Frankenfood: Organic spray pancake batter

In the last week I've discovered twitter.

Actually, truth be told, in the last week I made a point to learn a bit about twitter....micro-blogging being the new wave and all.

One of the really neat things about twitter....one that makes facebook like, uh, so yesterday....is the ability to receive live feeds about any topic you choose.

So yesterday I plugged in 'track organic' into my gtalk twitter feed and sat in amazement as the live tweets rolled in (and still are....organic is a hot topic on twitter...and elsewhere).

This was a twitter I received on the organic track tonight:

The world has officially ended. You can get spray organic pancake batter. Like spray cheese. Except it's pancakes. And organic. wtf?via this twitter user who is someone I do not know or follow on Twitter

Curious comment isn't it? Don't you want to know more?

Well I did, so I highlighted 'spray organic pancake batter', right-clicked, and searched.

Here was the first hit (just hover your mouse to see their oh-so-catchy name....or click through to see their 'splashy' page.....omfg).

Hey it must be good for you if it's organic right? The name alone should send you running and screaming. Or blasting out some real food from your kitchen :)

Has the world officially ended?

The word organic is a bit of a joke if it can be plopped into a spray can(!) that has been inserted with 'food'. Organic food no less. I wonder what kind of inert gases blast this stuff out. Oops. I should say organic inert gases.

And please remember that pancake mix is something that could be made with just a few raw ingredients and a hand mixer in about 10 minutes.

As my friend Doug used to say...in the 1990s...."You know, you just wait and see, just one of these days they just might get a man on the moon."

And for those that are not aware of this 'line'.....it is a spoof from the conspiracy theory that claims that man landing on the moon was in fact orchestrated by the new medium of television in the 1960s....that the whole moon landing occurred in a TV studio rather than on the moon (wiki has a fascinating entry on this).

Indeed Doug, indeed.

Maybe they'll take some of the organic pancake spray up there with em too eh?

I don't know about you but I think that this link has made my twitter explorations worthy for sure.

To find out that another [random] human being on this planet regards organic spray pancake batter as much of a perversion as I do is somewhat comforting.

The natural laws of food have been disregarded for near a century now - or more?

Perhaps this is what happened to the people of Teotihuacán. We're more certain about the people on Easter Island.

The politics of food and 2006 Stats Canada Census data for Toronto

The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.' data source

Toronto has reached a new era of multi-culturalism.

Us Torontonians are living in a city with no clear majority of race, colour, or creed.

This is a unique time and place to live on this globe.

Why post this on a food blog?

As it turns out, the politics of food in the city has become a hot topic. I attended a forum on this exact topic in the fall (audio download available here).

An eloquent farmer (wearing a bright "Farmers Feed Cities" button) got up during the question and answer period and asked us all to consider why G8 countries obey very strict laws regarding importing cheaper goods into developing countries that can't grow or produce the same goods as cheaply as wealthy developed nations YET our very own country allows cheap imported food to undercut locally grown food at alarming and growing levels (most of Toronto's food is imported from outside of province and outside of the country - this has changed drastically in the last 20 years). He mentioned strawberries from California as the perfect example.

Part of the wide scale change in Toronto's food markets has come about because of what I have displayed above using today's freshly released 2006 census data and google's funky new chart creator.

A city of immigrants wants a taste of their homeland and they have every right to demand it from the market. But what we don't have at the moment is the ability for Ontario to provide the raw food for the myriad of diets that the city of Toronto currently has. Rice is just one small example of a food that is in huge demand in our city yet Ontario is not able to grow this staple.

There are foods that Ontario could grow but Canada does not provide immigrants with support to choose farming in their new land. Our immigrant approval process actively discourages applications from foreign farmers.

So we have white Caucasians choosing what to grow in what little farmland is to be had around Toronto (and Ontario) so the dietary needs of most new immigrants can not be supplied with locally grown food.

This imbalance has resulted in a form of food terrorism. Immigrants are forced to buy imported goods in various markets booming around the city. Any change or threat to this food supply will lead to a large scale disaster of a gastric nature.

And considering that most of us Torontonians (visible minority or not) consume foreign grown food daily...this food terrorism situation applies to us all.

That is why I belong to a food co-op. Increasing and maintaining active alliances with local farmers is something I hope to formalize at the co-op during my term on our board of directors. Food security is a real issue. For all of us. Everywhere.

Karma Food Co-operative Inc.: Toronto's only Member Owned Food Co-operative Store

I am on the board of directors for Karma, a co-op that has been running for over 35 years. In 1997-1999 I was on the board of director's for Ebytown Food Co-op in Kitchener (now a 30 year old institution). The contrast in experience is baffling to me in many ways and for many reasons but there is one way that my experience with both co-ops is exactly the same - the availability of whole foods at decent prices.

I took a number of pictures yesterday at Karma. I wanted to record some general prices of the food Karma carries with my camera.

One of Karma's idiosyncrasies is that we still do not have an electronic point of sale system. All record keeping is done basically by hand except for some, but not all aspects, of basic accounting/book-keeping. This makes analysis of any data at Karma next to impossible and is rarely done except for the financial statements.

As a board member of a co-operative, and Karma has ten people on it's board, we are elected and mandated by our 1000+ members to ensure the efficient and effective operation of our food store. Remarkably, this has worked for 35 years without many processes implemented to observe, record and analyze product movement through the store. Membership details are casually observed but again, no analysis that I know of has been done.

Karma has nearly gone bankrupt a few times in the past and is currently facing a union drive by it's staff of 10 people. Couple this union with our very weak state of finances (due to a renovation that must happen due to violation of the health code) and this might be the death knell. Might. The vibrant and tumultuous history of Karma's past tells me that we will not likely to die and certainly will not without a fight.

Members of food co-operatives tend to get nearly violent (ahem, figuratively) when loss of their food is threatened. Thus, I'm fairly positive that I will be able to take a similar series of pictures next February in our renovated store and we can compare some prices together and marvel over the increased number of local greens on Karma's shelves (we already provide a few hydroponic products from local farmers and that market is growing). I might even be able to report about the successful implementation of a point of sale system (currently being studied by a very productive committee at Karma). Or point you to a site containing events that you, a member of the Toronto public, can attend to find out more about Karma. Pollyanna-like musings? Time and a round table of 10 passionate board members will tell.

All of my visitors are tracked with google analytics. In an effort to illustrate the ease, necessity, and power of data collection in the age of blogging I have planted this post. If you found this post via a google search for Toronto food co-ops or something similar then I will find out (not who you are - just what you searched for - here is the report of key word searches to this blog for last month). Feel free to leave a comment if this is how you landed - in the interest of data collection of course ;) Comments from others are also welcome!

Frankenfood vs Aloe Vera

Two 'Food' Photo tours: You tell me which one you would call food.

Photo Tour I (19 macro photos of deli meats aka food)

I couldn't watch more than 4 photos of this tour at the beginning. Kudos to the photographer for providing more evidence for my frankenfood 'experiment'.

This tour shows macro shots of 'food' purchased at Walmart. Need I tell you more? It's definitely a barf time experience.

I haven't eaten this type of 'food' (nor wanted to) in about 15 years so it doesn't kill anything for me. If you ever eat deli meat you might want to give this a serious viewing. Maybe eat some deli meat with it for the purpose of curing your intake of this 'food'. Walk by the street meat cart next time and remember these pictures.

Another warm thanks to Drew off of this list for this excellent link.

Photo Tour II (12 macro photos about how to harvest your aloe vera plant)

I drink aloe vera juice and am fascinated with this photo tour on how to make my own.

Drinking organic aloe vera juice (1/2 cup) mixed with 1 tsp psyllium husk is a very good colon cleanser/healer (but do not use for more than 7 days in a row unless under the supervision of a medical professional).

Drink this mixture (I sometimes add 1/2 cup organic bilberry nectar or pure cranberry juice or pure pomegranate juice for flavour and healing effects) on an empty stomach and follow with a glass of water. When I am not using psyllium for my fiber source, I munch on fennel seeds instead (another excellent dietary fiber source).

The Vitamin D Pandemic

This is an excellent @50 minute long presentation by Michael Holick, PhD, MD conducted on May 5, 2007 (this is best viewed in IE and a very special thanks to Drew for posting this to the MS-Diet list).

Most of our human population on the entire planet is walking around deficient in Vitamin D. Even in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, India, etc.

While watching the above I kept thinking about this BBC documentary on global dimming (and you thought global warming was the problem.....it's not that simple.....).

I wonder if the global dimming experts are talking to Dr. Holick's research group. They should be.

Frankenfood meets nanotechnology this year in a big way

This terrifying knell came straight out of my google alert for frankenfood this morning (emphasis made by moi) - it should make you run towards the closest organic food market near you (or grow your own!):

"A breed of Frankenfood is being introduced into human diet and cosmetics with potentially disastrous consequences, experts said last night.

Academics, consumer groups and Government officials are warning that the arrival of nanotechnology threatens dangerous changes to the body and the environment.

The particles it uses are so small - 80,000 times thinner than a human hair - that they can pass through membranes protecting the brain or babies in the womb.

Nano health supplements, such as antioxidants, are already on the market while the first of hundreds of new foods are expected to arrive in the next 12 months." (published 10:26am on 2nd January 2008)

Here is something quite interesting to chew on

I just read the latest (er, 4th, ?) book from the Uglies Trilogy, by Scott Westerfeld. This is a great science fiction series for youth, btw. Apparently there is a movie to be made by Fox in the works too. Fox might butcher it tho.

However, it is this 2008 news clip (thx to wisewebwoman), which disturbs me with the parallels between the child discussed in the clip, Brooke, in 2008, and the 'surg' heads from Westerfield's futuristic post-Rustie world (with Rustie being the term for today's humans). Surg heads are humans that constantly change their body figure/form with surgical modifications for style/popularity gaining reasons (popularity ranks are very important in this future world...I find it an ironic mirror to today's world....).

A 12 year old child in Texas has become the youngest surg head that I've ever heard of. And her 'popularity rank' certainly has increased, hasn't it? Sounds to me like popularity is the only motivation for her entry into perpetual surg head mode.

And also, not once in the clip do they talk about her diet (past or current). The female interviewer looks like a bit of a surg head herself and probably lives on protein bars and boost. That's a bit harsh eh? But to not ask about food consumption when someone is obese is pretty messed up in itself. What were the child's parents FEEDING her for 12 years for goodness sake? And why are there no abuse charges applied when children are obese?

Silly questions when we all know that there is money to be made when people are obese.

Surgery is just one income stream opportunity (and that is a renewable stream, Brooke has hopped onto one surgeon's deluxe christmas card list eh?). Think of long term medications required by most aging obese people and the cash flow they generate - worldwide. And then there is the advertising base for the products that obese people need.

Wholesome/Unprocessed fresh food choices have never exactly been regarded as 'cash cow' endeavours due to the labour and time to table issues. That is, of course, until humans discovered how to best make money off of the darned cow.

So why not disregard something obvious....and hope that the masses don't notice these anomolies.....and continue pumping trans fat, gluten, dairy and sugar into the populace by the poundful....or tonful......????????

This capitalist based strategy seems to have worked for hundreds of years so far.....at least the gluten and sugar part.....trans fat was the latest killer food added 30 years ago and of course dairy really made excellent headway with the onset of pasteurization and refrigeration technologies not to mention gaining it's own box in Canada's food guide (and the mighty US pyramid).

And then there is the whole matter of our food also being the product of surg head modifications (ie GMO). But I'll leave that for another rant.