Walmart Hypocrisy: Hunger Campaign that Doesn't Address Real Hunger

The hypocrisy and cynical irony are almost too rich for words. Extreme, ethics-free capitalism at its finest... 

Hunger is defined as "... the physical sensation of desiring food. When politicians, relief workers and social scientists talk about people suffering from hunger, they usually refer to those who are unable to eat sufficient food to meet their basic nutritional needs for sustained periods of time." on Wikipedia. 

With this ad late last month, Walmart urged Americans to join in "fighting hunger together" by buying products in its store, made by the leading fake food mega-corporations:

• General Mills
• Kraft Foods
• Unilever
• Kellogg's
• Con Agra Foods
• Nestle
• Pepsico
• Campbell's
• Dr Pepper/Snapple Group
• Mondelez International (formerly Kraft Foods Inc.)

Walmart wrote:

"In 2010, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation made a historic $2 billion commitment to fight hunger in America through cash and in-kind donations. The Fighting Hunger Together leverages Walmart and the Walmart Foundation’s size and scale to provide nutritious food and funding to nonprofits that are committed to finding solutions for this important issue."

This clever ad campaign leaves the clear impression that Walmart and its fake-food corporate suppliers are fighting hunger.  Truth is that nowhere does Walmart state that it or its partners "are committed to finding solutions for this important issue."     

Instead, Walmart appears to promise to donate a tiny portion of cash (see the list of nonprofits here) from sales to Americans of highly-processed fake foods  manufactured by its "partners" including:

• Kellogg's Froot Loops
• Skippy peanut butter
• Banquet chicken nuggets
• Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, canned
• Nature Valley granola thins
• Honey Nut Cheerios

"In-kind donations" by Walmart and its mega-corporate food suppliers means that a majority of their joint "$2 Billion commitment" will be their own fake food products... Froot Loops, Skippy peanut butter, Banquet chicken nuggets, canned Kraft cheese, Nature Valley bars, Honey Nut Cheerios, and the like... to food banks, charities, and soup kitchens serving the hungry in their communities.  

If hungry Americans dine mainly on fake-food product donations, then, by definition, they will remain hungry, as Froot Loops, Skippy peanut butter, Banquet chicken nuggets, canned Kraft cheese, Honey Nut Cheerios, and all other highly processed foods do not meet their basic nutritional needs for sustained periods of time. Not by a long shot... 

Such processed fake foods are chock full of fat, salt, and sugar, as well as chemicals, additives, fillers, emulsifiers, artificial  colors and flavors, and much more. . 

Walmart's "fighting hunger together" campaign is sheer gimmickry genius in that it equates Walmart with fighting hunger, yet requires nearly no sacrifice of one the world's largest corporations beyond increasing sales of its products.  And Walmart gets humanitarian brownie-points by donating products approaching "must sell" dates or the end of shelf life... 

Indeed, a fine example of ethics-free capitalism.  Problem is... the hungry are still hungry! 

The Rise and Sad Demise of an Iconic American Product: Killing Knott's Berry Farm Foods

Walter Knott's freshly picked berries... blackberries, strawberries, red raspberries, loganberries, especially his extra-sweet Macatawa blackberries... were favorites of my Great Aunts Gertrude (1885 - 1962) and Clara (1888 - 1975).  

On sunny Saturdays in the early 1920s, they and husbands Gordon and Victor would drive a Model T Ford down eleven miles of dusty roads south from their Whittier homes to Walter and Cordelia Knott's roadside berry stand in Orange County, California.  Sunday suppers by the Kansas-born sisters featured homemade preserves and pies vivid with flavors of Knott's berries. 

By 1927, the industrious Knott farm employed up to 50 seasonal pickers, and often yielded four crop rotations a year for berries, cherry rhubarb, and asparagus.  

And Walter had finally persuaded Cordelia to set-up batches of her popular, pure berry jams, jellies, and preserves to sell at the berry stand.  Gertrude and Clara, who were busy mothers, housewives, and yearned for travel adventures by car, rarely again made homemade preserves.  

The rest is Southern California history:

"Knott's great berries were a 'must stop and buy some' for both old friends and for travelers and tourists who had heard the good news by word of mouth...

"The big Depression hit then, in 1928,  but the Knotts responded positively by using the last of their savings to build the Farm's first permanent building--- a combined berry market,  a small mursery to sell berry plants, and a five-table Tea Room where Cordelia served sandwiches, hot biscuits with berry jam, and berry pie."  (Source - Knott's Berry Farm Cookbook, 1976)

By 1934, the Tea Room expanded to a 40-seat diner serving fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans, plus hot biscuits, berry jams, and berry pies.  Three years later,  Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant opened doors with 300-seats and long waiting lines. Today, the famed restaurant draws more than 1.1 million customers a year. 

Cordelia's jams, jellies, preserves, and her new boysenberry ice cream and pancake syrup became legend, drawing locals and tourists eager to taste and tote home Knott's berry delights. Selling fresh berries fell by the wayside as crowds swelled for Cordelia's fried chicken and country ham dinners.  

Walter built small amusements to entertain customers while they waited hours to dine: first a rock garden and a replica of George Washington's fireplace, followed by a gift shop and an old Wells Fargo stagecoach. By the 1940s, Walter Knott embarked on rebuilding an American West ghost town, replete with relics from the California Gold Rush.

The end result, of course, was Knott's Berry Farm, today a famed 160-acre amusement park with 3.6 million visitors in 2011, and owned by New York Stock Exchange-listed Cedar Fair Entertainment Company.

A Business Built on Real Foods

Knott's, though, was built first on Walter's premium berries, and then on Cordelia Knott's extraordinary jams, jellies, and preserves made simply with the finest ingredients.  After Walter Knott innovated a new berry in the 1930s, the boysenberry, buyers returned in droves to try the unique fruit.

At every meal, my two great aunts, particular midwest-style cooks, always set on the table a pretty jelly dish or two of Knott's boysenberry, red raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry jam alongside a heaping plate of homebaked bread or hot biscuits.  

One of my earliest childhood memories is of savoring the tangy, sweet tastes of delicious Knott's jams at the elegantly-set Sunday supper tables in the Whittier cottage-homes of Great Aunts Gertrude Bennett and Clara Hodgin. (Yes, they knew the Nixon family. Never thought much of the Nixon kids.) 

 As the Knott's Berry Farm franchise grew over decades, gift packs of Knott's top-quality jams and jellies were commonly given to family, friends, and even as company gifts to employees. Knott's products were special, and considered special occasion, gourmet treats. 

Killing Cordelia Knott's Homespun Preserves

But as of 2013, Knott's superb products are no more. Killed by industrial food mega-corporations, hungry to cheapen and undercut great American products for greater profitability. 

Big Food corporate fake-food giant Con Agra bought-out Knott's food products and operations in 1995, pledging to foster the high-quality and good reputation of Knott's Berry Farm foods that had pleased generations of Americans. 

In 2008, though, Con Agra closed Knott's artisan jelly-making plant here in my hometown, and sold Knott's food brands to Ohio-based food giant J.M. Smuckers Co., industrial food corporate owner of Pillsbury, Hungry Jack, Dunkin' Donuts, Jif peanut butter, Crisco shortening, and hundreds of other processed food brands.  

In early 2013, Smuckers announced that Knott's-labeled preserves, jams, and jellies had been discontinued (except for token offerings at the Buena Park theme park).  That all Knott's jams, jellies, preserves and related products would bear the name of Smuckers...  a move that seems logical, considering that the high-quality ingredients and artisan-attention Cordelia Knott lavished on her pure, homespun fare had long since been compromised in favor of fake food sweeteners, additives, and processes.

Today, the ingredients listed for Smuckers Boysenberry Preserves, after boysenberries, are:

• High fructose corn syrup
• Corn syrup
• Fruit pectin
• Citric acid

Great Aunts Gertrude and Clara would be appalled. At their Sunday supper table, they would never have stooped to serve these inferior tasting, processed-food substitutes for Cordelia Knott's fresh, crisp iconic American creations.

In honor of their family tradition of delicious, healthy meals made with fresh, high-quality food, I won't either. 

(Great Aunt Clara is on the far right. Great Aunt Gertrude is standing center, back row. My maternal grandmother, Marie, their younger sister, is standing between my great grandparents. Photo was taken about 1900.)

Oreos, Cheetos, Twinkies, Doritos: Home Baking as Rebellion Against Industrial Food

In 2013, home cooking is a radical act that empowers Americans to bypass the near-total control over the U.S. food supply of about twenty industrial food mega-corporations.  

Michael Pollan, famed journalist of Big Food, observes in New York magazine's April 2013 issue:

"... one of the most striking things I’ve learned is that all traditional food cultures keep populations healthy no matter what they are... The great irony is that now our civilization has managed to construct a new food culture that reliably makes people sick. It’s the first time in history...

 "But the collapse of home cooking is limiting for the food movement. As I watched this local agriculture movement get started, I realized that the farmers’-market movement was only going to get so far if people refused to cook."

Home baking, in particular, is personal rebellion.... creative, craftsy, delicious rebellion... against the hundreds of invisible chemicals, preservatives, cheap fillers, additives, emulsifiers, and artificial colors and flavors gunking up otherwise scrumptious delectables.

That doesn't mean, though, that you need resort to your grandmother's cherished baking cookbooks.  (See above from my mid-20th century cookbook collection, "Ann Pillsbury's Baking Book," which was near-revolutionary when published in 1950 with "more than 400... rolls, cakes, cookies. and pies.") 

Grandmother's baking was comforting and delicious beyond mere words, of course, but her recipes were complex, and a bit too fussy and old-fashioned for most 2013 home bakers.

A brand-new book that I'm crazy about is "Classic Snacks Made from Scratch: 70 Homemade Versions of Your Favorite Brand-Name Treats"by Casey Barber, a recipe developer and food writer.

Using good-quality ingredients and absolutely no additives or preservatives, this fun book enables all to bake better-quality, equally yummy versions of...

• Oreos
• Mint Millanos
• Animal crackers
• Twinkies
• Wheat Thins
• Peeps
• Cracker Jacks
• McDonald's apple pie
• Pop Tarts
• Cheetos
• Goldfish
• BBQ potato chips

....and, believe it or not, Cool Ranch Doritos.

No, none of these snack vices will be approved by stiff-necked nutritionists.  

But if you or yours have to have it... and we all do now and then... reject the cheaper, chemical-sodden ingredients used by greedy industrial food mega-corporations.  

Join the rebellion by returning to your grandmother's ritual of baking at home.  She'd be so pleased! 

"Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans

"Fascinating" and "horrifying" are two words that come to mind to describe new bestseller "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Pulitzer Prize journalist Michael Moss.  

"Fascinating" because Moss provides rich, fully-sourced details about industrial food corporations using tobacco-industry tactics in extraordinarily greedy pursuit of profits, public health be damned.  

"Horrifying" for the same reasons. 

"Horrifying" also for the smooth, underhanded ways Big Food has used, and still uses, to fool, trick, and hook all of us to enrichen their corporate coffers while clearly and deliberately hurting our health. 

Please read this brief, illuminating excerpt from the #2 book on last week's New York Times non-fiction bestseller list...

"... in attempting to trace an E.coli-tainted shipment of hamburger that had made hundreds ill and paralyzed a twenty-two-year-old former dance teacher in Minnesota named Stephanie Smith, I found the federal government to be of little help.

"Not only that,  the Department of Agriculture is actually complicit in the meat industry's secrecy.  Citing competitive interests, the public agency refused my requests for the most basic facts, like which slaughterhouses had supplied the meat.

"I ultimately obtained the information from an industry insider, and the smoking-gun document--- a detailed, second-by-second account of the hamburger production process called a "Grinding log"--- showed why the government is so protective of the industry it is supposed to be holding accountable.  

"The burger that Stephanie ate, made by Cargill, had been an amalgam of various grades if neat from different parts of the cow and from multiple slaughterhouses as far away as Uruguay.

"The meat industry, with the blessings of the federal government, was avoiding steps that could make their products safer for consumers.  The E.coli starts in the   slaughterhouses, where feces tainted with the pathogen can contaminate the meat when the hides of cows are pulled off.  

"Yet many of the biggest slaughterhouses would sell their meat only to hamburger makers like Cargill if they agreed NOT to test their meat for E.coli until it was mixed together with shipments from other slaughterhouses. 

"This insulated the slaughterhouses from costly recalls when the pathogen was found in ground beef, but also prevented government officials and the public from tracing the E.coli back to its source.  When it comes to pathogens in the meat industry, ignorance is financial bliss."

I recommend this riveting expose to all Americans: this clever book will help you reclaim a measure of control over your life and health as you understand the nature and origins of the #1 non-genetic factor on your health and longevity. 

Ballpark Food: New Gluttony and County-Fair Grotesqueness

Is ballpark eating now a grotesque indulgence akin to county fair gluttony?  

American tradition embraces juicy hot dogs and cold, cold beer at the ballpark, but when did a stadium visit become another exercise in over-the-top, self-destructive gastronomy?  

Call me naive about stadium food, because the ballpark in my neighborhood, Anaheim Stadium, emphasizes healthy choices including:

• salads at 8 stadium locations
• veggie dogs at 6 locations
• vegetarian panini sandwiches

Joining Anaheim Stadium concessions last year was Melissa's Fresh for You, offering "healthy wraps, salads, fruit cups, hummus and pita chips, gluten-free hot dogs, and gluten-free beer" in four locations. I hear Melissa's black bean burger is scrumptious.  

Sure, the home of the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles (future 2013 World Series champions!) offers heavy, satisfying fare for fans as pastrami, cheese steak, and meatball sandwiches, and gigantic, deliciously greasy pizzas by-the-slice.  And like every ballpark, Anaheim serves heaping piles of  "nacho" chips dripping with hot, yellow, liquid "cheese" topped with jalapeno peppers and God only knows what else. (Why my husband craves ballpark nachos, I will never, ever know...) 

My point is that, in my recent stadium experiences, the direction of food concessions has been toward healthier fare, less to conspicuous gluttony.

So imagine my delighted surprise when I recently read a headline in my father-in-law's morning newspaper, the Reno Gazette-Journal, touting "Aces Chef to Debut Tasty Treats."  Terrific, I thought. Healthier foods at the stadium for the Reno Aces, a popular Triple-A baseball team affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  A ballpark with an actual chef on staff! 

Delighted surprise until I read the article, that is. Among the new tasty treats? A foot-long hot dog smothered in chili and Fritos.  Pretzels slathered with "beer cheese." (Liquid beer cheese? What is beer cheese?) And sweet potato tater tots, deep-fried of course.  

A single Google search of stadium foods turned up, at the Texas Rangers' ballpark, a $26, two-foot hot dog weighing a full pound, dripping with that yellow liquid cheese substance, jalapenos, onions, and likely whatever else suits your food fantasies.  (See photo above.)

Has ballpark eating become the newest venue of rebellious, indigestion-inducing indulgence akin to county fair in-your-face gluttony as entertainment?  If so, shouldn't hungry fans at least be told the calorie, fat, salt, and sugar content of their food options? 

I believe in freedom of individual choice, yet recognize that in a responsible, safe society, individual freedoms must be balanced with public responsibilities and privileges. In the case of stadium foods and similar, public health concerns must be weighed against individual choice.  

The fast food industry is required by law to disclose the nutritional content of its menus, so that the public can make informed choices.  

The time is overdue to also mandate nutritional content disclosures of the tens of millions of meals and snacks sold annually at U.S. stadiums and ballparks.  Take me out to the ballpark, but please, tell me what I'm eating.  

Autism and GMO Foods, Pesticides, Industrial Foods

Many scientists and experts, and a 2011 medical study, have connected the accusatory dots from the alarming rise of autism in U.S. children to the explosive growth of genetically modified foods, industrial-made foods, and pesticides in U.S. diets and homes.  

Scientific American reported in 2009:

"California's sevenfold increase in autism cannot be explained by changes in doctors' diagnoses and most likely is due to environmental exposures, University of California scientists reported Thursday.

"The scientists who authored the new study advocate a nationwide shift in autism research to focus on potential factors in the environment that babies and fetuses are exposed to, including pesticides, viruses and chemicals in household products..."

Facts and Statements - Autism, Diet and Bt-toxins

• "The average rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among eight year olds is now 1-in-88, representing a 78 percent increase between 2002 and 2008. Among boys, the rate is nearly five times the prevalence found in girls."  (Source - Center for Disease Control)

• "It is known that children on the Autistic Spectrum suffer from fragile immune systems, significant digestive and brain inflammation, and the environmental toxin overload. Putting foreign entities such as GMO foods into such a fragile child may indeed cause further deterioration..." (Source - Dr. Janelle Love of the Autism Relief Foundation)

• "The five main GM foods are soy, corn, cotton, canola, and sugar beets. Their derivatives are found in more than 70 percent of the foods in the supermarket. The primary reason the plants are engineered is to allow them to drink poison... Some GM corn and cotton varieties are also designed to produce poison...called Bt-toxin, in every cell of the plant. " (Source - HuffPost Healthy Living)

• " A 2011 Canadian study... discovered that 93% of the pregnant women they tested had Bt-toxin from Monsanto’s corn in their blood. And so did 80% of their unborn fetuses."  (Source - Institute for Responsible Technology)

• "GMOs have been shown to adversely affect the digestive and immune systems of animals in laboratory settings. Lyme and autism, on the rise in the US, are also associated with digestive and immune system dysfunction. Therefore, patients with Lyme and autism should avoid GM foods." (Source - Dr. Amy Dean of The American Academy of Environmental Medicine)

In a well-researched 2012 article, The Center for Responsible Technology reported:

"What is it that is damaging the health and well-being of so many of our children? Don Huber, PhD, professor emeritus from Purdue University, has an idea.

"In October 2011, Dr. Huber gave a talk in Germany about the physiological, neurological, and behavioral symptoms of pigs, cows, and rats fed genetically modified feed. After his lecture, a physician and autism specialist approached him and said, “The symptoms you describe are exactly what we are finding in our autistic children.”

"The animals in those studies were fed the same GM soy and corn eaten by children and adults in the US. Both crops are outfitted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive being sprayed with herbicide, which kills plants. As a result, higher residues of toxic weed killer end up inside our food...

Although the biotech seed companies like Monsanto claim that their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are harmless, that’s not what the independent scientists are finding."

A peer-reviewed medical study, released in April 2012, clearly linked the "autism epidemic" with industrial food-product ingredients, especially high fructose corn syrup. Such ingredients were found to exert toxic influences on developing brains in unborn and young children.  

(Read study results HERE at the National Institutes of Health website, and a detailed explanation HERE at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.) 

Blaming Parents and Genetics, Ignoring Environmental Factors

Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a University of California, Davis epidemiology professor, agrees with millions of parents of autistic children that federal officials and industrial food corporations over-blame genetics and parenting, while virtually ignoring environmental forces as contributing factors to the astonishing spread of autism in U.S. children.

"There's genetics and there's environment. And genetics don't change in such short periods of time," commented Dr. Hertz-Picciotto to the press.

Dr. Arden Andersen, physician as well as author, soil scientist,  and former farmer, states it more bluntly:  "It appears there is a direct correlation between GMOs and autism." 

Why?

• Why does the U.S., via the USDA, condone, protect, and support GMO crops and foods?
• Why has the US not joined more than 50 other countries in mandating that GMO foods be clearly labeled for consumers?
• Why does the U.S. Congress provide tens of billions in annual cash payments mainly to farmers who grow five GMO crops that comprise the basic ingredients of U.S. industrial foods?  (Read What Are U.S. Farm Subsidies?)

Why is the U.S. government not actively investigating links between the alarming rise of autism in U.S. children and the explosive growth of genetically modified foods, industrial-made foods, and pesticides in U.S. diets and homes?

Why is our elected government protecting industrial food corporations over public health? Over the very health of our children?    

America's ailing children desperately need solutions, and answers to these terrible questions.

Gaudy New Frito-Lay Chips Embody Wrongs of U.S. Industrial Foods

Three gaudy new Lay's potato chip shock-and-awe flavors embody all that's destructive and wrong and seductively delicious about U.S. industrial foods. 

Frito-Lay, Inc. is betting millions that these taste-exploding snacks will be the next red-hot must-buy in grocery markets, convenience stores, and gas stations nationwide.  If U.S. culinary history since the 1950s is any guide, Frito-Lay is likely correct.  

These chips, the brash embodiment of fake food in all its tasteless glory, would be an addictive party-and-a-half for junk food aficionados.  I should know... I sampled all three flavors after my son picked-up giveaways pushed this past weekend at a major supermarket chain.  (Click here for Lay's "Vote to Save Your Fave" contest at Facebook.) 

In extraordinary new bestseller "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us"Pulitzer Prize journalist Michael Moss writes of two corporate suppliers of key ingredients to American junk-food manufacturers:

"These were no run-of-the-mill ingredients... These were the three pillars of processed foods, the creators of crave, and each of the CEOS needed them in huge quantities to turn their products into hits. These were also the ingredients  that, more than any other, were directly responsible for the obesity epidemic.  Together, the two suppliers had...

• the salt, which was processed in dozens of ways to maximize the jolt that taste buds would feel with the very first bite;

•  they had the fats, which delivered the biggest loads of calories and worked more subtly in inducing people to overeat;

•  and they had the sugar, whose raw power in exciting the brain made it perhaps the most formidable ingredient of all, dictating the formulations of products from one side of the grocery to the other."

Author Moss recounts in lurid, well-documented detail how Kraft, Nestle, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Mars, and other industrial food corporations used tobacco industry marketing tactics to addict Americans to radically unhealthy foods laden with salt, fat, and sugar.   

Moss also describes the extreme addiction of industrial food corporations to rich, near-endless profits reaped by junk foods that are making Americans fat and sick... and how the U.S. government is too cozy with industrial food executives and lobbyists to stop the sickening of America. 

Notes the New York Times review of this book:

"Virtually everything you can buy in a supermarket that’s not an outer-aisle pure food like milk or kohlrabi has been fiddled with to make you shiver with bliss — which will in turn make you buy the product again and again."

I'm awestruck by the shameless, in-your-face brass of Frito-Lay in testing and releasing these three grotesquely over-the-top junk foods in the face of First Lady Michelle Obama's courageous three-year campaign to urge American children to eat more veggies and fruits, and less unhealthy fare.   

Yes, I'm awestruck at the corporate gall of unleashing these aggressively unhealthy snacks. 

But I'm also quite awestruck by the absolutely awesome taste of Lay's Chicken & Waffles flavored potato chips.  (I confess: see my empty bag, at right!)

Therein lies the deadly diet dilemma for us and our children and grandchildren. For the very vitality of our nation. 

Something needs to be done. Something needs to change. 

My suggestion? Make better food choices. Don't buy these scrumptious snacks that are intentionally designed to hook you and yours into a deadly, delicious cigarette-like habit. Just say NO. 

Mayor Bloomberg's Silly, Arbitrary Ban on Soft Drinks: Public Health Politics Run Amok

Mayor Bloomberg is wrong, and State Supreme Court Judge Tingling is right: Bloomberg's New York City ban on sales of certain sugar-loaded drinks larger than 16 ounces IS "arbitrary and capricious." His ban is also ineffective and unenforceable.

Besides, governments have no damn business dictating what Americans drink, much less mandating drink quantities allowable for public consumption. 

Mind you... I detest soft drinks, which are little more than chemicals, additives, fillers, food coloring, caffeine, salt (sodium), and sugar or a chemical sugar-substitute. I neither buy nor consume soft drinks, nor serve them in my home. To me, they taste harsh and metallic... Soft drinks are the ultimate industrial fake food.  

We've known for decades that sugar-loaded soft drinks are a key contributor to the U.S. obesity epidemic, as well as weight-related diseases as diabetes Type 2,  dental decay, heart ailments, even cancers.    (Recent studies have linked sugar-free soft drinks to health concerns, too, including weight gain and metabolic syndrome, which is pre-diabetes.) 

The Mayor is obviously correct: soft drinks are bad for human health. But his ban is sillly, and it's insanely arbitrary and capricious. 

As I wrote in June 2012 in Silly Food Facism,  Mayor Bloomberg's edict banning large-size soft drinks is a classic case of arbitrary bureaucratic silliness and of patronizing nanny-state law-making.  Public health politics run amok. 

The Mayor wants to make it a minor crime for restaurants,  theaters, sports venues, fast-food purveyors, even food carts and kiosks to sell sugar-laced drinks... soft drinks, sports and energy beverages... in containers larger than 16 ounces. 

But Mr. Bloomberg provides a plethora of bewildering exceptions, including: 

• Convenience stores, including 7-Eleven, home of the Big Gulp and Super Big Gulp
• Grocery stores and markets of all types
• Vending machines
• Newsstands
• Soft drinks with fewer than 25 calories per 8 ounces
• Fruit drinks
• Beverages containing dairy products
• Beverages containing alcohol

No bans are planned for buying more than one 16-ounce cup, for refilling your existing cup, or for filling to the brim your own mega-size non-disposable drink holder. 

New Nabisco Triscuits: We Made a Real-Food Dent in Industrial Fake Foods!

Holy healthy foods!!!  They hear us. And they're making  product changes to appease and please us! 

Our Real Food movement is apparently having an impact on at least one  industrial fake-food manufacturing mega-corporation.

Just imagine! A brand-new Nabisco cracker line obviously created to appeal to shoppers looking for products made with real foods, and not concocted with chemicals, additives, fillers, stabilizers, and dozens of fake-food  industrial ingredients.  

I found this box (see at right) in a special display at Stater Bros, a major 167-store grocery chain. Not at a health food store, not some expensive specialty-foods store. A typical chain grocery store, albeit one that does try a bit harder to also stock better-quality fare (expanded organic produce sections, La Brea Bakery breads, a to-go salad bar).  

Mind you... Triscuits are a snack food, and not equivalents of fruits and veggies, which are better food choices.  These crackers are not fortified with vitamins and minerals essential to anyone's health. Nutritionists would still apply the "empty calories" tag to Nabisco's Brown Rice line of Triscuits. (Three sugars are among the ingredients, below.)

But all Americans indulge in snacks. These particular snacks appear to be largely free of the cheapest, nastiest non-food chemicals and fillers, unlike almost all processed snack foods. 

That, alone, would be huge health news. That, alone, is a signal that the Real Food movement is starting to impact the U.S. food supply.

Invoking a "Health Halo" Effect

Per the requisite Nutrition Facts label,  ingredients of Brown Rice Triscuits Baked with Sweet Potato are:

• Long grain brown rice
• Soybean oil
• Whole grain soft white wheat 
• Dried sweet potato
• Onion powder
• Brown sugar
• Sweet potato powder
• Sea salt
• Sugar
• Garlic powder
• Dried molasses
• Dried parsley
• Yeast extract
• Distilled white vinegar
• Citric acid

The ingredients sound appealing, like ingredients you and I might use in our kitchens. Which, of course, is Nabisco's whole marketing point: to invoke a much-desired "health halo" effect for this new Brown Rice line of Triscuits, thereby achieving their sole goal of increasing sales and profits. 

The box of Brown Rice Triscuits Baked with Sweet Potato is festooned with Real Food marketing goodness:

"Triscuits... delicious... real food snacks. Made with delicious real food ingredients."

"We start with 100% WHOLE GRAIN BROWN RICE & WHEAT and bake in real food ingredients such as pieces of delicious golden SWEET POTATOES or savory RED BEANS."

I sheepishly confess... the new cracker tastes terrific, although a tad too salty.  I like the lighter texture and crispier crunch better than traditional Triscuits.  I'm sure the four other flavors available at Stater Bros also taste terrific. Industrial-made snack foods are always engineered to taste absolutely terrific.  

 Is this the entire ingredient list? I don't know. 

Are any of the ingredients laced with chemicals, additives, fillers, stabilizers? I don't know. Probably yes, since the box has no spoilage date and does not indicate "no preservatives."

   
Is this a healthy snack? No, of course not.  Nuts, fruits, veggies, cheeses are far healthier snack choices.  Nutritionists lament "health halo" snacks because they fear that...

"...people eat so much more of the ever-so-slightly less awful, so-called 'better for you' choice that they actually eat more in the way of calories, or salt, or sugar than they would have had they chosen that food's blatantly junky brother." (Source - U.S. News and World Report Health: Why Baked Chips are Worse Than Fried)

As a Real Food advocate, though, I celebrate Nabisco's new Brown Rice product line of Triscuit crackers.   

This new product that sounds seemingly near-free of industrial ingredients means we are that having an impact on industrial fake-food manufacturing mega-corporations... in this instance, Nabisco, which is owned by Kraft Foods, conveniently renamed recently as Mondelez International. 

Making one tiny dent in product formulation strategies for industrial fake-food corporations is cause for celebration. 

Certainly, it's only the very beginning of what will be a long crusade to clean-up the health-shattering morass of U.S. industrial-made foods... but I feel encouraged. They hear us. And they're finally making  product changes to appease and please us! 

How to Avoid Eating Horse Meat, Other Mystery Meats

Surprised by horse meat in the world food supply? Then you're not paying attention...  

If you eat frozen or processed dishes, whether at home or restaurants, chances are good that you consume mislabeled mystery meat with murky, unappetizing origins. 

U.S. meat inspection laws have been diluted over the past few years for imported meats.  And U.S. loopholes for stealth use of imported mystery meats are larger than a truckload of cattle headed for the slaughterhouse. 

Europe's 2013 horse meat scandal may be the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" for processed foods in the U.S., signaling troubling revelations to come about the "meats" in frozen entrees, processed meat products, and your favorite fast food fare.  

Food fraud in meat is nothing new, although we rarely learn the sordid details hidden from the public. Irish Times newspaper recently recounted:

"Most people thought we were entering uncharted territory when it emerged that horse meat had been found in burgers and other beef products. But there was a sense of deja vu for anyone who remembered the Australian meat scandal of 1981.

"It was revealed by an alert food inspector in San Diego who thought that three frozen blocks of Australian beef looked darker and stringier than they should. His instinct was right: it emerged that horse, donkey and kangaroo meat, masquerading as beef, were being exported to the US.

"Papers released last November after a 30-year freedom-of-information battle by the journalist Jack Waterford showed that the scandal was bigger than originally thought, with meat destined for pet food being sold for human consumption.

"'The flesh of donkeys, goats, kangaroos, buffaloes and horses, killed in the field and without regard to any consideration of hygiene . . . was used indiscriminately to produce food for human consumption,' said an appendix to a report into the issue."

IKEA meatballs, Taco Bell tacos, Birds Eye spaghetti bolognese, frozen entrees as lasagnas, moussakas, and shepherd's pies... the list of horse-meat tainted foods found in 2013 in Europe grows daily. 

Of course, that's because European countries are intentionally testing for improperly labeled meats, and publicly releasing results of testing.  

Is the U.S. Testing Imported Meats?

Is the U.S. testing for mislabeled meats at U.S. grocery stores and food purveyors?   Uh... sort of. Sometimes. 

Are we consuming horse or other horrifying meats of murky origins in our fast-food crunchy taco supremes and deluxe veggie works burritos, or in freezer-section pot pies, lasagnas, enchiladas, and those delicious egg rolls?  Maybe. Likely sometimes. 

Michael Pollan and the Mediterranean Diet: Your Great-Grandmother in One Afternoon

Once again, real-food guru Michael Pollan looks like a genius. A prophet. A modern-day messiah of food wisdom.

 "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," he famously warned in his 2007 classic The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." he added in bestselling tomes In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifestoand Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

There it was again in boldest possible headlines this week: living, breathing proof that we'll be healthier and live longer by heeding Mr. Pollan's wise, simple words.  

In Mediterranean Diet Shown to Ward Off Heart Attack and Stroke, the New York Times trumpeted:

"About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found."

"The findings, published on The New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site on Monday, were based on the first major clinical trial to measure the diet’s effect on heart risks. The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue."

Scientific testing behind these seeming incredible claims is solid:

"Researchers tracked 7,447 patients, all of whom were considered at risk for heart disease before the study began. Participants were divided into three groups, two of which ate a food central to the Mediterranean diet. One was given 30 grams of nuts a day, while the other was given a liter of olive oil a week. The third group was instructed to follow a typical Western low-fat diet.

"After tracking patients for an average of five years each, scientists found that those who were consuming either the nuts or the olive oil had about a 30 percent lower chance of experiencing a negative cardiac outcome than those instructed in a low-fat diet." 

Food choices allowed under the moniker of Mediterranean Diet were easily findable, real foods that would be recognizable to your great-grandmother:

• Three servings of fruit daily
• Two servings of vegetables daily
• Fish three times weekly
• White meat instead of red
• Beans, peas, lentils three times weekly
• Snacks of nuts between meals
• Up to seven glasses of wine weekly
• Use olive oil liberally, preferably four tablespoons daily
• Minimize: dairy and processed meats (industrial food products)
• Avoid: industrially-baked cookies, cakes, pies, pastries (industrial food products)
• Eliminate: soft drinks  (industrial food products)

Ignore the fat content of all foods, as did your grandparents and great-grandparents. 

Food Safety News observes"...scientists are still unsure of why these foods seem to reduce the risk of heart disease.".    One author of the study speculated, "Perhaps there is a synergy among the nutrient-rich foods included in the Mediterranean diet that fosters favorable changes in intermediate pathways of cardiometabolic risk."

This isn't hard to do. Nutritionists have been telling us for years about the power of eating real foods, and urging us to bypass the addictive, radically unhealthy industrial food-like products intentionally adulterated with salt, sugar, and cheap fats. 

 Truth is... Michael Pollan told us in plain and simple terms. My advice? Buy yourself a copy of Pollan''s short, quick-reading book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

One relaxing afternoon of reading will infuse you with a  lifetime of new understanding of how to eat deliciously to avoid a shortened life.  Eating in the same pre-industrial-food way as did our great-grandparents, ancestors, and ancient forebearers.