Gulf seafood is safe and for sale, but some fishmongers are pushing more risky foreign shrimp, crab and oysters.

Fifty-two days of oil gushing from the jagged remnants of the British Petroleum well, while devastating, has contaminated less than a third of the Gulf of Mexico fishery.

Nevertheless, there is growing fear among those catching, processing and selling the Gulf’s shell and fin fish that the nation’s fishmongers and restaurant suppliers may soon go to foreign waters for their seafood because they don’t understand that their products are both available and safe.

Gulf Blue Crabs waiting for pot. Photo (c) a. schneider

I’ve spent about three weeks talking to people who supply and ultimately cook those coveted saltwater delicacies from the docks of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

I found was that hundreds of samples of market-ready Gulf seafood have been and continue to be tested by about every government agency you can name. The testing uses both the highest-tech laboratory equipment and the carefully trained noses of human inspectors.

The conclusion so far is that the seafood being sold is free of contamination by oil and the little-understood chemical concoctions that make up the millions of gallons of dispersants dumped on the Gulf.

This rush to import from overseas, and replace what is still a steady source of safe Gulf seafood, could ravage a supply chain built over decades. But of greater public health concerns to many experts is that those who rush to foreign suppliers may not know (or may chose to ignore) the litany of FDA warnings over the years. Those warnings address harmful adulterants found in fish and crab, farmed shrimp and oysters from China and several other Asian countries.

The contaminants — some of which the FDA listed as carcinogenic – included a number of antimicrobial agents, disinfectants and drugs to combat diseases and parasites that often flourish in heavily overcrowded fish and shellfish pens.

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A critic on food stamps has a lot to tell us

If you only read one food-related story today, this would be a good one to pick. It appears in Pacific Northwest, the Sunday magazine of The Seattle Times. The writer is Ed Murrieta, a former food critic whose income vaporized, sending him to the food-stamp line with millions of other Americans.

He writes:

“When I was the restaurant critic at the Tacoma News Tribune, from 2004 to 2008, I enjoyed a $1,300 monthly expense account, on top of the middle-class salary that financed a house overlooking Puget Sound. I gave that up to start my own business, and when my entrepreneurial dream fizzled along with the economy, my food budget — my total income — plunged to $200 a month.

As I search for work without success (I’ve applied for restaurant-critic jobs at alt weeklies in Seattle, San Francisco, Denver; communications jobs with state and city agencies; and jobs as butcher, baker, line cook and carpet cleaner) I find neither shame nor deprivation in food stamps.”

Check out this excellent story, here.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

The 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards go to…

If you were at Woodstock (or could have been if your parents weren’t such Fascists), you’re old enough to remember when high school yearbooks used to routinely award the “Most Likely to Succeed” title to the biggest pothead in the senior class. Wink wink.

The Xtreme Eating Awards of 2010 are sort of like that. Folks at The Center for the Science in the Public Interest know that railing about junk food doesn’t change anything, but humor might. So they sent out their best (undoubtedly thin) investigators to discover which restaurants in this country are the worst, most “Xtreme” offenders in the calorie war. (more…)

LudoBites: The hot-hot-hot LA eatery that roams

How often have you said of a restaurant: “Love the food, but the atmosphere stinks!”

Well, celebrity chef Ludo Lefebvre has solved that problem with his pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles.  It’s simple, really. He’s the master of the wandering chew…he’s a restaurant chef without a restaurant.

The Los Angeles Times profile by Betty Hallock is the biggest rave I can remember reading about a pate de foie gras slinger:  To wit:

“Reservations at his pop-up restaurant LudoBites — several-week stints of Lefebvre cooking at various locations, including a bakery and an art gallery — sell out overnight. And if he’s serving fried chicken from a food truck, the line of customers/fanatics will be an hour (or two) long…”

“There is, of course, Lefebvre’s French-accented charm, his telegenic looks, his bent for cutting-edge cuisine… And don’t forget — there is also his attorney wife, Krissy Lefebvre. If he’s the creative talent, she’s the organizational and marketing force behind him. He’s concocting foie gras powder while she’s scheduling his next photo shoot.”

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Harmful levels of Bisphenol A found in almost all canned foods, new study reports.

The health hazards of bisphenol A are clearly proven, but scientists now report that the levels of the chemical – used to protect canned food from corrosion and bacteria –  are surprisingly high in the  canned goods found on our kitchen shelves.

To reach this conclusion, 50 different cans of food were collected from pantries in 19 states and Ontario and were analyzed at a top food safety lab in San Francisco. BPA was found in 92 percent of the samples according to a 24-page study called “No Silver Lining,” which was released today by the National Workgroup for Safe Markets.

The highest  level of BPA was 1,140 parts per billion – believed  to be the highest ever found in the U.S. It was detected in Del Monte French Style Green Beans from a pantry in Wisconsin, the report said.

Other high scorers included Wal-Mart’s Great Value Green Peas from a store in Kentucky, and Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup from a pantry in Montana, said researchers from the coalition of more than 17 public and environmental health organizations .

“Our study details potential exposure to BPA from not just one can, but from meals prepared with canned food and drink that an ordinary person might consume over the course of a day,” Mike Schade, a co-author of the study told AOL News.

The unopened cans of fruits, vegetables, beans, soups, tomato products, sodas, and milk were sent to Anresco Laboratories. In order to determine the concentrations of BPA in the food within the can, only the food, not the packaging, was tested. (more…)

Fruit and Vegetables: They have their own month

We’re in a panic around here. It’s almost June.

You know, National Fruit and Vegetable Month.

That’s right, the month-long holiday is looming and I’m in danger of being caught with a fridge full of diet soda and a fruit bowl full of car keys and old rubber bands.

Photo by Yosarian, courtesy of Wikimedia

Fortunately, wiser (and healthier) heads can prevail. Just this morning The Food Watchdog got a press release citing an article titled, “ROYGBIV: The Color of Health” by natural chef and nutritionist Patty James, co-author of the book, More Vegetables Please!

And, no, that article title is not misspelled. “ROYGBIV” is indeed intended.

It’s meant to be a little reminder about the need to eat fruit and veggies of different colors. Or, to spell it out:

Red

Orange and Yellow

Green

Blue and Indigo and Violet

White

Each of these groups has particular value. Take Reds, for example. As James writes, red peppers, potatoes and their similarly hued relatives have lycopene, which:

“Helps rid the body of damaging free radicals, protects against prostate cancer, as well as heart and lung disease. The red foods are loaded with antioxidants thought to protect against heart disease by preventing blood clots and may also delay the aging of cells in the body.”

James knows that a little memory trick goes a long way to keeping people with the program. Yet I can’t help but feel that she may be a bit too optimistic about my grasp of this approach.

If I could remember ROYGBIV, I could also remember the 97 passwords associated with my computer and internet use. I’d never stand in front of the ATM in a frozen panic. I would sort out the destinations of Interstate 205-South and Interstate 205-North, once and for all.

This is not to say that we don’t need rules. We do. They just need to be a little easier to remember. For example:

1 – If the food item can sit on its own without packaging and has a peel, seeds, stem or stalk, eat it.

2 – Make the food items take turns. If Green went at lunchtime, then Yellow gets a turn at dinner.

There, done.

Have a great month. Don’t forget to hang that eggplant out on the flagpole on June 1.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

(Better yet, see what the expert says: www.PattyJames.com)

Must be the artist’s Blue Period

It’s not easy to take a photograph of a crab that’s artsy, but an artist with the Flickr name of Tattooed JJ has managed.  It’s used as the illustration for a rejoicing story on the food blog SlashFood that is headlined “Blue Crabs Are Back in Chesapeake.”

A slice of history

Imagine my good luck while searching for prices on a new toaster. Instead I found Toaster.org, better known as The Cyber Toaster Museum. This non-profit organization is all about preserving and promoting toaster history.

So, naturally I needed to learn more about the site’s creator, which led me to founder Eric Norcross, who started the valuable archive in a former life as proprietor of a Seattle cafe/gallery. He’s moved on, but fortunately for all of us, his curatorial triumph lives on in both real and cyber space

Yes, that’s the really good news: Norcross’s collection of 500-plus actual toasters is now among the exhibits of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

Photo courtesy of Toaster.org

What I like best about Toaster.org’s approach is the experts’ obvious willingness to admit that toaster history is a fluid thing, subject to interpretation and rethinking:

Q. Who invented the toaster?

A. … There is evidence now that either an inventor at the Pacific Electric Heating Co. (later Hotpoint), someone at the Simplex Electric Co., or Hoskins Manufacturing came up with the first American electric toaster, but there is no known patent coverage so we don’t know the date or the person. And, we’ve heard rumors that there is an 1893 English toaster that was the very first electric, but we haven’t tracked down any info yet…

The toast historian adds:

“Of course, there was toast before electricity. The ancient Egyptians are credited with first making bread as we know it today (leavened, with natural yeast), and probably made the first toast by placing bread near fire.”

I’ve whiled away a good part of the morning learning ways to determine the value and vintage of my toaster, as well as care for it properly. I’m seeing it through new eyes now. I’m keeping it.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett