…by making those jams and jellies she used to make.

…by pickling your cucumbers, peppers and green beans.

…by canning fruits and vegetables in sturdy glass jars.

…but make sure you update the recipes! Whether your grandmother or grandfather was responsible for storing the summer’s harvest, you may want to consult the USDA guidelines to make sure cooking temperatures and times are sufficient to keep your food supplies safe.

Some folks do not have the fond memories of growing up eating Grandma Becker’s dill beans (green beans pickled with dill), meting out Mom’s homemade raspberry jam so it would last all winter or simply knowing that home-canned peaches and pears were firmer and tastier than their store-bought counterparts.

No matter where you are starting from, converting your food supplies from store-bought produce to home-preserved foods can be overwhelming. Some recipes are time-intensive, or supplies have a high start-up cost, or taste is compromised by simple errors.

Begin your journey to home preservation with an honest conversation about your time and financial resources – how much of your evening and weekend can you devote to these projects? Do you like to take a summer vacation during prime tomato harvest? Do you have the patience and discipline to create safe foods?

For some home kitchens, starting with a few fruits and vegetables is a great place to begin. It allows you to learn skills incrementally and slowly build your preservation knowledge and supplies.

Food Safety in Your Kitchen

Whether you are working toward becoming a locavore, or simply want to make the best use of your garden’s harvest, the following information will help you reach your goal.

The articles in mainstream media and on this and other food-specific websites is zeroing in on the tension surrounding food safety. Is it the government’s burden to create and enforce regulations? Should the producer, middleman or retailer be responsible for contamination-related injuries? Or, does the burden fall to the consumer, who has little or no ability to evaluate a commercially-sold-food’s contamination risk?

The home food preservation techniques featured here keep the majority of food safety in the hands of the same person – you! If you are a home gardener, your food’s safety is entirely in your hands.

The keys to creating safe products in your home are thorough preparation, careful food selection and precise attention to detail.

Thorough Preparation means Education, Sterilization and “Planification” (preparation of supplies, utensils and ingredients)

Whether you opt to can or dry your summer tomatoes, make a tomatillo salsa, create pickles, relishes, and chutneys from your overstock of onions, cucumbers, and herbs, or use your berry harvest to make delicious jams and jellies, there are four common enemies to home food preservation and storage.

4 Common Enemies to Home Food Preservation*
  
1. Enzymes: enzymes naturally occur in foods and are responsible for breaking down the food’s biological and chemical structure. Extreme temperatures are the common response to enzymes; extreme heat permanently stops enzymes and extreme cold temporarily stops enzymes. For home preservation, it is usually best to pick fruits, vegetables and herbs that are young and tender, pick them promptly, and prepare them shortly thereafter.
   
2. Bacteria: without inundating you with the familiar and unfamiliar list of deadly bacteria that are involved, we all know that bacteria and food are a bad combination. Food poisoning is often the result of bacteria living in the food we eat and can lead to mild gastrointestinal discomfort, a visit to the ER, or lasting injury and death.  That being said, if you follow the USDA recommended temperatures and times for home food preservation, and the sterilization and processing techniques, your homemade foods should be bacteria-free!
   
3. Yeasts: these living creatures that lead to yummy bread can be pesky in home food preservations. Yeasts most frequently interfere with jams and jellies and lead to fermentation. These microscopic would-be-bread-friends make home made preservations taste bad and icky, but are rarely dangerous.
   
4. Fungi: specifically, the enemy here is the fungi spore. Fungi spores travel by air and may find their way into your home food preservation, resulting in some unanticipated (and inedible) funky growths. Freezing will stop spores from developing. By following food preservation recipes and using good preparation and processing techniques, you can prevent spores from reaching food in the first place.

*Adapted primarily from: Warren, Piers. How to Store your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency, Wildeye, Green Books © 2002.

Now that you have these challenges in mind, the next aspect of education to address is food selection. For some, this conversation takes place in the winter months, as you plan out your planting and gardening for the upcoming spring season. For a beginning home food preserver, you might review what is coming up in your garden, what the offerings will be at your farmer’s market – or simply what you can get from your local grocer.
 

TIP: Peruse the aisles of specialty food stores for ideas; look at chutneys, jams and sauces. Review the ingredients; take these combinations as a starting point. See how many ways you can creatively preserve the fruits and vegetables available to you.

Check out a book from your library, purchase one at a local bookstore, or download the USDA guidelines and start making a plan. Plan out the quantities you need of each ingredient, the utensils and equipment you will need to prepare and process the food, (including the amount of storage containers you will need) and how much time you should set aside to complete the project. Worry less about where you will store the food; if you manage to fill your pantry, you can find other nooks and crannies in your house, or start giving these tasty treats as gifts!

Sterilization is an important part of home food preservation and the sterilization techniques accompanying storage containers should be followed to the letter. Most guidebooks and recipe books will include sterilization techniques and tips, as well. If you have any doubt about whether to sterilize a container or piece of equipment, err on the side of caution. The time will be worth it; ten extra minutes beats throwing out an entire batch of contaminated jam mid-winter.
 
Careful food selection

Aside from the above-mentioned tip to choose young and tender fruits, vegetables and herbs, there are other factors to making a good food choice. Well-seasoned chefs, gardeners and foodies know which foods respond best to freezing, canning, pickling and drying (or clamping, making a sauce, paste, jelly or jam).

Whether the expert is your friend or the author of your guidebook, whether the knowledge arose from a scientific aspect or from food folklore, put your trust in those who have been there. Matching food to a preparation method is one area in which the time-tested recipes reign supreme.

After achieving some success with food preservation, the creative types out there may come up with new techniques and recipes. There is a reason that cucumbers are stored by pickling and apples are stored as sauce. The explanation is a mixture of science and taste. The way the fruit, vegetable, or herb breaks down over time and the attributes that make the food tasty and attractive to eat contribute to these decisions.

Precise Attention to Detail

Temperatures and times. Times and temperatures. What do I mean by this? When it comes to taking a living thing, whose natural path is to wilt, soften and rot, and preserve it safely, you must follow instructions related to temperatures and times.

Regardless of the method you choose to preserve the harvest, the recipes include instructions geared to destroy microorganisms (read: bacteria) that are the greatest food safety threat in home food preservation. Specifically, recipes often give specific temperatures that must be reached and times of duration that those temperatures have to be sustained. In order to ensure your safety (and that of your family, guests and recipients of your preserves as gifts), follow these instructions and ask for clarification from the author or another expert when you are unsure.

Additionally, many of the methods of food preservation require creating a vacuum between the storage container and the food itself where bacteria cannot grow or enter. Following the temperatures and times in the directions will ensure you create the necessary conditions to prevent contamination.

Another aspect of precise attention to detail is making sure your storage containers are durable enough to withstand the extreme temperatures involved and are in sufficient condition to maintain any necessary conditions. A chipped jar mouth will fail to create a vacuum and should be discarded or used for other purposes.

Continuing a Grand Tradition

With modern technology, the global trade routes and shipping technologies, we have the capability to enjoy fruits and vegetables out of season. That ability offers insufficient reason to abandon the tasty foods that arose out of necessity. Generations ago (and in many parts of the world, today), surviving the winter or off-seasons depended on successfully preserving and storing foods as they were harvested.

Whatever your reason for embarking on a home food preservation journey (if you pursue the journey), by doing so, you will walk in step with your ancestors from generations past. Take a moment to hear the stories behind your favorite recipe, and consider writing your own stories as you adapt and modify recipes to your resources. Share your experiences with your neighbors, grocers, and local farmers, and realize the extraordinary depths of your local food community.

Resources:

USDA web resources:
National Center for Home Food Preservations
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html

Books:

Bell, Mary T., Food Drying with an Attitude: A Fun and Fabulous Guide to Creating Snacks, Meals and Crafts, Skyhorse Publishing © 2008.

Chadwick, Janet, The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food: Easy Step-by-step Instructions for Freezing, Drying and Canning, Janet Bachand Chadwick © 1995.

Costenbader, Carol W., The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest, Storey Communications Inc. © 1997.

Emery, Carla & Forkner, Lorene Edwards, An Encyclopedia of Country Living Guide: Canning & Preserving Your Own Harvest, Sasquatch Books © 2009.

Hobson, Phyllis, Making & Using Dried Foods, Storey Communications, Inc. © 1994.

Kingsolver, Barbara, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Harper Collins Publishers © 2007.

Ward, Karen, Canning & Preserving for Dummies, Wiley Publishing Inc. © 2003.

Warren, Piers. How to Store your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency, Wildeye, Green Books © 2002.

In 2005, four San Francisco Bay area women coined the term “locavore” in their quest to engage a larger community in the conversation about eating locally. The reasons for pursuing this goal vary from the thrill of the economic challenge, to a desire for increased food safety, to the desire to reduce environmental resources expended to ship food.

Supporting the local community has been a tenet of local politics for eons, whether “local” means running for the school board, a county or state office or for national office. People who engage in this type of local support can be thought of as “economic locavores.”  

An “economic locavore” spends money locally. She may take her car to a local mechanic, eat Sunday breakfast at the neighborhood mom-and-pop diner, and buy books, clothes, home furnishings, and electronics from local and independent sellers whenever possible. In your region, small town, or neighborhood community, a locavore might be the mayor, city council-person, or businessperson, who uses the local economic transactions as opportunities for building goodwill among constituents.

Whether you approach food purchases from the economic, food safety, or environmental perspective (or another reason), buying all of your food locally can be a challenge. That challenge is even greater is you live in a region with a limited winter growing season.

For locavores facing winter climates that stunt or eliminate opportunities to grow fruits and vegetables, eating local fare takes a lot of preparation.

Many experienced locavores start working hard in early spring to preserve each harvest’s bounty for the lean months of winter.  Locavores who are still a bit green may find themselves behind the curve, but don’t worry, there is still plenty to do in the next months. And, for those locavores who don’t prefer these do-it-yourself tips, there are some suggestions for you, too!

Be prepared! It’s not just a motto to teach young boys and girls.

The best way to eat locally all year long is to preserve the fruits and vegetables you get from local farmer’s markets, grocers, or your garden. This holds true even if your winter months yield fresh fruits and vegetables. Preserves can come in handy for many dishes and can tide you over in between trips to the local grocer, farmer’s market, or CSA delivery.

The most economical way to do this is to preserve fruits and vegetables in large quantities as you harvest them, or as they ripen. Another option is to preserve, in smaller quantities, those fruits and vegetables you cannot consume before they spoil.

To prepare your pantry during the summer consider the following preservation methods:

• Jams & Jellies
• Pickling
• Sauces, Pastes and Salsa
• Freezing
• Drying
• Roasting
• Canning whole fruits and vegetables

Locavores eat Seasonally.

Eating seasonally means there is always a seasonal delight just around the corner. Autumn figs and chestnuts, spring asparagus and August tomatoes come to my mind. Such a lifestyle enhances your pleasure from a particular food for many people, because the flavors are more intense and because they stimulate your senses in unique ways. Connecting with foods in this way is very rewarding for some people.

As a locavore you must adapt your diet. Do not expect fresh tomatoes in January in Wisconsin. Get used to using home-canned, home-roasted, or home-dried tomatoes, or use home-canned tomato paste or sauce for most of your cooking. Or, look for these products as value-added options available from local producers.

By eating fruits and vegetables that are in season, you’ll likely find that these foods are more flavorful than those that have to be shipped from thousands of miles away. The shipped food ripens in the shipping containers and trucks while en route to the grocery store, and is often engineered to be visually appealing but lacks flavor and texture of locally grown foods.

If you can’t stand to go even one month without tomato on your sandwich, don’t despair! Indulgences are available! Many locavores still indulge in out-of-season produce by finding creative alternatives. Some areas with burgeoning locavore communities have greenhouses that can grow produce out of season. Many farmers and nurseries produce seeds and starter plants in smaller greenhouses and could be persuaded to grow your favorite fruit or vegetable out of season (for a price).  

Another way to continue to eat locally is to seek out and support restaurants that buy food supplies locally. Eat at these restaurants that focus on buying locally. They may inspire you with new recipes and preparations you didn’t know about or hadn’t found in a recipe book. Talk to the chef – ask what you should be looking for at the farmer’s market and what’s in season. Chefs also have special preservation methods or can offer a tip on your current preservation project.

For non-vegetarians, meat preservation methods include drying, curing, smoking and freezing.

Feeling connected to your food because you made it is great. Each time you pull a jar out from the pantry shelf, you re-visit those lovely summer months. It puts the year in perspective and reminds you that summer will be here in the blink of an eye. You’ll note the passing of months with the dwindling supplies on your pantry shelves. And, canned preserves make a great gift if you’re crunched for time.

Autumn Bounty.

In many areas of the country, eating seasonally currently means buying squash, potatoes and other root vegetables that are filling up the shelves at farmers markets. Preserve them in a root cellar, if possible.

If you don’t have a root cellar, you can extend the lives of the fall bounty by storing them in a dark, cool place that does not experience extreme variations in temperature and that has good air ventilation. You can hang onions and garlic in mesh bags to extend their shelf-life.

No time? No supplies? No worries – you can still eat locally this winter!

Many people feel crunched for time as it is. You’ll note that the DIY methods listed above can be time-consuming, have expensive start-up costs for supplies or require more storage room (for equipment and resulting preserved foods) than you have available. If you are new to preservation, try one method, one fruit, one vegetable at a time and take it from there.

To enhance your experience, seek out like-minded peers and have fun while you do the work. Host a canning party and increase your pantry’s variety by divvying up the results among all of the participants. Look for a local kitchen (school, church, community center) where you can gather and share the workload and supplies. Many hands make light work!

For those people who can afford to pay for these services, start asking your local farmers or CSA representative if they would preserve fruits and vegetables for you. By asking now, you’ll give your farmer a better opportunity to line up additional staff to perform these tasks during the next growing season. And you will be able to replace the store-bought jars of food that line your pantry shelves with locally grown sauces, fruits and vegetables.

Don’t tell me you’ve never thought, “Oh yea, calcium is just what I needed this morning!” Really? Not you?

All right, how about “Yummy, yummy chocolate?” Or, “Wow, those fries really hit the spot!” Have you ever placed a chip precisely on your tongue to enhance your experience of its flavor? Ah, yes, now I am talking a language you understand.

U.S. consumers don’t talk in the same terms used in the nutritional guidelines offered every five years by the federal government. The 2005 Dietary Guidelines table of contents includes “Fats,” “Carbohydrates” and “Sodium and Potassium.” Popular food groups like pizza, chocolate, and chips don’t even get a specific mention in this list.

So, how can U.S. consumers translate the highly specific and complex information contained in these recommendations? Ah, yes, the Food Pyramid! The darling of the past few decades that showed us the appropriate proportions of each food group we should be eating. Oh wait, those pictures aren’t helping us either? Well, there must be something else going on.

Back story of U.S. Dietary Guidelines

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services jointly issue dietary recommendations every five years. If you think the most recent recommendations hold any answers to the growing obesity problems in America, well, think again.

A 1999 review of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans from its inception in 1980, showed little difference among the basic recommendations. Stretching back even further to the early 1900s (i.e., when the government started discussing nutrition guidelines), we see that meaningful variation is relatively difficult to identify.

Surely, the amount of detail is vastly different. Yes, the early 1900s did not include many of the minerals that are studied by top academics today.

Those early efforts were aimed at reducing the number of deaths from basic nutrition deficiencies. The striking similarity can be seen by following themes of variation, proportionality and moderation that were present then, and persist throughout the historical development of the nutrition guidelines to today.

The initial campaign in the early 1900s had great success, in part because the nation was settling into a system of civilization that lent itself to modern techniques of food preservation, leading to more affordable foods and less scarcity during winter months.

The early recommendations focused on basic groups: milk and meat, cereals, vegetables and fruit, fats and fatty foods, and sugar and sugary foods.

After the initial campaign for public nutrition education resulted in a better informed and well-fed public, the results were encouraging. Diseases like scurvy and beriberi no longer plagued the American public.

The early USDA recommendations targeted American males and specific minerals and vitamins were not identified. By 1941, the National Nutrition Conference for Defense created the well-known Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA’s) which continue to provide infrastructure for today’s dietary recommendations of intake of minerals and vitamins. This group also developed “Characteristics of an effective nutrition education program” which expanded the focus from the American male to “the whole population–all groups, all races, both sexes, all creeds, all ages.”

The guidelines still emphasized variation, proportionality, and moderation as key principles, even while the recommendations shifted and morphed slightly in response to new technology and research.

Yet, the 1999 review shows that daily servings recommendations in the main categories differed little or not at all since 1916. Those categories are protein-rich foods (milk/meat), breads (including cereals, rice and pasta), vegetables and fruits, and others (including fats and other sugars).

The only difference is that our nutrition debacle has developed into one where obesity and chronic disease have replaced scurvy and beriberi.

Will 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans bring more of the same? 

The USDA and HHS are in the process of developing the 2010 version of the guidelines and are accepting public comments. They have held at least three public meetings and aim to produce the guidelines by late fall 2010.  You can see from the submitted comments that a plethora of experts, executives, and advocates are weighing in on the new recommendations, as well as everyday Americans.

Yet, are the USDA and HHS efforts misguided? Will more knowledge about nutrition push the U.S. populace to the tipping point? Or will it take something more than that?

If you look at the resources available on the USDA dietary page, you can see that there is no lack of nutrition information. In addition to the numerous scientific food studies, many studies aimed to answer the question whether economic dynamics play a role in the recent nutrition debacle, yet none have produced a significant link.

The lack of a link here arises from studies that stack fruits and vegetables up against snack foods. The studies seem to show that when comparably priced, consumers choose snack foods over fresh fruits and vegetables.

Even without a scientific study, it is easy to understand that snack foods are non-perishable; do not bruise in a backpack, lunchbox or briefcase; and to see that snack foods have more face time with consumers. Back in 1999, the USDA reported that the federal government’s healthy eating campaign was outspent by the commercial food marketing, $350 million to $11 billion. Image-conscious Americans craft their persona in the cell phones they buy, the cars they drive, and the foods they eat, thanks to this powerful marketing.

Yet, none of this is new information. The studies performed and reported on in the mid-1990s sound like they could have been published yesterday. The same symptoms, chronic disease and obesity, arise from the same eating habits Americans continue in spite of the Dietary Guidelines.

What needs to change?

While the USDA studies do not reveal any startling truths among the myriad decision-making factors, they do reveal much about U.S. eating culture. The fact that someone chose to study a comparison between opting for fruits and vegetables and opting for snack foods may be a meaningful clue.

We need to stop thinking of fruits and vegetables as snack foods and start thinking of them as the basis for meals! Fruits and vegetables should no longer be relegated to garnish, optional additions, or accents to a dish. They should form the basis of the dish.

Vegetable-based stir fry, steamed vegetables, and salad can be the base for many delightful dishes, but these dishes are minimally represented in restaurant menus (at least at the restaurants I patronize).

If you look at the food pyramid and 2005 Dietary Guidelines, they recommend eating 3-5 servings of vegetables (2 1/2 cups) and 2-4 servings of fruit (2 cups) – DAILY! That means fruits and vegetables need to be compared t
o me
al options, not to snacks.

Americans have been hearing the message to eat more fruits and vegetables for decades. The food industry has attempted to respond by marketing fruits and vegetables in novel ways, such as the vegetable drink, V-8® and its offspring. Yet, even this attempt at creative marketing fails to make a meaningful dent in the overall U.S. eating culture.

In fact, V-8® advertisements show just how far away the average consumer is from the Dietary Guideline recommendations.

A recent set of advertisements for V-8® shows meal situations where a person is struggling to consume unpalatable vegetables. A digitally imposed ticker floats over each person’s head, tracking the amount of fruit and vegetable servings consumed. The ticker over the commercial’s protagonist wavers between “0” and “1” as he or she struggles to eat a serving of vegetables. After giving up on actually eating the vegetables with the meal, the person heads to the fridge for his or her serving of V-8®. The announcer gives the nutritional information (at the website link you can reset the product field for nutritional information on the other V-8® options) as the protagonist’s ticker clicks up to “1.”

According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines we should be eating 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day – yet, this V-8® commercial targets consumers who struggle to eat even one serving in a day.

This is not a comment on the merits of V-8, nor the marketing efforts by Campbell’s, nor the average U.S. consumer. Kudos to the American who opts to get even a minimal amount of vegetables into his or her diet – it is a great starting point.

The commercial is a symbol of the dysfunctional relationship the modern American has to nutritional guidelines and to eating sufficient levels of fruits and vegetables.

Dysfunction Junction

Perhaps the cultural influences that led researchers to compare purchasing decisions of fruits and vegetables to snacks tell us something about the eating culture of the U.S.

The USDA and many other public and private organizations have been studying nutrition and dietary needs for at least the last century. Little of the basic recommendations have changed, and the recommendations still orbit around the principles of variation, proportionality and moderation.

Yet, the nation suffers from poor eating choices still.  Nutrition deficiencies have morphed into chronic disease maladies. Our health situation’s image has transformed from a nutritionally deficient hollow face peering out from a rural homestead to a calorie-overloaded bulging belly dominating an office cubicle or pantsuit.

More information, more complexities, and more academic studies have their role in improving health, by improving food safety, targeting specific diseases attributable to lifestyle or demographics, and to identifying key ingredients to optimal nutrition. Yet, they offer few clues to incite the behavioral changes called for in the Dietary Guidelines.

Perhaps what this means is that the answer does not lie in defining the specific minerals, nutrients and vitamins in each piece of food we eat, but rather stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. What about variation, proportionality and moderation? Where are these values represented by the commercial food industry?

Start your transformation by talking about variation, proportionality and moderation with your friends and family. Ask your local and national restaurants for more vegetable-based options. Use your social activities to foster positive nutritional experiences, and make them flavorful and enjoyable – but rich in fruits and vegetables.

What’s more American than a hamburger? Apple pie? Baseball? Maybe. Yet hamburgers alone are an American icon at risk of becoming a symbol of the regulatory dsyfunction behind many food safety issues discussed on this website.  

This Sunday, a New York Times Magazine article by Michael Moss highlighted the problems that put the safety of American hamburgers at risk. The article is sure to discourage many consumers from purchasing frozen hamburger patties, whether at a discount warehouse, retail grocer, or chain restaurant.

The article documented the result of USDA policy that allows self-regulation at both slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities (meat grinders). According to Mr. Moss’s investigative report, meat grinders rely on slaughterhouse suppliers to provide safe ingredients. Most grinders only test the finished product for contamination. And, in the case of Stephanie Smith, even that meager testing proved insufficient.

Requiring slaughterhouses and meat processors to conduct such tests is a regulation that was left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. According to a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service assistant administrator quoted in the article, setting regulations includes balancing industry impact with public health. The contamination featured in the article resulted in a recall of 844,812 pounds of hamburger patties. That sounds like a major impact on industry to me.

The regulatory debacle behind the tainted hamburger patties consists of lax enforcement of regulations, dsyfunctional self-regulation and a lack of accountability. These flaws too often impose severe consequences on unsuspecting consumers.

In an industry where money talks, food safety regulations need sharper teeth that bite more often.  Industry executives are free to set unreasonable production quotas.  Such elevated quotas discourage safe and thorough slaughter practices.  

Mr. Moss offered several opportunities for slaughterhouses and meat processing operations to defend their practices – very few took up the opportunity. Those who did speak up merely underscored the need for regulation by citing unwritten expectations between slaughterhouses and processors, and safety procedures that related more to risk management than to preventing contamination.

For me, the safest response to the flimsy regulatory climate in meat production is to demand more information before I buy any meat product.  For my home, I ask the grocer or butcher the meat’s origin; to dine at a restaurant, I ask from where the meat came.

The transition is difficult. Enforcing this policy can ruin my hamburger craving (resulting in a veggie burger substitute), or it is a killjoy among friends; it entirely eliminates certain national chains from my dining options.  Many Americans are not willing to make these sacrifices; many others do not feel they are financially able to make these choices.

The bottom line is this: Food safety needs to be a higher priority at slaughterhouses and meat processors. We may end up paying more for our meat, but we wouldn’t be nearly so afraid of it.

There is a new set of food safety instructions to consider, “Eat when hungry; stop when full.” It sounds self-explanatory, but healthy eating habits, nutrition and portion sizes are important aspects of food safety that are uniquely the responsibility of consumers.

Most aspects of food safety are addressed by government regulations, industry regulations, market forces and consumer demands. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is revising food safety regulations in response to the rise of food-related injuries, developing technologies and the expansive reach of global food producers into the U.S. food supply. In addition to those regulations, industries sometimes take initiative to recommend food handling tips to ensure a safe product, markets respond to rising costs of safeguarding the food supply and consumers demand foods they find pleasing or essential.

Production-side food safety issues include the steps taken to prevent contamination of food – during harvesting, processing or transporting. Production-side issues also include food preparation, service and storage.  This is especially true when consumers have limited influence on the menu, such as school lunch programs. Commercial food preparation issues merge with consumer demand when consumers do influence the menu, such as in restaurants or “junk food” snack production.  As consumers, we have come to expect food production to safeguard us against acute food-induced injuries.

Yet, the food safety picture is not complete without recognizing the consumer’s role as a stakeholder in food safety. Consumers are responsible for choosing which food to purchase, how to prepare it, how to store it and how much of it to consume. Consumers are in control of choice.

Consumer Choices…and Obesity.

Among the myriad consequences of consumer food choices, chronic health is a troublesome tempest. Chronic health refers to adverse health effects resulting from long-term exposure to a substance, and to persistent adverse health effects resulting from short-term exposure. One example of a chronic health problem stemming from food consumption choices is the person who consistently chooses to eat past the point of satiation, or “over-eating.” Over time, this person will most likely carry some extra weight. If that extra weight reaches the level of overweight or obese, the weight-bearer gains increased risk of coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and sleep apnea, to name a few.  

Although this connection between extra weight and adverse health effects is well understood, many people keep making choices that lead to obesity. Scientists debate the causes of obesity; they conduct studies designed to gauge how much a person’s environment, genetics, family history, and lifestyle choices factor into becoming obese. Without delving into the complex interrelationship between these factors and resultant obesity, it is easy to recognize the interrelationship between obesity and adverse health effects.

Likewise, regardless of environment and family history, people can control their lifestyle choices, including over-eating. No matter how over-eating habits develop, they constitute a lifestyle choice, an eating choice. Just how much time, effort and thought goes into making eating choices is often a function of personal philosophy.

As a function of personal philosophy, eating choices can be characterized as a personal eating philosophy. The spectrum of eating philosophies is broad and varied. Some people simply buy foods that they were raised on, reflecting regional, ethnic and cultural preferences. Others choose an eating philosophy and follow its tenets; e.g., vegan, macrobiotic, pescetarian.

One tricky part of developing an eating philosophy to maintain non-obesity is that food often plays a dominant role in socialization. Social events often include rich, decadent foods; foods that at one time were reserved for celebratory purposes but are now widely available. These events may have specific food rituals. Food rituals may surround a sports event (chips, dip and beer, anyone?), a special occasion (gobs of articles are devoted to keeping off the holiday pounds and the holidays are followed by gobs of articles devoted to burning off the holiday pounds), or merely a family event (we grilled brats and burgers nearly every summer weekend while I was growing up). Over-eating may arise as part of a social event food ritual.

Yet, food rituals also include your day-to-day eating routine. How many fruits and vegetables you eat each day, whether you commonly have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in lieu of dinner (or in addition to dinner) and other habitual eating choices constitute your daily food ritual. The USDA offers its recommendations every five years.   Yet, it is difficult to take such academic recommendations and create a food ritual that fulfills a consumer as much as Grandma’s chocolate cake (or milk and cookies after school) can. Such indulgences are not guaranteed to lead to obesity; they are experiences that can be shared by obese and non-obese alike.

Thus, while USDA guidelines offer up 84 pages of guidance, they are guiding utterly human desires and appetites. Should it be any surprise that they are as effective at curbing over-eating as the Bible and the Koran are at curbing prohibited behaviors like infidelity, lying or alcohol consumption?

There is no surefire ritual to avoid becoming overweight or obese. Personal philosophy, eating philosophy, desires, environment, family and genetic history, social demands…the list of variables goes on and on and no one ritual can accommodate those variables. As long as you eat at a slow and relaxed pace, there is one steadfast rule that can guide you through any situation: “Eat when hungry; stop when full.”

Eating Culture.

This article may repeat familiar themes. It may offer little new information to those who seek solutions to over-eating or obesity. Personal eating philosophies are not within the reach of government regulation, industry specifications or market forces. Consumer demand merely reflects these personal eating philosophies. What effect can a simple article have on over-eating and obesity?

The article on its own will have negligible effect on over-eating and obesity, but hopefully it will contribute to a national discussion about the U.S. eating culture. Hopefully, the article will inspire food safety experts to include eating habits, food rituals and consumer choices in food safety conferences. Hopefully, this article will provoke discussions among families, friends and co-workers about food rituals.

By awareness, discussion and reflection, we can revitalize the eating culture that is making America the fattest it has ever been, and it can start as simply as living by the mantra: Eat when hungry; stop when full. It is not a silver bullet, but it is a springboard to revising the U.S. eating culture.

We accept that food safety inspections are a necessary part of processing cattle, pigs and poultry before they make it to a frypan, oven, or grill. We accept that meat must be cooked to a certain temperature to be “safe.” We accept that fruits, vegetables, nuts and related byproducts need to be kept at certain temperatures to prevent rot – who recommends those temperatures but the government? These regulations have shaped the landscape of our modern eating culture as farmers, manufacturers and the agribusiness industry approach food production with these regulations in mind. 

 
Are there any lessons to be learned from food safety regulations? How would the health care reofrm debate evolve if we consider the role food safety plays in our standards of health?  

 
Eating Cultures

 
Lutefisk. Kimchi. Headcheese. What do these foods have in common? For many modern eaters in the U.S., the processing behind these foods makes noses wrinkle and heads shake with disgust. These are “gross” foods. Preserving fish in lye (lutefisk), burying vegetables in the earth to pickle them (traditional Kimchi), and congealing simmered head organs (headcheese) typically do not whet the modern appetite.

These foods, and others like them, are part of food folklore. Despite their high entertainment value when members of another generation tell stories of war, depression, or hard life on the farm, they are not part of everyday meals for most modern eaters in the U.S.

The traditions behind these food preparations offer hints about the eating cultures who produced them. Although some “gross” foods are particular to a region, headcheese or some variation of it can be found on each inhabited continent.  No matter what you call it or which animal organs it is made from, headcheese and its kin offer a lens through which we can observe traits of an eating culture. Among the headcheese cultures, two common themes seem to be preserving foods and avoiding waste; that is, to produce as many edible products as possible from a food source and then preserve the food to feed the family during the off-season.

An eating culture is an metamorphic concept, ever shifting, evolving and redefining itself based on food availability, social norms and economic trends. After modern technologies, including a refrigerator in every household, diminished the necessity of using traditional preservation methods, modern eating cultures were free to respond to other cues. Some eating cultures value perceived health benefits, such as discouraging dairy intake after a particular hour, believing dairy interferes with digestion late in the day. 

Other eating cultures value social cues such as offering tea as a part of any social, familial or business interaction. In the U.S., some families strive to keep a consistent dinner hour or to turn the TV off during dinner, while others value food portability and eat at their desks, in the car or away from home.

Food Safety

Eating culture traditions infiltrate our approach to other aspects of food – such as food safety and health care. As Congress authorized food regulation bodies in the early twentieth century, the eating culture changed in response to concerns over foodborne illnesses. 

Themes like preservation and waste avoidance were rendered nearly obsolete for the everyday family in the U.S. following World War II. Families lived off the land less, and family farms closed down as more people moved to the cities – where the jobs were. 

Other technologies and policies made processed foods widely available at cheap prices. Food safety regulation went through a new phase of government legislation and U.S. consumers began to expect food safety from all vendors. The modern U.S. eating culture began to emerge, themes focused on ease of preparation, marketability and taste.

Purchasing food in the U.S. differs from doing so in countries that lack a food safety infrastructure, or other locations where food safety is not widely expected. For instance, there is probably not an agency that regulates food processing of roadside butcher shops or “street food” vendors common to many developing countries. Foods being sold on the side of the road may have been prepared in the home, whereas the U.S. requires food for sale to be prepared in a commercial grade kitchen. 

In non-regulated countries, consumers assume a larger part of the risk associated with eating unsafe foods. The risk ranges from mild discomfort and indigestion to full-blown food poisoning, and death is an eerily real possibility.

In contrast, U.S. consumers have come to rely on purchasing predictably safe foods in the marketplace. Without polling consumers about their food safety regulation knowledge, we can see that the expectation of safe food is ubiquitous among U.S. consumers. When a consumer becomes ill from a food purchase, whether from a grocer or restaurateur, the consumer expects to be compensated for that illness and its interference in the consumer’s life. 

The risk of a foodborne illness is significantly diminished in the U.S. food marketplace. U.S. consumers rely, at least in part, on government regulation to hold food producers and processors accountable for food safety.

The intensity of foodborne illness risk influence the eating culture. In some locations where food safety is less rigorously enforced, or non-existent, wiping a bottle’s mouth with a tissue or a lime (to cleanse the glass) is an expected part of drinking a soda or beer. If someone fails to observe this practice, it is easy to determine that person is an outsider or is perhaps less concerned with health and cleanliness. Though this practice may not reflect any actual threat, it is an ingrained behavior reflecting that culture’s beliefs about food safety. Consumers in the U.S. would tend to find this practice rather absurd; we rely on the bottler to follow government standards to ensure the bottle is suitably clean and safe. 

With the relatively low risk of foodborne illness, the U.S. consumer has been able to focus on the role of food as entertainment, comfort and status symbol. The widespread practice of excessive consumption is evident in the portion sizes at restaurants and the expanding waistlines that plague our health statistics.

Government’s Role

Since humans began forming governments (voluntarily or not), the debate over government involvment in citizen autonomy has raged. In the U.S., the debate was recently reignited (some might call it arson) by opponents to a government run health insurance option. Because what we eat is inarguably linked to our health, food safety and our eating culture also relates to our health care. 

After accepting government inspection into every step of food production, from farm to plate, is it that hard to accept that the government has a meaningful role to play to insure adequate health care is available?

The consumer product at the heart of this debate is “health insurance.” “Health insurance” is supposed to be a product that consumers purchase to pay for the costs of medical bills. Several other government activities and consumer products already function to offset those costs. Car insurance, required in all 50 states, provides some coverage of medical bills associated with automobile accidents. Boaters’ insurance, travel insurance, and other activity-specific insurance often have provisions for specific medical care. 

Government regulations for product safety reduce the number of people visiting emergency rooms, and reduces the number of injuries that require ongoing care. Likewise, food safety regulations are supposed to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses, and associated medical costs. 

Seat belt laws, helmet laws, workplace safety laws, the list of government regulations that reduce doctor visits goes on and on. Yet, none of these quasi-health-insurance methods apply to genetic or chronic illnesses, thus the need for “health insurance.”

Note that “health insurance” as it stands now is essentially a consumer product–and health insurers are businesses. Businesses that sell consumer products survive and thrive by…selling more products. What incentive does a health insurer have to promote a healthy populace?

Despite this predictament, some health insurers take measures to promote healthy customers. A minority of health insurers rewards its insured for healthy practices such as joining a gym. Mostly, these rewards are reduced monthly fees, a rebate on premiums paid or reimbursement for the gym membership. 

By necessity, health insurers reward behaviors that they can measure. In the gym membership example, the insured must sign-in at a prescribed number of visits per month, in order to qualify for the reward. And, while what we eat is equally important, if not more important, than exercise, health insurers do not reward those who maintain a healthy diet on a regular basis. Such a system would require a challenging first step of defining just what is a “healthy diet” –which can vary from person to person. For this and numerous other reasons, such a system will never materialize.

Even without such a formal system, health insurance influences our eating culture. Many health-conscious folks believe they realize their own rewards by having fewer doctor visits – and thus fewer health insurance claims, which leads to lower premiums…right? 

With the current mess of health insurance, it is too hard to tell. Insurers raise premiums on healthy clients, and drop ill clients; they cut benefits on the eve of treatment, they deny payment of claims that were pre-approved. The resulting chaos has led to consumer frustration, industry profits and health statistics that lag drastically behind all other industrialized countries and even some developing countries.

In the face of such dismal results, citizens should be outraged that the government is not doing more to regulate health care insurance in the U.S.

Health insurance should function like a refrigerator –we should expect to see it in every household, though the contents will vary. 

The current model of the health insurance system has failed. Currently, too many citizens are struggling to survive from illness to illness, hoping no emergency will arise to bankrupt them and their family. This existence mirrors the struggles that produced lutefisk, kimchi and headcheese in eating cultures. 

Those members of society struggled to stretch one season’s harvest to sustain a family until the next harvest. Unlike the modern technologies that freed our eating culture from its dependence on food preservation and waste avoidance, health insurance in the U.S. has thus far failed to free the masses from depending on emergency care and self-help remedies. 

A successful health insurance system should allow us to focus on preventing illness through promoting healthy habits.  A competitive and universally available health insurance industry could be the key that gives us the freedom to modify our health culture and could result in a healthier lifestyle overall.

Held at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds, the event was called the Local Chef Showoff, a Tastebud Explosion. Chefs from Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Port Orchard, Keyport, Gig Harbor, Suquamish and Silverdale cooked gourmet dishes with locally grown and harvested fruits, vegetables, grains, seafood, and livestock. Grilled clams and oysters, cassoulet (a French comfort food bursting with flavor), Trinidadian curried goat and goan curry vegetable samosas were among the dishes being shown off by these local chefs.

The KCAA event reflects the local food movement taking hold of the Olympic Peninsula.

Local food movements are heating up around the U.S. Some movements arise in response to E. coli outbreaks, meat contamination, or animal rights concerns. Each movement varies in accordance with the regional location, personalities, and motivations of those involved. The common thread is that participants reject the processed food options that line most grocery store shelves. They seek an increased variety of whole foods, and many are demanding organic options. Although niche grocery stores have developed in high-end markets and most grocers offer some organic options; affordable alternatives are not yet available to the masses.

This situation begs the question: Can local farmers fulfill those consumer demands?

Whether the local farmers are capable of growing the food is less of an issue; more complicated is whether those farmers can survive on the earnings from such a business and whether consumers can afford to pay for locally grown products. Keynote speakers Nash Huber and Kate Dean addressed local farmer concerns to the crowd of about 300 listeners.

Nash Huber has been farming in the area for over 40 years and has always practiced organic, conventional farming methods. After outlining his farming experience, which included years of barely scraping by, Nash’s speech turned philosophical.  He reflected on the relationships that sustained him – with teachers in local high schools, FFA and 4-H leaders, adjacent landowners, merchants who bought his produce.  When he needed advice, manual labor or mechanical expertise, Mr. Huber usually could not afford to hire someone to perform those services. He had to rely on a network of informal relationships to fill those gaps. The community, as a whole, has to have a vision of supporting local farmers and eating locally, which includes these types of relationships.

The last decade has brought more success to Mr. Huber, he successfully farms for profit and his operation employs 30-35 people on a regular basis. (See more details at his website, http://www.nashsorganicproduce.com/). He recently incorporated his farm to ensure that the land would be farmed after his death.

Many in the local food movement have been around for as long as Mr. Huber. For example, Michael Pollan has been writing about these same issues for decades. You do not need understand why local food movements are so popular to know that they are growing in number and gaining momentum. For the first time in decades, Congress vigorously debated the Farm Bill, eventually passed in 2008, a year behind schedule. That unusual amount of debate, and some additional provisions in the bill, can be attributed, in part, to local food movements.

Another source of energy for the local food movements are the young people getting involved in farming. Specifically, young people who do not come from a farming background are breathing life back into organic and conventional farming. Kate Dean is such a farmer and she took the stage after Mr. Huber.

Kate Dean was a contributing founder to Mount Townsend Creamery, and now works with Jefferson LandWorks Collaborative. (See more details at http://www.jeffersonlandworks.org/). She farmed for 10 years before starting the creamery and having two children.  She is currently dedicated to preserving farmland in Jefferson County, Washington. The organization does this by assisting farmers to develop financially successful farming operations, rather than merely protecting the land from other development. Through her work with LandWorks, Ms. Dean develops creative and unusual financial relationships for farmers, in order to keep farmland from being otherwise developed.

Ms. Dean identified many of the financial hardships facing farmers. For current farmers, retirement is difficult to achieve without selling the farm to commercial real estate developers, or keeping the farm in the family by passing it to the younger generation. Yet, lack of interest from the younger generation leaves most family farms vulnerable to sale. For new farmers, land acquisition is the biggest challenge because they are competing with the commercial developers who have deep pockets.

Another financial obstacle for new farmers is raising capital for buildings, machinery, seed and other start-up costs. Even if a farmer can make it through these daunting financial challenges, she still runs the risk of financial ruin from a finicky marketplace, dramatic weather or increased cost of living.

Ms. Dean combats these insecurities by assessing the unique financial situation of each client. A 33-year ground lease might work for one client, whereas farming on publicly owned land fits another farmer’s business plan needs. Approaching local investors in the currently dismal economy supplied start-up capital for one farmer. She noted that federal policy is almost silent on the issue of protecting farmland from commercial (or other) development. She hopes that legislators will strengthen what programs there are, such as conservation easements; and add other programs to create new avenues for young farmers.

These measures still do not protect farmers from increased costs of living. In tune with the health care debate raging in Washington, D.C., rising private health care costs are a hurdle that farmers face alone. Young, idealistic farmers may evade health care costs for a time, (by avoiding visits to the doctor); but there needs to be affordable health care for longstanding farmers.  Longstanding farmers, farmers with children, and farmers with medical conditions cannot ignore the substantial financial burden of health care.

Within the content of their speeches, Ms. Dean and Mr. Huber emphasized the essential roles that talkers and doers have in the local food movement. Talkers fire it up! They keep the momentum going by inspiring others to take an interest in food, farming and related social issues. Talkers start conversations about food safety, food security and nutrition and taste. Foodies do this by demanding local ingredients from restaurateurs, philosophers by starting conversations about the eating culture and sustainability of the industrial agriculture model of “modern farming.”

Doers are ready to go! Doers farm the land, they get their hands dirty planting, weeding, and harvesting.  Doers milk the cows and goats, watch for blight and go to market. Doers invest in farmers, loan money, and craft land trusts to sustain farmlan ds. Doers open value-add ed businesses such as canneries, meat butcheries and granaries where local farmers can affordably prepare consumer goods for sale.

It was easy to get fired up in the warm, friendly atmosphere of the Kitsap County Fairgrounds, among like-minded folks and with a belly full of delicious food. The other attendees seemed to feel the same way, strong applause followed each presentation and several people stood to applaud. Yet, the doers among us were quick to depart. The chefs had dishes to clean, the farmers had evening chores to do, and the real estate developers and lawyers had creative financial instruments to draft.