Calling all Los Angelenos

I'll be fruit picking at CSUN for charity during that time, but you should totally check it out! It's pretty close to Los Feliz area, so east LAers can enjoy it too. Perhaps a short hike in Griffith to work off all those vegan numblies? :)

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Chicken FAIL

Lordy, what next? Another FAIL, you betcha. Just to show I'm not biased towards chickens, (although I am because I secretly openly adore them and plan on raising some, not for eating silly), I've got a loverly article from the LA Times about those extra plumped chicky breasts you might find in your local megamart.

I'll leave you to read the short but informative article and deduce of it what you will. Suffice it to say that your little chicken pieces are being pumped full of salt water and preservatives and you might not even know it. Ah fine print, gotta love it.

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Beef FAIL

"Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia."

(Um.... how is that entrepreneurial exactly???) The NY Times published a very interesting article about the quality and processing of leftover beef bits. The "entrepreneurial" company, plainly named Beef Products Inc, actually gained exemption from the USDA in 2007 for having supposedly undetectable levels of E.Coli. (Yummy right?) Beef Products became a mainstay meat for fast food restaurants like McDonalds and was widely served in lunch rooms.

"Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated."

As the number of cases of E.Coli and Salmonella tainted meat grows every year, one can't help but think of the children. I noticed the pressure on the quality of school lunches started to accelerate in '09. Hopefully more Americans are shifting their focus more towards better health standards in public institutions.

"School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods."

And yet, despite obvious problems, this meat is still being used. You needn't ask why, this answer is plain: BECAUSE IT'S CHEAP. Behold the power of the almighty dollar.
Nuts to the FDA for approving this process, which uses ammonia as a processing agent but doesn't require it to be listed on the label. Ammonia is naturally present in meat, it's true, but injecting fatty and discarded hunks with extra amounts seems obviously wrong. "She can't take much more ammonia sir! She's already loaded as she is!" Besides sometimes smelling like ammonia (enough reason to keep walking) and tasting not-quite-right, I'm not sure how any logically-minded worker or Beef exec didn't have the mind to pause and reflect on what exactly they were doing to FOOD.

I find it absurd that there's so much excess meat, enough to cause a significant loss in profit, that it needs to be chemically treated and sold. I won't rant on how we should, at the very least, shrink the industry and focus on quality meats. I'll save that for another time.

I suggest you go read the article and think for yourself. If you feel so inclined, write to the USDA and/or FDA about this issue. And before you order that drive-thru hamburger, consider this...

"At 6:36 a.m. on Aug. 10, the Beef Products plant in South Sioux City, Neb., started up its production line for the school lunch program. In 60 minutes, the plant produced a batch of 26,880 pounds of processed beef that tested positive for E. coli.
Six days later at the same plant, another 26,880-pound lot was found to have salmonella, government records and interviews show."

That's a quality assurance FAIL if ever I saw one.
Eat healthy and responsibly!

Citation: Quotes and Image
Moss, Michael. "Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned". New York Times. 2009: 1-4. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html 12-30-09.

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"Whole Foods is returning to its health-food roots..."

Thank (random celestial being) for Mr.Mackey! The CEO and co-founder is going to reunite Whole Foods with its healthy "whole food" ideals in 2010.

You can read the full article here.

I loved Whole Foods about a year ago. I would say that half of my shopping happened there, a very SMALL half, but I always made a point to go there.

It happens to be a place where you can find niche vegan foods that no one else has the customer base to keep in stock. As a new veggie, I could find just about any vegan meat substitute on the market in Whole Foods. Now that I eat less processed foods, and rarely eat soy processed fake vegan meats at all, I've found myself going there less and less.

Good food costs good money. Hands down, that is something I have come to learn and accept. However, the emphasis of WF in the past few years has definitely been on the never ending rows of high-priced indulgent and gourmet products. I definitely agree with Mackey's stance and believe that the "health food" and "gourmet" sides of WF have always been at conflict.

While I have discovered amazing things there, like dark chocolate balsamic vinegar spread and smooze popsicles, they don't stock my shelves regularly because they're not whole foods. As the Vegan Freaks would say, those are "sometimes" foods, treats to be enjoyed once in a while, but shouldn't make up a consistent part of my diet.

I'm excited to see how 2010 will pan out for Whole Foods Market. Perhaps I'll have to take another look and here's hoping that instead of being buried in garlic-parm-sourdough-croutons-with-carmelized-medditeranean-fig-spread, I can grab some local organic produce and enjoy a fresh juice at the juice bar.

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