Top Tin Vol. 2: Organic Meat and Dairy

As promised, here is the latest "Top Tin" list. Lifted and barely paraphrased from care2.com, here are the.....

Top ten reasons to buy organic meat and dairy:

1. Free of antibiotics and other drugs, added hormones, genetically-modified animals or feed

2. No animal cannibals protects against Mad Cow disease

3. More humane and ethical treatment of animals

4. Animals are usually free-range and can graze

5. Controlled production of small amounts of organic manure

6. Animals help organic farmers

7. Fewer chemicals in your food, your body and the environment

8. Support diversity

9. Save resources

10. Support small family farms

For more explanation and some great links, please visit the original list on care2.com.

Crying over scared milk (and bad beef!)

I just put off writing a new blog entry by making a yummy batch of Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies, with sliced almonds added for crunch and a miniscule amount of
health benefit in an otherwise purely hedonistic cookie.

As I tested to make sure the second batch out of the oven was as good as the first, I was messaging with my younger brother, Brad, on my computer. Since he lives 45 minutes away in glamorous South Beach, (where I grew up and went to high school) I rubbed it in that I was enjoying delicious fresh cookies. He messaged back, “Got milk?”

I did, actually. A tall frosty glass of organic milk in my vintage Burger King Empire Strikes Back drinking glass. (The Hoth one, with C-3PO and R2D2 in the foreground and Han Solo on a tauntaun in the background, for those whose geeky minds need to know).

Of course, although my brother undoubtedly would have approved of the glassware, he immediately called me “Hippie!” when I told him I was drinking organic milk. He does this a lot. But, not only hippies like me choose organic dairy and meat. (And organics aren’t just for vegetarians.)

I found so much good stuff researching this topic, it is going to spawn more than one post. I will share this one great site I found: The O’Mama Report - Organic Information and Inspiration. My husband pointed out that I squealed when I stumbled across it. They have an O’Baby and O’Kids area, too. This site is definitely being added to my Top Tin websites list, which is still under construction.

I also found a complete new Top Tin list, the top ten reasons to buy organic dairy and meat, and that will be coming to you soon.

Top Tin Vol. 1: Fruits and Veggies

Welcome to the first installment of a very exciting ongoing series here atMom's Tinfoil Hat. Drum roll please.....lists! No, wait, don't click away, it's more exciting than that. I will be putting together "Top Tin" lists on various scary plots by mad scientists, the worst food additives, and other exciting stuff.

If I were more organized, I would do this every Friday, or every second Tuesday, but I don't roll like that. When the mood strikes me, when the list gets complete enough, when I have nothing else to blog about, and when the little voices tell me you need it the most, a new "Top Tin" list will appear on this blog, full of tinfoil hat inspiring villains, or websites to research whatever is worrying you at the moment.

Today's "Top Tin" is a double feature. And just to show you how much I think outside the box, each list has a dozen items. (I bet you were expecting ten. I am full of excitement, see?)

One of my "Top Tin" organizations, when that list comes up, will definitely be The Environmental Working Group. When I go to their website, I feel like the mothership is calling me home. They assembled a pesticide report card ranking the fruits and vegetables which have the highest and lowest amounts of pesticide residues. These amounts are averaged from produce washed and prepared for typical eating, and "based on an analysis of over 100,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 1992 - 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration."

I don't know about you, but my local grocery store does not contain a complete selection of organic produce, although it has definitely been getting better. There are other options for me to get organic items, but not everyone has these resources in their area, or can always afford to go organic. It helps to be able to rank the chemicals my children, the environment, and the agricultural workers are exposed to based on my produce choices.

The "Dirty Dozen" the fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues:

Apples

Bell peppers

Celery

Cherries

Grapes (imported)

Nectarines

Peaches

Pears

Potatoes

Red Raspberries

Spinach

Strawberries

The "Not-so-dirty Dozen" the fruits and vegetables with the cleanest scores:

Asparagus

Avocados

Bananas

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Corn (sweet)

Kiwi

Mangos

Onions

Papaya

Pineapples

Peas (sweet)

Happy Thanksgiving, please pass the Osturduckencorpheail??

(Originally posted Thanksgiving Day 2006)

I was going to write a serious Thanksgiving Day post about increasing salmonella in poultry, and antibiotic resistance brought on by the senseless amount of antibiotics we pour into our chickens and birds. But, something scarier caught my eye.

My brother and I have had a long standing joke about the Turducken, which is a deboned turkey, stuffed with a deboned duck, stuffed with a deboned chicken. If that’s not enough layers of meat for you, you can use sausage as a stuffing in between the layers instead of bread crumbs.

If that still isn’t tiered enough, Wikipedia has some variations. The article claims that Cajun Chef Paul Prudhomme has a recipe for an Osturduckencorpheail: ostrich, turkey, duck, chicken, Cornish hen, pheasant, quail. I can only confirm on his website that he has a recipe for turducken.

OK, this frightens me. I have a fridge FULL of food for tomorrow. I am anticipating cooking for hours today, and for the entire day tomorrow. I love it, don’t get me wrong. My mom tries to get me to buy a prepared Thanksgiving dinner every year because “You don’t really want to cook, do you?” and I turn her down every year.

But, the turducken involves deboning 3 birds, and involves several hours of prep just for the one main dish, in triplicate. Can you imagine seven birds? How about ten?

Here’s to wishing a happy and relatively low maintenance Thanksgiving.

Teflon, Part II

Luckily for me, DuPont maintains an informative website about its ubiquitous product conveniently located at www.teflon.com. Not only does this life saving substance coat our windshield wipers and make driving safer, according to the website, but it is also safe. At least, this is implied by their link entitled "Teflon is safe".

Their site agrees with recent findings of the Environmental Protection Agency. The main concerns with Teflon are with PFOA, (favorable talking points available at www.PFOA.com, go figure) a chemical used in the production of Teflon and similar substances. PFOA been found in the environment, and in human blood, breast milk and umbilical cord samples. Ahhh, now I understood why I was directed to the Environmental Protection Agency website instead of the Food and Drug Administration website. DuPont admitted to hiding toxicity research about this chemical, which its own studies indicated caused cancer and birth defects in laboratory animals. Good news for me, apparently there is little to no PFOA left in the finished product, like my minimuffin pans.

But, there is plenty of it left in the environment, and it is found in the blood of about 95% of Americans. So, bad news for all of us. Also bad news, there isn't much the EPA can tell us yet about avoiding it or removing it from our bodies. Hopefully they will come up with something in the ten years DuPont and friends have to phase out the chemical.

There is also some fear that Teflon sends off toxic vapors at extremely high temperatures. These vapors can be toxic to birds. According to Wikipedia, however, these same toxic fumes are emitted when butter is heated to a much lower temperature.

That settled it. I was not about to give up butter, so, the kids were allowed to eat the minimuffins. Boycotting further Teflon products until the compound may help influence (minutely) the amount of PFOA released into the atmosphere, but my pans were already made and purchased. And, those muffins sure smell goooooood.

For anyone who is a glutton for paranoia, put on your own tinfoil hat and read some more information from the Environmental Working Group.

Teflon

Last Saturday, I decided to distract myself from overthinking the various synthetic threats that lurk all around my family. I figured baking something delicious and wholesome from scratch would be just the trick. I whipped up a bunch of mama's whole wheat banana chocolate chip muffins.

This should keep my husband from having to sneak in contraband, I thought. Like the new evil Entenmanns's individually wrapped snacky cakes aptly named Enten-mini's - that appeared out of nowhere last week. Having my tasty muffins around would prevent another such security breach. I puttered around the kitchen, tidying up, feeling good about myself. Threat averted. No way that that nagging little voice in my head would have anything to say. I hung up my tinfoil hat and then....I still heard the voice.

"Teflon."

Did you hear something?

"Teflon."

Sigh. My regular muffin pans were old fashioned, not non-stick material. (Hmm, double negative...I guess that would make it stick material?) But, my brand new adorable mini muffin pans were some sort of new, possibly alien acquired technology that made the perfect little mouthfuls glide out with such ease.

Teflon® by DuPont is the original of many extremely low surface friction materials used to coat many surfaces that come in contact with food, including non-stick cookware like my pretty new minimuffin pans. I had heard recently that DuPont had agreed to completely suspend production of Teflon over the next decade. Considering that they make millions of dollars selling the stuff, something major had to be wrong with it. Or, at least that is what the little voice in my head was telling me.

I slammed the tinfoil hat back on, but it was too late. I have to find out more. I will be back with my findings on Teflon.