Walking Corn

Due to the US Government's push toward cheap and boundless corn, it has managed to squeeze its way into almost everything we eat. Whether it is ketchup, salad dressing, soft drinks, or cookies its got corn in it. In fact, if you were to submit a strand of hair to a scientist with the right machine they would probably see that over 50% of the carbon forming the hair was from corn. Thats a pretty scary thought since over in Europe the average is around 5%.. and you know how attractive Europeans are compared to Americans.. So my new quest now is to find food that is not corn based.. which is probably near impossible living on a student budget but I will try my best to at least reduce my dependence on corn.

So for now that means avoiding :

ketchup without High Fructose Corn Syrup
corn based chips
soft drinks
almost any kind of fast food item
and the list goes on...

Organic Tomatoes vs Non Organic Tomatoes

In my search for evidence pitting the Organic corner against the Non-Organic corner, the organic side claims that studies suggest that organic food was more nutritionally dense while the non-organic side claimed "inconclusive studies" of this. Who are you to believe? Because I'm an engineer by heart, I tend to side with cold hard evidence. Most of the evidence I gathered from scientific institutes said there was no conclusive evidence that organic food was healthier from a nutritional standpoint compared to non organic food. They also said there was no evidence that having some pesticide in your urine was actually a detriment to your health, as long as the levels were under a certain level. All agreed, though, that organic farming was probably better for the environment. The non-organic side argues that organic farming was economically inefficient and not able to feed mass populations. As for taste, that is a subjective thing and everyone has their own. Personally, I've had some great fruit at both HEB and Whole Foods. Likewise, I've had my share of sour and mushy ones at both venues too. I'd have to say that judging from all the articles I've read, the determining factor in taste is to get something local/just picked. All the fruit you see in HEB/Whole Foods was picked who knows when and transported who knows how far.

One place I did find evidence, however, in favor of organic foods was based on a study done by UC Davis. They compared organic and conventional tomatoes from 1994 - 2004 and saw ever increasing flavonoids in the organic crop each year. The increase was due to organic matter building up in the soil each year from the organic farming methods while at the same time reducing the manure application rates. This was a scientific experiment proving that organic farming for tomatoes definitely made them more nutritious and better for the environment. So for now I might plunk down that extra amount for organic tomatoes!

"Free Range" Chickens

In his book Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollack sheds light on some of the questions I had about organic food.. or should I say "organic" food. Part of his research for the book was going to a real sustainable farm and comparing/contrasting this with one of the "industrial organic" farms that supply, for example, eggs to Whole Foods. Where on the sustainable farm the chickens are literally out in the open and in general well cared for, the industrial organic farms had a whole different picture. These chicken were supposed to be "free range" as advertised on the egg carton. But "free range"meant that the chicken were pretty much taken care of the same way non organic industrial eggs chicken were.. in vast warehouses indoors. The difference being that they were fed organic chicken feed and that there was a tiny door at the end of the warehouse. The caveat was that the chicken were held indoors for the first five weeks of their lives and only then was this door unlocked. By then the chicken were so accustomed to being indoors that they never would leave. This was extremely eye-opening to me and helped me to question if it really was worth paying extra money for "free range" chicken eggs.

Introduction

The focus of this blog is to compare and contrast Premium/Organic foods like the kind at Whole Foods with the Budget/Mainstream type you can get at HEB, Walmart, or Fiesta. Its something I've always been curious about and hopefully I can learn alot about this topic by semesters end.