W. Devon Ave. Chicago - Food Wonderland! Annapurna Simply Vegetarian

   W. Devon Ave. in Chicago is a culinary wonderland - a vibrant area of Indian and Asian restaurants, grocery stores (and one supermarket), bakeries and various household and clothing stores. This one of the vegetarian restaurants on Devon St. from 2012 -

ubiquitous food additives

Salmonella prompts processed-food recall
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 5, 2010; A02
Thousands of types of processed foods -- including many varieties of soups, chips, frozen dinners, hot dogs and salad dressings -- may pose a health threat because they contain a flavor enhancer that could be contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.
Officials believe the public health risk is low, and no one is known to have fallen ill as a result of the contamination. But manufacturers voluntarily recalled 56 products Thursday, and that number is expected to balloon in the coming weeks into what could be one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.
"We don't know precisely how large this recall will get," said Jeff Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection at the FDA. "The potential amount of products . . . is very large."
Salmonella was detected early last month in one lot of the flavor enhancer -- hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP -- made by Basic Food Flavors, as well as inside the company's Nevada manufacturing facility, the FDA said. The company, one of only a handful that make HVP, has an extensive customer list. The additive, which comes as a powder or a paste and is mixed into foods to give them a meaty or savory flavor, is similar to monosodium glutamate, or MSG.
The contamination is believed to date to September 2009, meaning millions of pounds of potentially tainted HVP -- all of which the company has recalled -- was shipped in bulk to foodmakers over five months. Many of those companies then sold their products to other clients, complicating the chain and making it hard for federal officials to gauge the scope of the problem.
"This can potentially be in over 10,000 products," said Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.
The FDA has posted on its Web site a searchable list of products being recalled by manufacturers. It can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/HVPCP/.
Federal officials said the public health threat is low because most products containing HVP are cooked during processing or carry cooking instructions for consumers, so any salmonella would be destroyed before the food was eaten. Ready-to-eat products, such as chips and other snack foods, would carry greater risks.
In recent days, FDA officials have told foodmakers that their products do not need to be recalled if they can document that foods containing HVP were heated to appropriate temperatures.
Because of the number of products involved and the uncertainty of the risk, officials have been struggling to find the balance between protection and alarm.
"They're trying to come to some reasonable decision about how to protect the public health but not be so cautious as to be ridiculous and throw out tons and tons of product that may be fine," said Don Schaffner, a professor of microbiology professor and food-safety expert at Rutgers University, who has been advising several foodmakers that bought HVP from Basic Food Flavors.
FDA officials declined to say Thursday when they or state health officials last inspected the Nevada plant, or whether the company had a history of sanitation problems. The FDA was still attempting to determine what caused the contamination.
The company did not return calls seeking comment.
The salmonella bacterium is usually found in animal or human feces. Most healthy people infected with salmonella recover without treatment but experience fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Salmonella infections can cause serious problems and even death in the young, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.
The agency learned about the problem after a foodmaker found the bacterium in a shipment of HVP and reported it under a new law that requires companies to notify the federal government if they detect contamination in a product or ingredient. Before September, the food industry was not required to alert the government to contamination.
"The FDA identified this before any major outbreak [of illness], and I think that is very good news," FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said.
Joshua Sharfstein, deputy commissioner of the FDA, said the outbreak underlines the need for the Senate to pass a food-safety bill that has stalled since the House approved it last year. The bill would require companies such as Basic Food Flavors to take actions aimed at preventing contamination in the first place.
"We want to be able to set up preventive standards, so we don't have situations like this at all," Sharfstein said.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030403863.html

Tiffin Marketing In Brattleboro, Vermont

   This is in a store front in Brattleboro, Vermont - October, 2009.

Channa & Pumpkin Roti at Ritas / Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC

      This channa and pumpkin roti is from 2009 but Rita is keeping at it on Georgia Ave in 2014. I have been loving various veggie rotis at Ritas since the 1980s. Good stuff.

Flying Fish In Memphis - Road Food Worth Eating

  Five years ago (or so), driving into Memphis in the evening, I found this spot. In the downtown area, walking distance to Beale Street and the Memphis Redbirds baseball stadium. I avoid the catfish in general, nothing about this catfish, but there other items on the menu. I liked the cole slaw and okra basket.

Organics Going Mainstream

   In the early 1990s I heard a vice-president of Whole Foods speak at a conference where she asserted that we - organic consumers - were mainstream, not fringe. Twenty years later............

Walmart to Offer Organic Line of Food at Discount Prices

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS and STEPHANIE STROMAPRIL 10, 2014

Walmart plans to announce on Thursday that it is putting its muscle behind Wild Oats organic products, offering the label at prices that will undercut brand-name organic competitors by at least 25 percent.

The move by Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and grocer, is likely to send shock waves through the organic market, in which an increasing number of food companies and retailers are seeking a toehold.

“We’re removing the premium associated with organic groceries,” said Jack L. Sinclair, executive vice president of Walmart U.S.’s grocery division. The Wild Oats organic products will be priced the same as similar nonorganic brand-name goods.

For now, Walmart will carry the Wild Oats label, which is owned by the Yucaipa Companies, a private investment firm, only in its pantry section, with items like tomato paste, chicken broth and cinnamon applesauce cup. Over 90 percent of its offerings at Walmart will be organic, while the rest will adhere to company standards about ingredients and additives, a Wild Oats executive said, but not to any government regulations.

Instead of hitting the entire national market at once, Walmart will first introduce Wild Oats at 2,000 stores in the coming months, only half of its national footprint, and then roll it out to the rest of the country. Mr. Sinclair said that concerns about supply kept the retailer from introducing the brand in all its stores at once.

“What we don’t want to do is launch it in 4,000 stores and then not be able to supply those 4,000 stores in the short term,” he said. “Certain commodities are challenging in terms of being able to access both the raw material and the processing capacity.”

In an effort to manage and ensure the supply, Mr. Sinclair said, Walmart plans to enter into long-term agreements with suppliers — for five years, for example — so it can lock in what it will need to meet its enormous requirements.

Over at least the next few years, Walmart’s move is likely to raise prices for organic ingredients, which are already going up because of fast-growing consumer demand. Organic food accounted for $29 billion in United States sales in 2012, according to the most recent data, the Organic Trade Association said. Ten years earlier, its sales were $8 billion.

Eager to tap into that demand, Target, one of Walmart’s primary competitors, said on Tuesday that it would expand the presence of organic products in its stores. At Walmart, internal company research found that 91 percent of customers said they would buy “affordable” organic products if they were available, executives said.

While organically produced grains do not necessarily cost more to grow than other types, Lynn Clarkson, founder of the Clarkson Grain, which processes and sells organic and conventional wheat, soy, corn and other grains, said they commanded a huge premium because they were scarce.

“Right now, there is so much demand and competition for supplies that the price is very high, and I cannot imagine that changing anytime soon,” Mr. Clarkson said.

He estimated that farmers in the United States were producing about six million bushels of organic soybeans, for example, when some 20 million bushels are needed to meet current needs. Organic soy is selling for $25 to $30 a bushel, Mr. Clarkson said, or about twice the price of regular soy beans.

The amount of land devoted to organic farming has grown, according to the Agriculture Department, but not nearly enough to address growing consumer demand.

“Younger people are much more interested in the chemistry of their lives, and so for them the issue of pesticides is a troubling one,” Mr. Clarkson said.

Ultimately, however, Walmart’s move could increase the supply, and eventually bring prices down.

The online grocery retailer Fresh Direct has an extensive selection of organic products among its overall merchandise mix. A five-pound bag of conventional russet potatoes was selling for $3.99, while its organic counterpart was $5.99. A box of Driscoll’s organic strawberries is usually a dollar more than its conventional brethren.

“We offer both, but more often than not I try to push people into the organic because I think it’s better,” said David McInerney, a founder of Fresh Direct. “You can compress the margins on organic to make it more attractive.”

Mr. McInerney said he did that in hopes of building the scale of organic products. “Prices can and will come down with scale,” he said. “We’ve already seen that as demand for organic products has grown.”

He said an increasing number of farmers he dealt with were considering switching at least a portion of their conventional production to organic, attracted by the premiums.

But even if a farmer decided to turn to organic production today, various restrictions mean that it would be three years before any crop could receive the federally approved organic seal.

A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2014, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Walmart to Offer Organic Line of Food at Discount Prices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/business/walmart-to-offer-organic-line-of-food-at-cut-rate-prices.html?hp

Farm Bill Recognizes Organic Farming and Fruit & Vegetable Farmers

    Organic food and beverage sales represented approximately 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales in 2010. Leading were organic fruits and vegetables, now representing over 11 percent of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales.
Source: Organic Trade Association’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey 
http://www.ota.com/organic/mt/business.html



    At 11% of all US fruit and vegetable sales, organics can no longer be ignored.

Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator’s Persistent Tilling

By JENNIFER STEINHAUERMARCH 8, 2014

WASHINGTON — The farm bill signed by President Obama last month was at first glance the usual boon for soybean growers, catfish farmers and their ilk. But closer examination reveals that the nation’s agriculture policy is increasingly more whole grain than white bread.

Within the bill is a significant shift in the types of farmers who are now benefiting from taxpayer dollars, reflecting a decade of changing eating habits and cultural dispositions among American consumers. Organic farmers, fruit growers and hemp producers all did well in the new bill. An emphasis on locally grown, healthful foods appeals to a broad base of their constituents, members of both major parties said.

“There is nothing hotter than farm to table,” said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican from a district of vast cherry orchards.

While traditional commodities subsidies were cut by more than 30 percent to $23 billion over 10 years, funding for fruits and vegetables and organic programs increased by more than 50 percent over the same period, to about $3 billion.

Fruit and vegetable farmers, who have been largely shut out of the crop insurance programs that grain and other farmers have enjoyed for decades, now have far greater access. Other programs for those crops were increased by 55 percent from the 2008 bill, which expired last year, and block grants for their marketing programs grew exponentially.

In addition, money to help growers make the transition from conventional to organic farming rose to $57.5 million from $22 million. Money for oversight of the nation’s organic food program nearly doubled to $75 million over five years.

Programs that help food stamp recipients pay for fruits and vegetables — to get healthy food into neighborhoods that have few grocery stores and to get schools to grow their own food — all received large bumps in the bill.

The new attention and government money devoted to healthy foods stem from the growing market power of those segments of the food business, as well as profound shifts in nutrition policy and eating habits across the country.

“This is my fourth farm bill, and it’s the most unique I have ever been involved in,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat who negotiated, prodded, cajoled and finally shepherded the bill through Congress over two and a half years. “Past farm bills pit regions against regions. I said that we were going to support all of agriculture.”

The bill also eased a 75-year-old restriction on growing and researching industrial hemp, paving the way for several states to begin pilot growing programs for this variety of the cannabis plant, which can be refined into oil, wax, rope, cloth, pulp and other products.

At the same time, hunting programs were protected in the farm bill, which attracted the rare approbation of the National Rifle Association. The bill also ties conservation requirements to crop insurance benefits, which many environmental groups praised. “I think this is the new coalition,” Ms. Stabenow said.

While still in the shadows of traditional farming, organics are the fastest-growing sector of the food business. Support for that movement has traditionally come from Democrats in Congress, but the organic farming provisions in the bill had broad support from both parties.

“We kind of overperformed with younger new members of Congress on both sides of the aisle,” said Laura Batcha, the executive director of the Organic Trade Association.

Ms. Batcha pointed to a provision sought by her organization to exempt organic producers from having to pay assessments for certain marketing programs, which received broad backing from both Republicans and Democrats. The support surprised her, she said, but showed the popularity of organic products.

“I think we should let consumers make their own decisions about what kinds of foods they purchase,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin, who is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. “And if there’s a market for organic products, we should support it.”

Over all, healthy food has become more politically popular because of efforts to combat childhood obesity and diabetes and a growing national interest in the farm-to-table movement promoted by the first lady, Michelle Obama, and other national figures.

“The average member of Congress, whether they are urban or suburban, knows that is what their constituents want,” said Ferd Hoefner, the policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Even the most ag-centric member of the Agriculture Committee knows that is what helps sell the bill when it gets to the floor.”

For farmers of fruits and vegetables, oddly referred to in ag-speak as specialty crops, the ability to participate in crop insurance programs, which were expanded as direct payments to farmers were ended, is a major victory.

John King, a co-owner of King Orchards, which specializes in Montmorency cherries in Central Lake, Mich., was previously able to get insurance only for his apples. His cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots and raspberries went uncovered.

In 2012, the combination of a bitterly cold winter and a March heat wave resulted in Mr. King’s greatest losses in the farm’s 34-year history, wiping out all of his stone fruit and a third of his apple crop. “Crop insurance did not even cover half my labor bill for the year,” said Mr. King, who has already signed up for the maximum insurance for 2014.

“Over the years the big-program crops have been able to get what they want while for specialty crops it has been, ‘Tough luck as you freeze,’ ” Mr. King said. “Well, we grow the stuff people eat and want to eat, and we do need some financial cover from this increasingly precarious weather situation.”

On the farm bill, Ms. Stabenow was able to come to an agreement with her Republican counterparts in the Senate as well as the House, where the most conservative members sought large cuts to the food and nutrition program that makes up about 80 percent of the bill.

Ms. Stabenow had to fend off the most conservative House members, who at one point wanted drug testing for food stamp recipients. (Ms. Stabenow told them that she would agree only if every recipient of farm bill dollars was also tested.) But she also had to deal with some liberals who pushed back against any cuts to the food stamp program, including a provision that had allowed some states to inflate residents’ food assistance by counting the costs of utility bills that residents did not actually have.

“I appreciate passionate advocates,” Ms. Stabenow said. “But I believe it helps to be the first one to call out situations where there is not accountability.”

Ms. Stabenow was so persistent, her colleagues, supporters and Senate aides said, that some senators began to fear her approach as she moved purposefully between the Republican and Democratic cloakrooms just off the Senate floor. The clerks there would bet over drinks whether she could get her bill passed.

In general, the bill reflects the diverse agricultural landscape of Ms. Stabenow’s home state, which plays a leading role in movements like community gardens in schools and offers a program that gives food stamp recipients double credit for food and vegetable purchases — a model for the federal farm bill.

“I give her a lot of credit,” Mr. Hoefner said. “She made it clear from the get-go that these items needed to be in the bill.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator’s Persistent Tilling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/us/politics/farm-bill-reflects-shifting-american-menu-and-a-senators-persistent-tilling.html

Farm bill: Why don’t taxpayers subsidize the foods that are better for us?

By Tamar Haspel, Published: February 18

Read the farm bill, and a big problem jumps right out at you: Taxpayers heavily subsidize corn and soy, two crops that facilitate the meat and processed food we’re supposed to eat less of, and do almost nothing for the fruits and vegetables we’re supposed to eat more of. If there’s any obligation to spend the public’s money in a way that’s consistent with that same public’s health, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
The problem dates back to the bill’s inception in the 1930s, when farms raised livestock and grew a mix of crops, including staple crops (corn, wheat, oats, barley) and what the bill calls “specialty crops” but what the rest of us know as fruits and vegetables.
From the 1930s to 1980, subsidies alone weren’t substantial enough to significantly change the mix of crops on farms, according to Vincent Smith, professor of economics at Montana State University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “In 1980, we introduced crop insurance subsidies of substance that began to change the ways in which farmers manage risk, and to discourage diversification,” he says. And then we increased them until they became very substantial, and farmers, at least to some extent, farmed to the bill the way teachers teach to a test.
What’s important about how we subsidize farms isn’t necessarily the overall dollar amount — it comes to 5 percent to 10 percent of the market price of most of the subsidized crops — it’s that it takes some of the risk out of farming grains and oil seeds, but not fruits and vegetables.
Farming is inherently risky. Weather, insects and disease, over which you have limited control or none at all, can wipe you out. One of the ways farmers manage risk is to plant variety. Okay, powdery mildew got your strawberries, but the broccoli’s going gangbusters. For farmers, crops that are given guaranteed protection from both losses and price drops are lower-risk propositions.
Farmers, like the rest of us, have bills to pay and children to feed. (Full disclosure: My husband and I farm oysters and have benefited from the farm bill’s conservation program.) A guaranteed source of income is attractive. That’s one of the reasons that, of the 300-million-plus acres planted with food (other than grass, hay and forage for animals) in this country, half are corn and soy. Another 50 million are wheat. Only 14 million are devoted to fruits and vegetables, from peas (1.2 million acres) to mangosteens (1 acre, which I’d dearly love to visit).
The 2014 iteration of the farm bill, signed into law this month, changes the way farmers are subsidized, and if you’ve read one thing about it, it’s probably been that direct payments — annual checks based on production history — have been discontinued. But calling the two programs that replace them “crop insurance” isn’t quite accurate, says Smith, because there are no premiums and no policies. Farmers choose between Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and receive payments when price (for PLC) or revenue (for ARC) drops below a benchmark.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that PLC and ARC will cost about two-thirds of what direct payments cost, but the accuracy of that estimate depends on assumptions about the future price of commodities, something any commodity trader will tell you is notoriously hard to predict. Any analyst who could do it accurately would make his fortune in commodity futures, quit his analyst job and buy a lovely home somewhere sunny, where they grow less corn and more mango­steens.
PLC and ARC, together with a few other commodity programs, are slated to cost $44.4 billion over 10 years. Traditional crop insurance will continue, with government paying 65 percent of the premiums, and that’s another $89.8 billion, for a total of $134 billion for commodities over a decade.
And how does the bill help specialty crop growers? Robert Guenther, senior vice president of the United Fresh Produce Association, counts the ways. There’s help with research, provisions to include produce in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school lunches, export enhancements, grants and a few other things. Total expenditure: $4 billion over 10 years. There is almost no insurance, and there are no subsidies, but many fruit and vegetable growers wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’ve taken a different approach from the commodity growers,” says Guenther. He explains that specialty crop farming, because of its variety, doesn’t lend itself to the same kind of regulation. And he says many farmers prefer the flexibility that comes with independence to the conformity required by regulation, even if the regulation comes with cash. Asking the Agriculture Department to compare Washington apples with Florida oranges, and regulate appropriately, would be asking a lot. (There are also contractual agreements, outside the scope of the farm bill, that reduce risk for many specialty growers.)
It’s worth noting that, although producing more vegetables at lower prices looks good from a public health perspective, it’s not in the interest of the farmers already growing vegetables.  Specialty growers supported the rules that, until now, prevented commodity growers from devoting some acreage to fruits and vegetables; this year’s farm bill allows commodity farmers to use up to 15 percent of their acreage for specialty crops without losing benefits. Because growing interest in local produce gives them a market, some will undoubtedly do that, and one study, published last year in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, concluded that “the removal of the planting restriction may have a non-trivial impact on U.S. fruit and vegetable production.”
I asked Guenther what he thought about the competition. “As long as these growers are willing to play by the same rules that current producers play by, they’re welcome to join the club,” he replied.
The extent to which the farm bill has shaped agriculture is hard to quantify, and the degree to which changing it can reshape it is hard to predict. According to Patrick Westhoff, director of the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute, “If you subsidize something, you get more of it.” Neither Westhoff nor Vincent Smith, however, is convinced that if you stop subsidizing it, you get much less.  But a 1 percent decrease in the 160 million acres of corn and soy translates to an 11 percent increase in the 14 million acres of fruits and vegetables. (Whether that would translate to increased consumption is, of course, another question.)
There might be a way to promote production of fruits and vegetables while also protecting the interests of the farmers already growing those crops. Although specialty growers haven’t pushed for commodity-like plans, Guenther says they would like to see more focus on insurance. Smith points out that most of the risk to specialty crop growers comes from weather, and many private weather insurance products are available now that can cover a wide variety of crops. Many farmers don’t buy them because they’re not subsidized. If we were to change that, says Smith, “it would probably increase production, and there would be some price effect.” How much? “Anybody’s guess.”
Changes to the farm bill can have consequences both here and abroad, and we have to proceed cautiously. We can’t pull the rug out from under farmers whose choices have been influenced by the bill, and we have to consider the price and supply of the grains and oilseeds that feed the developing world. But we also need to move away from a system that requires taxpayers to spend billions underwriting a system detrimental to public health.

 
Haspel, a freelance writer, farms oysters on Cape Cod and blogs at www.starvingofftheland.com


http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/farm-bill-why-dont-taxpayers-subsidize-the-foods-that-are-better-for-us/2014/02/14/d7642a3c-9434-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Living Off The Land - Los Cantaros Taqueria, Emeryville, California

      As is often the case for me, a little more pork on the menu than I would like but what is a non-meat eater to do? When on the road living off the land, must be adaptable. Los Canteros Taqueria in Emeryville, California proved to be a gem of a find close to closing time at 9pm - not the latest but well beyond the lunch crowd. Veggie burrito, fish taco - the standard order and here I can have a beer too......