Americans Reject Pink Slime Beef, But Six Politicians Still Push It

Taco Bell, McDonald's, and Burger King dumped beef with pink slime, Play Doh-look-alike filler last December after chef Jamie Oliver exposed the ammonia-treated goop on TV a few months earlier.

Safeway, Albertson's, Super-Valu, Kroger, Winn-Dixie, Stop & Shop, Wegmans, Target, and other large grocery chains are dropping slime-filled ground beef in response to consumer demands. Walmart will offer consumers clearly labeled choices. 

Yet the USDA continues to stand by its "7 million-pound order of connective tissue and beef scraps doused in ammonia, set to hit school lunch trays in coming months" which it hilariously allows the meat industry to deceptively dub "lean, finely textured beef." 

Six politicians... five governors from farm states and the lobbyist-beholden head of the U.S. Agriculture Department... persist in urging Americans to ignore what Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad calls "an unwarranted, unmerited food scare."  The politicians pushing the pink-slime concoction that was previously reserved for dog food are:

Meat Lobbyists Angered by "Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer" Billboard

Chicago commuters were greeted this week by a billboard shrilly proclaiming "Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer." 

The sign, located on the busy Eisenhower Expressway, is sponsored by longtime health activist group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, led by Dr. Neal Barnard of George Washington University. 
"The billboard’s blunt language was prompted by a recent survey showing that a surprising number—39 percent—of Americans do not know what the colon is," writes PCRM.com. 

Campbell's Tomato Soup: Bad Policy Spoils Good Soup

Andy Warhol painted it. The Paris Exposition awarded it the Gold Medallion for excellence in 1900.

American mothers have served it to children for over 100 years. My husband craves it when he's sick. Or busy at work.

In 2012, Campbell's Tomato Soup still ranks as one of the top ten selling dry grocery items in U.S. grocery markets.

Truth be known, it's fairly healthy, too, for canned, modern industrial food.  No fat, no cholesterol, no fake colors or flavors. Laced with minerals, iron and Vitamin C. An entire can... two servings... is only 270 calories (before requisite grilled cheese sandwich).

Campbell's has added a generous dose of high fructose corn syrup (i.e. sugar) to please America's sweet tooth. And all canned soups are inherently very high in sodium (i.e. salt). Clearly, canned soups are second best to homemade in both taste and nutrition.

The soup in Campbell's Tomato Soup isn't the health hazard. It's the can. 

Campbell's Soup Co., now a profit-hungry multinational corporation with $7.7 billion in annual sales, is one of the major food manufacturers to still line its cans with bisphenol-A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting chemical that can leach from can linings into the foods held inside.

U.S. Lags European Countries in Fighting Food Fraud, Related Health Risks

Where is the U.S. government... specifically the USDA and FDA... when it comes to protecting Americans from food fraud?  Conspicuously absent, compared to most European countries, it seems.

"'Food fraud' has been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup, and appears to pose a significant problem in the seafood industry.  Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies," per the Washington Post. 

Contrast the U.S. government's shielding of product sales over consumer protections with strike actions taken jointly in late 2011 by ten countries: Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Under the auspices of Interpol-Europol,  police, judges, customs agents, and food regulatory officials in the ten countries enforced Operation Opson during the week of November 28, 2011, by seizing "hundreds of tons of counterfeit, fake and substandard food and beverages, including champagne, cheese, olive oil and tea, across 10 countries in Europe."

Operation Opson seizures from stores and markets, airports and seaports included the following, per Europol:

• 13,000 bottles of substandard olive oil
• 30 tons of fake tomato sauce
• 30,000 counterfeit candy bars
• 5 tons of substandard fish and seafood
• 77 kg. of counterfeit cheese
• 12,000 bottles of substandard wine

Don't Blame Dr. Oz! Support Bill to Remove Arsenic from Apple Juice

Don't blame it on Dr. Mehmet Oz of Oprah fame, as the FDA certainly did. 

Aware of shoddy FDA standards for arsenic levels in most beverages but water, Dr. Oz paid for testing of apple juice by an independent toxicology laboratory.

And there it was: proof of high levels of arsenic, a deadly toxin, in popular, store-bought apple juices, the juice drink of choice of U.S. moms for their babies.

How did the FDA react?  With alarm for public safety? With expanded testing, to reconfirm
these dire results?


Nope. With an intimidating  letter to Dr. Oz, questioning his science and threatening to expose Dr. Oz as "irresponsible and misleading" if he aired the results on his daytime TV show.

Beware the Bargain Bagel: Scary, Stealth Ingredients; Undisclosed Animal Products

I was chagrined when Ron, my husband, bought Stater Bros Country Harvest Blueberry Bagels last week.  They were the least expensive bagels on the local grocer's shelves, and budget matters in our home. He was proud to find a bona fide bargain, of course.... and with blueberries! 

My mistake. I'd included bagels on the shopping list, and forgot to be specific: fresh bagels from the store bakery or local bagelry.  At minimum, store-bought bagels made without additives or preservatives. (And made with whole grains, if possible.)

Real bagels made with real ingredients, not industrial-made food. Not fake food.

Ron's bargain bagels are a perfect example of modern industrial food, packed with additives, preservatives, dyes, and fillers to produce a cheap "bagel" with white-bread texture. 

Like Stater Bros Country Harvest Plain Bagels (pictured here), ingredients for the blueberry bagels include:

FDA Poised to Approve Genetically Modified Fish Despite Public Uproar

Ready to feast on the world's first fake salmon?

Hungry to savor the "first genetically modified animal approved for widespread commercial production and human food," in the  words of Dr. Anne Kapuscinski, Dartmouth College Professor of Environmental Studies?

If YES, then 2012 might be your lucky gastronomic year, as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is quite anxious to approve AquaBounty's genetically engineered salmon... dubbed "Frankenfish" by its many critics... and the FDA apparently doesn't give a damn what the public thinks.  


About GMO Salmon
Briefly, AquaBounty Technologies has engineered a fast-growing Atlantic salmon by "artificially combining growth hormones from an unrelated Pacific salmon with DNA from the anti-freeze genes of an eelpout. 

The Great Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Scam in America

Olive experts estimate that between 50% and 80% of extra virgin olive oil in U.S. grocery markets is not really extra virgin.  In fact, much of the olive oil sold to Americans isn't even produced from olives... and is purposely mislabelled.

Further, the USDA is fully aware of this ongoing fraud, yet has failed for years to notify the public and has done precious little to deter the great olive oil hoax.

Chris Kimball, founder of America's Test Kitchens, recently commented on his weekly radio show, "EVOO clearly doesn't mean anything since most EVOO in American markets are not extra virgin...." He added that buying olive oil in grocery stores is "a complete crapshoot."

Here's the deal in a nutshell: the U.S. retail market for olive oil is largely unregulated, thereby allowing European olive growers to freely dump their crummiest-quality crops in the U.S., usually in fancy, high-priced bottles with impressive labels to attract naive buyers. 

Secret Pleasures and Public Perils of Industrial-Made Frosting

Do you stash canned frosting in the back of your crammed refrigerator hidden from the view of family nutrition nazis, ready for a stealth shot of that luscious sugar-high? 

Do you secretly frost family cakes and cookies with canned confections, embarrassed to publicly confess that you're not Martha Stewart's kindred kitchen spirit?  

If so, you're not alone. Absolutely no one admits to buying canned, premade frosting, even though millions of the vividly-colored cans are sold each year by grocery stores, WalMart, Target and the like. 

It seems to make good sense: you're in a hurry, it's 7 pm, and your child needs frosted cupcakes tomorrow for a school party. Whip up the goodies using a quick cake mix; top with vibrantly colored, easy-spread canned frosting... and presto! Time-crunch dilemma solved. 

Problem is... canned frosting is essentially a chemical concoction, with a long list of ingredients that would confound anyone but a professional food chemist.  Certainly nothing your grandmother could identify as a real food, except sugar. 

Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Strawberry Frosting, for instance, contains no strawberries. Or butter. Or cream or milk. And is ridiculously high in saturated fats. Instead, the gooey, bubblegum-pink glop's ingredients include:

Handier, Saltier, Gluey Cheddar Cheese

Admit it!  You love the salty, smooth deliciousness of melted Kraft singles slices clinging neatly to your burgers, whether grilled or sizzled on stove top.  We all do. 

And Kraft singles are so darned convenient. Neatly pre-sliced into  .75 oz, 60-calorie squares, Velveeta slices are sensationally handy for snacking or last-minute quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, or over tortilla chips... without all that messy grating or choosing expensive cheeses. 

Or buying actual cheese at all, since Kraft Velveeta Slices don't meet the USDA definition of cheese, or that of any country with official standards to grade good-quality cheese. 

Instead, the artificially-colored orangey slices are  an industrial "pasteurized prepared cheese product," also known as processed cheese. Or government cheese, because processed cheeses are commonly served in public school lunches and included in cartons of municipal food handouts. 

Twinkie Owner Bankruptcy: Good and Bad News for Fake Food Fans

Heartbreaking news for fake food aficionados: Hostess Brands, the maker of delectable, cream-a-licious Twinkies has filed for bankruptcy. Again. The second time since 2004.

The Wall Street Journal explains, "Sales of Hostess's signature Twinkies have recently declined a bit while the overall bakery snacks category has been about flat. Nearly 36 million packages of Twinkies were sold in the year ended Dec. 25, down almost 2% from a year earlier... Hostess also has had trouble attracting consumers who have migrated away from white bread to whole grains and other healthier foods." 

Another famed Hostess product is Wonder Bread, a malleable, snow-white bread first advertised in 1921 as a "wonder" that would not dry out when sliced. In the 1940s, Wonder Bread's baker "began adding vitamins and minerals to Wonder Bread as part of a government-sponsored program of enriching white bread which was notoriously deficient in vitamin and mineral content" per Wikipedia.

Twinkies are perhaps the iconic American snack fake food and secret junk-food vice.