Food thoughts

Weekly Food Thoughts 02/11/2010

Good article this week in the NewYork Times about "A federal effort to push junk food out of school" (link below). While I think the effort is somewhere praiseworthy, I also think it totally miss the real problem and here is why ...
Beyond the point, the article mentionned the whole "business" of selling, let's call it junk,  to help raise money to pay for new sport uniforms or other extra cruricular programs !!! quite paradoxal : selling junk to pay for sport equipments !! it is really sad to think that schools have to go to that extend because they don't have the adequate fundings!!!
Now to the point missed: I have cookies or cake every afternoon and I would not want someone to take it away from me (make me unpleasant).
BUT I bake my cookies/cake which usually include: sugar/flour/eggs/butter and, depending the mood and the week, from nuts to dry fruits to chocolate ... in short the usual home made organic taste delicious cookies.
NOW have you ever read mass produced cookies's labels ??? (yaya I went back to the store with my little notepad) I found out that they all have more or less the same ingredients from : palm kernel oil with TBHQ for freshness (no kidding and I am quoting) (see my google result below), cocoa processed with alkali, Polysorbate 60 (often used in cosmetics to solubilize essential oils into water-based products. Polysorbates are oily liquids derived from PEG-ylated sorbitan (a derivative of sorbitol) esterified with fatty acids.) yup I did not know either !! Vanillin : an artificial flavor (sic) (all spelled out), soy lecithin (even my chickens dont eat soy) etc etc etc from yellow #5 to red #40 you got it and here where the real problem is NOBODY goes after the manufacturers of that junk, of course kids (and grownups) are going to buy it : it is available in quantities and it is CHEAP (here again) and as long as nobody will forbid the food manufacturers to put in your food the same stuff you find in your body lotion (polysorbate) why should they stop ???
If we want to stop the health problems of generations of kids let's stop to produce the crap ... if kids are not buying it at school then they will buy it somewhere else.
Let's teach the kids to bake their own cookies with real ingredients, they will love it and dont give me the "no time" crap ...  
In the meantime you can buy real cookies at the farmer's market.
See you all on Saturday ....

TBHQ is another ingredient that is in alot of food products.
TBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, is an antioxidant derived from petroleum.
TBHQ is a form of butane, i.e LIGHTER FLUID, that the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food.
Ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomitting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” TBHQ used in lab rats has cause cancer, stomach ulcers, and damage to DNA.
Ingesting 5 grams can kill.
And here’s a gross fact about McNuggests from McDonalds (they love to see you smile). TBHQ is sprayed directly on the nugget or on the inside of the box is comes in to “help preserve freshness.” They “promise” that each nugget has 0.02 percent of TBHQ oil.

The next generation of Laying Girls ...