The Hungry Herbivore

Crescent Foods makes an awesome vegetarian burrito called the “Benevolent Burrito”. Can’t wait for the Folk Festival to roll around in RVA so that I can get a hold of one. And maybe some suh-weet funnel cake.

socalurbanfarmer:

Local food and sustainable farms are awesome.

(via natureconservancy)

Many of the chemicals added to the raw food from farms are not listed on food packages. The FDA does not require food additives “Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS)” to be put on an ingredients label. All that is required are the words “artificial flavor” or “artificial color” or “natural”. However, not everything that is natural is good for you, or even desirable. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, for example, are all natural, as are insect parts, arsenic, mercury, and cattle feces.

            The average American eats his or her body weight in food additives each year, about 150 pounds of them. About 10 percent of this is flavoring agents, preservatives, and dyes. Many of them considered GRAS by the FDA. However, it is the food industry, not the FDA, which provides the evidence to support the GRAS claim. Having chemical manufacturers provide their own research to support a claim that a chemical is safe is the same as letting a cigarette manufacturer do the research to show cigarettes are safe. This seems less than advisable, but in the case of food, it is mandated by the high cost and time-consuming nature of testing. The FDA has neither the time nor the money to do the testing.

Go to your cupboard, pull out a package of something, and read the list of ingredients. Now ask yourself, which items in this list have I never heard of or have no idea what it is? You may be surprised at the number of unknown words you have just read, words that, for all you know, might be the ingredients for glue or synthetic road-deicer rather than something you wold want to eat. If you check out some of these words in a book on the chemistry of food, you will find that they are assorted chemicals added to primary ingredients, such as wheat, milk, or meat, intended to cover smells, color, stabilize, emulsify, bleach, texturize, soften, preserve, sweeten, or add more flavor to what nature provided. The FDA lists approximately 2,800 international food additives and about 3,000 chemicals that are deliberately added to our food supply. When considering the number of chemicals used in the process of growing and processing food, we consume between 10,000 and 15,000 added artificial chemicals in a day of eating. Most of the food we eat has been processed in some way and is very different from the way we ate 350 years ago or even 100 years ago.