Is that chicken, just chicken?

Because of some health issues (fibromyalgia for one), I’ve recently been working on my diet. I’m trying to eat more “natural” foods, as close to ‘off the farm’ as possible. It’s made me check food labels even more carefully. Sometimes the ingredients are kind of what I figured, and other times what I read on labels comes as a complete surprise.

Case in point… chicken. I was looking at labels on packages of frozen chicken breasts, figuring it’d say chicken. Period.

WRONG!

I discovered the chicken is injected with broth. I looked at lesser known brands first, then I checked out Tyson. Didn’t matter. Both were injected with up to 15% broth/salt water. And getting fresh chicken instead of frozen doesn’t help. It’s injected with the broth solution also.

When I looked on the web to see if I could find out exactly what is in the broth, I never did get an exact list of ingredients, but I did find out a whole lot of other stuff.

It seems Tyson says their company injects broth in chicken because “customers like it.” It supposedly makes the chicken more tender.

But here’s the thing. Tyson sells chicken to Walmart. Walmart wanted packages of chicken to be even weights, like their 3-pound bags of frozen chicken breasts. Well, guess what? Chickens don’t all produce the exact same weight breasts, so either the chicken company has to put in extra chicken to ensure there is at least 3 pounds, and lose money because there’s some “free” chicken in there… or they inject a lesser amount of chicken with broth until it weighs an even 3 pounds.

Okay, if they want to inject the chicken with broth, and it’s labeled they have, that’s their choice. The problem is the USDA allows them to label this broth-injected chicken as “100% all natural chicken.” What???

Some chicken companies quit selling to Walmart when it insisted on even weight packages because they wished to keep their “natural” label and couldn’t afford to lose money by putting extra chicken in the package. Naturally, they’re upset that the USDA now allows the natural label to be put on broth-injected chicken.

These companies lose out because a) they lost their market with Walmart, and b) now they lose the uniqueness of their labeled chicken, because other companies can use the label even though their product is not chicken, just chicken.

The consumer loses out on this deal because a) they are paying the same price for the broth in the chicken as they pay for the chicken itself, b) there is an increased amount of sodium in the chicken which most if not all consumers positively do NOT need, and c) where do you find just chicken, plain chicken????

What a rip-off!

Do You Know Who Grows Your Food?

I’ve wondered who’s going to grow food if the farms are all turned into subdivisions. I’ve thought about Sustainable Agriculture, and trying to maintain a positive balance with the ecology.

I’m more and more convinced that the more food you can buy locally, the better off you are.

Why bother? What does it matter where your food comes from? Well, have you listened to the news lately? How many food items have been recalled in the last year?

The USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service has about 38 items listed on their recalls for this year alone, and the year’s not over. The FDA also has several food items on their recall list, along with pet foods and pharmaceuticals. The food recalls are made for reasons varying from mislabeling and undeclared allergens, to some serious pathogens like e. coli, listeria, and Staphylococcus aureus.

When growing food becomes big business, and food is coming from world-wide sources, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain quality control, to know where exactly the food came from, how it was handled from start to finish, and what exactly is in it, not to mention the impact on the planet from whatever production methods were used, such as high pesticide use.

Buying locally doesn’t guarantee good food, but it does give you an idea where your food came from and a person to question about how the food was grown.

That is not to say buying local is the only answer. There are some big farms out there growing quality food, trying to lessen their impact on the environment, and building a trustworthy reputation with their customers. We need more of these!

An example is the Robinson Farm on Prince Edward Island. They have a fascinating blog about the potatoes they grow. I was especially intrigued with the “Smart Spud,” a sort of genius electronic Mr. Potato Head. It’s put through the process with the other potatoes, and the data from the Smart Spud tells them where the potatoes are getting banged up and bruised. Cool, huh?

I’m sure most people would have trouble right now buying all their food from known and trusted sources alone. Hopefully such products will become more widely available as the market for quality food grows with more and more people becoming concerned about what they consume. We need farmers, big and small, who are willing to balance their need for profit with a stewardship of the land, and growing food that nourishes, not sickens, people.

It’s just good to know if your food came from a source you can trust.