TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction
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Dont Believe Labels
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Food Promotes Culture
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The many forms of Coconuts
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Chicken is Foul
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Good Food is Expensive
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Cooking is Easy
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Corporations Run the Industry
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Processed
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Try Something New
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Cooking is an Artform
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Conclusion
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Sources
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INTRODUCTION Over the past six years, my summers have been spent on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. However being a local, this didn’t mean a “relaxing vacation, but instead three months of earning as much income as possible. After taking a culinary course in high-school, the thought of working in the culinary world sounded extremely appealing, and so the summer after marked the beginning of my adventure with food. The first job I was able to find was a restaurant supply store, which was a four minute walk from my house. I stocked shelves, and learned about the supply end of the industry; how cheaply restaurants are able to get their supplies. However working 40 hours a week wasn’t the ideal thing for a 14 year old in the summer, so naturally I quit after the first month. The next three years were spent working at a local general store preparing all their pre-made meals. Most of my week was spent making bulk amounts of food, with the most popular being chicken salad. On average, the store would go through 80 pounds of chicken salad in 2 days, rendering my ability to consume any chicken products completely useless. The company also provided catering services for weddings and large events. Cooking for 350 people at a time was a new and stressful experience, but I
quickly learned that in the end the money made up for it. I was then offered a job working under my older brother, who had worked himself up to being the head chef at one of the islands highest rated fine dining restaurants. It was this year where my love for the culinary world grew exponentially. I learned more than I thought was possible, and barely noticed as the 60 hour weeks went by. My final year as a chef on Martha’s Vineyard consisted of working a relaxing job at a local chocolate company and cafe. It specialized in being gluten free and vegan, and this is where I learned more about “healthy” food that I ever thought possible. Most my days were spent baking their chocolate chip cookies, and wondering why so many people would pay 15 dollars on a smoothie. In this book I share with you 10 insights I have gathered from my times working in the food industry; a sort of culinary journal that illustrates these six years. Some touch on serious topics, while others are more whimsical and interesting.
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DON’T BELIEVE LABELS Nationwide, retailers from Wal-Mart to Whole Foods are increasingly devoting more shelf space to “locally grown” products including such things as fresh produce and Thanksgiving turkeys. Whole Foods, for one, now spends almost 22% of its produce budget on locally grown products, up from 15% four years ago, it says. The “locally grown” label is part of retailers’ push to tap into consumer desires for fresh and safe products that support small, local farmers and help the environment because they’re not trucked so far. At least one consumer survey has showed that whether something is locally grown is now more important than whether it is organic (which many local products are not). But retailers may have far broader definitions of “local” than consumers do. And while freshness is more likely if food isn’t trucked so far, food-safety experts say there’s no evidence that locally grown products are safer, especially because small producers often lack the food-safety audits more common among big producers. Most food-borne illnesses don’t get noticed because not enough people get sick to alert officials that an outbreak is underway. Undetected outbreaks are more likely with local products delivered in small quantities and sold in a small area, says Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. South Carolina’s Titan Farms, one of Wal-Mart’s local growers, with 3,750 acres, links its website to a 13-page food-safety Primus audit that covers such things as whether there’s evidence of insects on produce and whether Titan has enough bathrooms for workers.
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FOOD PROMOTES CULTURE Working in the bakery provided me with an abundance of knowledge on eating cultires. A raw vegan diet consists of unprocessed, raw plant foods that have not been heated above 40 °C (104 °F). Raw vegans such as Dr. Brian Clement, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, Thierry Browers a.k.a. “Superlight”, and Douglas Graham believe that foods cooked above this temperature have lost much of their nutritional value and are less healthful or even harmful to the body. Advocates argue that raw or living foods have natural enzymes, which are critical in building proteins and rebuilding the body, and that heating these foods destroys the natural enzymes and can leave toxins behind. However, critics point out that enzymes, as with other proteins consumed in the diet, are denatured and eventually lysed by the digestive process, rendering them non-functional. Typical foods included in raw food diets are fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouted grains and legumes.
Among raw vegans there are some subgroups such as juicearians, or sproutarians. Fruitarians eat primarily or exclusively fruits, berries, seeds, and nuts. Juicearians process their raw plant foods into juice. Sproutarians adhere to a diet consisting mainly of sprouted seeds. Vegetarianism is a diet that excludes meat (including game and by products like gelatin), fish (including shellfish and other sea animals) and poultry, but allows dairy and/or eggs. Common foods include fruit, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, dairy, eggs and honey. There are several variants of this diet.amounts of raw animal foods such as meats/organ-meats, seafood, eggs, and some raw plant-foods, but usually avoiding non-Paleo foods such as raw dairy, grains, and legumes
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THE MANY FORMS OF COCONUTS One of my summers was spent working at a local chocolate company, where my main duty was to oversee the production of chocolate chip cookies. Coconut flour is made from ground coconut meat and has the highest fiber content of any flour, having a very low concentration of digestible carbohydrates makes an excellent choice for those looking to restrict their carbohydrate. Coconut water contains sugar, dietary fiber, proteins, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, and provides an isotonic electrolyte balance. It is consumed as a refreshing drink
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throughout the humid tropics, and is gaining popularity as a sports drink. Mature fruits have significantly less liquid than young, immature coconuts, barring spoilage. Coconut water can be fermented to produce coconut vinegar. Coconut milk, not to be confused with coconut water, is obtained primarily by extracting juice by pressing the grated coconut’s white kernel or by passing hot water or milk through grated coconut, which extracts the oil and aromatic compounds. It has a fat content around 17%. When refrigerated and left to set, coconut
cream will rise to the top and separate from the milk. The milk can be used to produce virgin coconut oil by controlled heating and removal of the oil fraction. Another byproduct of the coconut is coconut oil. It is commonly used in cooking, especially for frying. It can be used in liquid form as would other vegetable oils, or in solid form as would butter or lard.
known as toddy or tuba (Philippines), tuak (Indonesia and Malaysia) or karewe (fresh and not fermented, collected twice a day, for breakfast and dinner) in Kiribati. When left to ferment on its own, it becomes palm wine. Palm wine is distilled to produce arrack. In the Philippines, this alcoholic drink is called lambanog or “coconut vodka.�
The sap derived from incising the flower clusters of the coconut is drunk as neera, also
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CHICKEN IS FOUL More than 9 billion chickens, along with half a billion turkeys, are slaughtered for food in the United States each year. This number represents more than 95 percent of the land animals killed for food in the country. Worldwide, more than 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered annually. Many people believe that chicken, especially the breast of the chicken, is healthier to eat than “red meat.” Chicken consumption has consequently risen dramatically over the last few decades as more and more people make the switch. The birds raised for meat, called “broilers” by the industry, are the product of genetic manipulation that has drastically increased breast and thigh tissue (the most popular parts of the animal) and produced a very rapid growth rate that outstrips the development of their legs and organs. Broilers raised in this way are supposed to reach “slaughter weight” at just six or seven weeks of age, but the death toll
is very high. The growth of abnormally heavy bodies causes crippling and painful skeletal deformities, and the overburdening of the birds’ underdeveloped cardiopulmonary systems often causes congestive heart failure before they are six weeks old. Some broiler chickens who do not succumb to these problems still die of thirst, because they are physically unable to even reach the water nozzles in their sheds. Other common causes of death pre-slaughter are heat prostration, cancer in an animal less than seven weeks old, and infectious diseases. Broiler-chicken facilities tend to be extremely overcrowded, with tens of thousands of birds crammed into a single closed broiler house. Each chicken is given less than a square foot of space, so hardly any floor is actually visible. The birds are unable to roam, to scratch, or, indeed, to avoid each other at all.
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GOOD FOOD IS EXPENSIVE
COOKING IS EASY
Healthy eating really does cost more. That’s what University of Washington researchers found when they compared the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area. Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices also are less likely to rise as a result of inflation. The findings, reported in the current issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, may help explain why the highest rates of obesity are seen among people in lower-income groups.
There’s a strong sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from cooking your own meals; from taking ingredients and combining them to create eye-catching and mouth-watering dishes that can please you and your family and friends. The only problem: For many of us,
The scientists took an unusual approach, essentially comparing the price of a calorie in a junk food to one consumed in a healthier meal. Although fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients, they also contain relatively few calories. Foods with high energy density, meaning they pack the most calories per gram, included candy, pastries, baked goods and snacks.The survey found that higher-calorie, energy-dense foods are the better bargain for cash-strapped shoppers. Energy-dense munchies cost on average $1.76 per 1,000 calories, compared with $18.16 per 1,000 calories for low-energy but nutritious foods. The survey showed that low-calorie foods were more likely to increase in price, surging 19.5 percent over the two-year study period. High-calorie foods remained a relative bargain, dropping in price by 1.8 percent. Although people don’t knowingly shop for calories, the data show that it’s easier for low-income people to sustain themselves on junk food rather than fruits and vegetables, says the study’s lead author Adam Drewnowski, director of the center for public health nutrition at the University of Washington.
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cooking looks so complex and frustrating that it doesn’t seem worth our time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, all it takes to build confidence in the kitchen is a firm grasp of the basic concepts, methods, and techniques used every day by chefs. While cookbooks are pretty to look at and cooking shows are certainly entertaining, neither of them truly teaches the lost art of cooking; neither of them truly demonstrates the fundamentals and stepby-step strategies that go into creating a wide range of dishes. With just a bit of education, you can master how to cook and forget about being anxious in the kitchen. Of course, it’s rare to find a truly gifted chef who can actually show you how to cook; who can engage your mind to think about food in new ways. Even though cuisine changes constantly and tastes come and go, there’s a stable foundation on which all cooking rests. It is this foundation that Chef Briwa shows you how to build. Working with high-quality ingredients and knowing what those ingredients can and cannot doUnderstanding basic cooking techniques and knowing when to use them. Tapping into, and appreciating, the intriguing interaction between taste and flavor
CORPORATIONS RUN THE INDUSTRY There’s nothing they are leaving untouched: the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, the cauliflower. Once they have established the norm: that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it; it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world. The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”. One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then
he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy. Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto’s long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.
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PROCESSED Americans typically eat only one-third of the recommended daily intake (three servings instead of nine) of fruits and vegetables, so if you’re in a bind, a vegetable in any form is better than no vegetable at all. And as winter approaches, fresh produce is limited, or expensive, in much of the country, which forces many of us to turn to canned or frozen options. While canned vegetables tend to lose a lot of nutrients during the preservation process (notable exceptions include tomatoes and pumpkin), frozen vegetables may be even more healthful than some of the fresh produce sold in supermarkets, says Gene Lester, Ph.D., a plant physiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Center in Weslaco, Texas. Why? Fruits and vegetables chosen for freezing tend to be processed at their peak ripeness, a time when, as a general rule, they are most nutrient-packed.
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While the first step of freezing vegetables; blanching them in hot water or steam to kill bacteria and arrest the action of food-degrading enzymes, causes some water-soluble nutrients like vitamin C and the B vitamins to break down or leach out, the subsequent flash-freeze locks the vegetables in a relatively nutrient rich state. On the other hand, fruits and vegetables destined to be shipped to the fresh-produce aisles around the country typically are picked before they are ripe, which gives them less time to develop a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. Signs of ripening may still occur, but these vegetables will never have the same nutritive value as if they had been allowed to ripen on the vine. In addition, during the haul from farm to fork, fresh fruits and vegetables are exposed to heat and light, which degrade some nutrients; delicate vitamins like C and the B vitamin thiamin.
TRY SOMETHING NEW One things that my brother has always been forcing me to do, was to adventure with my taste pallat. He would always get me to eat new things, and would even insist on paying me if I was stubborn enough. Because of him, I’m proud to say ive eaten foods such as brain and conch penis, and I plan on continuing this adventure.
days, until the fish’s flesh turns to jelly. Since lye is a poisonous and toxic substance, the process does not stop there: At this point, the lye-saturated fish could kill the one who eats it. In order to make it edible, the lutefisk is soaked in daily changed water for about a week, until most of the lye is gone. Lutefisk is often mocked for its strong, nearly unbearable smell.
Century eggs; or millennium eggs, thousandyear-old eggs or pidan, whatever you call them, are quail, duck or chicken eggs preserved in a mixture of ashes, clay and salt for several months. In the process, the egg’s white turns to a jelly-like brown mixture, while the yolk turns into a green-ish or gray-ish cream. Century eggs emit a powerful smell of sulfur and ammonia, and their taste is strong and complex.
Escamoles are the eggs of the giant black Liometopum ant, which makes its home in the root systems of maguey and agave plants. Collecting the eggs is a uniquely unpleasant job, since the ants are highly venomous and have some kind of blood grudge against human orifices. The eggs have the consistency of cottage cheese. Escamoles have a surprisingly pleasant taste: buttery and slightly nutty.
The Viking dish par excellence, lutefisk is made from dried white fish, usually cod or ling. The dried fish is placed in water for several days, then in a lye-saturated solution for two more
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COOKING IS AN ARTFORM When working in a fine dining establishment, the presentation of food becomes almost as important as the taste and ingredients. As a garde manger at a high end restaurant, this meant most of my time was making sure the plates of food I put out were not only delicious, but also beautiful to look at. Perfect is mandatory when people pay upwards of 20 dollars for a plate of food. Food presentation is the art of modifying, processing, arranging, or decorating food to enhance its aesthetic appeal.The visual presentation of foods is often considered by chefs at many different stages of food preparation, from the manner of tying or sewing meats, to the type of cut used in chopping and slicing meats or vegetables, to the style of mold used in a poured dish. The food itself may be decorated as in elaborately iced cakes, topped with ornamental sometimes sculptural consumables, drizzled with sauces, sprinkled with seeds,
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powders, or other toppings, or it may be accompanied by edible or inedible garnishes. The arrangement and overall styling of food upon bringing it to the plate is termed plating.Some common styles of plating include a ‘classic’ arrangement of the main item in the front of the plate with vegetables or starches in the back, a ‘stacked’ arrangement of the various items, or the main item leaning or ‘shingled’ upon a vegetable bed or side item. Item location on the plate is often referenced as for the face of a clock, with six o’clock the position closest to the diner. A garde manger (French for “keeper of the food”) is a cool, well-ventilated area where cold dishes (such as salads, hors d’œuvres, appetizers, canapés, pâtés and terrines) are prepared and other foods are stored under refrigeration. The person in charge of this area is known as the chef garde manger.
CONCLUSION Cooking has become more than just a source of income for me. The skills I’ve learned over the past six years, as well as the skills I will continue to learn will stick with me for the rest of my life. Learning what happens behind the scenes in the food industry can be an amazing, shocking, and disgusting thing. However the more you learn, the better you are able to control your nutrition. Cooking is a skill that is easy, and often overthought. With just a small amount of basic information, anyone would be able to cook delicious and healthy meals for themselves and others.
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SOURCES “Advocacy for Animals.” Advocacy for Animals FactoryFarmed Chickens Their Difficult Lives and Deaths Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/05/the-difficultlives-and-deaths-of-factory-farmed-chickens/ “Education.” ‘Locally Grown’ N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. http://consumer.westchestergov.com/important-information/weightsand-measures/food-and-nutrition-labels “The Everyday Gourmet: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Cooking.” The Everyday Gourmet: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Cooking. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=9231 “Food and Nutrition Labels.” Westchester County. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/fresh_vs_frozen_vegetables_are_we_giving_up_nutrition_fo “A High Price for Healthy Food.” Well A High Price for Healthy Food Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-healthyfood/?_r=0 “Q. Fresh vs. Frozen Vegetables: Are We Giving up Nutrition for Convenience?” Fresh vs. Frozen Vegetables: Are We Giving up Nutrition for Convenience? N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-10-27-localgrown-farms-produce_N.htm “Top 10 Weird Foods From Around the World.” Endless Simmer RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. http://www.endlesssimmer.com/2013/02/15/top-10-weird-foods-fromaround-the-world/ “USDA ERS - Report Summary.” USDA ERS - Report Summary. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-report/ err97/report-summary.aspx#.UoRgLPmsiSY “USDA ERS.” USDA ERS. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/livestock-meat-domestic-data. aspx#26084
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