Deadly Cantaloupes

The breaking news this week was that at least 13 people in eights states died after eating cantaloupe contaminated with listeria, a bacteria that can be very dangerous to the elderly or those with weak immune systems.

The cantaloupes were grown by the Colorado company Jensen Farms, which recalled the cantaloupes earlier this month. As of Monday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that at least 72 people have fallen ill in 18 states since the outbreak began in late July.

Coincidentally, on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration lifted import restrictions on cantaloupes from a Guatemala farm that had been recalled in March after they were linked to a multistate salmonella outbreak. The decision was somewhat controversial, as safe food advocates have accused the importer, Del Monte Fresh Produce, of trying to bully the F.D.A by filing a lawsuit against the agency.

While I've written about E. coli within the meat industry, foodborne illness from fruit and vegetables is an even more troubling issue because it is in many cases directly impacted by factory feedlot practices.

In fact, as Gretchen Goetz reports in Food Safety News:

"Cantaloupe is particularly susceptible to contamination because it grows on the ground, where it can come into contact with bacteria from animal feces harbored in soil or rainwater runoff."

When contaminated manure from cattle raised in factory feedlots is used to grow fruit and vegetables, there is an increased risk of tainted produce such as lettuce and spinach.

Currently two senior Democrats on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling for a hearing on the Jensen Farms listeria outbreak, which is the deadliest foodborne illness epidemic in more than a decade. Still, food safety seems to be treated as a wedge issue for some reason, so I doubt much headway will be made in terms of thoroughly investigating the company.

The Top Five Vegan Cookbooks

An important tool for anybody considering veganism is an informative cookbook. Some vegans give up animal-based products only to become reliant on store-bought processed food, such as frozen veggie burgers. It is therefore vital that you invest in the necessary cookbooks in order to construct an informed, healthy diet. To that end, here are my top five vegan cookbooks:

1. Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

This book boasts over 150 animal-free recipes for everything from entrees to muffins and scones. Moskowitz also provides on overview of the kitchen tools and culinary staples that are necessary when transitioning to a meatless kitchen. While Vegan with a Vengeance offers a number of creative recipes, I particularly enjoy the mushroom and sun-dried tomato risotto and the sweet potato crepes with cilantro-tamarind sauce.

2. The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Patrick-Goudreau's book is especially helpful for the uninitiated (Moskowitz assumes that anyone picking up her book is already vegan). She talks in the book's forward about how she became a "compassionate cook" to provide resources, answers and empowerment to people who want to change to their diets but just don't have the tools to do so. The Joy of Vegan Baking certainly accomplishes that goal: Patrick-Goudreau provides an overview on stocking your vegan pantry, as well as general information about baking terms and tools. Her recommendations for nondairy milk, butter and cream are also very helpful. Pick up this book and you'll be making dairy-free lemon cheesecake in no time.

3. Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Moskowitz is fairly prolific in the world of vegan cookbooks, and with Vegan Brunch she tackles the sort of comfort food that vegans can't usually touch, such as french toast, bacon and omelets. Some of my favorite recipes include chocolate beer waffles, diner home fries and baked hash browns. Since the focus of the book is brunch, she also provides some tips on entertaining.

4. Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

This one is called Veganomicon for a reason - with over 250 recipes it's a doorstop of cookbook. It's also extremely informative (the book discusses the best ways to cook pretty much every vegetable you can think of). Still, it can be a bit overwhelming as an introductory text. Instead, this makes for a good cookbook when you're further along in your transition to veganism and you're looking to add more variety to your diet. The book's design is also more along the lines of a reference guide, as it lacks the artful photographs that might encourage the tentative chef to try something more exotic.

5. Vegweb.com

While this isn't a traditional cookbook, I've added it to the list because I've found this website to be very helpful for finding new recipes and coming up with cooking ideas. Since the website is made up of user-submitted content, some of the recipes are hit or miss. Still, each recipe has a rating, so you can always sort recipes by the most popular ones. The recipes also have a comments section, which gives you a good idea of how successful a recipe will be. Probably the greatest benefit of using this site over a traditional cookbook though, is the fact that you can access it on your phone through an App. So no longer will you be stuck in the middle of the grocery aisle trying to remember the name of an ingredient you have to buy.

There are plenty of other great vegan cookbooks out there. Veganpeace.com has a number of user-submitted reviews, and a simple search on Amazon brings up over a thousand vegan cookbooks. So peruse a couple titles and get cooking!

Raising a Vegan Child

Last week, Georgia's Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions and life prison sentences of an Atlanta vegan couple who were charged with allowing their baby to starve to death. ABC News reports:

"Six-week-old Crown Shakur weighed 3 1/2 pounds when he died in 2004 from extreme malnourishment or starvation. His parents, Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas, were convicted Monday of malice murder, felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children.

'No matter how many times they want to say, 'We're vegans, we're vegetarians,' that's not the issues in this case,' prosecutor Chuck Boring told the court. 'The child died because he was not fed. Period.'"

While this case seems to have more to do with child abuse than veganism, it highlights the importance of food education. A vegan diet can be complete and nutritious, as long as it contains enough protein, calcium and vitamins D and B12. Similarly, there's nothing unhealthy about eating meat, as long as you make sure your diet is diverse and not lacking in fruits and vegetables.

For most women, a vegan pregnancy would probably prove difficult, and raising a picky toddler on vegan food even more so. Instead, the focus should be on providing the most nutritious diet possible. And when 20 percent of children aged 6-11 years in the United States are obese that often doesn't seem to be the case.

Why Regulation Matters

With the economy imploding, one of the Republican party's favorite talking points is that excessive government regulation hurts jobs and household budgets. And when Republicans say "excessive," they cast a pretty wide net.

According to the GOP party, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is the root cause of our recession and continuing economic decline (the fact that the law was passed in response to the near global economic collapse of 2008 might as well be ancient history). And the Environmental Protection Agency has apparently been destroying America since its inception in 1970. As current Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry succinctly puts it:

Cemetery of jobs indeed. And Mr. Perry knows a thing or two about jobs: Since 2009, Texas has led the country in job creation (it also has the highest percentage of minimum wage workers in the U.S. and the eighth highest percentage of people living in poverty, but why split hairs?). Not to mention, Mr. Perry knows a thing or two about cemeteries:

But what does this have to do with food?

A topic that I've frequently returned to on this blog is the matter of U.S. food regulation. I've argued that such legislation is vital for consumer safety, as well as the protection of the environment. But what I have yet to mention is how important these regulations are for improving the labor conditions of people working in the food industry.

One of the most interesting segments of the film Food, Inc. documents the exploitation of illegal immigrants by meat processing factories. The filmmakers travel to North Carolina to investigate one of the largest pork slaughterhouses in the world, where undocumented workers toil away under unsafe working conditions.

Smithfield Foods - the company that runs the slaughterhouse - is able to bus these workers into its factory because it regularly tips off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the names of undocumented employees. In exchange, ICE agents stay away from the plant floor.

Practices like those at Smithfield aren't going to be solved by lessening regulation. But it's difficult to make headway on these issues in the political arena when the power disparity between migrant workers and companies like Smithfield is so great.

You might find it shocking that people could be treated this way, but 20 years ago Mr. Perry actually ran for the position of agricultural commissioner in Texas on a platform of abuse. In 1990, the Democratic incumbent, Jim Hightower, had come under fire for his efforts to regulate pesticides. In his campaign against Hightower, Mr. Perry argued for repealing a Hightower rule requiring farmers to get their workers out of the fields before they sprayed pesticide on them. Mr. Perry won that race.

I read about this frightening instance of politicking in an op-ed piece by Gail Collins from last Sunday's NY Times "Week in Review" section. While it struck me as absurd and dispiriting at the time, it didn't truly impact me until later in the week when I was interviewing an attorney as part of my job as a writer for a publication that profiles law firms.

The lawyer explained to me that one of the firm's highest-profile cases involved a baby boy who was born without arms or legs as a result of his mother having been repeatedly sprayed with pesticides while she was working in crop fields owned by the tomato grower Ag-mart Produce. And this apparently isn't an uncommon practice among tomato growers: See the case of Fish Farms.

It's reprehensible that Mr. Perry openly advocated to repeal regulation designed to prevent these abuses. Not all regulations are worthwhile, but arguing for a moratorium on regulations - which he has in the past - chips away at the government's social contract. And in the case of the pesticide rule, it shows a profound lack of common human decency.

Regulating the Meat Industry

On Monday The New York Times reported that the federal government will ban the sale of ground beef tainted with six toxic strains of E. coli bacteria. These relatively rare forms of E. coli will now be treated the same as the more common strain, called E. coli O157:H7.

During a Tuesday press conference, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that the government is banning these less common strains because they can be just as dangerous as O157:H7. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that E. coli strains other than O157:H7 cause nearly 113,000 illnesses each year.

Not surprisingly, the meat industry isn't pleased. The NY Times reports:

"But the American Meat Institute, an industry group, has argued that safety measures already in place are sufficient. On Monday, the group was highly critical of the extended ban.

'Imposing this new regulatory program on ground beef will cost tens of millions of federal and industry dollars -- costs that likely will be borne by taxpayers and consumers,' the group said in a statement. 'It is neither likely to yield a significant public health benefit nor is it good public policy.'"

Their argument basically boils down to it's not worth spending the money. That might gain some traction in this economy, but I doubt they can do anything about these regulations (when the U.S.D.A. banned the O157:H7 form from ground beef in 1994, the meat industry sued but ultimately lost in court).

It's good to see our government working to make our food supply safer, but it's still disturbing that these strains of E. coli have become so pervasive that bans are required. Maybe this new ban, which goes into effect in March, will prompt meat corporations to improve their practices; but given the patchwork nature of food safety regulation I doubt that will be the case.

Local Bites: Veggie Heaven

One of the drawbacks to being vegetarian is that most restaurants don't provide food options beyond what's listed under the salad section. Things get even more difficult for vegans: The croutons peppering a salad dish could very well contain whey (also known as milk plasma).

But every so often a vegetarian restaurant sets up shop -- and doesn't immediately go under. This has been the case with Veggie Heaven, a vegetarian Asian restaurant chain with branches in north New Jersey.

The restaurant -- which is located in Teaneck, Montclair and Denville -- offers ans eclectic menu full of healthy alternatives to traditional Chinese cuisine. From sesame chicken to California rolls, all of the restaurant's dishes are prepared using vegetables and vegetable derivatives. Instead of "meat," "poultry" and "seafood," you'll find yourself enjoying ingenious blends of bean curd, taro root, wheat gluten, mushrooms, yams and other vegetables.

Veggie Heaven also boasts that its chefs only use pure olive oil and other healthy, nutritional vegetable oils. Furthermore, the restaurant does not use MSG, artificial preservatives or flavorings, and all of its dishes contain zero cholesterol and saturated fat.

Still, nobody goes to a restaurant worrying about their saturated fat intake (if they did, McDonalds would go out of business). The good news is that Veggie Heaven's food is also delicious.

For appetizers, the scallion pancakes, which come with a creamy peanut sauce, are a must. And the boneless barbecue ribs might convert even the most obstinate of meat-eaters.

Main course options run the gamut from burgers and sandwiches to curries, sushi and stir-fries. But if you enjoy curries, Veggie Heaven does them particularly well: I would suggest ordering the Thai coconut green curry with chicken, beef and mango, which manages to find the perfect balance between heat and flavor.

All of Veggie Heaven's food is very affordable and tea is provided for free. Though some may be surprised to learn that a meal without any meat can cost $15, that's the most you'll pay for a dish. And no matter what you order you won't be disappointed.

Food Flicks: Food, Inc.

I first became interested in the ethical quandaries of the food business when a good friend of mine decided to become vegan. It wasn't until I saw the movie Food, Inc. though, that I decided to put my knowledge into action and change my diet.

This movie is informative and alarming, shattering preconceived notions about the practices that comprise farming in the 21st century. While people may not be surprised by images of industrial feedlots, or even the instances of animal abuse that the film documents, the human cost of big business feeding is often infuriating.

In an interview with a mother of two whose family is overweight, the woman notes how due to the economics of the food industry, fast food is simply the more affordable option. She says, "I feel guilty giving it to my kids," but can't see any way to provide a healthier alternative.

Director Robert Kenner also documents how difficult it is for farmers to advocate for better practices when the nation's food supply is controlled by a handful of corporations. He shows how secretive these companies are about revealing their practices: One farmer he interviews loses her contract with a giant food corporation after allowing reporters to document the abusive methods used to transfer chickens to their factories.

While the film only briefly touches on solutions (and there aren't many), its overall message that it's important for us to understand where our food comes from and how it's made makes it a must-see.

Hungry For Change

When I first decided to become a vegetarian, my mom couldn’t help but take it personally. Her family comes from British farming stock, and growing up I was raised on variations of the Sunday roast. So when I started cooking dishes like tofu and sweet potato jambalaya, she inevitably assumed I was making a statement about her cooking. But I wasn’t. I decided to give up meat when I began learning about how our food is produced.

In 1906 Upton Sinclair published The Jungle. His novel exposed the disgusting filth and contamination in American food. As a result, President Theodore Roosevelt demanded an official investigation, which led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.

Today, food poisoning still sickens 48 million people each year in the U.S., puts 128,000 into the hospital and kills 3,000. Fortunately, President Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) earlier this year. This law expands the reach and regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The FSMA is vital for improving the safety of food in our country. Previously, if a company produced contaminated food, the FDA would have to arrange a voluntary recall with that company. Now the FDA has the power to directly issue a food recall.

Still, what hasn't changed are the highly mechanized and often unregulated methods used in food production which have only helped to pad company profits at the expense of consumer health. In recent years, factory farming has created dangerous new strains of E.coli and contributed to widespread obesity and diabetes among adults.

Indeed, the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations is at the root of my dietary concerns. The industrial production of livestock consumes excessive amounts of energy, pollutes water supplies, generates substantial greenhouse gases and requires environmentally destructive amounts of corn, soy and other grains.

Ultimately, this dependency on assembly-line meat factories is unsustainable, and until changes are made I will continue to eliminate animal products from my diet. The purpose of this blog will then be to discuss developments on the fast food front, as well as to document my transition from vegetarianism to veganism.

Bon appétit.