Remember the FDA's historic Food Safety Teleconference for bloggers last November? The one where the FDA, in one of their most grassroots outreach moves, drew up a list of bloggers - average consumers talking about food safety - and invited them to listen in and ask questions about changes they were proposing via their new Food Protection Plan?

Well, pursuant to that call, Bill Marler (a food safety activist/attorney) thought it would be a good idea to set up a food safety conference. He envisioned inviting government, industry, science, and consumer representatives to discuss the present state of food safety, and to propose ways to improve it.

His conference came together. And it's about a month away!

The list of speakers is impressive. Here are a few:

In light of the "more than 28 million pounds" (see below for quote source) of possibly tainted food removed from circulation in 2007 alone, I was prompted to take a look at the current sponsors of the Safe Food Act 2007. Since my last look, two more House members have added their names.

The complete list of sponsors of the Safe Food Act 2007 today is:

Along with the Senate sponsor of the bill, Senator Richard Durbin [IL], there are 3 Senate cosponsors:Senator [State] - Date of Cosponsorship
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] - 2/15/2007
Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. [PA] - 3/21/2007

I'd like to ask a favor of anyone who sees this post in the next few days.

Would you visit this site: FoodSafety.gov ...

... and tell me if you think it easily answers any questions you, as a consumer, may have about food safety -- things like consumer alerts, current recalls, current food-related outbreaks, consumer guidance for same, etc. No big deal, just a quick scan.

On Wednesday, November 14, 2007, the FDA engaged in a historic event: its first teleconference with bloggers. I felt honored to have been invited.

In attendance were FDA Commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach (center in the photo), and FDA Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection, David Acheson (right in the photo). (HHS Deputy Secretary Tevi Troy is shown on the left.)

Around the time Fred Thompson proclaimed, "I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat.", the USDA was issuing a press release describing changes it planned to make to its food assistance program WIC.

A former White House Administration official wants to Nix The Farm Bill: 1"I’ve got a way to reduce global poverty, decrease the number of workers crossing our borders illegally, save American taxpayers money, and cut your supermarket bill -- in one fell swoop. How? Get rid of US farm subsidies and tariffs."

For the rest, see former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's latest blog post: Nix The Farm Bill.

Recall my post from a few weeks ago, Living High Off The Hog?, where livestock farmers in Pennsylvania ..."... started giving their pigs and cows chocolate - and banana chips and cashews and yogurt-covered raisins, any of which were cheaper than run-of the-mill corn and beans. One farmer even supplied his cattle a special "party mix" of popcorn, pretzels, cheese curls and crisps. This, he told reporters, saved 10% on feed costs."It looks like livestock farmers in Europe may add animal remains to their party mix: 1
"The European Union is preparing plans to allow pig remains to be used to feed poultry. The practice - banned in Europe after the BSE* crisis 10 years ago - would save farmers millions of pounds as prices of cereal feed for chickens soar, say officials in Brussels."

Well, how about that. Mark Bittman has a blog. (Thank you, Melinda.)

Bitten: Mark Bittman on Food

It doesn't look like he posts often. Although he did make a few comments yesterday about his recent article that appeared in the New York Times, the one we discussed on my post, Got Vegetables?:

Eating Meat Is Only Human, Bitten, 5 Feb 2008

He lamented (I think he was lamenting), that he "got only two comments [on his original article]: one from a cattle rancher with some smart reasoning, and one from someone who was a little more emotional."

Do visit a Calorie Counter.

It also counts protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and lots of other nutrients the USDA has tucked away in their data base. Uncluttered, fast, informative - government agencies in charge of food could learn from a site like this. :)

The owner of the site also has a blog. His last entry on November 6th points to a spectacular table he just created that compares basic nutrition facts for some popular foods from over 20 fast food restaurants:

Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared

The UK Department of Health released its "Health Profile of England 2007". They noticed a trend:

The UK Government Office for Science projected that trend 40 years into the future and determined that a "bold whole system approach is critical":

Cultured meat isn't going away anytime soon. The People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA) are making sure of it.

Yesterday PETA disclosed they'll be offering one million dollars to the first group able to grow palatable chicken meat within the next 4 years:

From PETA: PETA Offers $1 Million Reward to First to Make In Vitro Meat:"PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

• Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.

Talking about barley make me recall this Table I posted a while ago. It came from a paper written by Dr. Vinson in 1999, entitled:

The Functional Food Properties of Figs

I like figs.

Well, I just ran some numbers. According to the data in this Table, 2 tablespoons of dry barley has 37% more polyphenols than 1/2 cup blueberries ... and 3650% more polyphenols than an equal amount of wheat.1

Lavender Blue sent me this article from Newsweek:

Junk Food County: Why many rural Americans can't get nutritious foods. The unhealthy truth about country living.

I can't stop thinking about it. It's troubling, on a number of levels.

An excerpt:

The Swedish grocery store chain, ICA, is considered one of the most trusted retail brands in Sweden. It celebrated its 90 year anniversary this year.1

According to Wikipedia, a documentary aired on Swedish television last week that showed ICA employees:"... relabeling out-of-date ground meat, as well as grinding down other forms of meat past their 'best before' date to make ground meat (mince)."

I'm still wondering ... is cultured meat living?

A group of artists from the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TCA) in Australia grew this steak for their exhibition "Disembodied Cuisine".

Click to read captions, and to see some cultured meat up close.

Ronald's comment reminded me of this.

Libby's Ingredients: Mechanically Separated Chicken, Partially Defatted Cooked Pork Fatty Tissue, Beef Tripe, Partially Defatted Cook Beef Fatty Tissue, Vinegar, Salt, Spices, Sugar, Flavorings, Sodium Erythorbate And Sodium Nitrate.

Paul Krzyzanowski posted this photo of his collection:

I've been eating a lower carbohydrate diet. By default this has me eating more meat. The recent issues of breast cancer in my family have had me investigating meat consumption's affect on cancer risk.

I found this study while browsing the research:

Red Meat Intake and Risk of Breast Cancer Among Premenopausal Women (November, 2006)

Study Basics

• Study population: 90,659 premenopausal women from the famous Nurses Health Study II

Hard to miss this top news story from last night:
USDA Orders Recall Of 143 Million Pounds Of Beef

I was watching this story since early February, when the undercover video appeared on YouTube. I opted not to post it because it's difficult to watch. I changed my mind.

Here's the original footage of animal treatment at a California slaughterhouse (Hallmark Meatpacking Company), taken over a six week period by the Humane Society (5:46 minutes):

Here's an Associated Press clip (1:48 minutes), based on the above footage, that summarized the situation a week after the video above went viral. It includes a statement by Hallmark/Westland President Steve Mendell:

There was a full moon last night. It will be visible tonight too, and according to NASA, it will be the brightest full moon you'll see for the next 16 years:"That's because it's the highest-riding full moon until the year 2023."

Talk about polarizing issues. While campaigning in South Carolina yesterday, presidential candidate Fred Thompson said:"I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat."Thompson: Don't Let The Government Tell You What To Eat

Mark Bittman, author of the popular How To Cook Everything , New York Times' food writer, and host of the YouTube video that accompanied my post New York Times' No Knead Bread (probably the most-visited post in my entire blog archive) has a new NYTs article out. From yesterday's paper:

In my thinking-out-loud comment under RS and Colon Cancer, I spoke of the social pressure to eat a certain way.

Below is an example. It's a photo of the entrance foyer of a large food store where I shop. A mountainous display of some food item always occupies this space. This week a mountain of soft drinks was being erected. The last display was a mountain of chips, crackers, and dip. At the top of the display (they weren't done piling yet) is often a wide screen television showing people consuming the food in the display, interspersed with "fun" activities ... sports, parties. I can't imagine these are just props, that they don't include them in their inventory without the intention of selling them.

"Since World War II, the food industry in the U.S. has gone a long way toward ensuring that their customers (just about all of America's children, as well as a good proportion of the adults) do not have to chew breakfast. The bleached, gassed, and colored remnants of the life-giving grains are roasted, toasted, frosted with sugar, embalmed with chemical preservatives, and stuffed into a box much larger than its contents.

Every day, a little bit of my faith blows away ...

Cancer Docs Profit From Chemotherapy Drugs
Situation begs the ethical question: Are they overprescribing?"The significant amount of our revenue comes from the profit, if you will, that we make from selling the drugs," says Dr. Peter Eisenberg, a private physician who specializes in cancer treatment.________

Just for fun and because I was curious, I threw together a quick vegan menu to see how much protein it contained. A vegan diet excludes all forms of meat, fish, dairy products, and eggs.

The menu below provides 60 grams of protein for 1700 calories. It does not include processed items like wheat gluten and soy-protein-based foods (veggie burgers, fake deli meats and cheeses). It even lacks wheat products, breads, tofu, and soy milk. Not saying those can't be part of a vegan diet, but I didn't want to boost the protein with anything processed.

The Mississippi House of Representatives has floated a bill (HB 282, below) that would make it illegal to serve obese patrons.

The gentlemen below are the Bill's authors. From left to right: W. T. Mayhall, Jr. (R), John Read (R) , Bobby Shows (D). It appears to be a bipartisan effort.

Oh. A trend!

A few weeks ago I posted a report by the UK's Government Office for Science which said:"The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone and demands a societal approach."
...
"The people of the UK are inexorably becoming heavier simply by living in the Britain of today. This process has been coined 'passive obesity'."I lamented that government agencies in the US still frame America's weight problem as the creature of an individual's nefarious choices. "Eat less refined corn and soy products!" they say, as if our weight problem is our fault.

It's incomprehensible to me that those same agencies, backed by Congress, turn around and fund the production of those very corn and soy products they tell us not to eat - making them cheaper, more accessible, and, well, downright popular.

This is another in my series of posts on low-carb diets. I've been reducing the amount and changing the type of carbohydrate I eat, which by default changes the amount of fat and protein I eat. I'm wondering what the long-term effect of this pattern of eating is.________