Sugar Stacks

A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?

Back in May of this year, a web site called Sugar Stacks was launched to help consumers actually visualize the amount of sugar found in common food items.  They use “regular sugar cubes (4 grams of sugar each) to show how the sugars in your favorite foods literally stack up, gram for gram”.

Note that they don’t differentiate between different types of sugar, they just use cubes of white sugar as a visual aid.

Support Local, DAM It!

I know.  It’s been over five weeks since I last posted.  Sorry, friends.

This is a happy reminder that the next DAM (Downtown Art Market) will be this upcoming Saturday the 12th.  Ben & I will attend as consumers this time around, which means I’ll post more on my Local Christmas Challange later.

Thanks to our friends who bought produce from our garden last month.  It was such a blessing.  (Betenbough stopped by and made a donation!)

Dumbfounding Moment of the Day

My friend Amanda sent this to me this morning.   Watch and be flummoxed:

Um, I’m speechless.  Just…wow.  Please, I hope she doesn’t procreate.

A Very Local Christmas

Ben and I went to the Lubbock Downtown Art Market a couple weekends ago to promote efforts at starting a Downtown Farmers Market.  This was the third ever monthly Art Market, however potential Farmers Market vendors were invited experimentally.  It was a success!  (Thanks to all our friends who stopped by!)

Inspired by all the local art, we decided to challenge ourselves to buy only local or handmade Christmas gifts this year.  This means that our gifts have to be bought from local artists, locally owned retailors, or hand made (by me, unless Ben wants to learn how to knit or something).  I’ll keep you updated on my progress (and, though hopefully not, cheats), as well as work on a post about my favorite local shops.

So far, I’ve bought a porcelain necklace, little ceramic dish, and porcelain buttons (for two of my knitting projects) from Summers Studio Pottery.

Here’s the  Art Market schedule for the rest of the year:  August 8, September 12, October 10, November 7, December 5.

It’s True, We “Can’t Live Without Spunk”

I’m still giggling over this…you’ll see.

Ask anyone that knows me well – I think Dasani is utterly disgusting and won’t drink it.  I’ve hated it since my first taste, soon after its introduction to plastic-bottled-beverage fridges everywhere.  I’ve always whined that it tastes like tap water, but not just any tap water.  Dasani tastes like bottled city park drinking fountain water.  Water of the kind that is acceptable to drink only when absolutely necessary.  Sure, I’m probably a brat about this, but seriously, just the smell of Dasani makes me a little sick.

So, I’ll admit that I was happy when (in 2004) this British PR fiasco revealed that Dasani is in fact water from a public source.  More disturbing, though, is this: A month after Coca Cola introduced Dasani to the British market, UK authorities found bromate, a suspected human carcinogen, in the water.  Coca-Cola immediately issued a recall and pulled the brand.  Apparently, bromate was not present in the water before the treatment process, but rather was a result of it.  (So maybe city park drinking fountain tap water is safer than Dasani?)

How I missed the following, though, I have no idea:

A month before the bromate discovery, Coca Cola launched Dasani in the UK with an advertising campaign that referred to the product as spunk (“bottled spunk” / “can’t live without spunk”)!  For those of you with a less-than-broad sexual lexicon, “spunk” means “semen”.  Mmmmmm, bottled semen!  How did their advertising department miss this?!  While I know that this is technically a British English slang term, I know what it means!  So, I thought maybe I’ve just read too many British novels or watched too many British shows.  But Ben knows what it means, too.  I asked him today, and his response was not “It means ‘fortitude.’”

Anyway, Congress has shocked us all by announcing this month that it finds the need to regulate….Yes, bottled water, in this rare case of government sanctioned control.  You can read the how’s and why’s over at GOOD and the NY Times.  In short, they sent letters to 13 companies requesting more information about the source of their water and how it is tested.  While Pepsi and Nestle both disclose that Aquafina and Pure Life come from “public water sources,” Coke so far won’t admit to Dasani’s water sites and sources.

While you should feel free to ask Coke to disclose this information to its end users, I say just don’t consume it.

Inescapable Monsanto

There’s a frown inducing Food Policy Friday blog over at Eat. Drink. Better. (from two weeks ago, sorry, I’m behind on posting).

Once upon a time, Ben and I were optimistic that Mr. President would appoint advisers who aren’t actually Corporate Tools, especially in the long-villainous ag and food departments.  But alas, “hope” and “change” are not to be applied across the board.

Monsanto is a whole other blog (or series of blogs).  But, in case you are unfamiliar, I’ll explain that I have no greater disdain for any other American entity (and that is saying something).  In reading and learning about American health, food, and farming one inevitably comes across Monsanto many times.  And let me tell you, their story reads like an unreal, pre-apocalyptic sci-fi horror story.  You just wouldn’t even believe.

But alas, these are the people make policy.  So it goes.

What’s On My Food?

Last week, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) launched their new searchable online database, What’s On My Food?.

The website uses data gathered from the EPA’s Pesticide Reregistration Status, the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program, and PAN’s own Pesticide Info Database and compiles the information into easy-to-understand graphs and charts, placing each chemical in one of four categories (Carcinogen, Hormone Disruptor, Neurotoxin, or Developmental/Reproductive Toxin).  You can search by food item or chemical.

So lets look at strawberries, for example.  Captan (a known carcinogen) is found 70.1% of the time and Myclobutanil (a developmental or reproductive toxicant and suspected hormone disruptor) is found 34.7% of the time in conventional strawberries.  These chemicals were not found (0.0% of the time) in domestic organic strawberries.

Some domestic organic produce does still contain pesticide residue.  Domestic organic apples, for instance, are found to contain an average of 0.004 micrograms of Thiabendazole (a probable carcinogen) 20% of the time, versus an average of 42.5 micrograms 89.7% of the time for conventional apples.

The USDA tries to prepare the food the same way you would so most foods are washed and/or peeled before testing.  Many pesticides are systemic, however, meaning they are actually absorbed by the plant.

I know I don’t buy all organic, all the time, but this is a good resource to use when deciding which conventional fruit is most toxic and should be avoided.  While I still think any fresh fruit or vegetable is better than none at all, it’s rather disturbing to be so vividly reminded that I’m not eating just a strawberry or an apple – I’m eating, and my body is absorbing but not eliminating, all the toxins too.

My Facialist, the Bee

Lovely honey.  It’s been used for skin care as far back as Cleopatra.  It’s antimicrobial, humectant, and full of antioxidants.

I’ve been using partially crystallized honey as a weekly exfoliant for a long while now, but a post at Crunchy Chicken’s new blog, Green Goddess Dressing, has inspired me to rethink its use for my daily routine.  And Sweet Moses, my daily routine has been lacking, to say the least.  I struggle with “girlie laziness syndrome” and constantly need new motivators to spank me into cultural submission.

I’m blessed to have an endless supply of beautiful honey from my grandfather-in-law’s bees.  Although I would guess that, as with most produce, the fresher the better, you can use any honey (including creamed or whipped honey, but know that these are processed).

You can use honey only, or mix it with other natural ingredients.  I’ve tracked down a pretty helpful fact sheet from the National Honey Board (a good thing from the USDA?!?) for our cleansing pleasure.  I think I’ll try this honey, glycerin, and castile soap combo:

Mix 1/8 cup of honey, 1/4 cup of glycerin (I would use natural vegetable glycerin, not synthetic glycerin aka “propylene glycol”), and 1 1/2 teaspoon of mild liquid castile soap (I use Dr. Bronner’s) in a small bowl until well blended.  Store in a sterilized (boiled) container.

“‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘what I like best-’ and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”  - The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne

Inside “Food, Inc.”

GOOD did a great Q&A with Food, Inc.’s Robert Kenner that I want to share.  I can’t wait to see this film (I’ll post a review when I do), if only for the rage it will incite.  The rage keeps me passionate.  We all need a healthy dose of disgust every once in a while to keep us keen!  The Omnivore’s Dilemma definitely falls into this category for me.  If Super Size Me didn’t fully convince me to never eat at McDonald’s again, Michael Pollan succeeded.  Never.  No desire.  Ben and I have contemplated visiting a chicken farm, stock yard, etc. but have obvious hesitations.  For me, seeing it would keep me from eating any factory farmed meat ever again.  But then again, maybe that’s just the kind of encouragement (discouragement?) I need.

What?! There’s no such thing as Crunchberries?

Over at GOOD (my favorite) there’s a post about a California woman’s lawsuit over the absence of actual crunchberries in Crunchberries cereal.   This is one of those things that makes me embarrassed to be human.  Anyway, the stupid, ridiculous lawsuit is not the point.  I think Smith makes the point when he says:

Misleading advertising is ingrained in our food culture. Consumers seem to be rarely, if ever, presented with clear, concise information about a food’s origin. But the extreme presented in Sugawara’s case (how could any regular supermarket shopper be so gullible?) raises a larger, more legitimate question about labeling claims that imply a positive effect without any explicit data. Crunchberries may or may not lead a “reasonable consumer” to a never-never land of nonexistent fruit species, but manufacturers continually use the same advertising space to make claims about food safety, health, or nutrition—and expect these front-of-the-cereal-box claims to be taken seriously.

Contains No Saturated Fat!  No wait, we mean Great Source of Omega 3s!  Oh, damn, now it’s Contains No Trans Fats!  Or is it May Help Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease?  *Sigh*

We as consumers are wholly responsible for what we buy and eat (no buts about it!)  Food packaging = advertising.  Period.  This goes for organic food, too, which is probably the most hyped and over-marketed niche in the food industry today.  This extends into Michael Pollan’s apt idea of “Supermarket Pastoral”.  Every company is jumping on that bandwagon.  This doesn’t mean I don’t still prefer organic; it just means I recognize that most “Free Range!” chickens are anything but free range.