In a Nutshell

Alarmist books about our food supply are the non-fiction equivalent of young adult novels with vampires--a dime a dozen lately. I'm as freaked out as the next thoughtful eater by debeaked chickens and mysterious chemical compounds in our food supply, but there's only so much to say about it.

It being About That Time again, however, I picked up Robyn O'Brien's THE UNHEALTHY TRUTH: HOW OUR FOOD IS MAKING US SICK--AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. Some of the ground O'Brien covers will be review for readers of Michael Pollan or Nina Planck, but because of her four food-allergic children, she has her own unique spin on things.

O'Brien details the remarkable rise in childhood ailments, including autism, allergies, asthma, ADHD(!), cancers, and obesity, and finds connections to changes in our food supply. These changes include:

1. A decrease in micronutrients as Americans switch from real to processed food.
2. Excessive exposure to antibiotics
3. Possible allergic reactions to genetically-modified organisms, especially soy and corn. A possible connection between soy exposure/allergy and peanut allergies!
4. Isoflavones in soy that boost estrogen levels
5. Growth hormones in dairy products (including one of my favorite ice cream brands, Breyer's)
6. The use of artificial colors and preservatives
7. The use of artificial sweeteners

I was particularly interested in the discussion of soy and other genetically-modified crops. In most cases the crops have been genetically modified to survive being sprayed with pesticides marketed by Monsanto (which conveniently also markets the GM seeds). O'Brien believes the genetic scrambling that takes place might be causing the jump in allergies, since soy might trigger other allergies and is found in just about every processed food.

Takeaways on genetically-modified food:

1. 92% of U.S.-grown soy is GM, as is 80% of the corn.
2. Top 10 GM crops in the U.S. are: corn, cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, soybeans, canola, sugar beets, rice, flax, squash/zucchini, papaya, and radicchio.

Takeaway on the takeaways: the food world is going to hell in a handbasket, and our farmers market can't open soon enough. I'll have new questions for the farmers as well--are they buying seeds from Monsanto (which O'Brien probably mis-typed as Monsatan-o as she worked on her book)?

After reading I considered going on a frantic pantry purge, but O'Brien ends on a realistic note. Processed foods are almost impossible to avoid, especially since kids will eat what they want to eat and what is offered, so shoot for an 80/20 ratio of  80% real, healthy food to 20% death-by-a-thousand-soy-derivatives.

Works for me.

A Golden Foodpurtunity

Last night BFM Director Lori Taylor and I attended Foodpurtunity in Seattle, "a networking event for food journalists, Public relation professionals, restaurateurs, farmers, companies and all food passionate people." It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. Tom Douglas' Palace Kitchen Ballroom was packed with such folk, all trying to elbow each other out of the way (politely) to get at the delicious samples. Personal favorites included the short-rib-and-kim-chee sliders from Mistral Kitchen and the gluten-free crostini with cheese, arugula and balsamic reduction from Wheatless in Seattle. Oh, and let's not forget the molten chocolate cakes from hot cakes confections, indulgent treats that will be available at our Thursday market. Pure indulgence.


Many of the treats featured ingredients from BFM farmers and vendors. Lori and I came upon Fishing Vessel St. Jude tuna and Willie Greens produce and Foraged and Found nettles. One Spanish tortilla featured potatoes from our own Olsen Farms, and both Marilyn's Nut Butters and Fosse Farms were there sampling products.

If the food was front and center, the networking was close behind. Large screens scrolled through tweets from attendees, and the evening wound up with a rigorous "speed-networking" event where I had to face off with twenty other bloggers, chefs, reviewers, sommeliers, etc. and see if we were going to make beautiful meals together. I think a whopping two of them had ever been to our lovely market, but hopefully my thirty seconds of arm-twisting will get more of them to cross the bridge.

Thanks for checking in with the blog. You might or might not be thrilled to know you can now become a fan of the Bellevue Farmers Market on Facebook or follow me (@CNDudley) on Twitter. Bon appetit, and let's network!

Armchair Chicken Farming

It's been some time since the UrbanFarmJunkie reviewed a book, but I just finished Bob Sheasley's delightful HOME TO ROOST: CHASING CHICKENS THROUGH THE AGES and had to share. Sheasley works as a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, but at home he raises chickens--lots of them. The book is hard to classify: part history of chicken domestication, part recap of funny historical beliefs about chickens, part personal anecdotes, and part philosophical exploration. The author's sense of humor keeps the book lively, even when he takes on such subjects as cockfighting or industrial chicken farming, and the bits about chicken sexuality are highly entertaining. (Of course, I may have a soft spot for chicken sexuality because my children's favorite birds-and-the-bees book features paper cut-outs of all kinds of animals going at it, and the chickens are my hands-down favorite. To think--someone had to cut out little humping chickens. Amazing.) If chickens bore you, don't despair: ducks and peacocks make the occasional cameo in Sheasley's book as well. Highly recommended.

If, on the other hand, the only thing that gets you up in the morning is vegetables, Marion Nestle recently blogged on how to retain the most nutrients in the vegetables we eat.  In short, eat both raw and cooked vegetables. Some fresh vegetables benefit nutritionally from cooking, but frozen vegetables suffer. (But yuck--who wants to eat an uncooked frozen vegetable?)

And finally, if you've been putting all your eggs in the omega-3-fatty-acids basket, Forbes notes that all omega-3 sources are not equal. Fish sources beat plant sources, in terms of how effectively our bodies process them. Have pity on the world's overfished critters, however, and get your recommended two-servings-a-week from the BFM's own sustainably-caught Loki Fish, available in the off-season at some Seattle markets and online.

All for now. Less than two months until Opening Day!

All Good News Edition

The countdown to the Bellevue Farmers Market opening is on! If you haven't checked the website, Opening Day is slated for Thursday, May 13, at 3:00 p.m. Thursday's market will be back at its 2008 location in the parking lot of First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, which should please the farmers who told me last year that they missed the pretty setting and the trees. It should also please those who grumbled about parking in the Bellevue Square parking lot and having to cross the street. I'm not making fun of you--I did my fair share.

Saturdays will get rolling come June 5, in a new Washington Square location: 10610 NE 8th, courtesy of another generous sponsor, Wasatch Development in Utah.

In collecting information for these posts, I've noticed bad food-news is much more plenteous than good food-news, but I've managed to scrape together these tidbits:

1. The number of farms in Washington State rose 6% from 2000 to 2008, according to the Seattle Times, and a whopping 90% of these farms are owned by individuals and families! Because our area is so local-food friendly, farm income has also risen. Voting with our dollars works.

2. Speaking of voting with our dollars, a recent Atlantic article notes with surprise Wal-Mart's entrance into the organic food market. Huge food players like Wal-Mart and McDonald's can change the way America eats simply by changing what they choose to buy, and it looks like Wal-Mart's Heritage Agriculture program could have many positive repercussions. The program encourages farms within a day's drive of a warehouse to grow crops Wal-Mart could sell--cutting out some of the produce flown all over creation. And it isn't just fruits and vegetables: Wal-Mart's desire for organic milk has already saved some struggling small dairy farmers. Very interesting to see how this will play out. Read the article to see how blind tasters compared Wal-Mart produce to Whole Foods!

3. Finally, you may be aware that 2010 is not just the Year of the Tiger, according to the Chinese calendar, but Seattle has also declared it the "year of urban agriculture." To this end, urban farm collective Alleycat Acres is trying to put vacant lots in Beacon Hill to urban agricultural use, growing produce for nearby low-income residents. Check out the interesting Seattle Times article, and if you have land to donate in South Park or Georgetown, they'd love to hear about it.