In the News.....

Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on fortified foods--also known as "functional" food. Manufacturers are increasingly pushing this concept. Classic example of overkill: Tropicana orange juice "fortified" with Omega oils. Do you really need fish oil in your O.J? While the taste is being processed out of that fish oil, what is happening to the Omega 3's? Bottom line seems to be: eat whole foods, take a multivitamin if you must. You'll save a lot of money.

And speaking of fish, last Wednesday, the NY Times hosted a discussion on the choices (or lack thereof) facing fish eaters who want to be environmentally correct.

On a happier note, last week Martha Rose Shulman presented a series of recipes focusing on one of my favorite foods: polenta. Interestingly, she led off the series by recommending cooking polenta in the oven. I like to make polenta using DeLaEstancia polenta, sold in Aisle 2A. This polenta only needs to cook for about a minute on the stove and is delicious. Bob's Red Mill polenta needs to cook longer. The corn meal sold in the bulk bins also works and is the cheapest. Sixty of our members opted for the super fast method--buy the cooked polenta in the plastic tube sold in Aisle 6A. We were sold out on Monday. If you are a tube purchaser, make the leap and try the DeLaEstancia. Just bring it to boil and let it cook one minute. You'll never look back.

Christian Science Monitor profiled the CONACADO cocoa cooperative in the Dominican Republic. Equal Exchange purchases cocoa from this cooperative. The Fair Trade premium helps pay for basic needs in their community, including schools and plumbing. We sell lots of Equal Exchange Fair Trade organic chocolate bars in Aisle 7A.

In the News.....

Lots of Coop members have cats. Most are concerned about the environment. Probably most have not thought about how feeding fish (or chicken that was fed fish) to their cat plays a significant role in diminishing the ocean's resources, further endangering large ocean mammals, like whales. Paul Greenberg, who is writing a book on the future of fish, points out this problem in an interesting op-ed in the NYTimes 3/21/09. The Coop doesn't apply the same standards to fish, poultry and meat in the pet food we sell as we do for the products for human consumption. Something to think about.

The recent peanut scare highlighted how unregulated the food industry is. Both the Wall Street Journal and the NYTimes detail how many manufacturers do not know the origin of many of their ingredients, even when they are required to document their sources.

And the LA Times weighs in about a similar problem concerning pharmaceuticals. Reporter David Lazarus was unable to track down where his generic acetaminophen was manufactured. Unlike the food industry, there is no requirement to cite the source of ingredients in pharmaceuticals, and many sold in the US are manufactured in other countries. China is a major manufacturer.

An independent lab that tests supplements, ConsumerLab, recently updated its review of fish oils. The good news is that the 52 products that they tested did not have high levels of mercury. However, the free summary on the web hinted that some of these products were more like snake oil than fish oil, i.e., they didn't contain the omega-3's the labels cited. Unfortunately, in order to read the full report you need to spend $$ and subscribe.