Raw Rag™

Think about this: Review of "The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle over Food Rights"

From "Criminalizing Nature’s Most Perfect Food: FDA's war on private food contracts" (thepeoplesvoice.org):

In his latest book, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle over Food Rights, David Gumpert details several cases of malicious prosecution against the natural dairy industry, reporting the myths, exaggerations and deceptions by authorities charged with protecting the food supply.

What you won’t get from the book is a whitewash of the raw milk movement. Even advocates were caught exaggerating claims or ignoring evidence. Gumpert also includes tender, heart-wrenching stories in the words of mothers whose children became critically ill from drinking contaminated raw milk, or so they believe. Though the link was never scientifically made in those cases, it was in others, including a raw milk herd share. Gumpert bridges compassion for those mothers with compassion for dairy owners who are financially wiped out by the government’s strategic war on private food arrangements.

From the cases explored in the book, and from recent government actions and statements, it becomes clear that food safety authorities are using their power to destroy competition of drugged, genetically engineered, factory processed foods.

For years, writers and researchers have shown how regulatory agencies have been captured by industry. President Obama exemplifies this in his Food Policy picks, recruiting directly from biotech firms like Monsanto and lobbying groups like CropLife America. His Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan, in her capacity as Solicitor General, intervened on behalf of Monsanto in the first case to reach the US Supreme Court regarding genetically engineered food.

In the potent Foreword to the book, farmer Joel Salatin admits:

“People like me don’t trust Monsanto. We don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration. We don’t trust the Department of Agriculture. We don’t trust Tyson. And we don’t think it’s safe to be dependent on food that sits for a month in the belly of a Chinese merchant marine vessel.”

And the outcome?

“When the public no longer trusts its public servants, people begin taking charge of their own health and welfare. And that is exactly what is drving the local heritage food movement.”

Click to read the rest of the article. Click to read Gumpert's blog.

Another invitation to healthy skepticism when evaluating nutrition claims of gurus and experts

Lots of years have passed since I first began doing research to answer the question "What is the best way to eat?" It is still fun to watch the heated debates between many of the dueling experts with somewhat limited wisdom, and the arguments between those who approach the topic in their reactive brains and those who use their reflective minds.

Despite the nutrition debates, I always recommend that each person find out what lifestyle fits best, and to keep in mind that one size does NOT fit all. For more on those recommendations, I invite you to read my post The diet argy-bargies: Raw, natural, vegan, vegetarian, locavore, omnivore? What is a person to eat?

For those of you who wonder why one expert can definitively claim one thing and another just as confidently claims the opposite, they are typically basing their "knowledge" on either anecdotal evidence ("it works for me and all my friends so it will work for you, too") or scientific research. Lest you be too quick to trust the research, I urge you to read this article in The Atlantic.

Excerpt from "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science":

The humility and graciousness seem to serve [John Ioannidis] well in getting across a message that is not easy to digest or, for that matter, believe: that even highly regarded researchers at prestigious institutions sometimes churn out attention-grabbing findings rather than findings likely to be right. But Ioannidis points out that obviously questionable findings cram the pages of top medical journals, not to mention the morning headlines. Consider, he says, the endless stream of results from nutritional studies in which researchers follow thousands of people for some number of years, tracking what they eat and what supplements they take, and how their health changes over the course of the study. “Then the researchers start asking, ‘What did vitamin E do? What did vitamin C or D or A do? What changed with calorie intake, or protein or fat intake? What happened to cholesterol levels? Who got what type of cancer?’” he says. “They run everything through the mill, one at a time, and they start finding associations, and eventually conclude that vitamin X lowers the risk of cancer Y, or this food helps with the risk of that disease.” In a single week this fall, Google’s news page offered these headlines: “More Omega-3 Fats Didn’t Aid Heart Patients”; “Fruits, Vegetables Cut Cancer Risk for Smokers”; “Soy May Ease Sleep Problems in Older Women”; and dozens of similar stories.

When a five-year study of 10,000 people finds that those who take more vitamin X are less likely to get cancer Y, you’d think you have pretty good reason to take more vitamin X, and physicians routinely pass these recommendations on to patients. But these studies often sharply conflict with one another. Studies have gone back and forth on the cancer-preventing powers of vitamins A, D, and E; on the heart-health benefits of eating fat and carbs; and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life. How should we choose among these dueling, high-profile nutritional findings? Ioannidis suggests a simple approach: ignore them all.

Please click to read the whole article. It is worth your time.

What's the best way to remove pesticides from your produce? Some researchers say the key is friction, not soap or temperature, that matters

A healthy diet, whether raw or not, includes lots of fruits and vegetables. The New York Times recently carried an article about the best way to wash your produce. From "The Claim: A Soap-and-Water Rinse Gets Produce Cleanest":

The prospect of ingesting pesticides and other contaminants can make supermarket produce seem less than appetizing. Buying organic lowers the risk, but is no guarantee against food-borne pathogens.

Scientists have found some effective household measures that can eliminate germs and pesticides. The simplest? Rinsing with tap water, which works as well as a mild soap solution or fruit and vegetable washes.

In studies at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in 2000, for example, scientists compared pesticide removal methods on 196 samples of lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes. Some were rinsed under tap water for a minute; others were treated with either a 1 percent solution of Palmolive or a fruit and vegetable wash. Tap water “significantly reduced” residues of 9 of 12 pesticides, and it worked as well as soap and wash products, the studies found.

Click to read the rest of the article.

The writer also says that the best way to remove micro-organisms from produce is to use a vinegar solution. Unfortunately, the article does not say what concentrate of vinegar in water, but the research abstract linked to says 10%.

Is this grow-your-own-food movement, well, growing?

This weekend has included a focus on the source of our food, highlighted last night by viewing for a second time the movie Fresh. Today my attention was pointed to an episode of Nightline about a family in Pasadena, California, growing all of their food on 1/5 of an acre. And then someone alerted me to a video of Joan Dye Gussow talking about why she grows her own food. From the Cooking Up a Story web site:

This Organic Life [Gussow's book] tells the story of how she began her first garden, the challenges, and the small triumphs as a new gardener. Her interests and abilities in growing food grew over time. Soon she had fruit trees, berry bushes, along with the many vegetables in the annual garden. But it’s not necessarily a gardening book, it’s more of an ongoing inner dialogue from someone who cares deeply for this planet. She kept wondering, how can I get my food closer to home? After a eating a clementine orange, she reflected on how many miles had it traveled to get to her? When the genetically modified tomato FlavrSavr came on the scene she was concerned how a farmer would lose the right to save his own seed. And, as bountiful as California was, it was facing serious agriculture challenges from soil erosion, water, among other concerns. Would the current food system be able to continue to put food on our tables?

Her book was written back 2001. Have the number of people asking these kinds of questions grown? Are there now more people growing their own food? Or am I just noticing these people more because of my new interest in the source of my food? What do you think?