A Rose By Any Other Name

Think Progress has an interesting post up about the corn industry's current attempt to petition the FDA to relabel high fructose corn syrup as 'corn sugar.' This, no doubt, is in response to the current campaign to educate consumers about the hazards of corn syrup. Consumption of corn syrup is at a 20 year low, and instead of confronting the negative press, the industry is trying to avoid it all together.

Obviously I oppose such a measure, but I wonder if this is as terrible as some are projecting. The name change will still have the word 'corn' in the title, and in the internet age, the attention given to the name change will go a long way to counteracting the corn industry's goals. Another consideration is that this is an ingredient, not a free-standing product. I wonder if a consumer savvy enough to read through the long list of ingredients to find 'high fructose corn syrup' would be tricked by this name change.

To me its a good sign that people are becoming more aware of what is in their food. I actually welcome this move, as well as the fight that will result. Its a teaching moment, and I doubt it will do more than spread word on the issue.

And I really don't think that the Obama FDA, with its focus on fighting obesity, would approve this petition.

Follow-up on the Iowa Egg Recall

The story of the Iowa egg recall still has a lot of unanswered questions. Wright County Egg's facilities tested positive for Salmonella over 400 times in the last two years. That's a scary number. What is scarier is that a single outbreak can lead to the potential contamination of a half billion eggs. That's exactly what could have happened here. Wright County Eggs is a huge egg producer, supplying over three-quarters of the country's eggs.

I didn't spend much time on it in my review of Food, Inc., but the possibility of mass contamination is one thing the movie strongly cautions its viewers about. The movie shows the process of meat packing in the country today, and point out that one single burger has the potential to contain meat from several different cows. Because the industry is in such few hands, as is the egg industry, one contaminated cow could mix with and spread to meat all over the country. This has the potential to lead to outbreak on a wide-spread geographical scale. To anyone interested in how chickens are farmed in this country, I highly recommend watching this movie. It spends quite a bit of time interviewing chicken farmers and includes footage of a chicken facility. It also talks about the horrible financial straights of modern-day chicken farmers.

So how do you solve this? Going to your local producer, as appealing and obvious as that may seem, isn't really a possibility. The supply simply isn't there. It is also costly. Cage-free eggs cost more than mass produced eggs. The solution has to be regulatory in nature. The articles on this issue make it seem as though appropriate legislation is in place, but no one seems to know if Wright Country Farms followed through on all of their testing requirements. When you're talking about the producer of three-quarters of the nations eggs, this is simply just unacceptable. Nobody knows if at anytime in the last two years, they tested eggs produces in contaminated facilities for Salmonella? Why is nobody enforcing these requirements? Why do 1,500 people have to get sick before we realize how vulnerable our egg supply is to contamination?

How to Cook Your Life: A cooking class with Zen priest and chef Edward Espe Brown

How to Cook Your Life is probably the most interesting documentary title I've heard of in a long time. Its why I decided to try this movie. It is very Zen and beyond bizarre. I couldn't make it through 15 minutes. I didn't want to watch a bunch of Buddhists knead dough and discuss the taste of puffy bread. For those who enjoy "patience grass," try the movie on Netflix. Everyone else should stay away.

Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. starts by telling us that the food industry doesn't want us to know where our food comes from, because if we knew, we wouldn't eat it. The documentary wants the world to know that the way we produce food has changed. It is no longer farm-based, and is now factory-based. Its an industry that abuses animals and their workers as well.

I was especially excited to hear the input of Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. He points out that a very high percentage of our food is just a clever rearrangement and processing of corn. According to him, corn has conquered the food world. This is because the government subsidizes corn, allowing it to be produced below the cost of production. High-fructose corn syrup and a lot of other extracts are partially responsible for the rise in obesity in this country. It is also the main ingredients in feeds, including fish feeds. The "bad" calories are made cheap, and healthy calories are more expensive, making income the biggest risk factor for obesity.

What really bothers me about this topic, however, is the animal cruelty. A typical mass-produced will never see sunlight and is physically unable to take more than a few steps at a time. I'm sure we've all heard about downer cows.

Visually, the movie is well done. The camera angles and animations are very creative and look amazing. Some scenes, however, are hard to watch but in a movie on this subject, that is to be expected. It is not nearlly as bad as a PETA brochure.

In the wake of the recent Iowa egg recall, I recommend that anyone interested in food safety look into and advocate for Kevin's Law.

The interesting angle that I hadn't heard of before is that of genetically modified plants and the companies that hold patents on those plant seeds. The documentary makes it clear that these companies are abusing IP law the judicial and regulatory systems to harass farmers, some of which do not use their products. The fact that really irks me is that Clarence Thomas, a former Monsanto attorney, wrote a major decision on the issue of seed patents. In the interest of fairness, he should have recused himself. From what I know about Justice Thomas though, I'm not surprised that he did not. I really want to spend more time researching the patent issues here. They are absolutely fascinating.