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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

A sweet little article about whether the body’s seasonal health needs can be satisfied by eating seasonal foods is a timely one, in light of a couple of recent stories about risks to kidneys and livers by things we must have known we shouldn’t be eating. It’s not completely helpful to those of us above the citrus growing belt – article observes that colds and flu coincide with citrus and kiwi harvest – but it’s a nice idea. (Though winter vegetables like broccoli and squash do contain vitamin C as well) And the bottom line is that eating fresh vegetables and fruits is always the best way to go.

Because processed foods are getting more and more bad press. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS – or by its additive names, dextrose, glucose-fructose, fructose-glucose or isoglucose) was rumbled by Michael Pollan and many others for its role in increasing the heft of its consumers. Now, in addition to its contribution to obesity levels, it has been identified as damaging to human livers in people who already have liver disease.

Avoiding HFCS is difficult, if you buy processed foods, because it has been embraced by food processors for its cheapness (thank you US farm subsidies), and can be found in foods including (but not limited to) soft drinks, fruit drinks, sports drinks, flavoured yogurts, frozen dinners, frozen desserts, canned food, breads, muffins, cakes, stuffing mixes, breakfast cereals, pancakes, waffles, cookies, crackers, ice cream, children’s vitamins, cough syrup, candy bars, ketchup, relish, mustard, barbecue sauce, drink mixes, jams, jellies, syrups, meats, salad dressings, sauces, marinades and snack foods and chocolate bars.

Assuming you successfully dodge products containing HFCS, you can now start trying anew to avoid genetically modified foods, because there is evidence that GM crops are harmful to kidneys and livers. Indeed, this has only been proven in animal tests, but who wants to be the human lab rat?

Kidney disease is of course linked to obesity (see HFCS, above). Then again, it might be pure coincidence, but the rise in kidney disease over the past ten years coincides pretty neatly with the increase in unlabelled GM food ingredients (found in about 60% of our processed foods nowadays, according to a 2004 CBC article) like corn, canola, dairy, soy, potatoes, rice and now sugar beet products into North American diets: worth a bit of independent study, I’d think. We know already that Health Canada does not require independent testing on GM food safety for human consumption, but relies on the studies that the producers choose to release.

So. You know what to do. Get your copy of Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, consult your GE-free shopping guides and a good basic cookbook, and get thy processed foods behind thee.

BTW: was I the only one who found the beverages consumed in the movie Juno disturbing, particularly when the consumer was pregnant? Without wanting to know what was in the blue liquid whose surplus the character disposed of at various points, the ingredients in the jug of what she drank before her pregnancy test (amounting to 1539 calories, by the way) are:

Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Concentrated Juices (Orange, Tangerine, Apple, Lime, Grapefruit). Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Beta-Carotene, Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Natural Flavors, Food Starch-Modified, Canola Oil, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Sodium Benzoate To Protect Flavor, Yellow #5, Yellow #6.

In her book English Bread & Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, writing in 1977, makes a point of value to us in these days when we are so distanced from our food supply: that for every ounce of bread we eat (a thin slice), an ounce of grain has been grown, harvested, transported (often long distances) to mills, cleaned, dried, conditioned, ground into flour, treated, stored and finally delivered to bakeries and bread factories.

Wanting to get closer to my bread, I attended an artisan bread-making class last weekend, and here’s what I did at school that day….

Started off with lessons on yeast. Active dry yeast is the yeast of choice since it’s reliable and durable (can be stored for years in a freezer, though officially has a 3 month shelf life)

But fresh yeast is preferred by purists (assuming they are making bread in volume, since a cake only keeps for a month) – can be hard to find though.

Instant yeast comes in big granules; what the purists don’t like about it is that coating on the granules means you’ll get about 25-30% dead yeast together with the live cells, meaning you need to use about twice as much as active yeast, and soak in water, for reliable results.

Moving on from yeasts, we were introduced to sourdough and rye starters

Rye is particularly valued, because of its high amylase content, stable at high (baking) temperatures. Amylase is an enzyme – also present in seeds (contributing to germination) and saliva – which converts starch into sugar; starch is what hardens during baking to create firm, airy loaves. Since amylase breaks starch down during baking, rye contributes a moist, dense texture in bread. We didn’t use the rye starter in this class, but I hope to take the next installment which is all about fermentation techniques.

Then there was Poolish – which originated in French kitchens (the name a nod to the Polish bakers who probably introduced it). Simple to make and only needing a night to ferment, it is gooey and puffy, and went into our baguettes:

and Biga, an Italian starter, which is thicker and sturdier than Poolish, and used later that day to make ciabatta.

We watched our instructor – Martin Barnett – make a Challah dough

while he explained why it is better to weigh ingredients than go by volume (a cup of plain flour is not the same as a cup of whole wheat, etc.) and paused at intervals to demonstrate different stages of gluten development

stopping only when it had advanced to the stage when you can make a window to read through. Then he covered it and left it to carry on with its first rising (primary fermentation).

Lessons learned, we proceeded to make buttermilk seed bread

and some dough for baguettes.

Some of us made ciabatta, and others (like us) Tuscan loaves; then we readied our ingredients for wholemeal brioche and went for lunch (pizzas we assembled ourselves on fresh pizza dough). After lunch we put our bread into loaves, and then made the brioche dough, rolled it flat, buttered it and sprinkled it with sugar, cinnamon and raisins; rolled it up

and cut it into buns

which were baked and then brushed with apricot glaze

and some lemony icing.

We rolled our baguettes and popped them into forms to rise

and then started reaping the bounty. Ciabatta

baguettes

and our seed and Tuscan olive breads. Not a bad haul for 8 hours’ work.

March is Nutrition Month in Canada, and the theme is “Celebrate Food, from Field to Table”. The Vancouver Island Health Authority’s suggestions for ways to celebrate include:

• Plant a garden in your backyard, a container garden on your balcony, or herbs on your windowsill.
• Get children involved in preparing food and eat family meals often. When kids take part in meals, they are more likely to make healthier choices.
• Enjoy fresh food in season. Shop at local farmers markets and farm gates. Freeze or preserve local fruits and vegetables to eat a greater variety throughout the year.

Tips for supporting your community to grow a local food system:

• Start, support or get involved with a local community garden project to grow food close to where you live.
• Join a community kitchen group to cook and enjoy meals with friends.
• Work with your local school board to create ways to showcase local foods either in the classroom, school cafeteria or schoolyard.
• Encourage your grocery store to carry more local foods.

Meanwhile. as people have been discovering with the recall of North American food products containing Hydrolyzed Vegetable Proteins, a little can mean a lot to food safety. Time magazine’s recent article about the lead content of Indian spices is another argument for buying or using local – including the seasonings in your foods. Many spices and herbs are sold in organic versions which, of course, cost more – but what we’re learning nowadays about the dangers of even tiny amounts of toxins in our foods show why it can sometimes be critical to pay more for less.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has a Food Safety website where you can see the latest hazards, recalls and alerts. It is a nightmarish list of undeclared milk and wheat and egg, product tampering, prosecution bulletins, and instances of Salmonella and Listeria Monocytogenes. All of which have to do with commercial food processing products and facilities. If nothing else, it affirms the value of staying away from processed foods and cooking with fresh, organic ingredients wherever possible.

And speaking of organics, the Organic Center, out of Boulder, Colorado, has posted The Browning of the Green Revolution, (which summarizes the full paper – available here – published in the open access Journal of Environmental Quality) that found adding artificial nitrogen to soil actually depletes nitrogen, and has a diminishing effect on soil fertility. Just as Dirt! The Movie and a thousand other sources will tell you, the authors find that:

Half a century after the onset of input-intensive agriculture, many of the world’s most productive soils have been degraded and cereal production is increasingly exceeded by grain demand for a burgeoning human population.

Plug this into what we know about world food shortages and you get a rather obvious conclusion:

This dilemma warns of the critical need to reevaluate nitrogen fertilizer management and usage, and may ultimately require a transition toward agricultural diversification utilizing legume rotations, instead of further intensifying inputs under the auspices of another Green Revolution. An inexorable conclusion can be drawn: the prevailing system of agriculture does not provide the means to intensify food and fiber production without degrading the soil resource.

I wonder who’s listening… Will our government be able to untangle itself from the knots of influence it’s bound itself to with agri-business multinationals and actually plan for an enduring agricultural industry that produces food for generations to come, or will we stick with short-sighted methods that feed us and starve the future? The problem is that the future appears to be upon us.

Gwynne Dyer’s on a speaking tour of Canada and we were fortunate enough to join a packed house at the McPherson Playhouse to catch his Climate Wars talk last Thursday. He was of course selling his book – and provided a great capsule view of what it covers – but also offering some lessons learned while writing it. I’d heard the gist of the science he described at BCSEA meetings, but it was sobering stuff nonetheless.

My thumbnail version of significant points is:

• Climate change is moving faster than predicted because the predictions widely quoted by media are from the 2007 IPCC Intergovernmental Panel report. Which, if you track it back would have been based on 2003 data at the latest (tracking back to allow a year for meetings and editing; perhaps a cut-off of 2005 published papers which would have been using data gathered from 2003 or earlier), which doesn’t include the rapid advancements in newly industrializing nations like India and China.
• The speed of the climate changes are alarming the scientists who study them.
• Climate change reaches an irreversable point at 2 degrees increase in world temperatures; beyond this, natural climate feedback mechanisms kick in and there is nothing we can do to slow the damage.
• We are living on borrowed grain. The world is consuming more than it produces for the first time in its history; the reason we have not yet reached the crisis point is because we are dipping into global grain reserves. The figure he quoted, that reserves are sufficient to feed the world for 57 days, was actually published in 2006 – before the full effects of the Australian drought were felt – so it would be good to know what the current figure is (but in 2006, 57 days was cited as the lowest since the 56 day point reached in 1972.)
• The world loses 10% of its food production capability for every 1 degree increase in global temperature: it’s estimated that a 2 degree rise would reduce India’s food production capacity by 25%; China is expected to lose 38%. Dwyer noted that the World Bank has gathered information on the effects of temperature change on world food production but does not want to release it for fear of causing panic. But, he said, the governments are well aware of it.
• But what the governments can do to safeguard their citizens’ food security – without which there cannot be civil rule – is fraught with problems. You cannot make food grow without suitable climate or adequate water, and both are at risk. One of the cornerstones of world agriculture as we’ve practiced it is the wanton and excessive use of irrigation to grow crops: we’ve depleted our reserves and are busy tapping fossil water, which will not be replenished in our – or our great-grandchildren’s – lifetime. So water shortages loom, and conflicts between upstream and downstream states are a possibility.
• Governments who have some economic and environmental buffers against imminent disaster in the face of climate change also face complex problems in securing their own borders against climate refugees. Taking Mexico/USA as one example, Dyer pointed out that any border can be secured if you really want to do it, but the Americans do not have the political will to secure the Mexican border: without the illegal immigrants who fuel the agricultural and service economies, the country would cease to function, so it is in the interests of the US to keep the border porous. And in the case of the Americans, you can’t secure a border when 25% of your population originates in or is related to the population of the countries you are trying to keep out. And that’s a reality everywhere today, thanks to globalization and the dependence of all wealthy nations on black market or sweatshop labour to keep costs (pesky matters like salary levels and working conditions) down so that the rich can keep getting richer.
• One thing those rich folk won’t want to do is pay to clean up their mess, however. Dyer explained why a deal was not possible at Copenhagen, using the example of our own government. He asked us to imagine Stephen Harper returning to Ottawa to announce that Canadians would face an immediate 40% reduction in carbon emissions as well as a multi-billion dollar support package to the likes of India and China to help them prepare for a carbon-neutral future. The fact is that wealthy nations are wealthy because we built our wealth on cheap oil, which has fuelled both our standard of living and the environmental disaster we are collectively facing. The only way forward is that we have to pick up the tab for this, and no government on earth is going to get re-elected once it’s done so.
• Dyer predicts we will not make the 350ppm target for emissions.
• He does believe that the world will eventually act, belatedly, because it will have to for all the reasons above and then some. And the one tool we have available is geoengineering climate change, to temporarily reduce the increase in average global temperatures while the necessary changes to the way we live are implemented. A couple of examples are to either seed the stratosphere with sulphur dioxide, mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions; or seeding stratocumulus clouds above the ocean with salt water, to enhance their cooling effect.
• Geoengineering, he stressed, is not a cure, but it is likely to be all we have in our emergency kit down the line when it’s too late for positive political action. And at the point drastic measures are taken, it will quite possibly be too late to save the earth’s oceans. (And it will certainly be too late to feed the entire global population, since crops take time to grow and harvest, although he did not go there specifically.)
• The question of who funds this kind of research, and who gets to make the decision to use it – since it will affect every living thing on the planet – is the subject of a conference he was travelling to next.
• He also stressed that the world is about as peaceful as it’s ever been and is ever able to get, so the social conditions are right to implement drastic action to save our world. Once the climate changes kick in, governments will be distracted by their own emergencies. So it’s now or never.
• The “what do we do” question received the usual answer: demand political action at every level; impress upon your representatives the urgency of the situation and be ready to embrace the somewhat drastic changes that will need to be made if the world is to survive to be handed on to future generations.

If you haven’t heard him talk on this subject, here’s a podcast version from TVO which is similar to the talk I attended. Worth watching.