displace life’s challenges off of the body and onto a tool has shaped us from the beginning- most especially when it came to the challenge of eating.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham explains that the transition to cooking our food fundamentally shaped our bodies into what we are working with today, e.g. smaller mouths, smaller guts, punier teeth than apes. We have come to rely heavily on food processing (cooking, fermentation etc) for digestion.

So for better or for worse the human form was shaped in large part by processing our food, making digestion easier and leaving extra energy for thousands of years of other inventions, which are continuing to shape us in ways we don’t yet know. Which brings us to…the appendix!

The irony of the appendix is that it turns out to be much more functional to us than we thought, but may well be on its way out after all.

Scientists are continuing to find evidence that reveals the appendix as a useful organ, and not, as Charles Darwin assumed, just a remnant from past preference of plants. Studies from the last few years has show the appendix to be an evolved organ that houses good bacteria waiting to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed due to the presence of harmful microbes.

This use has been hidden from us since increased use of sterilization, clean drinking water and non-threatening foodstuffs has meant that survival in an industrialized world may be possible without an appendix. In fact the presence of the appendix seems to do more harm than good in clean conditions as they are finding a relationship between the inflammation of the appendix, which leads to its removal, and the fact that it is under-used.

As explained by researcher William Parker, Ph.D. (more from him here)

“Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,”…This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react….

This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis…Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”

So, what should we do with our vermiform organ? Use it or lose it?  “The function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes…” says Parker. “[Such changes have] left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble.”

Cooking our food fundamentally changed the human body, and increased sanitation of food and drink seems to be on the way to do the same. But to just accept the obsolescence of this functional organ as a part of our ongoing evolution seems flawed. We can’t guarantee current conditions (not to mention that most of the world doesn’t experience such conditions) and we still are just discovering the power of the microbes in our gut as fighters of all sorts of disease; it seems hasty to just discount the thing entirely, though we often do since the appendectomy is the most commonly performed emergency operation in the world.

So, we should put it to use right?  Parker  posits that we should start challenging our appendix and the immune system generally with the tasks they are supposed to tackle. A completely great idea! However, I think he is looking to the problem for the solution…”If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that,” Parker says “we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis.”

I think this dilemma provides a lovely analogy to the situation currently faced by the whole human body. We have these perfectly useful systems, well-adapted to deal with challenges of daily life for the last 499,950 years, give or take. Modern society has taken it upon itself to relieve us of these challenges, only to find out that they are entirely necessary!

In the case of the gut, we might try trusting our microbes to deal with the challenges they are capable of facing. Instead, we should rely on modern medicine to bottle up and feed us those very challenges it helped us/told us to avoid?

I say, start with what we have and use it as its meant to be used. Drink raw milk, dig in the dirt, eat fermented food, even get sick! Resist the obsolescence of the human body and challenge it to its fullest extent.

In that spirit, after the challenge of a long trek on foot (and embarking on the challenge of marriage) and a long break from the blog, I look forward to recounting the adventures and the lessons, along with continued thoughts from home kitchen. No longer the itinerant one below (for now anyway).

I have spent only a limited time of my life living alone. I moved from the family house to communal housing then to life as part of a couple. Occasional travel or other changes have required me to be by myself for extended periods. The last three weeks was one such occasion and I realized what a challenge it is to eat well alone.

Getting groceries from the market and cooking a nice meal singlehandedly wasn’t really the issue, these are things I often take on. The challenge was really coming up with a reason to make a delicious meal when I was just going to eat it by myself. For me the dinner table is a great time to share in enjoyment of good food and to let other interesting topics entertain us while we eat.

The part of cooking for myself that I don’t love is that you make the effort (mess) of cooking and then have to clean up after yourself as well. This is a strong motivator to make something that you can eat for a couple of meals. I don’t mind the work of meals but there is a point where if you cooked and cleaned every night, the dinner out of a frozen box would get more and more appealing and that just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

For the first few days on my own, the evening meal became more of a chore of just filling me up with whatever I could piece together. Then, after days of so so dinners, I decided to just go all out and make a dinner I would be proud to share, and just enjoy it alone.

The roast has a lot going for it: It is easy to do well, comes from affordable cuts of meat (or a whole small bird), is pretty much hands-off, lasts for leftovers, and, best of all, makes gravy!

My first solo-roast was actually a beautiful little chicken from Soul Food Farm. I made a gravy from the drippings and proceeded to eat that with the best chicken bits with my hands, standing at the counter. It must have been the messy fingers that kept me from taking a picture to share. The meat from the breasts went into curry and chicken soup. The carcass made the best, richest broth I’ve ever had. It was a $10 four pound bird, but it made itself very useful.

Not all my meals from my time alone have been such undertakings. One of my favorite things has been how long leftover rice lasts. One of my jobs currently is selling rice at the farmer’s markets and I often get customers who don’t want to buy a 2lbs bag because they are on their own. I often make 2 cups (about half that bag) and eat it as instant meals throughout the week. A filling and quick standby is something I learned from a friend (and future sister in-law): A layer of cooked brown rice in a cast-iron skillet over medium-low heat. Crack an egg per person (just one in this case, and I used my tiny six inch skillet for a single serving) over the rice and cover with a lid. Cook until just before the egg is set to the firmness you like and grate some nice cheese on top. I use a raw Monterey Jack. The rice gets nice and crispy on the bottom and the whole mess is very satisfyingly simple.

I have a new favorite dish of baked beets marinaded in red wine vinegar and olive oil. It isn’t the most popular dish for others, so it made sense to make it more while alone. Beets and their greens are exceptionally nutritious, full of valuable vits and mins and very good to eat together. I chose to put the greens in the fritatta rather than mixing with the beets themselves, but the sweet and bitter of roots and tops do set eachother off well if you choose to combine.

(this fritatta was actually terrible, as I didn’t rinse the greens enough and ended up with crunchy eggs…yuck.)

My other strategy for eating alone was to keep flowers on the table. It helped in a funny way.

My solo eating adventures can now come to an end, as well as my lack of attention to Mind to Mouth. I have two weeks before I leave for the Great Walk North and even through that I plan to discuss eating and living well…just on the road and on foot. So apologies for the canvernous gap in posts and thanks for the fact that it mattered to many!

I’ve now made my third multi-grain sourdough bread, from here. For those adventurous souls who plan to embark on this three-day bread I have some thoughts. My amateur advice may not be worth much, but something I always find frustrating about recipes is that they don’t tell you about the mistakes. ( Though Breadtopia has a good deal of comment-discussion about things that go wrong for others, so that is worth a perusal.) The thing about this bread is that there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, when you have multiple days each step is a little nerve-racking. But the encouraging thing is that its a pretty resilient bread and all my mistakes have resulted in something different, rather than disastrous.

Notes on the first step: getting the starter working. Depending on its level of activity, or the last time you fed it, it can take a couple days to get going. Start with just a scant 1/4 of a cup, because you don’t need much for the bread. You will add an 1/8 cup of water and an 1/8 cup of (white) flour. You will then have a total of a 1/2 cup and your next feeding will continue this ratio of equal parts water to flour, doubling the amount of starter. So you can see how much you can make very quickly. If your starter is particularly dormant then you will need to feed it for longer, thus making more starter. You can dump some out and keep the level down…but! If you don’t want to do this you can plan a very delicious waffle breakfast after starting your bread. See this post for recipes. Using the starter means the phytic acid in the wheat is neutralized so its not blocking the nutrients in the other good stuff on the waffle. I used all white just to go full on pastry texture, but you could mix in whole wheat or other the night before.

Whole Milk Nancy's yogurt (which is pretty much like ice cream), Almond Butter, Grade B Maple Syrup, Raw Butter, and Late Spring Strawberries

Okay, back to the bread. So the first step is basically making a bowl of whole wheat starter and letting it sit, covered (plastic bag works well) for 12 hours. Breadtopia suggests this be the “evening of day one” but my schedule is weird and time to make bread varies so sometimes I use different 12hr periods, depending.

12 hrs from mixing together the starter and WW flour, you add the rest of the flours (spelt, rye, white, more WW) more water and salt. As much attention as the no-knead bread has gotten, I think that the kneading step is not just fun for the sake of bread making, but useful for getting a good sense of how the dough is doing. I once made the no-knead and couldn’t tell that is hadn’t risen (too long a proof and not very strong starter) until it was out of the oven, because you aren’t touching it and seeing how it feels. So this step of kneading for ten minutes is useful, and good exercise. I look at the clock to make sure I do a full ten (otherwise I’m too lazy).

The kneaded dough then goes in a bowl, covered with the same plastic bag, in the refrigerator to 24 hrs. This stage is where you can be more flexible about the timing. The first time I made the the end of the 24hrs ended up being at 8am, which was before work, but! it needs to sit and get warm and comfy for another 5hrs before going in the oven. I ended up coming home during lunch and baking it. This is a totally avoidable situation. If you find that the timing doesn’t line up for taking it out of the fridge and then baking 5hrs later, you can punch down the dough in the fridge before its fully rise (that is before the first 24hrs) and let it go another 24 or so. Ex: First step at 8pm Monday, second (mixing dough, kneading) at 8 am Tuesday, 24hrs later is 8am Wednesday but I don’t have time to deal with it then- so at 5pm on Tuesday I punch it down. Now, I am set to take it out at 5pm Wednesday and bake at 10pm (which works for me).

This is a lot for bread, I realize. And I think in the last post on this I admitted that it is probably too much and gives a good argument for specialization. But its interesting and delicious, very nourishing and getting easier. Plus, it turns out well even when not perfect.

Last loaf: I took it out of the fridge at 5pm and let it sit covered with plastic in the bowl until 10 (at 9:30 I pre-heated the oven, with the dutch oven inside). But, that isn’t whats supposed to happen. For some reason I completely forgot the step of taking it out of the bowl, forming a “boule” and putting it in on a floured towel, and then back in the bowl (covered, not with plastic, but more floured towel). I realized this as the action to put it in the smoking hot dutch oven felt different then before. But it was too late at that point and I just waited a half hour to see what happened.

Maybe not bakery-goods, but it was no fail.

I even think the crumb (the quality of holes in the interior, usually indicating moist, chewyness) turned out better than the last. The texture of the crust is different, but I woulnd’t even call it weird. That’s the thing with baking, often the variation is just that- not a mistake but a new way, a new texture, a new flavor. Punching down the dough and letting proof longer makes a more sour dough and really works the fermentation, that was a surprise and a delight (to avoid this acutally use more starter). Again, I don’t really know how useful it is for us all to be making our own bread, but I like to eat something and to know just how it got to be the way it is.