Eating Real Food - Food Inc.

In my pursuit of learning about the food we eat I watched an 11 part series currently running on YouTube, Food Inc.. If Supersize Me concerned you, this program leave you wondering about what is in the foods we eat. Certainly my daughter with a 19 month old was more than a little concerned after she watched it. Food is big business in the US particularly, huge business in fact and corporations are telling growers how they will produce the food we eat. According to former reporters with Fox TV, we have lost control of the food industry and how our food is handled prior to its arrival on store shelves. One single company boasts that it provides 75% of the ground beef found on store shelves in some form. To prevent the occurance of E-coli contamination it treats all its meats to an ammonia bath. Another company with a corner on the soybean market produces seed that is Roundup resistant so that they can then spread the fields with that herbicide to kill the weeds. According to Food Inc. in Paraquay small farmers who don't use that seed are 'accidentally' having their yards sprayed which is killing their cropsand their livestock. The soybeans raised in Paraguay are bound for the European mareketplace. There they will be used to manufacture food, fed to animals and poultry. This company has effectively shutdown US farmers who don't want to use their seed.
Before you say, but that is in the US, we have different rules here, and that is true, think about it. Look at the labels of the manufactured product you buy. Where are they made? Like it or not if you are eating a lot of convenience foods you are what you eat, sugar, salt, preservatives, stabilizers and all.
One of the biggest crops in this big business farming is corn. It is in almost every manufactured product we consume from bacon to vinegar. What is corn? Corn is maltose, dextrose, modified corn starch, maltodextrine, frustose and hydrolyzed protein. Corn syrup is used to keep your ice cream from crystalizing, your salad dressing pourable, give some foods better texture, enhance colour, keep jams from becoming stale, and it is a cheap form of sweetening. It is used in the drug industry in Vitamin C,and it is part of the fermentation process to help produce penicillin and other antiboitics. Corn and soybeans are fed to cattle, animals whose digestive tracks are designed to eat grass and graze for a living.
What else is corn? Corn is sugar, no different than any other sweetener. Since HFCS or high fructose corn sugar went on the marketplace 30 plus years ago obesity has gone through the ceiling. It isn't just this product that is to blame. It is simply that all these sweeteners are in manufactured foods, fast foods, and convenience foods. If we don't read the labels and become educated consumers we are getting a ton of sugar we don't need. But we have developed a taste for sugar whether it is in our fast food or our breakfast cereal. There is nothing wrong with sugar but there is a nutritional difference between the sweetener in your cereal and the sugar in an apple.
The other major problem with the common use of sweetener has been all over the news of late and that is Type II Diabetes. The statistics state a probibility of Diabetes and all its life altering risks currented associated with it are 1 in 17 or worse depending on what report you read, on either side of the border and those numbers are increasing with an alarming tendency to see younger and younger victims.
Depending on your age, your parents or grandparents would not recognize the majority of products on our grocery shelves. They either grew their own vegetables or they knew who did. They made their own bread and other baked goods. Bread was made of flour, salt, sugar,yeast and water. Maybe an egg was added for a bit of richness. Bread molded if it stayed too long on the shelf. You had to give things a shake or stir if they started to separate in the fridge.
We also used to eat seasonally. Oranges and bananas came in from Florida in season and our vegetables were consumed fresh in the summer and frozen or canned in the winter. There are many people who follow a 100 mile diet, which according to Mark Bittman is great if you are in California but is pretty limiting for most of us.
Now we can get our tomatoes from a can but we can also get organic vine-ripened tomatoes, just know your source. My daughter cooked a bag of baby carrots for Thanksgiving and was dismayed to see bright orange coloured water. She went out and bought regular carrots and was much happier with the results.
For my house it will be back to the Strathcona Farmer's market on Saturday for fruit and vegetables, Bliss Baked Goods for my breads and Real Deal Meats for my eggs and meats. I know where and how their products are made. Other than that I will become a keen label reader and go organic for anything else I need. Fast food from the local drive through, right off the menu.
If you think your family would have a challenge with this idea I have a suggestion for you. www.YourFamilyRules.com