You're better off knowing the truth. Trust me.

 

Real Food/Fake Food: 

Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It

 

by Larry Olmsted

 I was sailing through, all trusting, and suddenly he said Omega-3 fatty acids were "good" and Omega-6 "bad."  Bad?  how can an essential fatty acid be "bad"?  The badness comes from the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 in the Western diet -- we eat way too much Omega-6 by way of our seed oils--all that corn oil, soybean, sunflower, peanut oil--they have ratios like 8:1, 12:1 or 16:1. No one 'knows' what the perfect ratio should be, but the ratio in fish, grass-finished meat, pastured dairy, nuts and olive oils seems to be much better for us.

But skip that one misstatement, and read the rest of this book at your peril. You'll never order Kobe beef outside of Japan. You'll probably never order fish in a restaurant and you'll be highly suspicious of grocery story supplies.  You'll learn that America produces excellent wines and cheeses, but you'll know to look for names like "Midnight Moon" and "Constant Bliss" instead of ones stolen from places far away.  When a producer is proud of his product, he'll want to coin a unique name and not rip-off the copyrighted names of products like Parmesan-Reggiano or Gruyere'.

He spends a lot of time on wine, cheese, and beef, which were merely academically interesting to me.  I can't afford decent wine and I avoid cheese and beef, but I did come away with a strong desire to try--just once--a slab of real Parmesan-Reggiano cheese, from Italy--the only place it can legally be produced.  But he includes sections on many of the other commonly counterfeited foods, like coffee, tea, honey, fish, Balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.  Basically, anything that people will pay a lot of money for is sure to be faked, adulterated, or swapped with inferior versions. And no, the USDA and FDA are not looking out for us.  Should we expect them to?

The easiest way to eliminate drug trafficking would be to legalize domestic production and place heavy tariffs on imports. Soon, just like we can buy Kona coffee at the grocery store, we'll be able to buy "Copper Canyon marijuana" that was actually grown in Texas and consists of 10% actual marijuana and 90% corn and soybean by-products.  And we'll buy it because it's cheap and has a gorgeous label.

The Saturday after finishing this book I took a look at the label on my honey jar. It says: Glory Bee,  family owned since 1975.  It's 100% Pure (meaningless), USDA Organic (impossible--were the bees raised in cages?), non-GMO verified (probably not and again, impossible for honey), U.S. Grade A (meaningless and unregulated label), distributed by GloryBee inc. in Eugene Oregon, and, by the way--

Product of Brazil.

If I were a chemist, I'd analyze it and probably find it is 50% high fructose corn syrup and 50% honey from flowers common in China.  The jars of honey at the farmer's market have none of these fancy certifications, but of course, they only traveled about 30 miles to get here.  The Glory Bee traveled at least 8300 miles to get from Brazil to Oregon to here.  It takes a lot of labeling to travel so far.

All that said, this is not a depressing book. Remember--the title is Real Food / Fake Food, and there's a lot of Real Food described inside.  And best of all, he includes help on how to find it.  And why it's worth the trouble.



Be forewarned: occasionally


mouthwatering.