New Menu-Labeling Laws Proposed Across US

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

Hot on the heels of new legislation in Multnomah County (where Portland resides), the Oregon House of Representatives recently approved a new menu-labeling bill that would affect food service operations statewide. The proposed bill, similar to ones already passed in King County, Wash., New York City, N.Y., and Philadelphia, Penn., would require restaurants to display calorie counts for each of their food items, with fines up to $2000 for restaurants who do not comply.

New York Governor David Paterson also recently proposed that the city’s menu-labeling law be extended statewide. The New York  legislation ‘would require chain restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores and mobile vendor operations with 15 or more units nationwide to post calories on menus and menu boards at the point of purchase. Restaurants would also be required to post calories on drive-thru menus.’

“More than half of American adults are overweight or obese and the rates of obesity have tripled in children and teens since 1980,” Paterson said. “This legislation will help New Yorkers make better decisions about what they eat and will encourage more healthful choices, which will have a significant impact in reducing obesity.”

Similar legislation is being considered in Oklahoma, Indiana, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, and South Carolina.

Personally, I’m curious whether the menu-labeling will negatively impact restaurant business (‘Oh my! Look at the calorie count on that dish!’) and/or whether it will impact a diner’s decision.

Would the new laws change the way you eat?

Producers Resort to Saddling Consumers with Food Safety

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

Food writer Ruth Reichl was up in arms last week over a recent New York Times article noting that many food companies are now placing the responsibility of food safety on their consumers.

According to the Times article, companies like ConAgra, who experienced a recent food recall with their Banquet pot pies, have essentially resorted to wiping their hands of food safety responsibility by adding new ‘food safety’ instructions to their packaging. Other food manufacturers, such as Nestle and the Blackstone Group, are taking the same route, conceding that they cannot guarantee food safety in their products.

Consumers, as well as those within the food industry, are outraged by the passive take on food safety.

Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said companies like ConAgra were asking too much. “I do not believe that it is fair to put this responsibility on the back of the consumer, when there is substantial confusion about what it means to prepare that product,” Dr. Osterholm said.

Surprisingly, much of the difficulty in ensuring food safety lies within the food production industry itself. While there has been discussion about developing a stronger ‘food passport’, ensuring food safety at each level of production from harvest to final distribution, some groups within the industry, such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, feel as though the production information is ‘unnecessary’ and often ‘not practical or possible to provide.’

No wonder Reichl was appalled at these recent developments! It’s absolutely outrageous to assume that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to ensure food safety! Shame shame, big companies.

Be a savvy consumer! How can you ensure food safety within your home?

1. Boycott companies that can’t guarantee the safety of their food products, like ConAgra, Nestle, and others!
2. Utilize locally grown organic and natural food products within your home.
3. If you don’t own one, purchase a food thermometer, and become familiar with food temperature requirements, from storage to cooking.
4. Become an educated food advocate! Learn where your food is produced, how it’s produced, and how you can ensure food safety for yourself and your community!

Weekly Newsbits: GMOs in Your Kitchen, Swine Flu Renamed, Restaurants Resume Hiring!

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

A few of our favorite newsbits from today:

Rose over at A Little Bit of Green (which I found via Twitter from Real Food Media) has a great list of seven products you have in your kitchen that may be genetically-modified. I’m pretty surprised to see natural cleaning products on the list.

What do you do when there’s an unkosher flu going around? You rename it! Israel’s Health Minister, Yakov Litzman, has renamed the swine flu. I’m not sure if it helps or if it just offends a whole new group of people.

Could it be? Is it true? Nation’s Restaurant News is reporting that hiring is on the rise within the food and beverage industry. Though it’s still a bit low, at least 20% of restaurant managers who participated in a recent industry survey said they plan on adding to their staff over the next year.

US Pork Producers Quick to Assure Food Safety

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

The National Pork Producers Council released a statement yesterday stating that U.S. pork supply is safe to eat. Amid rampant concerns for pork safety after the recent swine flu outbreak in Mexico, the NPPC was quick to comment that the virus cannot be caught or spread by eating pork products.

“Pork is safe to eat, and direct contact with swine is not the source of, and U.S. pigs have not been infected with, the hybrid influenza that has been identified in a number of people in the United States and more than 1,300 in Mexico.

“NPPC wants to assure domestic and global consumers about the safety of pork and urges pork producers to tighten their existing biosecurity protocols to protect their pigs from this virus, including restricting public access to barns,” the [NPPC] statement went on to say.

Nonetheless, the U.S. Center for Disease Control is still recommending that anyone feeling flu-like symptoms remain at home in order to reduce the opportunity to get others sick.

You can read the NPCC’s full statement regarding the U.S. pork supply here.

A Secret Ingredient to the Tomato Sauce

Posted by R.K. Gella

Most Americans are back to eating peanut butter, tomatoes are ordered up in salads and sandwiches without a suspecting thought, and spinach, it graces menus unabashed and bluntly.  Besides wasn’t that E. coli mishap like forever ago?

Actually it wasn’t – only 2 ½ years ago if your counting, and that’s not to mention the salmonella outbreak in 2007 – and though spinach farmers have been able to move forward, as has the tomato industry and eventually the peanut butter manufacturers, what hasn’t been grappled with until recently is an updated public examination of our food stock and policies.

President Obama ordered a review of the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month following the Peanut Corp. of America knowingly shipping out tainted products from a plant in Georgia that sickened 500 people.

As it turned out the processors knew the plant was indeed contaminated with salmonella since 2007.

So how did this slip by inspectors?  In NY Times this week, an op-ed contributor, E.J. Levy, discussed the unsavory (to the fullest exacerbation of the word) policies utilized by the FDA via their booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans”, in which a percentage of “natural food contaminants” are explicitly condoned.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

According to Levy’s survey of the booklet, tomato juice and paste were mostly prone to fly eggs and larvae, while the kraut on your dog could lead you to ingest up to 50 thrips per serving.

It makes you wonder if the protein intake on the nutrition label is calibrated appropriately.

Peanut butter — that culinary cause célèbre — may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.

Levy also points out while the FDA considers these items solely “aesthetic” and “offensive to the senses”, with no outward harm posed to the consumer, the book hangs its policies on a hook of economics, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

To read the FDA booklet in its entirety click here.

Fixing New York City’s Watershed

Posted by R.K. Gella

New York City has been labeled many things, some rightly, some wrongly, but never has it received a distinction as a Mecca for healthy living.  The overpopulation, the constant construction, the exaggerated weather, the stress; these factors had contributed to the overwhelmingly poor health of New York’s citizens, but recent programs – several spearheaded by the Bloomberg administration – dedicated to invigorate a health conscious public have gradually raised the bar for healthy living.

Green carts and mandatory calorie charts were implanted last year, and today further efforts have been proposed calling for a wider access of farm raised goods, limitations on fast food restaurant development and a push for locally grown products on public agency menus.

Scott M. Stringer, the borough president of Manhattan, highlighted his goals for the city over the weekend.  He told the NY Times:

“If our watershed becomes polluted or broken, the consequences to New York’s economy and health are enormous,” he said. “Our foodshed is already broken and we need to fix it.”

In his report, Stringer outlined plans for the strict zoning of fast food restaurants, and tax incentives for “healthy” establishments and proprietors, which he deemed “food enterprise zones”.

Stringer also makes an appeal for public agencies – such as schools and shelters – to source more of their menus from local growers (of 100 to 200 miles radii) with a representation of up to 20% on those said menus.

The report also mentions possible incentives for community and private gardens.

New Administration Urged to Reform Food Safety

Far be it from the rancid conditions of the meatpacking industry in the era of Upton Sinclair and his novel The Jungle, but the latest outbreaks of salmonella has achieved worthwhile concern from consumers and health officials.

While the previous administration did nothing to little to restructure the current regulations on food safety, advocates of reform have faith in President Obama.

During his campaign Obama spoke on the matter:

“Far too often, tainted food is not recalled until too late.  When I am president, it will not be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional resources to hire more federal food inspectors.”

The latest incident of salmonella poisoning involves tainted peanut butter/peanut products manufactured at a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.  The company has been charged with manufacturing the peanut butter in an unsafe environment and knowingly distributing the contaminated product.

In the recent years tomatoes, jalapenos, cantaloupes and spinach have been sources of foodborne illnesses measuring in large recalls and losses in crops and revenue.

Currently several bills involving food safety reform are floating through Congress.  The major items on theses bills, save for creating an entity independent of the FDA – which had been a proposal of Illinois Senator Richard J. Durbin – include stricter inspections of domestic and foreign facilities, regular access to food testing and a reconstruction of the system used to detect outbreaks.

Durbin told the New York Times, “I think I can prevail on the president to take a fresh look at this.  We can no longer forgive or explain what’s happening with food safety in this country.”

Weekly Newsbits: Whole Foods/New Seasons Agreement, Celebrity Airline Food

An update on the continuing Whole Foods/New Seasons Market saga unfolding over the last few months here in the Portland area. According to an article last week in The Oregonian, both parties involved have reached an agreement, with the Federal Trade Commission ultimately asking a federal judge to halt the merger of Wild Oats and Whole Foods. The Food Dude at Portland Food and Drink posted a short statement from New Seasons CEO Brian Rohter as well. You can continue to follow the developments here at the New Seasons blog.

This week’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about a surprising recent change in airline food. With major US airlines increasing their food budgets by 8.5% in the third quarter of 2008, competition seems to be heated. Many are now turning to celebrity chefs from Charlie Trotter to Gordon Ramsay to bring their in-flight meals to a new level. With a first class ticket to Singapore in the $12,000 range (at least from NYC) the food better be spectacular!

Share Our Strength Launches “Operation No Kid Hungry”

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

In recognition of today’s National Day of Service, our friends at Share Our Strength are asking for your help to continue to fight hunger problems throughout the nation. Their newest campaign, “Operation No Kid Hungry” will continue to help raise funds for childhood hunger, encouraging communities to hold food drives for those in need within their own neighborhoods.

How can you get involved?

Share Our Strength has partnered with AT&T to offer two great ways that you can support and participate in “Operation No Kid Hungry”:

1. Donate by text! From now until March 1st, simply text “SHARE” to 20222 on your mobile phone and donate $5 to our fight to end childhood hunger in America. AT&T will match all text donations up to $100,000. Help us meet this challenge grant! You can find out more here.

2. Hold a food drive! Beginning January 19th, a national day of community service, help feed those in need by holding your own community food drive. Visit Share Our Strength to find a food bank and a list of the most needed nutritious foods.

Honey Laundering? Who Knew?!

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

Today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the most fascinating article on ‘honey laundering’, the art of importing low-grade honey, often chockfull of pesticides or antibiotics. According to the article, many honey importers are actively funneling the questionable honey into the US market due to an increase in demand from to dying honeybee hives and stricter FDA regulations. Much of the imported honey is contaminated with antibiotics already banned in the United States – yet still makes it to your supermarket because of a lack in Customs and Immigrations enforcement.

“We have continuing safety concerns that center on harmful materials being present in some imported honey. It’s not something that can be ignored by FDA,” said Martin Stutsman, a senior FDA food-safety officer and the agency’s top cop when it comes to adulterated food.

“The consumer is cheated and the honest manufacturer trying to sell quality products is undercut and has a hard time competing,” he said.

With an estimated 237 million pounds of raw honey imported into the United States last year, you’d think preventing contamination of the general public would be top concern. But think again! According to a US-Canada border customs official, honey is certainly not a main concern.

“Honey is not only not near the top of the list of priorities,” [an unidentified Customs officer] said, “it’s just not on the damn list.”

If they’re not watching the honey, surely they’re keeping tabs on the melamine, right?

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