What are Natural Flavors?

One thing that I always look out for in my food is the presence of natural flavors.  You might picture me with my cart full of carefully selected frozen dinners or boxes of granola.  Well, thankfully that is not the case.  Where one might least expect it is where you find it.  A good example is tea.  Now there are so many brands of high quality tea out there.  As I read the labels there are maybe two or three brands that don't have natural flavors.  Many of the brands that do are labeled organic and charge a premium.  According to the government rules about organic, "natural flavors" are allowed.  So what are natural flavors, you ask?  I will not bore you with and explanation.  Instead, I provide you with a link to this eye-opening segment from 60 minutes.

What strikes me most about this story is how much effort these people go through to mimic the flavors of biodiversity.  There is a moment that one of the scientists opens her cabinet full of only different varieties of raspberry flavor.  It is almost comical.  When we lose biodiversity of taste because of commoditization we are left with a cabinet full of little bottles to mimic them.

60 minutes- The Flavorists


Feel free to post any thoughts you have on the blog.

Washington's and D.C.'s all natural , artisan made, GE Food Label bills

Last month in DC a new bill was introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer(D-CA) and Rep. Peter De Fazio(D-OR) to label all  genetically engineered foods including the tons of "food" made with GE grains and the brand new, right out of the box, GE salmon.  Not surprisingly, two Senators from Alaska are on board for labeling salmon.

There are also eight other co-sponsors for the bill in the Senate and almost two dozen in the House.  Does this mean the bill has a good chance of passing?   The fact that nine out of ten Americans support labeling may not mean much, especially when Congress sees large amounts of cash coming their way from big ag. On the bright side, it at least shows that they are paying attention.  It remains to be seen whether this is merely a reaction to the enormous amount of vocal support against GMO's (i.e. phone calls) that has been coming out of California and Oregon or that there really is enough national support to push a bill through.

In Washington state last month the legislature failed to vote on “The People’s Right to know Genetically Engineered Food Act” which means that the vote goes to the public as a ballot measure.  The initiative is similar to California's failed Prop 37, except there is no prohibition for the terms "Natural" and "All Natural" currently being used on food labels.

Now this is somewhat of sticking point for many people.  What exactly is natural anyway?

Everything in nature is "natural".  Not all of it is good for you.  Many prepared foods are labeled all natural although they have been transformed from their natural state and possibly had not so natural "natural flavors" added to them. One could argue the term and others such as "artisan" have been used in such misleading ways as to render them meaningless.  My personal favorite is "artisan made" which is so blatantly redundant I'm stupefied by the marketing genius that came up with this.

We may get some type of labeling for GMO's even though as I write this Monsanto emerges victorious in the Supreme Court case, Bowman vs. Monsanto. So, there are sure to be more lawsuits from their super-lawyers if these labeling bills pass. One has to be in awe of the power and money at stake here. Patenting life is big business. And although the Supreme Court ruling written by Justice Kagan follows the law, the ethics of this type of patent is another matter entirely; one that many do not agree with.  If you want to learn more about this convoluted case, check out The Washington Post article and feel free to post any comments on the blog.  I'm always curious to hear other's understanding of these things.

Next week I'll be digging deeper into the natural flavors industry,talking about what exactly they are and why it is a direct link to the purpose of this blog that aims to help preserve biodiversity.

Afourer Mandarin and the Sordid Sexual Escapades of Citrus

W. Murcott Afourer

Citrus reticulata Blanco

   Recently I purchased some incredible Afourer Mandarin marmalade from June Taylor. I was intrigued by this variety I had never heard of that was so delicious and I decided to do some sleuthing. 

    It seems that there is much confusion around mandarin/clementine varieties especially due to trademarking for marketing purposes.  Names have been changed and varieties are easily confused with each other.  Afourer, for example, is known as W. Murcott.  This is different from Murcott, aka Murcott Honey or Honey tangerine.  Afourer has also been trademarked by Tom Mullholland, one of the larger citrus growers in California, as Delite.  It is a tangor variety, a mandarin and sweet orange hybrid, brought to California from Morocco in 1985. It is believed to be a hybrid of Murcott and an unknown pollen parent. One of the oldest known tangors is Royal mandarin or Temple orange which was discovered growing wild in Jamaica in the late 1800's.  
    Afourer was not released to California nurseries until January 1993 and it is now planted extensively in the San Joaquin Valley.  It is an alternate bearing variety, meaning that it will produce a heavy crop every other year if not pruned back, potentially exhausting the tree.  It is also one of the few citrus varieties susceptible to cross pollination from other citrus trees making the otherwise seedless fruit bear seeds.  The trees need to be isolated in some way to prevent this. This has been a problem in recent years and farmers have tried to keep bees further away from their orchards so as not to lose the value of the fruit remaining seedless.  
    One of the most fascinating things about mandarins is their role as citrus parent.  In the 1970's research results suggested that there are only three primordial or fundamental citrus species in the subgenus: C. medic (citron), C. reticulate (mandarin), and C. maxima (pummelo).  This means that all other species of citrus arose from single or sequential crossing events, which produced hybrids between the three species or their offspring.*  Although one might think that lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits were the parents of modern citrus plants that is apparently not the case.  They were created by an orgy of large numbers of genes and came out of the sexual hybridization of the three primordial types and kumquats and papedas.  It has taken only small genetic changes over thousands of years, assisted by man and nature, to create the plethora of varieties that exist today; all of them originating from the crossing of three original types.

 

*Taken from College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, UC Riverside

Seed Libraries

This is a great idea started at a Colorado library to lend seeds and continue propagation of rare and heirloom varieties!


Seeds Are the New Books

Battle GMO Labeling (or Fun with Labels!)

    It looks as though California legislators are poised to introduce a bill for labeling GMO's.  While it is certain to bring the proverbial pot back to a boil, one can only hope that the political insiders won't be able to buy their way out this time.  As I mentioned in my earlier post about Prop 37, creating a political voice out of the alternative food economy or "food movement" is imperative.  Does the fact that the legislators are taking on this fight after the defeat of the proposition signify a shift in the awareness around how and by whom our food economy is controlled?  Could legislators be actually listening to public opinion? Well, at the risk of sounding cynical, not likely.  It's not clear what motivation might be behind the move.  Similar bills are being introduced in Vermont and Washington legislatures.

    While we wait for some possible action to be taken we can still keep labeling the food ourselves!

To print out your own labels go to labelityourself.org.  Just make sure you label the right stuff!

Like this:

Breaking News!!! Tony the Tiger tells Oprah: Kellogg’s enslaved me to sell their poisonous GMO cereal to kids. #LIY

Good luck and have fun!

2012 Harvest

Spanish beans from Extremadura

A delicious pole bean that is larger, creamier than Cannellini and a bit more dense reminding me of a lima bean.  These beans have incredible flavor and are excellent for a late summer gratin with some tomato thrown in.  Now all I need to do is find the name from the Kassenhoff nursery.  Easier said than done.

Riesentraube tomato

This German tomato dates back to the mid-1800's.  It is fantastic dried and put up in oil for the winter.  It has a fuller more complex flavor than many of the modern cherry hybrids whose profile is sweet and not much else.
Treated with a generous helping of minerals at planting time helped them flourish and have great acid/alkaline balance.

  

Shanty Pea

A South Carolina heirloom field pea with a richer, heartier flavor than      your standard black-eye pea.  These are excellent for contrast in summertime cucumber and tomato salads and also stand up well to a pork shoulder roast.
Field peas were originally brought to south by slaves from the African Niger River basin, although are native to southwest Asia.  Many of the old varieties still exist today thanks to southern gardeners, some dating back pre-Civil War.  

All of these crops are special in that they are available only through the hard work of gardeners who consistently save their seeds and share them.  Their exceptional flavor is what makes them stand out as varieties worth saving.  They are rare enough that one would not likely find them at a farmers' market and yet they are worthy of wider appreciation.  

This coming year I'll be focusing more on fruit in the garden as I dig around through the history of some unusual types including garden huckleberry and elderberry.  Also in the next couple of weeks I'll be writing about Afourer mandarin that originated in Morrocco.  The parentage of citrus does surprisingly not lead back to oranges and lemons.  It's really more like an episode of some soap opera where it's discovered the parents are not really the parents but the cousins--and the cousins are the really the parents!

The Prop 37 Hangover

         Over the past month, there has been much talk about why California's Prop 37, the mandatory labeling of foods containing GMO's, failed to pass.  Both sides were using fear tactics.  Proponents cited numerous studies of the dangers of genetically modified crops, while the argument that food prices would rise considerably was the mantra of opponents.  The big difference of course being that the side against labeling have large amounts of money to draw from.  So, it's no surprise that the opposition outspent advocates about 5 to 1.  Also, people tend to think about their bank accounts before they think about their health, as is evident in our overwhelmed health care system.  Trying to legislate change through policy is very difficult with those odds.  Still, almost 6 million people voted for the proposition.  Many were educated around some of the dangers posed by GMO's.  That's important as we move forward.  One of the lessons of Prop 37 is that the fight may be best waged through continuing to develop and link sustainable food communities around the country, as suggested by Kristin Wartman and Erika Lade.  The actions of many brought together to create one voice may be the best weapon to start to disenfranchise the influence of large food companies in our government.  It will have to be quite a loud voice though.  The biotech industry has spent millions of dollars over the past decade to secure their position.  It's possible we have reached the tipping point, as discussed by noted scientist, Jeffrey Smith.  That remains to be seen as the information around GMO's becomes more widespread through mass media coverage.  In a movement without leadership it is imperative to educate the public through the many sources available.  It will take time, but if we truly believe in the power of the people in our democracy then the alternative food economy must transform itself into a serious, hard line political voice.

        A veteran farmer raised an important question to me many years ago: "Why is it necessary to label healthy food as organic or natural?  We should be labeling the stuff with chemicals." If there is a cost to labeling, small farmers and companies have certainly paid it.  That Big Ag refuses to is a clear sign that there is fear of the public being educated.  Yet labeling is only the tip of the iceberg. The fight goes much deeper to the power that corporations wield over our food supply.  There are serious ethical questions about the patenting of food plants and how a corporate entity, let alone an individual, can claim rights to something that is a part of nature--even if it started out in a laboratory.  The drawbacks of these crops and their companion chemical inputs are becoming clear.  Weeds have evolved to become resistant to Roundup.  Its widespread use has also caused a rise in plant diseases and obliterated soil.  Insects are developing resistance to Bt corn and cotton.  Farmers are seeing alarming rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in their livestock.  Addressing the latter, Dr. Don Huber, an expert on Roundup, sent a letter to USDA Secretary Vilsack concerning high concentrations of a new microscopic organism being found in Roundup treated crops.  The same organism found in analysis of aborted fetal tissue and the animal feed.  Inevitably there are consequences when we tinker with nature.  Now we are starting to see what those consequences are.  Certainly, more will be discovered.  Food is critical to human existence in so many ways.  If we continue to treat it as a mere commodity, then as a result we end up treating ourselves as one.

        Excerpts from these two articles, written years apart, perhaps best represent the ignorance that exists in today's biotech industry, which has lost sight of generations of knowledge in stewarding the land.  While this shift actually began in the late 1800s at the beginning of the industrial economy, it has reached a critical point in its evolution.  We have long since forgotten the ways of peasants that Rudolf Steiner said understood the "breathing of the earth".  Instead, we foolishly believe we can use something we can control--science, to control something we cannot--nature.

 “Modern agriculture is driven by diminishing biological diversity and relentless consolidation, from the farms themselves to the processors and the distributors of the crops and livestock. But you cannot consolidate the soil. It is a complex organism, and it always responds productively to diversity. The way we farm now undervalues and undermines good soil. Our idea of agricultural productivity and efficiency must include the ecological benefits of healthy soil. The surest way to improve the soil is to remember what industrial agriculture has chosen to forget.”

Did Farmers of the Past Know More Than We Do?

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: November 3, 2012 in the New York Times

     “Perhaps more than any other realm of activity, agriculture has been torn forcefully and irrevocably from the culture from which it originally came. But it is, in another way, only one of many activities upon which our lives depend that now exist in a manner that is light-years apart from the cultural matrix in which they originated.” 

Rudolf Steiner: A Biographical Introduction for Farmers    By Hilmar Moore

Originally published in Biodynamics No. 214 (November/December1997)