Veggie Daddy Rule #5: Know Thy Food Source

"The stuff we throw away is what we're paying for...the packaging, printing, manufacturing, warehousing, refrigeration, and distribution. After all this has been paid off, there's not much money left for the actual ingredients in the food. This is why most processed, packaged, and prepared foods are full of chemical flavors, colors, and empty calories created to make actual food ingredients go further. Another reason for enjoying more whole, fresh, raw foods straight from the source." -- Ani Phyo, author of Ani's Raw Food Essentials.

Got this from Chapters for ten bucks. Good deal, I must say.

Veggie Daddy Rule #5: Know Thy Food Source

Veggie Daddy Fun Fact: Thomas F. Pawlick from The End of Food says the Canadian potato has lost 100% of its Vitamin A. This doesn't just apply to potatoes, but all of our fruits and vegetables, grains, and even our sodium-solution-pumped meat has lost massive amounts of nutrients over many years. Synthetic fertilizers are a big part of the blame, the food industry as a whole, but we, too, are a big part of the blame. We choose to buy inferior food. My guess is that this could turn around if we started to pay more attention to where our food comes from: who's growing it, who's making it, who's selling it, and who's buying it. And don't forget the most important question of all: What is in it? Take the Slate quiz and see how well you do. Our food has become so alien to us, we need the food companies to come up with a fancy brand name in order to tell us what it is we're eating. If the Slate quiz makes anything clear, it's that the food we are eating is not food at all. So, again, if it's not food, what in God's name is it?

That fruit you're buying that was shipped from God knows where isn't getting soft because the fruit is being harvested when it is barely ripe. Then the fruit gets subjected to bouts of toxic polyethelene gas as if in a modern-day Auschwitz re-enactment in order to "ripen" the fruit in the "ripening" rooms on the trucks as they get shipped thousands of miles to our favorite grocery store. The fruit looks amazing, and then we take it home with us and bite into that juicy tomato, which isn't juicy at all, it just looked juicy, and it has no flavor at all, it just looked like it did. What is happening to the food? It's being gassed to death in trucks. Do you think this gas might affect our health? I'll let you figure that one out.

Synthetic fertilizers only focus on three nutrients (the classic NPK formula) when we actually need seventeen essential nutrients to grow our food. Monsanto is trying to sue farmers for trying to steal their seeds as the genetically modified crops inadvertently contaminate organic, non GM crops. "The major biotech companies currently own 50 percent of the world’s commercial seeds, and we certainly don’t want to get into a situation where a few chemical companies own all our commercial seeds," says Andrew Kimbrell, founder and exec. director of the Center for Food Safety. Seeds aren't very profitable until you find some way to patent them. Now they can make you bank. Now you can "smile as you kill" as you join the others at "the top of the hill." 

Yet we must stay low to the ground and eat low on the food chain, foods close to the earth, as local and organic as possible. I just learned that genetically modified food is still considered organic. This is a joke. And the joke's on us. Thomas, a guy I know from down at Harbourside told me to Google "Cow Human Hybrid" and "Spider Goat". When I get the time, I will, but from what he told me last night, we are in serious trouble. And at the rate we are currently going, we are letting these people control our entire food supply. When will we TAKE THE POWER BACK? Only time will tell.  

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

And don't forget Veggie Daddy Rule #4!

Buy Local! Buy Fresh! Your Guide to Eating Locally on the Avalon

The Northeast Avalon Regional Economic Development Board has just created a wonderful map and guide to eating locally on the Avalon Peninsula. Here's a list of all the places you can get the map. You'll notice there is a paucity of fruit here, save for berries and bakeapples, and that means we'll just have to keep getting most of our fruit from off the rock.

Though I am horrified by today's industrial farming methods and how most livestock are cruelly treated and injected with all kinds of drugs to keep the bottom line pumping, if you are going to eat meat, please make an effort to support our local farms. When my mom was in town, we went to the St. John's Farmers Market and got some eggs and hamburger from Oliver's Farm. This is a much better option than buying Maple Leaf or Country Ribbon. "It's fresh because it's made right here?" Just because it's "made" here doesn't mean it's fresh. A guy I know said that if anyone were to ever take a tour in there, they'd never eat chicken again. I'm pretty sure he's right.

Speaking of horror, scientists are saying that pigs have the intelligence and awareness of 3 year-old children. That shouldn't be too surprising since their DNA is so similar to our own. When the other pigs see their friends getting impaled on sharp hooks over the conveyor belts, the pigs in line squeal in terror because they know they are next. In 1999, when Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina, an estimated 100,000-400,000 hogs were drowned because they were trapped in their CAFOs. Since they didn't know what to do with all the freshly-killed pink carcasses, they ground up the dead pigs and fed them to the live ones. Very efficient, I must say.

Please support your local farms. Big Agriculture is big trouble, and the small farmers get inevitably squeezed out because they simply can't compete with the big boys.

Here's an example of what happened to small Vermont dairies who tried to market rBGH-free milk. In order to increase milk production, cows got treated with rBGH, Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone. Monsanto called theirs Posilac. This is so the cows will lactate 15% longer than usual, thus increasing milk production by about 30%. Vermont wanted all milk that was made from Posilac-injected cows to be labelled. When Monsanto heard this, they fiercely lobbied the FDA to prevent the label. Bad for business, you see. And when dairies tried to advertise that their milk was rBGH-free, Monsanto threatened to sue them.

rBGH-treated milk was banned in the European Union in 1993, and Canada banned the practice because they were concerned about the health of the cows. Dairy cows can live up to 15 years, but when treated with rBGH, they only survive 1-2 years. Go Canada! My choice? Don't drink milk at all. There is no reason to and every reason not to.