Chock Full Of Nuts

I try not to limit what I eat. I learned a long time ago that being a food snob only makes you look arrogant, foolish, or both. And who wants to sit down to a meal with someone like that? Besides, watching the way my parents handled the tough economic times while I was growing up in the 1970s taught me a lot about how to make the most out of a little in my kitchen today. From that experience I also learned that even the most meager offerings taste better when shared with people you love. (Well, at least most things do!) 

So I try to approach food with an "Eat fearlessly" motto. And that's why I ate peanuts yesterday. I admit that after the salmonella scare I avoided them for a few months. After all, my credo is "Eat fearlessly," not "Eat foolishly." But I had an idea for a recipe mash-up, and peanuts were an ingredient essential to its success - I wanted to put a Thai twist on Chinese long beans. In addition I wanted to break in my new wok. 

The peanuts I had were contaminant-free, and the recipe came together nicely. I'll post it in the near future. In the meantime, this seemed like a good opportunity to segue into posting my article from the Progressive Populist that ran in the previous issue. 

Here's the link. And here's the text. (Hopefully the text will only appear once. It seems to keep doubling up in the template's preview.)

Peanut Butter and Privatizing Food Safety

By Steven Gdula

“The trusting confidence of the American public in the efficiency of laws was never more clearly shown nor more grossly betrayed than in the matter of food inspection.”

So said one George W. Wickersham of the National Civil Service Reform League when asked by journalists to comment on his investigation of the habits of U.S. food inspectors — in 1933. Wickersham’s quote came from the best selling book 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, an exposé that warned the American public about the dangers lurking in the food it was eating. The authors, Arthur Kallet and Frederick Schlink, became heroes for blowing the whistle on the lax performance by people who were supposed to be watchful of the foods packaged and sold to the American people.

Schlink and Kallet later had even greater success with their periodical, Consumer Union Reports, a precursor to Consumer Reports. With the country facing tough economic times, Consumer Union Reports garnered trust by scrutinizing packaged foods in a “test kitchen” through “scientific means,” and then warning consumers of potential hazards of ingesting the preservatives and additives they found. Each product was assigned a rating of “Best Buy,” “Also Acceptable” or “Not Acceptable.”

The authors picked up the fight for food safety at the point where they believed the government had failed, most notably in the implementation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Schlink and Kallet called the Act “feeble and ineffective.”

The law’s aim was that by holding companies accountable for the contents of their packages — by forcing them to label each package’s ingredients—the food industry would refrain from selling potentially harmful foods to the American public. The ever-present threat that the government could inspect the disclosures of the labels for accuracy would force food manufacturers to police themselves.

Schlink and Kallet saw how futile such a law was then, and as the recent tragic deaths and illnesses caused by salmonella-contaminated peanut products have shown, food inspection laws and the agency that enforce them are ineffective now. Even inspectors from the private sector often overlook the actual food products, focusing on the cleanliness of the machinery that packages them. As a result, a plant can receive a high score giving the impression of an immaculate operation even when dangerous bacteria are present.

Certainly Stewart Parnell, the top executive at The Peanut Corporation of America, who according to documents, knowingly sent out the tainted peanuts, didn’t fear the efficiency of any of these inspection entities, otherwise his salmonella-tainted products would never have shipped.

Coming little more than a year after salmonella-tainted jalapeno peppers sickened over 1200 people, the peanut fiasco has again shifted attention in Washington to the call for a single government agency to oversee the inspection of foods. Ten years ago, in 1999 the General Accounting Office (as the Government Accountability Office was then known) authored a report the title of which succinctly stated the problem: “US Needs A Single Agency to Administer a Unified, Risk-Based Inspection System.” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) have proposed that a new, single entity take on the combined authority and regulatory enforcement that is currently split between the Food And Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

The creation of such an agency would have made great use of some of the moneys in President Obama’s economic stimulus package. But while some of that cash has already put furloughed police back on the streets, a lag time in other cases of anywhere from three months to over a year exists before the financial aid reaches its intended recipients. With that type of window, the question of “if” further contamination occurs becomes “when.”

Historically, laws regulating food safety have been created in response to a loud public outcry after a tragedy or scandal. The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was signed into law when Schlink and Kallet showed where the government had failed. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which the 1938 Act overhauled, only came about after investigative pieces in Good Housekeeping Magazine, among others, informed readers of the germs and filth characterizing so many meat markets. (The horrific conditions of meat-packing plants and slaughterhouses described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, also released in 1906, have been said to have influenced then-President Theodore Roosevelt’s urging of The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.)

With lives at stake, it’s time to reexamine the proposal by Durbin, DeLauro and the GAO to eliminate two existing agencies by creating a new one, and one of the first places to start would be looking at the cost; not of forming such an agency but of what the agency would charge for giving a food product the all clear. The government needs to make the process of receiving certification more affordable. And that process has to include not only the manufacturing plant but the food supplier servicing it as well.

Private auditors can charge as little as $1,000 to inspect a plant while the F.D.A. charges $8,000. Now, when faced with that type of disparity in fees, and when food-manufacturing plants have contracted the private auditor that is inspecting them rather than being assigned one by a government monitoring agency, and when they’re writing the check for the inspector’s services, we’re expecting a high degree of integrity from both parties. There’s no placing of value on a human life, but it sure seems like the going rate is somewhere around seven grand.

Steven Gdula lives in San Francisco, Calif.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2009

Dig this... too!

OK, so much for a cut and paste of the actual text from that article.

Here's the link for "On The President's Plate" : www.populist.com/09.04.gdula.html 

And here's the text. 

On the President’s Plate by Steven Gdula

When Thomas Jefferson said to understand a society you had to “drive the people out of their hovels… look into their pots… and eat their bread” - an observation many historians associate with the French Revolution - he was drawing parallels between politics and the dinner plate. The foods eaten by a country, a state, a city, a town, and even a family of five are all indicative of what’s happening in a culture at any given time. Jefferson knew the hard times befalling the French, or any country’s citizens, were reflected by the contents of their kitchens. Ever mindful of that end, Jefferson sought to find ways to better the lives of his constituents. Monticello curator Susan Stein has said that for Jefferson there was no thing more beneficial to a society than the introduction of a new plant. When dispatching Lewis & Clark on their cross-continental journey, the president gave them specific instructions to make meticulous notes on the edible plants they encountered. Jefferson’s own land was planted with over 250 varieties of herbs, vegetables and fruits, all of which he cultivated with an interest in improving American lives.

Had he held office today, Jefferson’s epicurean pursuits would have branded him as a “foodie.” Famous for setting an amazing spread in the White House, his interest in food went far beyond simply feeding the people he’d gathered round his table. Borrowing from Brillat-Savarin, the French gourmand immortalized for opining that people are what they eat, Jefferson knew that the contents of one’s larder had an enormous influence on the quality of one’s life.

I was reminded of Jefferson’s love of food when then-president elect Obama showed up at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a Washington, DC institution. It was a smart move on the future leader’s part. By choosing Ben’s, Obama showed that he wasn’t fussy about what he ate - a good meal is a good meal, period, whether it’s served over a counter or served on white linens - because if there’s one thing some Americans distrust its elitism when it comes to food.

And this distrust might prove to be one of the biggest challenges in overhauling the way the country thinks about farming and agriculture, even if the suggestions are ultimately in the best interest of both the people growing, and the people eating, the food. Many of us would like to see rules in place that benefit the environment as well as the economy without hurting the already struggling American farmer. But with so much suspicion and resistance surrounding the push for Americans to eat local, let alone organic foods, President Obama could use the White House lawn as a way to lead by example. The organization Eat The View has been seeking signatures for its petition that asks the new president to break ground on a new, organic garden within his first 100 days in office. The reason? To show the rest of the country his love of good food includes eating responsibly, which translates to a commitment to the environment and to sustainable farming practices. As envisioned by Eat The View, the food grown in the Obama’s new backyard would not only feed the White House, it would also provide food for local food banks that help the needy. The folks at Eat The View have called upon the president “to replant” a “Victory Garden,” adding that the “White House is America’s house and should serve as a model at a time of crisis.”

While no one is expecting President Obama to add Farmer In Chief to his list of duties, it should be noted that the White House grounds have been planted in the past. The Carters and the Clintons both had gardens that quietly served their kitchens, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous Victory Garden inspired a nation during the dark times of World War II. By referencing the Victory Garden in their petition, the people at Eat The View are signaling that the way we eat and grow our food is as much a responsibility of the patriot as any other type of national loyalty.

With responsibility being the hallmark of Obama’s inauguration, the issue of the president’s kitchen becomes very important. If we are to change how we think about food we need more than just words. We need action and we need example. How the policies of this administration will address the issues facing America’s farmers, grocers and homemakers is a work in progress. But as he calls upon all of us to serve our country as best we can, President Obama could influence millions with something as simple as what he eats for dinner. We’ve already seen that: Lines stretched out the door of Ben’s Chili Bowl and down U Street in DC days after pictures of his visit hit the media. A similar photo of our President tending a small family garden could really plant the seeds for change.

Dig This!

So it's Friday and I'm going to take the easy way out by posting something of mine that had previously this year appeared in the Progressive Populist. 

One of the most emailed articles from The New York Times' web site this week is the one about the vegetable garden that the Obamas are going to plant on the White House lawn, so it seemed like a perfect time to reprint my op-ed piece from the Prog Pop.

Also, I'm going to spend part of today and tomorrow at the school in my neighborhood where I'm a volunteer on the Greening Committee. We're trying to establish a garden that will help teach the kids about healthier eating habits. It's going to take some time, but we're off to a great start. I will try to post pictures in the future of our progress. 

In the meantime, here's my article from earlier this year.