Just call me pine mouth

We got a huge wad of kale in our sailboat CSA on Sunday morning so I decided to whip up a batch for lunch. I've been doing this thing where I'll sautee kale (or chard) in olive oil with shredded carrots, adding water as it cooks. I also throw in onion powder, garlic, salt, pepper and whatever else I feel like adding. It makes for an extremely tasty alternative to the higher fat version that I make, which entails heavy whipping cream and Parmesan cheese, which is slightly not as good for you.

Monday evening I started eating dinner and from the first bite, things tasted weird. I asked my husband if his vegetables (not kale) tasted okay and he said it was fine. I noticed everything had an odd bitter, metallic taste to it and just assumed I had eaten something that had thrown my taste buds off.

By Tuesday, I was still experiencing a problem. I didn't notice it in the morning, but by afternoon my apple tasted weird and, again, my dinner was even more bitter and metallic. I thought maybe it had to do with some new supplements I started taking and was a little concerned that it might be something more physical.

I know some nutritional deficiencies or a little too much of something can throw off your sense of taste. Since I had spent a good part of the afternoon trying to decipher a bunch of wonky lab results for my toxin body burden testing for my book (hello tungsten and molybdenum, why are you so high?), I figured anything was game.

So, I went to my trusty Google to see what I could find. I ran into a number of people claiming they had the same problem after eating pine nuts. Pine nuts! I had loaded up my kale on Sunday with pine nuts to make it a more substantial meal. According to wikipedia:

A small minority of pine nuts can cause taste disturbances, developing 1–3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. A bitter, metallic taste is described. Though very unpleasant, there are no lasting effects... Some publications have made reference to this phenomenon as "pine mouth". This is a relatively newly noticed phenomenon.

The Nestle Research Centre has hypothesized that a particular species of Chinese pine nuts is the cause of the problem. The suspect species of pine nuts are smaller, duller, and more rounded than typical pine nuts. This agrees with the findings of ødevarestyrelsen (Danish food ministry), which ties the symptoms to "illegitimate" nuts from Pinus armandii (Chinese white pine) and Pinus massoniana (Chinese red pine), which have a different fatty acid than "genuine" pine nuts, being mixed with "genuine" pine nuts in China to meet export demands.

Metallic taste disturbance, known as metallogeusia, is reported 1–3 days after ingestion, being worse on day 2 and lasting for up to 2 weeks. Cases are self-limited and resolve without treatment.

This does bring up the issue of food safety. This isn't the first time we've seen Chinese products "padded" with filler foods. When we buy nuts, we always buy in bulk and choose organic, but we don't have that option at the store we frequent for pine nuts. I suspect that we got a batch of pseudo-pine nuts because I've never had this happen before.

This apparently has become an emerging problem over the last few years with it peaking this last summer. In the UK, the Food Standards Agency is looking into the issue. As to be expected, in spite of complaints, the FDA is sitting on its hands.

The pine nuts I ate are relatively fresh, so I know that rancidity (which is an issue with these high fat tasty little nuts) isn't the problem. In any case, I thought I'd share my experience with you in case you buy pine nuts for the pesto I'm sure you make from all that basil you grow in the summer. I tell you, though, I'm going to be leary about the pine nuts I buy in the future. Several weeks of pine mouth is really unpleasant. Although it could be the next popular diet aid since it makes everything taste nasty.

Have you ever experienced pine mouth? Or even heard of it?

Tossing the 'sell by' date

I'm all about avoiding food born illnesses since it seems like, if someone is going to have a problem with rotten food, it's going to be me. Maybe it's just my tender tummy, but I tend to follow the "use by" and "sell by" dates religiously, just for that very reason.

According to this article in Slate, Ignore Expiration Dates, the author makes a reasonable argument that the dates stamped on our food are really just arbitrary.

University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza explained in the article that expiration dates address optimum freshness (rather than safety) and tend to be extremely conservative. Why so conservative? Well, because the dates need to account for how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food. Then the manufacturers test their products based on those criteria.

For example, for perishables like milk and meat, people who go straight home and refrigerate their groceries as soon as they get home will have a 3 - 7 day grace period after the "sell by" date. Because many consumers take their food on a tour of the city, leaving it in overheated cars or making additional stops on the way home and then store it in an overly warm fridge, the life expectancy of the food is reduced. This results in a shortened date span to accommodate the least common denominator.

More importantly, there is no federal mandate on food freshness dating. It's an entirely voluntary practice that's been adopted by producers and manufacturers to put on their products as well as grocery stores. This serves two purposes. On one hand, it gives us a sense (falsely so in some cases) of security about a given product's freshness. And on the other, it's possible that the manufacturers and stores are listing dates that expire prematurely to ensure that consumers replace products more frequently than they probably need to.

What's a consumer to do? Well, you really have to use your judgement. I wouldn't skimp on foods that, when they go bad, take you down with them. If that milk looks or smells weird, don't drink it. Is it covered in mold, slime or other unidentifiable growths? If so, depending on the type of food, either cut off the offending piece or throw it out (preferably composting it) altogether.

Still don't know what to do with it? Here is a series of videos explaining how to tell when food goes bad, including How to Tell if Your Bread has Gone Bad and How to Tell if Your Leftovers Have Gone Bad. So, now you don't have an excuse.

What do you think about expiration dates on food? Do you eat packaged or canned foods years after the pull date? If it looks and smells okay is it fair game?

Mobile slaughterhouse gets rolling

I can't tell you how excited I am that the Puget Sound area has finally gotten its mobile abattoir program rolling. Following the lead of San Juan County, small farms in the area now have access to a mobile slaughterhouse unit that allows them to not have to ship their animals down to Oregon for USDA-inspected facility "processing".

It didn't make sense for these local farms to be able to tout their products as local if there was so much mileage involved in getting their meat from farm to table. This specially built, 45-foot, stainless-steel trailer, officially called a "Mobile Meat Processing Unit", now lets small, local farms supply local meat without all the hassles inherent in selling live animals to consumers.

This whole thing got me thinking about chickens, so I asked the program manager of Puget Sound Fresh if this unit is available to a collective of backyard urban chicken farmers and, apparently, it's just for hooved animals. However, I was informed that there are actually small units you can buy/rent for backyard efforts.

For those of you in the area, a group on Vashon Island got a small grant to purchase a plucker and now they train people on how to harvest their chickens and process them. So, I can certainly see how a group of backyard chicken breeders could band together to process their own birds. It would certainly take a lot of the issues out of dispatching your own cluckers.

Would you be more apt to raise animals for meat if you had access to either an abattoir or a local group to help you?

Picture courtesy of The Seattle Times.

Sustainably grown certifications explained

There are so many certification labels on food these days and the most confusing are the ones stemming from organic, organic alternatives, naturally grown and the like. As you try to choose sustainably grown foods, it is important to have a good understanding of what each of the labels means.

So, I've put together a brief primer of what the most common certifications generally mean, so you have a better idea of what you are buying and can feel confident when you are purchasing from sustainable-oriented farms that you are choosing something that is safe for the environment, your health and your family.

Certified Organic - When a product is labeled "certified organic" it means that the grower has complied with the following standards:

avoided most synthetic chemical inputs (e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, food additives, etc), genetically modified organisms, irradiation, and the use of sewage sludge

used farmland that has been free from chemicals for a number of years (often, three or more)

kept detailed written production and sales records (audit trail)

maintained strict physical separation of organic products from non-certified products

undergone periodic on-site inspections

Claimed Ecologically Safe - There is no certification for this, it is the producer making the claim to use organic practices (see above), but without being checked. Not all farmers can afford the process of becoming organic certified, so they will follow the organic farming guidelines but won't pay for an actual certification.

Certified Naturally Grown From the CNG website, "when USDA's Organic program was implemented in 2002, many farms earning more than $5,000 per year were forced to make a difficult choice: either pay high certification fees and complete mounds of paperwork to become Certified Organic, or else give up using the word 'organic' to describe their produce and/or livestock.

Believing that neither choice was very attractive, some farmers created Certified Naturally Grown to provide an alternative way to assure their customers that they observed strict growing practices. CNG strives to strengthen the organic movement by removing financial barriers to certification that tend to exclude smaller direct-market farms, while preserving high standards for natural production methods."

Details of the certification standards can be found here, but suffice it to say that they are very similar to the Organic certification standards, just more affordable.

Food Alliance Certification - The Food Alliance site states that this certification is: "independently verified by a third-party certifier. To be certified, farms, ranches, and food handlers need to meet a comprehensive hierarchy of standards, evaluation criteria, and indicators."

These standards include (but are not limited to):

Providing safe and fair working conditions

Ensuring the health and humane treatment of animals

No use of hormones or non-therapeutic antibiotics

No genetically modified crops or livestock

Reducing pesticide use and toxicity through integrated pest management

Protecting soil and water quality

Protecting and enhancing wildlife habitat

And, for those of you who live in the Northwest:

Salmon Safe Certification - According to the Salmon Safe website: "The Salmon-Safe label on a product means it was created using healthy practices that keep Pacific Northwest rivers clean enough for native salmon to spawn and thrive. Farms and urban sites earn Salmon-Safe certification after a rigorous assessment that includes on-the-ground inspection by expert independent certifiers.

Land managers can do much to promote healthy landscapes for salmon by planting trees along riverside areas, improving irrigation systems to reduce erosion, and limiting pesticides and other pollution from reaching waterways. On a product, the Salmon-Safe logo refers to how the crop is produced, not to the food or beverage product itself."

So, there you go. I hope this helps clarify some of the labels and certifications you see when making food purchasing choices. Really, the best way to know how your food is grown is to talk to your grower by visiting their websites, meeting them at farmers markets and going to their farms if at all possible!

The pets in your pet food

I ran across this information while I was researching something else, but I thought it was important to share this with you. With the recent melamine scare in our pet foods, this should help bring to light what also is in your pet's food.

Most commercial pet food ingredients all start at the rendering plant, where carcasses of various dead animals are rendered into a by-product that is used primarily for animal and pet feed. What goes into this mix? Well, downed farm animals, dead laboratory animals, what's left over after slaughter of meat and hide animals (such as heads, hoofs, bowels, diseased parts, tumors, bones, contaminated meat and the like), road kill, euthanized or dead companion animals (aka pets), restaurant grease and garbage, and pastries and meat past their pull date from grocery stores.

Given that the amount of money spent on the rendering process does not allow for simple processing of the inputs into the plant coupled with the volume being dealt with, things like flea collars, metal tags, plastic bags, pesticide ear tags from cattle, and the Styrofoam and wrappings from bad grocery store meat all get thrown into the grinder. This is also not to mention the quantities of Sodium Phenobarbital in the bodies of euthanized animals and how that survives the rendering process. I can't imagine these things can be good for your pet in any amount.

When you see the upscale "real meat" stamped proudly on the side of your bag of pet food, they are not referring to the happy chunks of meat that are shown on the packaging and in commercials. Real meat, as defined by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), is anything but that.

What you are getting in "real meat" is the "flesh derived from slaughtered mammals and is limited to that part of the striate muscle that is skeletal or that which is found in the tongue, diaphragm, heart, or esophagus; with or without the accompanying and overlying fat and the portions of the skin, sinew, nerve, and blood vessels that normally accompany the flesh." Meat by-products are pretty much what's left that wasn't included in that list. Basically, anything listed as "by-product" or "meal" is generally bottom of the barrel material and probably inedible, at that.

As for what is listed as "lamb" or "chicken", the AAFCO allows the rendering plant to call whatever the dominant amount of animal is in that run. Say, for example, that 20% of a run consisted of lamb parts, 15% chicken parts, 15% beef parts, 15% cat and dog carcasses, 15% grocery store refuse, 10% roadkill and 10% waste kitchen grease, that run can be legitimately called "lamb".

And it will be sold as "lamb" and packaged as such on your pet food ingredient list, even though it contains, as you can see, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink. And I'm not including the excrement and trace bits of plastic and garbage that got ground in there as well.

Finally, not all of this rendered material gets exclusively sold for pet food. It also gets sold as livestock feed used to feed the animals that are raised for human consumption.

Now, before we get into a major cracker grinding session here, let me also point out that rendering plants provide an extremely useful service without which there would be tons of rotting animal carcasses spreading diseases far and wide. So, how do we deal with the issue at hand? The rendering plants reduce the carcass burden and turn it into something less of a public health threat - at least directly. The pet food industry fills the gap of what to do with the rendered product. I can't say I could, in good faith, feed my pets this output since I've read this, but what do you do with all this junk?

Essentially, humans are mostly at fault for the necessity of rendering plants. If we didn't raise farm animals, own pets or buy meat from restaurants and grocery stores, there would be no input into this system. Any roadkill or animals dying on their own could be buried or decompose in the wild. In other words, the volume would be considerably less and more manageable.

So, is the very act that we demand meat and companion animals creating this burden on the other end that, literally, feeds back into the system? Rendered products feed livestock and pets which is turn get rendered into feeding more livestock and pets, ad nauseum. It's easy enough to say that we should demand that our livestock and pet food be human quality feed, but then what do we do with the output of the rendering plants? The only way I can see a solution to this problem is to reduce the inputs.

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to solve this problem? Has this changed your perception of the pet foods you purchase?

Additional reading:
Food Pets Die For
Protect Your Pet

The other white meat

Last week The New Scientist reported the results of a study regarding the disease rates in organic pigs versus ones raised conventionally.

This is a no brainer, right? The organic pigs are by far going to be healthier, have less exposure to disease given their healthier living conditions and just generally be happier and shinier, right? Um, well, no.

According to the study, done by researchers from the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University, of the U.S. pigs that were tested, they found traces of Salmonella in 39% of the conventionally raised pigs (which are routinely given antibiotics) and in 54% of organic pigs raised outdoors without the drugs. Did you just snort those pork rinds out yer snout? Well, read on.

Additionally, the study found that two of the organic pigs had signs of infection with Trichinella, our dear roundworm friend that can cause trichinosis when undercooked pork is eaten. Trichinella has been nearly eradicated in livestock in the the U.S. and Europe, although it still exists in wildlife. The rate they found it was 23 times the average frequency in conventional piggies.

And, just to wrap things up, the researchers also found traces of the parasite Toxoplasma, which is carried by cats and other animals, in 1% of conventional pigs and 7% of free-range animals. For those of you who have been pregnant, you will recognize this as the parasite that can damage developing fetuses.

Now, before you start throwing out all your organic pork products in fear for your life let me remind you that as long as pork is cooked thoroughly according to federal guidelines, the presence of these infectious agents in food animals should pose no risk to human health. So, what's one to do? Shooting pigs up with antibiotics prophylactically breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but not giving them drugs means more animals carry Salmonella and other nasties.

This doesn't, of course, take into consideration animal welfare or other environmental impacts, but if we were to look strictly at food safety this poses a huge conundrum. Does eliminating antibiotic pre-treatment create an environment for the resurgence of diseases that we thought were somewhat under control? What does this all signify and can the same parallels be drawn in other animal stock? Will we see similar results if organic poultry and cattle operations are similarly studied and compared against conventional?

The obvious argument will be just to choose a vegan or vegetarian diet and you then eliminate all chance of meat-borne pathogens, but let's face it, that's just not a realistic answer.

Now comes the biggest question of them all, if you dig deep into the bowels of the original study article in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease you'll find this gem: "This project was funded by a grant from the National Pork Board (NPB-04-108)."

How significant is that? If you read the study it appears that the researchers are basically just reporting the numbers of animals found exhibiting the presence of certain pathogens, but we all know how numbers can be massaged to support one argument over another. How can we trust food safety research if there is the possibility of an ulterior motive funded by industry?

In either case, we are in a bit of a pickle. On one hand, organic pork appears to have more contaminants. If this isn't actually the case, then we are being bombarded by food safety studies that are skewed to smear the organic industry.

So, what should we do with this information?