Chicken Little

Sometimes I think policy-minded food bloggers are like Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes Again when he delivers the line, "Now then, what do we know? One, that Professor Fassbinder and his daughter have been kidnapped. Two, that someone has kidnapped them. Three, that my hand is on fire."

In case you haven't heard, the USDA has expressed interest in changing some poultry-related trade rules with China. Specifically, the USDA wants to import cooked chicken products from China provided that the chickens originally came from the United States or Canada.

To which part of this development have bloggers devoted their attention?

The part where they get their facts wrong.

Many reputable blogs, most notably Eat Local Challenge, conveniently forgot to mention that the imported chicken will be cooked to safe service temperatures. In fact, Expat Chef went so far as say that the chickens would be "processed" (which normally means slaughtered and broken down) in China. That is not, in fact, what the USDA has in mind. The idea is that the chickens would be raised in the United States or Canada, slaughtered here, and then sent overseas to be cooked. This cooked chicken will then be imported back into the US.

Moreover, many sources ground their objection to the policy in a supposed risk of HPAI H5N1 avian influenza. This risk is greatly exaggerated. The World Health Organization says that conventional cooking temperatures can completely inactivate the virus (PDF, 204 kb). The temperature the WHO gives, 70°C (158°F), is substantially less than the proper safe service temperatures given by the USDA. Yes, that temperature has to be reached in all parts of infected meat to kill the virus. However, this CCP is just as likely to be performed adequately here as anywhere else in the world. If undercooked contaminated meat did get through, it is possible that there could be a HPAI outbreak in the United States as a result. But while it increases the risk, I think most would agree that it is an acceptable one with the proper control measures.

The USDA has to approve each processing facility on an individual basis. After reading Fast Food Nation, I have serious doubts about whether a USDA inspection actually means anything. I mean, you can't tell me that there are the same kinds of negligence in US processing facilities as there are with the problems noted by Food and Water Watch in a letter to Congress. But the real objection, then, should be to clean up the poor condition of many domestic poultry processing facilities.

But there are several points that I feel haven't gotten the treatment they deserve.

First, this is OLD news. The policy was proposed on November 23, 2005 and blogs are only now crying foul?

Second, what in the ham sandwich are we doing importing cooked food from other countries? The real problem that I have with all of this is that food has gotten to be such a commodity that we're importing what can only presumed to be Chicken McNuggets and Hungry Man Dinners. I can understand importing raw foods. But cooked foods? What ever happened to the joy of cooking food yourself? Since when were we worker bees content with MRE rations? If that doesn't illustrate just about everything that's wrong with the food industry, I don't know what does. This doesn't mean that meat cooked abroad should be banned, but the fact that there's such a demand for crap food should be alarming to everyone. And to say nothing of the fossil fuel expenditure to send chickens across the Pacific. Twice.

Third, this arrangement was developed through diplomacy with China. The idea is something like this: if we import chicken from China, they're more likely to import our beef. Why don't they want to import our beef? Because the US government has a "if you don't see it, it must not be there" approach to BSE. Instead of, you know, testing a statistical sample of cows continuously to ensure food safety (and indeed, preventing independent companies and individuals from performing such tests by law) as other places like the European Union and Japan have done, we'd rather outsource more jobs and increase our chances of dying of the avian bird flu (if some analysts, with the caveat noted above, are to be believed). You would think that at some point it would be in our interests to actually take responsible steps to improving the quality of meat in this country in a documented and verifiable manner so we don't have to bend over backwards for other countries to accept our agricultural exports.

And even if this plan goes the way the US wants it to and China starts importing US beef, we're still increasing the risk and potentially promoting the spread of BSE around the globe.

Finally, many bloggers founded their objections on terms that seem racist to me. Rutsuyasun at Terminus Reality said, "Do we trust China to properly cook the chicken? I don't." This from a country that has been making chicken dishes for a very long time. This from a country that produces "our nice crap" as Stephen Colbert recently put it. But in all seriousness, many sophisticated products come from China from pharmaceuticals to electronics to organic-labeled food. If there were an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in, say, Spain, would these same people be saying that they don't trust the Spanish to properly cook a chicken?

The real issue is that there is a demand for chicken cooked in far away places. Cooking is no longer something that is done in our own homes or even our own local restaurants. This is a new step toward the delocalization of food and cooking. But we don't have to buy it. We don't have to settle for less. You can still buy a chicken from your local farmer.

The Cookie Cutter

In today's Wisconsin State Journal, columnist Bill Wineke took a stand against a new line of dolls for young girls. These dolls look normal enough, except that they come with a Bible lesson, cookie cutters and a recipe, and a list of activities. In his column, Wineke argues that such toys could have a deleterious effect on the upbringing of girls who might, as a result, aspire to a life of traditional domesticity.

Fair enough. All children, whether boys and girls, should decide for themselves what kind of life they want. For many, this involves some balance of a career and a family. Others may ultimately decide to do one or the other. It's not clear to me that one choice is inherently better than the other. Feminism, after all, is about giving women the right to work as their skills and desires dictate, not about women working. Toys play a role in that upbringing. I played with a lot of GI Joes when I was little, and for the longest time I wanted to attend the Naval Academy. So it's not unreasonable based on my personal experience with toys that a domestically-oriented toy might encourage girls to place too much emphasis upon family life, just like GI Joes maybe encouraged me to develop too much interest in military struggle.

What is unreasonable is Wineke's many unwritten assumptions throughout his article. For one thing, it's not clear to me that Leah, Elisabeth, and Abigail are really all about staying home, never thinking about working outside the home, and smashing the many contributions of feminism. They're dolls, and children impose their own narratives onto them -- not the other way around.

Since this is a food blog I'll go into but one of thing that gave me pause. Wineke wonders if "making cookies is the highest aspiration we can set for our daughters."

Since when were cooking and baking trifles, spurious activities that should not be taken Seriously? Learning to cook is good thing. It encourages healthy eating habits, independence, and gets you doing something with your hands. And it's a craft that anyone can take pride in, and whose product appeals to everyone. It can lead to an increasingly respected profession on top of that. Cooking can be incredibly simple or incredibly complex. I'm sure if they were instead Science Dolls that came with a protractor, Wineke would ask if drawing circles was "the highest aspiration we can set for our daughters." It's not like Science Doll owners would be deriving Euclid's Elements with it.

It bothers me that most people view cooking in the context of home economics, rather than a craft. This approach, reinforced by public education, seem bass ackwards to me. The food I made in home economics was not stuff that I'd ever want to eat. We made pizza by toasting some bread, spreading some canned pasta sauce on top of it, along with some pre-grated cheese, and pre-sliced pepperoni. Could you imagine coming home from work and making that for dinner? Yeah, I can't either.

Cooking is an important skill, and an important component of a cultural identity. If that identity is reflected by the "pizza" I learned how to make in junior high, then it's a sad state of affairs. Children should be taught to make food that tastes good and that they can take pride in. When I taste the difference between a canned product and one I've made myself, this little lightbulb has always gone off in my head telling me "so this is what it's supposed to taste like." Once you taste the difference between something as simple as homemade stock, as opposed to the canned stuff, you're hooked. Not because someone made you to combine ingredients somehow or because it's good for you or because it saves money. But because it's what you actually want.

If Proverbs-reading, feminism-crushing, cookie-baking dolls motivate children to actually make a cookie... well... that's something important, isn't it?

The GRAS is always greener...

Health-minded organizations and bloggers have suggested that the FDA remove salt from the list of food ingredients that are generally regarded as safe (GRAS). Most notably, the American Medical Association jumped on the bandwagon last year. The argument goes something like this: Salt is bad for you. It can cause high blood pressure, and increase your chances of having a heart attack. And studies have linked an over-consumption of salt with everything from asthma to osteoporosis. Clearly anything that increases your chances of finding yourself at the bottom of a six foot hole is not safe, and should not be "generally regarded" as such.

Proponents of this idea do have a point, although only to a limit. Many ready-to-eat convenience foods and restaurants serve salt way in excess of the recommended daily allowance of 5.8 g. This practice is bad for the health of diners, who might otherwise be led to believe that the food they chose is healthy given a variety of common label claims (low fat, heart smart, etc.). Reducing salt intake by 50% as the American Medical Association recommends would likely contribute to better health.

However, I kind of wonder how many of these activists have actually looked into the regulations they want changed.

First and foremost, what does it mean for an ingredient to be have GRAS status? Well, it actually might be easier to say what GRAS doesn't mean. According to the FDA, "GRAS ... status does not guarantee a substance's safety."

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to business. In 1958, the US Congress passed a measure that divides all things added to food into four categories: food additives, prior sanctioned, generally regarded as safe, and color additives. Food additives, what activists argue salt should be classified as, must be approved by the FDA before they can be used in any amount. Substances that have GRAS status are said to have a "long, safe history of safe history of common use in food" or have been adequately demonstrated to be safe by science. GRAS substances don't need to be tested because they have been used for such a long time that the safety is taken for granted.

This sentiment is codified in law in title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations section 182.1 ("21 CFR 182.1") where it is stated

(a) It is impracticable to list all substances that are generally recognized as safe for their intended use. However, by way of illustration, the Commissioner regards such common food ingredients as salt, pepper, vinegar, baking powder, and monosodium glutamate as safe for their intended use. This part includes additional substances that, when used for the purposes indicated, in accordance with good manufacturing practice, are regarded by the Commissioner as (generally) recognized as safe for such uses.

In struggling to define what GRAS status means, I found consolation in the fact that the FDA can't seem to define it either. At any rate, the ensuing sections provide a list of substances that are generally considered to be safe. This list includes everything from alfalfa to zedoary bark and amusingly lard and hydrogenated tallow (when contributed to food from cotton or cotton fabrics used in dry food packaging).

My main objection to the reclassification of salt is that it is not the consumption of salt that's unhealthy, it's the over consumption that results in adverse health effects. Within recommended levels, salt is absolutely essential for the human body to function. Consuming too much of nearly anything will bring you to harm, as the news story that came out today of a woman dying of water intoxication so poignantly demonstrates. If drinking too much water will kill you, so will consuming too much lactic acid or zein. And especially ethanol (the chemical that makes you drunk). So in challenging the GRAS status of good ol' sodium chloride, the entire basis of the GRAS classification is being challenged if dosage is ignored. Everything is bad for you if you consume too much of it, therefore nothing can be regarded as safe?

The bottom line is that people have been seeking out salt to eat for thousands of years. It can't be that bad for you.

If the proponents of the measure have anything going for them, it's that the FDA could do a better job of making sure that salt levels are reasonable. Indeed, the government already mandates that (21 CFR 182.1)

(b) For the purposes of this section, good manufacturing practice shall be defined to include the following restrictions:

(1) The quantity of a substance added to food does not exceed the amount reasonably required to accomplish its intended physical, nutritional, or other technical effect in food; and

(2) The quantity of a substance that becomes a component of food as a result of its use in the manufacturing, processing, or packaging of food, and which is not intended to accomplish any physical or other technical effect in the food itself, shall be reduced to the extent reasonably possible.

Well, then, the amount of any GRAS substance added to food must be the very least necessary to accomplish its function. Most fast food products probably add salt in excess of this limit. However unless otherwise stated 21 CFR only applies to the manufacture of food products, not restaurants (see 21 CFR 1.327). Then again, many prepackaged food items probably contain unreasonable amounts of salt as well. The FDA could challenge the manufacturers of these products to reduce the amount of sodium in their products.

I have mixed feelings, though, about the FDA compelling manufacturers into strict compliance. For one thing, just because something is unhealthy doesn't mean that it should be illegal. The sodium content of all prepacked food is already required thanks to 21 CFR 101.9, so consumers can if they are sufficiently inclined be knowledgeable and make reasonable decisions accordingly. Eating The Big One is bad for my health, but the government shouldn't prevent me from eating it if I want to. And besides, government involvement tends to make things suck. Take a look at Chicago banning the sale of foie gras.

Eating a healthy diet is important, and salt is a critical part of one. To the extent that we'd all be healthier if we ate less salt, I applaud the AMA for the reminder. Their argument, however, doesn't make sense in the context of federal regulations. And, frankly, it fails the common sense test too.

Attack of the clones

For those of you who haven't yet heard, the FDA issued a statement last week that concludes that milk and meat from cloned animals is safe to eat. While the press has taken this as an announcement that the FDA has conclusively decided that cloned meat is safe, and many bloggers have responded with alarm, things might not be so bad as they appear.

For starters, the FDA is not making this stuff up. From a regulatory standpoint, the question of the safety of cloned meat is a valid one. The FDA is charged with investigating the issue and reaching a decision. It seems the FDA consulted the professional literature on the subject and found insubstantial evidence that cloned meat is unhealthy. In response, they drafted a risk assessment, risk management plan, and guidelines for industry. And issued the press release that started this whole debate.

At first the issue seemed downright bizarre to me. After all, who would want to clone farm animals? Who is pushing for this and why? The who half, at least, is easy: the mega-dairy industry.

In the conventional dairy industry, revenue is proportional to the volume of milk produced. The more milk is produced, the higher your profits can be with the same size herd. Farmers from top to bottom do everything to maximize production. They feed cows the bovine equivalent of Science Diet. They restrict and often deny access to pasture. The milk production of each cow is often closely monitored until the cow's production starts to decline at the age of four, at which time it is slaughtered. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make the best living you can. And if consumers ultimately wanted their milk and meat from pastoral settings, they would demand it with their wallets. However, cloning offers the possibility of refining this a step further. A good cow can be cloned. Then these clones can be mated to produce an entire herd of cows that produce a lot of milk.

One source has said that the cost of cloning one animal is something in the ball park of $20,000. As a result, the idea is that farmers would clone a small handful of animals and then breed the clones the old fashioned way. When these clones get older, farmers would like to be able to sell these animals for slaughter. Thus, the chance that an individual would consume a clone is ridiculously small.

However, there are many reasons why farm animals should not be cloned.

The first reason that jumps out at me is genetic diversity. Traditionally, milk and beef came from the kinds of cattle in the local community. Due to slit-throat competition, many of these farmers have opted for breeds that have a milk production that is copious and has a desirable fat content. Today, one breed of cow -- the holstein -- accounts for over 90% of the US dairy herd. Genetic diversity ought to be preserved as a buffer against disease if for no other reason. The cloning of livestock only exacerbates this problem by reducing the genetic diversity in that one breed of cow.

The cloning of animals for food pushes the US away from the rest of the world, which would seem to be bad economic policy. The US is already on thin ice with our "if you don't look for it, you won't find it" approach to BSE. If the EU or Japan decided that they weren't going to import US meat that resulted from cloning, the entire meat industry in the United States would be significantly compromised. There is no analytical test to determine if an animal has been cloned, and so there is no way for a country that bans cloned foodstuffs to selectively block its entry. US farmers, then, would have to either slaughter entire herds or face closed markets abroad. You'd think that US farmers would want to raise their livestock in a way that would allow it compete or even oust its competitors. Cloning livestock for food does the opposite.

Third, competition in the dairy industry is fierce. The twenty large price tag for cloning an animal is a hugely expensive proposition for many dairy operations. If a farmer can't pony up the money, they'll be at a competitive disadvantage. If they can pony up the money, they lose a great deal of capital which could threaten the financial solvency of the business. The net effect is to encourage the trend toward large scale confinement operations, and discourage traditional family-run dairy operations.

Fourth, ground meat is often a mixture of the meat of hundreds of animals. One cloned cow in a herd results in a whole batch of potentially "bad for you" meat.

Fifth, and I believe this point to be especially important, is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because studies have failed to demonstrate any negative health impacts due to the consumption of cloned meat doesn't mean that it's safe to eat. Many of these studies have not been conducted for extended periods of time. While there's no bio-logical reason to suppose that cloned meat is in any way different from eating traditional meat, the long-term effects are not known.

As a result of any one of these factors, including food safety, the FDA should opt against the sale of cloned animals for food. Failing that, the government ought at the very least to require food from cloned animals to be labeled as such. Consumers should have the ability to make a reasonable choice as to what they eat and what they don't.

First Taste: Capital Vintage Ale

The Capital Brewery (Middleton, WI) made some waves this year by releasing a beer that's just begging to be aged. As an experiment, I want to drink my "Capital Square" four-pack over the next year and trace its development. To achieve a baseline, however, I needed to open one now. Tentatively, I'm going to label the remainder of my bottles as follows:
Bottle 2: open first day of spring 2007
Bottle 3: open first day of autumn 2007
Bottle 4: open January 1, 2008

It's true that most beers do not develop with age beyond a certain point, but then again most wines don't either. What makes strong ales so well suited to aging is their above-average alcohol content and aggressive hopping. Weighing in at 8.5% alcohol, this beer is definitely within style norms for this high gravity ale.




The twist-off bottle opened with a hiss bursting with Kent goldings and cascade hop aroma, nuanced by some yeasty and mineral notes. When poured vigorously into a glass, the nose demonstrated extreme restraint. Only a decided yeast and faint hop aroma was detectable.

The ale had a rich, warm copper color that was perfectly clear. Many small bubbles rose to the surface, but the carbonation was understated as is appropriate for the style. This lead to a small head of about 2 mm that disappeared almost instantly. The color was unexpectedly light, given the style, but this fact made the beer more surprising and interesting given the stiff hopping and malty backbone.

The flavors are dominated by a progression of complex malt flavors that progress across the mouth like a parade. The first taste is bready like childhood memories of grandma's house. This flavor morphs into a more biscuity maltiness before fading into a warm, generic malt flavor. The hopping is up-front, but not dominating, resulting in a beer that is quite bitter with little hop flavor or aroma. There are hints of vanilla, orange juice, and the tart quality of grapefruit as the beer warmed in the glass. The flavor experience is intense as the beer is slightly viscous and the flavor seems to concentrate on the back of the tongue and on the roof of the mouth, possessing a tannic quality I would normally associate with a red wine. There is also a fair amount of residual sugar in the flavor that gives me high hopes for the continued development of this ale. The beer is almost immediately warming, and is strong enough to demand sipping. This more rewarding than it sounds, however, as the taste persists in the mouth for several minutes.

I don't want to make this beer sound like a brute that would knife you in a dark alley or steal your wallet. It's not that. The flavor demonstrates an admirable level of restraint, which makes the flavor experience very precise and controlled despite the strength. The beer has a great ale-ish character, a certain wildness to the flavor that isn't too clean, that wasn't reined in by the brewer to make it more polite and docile. Even the carbonation attested to that, as more carbonation would certainly have made it overly bitter and astringent on the palate. It would have been easy to push this beer too far and wind up with a barley wine. The very fact that the Capital Brewery instead got Vintage Ale is a remarkable feat of craftsmanship.

With any luck, this craftsmanship with shine for some time to come.

Spoiled

People have asked me why I haven't supported groups like the Organic Consumers' Association or the Family Farm Defenders. These groups have admirable goals but their voice is deleteriously affected by "off topic" opinions.

Before I dish, let me say that I have the greatest respect for these groups when they are "on topic." I owe a debt of gratitude to the Organic Consumers' Association for bringing to my attention a study by the Cornucopia Institute which names brands of milk are labeling their milk "USDA Organic" despite being from industrial farms (i.e. a violation of 205.239.1-2 of the National Organic Program regulation). I respect the Family Farm Defenders for their opposition to industrial scale farms, rBGH, genetic modification of food products, and the conditions which favor BSE.

The mission statement of these groups is as follows

Organic Consumers' Association: The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability. The OCA deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability and other key topics.

Family Farm Defenders: Our mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice. FFD has worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative endeavors, form a mutual marketing agency, and forge alliances with consumers through providing high quality food products while returning a fair price to farmers.

It would seem odd, then, that these groups would go out on a limb to do things that are politically controversial, completely unrelated to their mission statements, and divisive.

Example one. The Organic Consumers' Association links to an article written by Heather Wokusch for the progressive opinion website Common Dreams in which she intones -- completely without evidence -- that Karl Rove was personally responsible for the anthrax attacks following the September 11 attacks as well as the nerve agent scare on Capitol Hill earlier this year. She goes on to suggest that the Karl Rove might use "some form of bioweapons attack," invade Iran, or capture bin Laden in October to rally the conservative vote for the November mid-term elections.

Example two. The Organic Consumers' Association links to an article written by Allan Uthman for the leftist website AlterNet whose mission involves opposition to the "right wing media machine" and building a "progressive echo chamber" that argues that that the US is becoming a police state based upon ten current events. He argues that the confluence of everything from "touchscreen voting machines" to "signing statements" (i.e. executive orders) to the prosecution of "high-ranking whistleblowers" (i.e. the polite term for someone who leaks information that you find useful or with whom you agree) is "becoming a police state."

Example three. Alongside books with clearly applicable titles like "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" and "Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Lawn into a Garden" there are titles with no applicability like "The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq" (the cover of which sports a comic image of "King George") and "Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 9/11" (which argues that Bush was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks). These are books with extraordinarily controversial content that doesn't apply to the OCA's mission, yet the OCA endorses them anyway.

Example four. Family Farm Defenders has endorsed the pacifist organization Farms Not Arms. This organization believes that resources spent toward martial causes is "misappropriated" and "wasted" because it could be used for ending "poverty, injustice, and religious intolerance." Interestingly, this group is officially endorsed by George Naylor, the president of the Organic Consumers' Association. I consider pacifism a radical political idea, and one that is extraordinarily divisive.

Example five. When Anna Lappé spoke at the Food for Thought Festival in Madison a few weeks ago, she shared a story in which she verbally sucker punched food scientists and made numerous attacks against "white men". (In the interests of transparency, please note that I'm a professional chemist working in industry. My opinion on this matter is thus biased. I'm also male and am as proud of it as any feminist is of being female.) She relates a story in which she obtained a press pass to visit a scientific conference on industrially processed foods. Being someone interested in real food, she was disturbed that each attendee praised industrial foods to a panel of like-minded scientists. So disturbed, in fact, that she asked the panel of food scientists why, if their products were so safe, a major company that wasn't in attendance at the conference paid a south-east asian country several million dollars to by-pass requisite food safety testing before their product could be imported. When the panel didn't have a coherent response and she was evicted from the conference, Lappé felt vindicated in her view of industrial food being unsafe and unwilling to have a dialog with the public. To great laughs, Lappé told the Food for Thought audience that she was told that her question was "off topic." If her anecdote demonstrates anything, it's that she's too eager to draw negative conclusions of entities that are the "bad guys" according to her weltanschauung. If an antievolution activist (presumably a "white male" from Kansas) asked a pointed question that favored creationism at a conference of evolutionary scientists, Lappé would probably applaud conference staff for evicting the member for being "off topic" and confrontational. When she does the exact same thing, however, she paints herself as a victim and a heroic crusader standing up against the Man. I don't think she fully understands that food companies are businesses. She wants to "have a dialog" with these companies, but she doesn't seem to realize that these companies would have to pay someone to have a dialog back to her. I'm not sure she'd appreciate it if Monsanto would call her up where she works and ask what temperature her thermostat is set to, or how may gallons of gas she's used to promote her books, or what the environmental consequences of manufacturing the ink for her book might be.

Please understand that I'm not a policy strategist. But I would think that if I were going to promote a cause, I'd want to get as many people on my side as possible. I'd put my argument forward in its most pointed, most basic state. That is, I'd do what Habitat for Humanity does. Habitat founder Millard Fuller believes in what he calls the "Theology of the Hammer." That is, whatever religious, political, or personal beliefs you have, everyone can agree that no one should be forced to be homeless. Everyone can find common ground by taking up a hammer for a common cause to confront a common problem. It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist. It doesn't matter if you voted for George Bush or John Kerry or Ralph Nader. Everyone agrees that it's a bad thing that some people are forcibly homeless.

I shouldn't have to sign on to nutcase conspiracy theories, pacifism, political pessimism, or be ashamed of being a "white male" scientist to join others in expressing my support of real food.

Similarly, I would think that everyone can agree that food should be nutritious, plentiful, delicious, healthy, and ethical. The Organic Consumers' Association and the Family Farm Defenders agree, too. But I'm withholding my support until they dedicate themselves solely to the promotion and defense of real food -- and stop clowning around.

Tasting Notes: Fraoch Heather Ale

In honor of my friend Heather's twenty-first birthday, I sipped at one of the world's oldest and rarest beers. Before Humulus lupulus became the bittering ingredient de rigueur of beer, people were making beer with what ingredients that they could find on hand. And in Scotland, where hops can't grow well anyway, this meant using the flowers of the abundant heather plant.

This beer style was nearly forgotten until homebrew shop owner Bruce Williams took a gamble with a family recipe for "leann fraoich" (heather ale in the gaelic language) and began brewing in Argyll. Before long, he expanded his operation by contractin with the family-owned Maclay Brewery in Alloa. Williams opened a quaint new brew house in Strathaven in 1997, but he still brews some of his beer under contract with Maclay's.

Only a handful of brewers have taken up the challenge of brewing a beer with heather, instead of hops. This is, no doubt, a challenge because the heather can be added as bittering hops (during the boil) and finishing hops (at the end of the boil and sparging). It's easy to imagine that the methods of brewing with hops are well known, and that any brewer who forgoes them for heather is placed on a fairly unforgiving learning curve with few peers to help.

Fraoch Heather Ale, being the standard bearer of a re-emerging beer style, promised to be a good introduction to the Scottish tradition of ancient herbed ales.

The bottle bursts open with a gentle breeze of floral aromas. Upon further inspection, the smell is extremely reminscent of walking into a greenhouse filled with flowers. A number of very well-defined flower aromas grace the nose. Underneath the obvious, however, there's a layer of pleasant grassy, earthy, and hay-like aromas. Strangely, the beer has a sweet smell to it that made me worry that the ale would be cloying and undrinkable to my pallate. Once I put my nose into the glass, I resolved the sweetness as a fruity plum aroma.

The beer itself is a brilliant orange-gold color when held up to lamp light. The turbidity of the ale is a striking feature, helping to accentuate the color and making it seem slightly darker than it actually is. Fraoch is only lightly carbonated, and thus doesn't raise much of a head. I think this is appropriate for the style.

The beer opens with a surprisingly sweet sensation in the front of the mouth. This rapidly gives way to an ephemeral taste of bitterness all along the tongue. The nature of the bitterness is threw me a bit off guard, as it wasn't a hop-like bitterness. Rather, it was an extremely dense floral bitterness that couldn't be more potent if you chewed on flowers. After the bitterness begins to recede, a slightly dry sensation is left in the back of the mouth. This effect of flavors rippling across the pallate, teasing it every step along the way, makes it a very drinkable beverage. But because of the bitterness, it certainly is not sessionable. Despite a lack of carbonation, the beer fizzes on the tongue slightly which leaves the pallate refreshed after each sip.

The bitterness was held in place by a robust Scottish malt flavor that is by itself slightly reminiscent of much heavier Scotch ales. The maltiness dominated the floral aroma when the beer was chilled out of my refrigerator. As it warmed up slightly in the glass, the floral aromas really opened up and outweighed the malt flavors. This flavor transition was interesting, of course, but I felt that the beer somehow lacked balance as a result.

There's a slight minerality to the flavor, which helps bring out the other flavors in the ale. At 5% abv, I was happy that I didn't taste or feel any ethanol.

Despite not being a "real ale" (i.e. one that is cask-conditioned), it was an interesting and delightful beer on which to reflect on the origins of brewing. And the unique combination of floral aromas and biting bitterness makes this beer as unique as it is enchanting.

Nina Planck Recap and Response

For those of you who missed it, author Nina Planck spoke about her new book Real Food yesterday at Cafe Soleil. Planck grew up on an ecologically minded vegetable farm eating what she now calls real food: the traditional all-American diet. No, not that one, the other all-American diet of meat, whole milk, pies made with lard, and vegetables aplenty. She rose to some prominence in founding and operating fifteen farmers' markets in London with her company London Farmers' Markets. She was also the director of New York's famous Greenmarket.

From her teenage years to her writing of The Farmers' Market Cookbook, Planck practiced strict veganism on the basis that it was the healthiest diet. At the same time, she put on twenty five pounds (despite running six miles a day, six days a week), came down with colds and the flu, felt moody and irritable, had dry skin, and bad fingernails. As she gradually added eggs, butter, meat, and fish back into her diet, these symptoms quickly went away. She lost "at least" twenty five pounds and generally felt healthier. Surprised by these results, Planck was inspired to do her own research into the healthiness of traditional diets.

And we all know that traditional foods are much maligned by nutrition professionals. Margarine is recommended over butter, vegetable oil is recommended period. Eggs yolks and organ meats are to be avoided at all costs. Processed milk is recommended over farm fresh milk.

Planck's book demarcates an alternative perspective on nutrition, apart from that of the traditional professionals. Her aim, then, seems bold and subversive, but Planck intimates that the government's dietetic standards are always out-of-date and are possibly "bought off" by the food industry anyway. Her talk focused on referencing historical data that would indicate that when a community's consumption of "real food" declines in favor of "industrial food," three diseases of civilization (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease) always increase. She also makes an attempt to rationalize these trends by referencing voices from outside of the science nutrition mainstream. In particular, Planck blames so-called diseases of civilization on the increased consumption of trans fat, corn oil, and sugar.

At the present, no health-oriented organization has supported Planck's heretical views.

Before I respond to Planck's ideas, please understand that I haven't read her book and that my views are purely that of an analytical chemist listening to an author's talk. I am not a nutritional expert, so it is not my place to support or refute her thesis that real food is good for you while industrial food is bad for you.

On the whole, Planck presented an interesting and bold case for real food. However, I found Planck to have made some points that have only the most tenuous of support, and some other points that seemed downright disingenuous. Allow me to explain:

1. Correlation does not necessitate causation. Much of Planck's argument has us believe that heart disease, obesity, and diabetes have increased because of the rise in "industrial foods." She makes this claim by showing how in our grandparents' generation, people supposedly ate a greater percentage of real food and that diseases of civilization afflicted a lesser percentage of the population. If we accept, for the moment, that "real food" really has declined to the degree that Planck believes, she does nothing to logically connect the decline of "real food" to the increase in diseases in civilization. There are a myriad of other factors that could be causes, co-causes, or generally play a facilitative role, such as less exercise (as fewer Americans perform physical labor, either at work or for recreation), environmental factors, the volume of food consumed, or specific chemical properties of the foods that we eat – to name but a few.

And speaking of which, it's difficult to believe that the house is burning when you don't smell smoke or see fire. Perhaps Planck provides this information in her book, but she did nothing to demonstrate that "real food" has been eclipsed by "industrial food" to the degree that she claims.

2. Hasty generalization. Listening to Planck, one would think that she would still consider McDonald's guilty of dietetic sin if they served organic, grass-fed, free range, cruelty free beef, served with freshly baked whole wheat buns, organic tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and ketchup -- with a side of organic fries cooked in beef tallow.

Her tagline is "real food is good for you, industrial food isn't." It catches your attention, yes, but upon further inspection you see that she has no basis for bringing down all industrial food. Just those that contain trans fat, corn oil, and sugar.

If industrial scale producers of food were able to eliminate trans fat, cut back on sugar, and use different oils, Planck would have no further argument against "industrial food" except that it's not as socially conscious or energy efficient as buying food that was locally grown and raised. Planck presents her argument as a purely dietary one, but one readily understands that her argument isn't based so simply. If she doesn't like industrial food companies in part or whole because they spite local and ecologically-minded farmers with bland substitutes and try to subvert legislation designed to protected these very people and their high-minded principles to the detriment on the consumer, that's fine. But her lack of transparency on the matter is suspect.

3. Appeal to authority. Planck is constantly dismissive of the dietary mainstream and the corpus of scientific work that I imagine went into crafting current dietary guidelines. At the same time, she seems to place complete trust in "new research" whose conclusions differ from the traditional authorities in the field.

4. Ignoring root causes. Planck comes out heavily against the pasteurization of milk. In general, milk is pasteurized because the udder is so close to the anus, making sanitation both extremely important and extremely difficult. As a result of modern mega-scale milk processing facilities, the improper sanitation of one udder could result in thousands (or tens of thousands) of gallons milk becoming contaminated. Without pasteurization, this milk would be passed directly to the consumer. Pasteurization thus allows the milk industry to certify that their product in safe to consume. Milk is also pasteurized to give it a much longer shelf life, which consumers both expect and appreciate.

Now, pasteurization of milk results in a myriad of chemical changes. Maillard reactions take place, which give pasteurized milk a subtle cooked flavor. Gases are allowed to escape (which happens when you heat any liquid) which improves shelf life. Lactose is partially degraded into lactulose and organic acids. The concentration of colloidal calcium decreases. And the concentration of vitamins, including vitamin C, decreases significantly.

So, while Planck is correct in arguing that we wouldn't "have to" transport oranges across the country if milk wasn't pasteurized, her argument is disingenuous. We'd still have to transport oranges because people in Wisconsin like eating oranges and we can't grow them here. There would also be the constant threat of sickness from consuming contaminated milk, which would drive consumption way, way down.

Planck takes aim at pasteurization of milk when she should be critical of the mega-scale processing and distribution of milk.

Moreover, the nutrient content of most foods is diminished by cooking. So if you're planning on cooking those green beans, or stirring that milk into anything hot from a béchamel to a cup of hot coffee, you're destroying most of the vitamins and anti-oxidants present. Her failure to note this fact when she is critical of pasteurization was most disingenuous.


Planck's lecture was interesting, insightful, and fun. She does good work in promoting local foods, but for the moment I'll have to remain skeptical of her conclusions.

Sopa de Huitlacoche

Last year, I had the good fortune to attend a cooking class at the French Culinary Institute by none other than Aarón Sanchez (Paladar, Mixx). It was one of those transcendent culinary experiences where I pushed my boundaries of what's "good to eat" way back. Chef Sanchez served up two things that I otherwise might be afraid to try: corn smut and worms. True, he did give everyone a shot of artisanal mescal, but I was awestruck by the dishes he made. They were a combination of French technique, Mexican flair, and truly fantastic flavor combinations. After a year and a half, the thing I remember most vividly about that class -- besides being outrageously thirsty by the end of the four and a half hour demonstration -- was his huitlacoche soup.

Huitlacoche is rendered into english rather ingloriously as corn smut. It's the result of Ustilago maydis, which is present wherever corn is grown. The end result, the part that cooks are interested in, is greatly enlarged kernels. The taste is an amalgamation of mushroom and corn.

Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, it's safe to eat. The Aztecs ate it, and Mexicans have been eating it continuously ever since. Huitlacoche has always been sold at a higher price than sweet corn, being considered a delicacy. Nowadays, many growers infect maize intentionally which has helped to keep the price under control as demand has steadily increased in the United States. Which is an interesting turn of events in itself, since the USDA has spent considerable time and money trying to eradicate corn smut. With the attention of Gourmet magazine, the Slow Food movement, and the James Beard Society, huitlacoche has made some cursory inroads over the last twenty years.

Speaking of the James Beard Society, you might also have heard the term "Mexican truffle" used to denote huitlacoche. This term was coined by the Beard Society in 1989 when they hosted a high profile huitlacoche dinner. The use of this phrase should be avoided, in my opinion since huitlacoche is completely different than a truffle. Truffles are foraged; huitlacoche has been grown since ancient times. Truffles are tubers; huitlacoche grows above ground. A single truffle in a room and can fill it with a pleasant scent; huitlacoche has no scent at all (this is how you can tell if it is huitlacoche and not something that might be poisonous). Truffles grow in the wild; huitlacoche grows among a staple crop (maize is the new world equivalent of wheat in the old world). Truffles are said to invoke passion; huitlacoche doesn't. Because of the almost comical lack of similarities between the two foods, it makes little sense to confuse things by associating one with the other.

Back to my story. I had been so eager to make chef Sanchez's soup that I was prepared to use canned huitlacoche until I read that Rick Bayless compares them to canned asparagus. As luck would have it, the Troy Community Garden in Madison had a farm festival last weekend. The highlight of the festival was, for me, the huitlacoche cooking demonstrations and the sale of fresh huitlacoche for the bargain price of $2 per ear. The huitlacoche was harvested earlier than would have been ideal, but I wasn't about to complain.



That night, I made a batch of sopa de huitlacoche, which is one of the simplest soups to make.

Simply heat some vegetable oil (or home-rendered lard, if you want to be authentic) in a skillet until very hot. Sauté one onion cut into half moons and two cloves of minced garlic until the onion is translucent. Add two roasted Anaheim chiles and one roasted poblano chile, all of which have been peeled and seeded. Cook for three minutes while stirring. Then add the huitlacoche of at least three ears of corn along with fresh epazote or cilantro. Reduce heat to medium and allow to simmer for five minutes.

Blend with a little chicken stock (about three cups) to create a smooth puree that has a thin consistency. Stir in half a cup of heavy cream, and bring to a boil. Simmer for five minutes before serving hot.

What stuck chef Sanchez's huitlacoche soup in my mind was the unique flavor experience of it all. Initially, you tasted an earthy-mushroom-corn flavor from the huitlacoche before being hit with a gentle dose of heat. I've never had a soup that had multiple ingredients mixed together that you still experience distinctly. If that's what I was trying to accomplish, I unfortunately fell short.

My version, while good as its own product, didn't have the interesting parade of flavors that I experienced last year in New York. The result was that of a simple corn-mushroom soup, which was still tasty. The huitlacoche was immature, and I used cilantro instead of epazote (the fresh epazote at the store didn't look terribly fresh).

In the end, I think this exact situation is what makes cooking so interesting. An expert can write down exact step-by-step instructions on how to make a dish, but an amateur can still only approximate the results of the expert. It makes every dinner a discovery.

Fortunately, this one turned out to be delicious.

The onion I used was from Tipi Produce (Evansville, WI) and the heavy cream was from the Blue Marble Family Farm (Barneveld, WI).

On the trail of Saveur

We who cook often find ourselves trapped in our kitchens, nose to the cutting board. We eschew travel, loath to squander the opportunity to reprovision our pantries with the fresh bounty that we dream of as Yeats dreamed. Loath to miss the fleeting smells of cherry tomatoes wafting from a farmer's stand, the grittiness of loamy soil on our fingers having run them over a pile of carrots each beautiful in their uniqueness, and the quiet reverence of our fellow parishioners as our feet carry us to a place where we get a brief burst of reality as we shuck an ear of corn, undressing it to the shoulders to admire its pulchritude for a moment, knowing that there is no ear like this one that's so close, so vulnerable, so fleeting, and so dear. It is the ear that we have lusted over when we wanted to stay home from work as a refuge from a deluge of snow, when we were having an affair with ramps while flirting with asparagus, and we will dream of it again as we bootycall a pumpkin to rekindle that old flame potage de potiron. But now is the time when we revel in corn, longing to expose it completely and enjoy every last kernal before it leaves us with fond memories of companionship and resentment that it couldn't stay, like the zucchini, driving us to ever higher plateaux of ecstasy as we try dish after dish of it. But in the end, you realize that it was just another tease like everything else that you can touch but not grasp, a longing without consummation.

We have our escapes. We read about food and about its Götterdämmerung and apotheosis in becoming cuisine. We subscribe to food magazines and eagerly await their arrival the way a lesser man anticipates the coming issue of Maxim. But every once in a while, these magazines don't whisk us away on a culinary exploration of field hands' dinners in Bordeaux or fold us into the midst of street markets in Melaka, but pipes us back home into liaison with our lives as cooks and as eaters.

That was the case when I opened up the September 2006 edition of Saveur to find the Milwaukee Friday night fish fry as the cover story. It highlights the midwestern tradition as faithfully as one could expect of the writer, Milwaukee native but expatriated Daphne Beal. I would have liked a bit more mise en scene to set the tradition against the backdrop of a city with a rich but troubled history, trying to find its identity without the glory of the now defunct Blatz, Pabst, or Schlitz breweries that still stand as drab monuments to an antiquated belle epoque in the city's history. It is a city recovering from a real lack of joie de vivre that so characterizes other Wisconsin cities. I can forgive the lack of historical depth as the length of copy was surely limited, and it might have been viewed as "off topic" by the more mainstream editors. I am also grateful that Beal managed to tell the story without the usual "quaint" or "provincial" descriptions.

To me, though, the real test of the article was to visit one of the restaurants it featured. Because of its prominent downtown locale, I went to the Historic Turner Restaurant for Friday night fish fry. A striking 1883 building greets the hungry diner as he opens the door to enter into a wide hall. After ascending a few stairs, the guest is immediately greeted by the pleasant smell of food and the decorous clatter of dining. Elegant wooden walls extend to a ceiling so high that you could hardly imagine any modern building being made that way. Historic photographs garnish the walls, adding character. Unfortunately, the restaurant has gone the "sports bar" route and has deleteriously affected its historical charm by hanging large televisions all over the restaurant. Although I tried to appreciate watching the Brewers play as a cultural element essential and perhaps inseperable from the experience itself, I found it distracting.



The menu features pretty much what you'd expect: a partnership of stripped-down cornerstones of many cuisines, mostly American and German. The prices are very reasonable, given the quality of the food. But I didn't really need the menu since I was there for the fish and the potato pancakes. The beer menu was sadly uninspiring for Milwaukee. It lacked many of the staple beers that one could expect: Riverwest Stein Beer, Sprecher Black Bavarian, New Glarus Spotted Cow, or Capital Special Pilsener. It did have some beers from the Water Street Brewery Bavarian Weiss. I was also disappointed in the service as the waitron only understood the "weiss" pronunciation instead of the more beer savvy and accurate "veiss." Never having sampled the Water Street Brewery's offerings, I was pleasantly surprised with the beer. It matched the style, possessed some complexity while avoiding the cloying flavors of other "wheat" beers. They served it in the correct kind of glass, which was also a nice touch.



The cod was tasty to be sure, having been well browned on all sides. It had the pleasing flaky-tender quality of a well-cooked fish. But the potato pancakes are what really stole the show. The pancakes were made by finely grating the potatoes, which gave them a nice smooth mouthfeel as opposed to the somewhat hashbrownie mouthfeel that potato pancakes sometimes possess. They were also cooked much more evenly than we've been able to achieve in my home kitchen, which was impressive even though I know the "secret" here is just using more butter.

My only complaints about the food are the quantity and the bread. They provide much more than one person could possibly eat, which demonstrates poor portion control. Second, the rye bread was extremely uninspiring. It didn't have the deep rye flavor or the heft that bread should possess. In the restaurant's credit, the butter was served warmed instead of refrigerator cold, which demonstrated an appropriate level of attention to detail on their part.

In all, the meal was excellent. I strongly recommend getting a table at the Historic Turner Restaurant. Going there might not have been the introduction to Irish folk cooking that I've come to expect from the editors of Saveur, but it did provide introspection into my own food culture.

That and the company of good friends gathered for a great meal.