Corn+Gas=High Food Costs

I know I have been a tardy poster. It’s true, and I’m sorry. There are copious reasons for that one of which being my other blog being a priority for one more month, and the fact that there really hasn’t been any strikingly interesting articles about food in the news. Have people lost their interest in food? Has the government stopped meddling in our digestion practices? I don’t think either of those are true, but I do think there are other things that are taking priority, like the gas crisis, the housing crisis, the recession. Whether we acknowledge it or not, all of these things have an effect on the way we eat.

Gas prices have an unmistakable impact on the cost of food. Besides leaching money from your food budget to fill your gastank, transportation of food is becoming increasingly more expensive, which means all those fresh fruits and vegetables we enjoy year round from various parts of the world are becoming more and more expensive. We are exporting corn and unbelievable rates because it’s one of the commodities we lead the global pack in. Corn is also being utilized for alternative fueling, although this is still in its testing phases, so it’s not as big as a culprit as exporting. So, how does this effect food prices again? Oh yeah, because so much of what we eat is composed of corn products, corn starch, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and a whole slew of other products that I can’t ramble off out of memory. Now that corn is scarcer in our local market it costs more for manufacturers to get their hands on, but trust me, they’re not taking a hit for you; you’ll see the change at the cash register.
This may sound like me pushing an organic lifestyle, but it’s not. We are who we are and we all value food differently. Organic foods aren’t ever going to be cheaper than processed and as the housing crisis continues as well as increasing costs for gas putting many of us in financial hardship, Americans will no doubt be looking to save money on food. All of this will most likely mean more processed foods, more store brands; more fast food (because buying a hamburger for $0.69, is a lot cheaper than buying ground beef, buns, lettuce, tomato, catsup, etc.) Buying food locally at green markets and food coops is a great option for those of you that want to eat organic, or close to it, without breaking the bank).

So what are we to do, when we’re all trying desperately to have enough income to feed our families, pay our mortgages, and put gas in the car, and eat healthy? Choose carefully, make informed decisions, choose the best of all evils. This seems like the most obvious and best compromise, which is why I was surprised when I heard that the law requiring all restaurants with more than 15 outlets in New York City to post their nutritional information on the menu was delayed for a second time. Law makers aren’t even asking that all ingredients are shown, just caloric values, which is why I’m so astounded by the amount of food industry back lash there is. Okay, I’m not surprised, I don’t trust the food industry as far as I can throw them, and well, I don’t have a whole lot of upper body strength. The law was passed to help consumers make educated choices while dining out, and to have a reversing effect on the obesity rates of New York City. I think that knowing calorie values is limited in how much it can help, but well it’s a great start at making the public more aware. If I were making the rules, ingredients or at least additives would need to be listed, but that won’t ever happen, so having a calorie listing would be greatly beneficial.

Opponents of the bill say that it would discourage diners from eating out. I say perhaps it would encourage restaurants to be more thoughtful and provide better choices. Glass half full/Glass half empty; either way there’s still a glass. We have always deserved to know what we are putting in our bodies, but now more than ever, when so many Americans are struggling to make ends meat (no pun intended) we deserve the right to make informed decisions. That’s my soapbox and I will continue to stand on it.

Vegan Corn Chowder, better than it sounds.

I love the Cooking with Kim segments of the Daily Special, if only because I really like to feed people; the whole crew is at my apartment and when the food is done it has to go somewhere, and therefore I get to feed people. Perfect right?
Well not this time.There is such a stigma attached to vegan food, a few members of the crew wanted nothing to do with my chowder. So many things that we eat everyday are vegan, but we don't label them as such, so they don't have that stigma attached, but yeah, I still have a lot of this soup left over. If anyone wants some, come on by. I have a ton of vegetarian cook books but this recipe didn't come from any of them, I really wanted to stick with my MO of cooking easy, healthy, tasty foods, and cookbooks tend to be more labor intensive. So this recipe is an adaptation of one I found on www.allrecipes.com, and I must say that it came out really well. I don't even like corn, or creamy soups and I thought it was good, so if you are normal and like corn/creamy soups you will probably think it's fantastic.




Low Fat Vegan Corn Chowder:
6 red potatoes, diced
2 Cans of Whole Kernel Corn
1 Green Pepper (diced)
1 Red Pepper (diced)
1 Onion (diced)
1 Tablespoon Thyme
1 Tablespoon Crushed Red Pepper
2 Cups Vegetable Broth
1 package (12 oz) Lite Silken Tofu

Directions: 1-Boil potatoes for 15-20 minutes until soft. Strain.
2-In a pot combine potatoes, corn (with can water), green and red pepper, onion and seasonings: thyme and crushed red pepper. Cook for 15 minutes, then remove from heat.
3-Seperate out 2 cups of vegetable mix. Process the rest of the soup and the silken tofu in a food processor or blender, until creamy consistancy.
4-Return all ingredients to the pot, cook for another 5 minutes and serve, season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 6, approx. 275 calories per serving, 1.7 grams of fat, 7.4 grams of protien, 6.6 grams of fiber.

It's not you, it's me. . .

I have a confession, and you may not like it. I’m cheating on you. Yes, it’s true, with another blog. I’m currently blogging my daily experiences on the SELF Challenge on a new blog. Don’t worry, this blog will always be my baby, but in an effort to investigate whether those fitness magazines actually know what they’re talking about, I’m going to take the next three months and commit myself entirely to the SELF Challenge. The good news is, the eating plan is very similar to the way I eat now, and really focuses on real foods. So, I will stay true to my convictions. Plus, if you’ve ever been interested in seeing what I actually eat. You can check to see if my money is where my mouth is daily on http://www.thekimchallenge.wordpress.com/.

Don’t worry. I’m still stalking food in the news and will keep on keepin’ on blogging about food in the news.

Snack Time: Chobani Greek Yogurt Review

I may have mentioned once or twice or a bajillion times that I have a love affair with yogurt. Yogurt is good for you, yogurt doesn’t complain when you ask it to make adjustments, yogurt is smooth and delicious. If I could date yogurt I might. So, when I got an email from a publicist for Chobani Greek Yogurt asking whether I’d like to try it, I said sure. Let me clarify, that I’m contacted a few times a month by publicists for different foods and most often from diet plans, and most of the time I decline because, well, I’m not really promoting any sort of dieting here; I just believe in living a healthy balanced life and eating food that’s good for you but also non abrasive to the world. Okay, clarifying done.

I received my handy-dandy refrigerated package with 6 cases of yogurt in it, strawberry, blueberry, peach, vanilla, fat-free plain, and 2% plain. I tried all of them except the blueberry, which I’m allergic to. I agree that blueberries are a strange allergy, but there’s really nothing I can do about it, so you’re on your own in regard to blueberry my friends. So what’s the verdict? It’s really good. Chobani’s fat free yogurts are definitely richer and creamier than Fage’s, which seems to be the standard by which all Greek yogurts are compared to right now. It’s an organic product which is sort of my standard for approval and blog mention. Gold star in regard to taste for Chobani! Okay, but here’s the bad news, it’s expensive. I went to my local grocery store to check out the cost of these adorable little yogurt singles and it was $1.99 per 6 oz. container, which means this creamy refreshing yogurt is a once in a while treat and not a daily addition to my diet. I like yogurt, but I like paying my rent too. So, if you’re in the mood for a treat, I highly suggest this yogurt. If you’re on a budget, I still recommend using the ole’ coffee filter, plain yogurt trick to strain your regular yogurt into a creamier consistency.

Eat Like You Drive a Prius

I’ve struggled for a while with my role in the food chain. I like meat, and that’s something that I take issue with. I once dated a guy who wrote entire book about meat and how awesome it is. I’ve read tons of books on vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, and I’d say 2/3rds of my cookbooks are vegetarian, yet I still find enjoyment in sinking my teeth into a nice juicy steak or perfectly marinated pork tenderloin. Gosh darn it, I’m conflicted. I’ve gone through copious bouts of vegetarian phases, but they never seem to stick. But, what I’ve gotten from my research and my conflict is that I am happy to live in compromise. The values that pilot me toward a vegetarian diet are those that believe that all creatures deserve to be treated humanly and that our current agriculture practices are destroying our planet. So, to appease my meat eating demons, I try to only buy locally farm raised/free-range/organically fed meat. That way I know that the animal that I’m eating had a life before it was killed, that the life it had could possibly have been easier on it than the life it may have had if we lived in a society where animals roamed free. Free of predators and the stressors of finding food. And that I’m supporting the farmers that fight the good fight and farm on a small scale. Perhaps that’s just my conscious trying to alleviate itself of guilt, but that’s the way I come to terms with my constant struggle between my values and my appetite. Also, the type of meat I buy is crazy-expensive which means I eat meat once maybe twice a week.

Okay, so where am I going with this, right? Well last week I read an article by Mark Bittman (author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, who also happens to not be a vegetarian, like me!) which spoke of the global impact of rising meat consumption globally(hmm, that was a bit redundant). According to Bittman, global meat consumption per year has gone from 71 million tons in 1961 to 284 tons in 2007; it is expected to double again by 2050. This raise in meat consumption did not come without cost. Raising more and more livestock for the food supply has turned our agriculture system into an assembly line. Old McDonald’s farm is more likely to look like a warehouse with animals crowded into stalls being forced to eat grain (Grain is not naturally digested by cows. It causes major health problems for them, often resulting in death Because of these health problems “ranchers” chock their cattle full of antibiotics, which are then passed on to you the consumer via their meat, effecting your immune system.)

Large quantities of livestock mean large quantities of feed are needed. Since it’s not possible to have a bazillion cows, pigs and chickens all grazing on lushes green grass, grain crops of soy and corn are in constant demand. Unfortunately, the soil on the earth is meant to rotate crops, that’s how it keeps itself nitrogen rich and ready to grow, grow, grow. Because of the constant need of grain, land is very, very rarely rotated and soil becomes arid and useless after prolonged use. Soil that isn’t growing crops is not adding oxygen back into the environment.

Large quantities of livestock also create large quantities of excrement (poop in laymen’s terms). So, isn’t animal poop fertilizer? Well, not in the quantities in which it’s being produced. Large amounts of excrement create noxious gasses that add to the greenhouse effect. Animal poop is ruining our ozone! In fact, “livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases—more than transportation.” Also, it seeps into the soil and then into our water supply. Yum!

According to Bittman’s article “Agriculture in the United States—much of which now serves the demand for meat—contributes to nearly three quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams.”

There’s a lot more I’m not going to get into, but I suggest that you click the link attached to Bittman’s name above and read the article for yourself. I also suggest reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, it’s goes into a lot of depth about this exact subject. In the meantime, let me leave you with some of the positives from this article. Small changes in your eating habits can make a big difference in the environment. “If Americans were to reduce mean consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan—a Camry, say—to the ultra-efficient Prius.” Also, scientists in Israel and Korea are currently working on technology that would convert animal waist (poop!) into electricity. Can you imagine a world powered by poop? There are currently farmers in the US that use pig manure as fuel (see American’s aren’t so bad, we’ve got some pretty creative farmers.) Also, what Bittmman call’s “meat without feet” which is meat created in a laboratory using cultured animal cells. It’s like growing your own steak, hold the cow. Okay, I find that creepy, but I could perhaps be persuaded. It also sounds like it would super-duper expensive, but possibly a good alternative to mass breeding and slaughtering. In the meantime, I will continue to support my local farmers and battle my meat eating demons.

Diet Soda, like Darth Vader only slightly more refreshing

Diet Coke, it seems like a moderately low risk vice. All those studies about lab rats getting cancer from NutraSweet, proved that unless we were attached to a proverbial saltlick of aspartame, we’d be fine with moderate consumption. It’s a zero calorie beverage that happens to be laden with caffeine; perfect for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

Ahhhh, ignorance is bliss, ain’t it?

The New York Times recently reported on a nine-year study by scientists monitoring men and women between the ages of 45-64 in regard to their eating patterns and likelihood of having metabolic syndrome (doesn’t that sound like a made-up disease?). In all fairness, something I feel that was completely overlooked in the Times article; men and women between the ages of 45-64 are prime examples of people who will naturally have increased levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, slower metabolism, and increased risk if diabetes—the defining symptoms/characteristics of metabolic syndrome. Okay, having cleared my conscious of common sense (pesky, I know), on to more information about the experiment. The study followed these 9,500 participants in their eating habits:

Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined grains, fried
foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for
metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish
and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.

But, diet soda still seems safe, right? Well according to a itty-bitty paragraph at the end of the article (are we back in the yellow-journalism era? Because the title of the article definitely said “Diet Soda”), those participants that drank one or more diet sodas a day increased their chance of metabolic syndrome by 34%. Okay, that’s a big number. I must say this article leaves me with more questions than answers. One being, why? What’s in diet soda that makes it increase your risk of heart disease by a third? Answer: They don’t really know.

I mean, I have my theories. Diet beverages are all chemicals. And although our bodies are evolving to an ever more encompassing food source at rapid rates, they still haven’t evolved to be able to digest manmade chemical compounds. The digestion of chemicals, like those found in soda, is treated in the body like a toxin, which will be processed accordingly through the kidneys. This extra tax on our internal organs would be my guess as to the cause of ‘metabolic syndrome’ (which still sounds like a made-up disease to me).

But what do I know, I’m a coffee drinker.

Scones to the Rescue

I must admit that I've been a bit tardy in my posting. There's actually a lot of food in the news that I feel keen to write about, and hope to get to it soon. I've always been one to fill my plate (in regard to time, not food) to the brim. I feel most alive when I'm being torn in all sorts of directions. But lately, I must say shooting a daily show, working full time in the non-profit realm, rehearsing/performing weekly, taking a writing class, and training for a charity athletic event has left me all sorts of frayed. Alack, as I try to get my self in gear in regard writing posts in the true nature of this blog (more food politics), I leave you with one of my most utilized and most favoritist recipes ever. Low fat scones.




These scones come out to about 100 calories a peice. I've made them with fresh fruit before and must say that they come out a bit soggy for my tastes. I prefer dried fruit. They are perfect for a mid-afternoon coffee break or as a light breakfast.

Cooking with Kim's Scones makes 12 scones:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (or a mix of whole wheat four and white flour)
• 3 tbsp.
• sugar1 tbsp.
• baking powder1/2 tsp.
• salt2 tbsp.
• unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 cup dried fruit of your choosing

Preheat oven to 400º F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Mix in butter until mixture is size of fine crumbs. Stir in buttermilk, then fruit.
On a prepared baking sheet, shape dough into two 7-inch circles. Cut each into 6 wedges.
Bake until cooked through and golden, about 20 minutes. Yields one wedge per serving.

Clone Free Low-Fat BBQ Chicken Salad

If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that besides writing about food politics here, I host an online daily webshow called The Daily Special for the fantastic website Elastic Waist. One of our most popular segments on the Daily Special is Cooking with Kim, where I whip up low fat versions of higher fat meals. I promise that these are all foods that I actually do eat on a regular basis and they are just as easy to make in real life as they look on the show.

On Today's episode I shared one of my favorite salads. After years of slobbering over BBQ Chicken Salads at chain restuarants like TGI Fridays or Applebees, I decided that I could make my favorite restaurant style salad at home for much less fat.




Kim's Low Fat BBQ Chicken Salad
Seasonings:
Garlic powder
Cajun/Creole Seasoning

Vegetables:
Lettuce
Tomato
Corn
Black Beans
(it's a salad, add whatever veggies you want!)

Dressing:
Fat free sour cream
BBQ sauce

Optional: reduced fat shredded Cheddar and croutons add some great texture differences for the salad, but for the sake of keeping the salad truly low calorie I omitted them from the show.

Directions:
Assemble Salad with above listed vegetables, and optional toppings.
Season chicken with Cajun seasoning and grill till golden brown, slice, top salad. (The original recipe calls for fried chicken, if you prefer fried to grilled, try crumbling corn flakes, dip chicken in corn flakes and bake till done, it will provide that flaky flavor without all the oil and fat of frying. )
Dressing: combine garlic powder, BBQ sauce and fat free sour cream. Blend, let settle for 5 minutes in refrigerator.