Frankenfoods

My latest post on food . . . and the scary things food processors do to the things they expect us to eat.

Check out Food wars: It's us (consumers) v. them (the processors) for the latest on Ammonia-Infused Hamburger, Zombie Orange Juice, and other horrors of the "modern" food system.

S510 back from the dead

Ay-yi-yi!

Looks like Monsanto, Cargill, and the other major industrial food suppliers may get their way and get “their own“ bought-and-paid-for food czar in charge of all food production in the U.S.

Speak of tyranny!

Please read S 510 Food Safety bill is still alive and may unleash a new army of FDA agents . . . and call your senators.

What‘s got me worked up?

• Even with the Tester Amendment (that permits farms with less than $500,000 annual revenue off the hook), this law encompasses virtually any and every viable “real“ farm in America. --$500,000 revenue will hardly permit enough profit to support a single family, much less an operation that requires a non-family employee or two.
   
• Constitutionally, according to the 5th Amendment, what is the U.S. Congress doing providing for the FDA to regulate local food growers/producers/distributors? If i grow fruits and vegetables (or meat or milk or any farm product) solely for sale to people in my own state, according to the 5th Amendment, the Congress ought not to be seeking to regulate my trade with my neighbors. (But, of course, the federal government has justified its infringements in these matters for decades. So I should probably simply acquiesce, right?)
   
• The issue that Mike Adams emphasizes in the article I have highlighted here: the plan to move full regulation of food production to the administrative whims of individual bureaucrats who can be bought off by special interests--bureaucrats who can always hide behind the justification that they had “reason to believe“ that something might be harmful. No judicial review. No appropriate due process. Simply the decision of a new “food czar.“

And we think we live in “the land of the free“?

"Weird" Science #7: Brix

I'd never heard the word until maybe a year ago. Amy brought it to my (our family's) attention. "Check this out," she said, and she pulled out a little instrument into which she squeezed some juice from an apple or some other piece of fruit.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm measuring brix: more or less, the nutrient density of the food."

Brix, as I soon learned, is a measure of total dissolved solids (TDS) or total soluble solids (TSS) in liquid. It was originally developed by A. F. W. Brix, a German chemist (1798-1890) who sought to help vintners whether and when their grape crops were ready for harvest and which grapes would produce the best wine. More prosaically, from their perspective, it was a means to determine sugar levels in grapes.

But, as my comment about TDS or TSS implies, brix doesn't merely measure sugars. It measures the total of all solids in the liquid. So, as one source notes, "many other substances can falsely indicate "brix" readings (although those readings are valid in their own right). Try rubbing alcohol, whiskey, vinegar, or wine. Interestingly, cooking oil, molasses, syrup, and other thick liquids require a refractometer calibrated to read 30-90 brix. Honey is checked with a refractometer calibrated to measure the water within it instead of the solids in the water."

However, in general, "The higher the brix, the greater the nutrient density." That should certainly be true of foods you grow. And until professional farmers begin trying to "scam the system" the way the Chinese pet food and children's formula manufacturers did with melamine three or four years ago, it should be true of most store-purchased foods as well.

One day, I have no doubt, someone will attempt to adulterate foods to maximize brix; hopefully it won't be soon.

So what does all this have to do with you?

Have you ever bought fruits or vegetables at your local market that seem to be completely lacking in flavor? --Test them and you will find they are low in brix.

Here's a chart of brix ratings for various fruits and vegetables.

So what difference does a high brix reading make?

Well, as already intimated,

• It makes a huge difference in flavor.
  
  Can you imagine celery (12 brix) or broccoli (12 brix) or cabbage (14 brix) that is sweeter than the typical orange (10 brix) you buy in the grocery store? (I have to confess: I can't. But those are results that some growers are claiming they have achieved.)
   
• But besides flavor, there really is--or normally will be--an astonishing difference in nutritional content.
  
  Here is an analyzed difference of various nutrients in green beans comparing the USDA "standard" values, values measured from some 4.2 brix store-bought beans, and the values from some (only marginally better) 6.1 brix, grown late in the fall, just before frost, home garden beans:
  
  

  Nutrient	USDA	%DV	Store	Garden	%DV
  Protein	1.8 g	4%	1.76 g	3.34 g	7%
  Calcium	37 mg	4%	70 mg	130 mg	13%
  Magnesium	25 mg	6%	30 mg	50 mg	13%
  Phosphorous	38 mg	4%	40 mg	80 mg	17%
  Potassium	209 mg	6%	190 mg	580 mg	17%
  Copper	0.1 mg	3%	0.1 mg	0.4 mg	20%
  Iron	1.0 mg	6%	1.3 mg	2.1 mg	12%
  Zinc	0.2 mg	2%	0.72 mg	2.3 mg	15%
  Manganese	0.2 mg	11%	0.29 mg	0.35 mg	18%

  --Chart found at HighBrixGardens.com

Are there other benefits one might see with high brix foods?

Yes.

I'm told that if you're a gardener or farmer,

• You can expect to invest far less time or effort or money on protecting your plants from insects, weeds, bacterial and/or fungal attacks.
  
  Over and over I have read or heard (I am listening to lectures presented at the Acres USA 2007 through 2009 conferences): High brix plants are generally immune to the pests that lead conventional farmers to spray their fields with toxic 'cides--pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and so forth.
   
• Unbelievably prolific plants: unusually heavy harvests and fruits and vegetables that mature in ridiculously short periods of time. --For example, celery ready to pick in 45 days when it was normally expected to ripen in 110. --Proper nutrification of the soil for the purpose of raising high brix foods, we are told, is the secret to this kind of bounty. (See the same page as above.)
   
• Not just heavier bearing, but longer growing seasons, too.
  
  Why? For the same reason that sugar water (or salt water; or any water that has high dissolved solids in it) will not freeze at "only" 32 degrees F. Plants die when ice crystals rupture plant cells. "Pure water freezes at 32 degrees Farenheit. However, a 5 brix water-sugar mixture freezes at 26 degrees; a 10 brix mixture at 22 degrees; and a 15 brix mixture won’t freeze until it reaches 17 degrees. . . . Many high brix growers find their production season extended because the first few light frosts no longer harm their crop." (Rex Harrill, Using a Refractometer to Test the Quality of Fruits & Vegetables)

But the benefits continue.

Whether you're a farmer or not, being able to store fruits and vegetables without decay for a longer period of time could be a great boon. So . . .

• How about tomatoes that won't go bad, even after they have been stored at room temperature for 14 months?!? Click here and do a "Find" for illustrations of high brix produce. This one blew me away.
  
  I had heard about the flavor from the very beginning. I had heard some stories about how nutrient-dense (i.e., high brix) fruits don't decay as quickly as those that are less dense. (Consider your standard apple, for example. Low brix apples, once you bite into them, turn brown quickly. But high brix, they say, maintain their original color longer.) But to see the photos of tomatoes that have been stored at room temperature for 14 months: that really takes the cake!
  
  --Again, such a result seems impossible to believe. I have been told tomatoes have an enzyme--polygalacturonase--that starts to make them decompose the moment they are picked, and the standard shelf life of the average tomato is 15 days in a refrigerator. See this article and this for more on the standard tomato rotting characteristics . . . and the work of geneticists to try to extend their shelf life. So what's with the 14-months-at-room-temperature tomatoes? Check out the photos and captions on the page to which I directed you.

If you're growing your own fruits and vegetables, while you're growing them, you want to measure the brix not of the juice in the fruits or vegetables, but the juices in the leaves of the plants. (As the people at Agriculture Solutions say, "Put a leaf or food sample inside some nylon and then use a garlic press to obtain a liquid extract.") You'll get different measurements than you will from the fruits, but you want to measure the brix in the leaves to provide a feedback mechanism to help you know which foliar sprays and/or mineral supplements and soil amendments you ought to be applying. There's a little bit of an explanation about how to do these tests here.

For about the fullest explanation of brix you can find on the web, complete with its history, how to measure it, and some very wise counsel, even, on how to use it practically in your garden and when shopping, check out Rex Harrill's Using a Refractometer to Test the Quality of Fruits & Vegetables.

Enjoy the adventure!

Think the BP oil spill is a major environmental disaster? Perhaps it's time for us to look at our food!

What with three children and several grandchildren who exhibit major reactions to various foods (but particularly wheat); and what with my rheumatoid arthritis diagnosed only just over a year ago--and rather quickly identified as strongly influenced by the ingestion of wheat (not to mention other foods); what with the discovery over this past year of just how difficult it is, in the modern world of processed foods, to acquire almost any food that has not been tainted or tampered with in some manner . . . : I have become more and more aware, especially this past year, of issues related to food and food production.

And with all of these thoughts fairly near the top of my mind, perhaps you can understand my fury at reading this story about Monsanto.

Be prepared to have your blood boil . . . and find your food buying habits slowly alter (as ours have) as you realize there really is something wrong about our modern food production system. . . .