The Real Cost of Cheap Food

[Dr. Obvious 49]

I need to try out some of the farmer's markets around here.. I needs to find me some rhubarb.. I think I am going through withdrawal.. plus my hubby has never heard of it or tried it....

my mom always had a rhubarb plant in the backyard...

Rhubarb is awesome. I never really ate it before I moved to Germany, but I tried some strawberry jam with some rhubarb chunks and that was the end of it. I went to the store and bought some and started experimenting more and more with it. It is great stuff, especially to make sauces with.

I know all about rhubarb, grew up on it ... mmm, yeah strawberry and rhubarb is the good combination.. strawberry rhubarb pie is so good...

also my mom has this recipe called Rhubarb meringue cake... soooo good... I haven't had it in soo long though

what else can you do with rhubarb besides jams or pies?....not that there is anything wrong with those... LOL I buy a jar of rhubarb preserves or jam every year at the farmer's market all for myself because i know hubster won't touch it...he doesn't like rhubarb.

I made it into a sauce with strawberries and used over sponge cakes or ice cream. You can also candy rhubarb, I believe.

Edited June 6, 2008 by Wacken

[Marilyn. 340]

this is a family favourite...

Rhubarb Crumb Crust Cake with Meringue

Crumbs:

3/4 cup margarine

2 tablespoons white sugar

2 cups flour

Rub above ingredients into crumbs and press into a greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Filling:

2 cups sugar

6 eggs yolks (save egg whites)

3/4 cup milk or cream

4 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

Mix above ingredients and pour over 6 cups of cut up rhubarb. Pour over crust and bake for bout 45 minutes.

Beat the 6 egg whites just stiff. The add 3/4 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Spread over rhubarb. Brown in oven. Watch Closely!

[Marilyn. 340]

growing up we always had a big garden .... mom would grow corn, peas, tomatoes, potatoes etc... mmm yum.. nothing better then fresh vegies from the garden..

[Amby 490]

We're part of a locally grown, weekly delivery program. For $20/wk we get a big paper grocery sack full fresh picked organic produce grown about 20 miles from here. We're not part of the program during the summer because we grow so many of our own items.

This is a really great website!

http://www.localharvest.org/

Awesome site! Thanks, Amber!

that IS fabulous. I've already looked up a place just about 2 miles from us that will do weekly mixed produce in $15 or $25.5 boxes. I'm going to keep looking though. I would hate to get a delivery where half of the box was stuff we wouldn't eat and would have to give away. I wonder if there are mixed produce programs where you can choose the products.

YAY! Happy other peeps love the idea as much as I do!

[SaadBell 0]

Reasons you should buy regular goods

By Jackie Avner

I don't like to buy organic food products, and avoid them at all cost. It is a principled decision reached through careful consideration of effects of organic production practices on animal welfare and the environment. I buy regular food, rather than organic, for the benefit of my family.

I care deeply about food being plentiful, affordable and safe. I grew up on a dairy farm, where my chores included caring for the calves and scrubbing the milking facilities. As a teenager, I was active in Future Farmers of America, and after college I took a job in Washington, D.C., on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee staff.

But America no longer has an agrarian economy, and now it is rare for people to have firsthand experience with agricultural production and regulation. This makes the general public highly susceptible to rumors and myths about food, and vulnerable to misleading marketing tactics designed not to improve the safety of the food supply, but to increase retail profits. Companies marketing organic products, and your local grocery chain, want you to think organic food is safer and healthier, because their profit margins are vastly higher on organic foods.

The USDA Organic label does not mean that there is any difference between organic and regular food products. Organic farms simply employ different methods of food production. For example, organic dairy farms are not permitted to administer antibiotics to their sick or injured cows, and do not give them milk-stimulating hormone supplements (also known as rbGH or rBST). The end product is exactly the same - all milk, regular and organic, is completely antibiotic-free, and all milk, regular and organic, has the same trace amounts of rbGH (since rbGH is a protein naturally present in all cows, including organic herds). Try as they may, proponents of organic foods have not been able to produce evidence that the food produced by conventional farms is anything but safe.

Do organic production practices benefit animals? Dr. Chuck Guard, professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University, told me that it pains him that many technological advancements in animal medicine are prohibited for use on organic farms. He described how organic farms don't use drugs to control parasites, worms, infections and illness in their herds. "Drugs take away pain and suffering," he said. "Proponents of organic food production have thrown away these medical tools, and the result is unnecessary pain and suffering for the animals."

In order for milk and meat to qualify as USDA Organic, the animals must never be given antibiotics when they are sick or injured. On organic farms, animals with treatable illnesses such as infections and pneumonia are left to suffer, or given ineffective homeopathic treatments, in the hope that they will eventually get better on their own. If recovery without medication seems unlikely, a dairy cow with a simple respiratory infection will be slaughtered for its meat, or sold to a traditional farm where she can get the medicine she needs. I don't buy organic milk because this system is cruel to animals, and I know that every load of regular milk is tested for antibiotics to ensure that it is antibiotic-free.

Organic milk certainly is not fresher than regular milk. Regular milk is pasteurized and has a shelf life of about 20 days. Organic milk is ultrapasteurized, a process that is more forgiving of poor quality milk, and that increases the shelf life of milk to about 90 days. Some of the Horizon organic milk boxes I've seen at Costco have expiration dates in 2008! There is a powerful incentive for retailers to put the ultrapasteurized organic milk on the shelf just before the expiration date, so consumers will think the organic milk is as fresh as the regular milk. After all, consumers are paying twice as much for the organic product.

Do organic production practices benefit the environment? In many cases, they do the opposite. Recently, Starbucks proudly informed their customers that they would no longer be buying milk from farms that use rbGH, the supplemental hormone administered to cows to increase milk production (even though the extra hormones stay in the cow, and the resulting milk is the same). The problem with this policy is that Starbucks will now be buying milk from farms that are far less efficient at making milk. Without the use of the latest technology for making milk, many more cows must be milked to produce the same number of café lattes for Starbucks' customers. More cows being milked means more cows to feed, and therefore more land must be cultivated with fossil-fuel-burning tractors. More cows means many more tons of manure produced, and more methane, a greenhouse gas, released into the atmosphere.

I see Starbucks' policy as environmentally irresponsible. When a farmer gives a cow a shot of rbGH, the only environmental cost is the disposal of the small plastic container it came in. But the environmental benefits of using this technology are enormous.

Attention all shoppers: Safeway is adopting the same misdirected policy as Starbucks, judging from the prominent labeling of milk at my local Safeway store: "Milk from cows not treated with rBST." When I'm feeling particularly green, I drive past Safeway and shop at another grocery store in protest.

Consumers assume that organic crops are environmentally friendly. However, organic production methods are far less efficient than the modern methods used by conventional farmers, so organic farmers must consume more natural and man-made resources (such as land and fuel) to produce their crops.

Cornell Professor Guard told me about neighboring wheat farms he observed during a visit to Alberta, Canada: one organic and one conventional. The organic farm consumes six times as much diesel fuel per bushel of wheat produced.

Socially conscious consumers have a right to know that "organic" doesn't mean what it did 20 years ago. According to the Oct. 16, 2006, cover story in Business Week, when you eat Stonyfield Farms yogurt, you are often consuming dried organic milk flown all the way from New Zealand and reconstituted here in the U.S. The apple puree used to sweeten the yogurt sometimes comes from Turkey, and the strawberries from China. Importation of organic products raises troubling questions about food safety, labor standards, and the fossil fuels burned in the transportation of these foods.

Does buying organic really benefit your family? Remember, there is no real difference in the food itself. At my local Safeway store, organic milk is 85 percent more expensive, eggs 138 percent higher, yogurt 50 percent, chicken thighs 80 percent, and broccoli 20 percent. If the only organic product you buy for your family is milk, then you are spending an extra $200 on milk each year. If you buy 5-10 other organic products each week, such as fruits, vegetables, eggs, yogurt and meat, then you could easily approach $1,000 in extra food costs per year. Families would receive a more direct health benefit from spending that money on a gym membership, a treadmill, or new bikes.

When I share this information with friends who buy organic, I get one of two responses: they either stop buying it, or they continue to buy organic based on a strong gut feeling that food grown without the assistance of man- made technology has to be healthier.

I don't push it, but I wonder: Why do people apply that logic to agricultural products, but not to every other product we use in our daily lives? There are either no chemicals, or the minutest trace of chemicals in some of our foods. But other everyday products are full of chemical ingredients. Read the label on your artificial sweetener, antiperspirant, sun lotion, toothpaste, household cleaning products, soda, shampoo, and disposable diapers, for example. The medicines we administer to our children when they are sick are man-made substances. Chemicals aren't just used to make these products; they are still in these products in significant amounts. It just doesn't make sense to focus fear of technology on milk and fresh produce.

I say, bypass the expensive organic products in the grocery store. Buy the regular milk, meat and fresh produce. It is the right choice for the family, animal welfare and the environment.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6474474

[LaL 418]

*head explodey*

I will just continue to shop at farmer's markets. Thanks for the link Amber!

[Alex & Rachel 78]

I like rhubarb in crumbles. A friend does a fantastic rhubarb, apple and ginger crumble.

[Marilyn. 340]

yeah rhubarb is so yum... as kids we would sometimes eat it raw and dunk it in sugar....

i still can't believe my hubby has never even heard of it...

[Cassie 8]

Jamie Oliver recently did a show on rhubarb -- he's got some interesting recipes on his site using it.

I used to chew it raw straight from the garden. Lovely stuff.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Jamie Oliver recently did a show on rhubarb -- he's got some interesting recipes on his site using it.

I used to chew it raw straight from the garden. Lovely stuff.

Aren't the leaves poisonous?

Edit: found some info:

During World War I rhubarb leaves were recommended as a substitute for other veggies that the war made unavailable. Apparently there were cases of acute poisoning and even some deaths. Some animals, including goats and swine, have also been poisoned by ingesting the leaves.

http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/rhubarb-poison.html

Edited June 6, 2008 by Jabberwocky

[Cassie 8]

Jamie Oliver recently did a show on rhubarb -- he's got some interesting recipes on his site using it.

I used to chew it raw straight from the garden. Lovely stuff.

Aren't the leaves poisonous?

the stalks, Steven, the stalks.

yes, the leaves are poisonous!

[Marilyn. 340]

Jamie Oliver recently did a show on rhubarb -- he's got some interesting recipes on his site using it.

I used to chew it raw straight from the garden. Lovely stuff.

Aren't the leaves poisonous?

the stalks, Steven, the stalks.

yes, the leaves are poisonous!

the leaves are only poisonous if you eat them, silly...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Jamie Oliver recently did a show on rhubarb -- he's got some interesting recipes on his site using it.

I used to chew it raw straight from the garden. Lovely stuff.

Aren't the leaves poisonous?

the stalks, Steven, the stalks.

yes, the leaves are poisonous!

the leaves are only poisonous if you eat them, silly...

Phew...thank God she lived to talk about it.

[Sister Fracas 5]

*head explodey*

I will just continue to shop at farmer's markets. Thanks for the link Amber!

Not to mention that products bought from local farmers don't have to travel hundreds to thousands of miles to get to the refrigerator. That seems a responsible deicsion to make. Amd I don't know about the farmers markets anyone else goes to but the prices are extremely reasonable. We aren't talking Whole Paycheck prices here.

[Cassie 8]

*head explodey*

I will just continue to shop at farmer's markets. Thanks for the link Amber!

Not to mention that products bought from local farmers don't have to travel hundreds to thousands of miles to get to the refrigerator. That seems a responsible deicsion to make. Amd I don't know about the farmers markets anyone else goes to but the prices are extremely reasonable. We aren't talking Whole Paycheck prices here.

the one we go to is very reasonable. It drives me crazy to buy trucked-in fruits and veg.