After weeks of pet food nightmare diaries and as we find out more and more about what might be making its way into the human food supply, I see Kossacks asking "how do we eat safely?" "what foods could be contaminated?". So I thought I'd write something, and maybe more than one something, about what I've learned about safe and economical eating and drinking over the years.
adigal mentioned in the sad thread about her dog's death, having once been told to shop the perimeter of the grocery store and it would help with weight loss.
Right now, in the brave new world of weird food additives that may be poisonous, shop the perimeter is probably the best and safest possible advice, short of doing all your shopping at Whole Foods (as not everyone can afford to do that).
Below the fold, I'll talk a little bit about how I eat and how I learned to change my food habits. If people are interested, I can write more -- about the cooperative movement, about how to start a co-op, about buying clubs and CSAs and Credit Unions and cohousing and all sorts of local organizing that can be done to make food and living cheaper and safer. I was kind of saving this for bink's proposed "My Left Fork" site...but instead I'm seizing the day.
First, a little about me:
- I am gluten-intolerant. This rules out a huge number of foods for me and I have to read labels very carefully.
- Earlier in my life I lived as a vegetarian or vegan for several years. I no longer am, but I learned a lot while eating that way.
- For most of my 20s, I was a cooperative movement activist: I organized and lived in cooperative houses. I learned to do large-scale batch cooking of cheap yet healthy vegetarian food for group dinners. I was also a part-time manager in a cooperative grocery store while I worked on my Ph.D., and then later helped to organize a neighborhood buying club (it's called the Fruited Plain Cooperative Society, and it's still in operation as far as I know), and I learned a ton about sourcing and purchasing natural foods.
- I have a Ph.D. in the biological sciences and the work I do now is essentially at the interface of large-scale molecular genetics and computational biology.
- I'm not just talking out my ass here.
So back to the topic at hand. What does shop the perimeter mean, and how can shopping the perimeter give you more control over your own food supply? If you've been lucky in your family or hung out with hippies, you've probably been schooled in all this already. But I meet a lot of people that do not think like this about grocery stores at all. Instead they head straight for the middle and load up on cookies, crackers, snacks and prepared foods. And that is where the mystery additives are lurking.
Buy the ingredients, not the finished product. Let that be your mantra, and your chances of eating a nasty additive are greatly reduced. (Also, wash your produce well even if the package says you don't have to. I think those pre-washed packaged leaves are part of the problem that people are having with e. coli -- we used to buy spinach with stems and mud and we washed it. Just sayin'.)
I'm taking for granted that not everyone here can afford to shop at Whole Foods. Some of us have to shop at the Food Lion or at the cut-rate neighborhood Mexican market (grocery chains like Atlantic Farmers' Market and Compare Foods which are sweeping major cities on the east coast). We don't have the luxury of buying organic.
However, in your plain old grocery store are plenty of foods with unambiguous ingredient lists. These foods are mostly located around the perimeter of the store. Turn left or right when you walk in the door and hit the produce aisle. Walk around the perimeter past the deli to the dairy, meat and fish. If you can afford it buy organic or free-range. But if you can't, make sure you buy the meat brands (I think Perdue is the one I've bought) that are NOT injected with flavoring -- at least you can avoid that "86% solution". SOLUTION OF WHAT? They seriously don't tell you on the package. A lot of major grocery stores now do carry milk products from regional dairies -- sometimes even in glass bottles. Those are your friend.
Around past the meat and the milk and cheese is your best friend, the frozen fruit and vegetable aisle. Skip the prepared dinners and go straight for the plain veggies. Bags of frozen veggies are often frozen where they're harvested and retain nutrients well. They can save you during those dark times of the year when nothing's in season.
Last, do a swing through the non-sexy inner aisles -- take a look at the canned beans and tomatoes. Nothing fills out a soup like some beans or tomatoes. Grab your toilet paper and shampoo and you're outta there -- and you've never walked down the aisles where the gluten additives or the unhealthy loads of high-fructose corn syrup are likely to lurk: frozen prepared foods, packaged soups, packaged snacks, sodas and "energy drinks". You've passed all that shit right by and walked out with a cart full of ingredients that you can look at in the package and know pretty much what's in there.
If you have one available in your city, you really should take advantage of the health food store or co-op. But gawd those places can be expensive, right? Here's the tip -- don't head for the organic versions of those processed foods that you stopped buying at Food Lion. Instead, head right for the bulk bins. Load up on lentils; rock out on rice. Buy your spices in bulk because you'll find that what cost you $5 in a bottle at Harris Teeter will cost you 50 cents in a baggie at the health food store.
Asian and ethnic markets are also great resources. They are often cheap, and many of the ones in my city have interesting specialty produce, fish, and meat as well as big cheap bags of rice. Again, there, don't buy the processed foods -- a lot of them will contain additives, and you can't be sure the packages are translated correctly. There was a big scare about chemicals in rice noodles made outside the U.S. a couple of years back.
Those are my whole food from the grocery store, happy cheap eating tips for the day. I'll close with a recipe for a healthy soup that comes entirely from the perimeter, that you can make in half an hour, and that will travel with you as lunch for a good part of a week:
* 4 tbsp butter
* 1 tsp black pepper
* 1 tsp thyme
* 1 tsp crushed garlic
* 1 bag frozen onion and tricolor pepper stirfry mix
Saute vegetables and spices in butter in your soup pot.
* 1 10 oz bag frozen sweet corn
Add this bag of corn to your saute. While it’s cooking, get out your blender.
* 1 cup half-and-half
* 2 tbsp "Better than Boullion" chicken flavor
Puree all vegetables with half and half and BtB. Add back to the soup pot. Now add the rest of the vegetable ingredients:
* 1/2 10 oz. bag frozen sweet corn
* SECRET INGREDIENT ALERT: 1 package birdseye frozen winter squash (this comes in the form of a puree, just toss in the block)
* optional -- 2 or more cups potato cubes (parboiled or microwaved in advance is better)
Add milk until the texture is to your liking and salt to taste. Simmer over low heat until the potatoes are tender and the flavors are blended.
Add:
* 1 12-oz bag of frozen peeled cleaned shrimp, defrosted and chopped
* other fish or shellfish as available
* salt and pepper to taste