Eat This Newsletter 280: Gordian
Hello
Sometimes, the simple solutions might actually be best. Sometimes, they’re not.
Take a Sword To It
Have you been worrying about how the Food and Drug Administration might tackle the fraught issue of defining ultra-processed foods? Worry no more. David Kessler, a doctor, lawyer and former FDA commissioner has offered the Administration an Alexandrian solution: take away the automatic classification of processed and refined carbohydrates as Generally Recognised as Safe. If the FDA agrees, this would automatically make foods that contained these ingredients “adulterated and illegal to sell”.
I got the news from the website of Marion Nestle, who handily offers Kessler’s letter to RFK Jr and the petition it presents which, she says, is “carefully argued and lengthy” and “makes a strong case for the unhealthy nature of processed refined carbohydrates.”
In his letter, Kessler says:
Just as nicotine causes millions to be addicted and sickened by tobacco, so do processed refined carbohydrates cause much of America’s chronic disease. There is no expert consensus that refined carbohydrates in ultraprocessed foods are safe under present conditions of use. That leaves FDA with no choice but to determine that processed refined carbohydrates, as a matter of science and law can no longer be considered GRAS and thus must be removed from commerce.
Mr. Secretary, the government has an opportunity, and a responsibility, to begin now the process of curbing processed refined carbohydrates in our food supply. On a larger scale, this petition triggers a remaking of the food supply. It will get companies to rethink and redesign the way they make food so that foods are not injurious to health.
Will the FDA accept this gift, from one of their own, no less? Impossible to say, but they have 180 days to act on the petition. I’ll be keeping an eye on Nestle, who will undoubtedly be keeping an eye on the FDA.
Food Safety Roundup
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Hard to know what to make of the Florida woman who is suing a dairy company after raw milk hospitalised her toddler and caused her to lose her unborn child. Keely Farms Dairy says it sells raw milk “as livestock feed, labeled ‘not for human consumption’.” The milk is available at farmers’ markets and apparently has many human consumers. The woman says she was “unaware of any potential dangers” of raw milk and that the company failed to give her adequate warning. The woman did not drink the raw milk herself, but was apparently infected by Campylobacter while caring for her toddler.
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Just when you thought deli meats were safe to buy again, Boar’s Head announced that it would re-open the plant in Jarrett, Virginia, that was behind the recall of 3100 tonnes of meat last year. The Associated Press, investigating the announcement, found that other Boar’s Head plants were flagged for the same kinds of contamination problems even while Food Safety and Inspection Service officials said that “the serious issues that led to suspension have been fully rectified” at the Jarrett plant. The AP report details some of the failings at the other plants. And, of course, it echoes warnings that people, including pregnant people in Florida and elsewhere, should “think carefully about deli meat consumption”.
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Even in its homeland, pasteurisation will not necessarily protect cheese-eaters from listeriosis. As of Wednesday, authorities in France were still working to identify the source of a listeria outbreak that had sickened 21 people, two of whom died. All fingers point to the Chavegrand dairy in central France, which produces own-label soft cheeses for supermarkets in France and internationally. The company is being criticised for delaying a recall of its products, and as a result infecting more people.
Cultural Histories
What do absinthe and upland rice have in common? Absolutely nothing, except that cultural histories of each crossed my path last week; two cracking long reads.
Nina Studer, author of The Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France’s Most Notorious Drink summarises parts of her book in a Q&A for TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research.
I am led by the question how a consumption shared between various groups – men, women and children, bourgeoisie, artists and working classes, colonizers and colonized – could be viewed and interpreted as having vastly different consequences, depending on both a person’s belonging to one of these groups and to behaviors associated to these groups.
A real eye-opener especially if, like me, your only experience of absinthe is the myths she so ably undoes.
And then there’s The Cultural Legacy of Moruga Hill Rice from Aramco World. Moruga is on the south coast of Trinidad, and the prized rice of the region comes from west Africa, via South Carolina. It is not, however, Carolina Gold rice, although its history is similar. Like Carolina Gold, Moruga Hill rice comes originally from West Africa, brought by enslaved people, but it is a red-bearded variety, not white, that Thomas Jefferson apparently brought to the United States. It reached Trinidad with African men who fought for the British in the war of 1812 and were granted freedom and land in the area around Moruga.
Again, an eye-opening history, with added recipes.
Recipe Notes
An interesting article from The Recipes Project looks at Recipes as Pedagogical Resistance: Teaching Food Writing in an AI-Era. Bonnie Shishko and Shawn Bowers, who teach English and writing at Queens University of Charlotte, asked students to produce a mini-book of “three recipes reflective of different intersections of their identities”. The goal was to nudge students away from seeing their writing through the “binary lenses of good/bad, right/wrong” — which they often think justifies the use of AI — and to “trust their own voices”. According to the article, it worked. Did any of the students write about Gullah-Geechee foods, I wonder.
Appropriately, this week’s other food podcast® suggestion is Around the Table Podcast, also from The Recipes Project. Sarah Kernan talks to Victoria Flexner about her historical supper club and the book that emerged from it.
What Is Wrong With English Farming
The EU! No, hang on, Brexit. Wait a minute, is it the Tories? Or Labour? Supermarkets, surely? I know — tax dodgers!
Round up the usual suspects for a long read on the impossible dream of family farmers, thanks to two sociologists who have spent three years in the Fens in eastern England, trying to understand “how farmers really feel, and what they want from government policy”.
“[W]e found a more nuanced and complex story than is sometimes presented in media reports about the farmers’ protests.”
No surprise there. I was surprised to see one farmer express the problem absolutely perfectly.
The first crop of wheat I grew, I got £120 a tonne for it – when I was 18 and beer was 50p a pint. So I got 240 pints for every tonne going off the farm. Last year, I got £65 a tonne and beer has come up to £3. So now, I’m getting 20 pints a tonne.
Me, I just want to know where to find a £3 pint.
Cheers, and take care
