Thursday, March 25, 2010

It Begins

I woke up still on a tear, so that's a good sign. I'm a notorious non-finisher of projects, but this is really interesting and very important to the health of my family. If I can just survive all the scary and gross information...

I'll get to that in a minute, though. I need to do a little before photo-taking. Here is my refrigerator and kitchen pantry in its current state (Yikes! A little messier than I'd like, and why does Lauren have four sippy cups in the fridge?):



You'll note that I have a decent stash of frozen veggies, nestled right up next to the Mickey Mouse Chicken Nuggets. In the fridge, I have two kinds of milk sharing space with a massive container of ranch dip (for the nuggets, of course!) There's low-fat yogurt (which I'm now feeling dubious about) and some string cheese, which according to the ingredients is actually decent. In the pantry, I have all my baking stuff, the granola bars with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), Gatorade powder and not one but three kinds of oatmeal. Like I said, I'm not starting off horribly, but I can definitely do better.

What you're not seeing is our other pantry downstairs that has most of the canned tomatoes (which I'm also feeling dubious about), broths, pastas, and extra juices for Lauren. We also have a large freezer in the garage: we buy half a cow's worth of meat every year and a half or so and it's all wrapped up in its pretty white paper in there. This is one choice I feel really good about. We buy the meat from a family friend in Idaho and we know exactly where the cow has been. Plus, it's a great deal. We have that, at least.

I just feel like I have a ton of learning to do. I don't know enough about local resources, what sweeteners are best, whether organic is worth it... It's going to be quite a learning process, and I just have to be patient.

I did start my learning today, though all the books I want to read are on hold at the library. Behold the power of the Internet! Without yet picking up a book, I've already learned a bunch of interesting things about the food we eat and the business of food.:

- Half the people that helped to develop the food pyramid had ties to agribusiness.
- 70% of the antibiotics consumed in America are consumed by animal husbandry. Those antibiotics given straight to us through the meats we eat.
- Every American gets the equivalent of a 5 lb. bag of pesticides each year. (That literally made me shiver to write!)
- We spend about $500 a year per student feeding the children in the schools in the United States. Given all the payroll costs and other overhead, it ends up being about $1 a day per child.
- One out of every four meals is eaten in a car. (Are they counting snacks, you think? What about when I'm wolfing down some of the groceries I just bought because I'm starving?)

All of these facts come from a couple of TED talks I listened to today:

Mark Bittman, "What's Wrong with What We Eat"

Ann Cooper, the "Renegade Lunch Lady"

Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" page has lots of interesting and disturbing facts and figures here


The good news at the bottom of the page? Congress is looking at creating new standards for all food at schools, including vending machines. $4.5 billion over 10 years is a small payment towards the improved health of our children!
See the story here.

4 comments:

  1. Brian and I took cooking classes at Cook's World (web is www.cooksworld.net) and our teacher--Nancie Brecher--was knowledgeable and passionate about healthy, local, minimally processed food. She's a fan of canned tomatoes, actually. Her preferred brand was S & W. Two of her main points were to buy organic and to use salt as a condiment (rather than have a lot of "hidden" salt that's added by you or food processing before the dish is done).

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  2. S&W, hmmm? I'll have to look into it. My concern about canned tomatoes comes from an article about BPA in cans, but I didn't look into specifics about brands. Thanks for the suggestion!

    I always do battle with salt, since I have genetically high blood pressure. Did she use salt in her cooking at all?

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  3. I'm not sure if this fact is from Jamie Oliver's show or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver but if we continue with our current trend of separating ourselves from how food is grow our grandchildren will have no idea how to make food. Something that has been part of our history (regardless of what your genealogy is) will be completely lost...gone. Sure they can look up how to grow things when, but the connection of growing for ourselves will be replaced by fast food, gas stations and super markets.
    I guess this blows my mind because I grew up with a large garden where most of our vegetables came from and fresh beef off the family farm. I hated weeding that garden every summer but I'm seeing more of it's value. I didn't realize how lucky my middle income family had it!
    I'm also obsessed with Chickens...I want 3 of them (the Seattle city limit) for fresh eggs and eventually meat. Not sure if this will become a reality living in a duplex but a city/country girl can dream! :)

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  4. Laura, re: chickens, did you see Kristi's post on the other page? Edmonds just changed its rules regarding chickens and now I have chickens on the brain. Jeremy looked at me as if I had sprouted another head when I told him this, but we'll see what happens. I think it would be a good learning experience for Lauren.

    I'm also pondering putting in a little garden. Obviously, the food would be healthier, but mostly it's so Lauren doesn't lose that connection to where food comes from. I don't want her growing up thinking that everything grows in boil-and-serve bags.

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