Blue Corn Crackers

I don't buy crackers very often as they always seem to have ingredients I prefer not to eat like hydrogenated oils or non-organic corn or soy ingredients that are most likely genetically engineered. Crackers are easy to make though -- pretty similar to making pie crust. I have many recipes in both Simply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook, but here's a new one I came up with recently. My daughter's friend liked it spread with freshly made peanut butter and sprinkled with sea salt.

Blue Corn Crackers
Crispy, flavorful, perfect with soup or as a snack. If you don't have blue corn meal, the regular yellow variety works just fine.

3/4 cup blue corn meal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup oil
1 tablespoon agave
3 – 4 tablespoons water, as needed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Large a medium cookie sheet with parchment paper. Mix cornmeal, whole wheat flour, and sea salt in large mixing bowl with fork. Add oil and agave and mix with fork until it begins to hold together. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time and mix with hands until mixture holds together.

Press dough into parchment lined cookie sheet. Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Score into squares with knife or pizza cutter. Bake 15 minutes, or until edges are golden. Cool 10 minutes before serving or remove to rack to cool completely.

Makes about 2 dozen crackers

How to avoid GE Sugar

According to the Organic Consumers Association, more than 70 companies have signed a pledge promising to avoid using sugar from genetically modified sugar beets "wherever possible." Unlabeled and untested GE sugar, derived from Monsanto's GE sugar beets, is now laced into hundreds of (non-organic) brand-name products. OCA and critics of genetic engineering have raised concerns that the modified beets could produce food allergies, threaten wildlife, and spread herbicide resistance or other modified traits to closely related species. See the list of companies that refuse to use GE sugar in their products.

MSG

Here is this week's Food Safety Tip from the Organic Consumers Association:

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is one of the most common and hazardous food additives on the market. MSG is reportedly more toxic than alcohol, tobacco and many drugs. MSG is an excitotoxin, so it tricks your brain into wanting to eat more and more foods containing the ingredient, even if you are already full. Side effects of MSG include: obesity, eye damage, headaches, depression, fatigue and disorientation. Food manufacturers know that health-conscious consumers try to avoid MSG, so it is oftentimes not listed in a product's ingredients. MSG is banned in organic foods.

Here's a list of ingredients that ALWAYS contain MSG:

Autolyzed Yeast -- Calcium Caseinate -- Gelatin Glutamate -- Glutamic Acid -- Hydrolyzed Protein -- Monopotassium Glutamate -- Monosodium Glutamate -- Sodium Caseinate -- Textured Protein -- Yeast Extract -- Yeast Food -- Yeast Nutrient

For more information, check out this article.

Marian Nestle

I had the pleasure of hearing Marian Nestle (author of numerous books on Food Politics) speak at Cal Poly University last night.

She gave a really good overview of some of the reasons we're having such a problem with obesity. One reason she said is that food manufacturers are under pressure to sell more food and grow their profits - which means getting us to eat more. Americans are now eating about double the calories they were in the 1980's. Here are some tricks the food manufactuers use:

- bigger portion sizes (charge more for smaller portions, i.e. soda is almost 5 time as much per ounce for a can as for a 2-liter bottle)
- encourage mindless eating (e.g. in front of the tv)
- keep food in your proximity (cafes in book stores, vending machines in schools)
- low prices (At McDonalds - $5.00 will buy you 5 burgers or 1 salad!)
- use sugar to add value (and make foods more addictive)
- use nutrition and health claims to sell food (Do you think eating Cheerios will really lower your cholesterol?)
- marketing to kids

So when you go to the supermarket, this is what she says NOT to buy:

- Anything from the center aisles (most heavily processed and junk foods)
- anything with more than 5 ingredients
- anything with an ingredient you can't pronounce
- anything with artificial ingredients
- anything with health claims
- anything with a cartoon on the package

There's so much more great info about what to eat in her book, aptly titled, What To Eat. For more info, check out her web site at: http://www.foodpolitics.com/

The high cost of cheap ingredients

I've already written about the contaminated gluten from China (which caused all the pet deaths) making it's way into food for humans - well some food suppliers are getting nervous about other food additives from China - and YOU SHOULD BE TOO.

According to an article in the May 18th LA Times, China has become the world's leading supplier of food flavorings, vitamins, and preservatives - in fact many food additivies are available in vast quantities only from China. China is now the most predominant maker of Vanillin (a vanilla flavoring), Citric Acid, Sorbic Acid, B vitamins (commonly added to processed flour goods), and Xylitol.

The problem is that China's overall food safety record is very poor. Use of chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticies is heavy; and fraud and corruption often thwart the lax controls that do exist. Also, many small companies don't register their products as nonfood items, thus avoiding supervision. Since many food additivies also have industrial applications (e.g. citric acid is also used as a cleaner), they can get away with this. In recent years, US officials have issued alerts about Chinese honey tainted with a harmful antibiotic, Chinese candy containing sulfites that can cause fatal allergic reactions, and infant forumula missing vital nutrients which left a dozen babies dead in 2004.

A further problem is that many US food manufacturers don't even know where all their ingredients originate. Most packaged foods contain dozens of items from around the word acquired though a complex network of traders and brokers. For example, a Hostess Twinkie contains 39 ingredients - including vitamin B compounds, sorbic acid, red and yellow colorings - most likely made in China according to Steve Ettlinger, author of the book "Twinkie, Deconstructed." He asserts that not only do food manufacturers not know the origin of all the ingredients in their products, they don't want to know. "The more you know, the pickier you get and the more it costs," he said.

So what can you do - stay away from processed foods would be the ideal. And (hope I'm not sounding like a broken record) - shop ORGANIC.

Otherwise, call or write the food manufacturers and tell them not to get ingredients from China. Mission Food Corp. and Tyson Foods, Inc. are bowing to consumer fears and have put out a directive to get no more ingredients from China - whether they'll be able to accomplish this is questionable but it's a start.