Sheryl Kirby

Food, Life and the World at Large

Category : savvy shopper

Yogurt – Still Full of Lies

May 18th 2011 - Posted in Food, food trends, health and nutrition, in the news, people are silly, savvy shopper, wtf?
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Am I beating a dead horse if I link to yet another article pointing out that health claims on packaged food are (intentionally) misleading?

This NY Times article doesn’t really reveal anything new if you’ve been following the whole story over the past few years, but it speaks to the stretches of truth advertisers will make and the overall gullibility of consumers when you consider that people are still buying these products.

It just feels like a battle food advocates can never win. Between advertisers and media willing to repeat any study that touts a “superfood”, or an ingredient with nutritional properties, the people standing up and saying, “hey now, wait a minute, do more research” are the ones made to look like kooks.

But how sad is it that we’re willing to buy yogurt, or juice or cereal because of false promises of restored health? I’m angry that people don’t take more time to inform themselves about what they’re buying and putting into their bodies, but I’m also a little shocked at the desperation of people willing to try anything that offers any kind of promise of improvement, be it weight loss, digestive health or, scariest of all, cancer prevention.

I don’t agree with everything said by author Michael Pollan, but “don’t buy food with health claims on the package” has to be one of the wisest things I’ve ever read.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Girl Guide Cookies

April 4th 2011 - Posted in cookies, ethics, Food, in the news, products, savvy shopper
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It’s Girl Guide cookie season. But before you get too excited, stop and ask yourself if you know what’s in those tasty biscuits? We look at the sustainability of everything else we eat, why not foods made/sold for charity?

It turns out that the cookies made for the Girl Scouts in the US are loaded with palm oil. In the news a great deal lately, palm oil has a scurrilous reputation. While it is the cheapest food oil on earth, it requires deforesting huge swaths of South Asian rain forest (and destroying the habitat of sensitive species like the Orangutan) to get the stuff.

Girl Guide cookies (the Canadian equivalent, with only the vanilla/chocolate combo in the spring and the chocolate mint cookies in the fall – not the plethora of flavours to be had down South) are just as bad. Made by Dare for Girls Guides Canada, they have made changes in recent years to decrease the transfats in the vanilla/chocolate cookies (there’s still some in the mint ones), but palm oil (because it is cheap and contains no trans fats) is still the main oil ingredient.

The saddest part is that members of  Girl Scouts/Guides in both countries have tried to get their respective organizations to change the recipe and omit the palm oil.

Carolyn Thomas of the blog The Ethical Nag suggests not purchasing the cookies. Instead, she tells her readers to give the girls the money, but refuse to take the cookies, making it clear why. And if you’ve got time, an email to Girl Guides of Canada wouldn’t hurt either. As an organization that promotes learning about, respecting and being part of nature (specifically to “protect our common environment”), it seems a bit shameful that they’re not more concerned about this issue. And as an organization that depends on donations (and cookie sales), letting them know that consumers expect them to source their product ethically is a lesson that would seem to be at the heart of the organization’s mission to teach girls to contribute responsibly to their communities.

Know Your Farmers, Trust Your Chefs

September 28th 2010 - Posted in eating locally, ethics, Food, in the news, savvy shopper
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It’s easy to target locavores for their sometimes elitist and naive world view when it comes to what and how people should eat. (And for the record, I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that they should get their heads out of their asses when it comes to preaching at people who can’t afford to make food a priority…) But it appears that there’s a whole new way to take advantage of the gullible foodies who think they’re saving the world by “knowing where their food comes from”.

CHOW has an article this week about vendors who show up at farmers’ markets claiming to be farmers but who aren’t. Journalists from NBC Los Angeles bought produce from an LA-area farmers’ market and then made a point of visiting the farms the food came from. Except that some of those farms didn’t actually exist.

This is exactly the kind of thing that the Toronto area MyMarkets attempts to weed out, requiring that all vendors be certified and that vendors sell only the food that they themselves have grown. This unfortunately rules out co-operatives like the Kawartha Ecological Growers (KEG), but does a good job of culling the people who would head to the food terminal and load up on imports and sell them as their own. CHOW’s got a list of things to look for to ensure that you’re dealing directly with the farmer and not some scoundrel reseller.

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The Savvy Shopper – Not Milk

January 23rd 2010 - Posted in beverages, Food, health and nutrition, in the news, politics, safety and sanitation, savvy shopper, what's in your food?
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Southern Ontario’s food community was shocked earlier this week when news came down that dairy farmer Michael Schmidt was acquitted of all 19 charges against him with regards to the production and sale of raw milk. Because of laws created in the early 20th century, it is illegal to sell or give away raw milk in Canada. Milk pasteurization laws were created to protect the health of citizens consuming a product that, left untreated, could contain e.coli, salmonella and other deadly organisms.

It is still illegal to sell or give away raw milk, although it is not illegal to consume the stuff – Schmidt won because the case was really about the constitutionality of his business model, which is to sell shares in a cow (and their output) to private individuals. As “owners” of the cow, they can legally consume the milk from it. Schmidt’s fight was also against Ontario’s quota system, used in the dairy and poultry industries, which strongly favour large-scale farmers. The Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) run the quota system, which can cost farmers as much as $20,000 per cow, and all milk in the system is pooled and pasteurized, and sold through the DFO. Small scale farmers like Schmidt generally cannot afford to pay quota to the DFO, and besides the issues of right to choose and health and safety of the product, Schmidt likely makes more money selling shares of his product than he would by being involved in the DFO’s corporate system.

As would be expected, the DFO is not happy about Schmidt’s recent win, claiming that his system puts public health at risk.

One of Schmidt’s points in his defence (he represented himself in court) was that consumers should have freedom of choice. Food activists will continue to press this point as they begin to put pressure on the government to make raw milk publicly accessible and more widely available for sale. Personally, I think this is a bad idea. While I believe in the right to choose the food you eat, we need to remember that raw milk is a special product that requires considerable care both in how it is created and how it is stored by the consumer.

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Probiotics Revisited

October 3rd 2009 - Posted in allergies, Food, health and nutrition, milk and dairy, politics, products, savvy shopper, what's in your food?, wtf?
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It’s been a couple of years since I posted my rant about probiotic claims on yogurt containers. Recently, Dannon/Danone settled out of court rather than face a lawsuit that would make the research they based their product on public. In Europe, the Food and Safety Association has rejected health claims on packaging outright.

One science food writer believes that companies will rally and come up with better research and better strains of probiotics, becuase they actually do a lot of good. Marion Nestle would like to see the US take on a similar approach that the EU has and ban health claims on products completely – her point: foods are not drugs and we shouldn’t be treating them as such.

One other thing that I don’t see addressed by anyone…

Dannon is working hard to get an approved health claim from the European Standards Agency which annoyingly wants to see some science behind health claims before approving them. Dannon has now added a tomato extract to its yogurts with the idea that this substance, which appears to help deal with diarrhea, will strengthen its bid for a health claim.

Tomatoes are an allergy trigger for a lot of people. Just as adding fish oil to bread so it can be enriched with Omega 3 could trigger allergic reactions in people sensitive to fish, might we begin to see reactions to products with tomato extract added? This all seems a desperate attempt to confuse and mislead consumers into believing that they can buy a tub of yogurt instead of visiting a doctor or taking real medicine.

And of course, as even Dannon’s research made clear, the probiotics don’t work as well as the company is claiming they do. Add to that all the sugar and flavourings most people need to make yogurt palatable, and you might as well be eating candy. Plain, unadulterated yogurt contains natural probiotics that can (maybe) be beneficial to your health. Don’t be fooled by the hype and the pretty package.

The Savvy Shopper – The Real Meaning of Local

July 22nd 2009 - Posted in field to table, Food, savvy shopper
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When someone refers to a pub as their “local”, no doubt we all imagine the same thing; a place where the atmosphere is homey, where the staff greet them by name, and where they probably know at least one other person in the room. Imagine the set from Cheers and that would be just about right.

We call these establishments our Local because it’s probably within walking distance from home – geographically it’s nearby.

When it comes to food, however, local is about more than geography. We are comfortable in our local pub because we’ve formed relationships – with the staff and owners, and with the other patrons, who are more than likely our neighbours. But even when we make an effort to buy local food, to support local producers, we don’t often get that same connection.

It’s hard – farmers are out in their fields, bakers manning their ovens, fishers on their boats. Building relationships with the people who make our food isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. And I say that as someone who works in the industry and gets to spend time a lot more time with local food producers than the average consumer.

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The Savvy Shopper – Made With Whole Grains

July 17th 2009 - Posted in flour and grains, Food, savvy shopper
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We all know that we should be eating more whole grains. Fibre is critical to a healthy digestive system and whole grain carbs like whole wheat, brown rice, quinoa or oatmeal help to slow digestion and provide longer-lasting energy.

It would seem that processed food manufacturers are excited to be helping us out – so many products now tout labels that say “Made with Whole Grain”. Isn’t it wonderful that we can eat a handful of cookies and be getting our daily recommended amount of fibre at the same time?

Not so fast. Just because there are some whole grains in the cereal, bread or cookies you’re buying doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good for you. Check the nutritional labels of your purchases. Ingredients on processed foods are listed by quantity, so we’re looking to see that the first ingredients include the term “whole grain”. In the case of a cereal, we want to see “whole grain oats” or “whole grain wheat”, and we want those ingredients to be the first ones on the list, not down with the preservatives we can’t pronounce. Unscrupulous manufacturers may continue to make their products with refined white flour and toss in a small percentage of whole wheat flour as well. Technically that product is “made with whole grain”, but it’s not 100% whole grain.

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The Savvy Shopper – 1000 Tastes of Canada

July 7th 2009 - Posted in Food, products, savvy shopper
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Back in November I attended an event hosted by Loblaw/President’s Choice to promote the launch of their Holiday Insider’s Report and the associated products. Shortly after that I wrote a post about the whole premise of the Insider’s Report, how it was modelled after a similar publication by a US company called Trader Joe’s, and how, as in the case of the original publication, most of the stories were not true.

In my blog post, I pointed out that the Insider’s Report contained many stories about how President’s Choice food developers travelled the world in search of new food items, but how they didn’t really need to, because most of their new products could already be found in the shops and restaurants of the many neighbourhoods of Toronto. I also noted that if President’s Choice was really sourcing their recipes from some Toronto (or Canadian) restaurant, bakery or chocolatier, wouldn’t it be a better marketing tool (not to mention a generally nice thing to do) to give props to the real inspirations behind those dishes instead of pretending they came from some little town in Italy or Mexico.

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