Based on what I learned from Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma about small organic farms being bought out by big organic companies and the resulting cheapening of products, I decided to go to our local health food store in Brooklyn and check out for myself which products seemed better based on their ingredients. My plan was to buy some food products to use in preparation for a dinner I would make for my family consisting of grass-fed beef and vegetables from local farms from the farmer's markets in Union Square and on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.
At the Back to the Land health food store I decided to check out the juices first. I found out that juices made from Santa Cruz, a big organic company in California, adds sugar to all its different fruit juices. Another big organic company, R.W. Knudsen, adds xanthun gum and sodium algenate gums to many of its organic juices. However, its ginger ale is sweetened with white grape and apple juice and has no bad additives. I bought 8 cans. The best organic juice company is Lakewood, which not only has no added sugar but also donates 10% of its proceeds to the capitol Environmental Education Charitable Foundation. Had I not seen the ginger ale, I would definitely have bought the Lakewood juice. The manager told me that probably the best form of sugar to buy is Xylitol, which used to come from birch trees in Finland, then from fresh fruits, and now from non-GMO corn. He says it is still good because it fights bacteria and keeps cavities from forming. Stevia is another good sugar that comes from plants grown in South America and Asia primarily. Because it was not grown in the U.S., the FDA tried to say that it was unhealthy. Now it is grown in California and a couple of other states, and you can find it in health food stores. The manager also told me that the worst form of sweetener is aspertame, which is used in Diet Coke. It is a neuro-toxin, can cause brain damage, and was originally an insecticide. He said that when Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense uder George W. Bush, was the head of a drug company called Searle, he was able to get the FDA to push aspertame through as a sweetener. It is also sometimes called vanillan and should be avoided at all costs.
I next went to the ketchup section because I was going to mix it with horseradish to create a dazzling shrimp cocktail sauce for my first course. I first looked at Annie's Ketchup, which had sugar in it. I noticed that Annie's Barbeque Sauce not only had sugar in it, but also had brown rice sugar syrup, molasses, cornstarch, alcohol, and xanthun gum. What is this doing in a health food store? I also looked at Muir Glenn ketchup and Organicville ketchup, both of which have sugar in it. I bought Organicville Ketchup, the only brand that did not have sugar in it. While I was in the ketchup section, I saw this bottle of ginger-lime sauce that my mother used to buy a lot when it was owned by Ginger People. The manager told me that this good small company was bought out by Royal Pacific Foods and now has in it brown sugar, regular sugar, and cornstarch, which were not in it before. The manager said he was going to discontinue it and go with another company called Spectrum, which so far does not add sugar or other additives to its sauces. I also bought horseradish and freshly crushed ginger, neither of which had any additives in them.
I then went to look at pasta sauces. There were three main brands: Muir Glenn, which has sugar and calcium cholride in it: Enrico's, which has sugar in it: and Newman's Own, which also has sugar in it. I decided to go with Classico, which only has tomatoes, basil, and olive oil in it. While I was in the pasta section, I checked out the nearby jams out of curiosity about their ingredients. Cascadian Farms, which Michael Pollan says is now owned by General Mills, now has sugar in all of its jams. Sorrel Ridge and St. Dalfour, a French company, both make jams that are only sweetened with fruit juice, and both taste better than the Cascadian Farms jam.
I made my dinner of grass-fed beef, organic pasta with tomato sauce, broccoli and green salad with tomatos from local farmers, and my family gave the dinner a 8.5 out of 10. I overcooked the broccoli. The sauce for my first course of shrimp, the salad dressing, the pasta sauce, and the ginger ale had no sugar in it or other additives. I learned from my shopping experience that sugar, xanthum gum, and corn starch are sneaking into everything, and Michael Pollan got everything right in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Local farmer's markets and small organic companies provide the best food that still have nutrients in them. Just as Michael Pollan says, when big companies buy out the smaller ones, even if they are organic, they start using additives to save money and because they need more preservatives for long distance traveling. I have a lot of respect for the manager of our local health food store, and it was interesting to leaarn that he is a big fan of Michael Pollan and that he finds it discouraging that organic health standards usually go down when bigger companies take over smaller ones. I was pleased with the meal I prepared, especially since it was my first time ever making dinner, and think that the next time (if there ever is one due to athletics), I would try to be more creative with the menu. I would always want to buy as much of the food at farmer's markets because the more I learn about what goes into processed food products the less hungry I feel.
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