Top 15 Most Pesticide-Free Fruits, Vegetables

For freshest taste, always choose organic produce over non-organic grocery store produce, which is lavishly treated with chemicals to prolong shipping time and shelf life.  

Fifteen fruits and veggies grown conventionally, though, are largely free of pesticides, per the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) annual survey of the dirtiest and cleanest produce grown in the U.S. 

(The EWG publicly ranks results of USDA and FDA testing each year of 32,000 samples of 48 non-organic fruits and veggies commonly found in the U.S.  Click here for  "Pesticide-Ridden Produce: The 12 Most Infected Fruits, Vegetables.")

For these 2014 Clean Fifteen, there's no need to spend your hard-earned money on organic if your goal is to avoid ingesting the poisons of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.  

Noted the EWG about Clean Fifteen vegetables. "Detecting multiple pesticide residues is extremely rare... only about 5.5 percent... had two or more pesticides."  About fruits, the EWG reported, "No single fruit sample from the Clean Fifteen tested positive for more than 4 pesticides."   (Yes, some of the dirtiest produce tested positive for up to 13 pesticides. One grape was found with residue of an incredible 15 pesticides...)

The Good News: Top 15 Produce Least Likely to be Infected with Pesticides

1.  Asparagus

2. Avocados - "Avocados were the cleanest; only 1 percent of avocado samples showed any detectable pesticides."

3. Cabbage

4. Cantaloupe - 61 percent of cantaloupe tested had no pesticide residue.

5. Cauliflower

6. Eggplant

7. Grapefruit

8. Kiwi - 82 percent of kiwi tested had no pesticide residue.

9. Mangoes - 88 percent of mangoes tested had no pesticide residue.

10. Onions

11. Papayas - 80 percent of papayas tested had no pesticide residue.

12. Pineapples - 89 percent of pineapples tested had no pesticide residue.

13. Sweet corn

14. Sweet peas

15. Sweet potatoes

Avocados. Mangoes. Sweet corn. Pineapples.  Cantaloupes. Cabbage for cole slaw.  Sounds like the makings for a scrumptious summer party! 

Enjoy!!!  And pass the guacamole to me... 

Pesticide-Ridden Produce: The 12 Most Infected Fruits, Vegetables

Americans can slash most pesticide residue from their foods by replacing only the most pesticide-ridden produce with organic fruits and veggies, per the medical and public health communities.  

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently released its annual Dirty Dozen list, which publicly ranks results of USDA and FDA testing of 32,000 samples of 48 non-organic fruits and veggies commonly found in the U.S.  

(Note: The Environmental Working Group is a non-profit devoted to "research and advocacy in the areas of toxic chemicals, agricultural subsidies, public lands, and corporate accountability." The 22-year-old group's mission is "to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment.")

"Two-thirds of produce samples in recent government tests had pesticide residues," writes the EWG. "Don't want to eat bug- and weed-killers?... We highlight the cleanest and dirtiest conventionally-raised fruits and vegetables."  

Without further ado, the EWG's 2014 Dirty Dozen are listed below. 

Next week, check back for the EWG's 2014 Clean Fifteen, listing the most pesticide-free non-organic produce currently sold in the U.S. (Hint! Avocados are #1 cleanest.  Bring on that guacamole...)

EWG's 2014 Dirty Dozen - "Each of these foods contained a number of different pesticide residues and showed high concentrations of pesticides relative to other produce items."

1. Apples - "99% of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue."

2. Celery - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

3. Cherry Tomatoes - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesticides apiece."

4. Cucumbers

5. Grapes - "A single grape tested positive for 15 pesticides."

6. Nectarines (imported only, not grown in the USA) - "Every sample of imported nectarines tested positive for at least one pesticide residue."

7. Peaches

8. Potatoes - "The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other food."

9. Snap Peas (imported only, not grown in the USA) - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

10. Spinach

11. Strawberries - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

12. Sweet Bell Peppers

"Real Food" Diet Dilemma: Of Michael Pollan and the California Drought

The results are in, and to no thinking-person's surprise, the best diet is no diet at all.  The best diet is real food.

The top "best diets" were tested by Dr. David Katz of Yale's Prevention Research Center, and published in  scientific journal Annual Reviews:

"In it, they compare the major diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets. Despite the pervasiveness of these diets in culture and media, Katz and Meller write, 'There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.' 

"They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. 'A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.'" (source - The Atlantic, March 24, 2014)

Just like Michael Pollan advised when he penned simply "Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants." in slim best-seller Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

Just like New York Times columnist Mark Bittman reiterated when he recently proclaimed "Butter is back!" in response to an Annals of Internal Medicine article comparing 72 nutrition science studies:

"... the real villains in our diet — sugar and ultra-processed foods — are becoming increasingly apparent. You can go back to eating butter, if you haven’t already.

"This doesn’t mean you abandon fruit for beef and cheese; you just abandon fake food for real food, and in that category of real food you can include good meat and dairy." (source - New York Times, March 25, 2014)

All well and good. Americans seem to finally be grasping that good food supports good health. And that highly processed industrial-made fake foods have a negative impact on health. 

But Houston, we still have a problem.  

Just as Americans relearn to appreciate real food, especially fruits and veggies, a profound shortage of US-grown produce is developing... and for a reason that most Americans selfishly believe doesn't affect them: the massive California drought.  

California produces the vast majority of U.S.-grown produce, including:  

• 99% of walnuts
• 99% of almonds
• 99% of artichokes
• 97% of plums
• 97% of apricots
• 96% of nectarines
• 96% of olives
• 95% of celery
• 90% of broccoli
• 89% of cauliflower
• 89% of strawberries
• 88% of lemons
• 76% of avocados
• 71% of spinach
• 69% of carrots

The  U.S. Midwest mainly farms three crops... corn, soybeans, and grains... to be used for highly-processed industrial-made foods. Midwest farmers are richly rewarded by mega-corporations and subsidized by Congress for focusing on fodder for fast and processed foods manufactured in the U.S. 

So most of America is heavily dependent on California for its harvest of fruits and vegetables in order to chow-down a "real food" diet.  

"The loss of California’s output would create a dire situation for at least a decade" observed Slate.com.

And this week, NBC News reported, "California's severe drought is causing a drastic increase in food prices."

What's the Solution?

What's the solution to make a "real food" diet reality for all Americans?  The long-tern solutions are political, simple and painfully obvious:

• The federal government should stop spending billions annually to subsidize crops for the processed food-like products made by mega-corporations.
• Instead, the federal government should put its money where its health-conscious mouth is, and subsidize fruits and vegetables, and high-quality dairy and meat  intended for direct sale to U.S. consumers.
• California farmers should receive maximum possible government support to help stay afloat and hydrated during this drought crisis. 

In the short term, what's a smart consumer to do to afford a healthier "real food" diet for her loved ones?

• Buy real foods, rather than processed food products, as much as practicable. Prices are often lower at farmer's markets. 
• Conserve,don't waste foods.
• Grow a garden in your yard, in balcony and patio pots and planters,  or community patch. 

And remember: ""Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants." 

Urban Farming Ignites Thanks to Alice Waters: Return to American Roots

Everything old is new again, at least in U.S. urban farming.  A much-needed return to American agriculture roots. 

And that's very good news for tens of millions of city dwellers today, especially school-age children. 

Alice Waters, innovative chef and leading real food activist, is credited with igniting America's return to urban agriculture by founding her Edible Schoolyard Project two decades ago. 

The White House staff, led by First Lady Michelle Obama, stylishly reinforced the principles of the Edible Schoolyard Project by replanting and publicizing a vegetable garden on White House grounds. 

Before the 20th century, Americans grew much of their family food supply. During both World Wars, U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt urged Americans to cultivate backyard produce gardens to ameliorate food shortages. At its height, the National Victory Garden movement produced 9 million pounds a year of fruits and vegetables during World War II, about 44% of the nation's produce. 

Urban agriculture largely died after World War II, as U.S. households eagerly bought the new ultra-convenient industrial-made foods filling supermarkets and sold by a rapidly expanding new breed of restaurant, the fast food joint.  The rest is American fake-food history...

In 2013,  a remarkably powerful resurgence of urban farming has been fueled by Alice Waters' pioneering 20-year-old agenda to restore "edible education" to urban school children and their families.  

Per a report released last week by the UCLA School of Public affairs, Los Angeles County, home to 10 million residents, boasts...

"... 1,261 verified urban agriculture sites — categorized as school gardens, community gardens and commercial primary growing sites... School gardens make up the majority of L.A. County's urban agriculture activity, with 761 sites. Commercial agricultural operations (nurseries and farms) total 382 sites, and the researchers documented 118 community gardens."

Los Angeles' tally of localized farming operations hasn't surged this high for nearly one hundred years, when midwest farmers were famously drawn west to California for its fertile land and fair weather. (See ad at right, circa 1929.)

The revitalized push to bring fresh produce to urban dwellers via local agriculture isn't confined to greater Los Angeles, which is uniquely suited in its vastness to accommodate growing crops.    

Similar projects proliferate across the nation, including in...

Seattle, where the city Office of Sustainability and Environment vigorously fosters urban farming, even declaring 2010 the "Year of Urban Agriculture." In 2008, the Seattle City Council passed the Local Food Action Initiative "to improve the local and regional food system."

Detroit, where urban farming has boomed as the sole source of fresh produce for a plethora of residents of the financially battered city. 

Chicago, where city zoning ordinances were elaborately amended to "allow agricultural uses like community gardens and urban farms in many parts of the city." 

Atlanta, where the Urban Agriculture Training Program has met massive statewide response in its program of "cultivating urban farmers and gardeners to build healthy, vibrant local food communities."

New York City, which is "starved for space, but increasingly, residents are filling every last inch they can find with (healthy) things they can grow and eat," notes WellandGoodNYC.com in an article on New York City's Biggest Urban Farms. "When The Design Trust for Public Space released its Five Borough Farm report last year, it found more than 700 food-producing sites within the five boroughs..."

The urban agriculture trend has exploded worldwide, as well. And just in time to partially meet demands of both American and worldwide hunger and healthy-food-shortage crises:

• 50% of the world's population lives in cities.
• By 2015, 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million-plus.
• 250 million hungry people in the world live in cities. (Source - Wikipedia)

Thanks to one low-key meeting between Alice Waters and a public middle-school principal in her Berkeley neighborhood two decades ago, one acre of blighted school yard was tilled, seeded, and tended into a glorious vegetable garden that transformed those students' lives... and transformed our national mindset about urban farming.

Or rather, reawakened Americans to the empowerment of growing our own produce, just as our families did before the powerful rise of industrial fake-food mega-corporations. 

Everything old and valuable and healthy is new again in U.S. urban farming. 

Farmers Markets, CSAs: A Blow for American Freedom of Choice

Farmers markets and farm coops, such as CSAs, are delicious antidotes to industrial fake food products. 

And both provide a powerful marketplace for people to directly support family farms, gardeners, and local communities. (CSA is an acronym for community supported agriculture.)

 August is the gloriously perfect month to enjoy... or begin to enjoy... fresh produce. Farmers' markets are open across the country in mid-summer, and bursting with freshest goodness... with melons, corn, tomatoes, zucchini and summer squash, peaches and nectarines, bell peppers, blueberries and strawberries, eggplant, and much more, depending on the U.S. region.

This week, my CSA carton will include a watermelon, two varieties of peaches, two lbs of tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, baby broccoli, a bunch of basil, potatoes, bell peppers, and a unique red romaine lettuce. (All for $38!) All was grown, harvested, and distributed by small family farms in Central California. 

To locate a farmers market, call or check the website of your local city government or Chamber of Commerce.   Or search here using the USDA's comprehensive "Farmers Markets Search" database. 

To find a CSA that serves your community, search here at Local Harvest's database. At Local Harvest's website, you can also learn about the workings of CSAs, and about the advantages for both farmers and consumers.  

One more reason I urge everyone to shop farmers markets and CSAs: freedom. 

Freedom from the unhealthy industrial fake foods that dominate supermarkets. Freedom from supporting major industrial corporations rather than local entrepreneurs.  Freedom from the federal government's funding agenda (via the farm bill) of genetically-modified foods teeming with chemicals, additives, fillers, and artificial flavors and colors... fake foods manufactured by political donors.  

Besides being sunny fun, think of shopping farmers markets and CSAs as striking a blow for American freedom of choice. 

Obama, Bush, Romney, Clinton: "Let Them Eat Cake" Politicians on Organics

Who eats organic fruits and vegetables? Top U.S. political leaders, both liberals and conservatives, but most desperately don't want you to know.

Many, many D.C. politicians select the highest-quality, healthiest foods for themselves, but insist that far lower quality fare (often grown by their donors) is good enough for the rest of America. 

Wanting to eat organic produce is understandable, given that organics are:

• Not genetically modified.
• Free of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides
• Free of antibiotics
• Free of chemical fertilizers, plant steroids
• Not prematurely ripened with chemical gases

Understandable, since these bureaucrats have likely heard that the EPA, which is part of the U.S. Agriculture Department, "considers 60% of herbicides, 90% of fungicides, and 30% of insecticides potentially cancer-causing."

Or maybe our leaders have heard the dire results of research done on this new experiment called genetically modified foods. "The results range from intestinal damage, allergies, liver or pancreatic problems, testicular cellular changes, tumors, and even death in the experimental animals."  (Source - Care2.com)

So who are these "let them eat cake" politicians who quietly quaff organic goods while foisting legislation and federal agency appointees on us to aggressively force non-organic food on American homes? 

Life Magazine on America's Bounty of Food: The Way We Were and Could Be Again

"Food, perhaps alone among the riches of the earth, pleases all the senses of man," exuded the November 22, 1962 Life magazine.  

"Taste, of course, and smell. Vision? Behold it. Sound? Who has not placed a crisp vegetable on a pine board and heard the delicious noise of a keen knife cleaving through leaf and stalk? And touch? In this picture, it is texture most of all that delights: the rough and smooth, soft and firm, all invite the hand."

"Could odor arise from these cold pages, how sweetly would they fill the air! The tang of apple, pear and such small fruit would drift above the smell of sun-warm strawberries, blending with the rich scent of melons."

Distinguished British historian and Oxford professor Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975) believed that the health of a nation is only as good as the health of its diet, and that a downward spiral in the quality of a nation's diet foretold a nation's cultural and political death spiral. Toynbee illustrated his hypothesis with innumerable examples of fallen countries throughout civilization and pre-civilization. 

In 1962, the United States was a robust and growing nation that enjoyed a healthy, balanced diet, much of it still grown by local family farmers (although food-chain industrialization and commercial pesticide use had begun in earnest). 

Observed Life editors, "After the lush variety of the modern American diet, as shown in this issue of Life, it is rather unsettling to see how the rest of mankind eats."

In the 50 years since this 1962 Life magazine, Americans have gullibly adapted the fake-food message of greedy U.S. industrial manufacturers that only real-food facsimiles oozing with fat, sugar, and salt are culinary nirvana.   (For details, click here for "Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans.)

The results have been truly disastrous for U.S. public health.  Many historians today detect Toynbee's cogent hypothesis to be sadly observable in 21st century America. Today, "it is rather unsettling" to see how America eats. 

It doesn't have to be this way, friends.  We can return to healthy, deeply delicious diets. And the U.S. can easily return to being the world's envy with "the miracle of our plenty" grown by American farmers.

Just yesterday, I picked up my family's weekly carton of freshly-picked produce from California family farms... a huge carton for the bargain price of $37, overflowing with:

• Three kinds of tomatoes: large red, cherry, and heirloom
• Four large cucumbers
• Half a dozen sweet peppers
• A watermelon
• Eight ears of sweet corn
• Two eggplants
• Two generous heads of romaine lettuce
• Four zucchini
• A plethora of the sweetest stone fruit imaginable: peaches, nectarines, apricots

My carton could have graced the cover of Life's 1962 "Bounty of Food" issue.  

One inexpensive trip to the grocery store, plus to the butcher for perhaps three nights' of better-quality meat, and my home is set for a week.  Both our budget and healthy eating habits are in top shape.  And we feel better! Much better... 

In 2013, the United States is not nearly the robust and growing nation it was in 1962, nor does it  universally enjoy either a healthy, balanced diet or even passably acceptable public health.  

According to Professor Toynbee's theories, we could start to return our great country to its former glory and world preeminence by first cleaning up our own lives and ways. 

That starts with each of us taking responsibility for our own personal health, and our food choices. 

That starts with ignoring the false message of industrial fake-food corporations that fatty, sugary, and salty highly-processed foods are the stuff of the good life. 

They're not. They're the stuff of bad personal and public health, bad federal food policies, and quite possibly, the implosion of great cultures and nations. 

Americans Throw Away 30% of Food Supply: Ideas for Zero Food Waste in Your Home

"Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry," uttered new Roman Catholic Pope Francis in his public address last week. 

"Consumerism and a 'culture of waste' have led some of us to tolerate the waste of precious resources, including food, while others are literally wasting away from hunger," the Pope elaborated. 

The Pope makes an astute point that connects two disturbing, widespread trends: hunger and food waste.  

In the United States today:

• 30% of all food is thrown away each year 
• Tens of millions of Americans go hungry on a daily basis. In December 2012, the number of children and adults on food stamps reached an astonishing, all-time high: 47,792,056, more than half children.  Fully 15% of all Americans.  

Stats published in 2012 by the Natural Resources Defense Council make clear the role of U.S. homes in food waste:

• Americans throw away about 1.5 pounds per person of food daily
• The average U.S. family of four throws away food costing about $2,275 each year
• U.S. food waste has jumped 50% since the 1970s.
• Food waste is now the single largest component of waste in U.S. landfills.

No-Brainer Ideas to Reduce Your Food Waste

No, your half-eaten leftovers obviously can't be shipped off to feed starving children in China, as U.S. mothers famously threatened kids dawdling over their veggies.  

But there are innumerable no-brainer ideas you can implement to responsibly ensure that you don't take more than your fair, necessary share of our food supply, or waste that which your home buys or uses. Here are a few...

1. Cut down first-serving portions at meals.  Today, portion sizes have grown two to eight times larger than recommended standard serving sizes, per the NRDC.

2. Cook only the amount of food needed for that meal. 

3.  Repurpose leftovers rather than dumping them. Clever restaurants constantly find new, tasty second-life for cooked, unserved foods, especially meats. 

4.  Write a grocery shopping list, and stick to it. Don't be dazzled by deals and displays for which you have no specific recipes or plans. Be aware that grocery stores will tempt you mercilessly to make that useless impulsive purchase. 

5.  Educate yourself on how to buy and store produce, and on the shelf life of various fruits and veggies.  And don't buy more than you will realistically use within one week.  

6. Use overripe produce, don't dump it. Overripe fruit is perfect for delicious smoothies and homemade popsicles.  Overripe tomatoes and other veggies are ideal for home-simmered sauces.  

7. Still have food waste? Toss it in a compost pile... yours or a community compost pile... to nurture future gardens. And our future food supply.

Your household goal should be zero food waste! It's good for your budget. Good for our world, Good for your soul.  

Need even more tips and recipes to help you actively move toward zero food waste? Try this site: From Garbage to Gourmet, which features "over 80 recipes and creative ideas for using... things that most people throw away without thinking about it, but can be used to make incredibly food!"

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.)

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. 

Fruit Gleaning Group Battles Fake Foods, Hunger, Waste in Los Angeles

For those hankering for smile-worthy news in the battle against the fraud and bad-health folly of U.S. industrial foods... 

Here's delightful news about a nearly all-volunteer non-profit that works quite effectively (and joyously!) to eliminate fake food dependence so common at organizations serving the hungry, including pantries, kitchens, shelters, and food banks.

Food Forward, a Los Angeles-based effort, was started in 2009 by local photographer, writer Rick Nahmias because he grew "tired of seeing wasted fruit from my neighbors trees littering the yards and sidewalks of my neighborhood, and frustrated with the knowledge that in the last year alone food pantries across the nation have seen an over forty-percent up tick."

Wrote founder Mr. Nahmias in 2009:

"I started this as a neighborhood project with zero experience. I'd get on my bike, and when I'd see someone with a tree, I'd stop and talk to them, saying something along the lines of, 'Hi, we're Food Forward, this is what we do...Would you be interested in letting us empty your tree and get a charitable tax deduction in the bargain?'

After a pick, each harvesting between 300-600 pounds of fruit in just a few hours, we drop the fruit at our main receiving partner: SOVA Food Pantry, a non-sectarian project of Los Angeles Jewish Family Services based in Van Nuys which services upwards of 7,700 clients a month at its three LA area locations. In a short three months, we've harvested over 10,000 lbs of fruit - all of it going to the hungry in our city."

Food Forward's mission is "to simultaneously alleviate urban hunger while fostering community interaction at a local level. In a nutshell,... a growing corps of Angelenos venture out weekly to glean people's excess fruit and donate 100% of it to local food pantries." 

The ebullient group regards itself as an emissary of "Fruitanthropy: the picking, donating, or distributing of fruit for humanitarian purposes." 

Organizations that serve the hungry usually stock only non-perishable canned and boxed goods, mostly donated industrial food products.  Fresh, perishable fruits and vegetables, which are rarely donated to pantries, kitchen, and food banks, must be quickly distributed before spoilage sets in.  

Amazingly, Food Forward has gleaned and distributed, free of charge, 1,275,756 pounds of fresh, real foods in merely four years. And every last orange, avocado, grapefruit, and all other food was proffered free for the picking by the property owners.