Put Obese Kids in Foster Care?

Today's Journal of the American Medical Association contains an editorial opinion by Dr. David Ludwig, whose work focuses on childhood obesity at Harvard's reknowned Boston Children's Hospital. In other words, a very knowledgeable, concerned, and influential physician in the realm of obesity, particularly pertaining to children and young adults.

Dr. Ludwig suggests that obese children be removed from their families and placed in foster care.

I can understand Dr. Ludwig's frustration, but since his days are spent looking at obese kids rather than the bigger picture of food marketing, consumption and health in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, I can see how he might reach the point he expresses in this editorial. From where I sit, I can't help but be horrified. My hope is that the editorial may spark widespread dialogue, about food, about families, and about the role of government intervention in regards to both.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (that regulates food labeling and food additives and develops nutritional education information in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture), Federal Communications Commission (that regulates broadcast advertising and children's television programming), Federal Trade Commission (that regulates product advertising), along with our state's attorney generals, education curriculum and school lunch programs committees, and local, state and federal surgeons general and health departments, have been utterly ineffectual at communicating the basic foundations of good nutrition and food choices.  The poor USDA nutritionists and a few school nurses have been running around out there saying, Eat More Vegetables! and having about as much impact as holding back a hurricane with an umbrella.

Actually, 'ineffectual' is an understatement.  The regulating agencies which we have created and engaged to try to protect us from unscrupulous business practices have not only allowed but subsidized and encouraged the production and marketing of substances extremely detrimental to our health. 

They have allowed High Fructose Corn Syrup, clearly demonstrated by Princeton University researchers to lead to fat and weight gain as well as serum triglyceride increases even when consumed in modest amounts, to pervade every food product on the shelf. 

They've approved the use of sythentic fat substitutes, now sold in 'fat-free' everything, but that interfere with the absorption of necessary nutrients and actually wind up making consumers fatter.  This threatens to create malnutrition and increased obesity in precisely those kids whose parents think they are doing the best thing by buying them fat-free cookies.

They have allowed sugar alcohols to be included as ingredients in 'sugar-free' foods, even though they not only cause gastric distress in many people but can spike the serum cholesterol in diabetics.

This is not a matter of saying, "Well parents should exercise responsibility and read food labels." You can read the label of a product that says it's natural, fat-free and sugar-free, and still feed your child something that damages his or her health and leads to obesity. And now that these agencies have failed to protect ordinary families from the harmful products they were directed to regulate, we arrive at the suggestion that parents who don't somehow figure this all out should have their kids taken away from them.

What, I'm left wondering, would the qualification requirements be for foster families for such children? Would foster parent volunteers be screened for BMI? What about households that follow vegetarian, or various religious or ethnic food practices?

And what would the social service agency plans for family reintegration look like? Would the parents have to lose X amount of pounds and attend cooking classes before the child could be returned to the household? Would Child Protective Services now hire a team of nutritionists to evaluate the shopping list of parents before parental visitations could be initiated?

Instead of pointing fingers--fingers that will inevitably get pointed along socio-economic lines--we need to all insist that the federal and state agencies that we send our tax dollars to actually look out for our health and welfare, since that is what we've hired them to do.  Then we need to help one another -- all of us, young and old, employed and unemployed, urban and rural -- to establish healthy food traditions that include links of family and community, like holding pot-luck suppers in your neighborhood or town-wide,  and volunteering to give cooking and canning classes at the local food shelf.

And mainly, we--ALL of us--need to just say "no" to buying this processed crap at the supermarket.  In my public speaking classes at the Community College of Vermont I always have students do an impromptu persuasive presentation trying to convince the other students to try their favorite cookie. Of the hundreds and hundreds of students I've had do this over the years, about 85% state their favorite cookie as a homemade chocolate chip--often made by someone in particular like their mom or grandmother. Kids are not going to become obese on homemade chocolate chip cookies despite the sugar, butter and real chocolate in them--but they probably WILL on the fat-free, sugar-free packaged varieties that they didn't really want in the first place.

So fight childhood obesity by baking some chocolate chip cookies with your kid -- and let's bury the talk of taking obese children away from their parents.

Chanterelles

Golden chanterelles, as precious as summer sunshine. Dinner tonight: Salad of fresh greens, a bowl of green peas in the pod, sumac and raspberry leaf tea, and chanterelle puffs, a light simple little fritter that lets the delicate earthy flavor of these mushrooms shine through.

I have a confession to make: I did not pick these chanterelles myself. There are a small number of mushrooms that I am confident picking and eating--dryad's saddles, morels, angel wings--and every couple years I add one or two more to that list. Chanterelles have not quite made it onto my complete confidence list. I have found carpets of them a few times... I think...but at the last minute I was not totally certain so I let them lie. Maybe in a year or two...

Meanwhile I bought this batch from a gentleman who sells wildcrafted foods at the Middlebury Vermont Farmer's Market. With my own gardening and foraging, it's not too often that I actually buy produce from someone else, so I was really excited about this.

Then I had to decide how to cook them. A simple saute in butter is always splendid with wild mushrooms, as is an omelet. Mushrooms and eggs just seem to go together. I opted for this suggestions from the Mycological Society of San Francisco Cookbook, and I'm glad I did. The buttery simplicity, the melt in your mouth texture of the dough against the chewy woodsy flavor of the mushrooms -- pure heaven.

Recipe: Golden Chanterelle Puffs

1 cup chicken broth (I used my fresh-made vegetable stock instead)
1/2 pound or so minced chanterelles
1 stick butter
1 tsp. sea salt
1 cup unbleached flour
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 450 and lightly butter a cookie sheet. Heat the broth in a saucepan; add mushrooms, butter and salt and bring to a boil. Slowly stir in flour a little at a time. Remove from heat and beat in eggs one at a time. Drop dough by tablespoons onto the cookie sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes until lightly golden brown on top. Cool them on a rack, then try not to devour them all at once. They are splendid slightly warm, and even better cold for lunch the next day.

Taking Stock: Table Scraps to Soup Broth

You may as well get every cent of value and every molecule of nutrition and flavor possible out of those organic vegetables that you either paid a fortune for or sweated hours in the garden over. Keep a big food-grade plastic bag in your freezer, and throw in all the onion ends, celery tops and bottoms, garlic peelings, tops and cores of bell peppers, mushroom stems, and twigs of herbs that you've dried. If you are so inclined, you can chop these bits into small pieces before freezing them, which makes your stock cook up faster and more flavorfully--but in the midst of dinner or salad preparation I must admit I usually don't take the extra time, but just toss them into the freezer.

I don't use brassicas like broccoli or cabbage leaves in my stock, as I don't like the taste. I like brassicas, just not in my stock, to me they impart a bitter taste but I know other cooks who use them and like the flavor. I don't eat meat, but occasionally eat fish and one summer after fishing I did make a batch of stock with the fish bones etc. in it as well, and it was really delicious; I used it later for making a fish chowder.

When the bag gets full enough, dump the contents into a large stock pot. Just cover the foodstuffs with water, add a bit of sea salt if you are so inclined (I do this, as I sort of feel it helps break the food down a little better and adds flavor, but I don't eat any processed or canned foods and don't really worry about excess salt in my diet; by all means leave it out if you prefer).

Simmer--don't boil--until there's nary an ounce of life left in the veggie scraps and they are all a brownish, colorless mass. Add water to bring the level up to just covering the vegetables if it starts to evaporate and boil off, but don't add too much or you'll wind up with a watery broth. Better to have a nice rich broth that you can water down later if need be.

Pour the hot broth through a colander into another big pot or bowl. Remember to put the pot or bowl under the colander. Yes, I say this through experience--my brain is so used to dumping pasta or things of that ilk into the colander where you save the stuff not the broth that I once poured the stock right down the sink. Sigh.

Send the veggie bits to the compost pile. Strain the stock once more if you like, through a fine mesh seive or cheesecloth. Stir well and pour it into quart or half gallon freezer containers and pop in the freezer to await your fall and winter soup and stew making. Freeze up a couple smaller batches for sauces and gravies if you like.  While I usually do this on cool autumn nights, my freezer was jammed full and I needed to make room for incoming vegetables, so I pulled the bag of stock veggies and took advantage of an unseasonably cool July evening to cook up this batch.

Happy thrifty cooking!

Sumac Tea: Free Summer Refreshment

The staghorn sumac, or Rhus typhina, grows as a 'weed tree' around these parts. It expands into islands about 20 feet out from the edges of woodlands in abandoned meadows, like the forest advance-guard, clearing the way for the aspen and birches to follow. As a kid I loved to play inside those island thickets, the tropical-looking leaf fronds forming a perfect roof and the open spaces between the trunks creating so many imaginary rooms.

Beginning in mid-July the staghorn sumac puts out distinct fuzzy red cone-shaped flower and berry clusters. Different stands seem to develop these velvety flower cones at different times from mid-summer to early fall, and I've not detected any particular rhyme or reason to the timing. The nice thing is, some patch nearby is always at its peak.

I use a pocket knife to snap off the whole berry clusters. You can just break them off with your hands, but sometimes the supporting twigs are a little tough, and you wind up either getting a mess of sap on your hands or breaking off a larger branch unnecessarily. Granted, sumacs are common as house cats so a small broken branch is not a huge disaster in the scope of the world, but still, it seems gratuitous, and besides, I like using my pocketknife.

At home, gently stuff the whole red berry cones into a glass jar. Fill with cold water. Let steep in a cool place, either just sitting indoors or, if it's not too hot out, in a sunny spot, but don't let it get too warm. The longer it steeps, the stronger it gets. Initially the brew will be a light pink with a mild refreshing flavor. As it gets darker it takes on tones of a hibiscus or rose hip tea, which it also resembles in its crisp, thirst quenching flavor. Strain the tea out through a cheesecloth or fine tea strainer, as the fuzzy bits from the berries can be irritating to the throat. You can sweeten it with simple syrup, honey or agave syrup, or drink it as is (I like it plain). It also makes a nice mix with green tea, or with a bit of lemon. 

If you leave sumac tea for a day or two, the color will turn black. This doesn't affect its flavor at all but it's not quite so appealing looking as that rosy pink freshness. I've read that sumac tea is high in Vitamin A and Vitamin C, though wild foods like sumac have not been the subject of much in the way of serious nutritional and medical research. The tea certainly has that high-vitamin-C red tanginess about it, and it has been consumed by residents of North America for thousands of years, so it stands to reason that, at the very least, it's not bad for you.

I've seen instructions on the internet saying boil water and make sumac tea like you would a hot herbal tea. Give it a try if you like but I don't think you'll like it; boiling releases the tannins and gives you a nasty bitter brew. If you want hot tea, steep the sumac at cool temperatures, strain out the sumac, then heat the tea in a mug in the microwave.

As with any new food, some people may have unexpected allergic reactions or intolerances, so don't go drinking a few gallons of sumac tea the first time you try it. Make a small glass and see if you experience any adverse effects at all; if so, leave it at that. More importantly, make sure you harvest sumac berries from a location that has not been sprayed with agricultural chemicals or road-and right-of-way clearing herbicides. These are much more likely to cause you ill effects than the sumac berries themselves. Sumac that is growing as part of a formal landscape is probably off limits both from an aesthetic and trespassing point of view as well as by virtue of likely having been doused with chemicals.

That said, sumac is abundant and often grows in neglected places where picking a few berry cones will do no harm at all. Its delicious tea is healthful, refreshing, and free, the perfect antidote to sugar and artificial color laden tubs of fake iced tea and lemonade mix. Better yet, it's an easy way to step into wildcrafting, and sharing the seasonal bounty of the local landscape.

She Can Bake An (Organic) Cherry Pie

Cherries are one of life's most precious ephemeral culinary joys. Sweet, tart, glossy, dripping from deep-green long-leaved trees perched on emerald hillsides under azure skies--nothing says summer like cherries. Except maybe a cherry pie.

The only conceivable way to improve on an honest-to-goodness fresh cherry pie is to make it from organic, or mostly organic, ingredients. Cherries are so rich in vitamins, anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants, it seems a shame to mix them up with agricultural chemicals and food additives.

Cherries
 

The hardest part about baking an organic cherry pie is finding organic cherries. Check your local farmers market, and be sure to ask farmers about their growing methods--many small farmers and orchardists use organic or low-input sustainable farming methods, but don't go through the expense and difficulty of obtaining a USDA organic certification. Check your local natural foods market, and if you've won the lottery recently, you may also be able to mail-order organic cherries from places like The Fruit Company.  Or scout around and forage--many folks grow cherries as an ornamental tree and never harvest the fruit, but don't spray it with anything. Abandoned farmsteads may also have feral cherry trees still putting out glistening burgundy orbs for your eating pleasure. Use sour cherries if you can find them, as they make the most delicious pies.

Dry Goods
 
Organic, unbleached white flour is available in most natural foods markets--just smell it and make sure it doesn't smell like much of anything, which says it's still relatively fresh. If you can't find certified organic flour, unbleached flour like King Arthur All Purpose White Flour is a far sight better than the bleached kinds. Use a fine-grain sea salt with no additives for your baking salt. Organic, GMO-free cornstarch is available boxed from Rapunzel Organic, and in bulk at most natural food stores and co-ops. Rumford also puts out a GMO-free cornstarch although it's not USDA certified organic. American-grown, certified organic sugar is available from Florida Crystals. This is available packaged or in bulk at health food stores.

Other Ingredients
 
A good sour cherry pie should have a touch of lemon and lemon zest; shop for organic citrus at your local natural foods store. I like a shortening pie crust for cherry pie, as an oil crust gets hard to work with doing the lattice top, which can start to break apart.  I use Spectrum Natural's Vegetable Shortening which is certified organic palm oil shortening. I know that coconut and palm oils are saturated fats, but they are medium-chain fatty acids that work differently than lard does; long and short of it is they aren't really that bad for you.

Recipe

Unlike baking cakes with organic ingredients, baking an organic fruit pie does not call for any special techniques. I adapted this pie filling recipe from Ken Haedrich's classic book "Pie" and the pie crust from my falling-apart Betty Crocker Cookbook. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and pit 6 cups of cherries.

Crust: 

Mix 1 tsp. sea salt into 2 cups organic white flour with a fork in a medium bowl. Cut in 3/4 cup organic vegetable shortening. I like to work this in with my hands. Add 4 to 6 tablespoons very cold water one tablespoon at a time, tossing the flour mixture after each addition.

Roll out a large half of the dough into a circle and fit it to a deep 9 inch pie pan. Roll out the other half into a square  and cut it into 8 1-inch wide strips, using either a knife or a ruffle-edged pastry wheel.

Filling:

Place 6 cups of pitted organic cherries in a bowl. Mix with 1 and a 1/2 cups organic sugar  and 1/3 cup organic cornstarch.  Add 2 tsp. fresh squeezed organic lemon juice and the grated zest of 1 lemon.  Stir and pour into pie crust. Top with 2 tablespoons organic butter, cut into small pieces. 

Assemble the lattice strips in a woven pattern with 5 strips running in one direction and 3 in the other. Brush the top with milk and sprinkle with organic sugar. Bake at 400 for a half hour. Rotate the pie 180 degrees in the oven, drop the temperature to 375 degrees, and bake for another half hour or until golden brown on top and the filling bubbling over the edges. Cool for at least 2 hours to allow the juices to set. Serve with ice cream or fresh whipped cream with vanilla.

Book Review: Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning

Interesting point to ponder: People in the past ate a lot more than we do today. They weren't obese eating 8,000 or 10,000 calories a day, because they walked everywhere and nearly all labor was manual labor. The round belly of a banker or fleshy arms of a noble woman were indeed the unusual signs of prosperity, an indication of the exemption, not the rule.  Everyone else consumed what must have been vast quantities of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables to make their daily fuel needs, given the lack of high fat, high calorie snacks we can pack on today.

So where did all the food come from--especially in winter?

When we think of home food preservation today, we usually thinking of sticking things in the freezer or home boiling water bath or pressure canner two-piece-lid glass-jar canning methods. That's if we think of home food preservation at all, since nearly everything you could want to eat and more is available in the freezer section or in a steel can at your local grocery store. Both of these methods are relatively new inventions of the modern post-industrial era. But are they improvements?

Government health agencies warn constantly of lurking dangers in home canning like botulism, yet people get sick and die from commercial fresh and steel-canned goods as well. Take a step back in time from the home canning, and the food industry professionals really go apoplectic, insisting that a long bath in boiling water is the absolutely minimum that food should ever undergo before consumption, just to make sure everything in it is dead as a doornail.  Open the jar of green beans, and cue the horror movie soundtrack theme music.

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante (Chelsea Green Publishing 1999) paints a different and much less frightening picture. Drying, lactic fermentation, oil, salt, sugar or alcohol are just a few of the old-school methods of food preservation still used by rural food fans in Europe, and now making a comeback amongst the American Localvore crowd. These methods retain more of the natural flavor and nutrients of the produce they preserve, transforming those elements into new food products different but just as worthy of enjoyment as the original fresh produce.

The book is less a how-to than a collection of letters from the horticulturalists and cooks of Terre Vivante, a non-profit ecological agricultural center in France. The book's warning page about food safety notes that common sense should apply--keep cooking surfaces and utensils clean, use only fresh, unspoiled produce, and if something smells or tastes 'off', then don't eat it.

Whether or not you dive in to make Lacto-Fermented Green Bean Soup or Sun-Cooked Cherries in Brandy, Preserving Foods Without Freezing or Canning is well worth a summer read, while the earth's bounty is bursting its buttons all around you. The sheer pleasure of contact with creative gardeners and farmers who have not leapt unquestioningly into modern food preservation methods, and who are generous enough to share the recipes and techniques passed down by their parents and grandparents in the language of friends and neighbors sharing the makings of their favorite dishes, is just delightful.

The take away lesson: The way we do things now is not necessarily the only, or best, way. And people in the past who dined on Pear Jam with Cinnamon or a stew of sun-dried tomatoes and eggplants are hardly the deprived, food-ignorant savages we often assume our ancestors to have been.  Read up, take heart, and dig in!

Break Free from Boredom: New Taste Sensations

Chocolate Mint, a Strong Peppermint Cultivar

One of the joys of loving real food is the adventure of new taste sensations. Once your tastebuds re-awaken to the myriad delights of real herbs and spices, tangy pickled and fermented vegetables, fresh fruits and whole grains that are not doused in salt and chemical preservatives, a whole new world opens up.

Paging through a magazine to avert waiting-room frustration two days ago I stumbled on a recipe that sounded like such an odd combination I had to run right home and try it: Mint pesto. Better yet, mint pesto served over strawberries.

Seeing the title of the recipe I immediately thought they were using the word 'pesto' loosely and that the ingredients would be mint and sugar, or something of that ilk. But no, it was basically a simple pesto recipe substituting mint for basil. I had made sage pesto before as a condiment for winter squash, but I could not for the life of me envision how mint and garlic were going to taste blended together.

Here's how I assembled it:

1 cup of fresh peppermint or chocolate mint leaves (I used the latter)
1/4 cup almonds (milder flavor than the traditional pine nuts or walnuts--cheaper, too)
1/4 cup mild grated parmesan cheese
1 garlic scape, woody bits removed (because these are in season; a clove or two of garlic would do)
Place all in blender and pour in enough light olive oil to let the blender mix it all together into a thick paste.

I served it with freshly sliced strawberries and Greek-style yoghurt; a nice neufchatel cheese with crusty bread would be another option. The result: fascinating. I'm not used to mint as a savory, rather than sweet, flavor. The mint oils and garlic create a lingering taste sensation that is tangy and energizing while at the same time so odd and different as to make you stop in your tracks and think about it.

As an anti-dote to slavish meat-and-potatoes, oatmeal-on-oatmeal with a side of fries dining, that's really not a bad thing. Cut loose this Independence Day and try a new flavor of real food. It just might start a culinary revolution.

Mint Pesto with Greek-style Yoghurt and Fresh Strawberries from Douglas Orchards