Kitchen Table Tidbits #2

1. AMERICANS NOW EAT MORE (PROCESSED) CHEESE FOOD THAN NATURAL CHEESES, according to Discover magazine. Don’t you love those orange rubbery slabs of whatever they are, called “American” cheese? They’re great for slapping together a grilled sandwich or cheeseburger. Nothing wrong with that, so long as you accept that it is illegal to call the stuff cheese, it is pasteurized processed cheese product. So, nothing wrong with that so long as you don’t mind ingesting manufactured food. Processed cheese is concocted from various chemicals and cheap ingredients (typically 15 or so) added to some cheddar (and perhaps Colby). “Overall, processed cheese products are an unholy mess of chemicals and additives, one worse than the next. When so many things must be added to make it taste good, is it really worth eating?,” asks the Alternative Daily news site. Right. So what is the alternative? Spend some money, they say, go for Swiss cheese, Parmesan cheese, Edam, feta, goat’s cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, and Brie, etc. “The place to find good cheese is at your local farmer’s market or specialty food store. Many large supermarkets also carry higher quality cheeses in the delicatessen area, as opposed to the main dairy case.”

2. FOLLOW UP: PROBLEMS WITH IMPORTED BEEF: We mentioned a suit going on at present to make known to consumers where their beef (or other imported meats) come from. There are good reasons why you would want to know. For example, Food Safety News tells us the US has joined with other countries banning Brazilian beef due to export of rancid raw meat – a practice exposed in a huge scandal involving presidential bribery and over $65 million in fines to meat packing executives. Point of interest: Sonny Perdue, President Trump’s Agriculture Secretary, opposed the ban until presented with more facts by his staff.

3. CONTAMINATED BABY FOOD: We’ve all been worried about lead in the water supply, but apparently the problem goes beyond that. An alarming new study from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), reported by TreeHugger News, has found that food is a surprising source of lead contamination – in particular, baby food, which showed higher levels of lead than regular food. The worst baby food culprits were grape juice (89 percent of samples contained lead), sweet potatoes (86 percent), and arrowroot cookies (64 percent). Lead is considered unsafe at any level, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because it hurts neurological development and can cause behavioral problems, ability to focus, and lower IQ.