Healthy Eating Part II: Going Local and What are Your Tips and Tricks for Cutting Out Hormones, Antibiotics and Pesticides?

[DreamSongs]

I know we have a thread on this, but its been awhile and was nearing the end.

I decided to make it a goal to eat healthier and for once I actually took a step instead of just talking about it. I found a local food cooperative where I can buy locally grown veggies, fruits, meat and dairy. I made my first pickup last night and I'm already thrilled that I made the decision.

Hand in hand with making the food supply change comes other changes that I have to make as well: somewhat planning my diet, not depending on microwaveable or delivered restaurant meals anymore, and actually cooking food daily rather than on an occasionally when I am bored. I think that much of the reason I adopted these habits is because of shift work, so I really need to work on having prepared foods for those 3-4 days in a row when I have to work 12-14 hours in a day.

I made some beef stock in my crock pot last night and froze some into ice cubes. I've a turkey breast roasting for sandwiches and salads when I work this weekend. What other tips and tricks do y'all have for navigating the pitfalls of shift work and staying away from GMOs, chemicals, hormones and antibiotics at your local supermarket?

[Fragile Bird]

If you want to avoid GMOs, chemicals, hormones and antibiotics you'll have to be prepared to pay more for your food. Unless you have a grocery store that is committed to supplying at least some organic, non-GMO foods at a reasonable rate.

I actually read some time ago that the biggest supplier of organic foods in the USA is now Walmart. If you don't have any problems shopping there, you may want to check out your local store and see what they have. Otherwise, Whole Foods is just waaaaay too expensive.

The grocery stores in Canada pretty well all have an organic foods section, some small, some large. Find out what your local stores carry.

In terms of preparing food, I think the biggest tip I learned this year is not to worry about what you eat at different times of the day. Something that has helped me satisfy my hunger is the idea of Dinner for Breakfast. Like having roast chicken and grilled bok choy for breakfast and cereal for dinner.

I also am preparing large quantities of a dish (4 or 5 servings) and either eating that dish once a day for 4 days in a row or freezing a portion. I have found the practice of having a dish that I eat four days in a row with the other two meals of the day being different every day easier than making three unique meals a day. There's only so much room I have in my freezer, and I have been trying to reserve that room for frozen seafood that I buy in larger packages at Costco, lean meats purchased on sale and packaged into individual portions for easy thawing, and a supply of homemade chicken and beef stock.

[Seli]

Live in Europe ? ;-)

[DreamSongs]

Thanks FB...we are supposed to be getting a Whole Foods later this year and we currently have an EarthFare, but the prices are way up there. I know that WalMart is supposedly 'organic' and they may be, but the truth is that 'organic' and 'cage-free' are not really regulated in the US. I can depend on Earthfare to not have pesticides in the food, but there are no guarantees on preservatives. The other issue I see is that when I was at WalMart the other day, the only poultry I could find that had no added preservatives were the fresh meats and some frozen rock hens...everything else has some kind of flavoring added via injection.

[Inigima]

Before moving into advice: think hard about whether you actually require some of those things. Non-GMO foods in particular are a big time red herring. There is nothing problematic about GMO foods and nearly everyone has been eating them for years already. A lot of this other stuff is mostly marketing used to separate yuppies from their money.

That said, getting your food from a local farm, it possible, is your best bet for stuff like organic produce and avoiding pesticides and the like. You can do this via a CSA (too late for this year, I should think) or a farmer's market. You can also grow your own produce.

"Organic" is better regulated than it used to be , but yeah, look hard at your sourcing. As you say, "cage-free" is all but meaningless. I asked about buying humane eggs a while ago and have been pretty happy with the answers I got. Buying from a farm where the conditions can be known is your best bet, but there are a couple of certifications like "Certified Humane" that are meaningful. Some aren't, so look up the cert online.

[wolverine]

What other tips and tricks do y'all have for navigating the pitfalls of shift work and staying away from GMOs, chemicals, hormones and antibiotics at your local supermarket?

I am not sure I understand the term GMO's like you do. What do we eat that is not a GMO? Water? Fish? Wild game? Nearly every species of domestic animal has been selectively bred for desirable traits and are thus genetically modified through human interference. Corn was grass and could not survive on its own in the wild.

What do I do? My dad raises pigs in the summer for eating so I know what went into them. My uncle has a pastured beef farm if I am concerned about what goes into my beef I can get supply there. My brother and dad have butcher chickens and my brother has egg laying chickens. I hunt and fish as well. Venison supplies a fairly significant portion of our diet (1-2 meals a week). We have a garden and can/freeze a lot of surplus veggies. But, IMO, if you are concerned about those things listed at the end, cook your own food. About 6 out of 7 suppers at our house are made from scratch mainly using the sources above. I understand this can be difficult for a lot of people. I love to cook so no matter how busy I am, I still cook real food.

Live in Europe ? ;-)

What difference does that make?

I do have a question though: Is sweet corn good for you? I know that corn is used to fatten livestock but they have a four chambered stomach and can process it much further than humans can. I am talking about whole kernel corn not ground but breads/cereals. I have looked around on the internet but I trust your collective wisdom more.

[Fragile Bird]

The issue of GMO food is misunderstood yes, mainly because people for the most part don't know what is or is not GMO in their diet, and not because there are so many foods out there that are GMO.

wolverine, I consider the "selective plant breeding argument" to defend GMO foods to be utter BS. The fact that a farmer noticed at some point in time part of his carrot crop was a lot nicer with bigger, better shaped carrots than 90% of the rest of his crop so he kept those seeds and planted the next year's crop with them doesn't bother me at all. Nor does the fact that a scientist cross-pollinated plants in a lab to create better apples or whatever.

Genetically Modified Foods, however, literally have the gene of another plant, usually another species and sometimes not even from a plant, spliced into their gene to produce a certain results, and hence they get called "frankenfoods". Or salmon with genes from another animal, the controversy there being most salmon sold in stores is farmed and there is a great fear GMO salmon will get loose in the wild. GMO salmon is not yet being sold to the public, the current issue with salmon is the appaling amount of antibiotics in farmed salmon.

When we eat those foods, we absorb the GMO genes into our bodies. There are in fact very few GMO foods being sold to the public directly. Almost all the exposure comes indirectly. For example, as of now, there are no GMO varieties of corn sold for human consumption. However, perhaps half of the corn grown in the USA is genetically modified, and that corn is used for animal feed, so we eat it through our meat, chicken and pork supply and our pets eat a lot of it, and for producing corn oil and high fructose corn syrup. Because corn has an unusual trait (I've lent out my copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma, can't remember if it's extra DNA or an extra molecule) a blood test will show you exactly how much corn you eat, because the extra molecule (?) shows up in your blood. On average the North American diet is 25% corn, the figure coming from blood tests.

We are not supposed to have a diet of 25% from one food item ("The Omnivore's Dilemma"). After reading this I started reading labels differently, trying to eliminate as much HFC from my diet as possible, and I stopped eating corn itself. I also no longer eat canned soup, but I gave that up a long time ago, because of the use of corn oil and other GMO oils, like canola. I buy organic corn oil and canola oil, made from non-GMO corn and canola, but I mainly use EVO.

The most widely eaten GMO food other than the corn products is tomatoes, which have been around since 1994. Another reason to buy organic canned tomatoes or canned tomatoes from Italy.

Potatoes are also being genetically modified, but I believe none are sold for human consumption (only 25% of the world's crop is eaten by people, the rest goes to animal feed and starch) and forms of rice, mainly sold in Asia.

[TrueMetis]

When we eat those foods, we absorb the GMO genes into our bodies.

That's not how digestion works. Any functional DNA in the food we eat is quickly broken down and becomes completely non-functional GMO or not. If this was a thing we had to worry about it being GMO would mean not a damn thing since it would happen with any DNA.

[Luzifer's right hand]

What difference does that make?

Some European countries are trying to be as GMO free as possible.

It's mainly baseless scaremongering of course but the resulting bans are still good in my book.

I have tasted GMO tomatoes at a science fair when there was still a debate about GMO foods in Austrian and they tasted the same as the usual tasteless(but nice looking) hybrid stuff. Nothing to get excited about.

The main promise back then(close to 20-15 years ago now) was that you will not have to use herbicides, pesticides and fungicides if you grow GMO plants. That would have been awesome but it was a false promise.

Some approaches have failed so far, insects adapt far quicker to plants which produce their own pesticides than expected afaik(massive crop failures have happened in some places because of that). The most successful approach seems to be the approach who makes plants resistant against against the toxins sprayed on the fields they are growing on. Not really a worthwhile approach in my opinion as the stuff is often much more toxic than it used to be(because you did not want to kill the crops with the pests).

That in many cases you have to buy seeds and herbicides from the same supplier if you grow that kind of GMO plant is the other problem with that approach. Growing plants with extra nutrients might be necessary in some countries but it's only a nice but not very important plus for most European countries.

It's not really an important topic for most European countries anyways. Growing enough food is not a problem for them and they can afford not using the stuff. It can't hurt to see how the stuff works in other countries in the long term and adopt it if nothing goes wrong.

Organic farming is another topic. Afaik organic foods have the highest market share worldwide here in Austria and even in that case it's only 7-6%. That's ignoring the fact that a lot of the stuff is fake(a very lucrative field for the Mafia in Italy for example). The only way to be sure is to farm yourself(or if you know a trustworthy organic farmer personally).

[Weeping Sore]

Before moving into advice: think hard about whether you actually require some of those things. Non-GMO foods in particular are a big time red herring. There is nothing problematic about GMO foods and nearly everyone has been eating them for years already. A lot of this other stuff is mostly marketing used to separate yuppies from their money.

I also resist a knee-jerk rejection of GMOs, but the fact is a lot of GMOs are for the "Round-up ready" gene, meaning resistant to Round-up. This allows a higher concentration of herbicide to be used without the crop dying. Those concerned about their chemical load* might do well to avoid GMOs for this reason.

But concern is still over-blown as the current list of GMO crops is as follows:

Corn, soybeans, cotton (for oil), canola (also a source of oil), squash, and papaya. You could also include sugar beets, which aren't eaten directly, but refined into sugar. There's also GMO alfalfa, but that goes to feed animals, not for sprouts that people eat.

Anything that doesn't have corn, soy, canola, or beet sugar in it is likely to be non-GMO, in other words.

* or the chemical loads of the agricultural workers who tend to die at increased rates from lymphoma...

[Fragile Bird]

Well, that's a bit simple Weeping Sore. The only way you are going to avoid GMOs is by preparing all your meals from scratch, taking care not to use any corn or canola oil or 'vegetable oil', which is usually soybean or some mix of the three. And not eating any beef, chicken or pork, unless it's organic, because those animals are being fed the GMO feeds. And you're not drinking soda pop, or eating chocolate bars or other sweets, or potato chips, of corn chips, and never any pre-packaged foods. Most people in North America have not eliminated all these items from their diets.

True Métis, I may have phrased that incorrectly, but you are what you eat. You eat GMO foods, you are absorbing genteticly modified food. Do you thing somehow that genetically modified part of the food magically passes through your gut without being absorbed by your body? One of the controversies over 'round-up ready' corn has been over the fact mice fed the grain developed liver toxicity.

[TrueMetis]

True Métis, I may have phrased that incorrectly, but you are what you eat. You eat GMO foods, you are absorbing genteticly modified food. Do you thing somehow that genetically modified part of the food magically passes through your gut without being absorbed by your body? One of the controversies over 'round-up ready' corn has been over the fact mice fed the grain developed liver toxicity.

Once it's broken down (or even before that really) the DNA from GMO crops is no different from the DNA of any other thing you eat. If DNA from every other thing we've eaten for billions of years hasn't had an effect, then GMO isn't going to change that.

And I want a source on that liver toxicity thing.

[Weeping Sore]

Well, that's a bit simple Weeping Sore. The only way you are going to avoid GMOs is by preparing all your meals from scratch, taking care not to use any corn or canola oil or 'vegetable oil', which is usually soybean or some mix of the three. And not eating any beef, chicken or pork, unless it's organic, because those animals are being fed the GMO feeds. And you're not drinking soda pop, or eating chocolate bars or other sweets, or potato chips, of corn chips, and never any pre-packaged foods.

That is what I do for 95% of my food. But yes, anything packaged is going to have soy or corn. And unless you can find Mexican (cane sugar) soda you're drinking corn syrup.

Still, I think the main danger of GMOs is the increased pesticide/herbicide load, not the altered DNA. After all, the entire history of agriculture is a history of modifying the DNA of plants (albeit through selective planting and cross-breeding rather than direct manipulation).

Also, while (virtually?) all the GMOs in the U.S. are created for profit (increasing chemical sales, increasing crop yields), the potential exists for different genetic modifications to fight malnutrition. "Golden Rice" (rice w/ beta-carotene, a vitamin A precursor) was developed to fight vitamin A deficiency in the third world http://www.goldenrice.org/ but the project was initially blocked by the EU because of the perception that all GMOs are bad.

[Seli]

....

What difference does that make?

...

It is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

But both EU and local governments here seem to be more willing to regulate food and food labelling. Which makes an informed consumer choice easier.

For example growth hormones are more restricted here than in the US. Although the recent horse meat scandals of course show it isn't perfect here either.

[Larry of the Lawn]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSL2N0DC22F20130425?irpc=932

Should be a link to a study that shows glyphosate isn't as safe as Monsanto has claimed.

[TerraPrime]

GMO's ill effects are mostly environmental and economical (non-self-renewing seeds). At the consumer level, GMOs really pose no dangers. Eating a GMO tomato is not going to alter your body functions in any way.

There are also no scientific data to date that can show a reliable difference in chemical compositions between organic produce and non-organic produce (not, say, fresh organic tomatoes to canned tomatoes). People who swear that organic food tastes better are probbably tasting the differences in freshness instead of differences in chemical composition.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

If you have a balcony (I think you do) try growing some of your most used veggies in pots. We have our peppers, tomatoes and even cucumbers all in pots. Then you can control the pesticides and fertilizers used.

[all swedes are racist]

I agree that kind of wild-eyed knee jerk negative reactions by some to GMO foods mostly silly, and unfounded. I don't, however, agree that there is nothing problematic about GMO foods. Mostly the issues, for me at least, have to do with the horrible business practices of the huge corporation that produce and hold patents on certain GMO products. I mean, it's not the genetic modification per se, for the most part, (WS' 'golden rice' example, is, I think, a fantastic development) but secondary and tertiary effects of creating GMO food, such as Larry's Round-up link above. I sure as hell don't want to support a business that does that to farmers, or the environment, if I can help it.

[DreamSongs]

http://foodrevolution.org/blog/former-pro-gmo-scientist/

This is the kind of thing that concerns me:

The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

So the GMOs themselves are classified as insecticides as well being able to withstand insecticide itself.

[TrueMetis]

http://foodrevolution.org/blog/former-pro-gmo-scientist/

This is the kind of thing that concerns me:

So the GMOs themselves are classified as insecticides as well being able to withstand insecticide itself.

I don't think Bt corn and soy is anymore resistant to insecticides than any other crop. And it's "resistant" to Bt only insofar as the mechanism Bt uses to kill certain types of insects is specific to those kinds of insects. With a few closely related species like the Monarch butterfly also being effected. Fortunately Monarch butterfly's don't eat corn in the larval stage so impact should be minimal. (What they do eat however can be found near cornfields so their is some impact)

Bt corn is exactly what was being talked about when it was said GMO's could reduce insecticide use, even better is that the toxin comes from a bacteria that can evolve if resistance in found to develop.

Also both the FDA and EPA od regulate Bt corn so guy is just plain wrong there.