Dinner Quandries

You all know that I love to cook. Lance and I both are passionate and adamant about cooking and eating good food, shopping at the local market and natural foods co-op*. We prepare most of our own meals and love nothing more than to share our creations with others.

Lately, there's been a discussion going on in Google Reader on shared items involving food, food choices, food regulation, and how socioeconomic status plays into it all. Of course, I was vaguely aware that my ability to purchase fresh, organic produce or to buy from the Farmers' Market on a regular basis was a privilege. I don't make tons of money, but I make enough to afford good quality food, and we make it a priority to spend a bit more on it (instead of, say, paying for cable or eating out a lot).

I'm lucky to be able to have both the financial means to purchase organic produce and to have access to it. I realized, however, that not everyone lives where they can easily buy organic goods or can even afford them if they did have access. When I was growing up, my parents couldn't afford to purchase enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed all seven individuals all the time (two adults and five children), and so we ate lots of spaghetti, ground beef or turkey, cheap lunch meat, white bread, peanut butter and jelly, and macaroni and cheese. We had canned or frozen vegetables mixed in (but not always), and I don't think we ever had a big green salad with our meals (which I eat almost daily now). We generally had bananas, and sometimes oranges or apples, but not always. I used to hate fresh green beans because I only ate the canned ones. We had our free school lunches, but as this blog points out, school lunches aren't exactly the paragon of good nutrition. We had plenty of food growing up, but now when I go to my parents' house, I have to bring my own food or I'll have a bad case of indigestion from the food I grew up eating. (Not to mention that they don't exactly good vegetarian-friendly dishes, so I just cook for myself and share with them, if they like).

People who are poor and live away from a good grocery store where they can buy anything fresh (let alone organic) don't have the same level of access that I now have to good quality food. They have to rely on the cheap, processed products they can afford and have access to for nutrition. Those in higher socioeconomic groups ignore the base problem of access, and insist that poor people are ignorant of their health and just need to be better educated**.

Another problem is that the government subsidizes the foods that have been shown to lead to obesity, diabetes, and cancer. If the government would switch to subsidizing salads and ensuring better food access for poor people, then maybe they would be able to afford to eat better and make better food choices.

Food and politics and morality are all tangled up in very wrong ways in America. Eating isn't a simple act. I'm fortunate to be able to be picky and shun processed foods, but not everyone has that choice. Sometimes all my parents could afford to buy us for dinner was a 25 cent box of macaroni and cheese and a package of hot dogs. They were sharply aware that it wasn't very healthy, but they didn't have a choice.

*We do, of course, occasionally eat something that might not fall into this category, like fried potato wedges on a road trip. But we try to mostly eat the good stuff, since too much junk/fast food makes us feel like crap.
**I do think that some education needs to happen, but poor people are not the only ones who are ignorant--middle-class children raised on pre-packaged food because the parents are too busy to bother cooking a real meal certainly need to learn that they need to change how they eat to be healthy. And a thin person who eats burgers and won't touch fruit or vegetables falls into that same category.

Staff of Life

I want to talk about something important today. I want to talk about bread.

When you're trying to eat healthy, mainstream thought tells us we should avoid bread. Bread is full of carbs! diet gurus shout at us. Don't eat bread--it'll make you fat!

I call bullshit.

The problem with bread is not bread itself. Humans have been eating bread since they started cultivating grain thousands of years ago. How can something that we've subsisted on for so long suddenly be the source of the obesity epidemic?

The answer is that commercially produced bread is...well, less than healthy. Or less than bread. It's an engineered product pumped full of sugar and chemicals to appeal to our desire for soft, ultra-palatable food. There's a reason why white bread is so popular and why really good wheat bread--if full of whole-grain goodness--is difficult to find outside of a natural food store. And commercially produced wheat bread is nothing but brown white bread with a deceptive "made with whole grains" label slapped on it.

Now, I haven't bought that kind of bread in a very long time. I normally go for a sprouted grain bread made by Ozark Natural Breads that is dense and well made. In my opinion, it has a good texture and can in no way be confused with the soft, cakey bread that many folks identify as "bread".

Remember yesterday when I said something about eating peas on a piece of toasted homemade bread? Well, recently I made a 100% whole wheat bread (with Lance's assistance and guidance). And while time consuming, it was reasonably easy. I'd never really made bread before, and my loaves turned out perfectly--and I knew what was in them.

The secret to a good, airy whole wheat bread--many people don't like whole wheat bread because it's so dense or dry--is to first make a sponge and to include a bit of sweetener. You mix together warm water, yeast, some flour, and honey and let it sit for an hour. The sugars give the yeast something to get it going, and it digests the whole wheat flour a little faster than it might without it. I ended up using part agave syrup because I didn't have quite enough honey, and the yeast really liked it.

After the sponge ferments for a bit, you mix in the rest of the ingredients: salt, oil (also key for a moister loaf) and more whole wheat flour. Knead until elastic, which gets the gluten forming--you have to knead and knead, but it's kind of fun and totally pays off.

A 1.5-2 hour rising, and then the loaves are ready to be shaped and let sit for another 45 minutes for the final rising. Here they are with their tops slashed, ready for the oven. If you don't want to make traditional loaves, you can also shape them into other formats, such as Lance's happy little boule:

The point is that bread does take time to make, but it's totally worth it. And most of that time is just waiting for the yeast to do its work! You get the satisfaction of knowing you aren't supporting companies that offer up little more than bread-flavored swill, and it's far more satisfying to slice into your own loaf then to pull pre-sliced bread from a bag.

Spread it with a little jam (homemade strawberry-rhubarb preserves are pretty good on it, which you see in the picture), slice it up for sandwiches, or eat a chunk with a fresh garden salad, and you'll understand why bread is considered vital to human meals throughout history.

Meditations on Sugar

I have a post all worked up in my head about Rachel Pastan's Lady of the Snakes, but I'll have to write it down tomorrow. Right now, I want to talk about my weak time of the day. It's about now, just so you know, so this post is really therapeutic (hopefully preventing me from raiding the ice cream in the work freezer). Must resist the 3 pm urge to eat sweets!

I'm cutting out sweets. Someone asked if this meant that I'm not eating fruit. Um...no. Do you see that orange on my desk? How about the bowl of fresh pineapple in the fridge and pint of strawberries from Lance's garden? There's no way that I can not eat fruit. I love it so; apples are a staple afternoon snack. Fruit is way too yummy to ever give up, and I shouldn't anyway since it's packed with nutrition and deliciousness.

Obviously there are ways to eat fruit poorly. Take yogurt with fruit in it. Yum! Yogurt is the ultimate health food, right? Now look at the ingredient list and the amount of sugar in it. Even if you're not eating a HFCS (high fructose corn syrup)-loaded yogurt (or worse yet, Splenda-loaded), even the Brown Cow (all natural!) variety is packed with sugar in the form of cane juice and maple syrup. No thanks--unless rarely as a treat (I like the Low Fat Vanilla Bean, personally--reminds me of ice cream!). Better to just toss some fresh or frozen fruit (without added sugar) into plain yogurt if you're have a yogurt craving and can't stand plain.

Fruit has juice and sweet without any need to add more, but we've gotten our taste buds accustomed to eating sweeter and sweeter things. Just try buying cranberry juice that's all juice and without freakin' HFCS. You have to dodge anything with the word "cocktail" in it because that means it's loaded with death in the form of chemically-produced corn-sweetener. I'll save the rant against labels for another day, but reading the ingredient list is all important if you want to eat in a manner that even resembles healthy.

HFCS has revolutionized the food industry. Mammals evolved to crave sweetness. The food industry has realized this, even if you haven't. If you don't believe me, go read the labels in your refrigerator or pantry. Most anything processed will have some form of added sugar (though you may not recognize it by name), I guarantee it. And much of that sugar will be derived from corn. It's the industry's way of making sub-par food taste a bit better to induce us to keep on buying it.

Instead, we should return to the simple, wholesome apple if we want sweet. Or fresh pineapple. Or berries. They offer more than just something for the sweet tooth--the have fiber, vitamins, anti-oxidants, and they just might help you live forever. Or at least help you live a more quality life. When we quit believing that "peaches in heavy syrup" is somehow more satisfying than a real peach fresh off a tree, we are making a step toward health and a better world, and a step away from industry-controlled crappy food. Off I go to peel and eat my orange!