Amongst all of the news and scary stories related to the egg recall is an interesting fact regarding the regulation of eggs and their production.

Before July 9, 2010 no one specific federal agency was directly responsible for the monitoring and enforcement of egg safety standards and regulations.

According an August 24, 2010 Wall Street Journal article:

“By law, the FDA oversees the safety of shell eggs. Prior to the new egg-safety rules taking effect, the FDA had authority to inspect egg producers, …, but didn’t have standards by which to enforce cleanliness and other safety-related issues

A spokesman at the USDA said that agency has no legal authority to regulate eggs still in their shells for human consumption. Parts of the USDA inspect eggs for freshness and thickness to determine what quality grade they should be assigned. But those inspectors don’t check for bacteria such as salmonella.”

If that was not scary enough, the article goes on to state:

“Before those rules took effect, ‘if a company was taking short-cuts, it would only become apparent if there was illness involved or if there was an audit performed by the FDA.’ Said Richard Raymond, former USDA undersecretary for food safety. Mr. Raymond compared the prior FDA regulations for shell eggs to a highway speed limit: ‘It’s only illegal when you get caught.’”

To read the full article, please click here or paste the following in your browser: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704340504575447951284839386.html

While one could argue the practice of manually synchronizing the phone and computer is a good idea and can help protect against accidental loss of data, the time and frustration associated with this daily ritual is something this client could live without.

So, while discussing the options of how to best work around and resolve the situation to my client’s benefit I mentioned the possibility of taking advantage of some cloud computing options. He responded by asking “what is cloud computing.”

Simply put, cloud computing stores data onto a server or servers connected to a network such as the internet or a company’s intranet. You connect to this data however you would normally connect to the internet or your company’s intranet. The concept of the cloud comes from the fact that you are not directly connected or tethered to a server or other computer. Instead, your indirect connection is to the network / internet, giving you access to all of the data servers or other resources also connected to the network, creating the cloud.

Today’s WSJ features an excellent summary article covering cloud computing by Walt Mossberg. Here is a link to the article and its companion web video.

It seems many people see buying organic / local foods is something done by others. What “others” is, I have no clue. But, I imagine it is entirely based on perceptions and stereo types such as: young hipsters, DINKS, “smarter” or “prettier”, urban-over educated, liberal loving and nearly socialist, Pruis or not American made/truck drivers, and other completely superficial and baseless things.

While there is probably a grain of truth to all of those stereotypes, the facts paint an entirely different picture.

According to a recent posting at Save Our Food, the USDA’s 2008 Organic Production Survey reports Virginia’s 180 certified or exempt organic farms occupied a total of 12,308 acres with 5,884 acres used for harvested cropland and 5,164 acres used for pastureland.

For the people owning, working on, and working with those 180 certified or exempt organic farms, ”40 percent of Virginia organic sales took place within 100 miles of the farm; nearly half took place within 500 miles of the farm.”

I gotta repeat this:

Half of the sales for the food from those 180 farms happens within 500 miles, a day’s drive, of those farms.

And;

“40 percent of Virginia organic sales took place within 100 miles of the farm…”

So, what does this mean?

It means that when you make an effort to buy organic and/or local foods, you are giving your dollars to your neighbors!

Still think rganic or local farming is something reserved for “them”?

Remember:

Local farming is “… as personal as your NEXT MEAL.”

P.S. The Virginia Farm Bureau’s website www.SaveOurFood.org is a great resource for information about farming in Virginia as well as finding local farmers, farmer’s markets, and CSA’s where you can receive locally produced food.

Grilin'

Guys like to Grill because it isn’t cooking

How many guys do you know (including yourself) who “don’t cook” but are the Grill Master at home, amongst friends or even the neighborhood?

But……

Isn’t the most basic and fundamental element to cooking the process of applying heat to food in order to alter some aspect of the food’s taste, texture or color in order to make it edible, or at least more edible?

So, isn’t grilling or bar-b-queing cooking?

Yes.

So why claim not to cook and then profess a passion for cooking by another name?

In a word, perception.

Even with massive media presence of celebrety chefs such as Bobby Flay and Emeril, the act and concept of cooking remains closely associated with maternal or feminine roles such as nuturing and caring for the family.

Meanwhile, grilling and bar-b-que are associated with images and concepts related to “the hunt”, survival, and the outdoors.

Don’t believe me? Compare the images of Rachel Ray and the Barefoot Contessa vs Bobby Flay and Guy Fierri.

Adding fuel to the fire, is how cooking is portrayed as difficult, time consuming, and something enjoyed only by the “elites” – those with time, money and/or “culture”. So now, not only is cooking perceived as feminine, it is also difficult, time consuming, elite-ist.

In summary:

cooking = woman, nurture, care, work, tedium, NOT FUN.

grilling/bar-b-que = man, hunt, survival, not work, FUN, cool (not literally),

Hmmmm, which one looks (will be perceived) as fun, not feminine, something a man/father will enjoy, and will be accepted and approved by other men?

Now, how does this relate to social media?

Perception – how a thing is perceived governs how how treat it.

If have something you want people to notice and engage with, try to be your audience’s concept of bar-b-que/grilling and not their perception of cooking.

Use social media to talk with and listen to your audience. Listen to their likes, dislikes, rants and raves. Talk with them on a person to person level, telling the story, details, etc of you, your product, company or vision. Most importantly, make sure you are letting them hear how and why you are grilling and not cooking as if they were saying to themselves.

Food

According to the March 20-21 Wall Street Journal: the Club de la Table Francaise, which includes 280 food-loving members of France’s Parliament, wildly supported “an initiative Mr. Sarkozy launched two years ago to gain United Nations recognition for French cuisine as an intangible cultural asset.”

Why?

“…to protect French gastronomy.”

Or, more accurately:

“Club members say French cuisine is under threat. Grocery stores are increasingly importing cheaper cheese and meats, threatening local producers.” – from France Offers a Menu for Its National Identity, Wall Street Journal, March 20 – 21, 2010

OK, so seeking to sanctify and preserve a land’s culinary history through regulation does seem to be a bit Orwellian. But, on second thought, having France’s culinary and gastronomic history / culture protected by UNESCO not only creates a barrier to trade and imports, it also creates an easy way to increase consumer’s perception of the value of those products.

Looking down a completely different path, why would a restaurant in Oakland, California undertake an effort to use web video, blogs and other social media to inform clients where their ingredients come from and why or what makes them special? On a societal level:

“In this new journal of stories, movies, cooking information and news we hope to give you an insider’s look at the workings of our restaurant community, of Oliveto, as a part of a larger community in which we live.  We also think that we are entering a time when people want to actually know where their food comes from not just for wholesomeness and nutrition or for assigning it worth, but for the joy and satisfaction that can come of it—a fuller more connected life.” Oliveto Community

But, on a business level, the telling of the story behind the food – how and where it is from, the people who make it, and why or what makes it special – in a way that is simple and approachable way allows clients to better understand and appreciate the food while also fostering familiarity with those people and places.

How important is familiarity?

According to Robert Cialdini in Influence Science and Practice:

“Few of us would be surprised to learn that, as a rule, we prefer to say yes to the requests of the people we know and like. What might be startling to note, however, is that this simple rule is used in hundreds of ways by total strangers to get us to comply with their requests.” p.144

I am not trying to imply this is some sort of Machiavellian plan or the purpose of the Oliveto Community website is purely to create profit. I am saying this is really a great example of using social media to reach out, engage, build relationships with people. A serendipitous result of this effort will be an increase in the perceived value of Oliveto’s goods and services by those clients

Interestingly, it is the Oliveto style approach and not the Sarkozy approach that creates longer lasting and sustainable added value to a product. A top down government lead approach such as Sarkozy’s may appear to addressing a problem and appease voters at first, the results are fleeting and can not persist without continued and significant government support.

So, do you think an Oliveto type approach is applicable to your needs? Why or why not?

Approximately one third of the world’s people suffer from a lack of micronutrients. Micronutrients are “any substance, such as a vitamin or trace element, essential for healthy growth and development but required only in minute amounts”  More specifically, micronutrients in food include essential things such as: folic acid, iron, vitamin D and iodine. Although they are consumed in minute amounts, the have profound implications on our health and wellbeing.

According to the World Health Organization, “these substances are the “magic wands” that enable the body to produce enzymes, hormones and other substances essential for proper growth and development. As tiny as the amounts are, however, the consequences of their absence are severe. Iodine, vitamin A and iron are most important in global public health terms; their lack represents a major threat to the health and development of populations the world over, particularly children and pregnant women in low-income countries.”

The proposal to address this problem is to enrich food staples and salts with micronutrients. It is true that enriching food staples such as adding iodine to salt and vitamin D to milk has been practiced in the US for a long time and is a primary cause in the elimination of nutrition based diseases such as rickets. Also, the article correctly notes that the cost of fortifying food stables with micronutrients is extremely cost efficient.

But, doesn’t this seem a bit like treating symptoms instead of treating problems?

The problem is not exclusively a lack of access to foods containing micronutrients. In all reality, the problem is a lack of access to an entire diet capable of meeting the current nutritional needs of people.

In a sense, fortifying food staples is the somewhat the nutritional equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The situation is akin to switching from regular to diet drinks as a way to regulate sugar and calorie consumption. The switch comes with the trade off of increased caffeine consumption as well as increased exposure to artificial sweeteners. At the end of the day, all you are doing is playing a game of nutritional three card monty by trading one bad thing for another.

It is critically important to ask what food staples that will be fortified. If fortified food products in the US serve as an example, they will be highly refined or processed, bearing little-to-no resemblance to their traditional form or place in a person’s regional or ancestral diet.

Considering:

“[When we eat refined foods] … we limit the opportunity to bolster our immune system, keep our blood sugar and emotions balanced, keep our blood sugar and emotions balanced, protect against degenerative diseases, maintain a trim and fit body, and in general, keep our integrated experience of life harmonious.”

“Our desire to overeat can stem from eating foods that are refined and therefore missing ingredients; these deficient foods can foster addiction as we are instinctively driven to over consume them in our endeavor to obtain the missing nutrients that are never there.”

Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford (2002 edition) pgs 16 -18

And, according to Harriet V. Kuhnlein, Professor of Human Nutrition and Founding Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada:

The development, health and scientific communities do not usually understand the food resources that indigenous people know and use. Scientific identifications and laboratory data for nutrients and other phytochemicals for a food system may be unknown for many species.

A possibly better solution to this issue might be re-examining and then reintroducing traditional dietary and agricultural practices “upgraded” for current daily life instead relying upon artificially fortifying foods derived from highly refined and processed foods frequently from foreign sources and diets.

So, at first impression it seems this spouse deserves a gold star for supporting the partner and understanding the challenges of following an unconventional diet with many possible restrictions.

Then the spouse laments for the days of gluten foods and half jokingly says gluten free foods taste “like straw”. Now, it seems that re-evaluating those gold stars might be a god idea.

Since this is “FOOD for the rest of us” and not “MARRIAGE counseling, guidance, and judgement for the rest of us”, I lets focus on the food.

This spouse is not the only person in the world to consider gluten free foods to be unpleasant.  In fact, I have previously blogged about a NYT article where celiacs’ laments for gluten foods such as pasta and breads were followed with praises to the food industry for coming up with increasingly “better” imitation foods as substitutes.

In fact, while making a birthday cake with two layers of genoise brushed with sherry and iced with mocha butter-cream and chocolate icing using regular all purpose flour, I found myself thankful for not having to counter balance any of the garbanzo bean flavor sometimes found in many gluten free flour mixes. I was also glad to focus on the cake and not if the amount of xyntham gum added was sufficient or too much.

So, while I wasn’t saying it tasted like straw, I was viewing it as something inferior to a gluten based product. Then I realized this was probably due to the fact that I was automatically assessing the possible tastes and textures of something made with out gluten against something made using gluten.

Just as substituting beef or chicken with some sort of soy based product, using vitamin pills instead of eating fruits and vegetables, or eating farm raised vs wild or “free range” fish, fowl, or beef leads to all kinds of dietary issues and doesn’t taste all that good; forcing an over processed, chemically stabilized, and artificial-in-nearly-all-aspects-of-its-existence food item to replace is not exactly a good idea.

Instead of looking for substitute food products or items that can be swapped in and out of your eating habits as if they computer parts or brake pads, maybe it is better to consider it time to undertake a food odyssey, searching for new to you foods that are fun to eat and do not conflict with your dietary choices.

After all, just because a meal or a specific dish or food item is made to be gluten free does not mean the food should not be good.

For example, the other weekend I cooked great meal.

The salad included fresh cherry tomatoes, sweetened red onions, basil, sheep’s milk feta, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

For the main course, I roasted beef sirloin with a rosemary, sage, thyme, parsley, Grana Padano cheese and garlic crust. The beef was accompanied by roasted apples, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and turnips, a pan sauce, and rustic mashed potatoes.

For dessert, I used Giffords’ double chocolate ice cream with warmed “Last of the Season” peaches and a ruby reduction.

Although I added toasted bread croutons with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, parsley, and basil to the salad, and the salad would have been equally good without them, the meal was essentially gluten free.

Nothing came out of a box, was almost entirely gluten free and it did not taste like straw. In fact, I was later told the meal was “Kick A** Good.”

It is easy to look around at the bounty of fruits, vegetables, and other foods being reaped during this time of harvest and believe the cornucopia is endless and offers limitless healthy food to all.

But, the cornucopia is neither endless nor offering limitless healthy food to all.

Instead, 36 million Americans, including 13 million children, struggle with hunger every day.

You may ask how is it possible for our American society to be plagued by such a horrible problem while our American society is also considered to be plagued by an obesity pandemic. Similarly, how is hunger among so many possible when so many fast food restaurants offer $1 menus?

The answer is not that food is not available. Neither is the answer that hunger equates to lacking of access to food.

Instead, it is better to consider the hunger crisis in terms of access to information about nutrition and foods offering dense nutritional value.

A body’s energy comes from three sources: Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats. Proteins and Carbohydrates offer about 4 calories per gram while fats offer about 9 calories per gram.

Considering our instinct is to seek out those foods offering the most energy and not necessarily the most nutrition, and the foods offering most energy happen to be fats, is there any real wonder why we would choose to eat an order of chicken nuggets dipped in a BBQ sauce with high fructose corn syrup as the primary ingredient, over a salad of fresh tomatoes with salad greens, thinly sliced steaks and a sauce of basil, garlic, parsley, olive oil and balsamic vinegar?

Similarly, when you walk into a coffee shop, what catches your eye longest? The lovely looking cracked bulgar salad with green onions, parsley, and tomatoes or those plump cinnamon, spice and rum soaked raison scones with the crunchy sugar sprinkles twinkling like stars and just enough to be seen? Since I just made myself hungary by typing the second description, I suspect the scone is the correct answer.

If you are tempted, what about everyone else? What about someone who might not be as interested in food as you and I, or someone who might not have the time, money or other resources to shop and cook the same as you?

So, during this time of amazing bounty, transition and the beginning of the fall and winter holidays ultimately leading us into 2011, it is important to remember the bounty offered to us can only be for all of us if each of us takes action to spread change and help those how ever possible.

Yes, I had head this claim before, and had always written it off as media pandering. But, a bit of recent news has changed my mind.

According Hal Arkowith and Scott Lilienfeld in the Sept/Oct 2009 Scientific American Mind:

“Two thirds of American adults and one third of school-age children are either overweight or obese (defined as extremely overweight).”

But this sounds a bit abstract, right?

They go on to state:

“From 1960 to 2002 the population of overweight and obese adults increased by roughly 50 percent, and the corresponding increase for children was 300 percent.”

So, in less than 50 years our society has gone from “thin” to “fat.”

This is our entire society, not just a handful of indulgent adults or spineless parents allowing children to overeat junk food. Also, if you want to blame genetics,while it is true genetics plays heavily into our weight, metabolism and how we process stress, sleep and other environmental factors affecting our weight, genetics are personal not societal and can not evolve quickly enough to account for these changes throughout our entire society.

Want to blame the “Industry” – Restaurants, Food Manufacturing Companies, the Government, our Schools, etc.? Well, while it is true that they must shoulder a responsibility for providing clear, easily understood and comparable information about ingredients, calories and other such things ….

“… the root of the obesity problem ‘must lie in the powerful social and cultural forces that promote energy-rich diet and a sedentary lifestyle’” (Scientific American Mind Sept/Oct 2009)

Before you go off to round up the pitchfork and torch brigade and head off to your closest MacDonalds or 7-11, consider what Gavin Fitzsimmons, Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Duke, has to say:

“There is a notion that if we all just had the full nutritional information on menu or food items, we’d choose rationally … [b]ut that isn’t so. There are too many unconscious environmental cues that prove too strong.” (Psychology Today, Sept/Oct 2009)

Additionally, we fool ourselves:

“[Brian Wansink, Dir of the Food and Brand Lab, Cornell Univeristy]… has demonstrated we consume more food when it is served on a larger plate, in a bigger bowl, or in bulk packaging. And if it’s labeled low-fat, we chow down even more – consuming, on average, 20 percent more caloriesthan we would were it not so labeled.” (Psychology Today, Sept/Oct 2009)

So, should we tax things that make us fat?

According to Yale Psychologist Kelly D. Brownell and Thomas Freiden, at the CDC, social policies such as taxes on “one of the biggest contributors to obesity: sugar-sweetened beverages.” (Scientific American Mind Sept/Oct 2009)

This cry is also supported by Dr Barry Popkin, one of the first researchers to identify a link between high frutcose corn syrup and obesity in his well known study published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2004.  As quoted in Food Navigator’s recent article, Fructose in the firing line:

“The idea is very simple, that essentially in America – and the rest of the world – when you consume any caloric beverage, particularly sugar-sweetened beverage, [including corn-based sugar] you don’t reduce your food intake.”

“We know that if you increase the price of sugar-sweetened beverages, you will reduce their impact,” he said. “Much like cigarette taxes have worked grandly in the US and elsewhere to reduce smoking…These are one of the only foods and beverages with no health benefits and clearly defined health cost.”

But, much like prohibition on alcohol in the 1920′s, wouldn’t a tax on bad foods result in them possibly becoming even more attractive by being “bad”?

“A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that the mere presence of health offerings on a menu or on display in a restaurant or even in a vending machine can often be enough to vicariously satisfy our long term health and nutrition goals-and trick our brains into allowing su to make more indulgent food selections, ones we would not otherwise make. (Psychology Today, Sept/Oct 2009)

So, basically, even if we know something isn’t good for us, by having  a healthy alternative is available we can placate our selves with the thought or intention of having that food while actually eating the “bad” food.

To me, this all boils down to changing your lifestyle since I don’t think taxes, government labels or other top down solutions will really do all that much good.

Simply put, say what you do, do what you say and find ways to give yourself success.

Interestingly,

http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Financial-Industry/Fructose-in-the-firing-line?utm_source=exclusive_interview&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Exclusive%2BInterview