USDA: Still Trying to Get It Right

The USDA's attempts to give nutritional guidance to Americans via an all-encompassing graphic image has a painful past. With the latest rendition, released a few weeks ago, they have gotten closer: simple, attractive, almost accurate.

This is the original "food pyramid" issued in 1992:

A backward step was taken in 2005 -- an image that communicated nothing but confusion:

The upgrade released a few weeks ago is the best yet:

But notice a couple of things about the image above:

1. The inclusion of "protein" as a food group. Protein is not a food; it's a nutrient that is found in the other three foods (mostly in grains, then veggies, very little in fruit). In other words, it you eat lots of a variety of veggies and grains (and legumes -- see below), you'll get all the protein you need. There is no need to put it as a fourth food group on the plate. Guess why they did? An obvious favor to the hugely influential farmed-meat industry. At least they didn't use the word "meat," but they didn't need to include the protein quadrant at all. If anything, they could have devoted it to "nuts, seeds, and legumes" which are protein dense foods. But the USDA wouldn't dare risk offending the meat lobby by not giving it its own place on the plate.

2. Same for "dairy" in the small glass or bowl to the side -- an obvious encouragement to consume milk and dairy products daily -- the throwing of another bone, this time to the "Got Milk?" folks that own Washington. How silly and unnatural for a human to gather his nutritional inputs from the plant kingdom that grows abundantly around him, then suddenly say, "Wait -- let's go over and drive that calf away from its mother and squeeze the cow's mammary fluid into a glass to wash down our vegetables, fruits, and grains." Who thinks of this?

Removing the protein quadrant and the milk/dairy glass, and adding "nuts, seeds, and legumes" to the fourth quadrant would have made this a truly healthy nutritional graphic.

3. But here's the real irony. Compare the plate image above -- the amount of room taken up on the plate by veggies and fruit -- with the graph below that shows federal food production subsidies.

Notice any inconsistencies? On the food plate, veggies and fruits take up half the plate. But in reality, LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of federal food subsidies go to farmers who grow fruits and veggies. Look where the VAST MAJORITY of food subsidies go: to the meat and dairy industry. The USDA is saying, "Do what we say, not what we do." If they really believe that half of the American diet should come from fruits and veggies, it would make sense for them to use taxpayer dollars to promote the production of those foods on a percentage basis.

Finally, here's the best nutritional recommendation graphic of all, produced a couple of years ago by the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. Do you think the USDA borrowed any ideas from PCRM's food plate? You'll notice on PCRM's plate there is (correctly) no "protein" food group. Instead, there is a "legume" quadrant (basically, beans, lentils, etc) which are super high in protein. This is as it should be -- not mixing "foods" with "nutrients" as the USDA plate does. (Thanks to PCRM for the unauthorized use of their image.)

All in all, the most recent USDA plate is a step in the right direction. Thanks to PCRM for setting the standard in simplicity and accuracy so the folks at USDA would have something to go by.

Blackstrap Molasses

Though blackstrap molasses is a highly processed food, it retains a high mineral and nutrient content. One tablespoon supposedly provides 20 percent of the RDA of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron, along with a healthy shot of vitamin B6. Blackstrap is what remains after the third boiling of the raw sugar from sugar cane. It retains (somehow) far more nutrients than refined white sugar which is mostly empty calories. (But blackstrap is far less sweet than refined sugar.)

As well as being good for humans (I eat a Tbsp daily in my oatmeal), blackstrap is used as a food for microorganisms in the production of compost tea. A few years ago when I had a large garden and was making lots of compost tea I bought a five-gallon bucket of blackstrap. I needed more (both for consumption and for tea), as did my son who makes lots of compost tea for his garden, so we went together and bought another five-gallon bucket. We did the numbers and discovered we paid less than a third the price of blackstrap sold by the pint or quart bottle in grocery stores. The molasses is unsulphured, produced by the Amish in Pennsylvania, and purchased from The Grain Mill of Wake Forest here in NC.

We split the five gallons, so I had 2.5 gallons to store. I vacuum-sealed 1.5 gallons in three half-gallon Ball canning jars using my FoodSaver vacuum sealer: (Since blackstrap is a liquid, you could fill the jar to very top, thus eliminating almost all the air. Oxygen is the great destroyer of food -- it's why vegetables have skins -- to keep the cells from oxidizing by coming in contact with air. One of the main ways I'm using vacuum sealing is for preserving the enzymatic activity in fresh-juiced vegetable juices, stored in 8-oz. Ball jars, for 2-3 days at a time after juicing. So I'm beginning to learn how to vacuum seal food in an experimental sort of way.)

I'll store these jars in the back of the refrigerator just to keep them cool: (You can see in the first two jars how the vacuum in the top half-inch of the jars is pulling TINY air bubbles out of the molasses toward the vacuum. I may try unsealing these in a few days and re-sealing them in an attempt to pull out even more oxygen. A little OCD there, but experimenting is part of learning.)

And I used an empty maple syrup container to store enough on the pantry shelf for daily use:

And the small remainder stayed in the food-safe five-gallon container to be used for compost tea this summer.

Dimming of the Day

I've been watching and listening to a lot of David Gilmour lately—the driving force of the 'Eighties version of Pink Floyd. I've been watching two concerts: David Gilmour in Concert which has songs from two different concerts (Meltdown Concert - 2001, and the Royal Festival Hall Concert - 2002) and Remember that Night—Live at the Royal Albert Hall - 2006. I missed Gilmour in the 'Seventies and 'Eighties, but am enjoying this exposure to him in his senior years. He seems to be a total gearhead (musical perfectionist), obsessed with experimenting with sound and instruments. Many of the songs he wrote or co-wrote and all of them are beautifully produced on the concert stage.

For years I've maintained a short list of the most creative musician/writers/performers in the "rock" genre. Admittedly, my knowledge and experience are relatively shallow (and everyone has their own favorites) but I'm adding Gilmour to the list: Michael Omartian, Sting, Paul Simon, Dave Matthews, and now—David Gilmour. (James Taylor is a possibility, but not yet.) This isn't a list of "my favorite bands," but a list of people who seem to stand head and shoulders above the crowd when it comes to musical genius and creativity.

The following song is from the David Gilmour in Concert DVD and is one of the few he didn't write. It must be one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, and Gilmour's production with the chorus of singers is gorgeous. (Rock trivia fans will recognize ageless English rocker Sam Brown, daughter of Beatles'-era Joe Brown, among the female backup singers -- fourth from the left. She and her father were both featured on the iconic Concert for George DVD, Sam bringing down the Royal Albert Hall with George Harrison's "Horse to the Water.") "Dimming of the Day" was written by Richard Thompson and has been covered by numerous artists, but I think David Gilmour's version is as good as any:

Thoughts for the Day 11.0

June 13

Faster no step moves God because the fool

Shouts to the universe God there is none;

The blindest man will not preach out the sun,

Though on his darkness he should found a school.

It may be, when he finds he is not dead,

Though world and body, sight and sound are fled,

Some eyes may open in his foolish head.

June 15

Who sets himself not sternly to be good,

Is but a fool, who judgment of true things

Has none, however oft the claim renewed.

And he who thinks, in his great plentitude,

To right himself, and set his spirit free

Without the might of higher communings,

Is foolish also—save he willed himself to be!

(George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul,

readings for June 13, 15)

Thought for the Day 10.0

"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

(The late David Foster Wallace in a commencement address delivered at Kenyon College, 2005. Cited in Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, p. 85)

"Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text"

WASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text.

Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words.

"Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words."

(The Onion, March 9, 2010. Cited in Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, p. 56)

David Jeremiah

Here's a brief, recent video clip of David Jeremiah recorded at Dallas Seminary talking about ministry. I've been writing and editing for Dr. Jeremiah's ministry, Turning Point, for more than a decade and am grateful for his focus on keeping Scripture at the heart of what he does: (the speaker at the end is Dr. Mark Bailey, president of Dallas Seminary)

New List of Safest/Most Dangerous Foods Re: Pesticides

The Environmental Working Group has updated its ranking of food safety based on pesticide residue found on the food. See the full article here and more info here. Notice that in the "Dirty Dozen" list all the foods are consumed in their entirety—skin as well as flesh. Generally speaking, the "soft-skin" or consumable-skin foods are the most dangerous to eat if grown commercially. It kills me when I see folks loading up on strawberries at a commercial (non-organic) U-Pick farm. Children standing in a strawberry patch with red juice running down their chins makes a cute picture, but the invisible poisons they're ingesting make it less appealing. "Out of sight, out of mind" is never more true than when dealing with pesticide residue on food.