Food scientists taking over?

 

Image via artursfoto of Pixabay

The war on food

We’re seeing first hand,  the terrible war events taking place in the world and how important food is for everyone living. It’s the gasoline for your body. 

But humans, being who they are, the more food can be provided at the least cost to the masses, the wealthier the food conglomerates get. Money is at the bottom of it all. 

Food has changed. So has people’s health as they consume processed non-food.

We have to find our own ways to afford food and prepare it.

But how?

It seems once you jump on the processed food bandwagon, it’s hard to get off again. Those tempting-looking packages show food like you would love to serve yourself and your family.

They’re supposed to be the same thing, you see. After all, how could you go wrong with mac and cheese? Or mashed potatoes? Or shepherd's pie? Turns out it’s easy when you buy them. Take a look at the almost-all reveal of ingredients in bought, frozen offerings.

☙ Mac and cheese

Image via VickiW

☙ Mashed potatoes

Idaho® potatoes, sunflower oil, corn syrup solids, salt, mono and diglycerides, sodium caseinate, maltodextrin, natural flavor, dipotassium phosphate, tricalcium phosphate, soy lecithin, artificial color. Freshness preserved by sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bisulfite, citric acid and mixed tocopherols.

Contains: Milk, soy.

☙ Shepherds pie

Topping: potatoes (contain sulphites), cream (milk ingredients, dextrose, microcrystalline cellulose, carob bean gum, cellulose gum, carrageenan, polysorbate 80), butter, salt, spice, water, caramel colour. filling: ground beef, corn, onions, butter. sauce: water, enriched wheat flour, beef base (beef, beef stock, salt, flavour, potato flour, caramel colour, corn oil, spices), salt, flavour (contains salt, canola oil), dextrose, spices, caramel colour, garlic powder, onion powder.

When I make these items I know only my limited kitchen-friendly ingredients go into what I cook. 

One of my good friends said she was too embarrassed to cook her own cheesy scalloped potatoes, because next to Betty Crocker’s they just don’t match up in taste, and her family doesn’t enjoy them. So this is why!

☙Potatoes

Enriched Flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Corn Starch, Maltodextrin, Salt, Onion*, Potassium Phosphate, Modified Whey, Vegetable Oil (canola, soybean, and/or sunflower oil). Contains 0.5% or less of: Whey, Garlic*, Celery*, Cheddar Cheese* (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), Monoglycerides, Lactic Acid, Nonfat Milk*, Calcium Lactate, Color (annatto & turmeric extract), Sodium Phosphate, Blue Cheese* (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), Chicken Broth*, Natural Flavor, Silicon Dioxide (anticaking agent), Buttermilk, Coconut Oil, Pea Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Spice. Freshness Preserved By Sodium Bisulfite. *DRIED

Are you rolling your eyes as you read my clumsy attempts at warning here? After all, you know your government and its associations would never allow health-endangering substances to be sold in your local food establishments, or do you? 

I care, because I’m seeing the destruction of our civilization through the food that goes into their bellies. There’s solid evidence that all the high-tech additives in “convenience” foods have links to cancer. I now have five younger friends with different types of bowel cancer. 

This would have been unheard of before all the present day scientific advances in food ingredients. These foods have become so common in our lives that many who prepare them from packages actually think they are “cooking”.

Image via LucasJackson1 of Pixabay

The same chemicals that are found in our processed food are found in cosmetics, paints and glues, plus other products that we wouldn’t really care to eat. It’s estimated that a minimum number of these is 6000.

It’s hard not to write in terms of gloom and doom on this topic. You read about “tipping points” in climate change. More of the same in the plastic and other pollution in the oceans. Can you imagine being a sea creature, forced to try and survive in this far-from-pristine environment? 

Or being a farmed salmon, swimming in waste and antibiotics, then bought by consumers because it’s so much cheaper than wild-caught fish? 

Seems like I’ve digressed here. After all, this article is about our food, not the battle that sea animals face. It’s worthwhile remembering though that many humans depend on those creatures for our own food. We’re intertwined, no matter which way you look at it.

Groceries are in the news these days. Prices have increased exponentially. It doesn’t take more than one trip to buy food to realize this. Sure, it would be nice if you had unlimited money to buy only organic food, at four times the price of the regular stuff on offer, but comparatively few of us can do that.

At this time researchers and biologists are warning about microplastics. Those are the tiny, pretty beads found in so many products these days. They serve one important purpose for food manufacturers. They add to the weight of products, therefore increasing the profitability for these gigantic corporations.

It’s worth telling you at this point that it’s actually quite impossible to avoid the global mess food manufacturers have inflicted on all of us. Manufacturers, food scientists, marketers and governments do not have our health in mind. The only thing that matters in their world is profit and money. Nothing else. 

What I have written here is just a tiny, skimming look at our modern food situation in 2023. It will not get better. The barn door closed after the horse escaped. We’re beyond the tipping point.

From a personal point of view, there are things you can do for yourself and those you care about. You cannot completely avoid processed food or ultra-processed food. Organophosphates mean that even supposedly organic foods can no longer make that claim.

☙ Read the labels. Know that any items on them you aren’t familiar with should make you pause, and possibly find another.

☙ Try to buy sauces, etcetera, in glass bottles. Plastic disintegrates into microplastic pollution that will be a curse for thousands of years. 

☙ Try some simple home recipes, made with familiar ingredients in your kitchen. They taste better, and are always way cheaper.

☙ Find folks who know how to cook, and learn to scratch cook from them. Lots of internet folks for this!

Thanks for reading. This affects us all. I’d love to hear your views on scientifically processed food.

Whorled Tickseed (coreopsis verticillata)

This lovely little rock plant grows just under my window in our new home.

It spreads, and is a lovely cheerful yellow. Seems strange, but it’s actually a tough little relative of the sunflower.

Image via VickiW

Moving: The grief, the joy

 

It’s been six months! Can you believe it? 

So many people warned me about the trauma of moving. They all seemed to be aware that, next to a death, moving is considered #2 on the trauma scale. 

I wouldn’t have considered a move unless the pros and cons list of doing so indicated it would benefit us in the long run, believe me. I blithely thought things would be sorted pretty quickly once we were in our new home. 

Nevertheless, we are both considered beyond our prime at this time. I wrote to my Dr. Lovely. Remember her? It may be worth a click here.

Reason being...

She left her practice after deciding she could no longer “doctor” by being forced to adhere to minimum patient times and realizing that massive amounts of paperwork were not an advantage to patient care. She decided archaeology was a much more interesting possibility at that time, so she jumped into that.

Anyway, when I contacted her, she didn’t give me the doom and gloom stats about picking up and leaving. She just told me she was so happy we could leave under our own terms and conditions, and advised us to find enjoyment in the new place as soon as possible. “Adventures are good”, she said.

Perks and challenges

Our new home is beautiful, in an old-fashioned way. It’s a condo, built 40 years ago. It’s very roomy, just the same square footage as our previous detached home. 

No ocean view here, but some splendid mountains, enormous trees on 10 acres of land. Wild life, mostly squirrels collecting nuts and burying them at this time. Ducks, herons are plentiful. Gorgeous gardens, and I even managed to bring a couple of tubs containing some saffron corms. They are flowering on the balcony this month.

There’s one major thing missing. The wonderful friends who are still such a part of my life. This past Monday I had phone calls from six of them. We had such joyful and close friendships.

Give and take

Since moving I’ve come to wistfully realize the importance of those friends, but also the relief of knowing that caring, younger family members are nearby, with no intervening ferry considerations when you would like to plan a visit.

Needs change as you move along with the years you’ve survived this life.

We are fortunate. Online friends have not experienced our disruption, and have for the most part kept solidly in touch. Our former neighbours still manage to make phone calls on a regular basis. If only they knew how reassuring that is!

Trauma

Six months on, I realize now it’s the emotional trauma of moving that really plays havoc with your mind. This is when the loss of what you had combined with what needs to be altered in the new place for your comfort. And yes, of course I give myself a swift metaphorical slap on the head, knowing our comfort here is amazing, when compared to the present wars in the world. But there is a hollowness in my heart.

It’s the kitchen for me. Forty years ago some demented, but possibly well-meaning guy built this one. I think of it as a kitchen box, and I’m inside it. Seriously, how did he think I would ever manage to do anything with these particular upper cabinets behind the fridge?

Image via VickiW

The Sunshine ceiling hangs over my head in the kitchen. I’m sure at the time it was carefully framed in. There are fluorescent bulbs in it, and thin panels that you can only hope will remain where they are positioned, quite low over your head as you move about.

Image  via VickiW

A peninsula juts out from the wall, Upper cabinets above it succeed in providing storage spaces, even if they do rather block the view out to the eating nook and the lovely outside beyond.

It has taken so long to find the people who we hope will magically transform this old space for us. We know it’s going to be a long haul, but it will be good to just know there is some action and interest ahead with this project.

There’s a wall that must be knocked out to provide extra entrance and exit to the kitchen. I love open plan. In particular, I’m imagining what a difference it will make in this kitchen.

The most urgent build at the moment though is a large bookcase to house all the books that are such an important part of who we are. Fortunately, we’re expecting to have that completed next month. It is a huge trial to have two lockers full of things still stuck away in boxes. The books and the kitchen tools, our friends of a different type, are greatly missed. This wall is where the custom bookcase will go.

Image via VickiW

Seasonal adjustments

The days are short and darker now. The rain is gradually helping to recover from the drought, but there seems to be a long way to go. How quickly those years pass! 

 It seems just so recent that we would have been able to manage these projects ourselves, but now it’s a relief to know others are in charge.

Writing is essential for my well-being. You, the readers, make it even more interesting. Thank you for reading, and never, ever give up. Hope you’ll enjoy the new adventure of kitchen redesign, estimated to start in December.

Squirrels and crows mingle on the lawns, the squirrels digging in nuts, and the crows digging them out again. I want some of those walnuts too, and will have to visit the dollar store to buy a nutcracker. These nuts were collected over the last few days, on the other side of the little creek. On closer examination, they don’t actually need a nutcracker. You can just give them a hammer tap, then peel them with your fingers. I think they are Carpathian walnuts because they are quite thin-skinned.

I’m hoping to use them in our first Christmas cake here!

Image via VickiW

Image via VickiW

Thank you!

Your visits are always appreciated and I hope you've found the content interesting and helpful.

Vicki

Your body's mega microbes

Image via Julien Tromeur of Pixabay

I don’t profess to know much about the more in-depth workings of our bodies. Like many older folks, my long-term memory is vastly better than my short-term recollection of events.

To make it even more interesting, I seem to draw on the long-term memory as I make comparisons of then and now.

Then

Right through school as I grew up in a small Zululand village in South Africa, I can only remember one obese student. My parents explained she suffered from a medical condition, and we were to be kind, not ever mentioning her weight. 

Now

Fast forward now. Obesity has become so commonplace that stats from the World Obesity Foundation predicts more than 51% of the world (four billion people) will be obese by 2035. It is literally becoming a huge, weighty problem, from both economic and health standpoints.

Every week I notice the foods that crowd shopping carts in the supermarket, so many in packaged items, huge amounts of fizzy drinks. These are all ultra-processed foods. If they are your main source of nourishment, your prognosis of health is not too good.

But why?

Like most folks, I thought the simple secret to obesity was caused by over-consumption of food. 

That was before I started to realize that food itself has changed. I wrote about this here.

As my interest in this topic grew, more facts about our digestive systems grew. It seems not only good food is important for health, but knowledge of something called a microbiome helps to support it.

In fact, you don’t even need to have a dog or cat in your life. Your personal microbiome can be looked after and appreciated with the nourishment and caring you provide.

I’m guessing most of us don’t really think too much about the trillions of microorganisms that live in our bodies. Usually, they live together quite peacefully. The only time we think of them is if there is an infection. That’s when we team up with a doctor to kill the offending ones with antibiotics.

How much is a trillion? 

Short and sweet--1000 billion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1 trillion. Those tiny microbes seem to practice tolerance as they glom together. They all have a lot of work to do, so that keeps them busy and out of mischief, as long as their host bodies (that’s you) treat them fairly. This huge collection of microbes is referred to as your microbiome.

Scientists seem to agree that our microbiomes are considered by them to be a large organ in the body, weighing from 3-5 lbs, in most cases.  Imagine!  All those tiny microbes are distributed throughout your body, but mostly in the large and small intestines.

You can see by this that what you eat would have a huge effect on your microbiome. Your DNA determines your beginnings of it when you’re born, but later on it’s your diet and where you happen to be on our planet that continually helps in its health protectiveness or its lurch towards your ill health, depending on the balance of your particular microbiome.

It’s pretty well established by the food scientists now that their Ultra-processed foods  (UPF) have achieved their objectives of creating new taste delights and convenience for global appetites. Intertwine those guys with the marketers the lawyers, and the internet. Now you’ve really created a whole new nutritional system for humanity.

OpenClipart-Vectors of Pixabay

If you don’t really care to treat your precious microbiome to UPF, knowing they’re not real foods, there are some defensive measures you can take.

Admittedly it takes a while longer to do your food purchases. But it may be worth it for the sake of your body.

• Read the labels. Learn to make sense of them.
• Walk around the perimeter of a grocery store, and buy your whole, unprocessed foods there. ( this used to work quite well, but now I notice those convenience foods aggressively intruding there.) You may see an entire freezer case of pizzas at rock bottom prices. Spices, dressings, meats already lathered in sauces ready for you to use. 
• Feed your gut microbiome with prebiotic foods, like apples, artichokes, bananas, barley, oats, chia and flaxseeds, alliums like garlic and onions, beans and legumes, green and black teas, and even cocoa. Adding chia seeds to oatmeal, cooking with a generous amount of garlic and onion, incorporating chickpeas into a salad, can all help your health.

Then again, some members of the microbiome team really appreciate you providing them with fermented foods like kefir, yogurt with live active cultures, pickled vegetables, tempeh, kombucha tea, kimchi, miso, and sauerkraut.

The essence of all this is that much research is going on to give people the help they need to eat satisfying food. It’s very well documented now that sugar should be eliminated. Sugar-free artificial sweeteners are also apparently just as much a problem, according to several studies in the Canadian Medical Journal Association. They are linked to weight gain, not weight loss.

In those days, so long ago, we ate lots of sugar. It was always cane sugar. There weren’t artificial sweeteners. There weren’t processed foods. There was no internet, so countries weren’t subjected to ultra-processed advertising. Countries all used their own local whole foods to a major extent.

So, it’s confusing. Probably the best bet is to remember the size of your stomach, and not overfill. Eat a variety of whole foods, but not too much. 

What you eat is going to either delight your microbiome, or stress it out trying to cope with food that it doesn’t recognize as being real food.

Autumn’s new arrivals

I love to cross over the little bridge in the mornings, and see the different stages of plant life. Animals too, the squirrels, as they gather walnuts and bury them for the winter.

Saw these fascinating fungi amid leaves dropping quietly from the massive trees.

Alemy

Hlasek Images via VickiW Image via VickiW