Opinions, Facts, and Assholes Like Me.

I'll try to make this brief, or at least, brief for me.  I've gotten into a lot of heated exchanges with people over the last month about food science and food issues.  I expect it, especially since the public has been indoctrinated to not trust a) corporations or b) anything mass produced.


That's fine to be skeptical, and as a matter of fact, it's most scientific to be skeptical.  There has to be a point, however, when you are presented with facts or given the technical reality that negates your point of view, that you cede to reason.

All too often people retreat and hide behind this mantra, 'Well, that's my opinion'.  Well, sometimes your opinion ceases to be an opinion and simply becomes dogma, a point of faith.  I hate onions.  Beer tastes like moldy iced tea and urine.  Black chicks that are into rock music and girls with foreign accents are always hotter.  These are opinions I hold. 

The sky is blue.  Organic food is more nutritious than conventional.  Cold brew tea bags diffuse no faster than regular tea bags in cold water.  These are not opinions, because these can be proven true or false.

I was tweeting with someone and they put Food Science in snarky quotes, as if to say it isn't really science.  I think that may be part of the problem.  People don't trust the source of the information.  To clear this up real quick let me just say a couple things about food science.

There is no giant building called Food Science where everybody in the food industry meets and decides how to fool the public and fake research.  Food Science is made up of industry professionals from researchers to executives and of academic professors and grad students.  There are no corporate g-men looking over a master's student while she/he works on their thesis study.  Large food companies have hundreds of researchers, technicians, and scientists that all did the work of learning about food science to get their degree before working for industry.  It's not some conspiracy, designed to deceive you.  Treat what a food science professional tells you with no less respect than a geologist telling you about rocks or an astrophysicist telling you about space.

And when we present the evidence and the facts and the studies, accept that you may no longer have an opinion, and that you may have just become wrong.  We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

Follow me on Twitter @samvance and search for me on Facebook.

Jamie Oliver's Food [D]evolution.

The title of this very short blog is clickable, so...you know...click it to see what I'm talking about.


I watched a piece that ABC's Nightline program did about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  It was obviously about his show, but they did that thing where they just put the set and his show in the background without mentioning it as a sort of subliminal advert for the other ABC show.  They show a clip where Oliver is in some lady's kitchen and has conjured up all the things she says she feeds her family during the week and piles all these things on a smallish kitchen table.

She was shamed by this(of course) to the point of tears and he then tells her that this food was endangering her family and shedding years off of their life.  Nightline later shows a clip of lunch ladies being interrogated over food ingredients.  Oliver again asks a shaming question of whether they know all the ingredients in the food item he was looking at.  They didn't.

He was pointing out the 'chemicals' in the foods and was made that these chemicals were being fed to school children.  It's 'chemicals' and deadly additives to Oliver and food activists like him, but to a food scientist, it all makes perfect sense.  In some cases, the ingredients are very familiar(vinegar, baking powder, vitamin c) but regulations require the food companies to use the scientific names so you see things like ascorbic acid, boric acid, and acidic acid(not sure why I listed all acids).  In other cases, the additive serves an important function in relation to shelf life, flavor, color, or it may even be a trace ingredient in another ingredient.  For instance, you may see anti-caking agents mixed in with some flour/salt so they flow in the hopper at the plant. 

Anything currently proven to be a danger is not in use.  Anything GRAS (generally recognized as safe) is at the very least, only used in quantities that have no ill affects.  For instance, an additive may be toxic once an ounce per pound of bodyweight is ingested, but the formulation might never have more than a hundreth of an ounce per serving, meaning that you would need to ingest 100 servings per pound of bodyweight.  So if you weighed 100 pounds, you would need to ingest 1000 servings.

A major problem that food hysterics like Oliver have is that while educated in cooking, they are uneducated about food.  Their ignorance of food science and things like how toxicity levels are determined give them a zero tolerance view on additives without scientific support for it.  The science they do mention always fails to account for the volume of a particular additive it would take to make someone sick.

He makes a remarkable statement that underscores this theme of willful ignorance.  I'm paraphrasing, but he says that if you don't understand something in the ingredient list, don't buy that food.

Let's apply this logic to other things in life, shall we?

Unless you've built computers from scratch and know all the components - don't buy a computer.  If you don't understand the mechanics of the internal combustion engine and other major systems of a car - don't buy one.  You can apply this leap in logic to bug spray, medicine, medical devices, video games, the shoes on your feet, or the paint on your walls.

The lady from the beginning of the story was interviewed and said that thanks to Jaimie's intervening, she has lost 40 lbs.  For her and her kids, she cut out chips, snacks, and pop.  The problem is that she was told those things made her fat, and not that it was the excess calories.  Sure if you stop eating 10% of the foods you normally eat, it stands to reason that you'll lose 10% of the weight.

The problems:

No real education about food and nutrition, just misinformation and scaremongering.  It's awesome that Jamie Oliver teaches people how to use ingredients and plan out and make a meal.  This can save people money and they can lose weight if they reduce their caloric intake.  Also, Nightline offered no interviews with food scientists or food science academics to counter what he said.  Once again, America gets half the story.

Hooter's Culture of Critical Safety Violations.

A while back, I wrote a piece that graded Hooter's(they got a C) and provided many suggestions on improvements that need to be made.  A couple weeks back, I had reached a saturation point with Hooter's culture of food safety - or lack there of.  I contacted the person running their twitter acct, who then gave me an email address to officially respond to.  I was happy that my complaints would be taken seriously, and hopeful that I would be part of their process of addressing these issues and ultimately changing them.

I received no response.

I then contacted the Cincinnati Inquirer who gave me an email of a reporter who might take a look into the issue - she didn't.  The Inquirer did suggest that I take the issue up with a local news station, which I haven't done.  I didn't want this to be about me getting on tv.  Before I go any further, let me share the letter I emailed to what I understood to be Hooter's Corporate.

"Dear sir or madame;

   I am Sam Vance.  You know me from Twitter.com as @samvance.  I mean to email you in order to make you aware of issues that may heavily impact your operations, but first, let me give you a background on myself.

   I am a Fall 2007 graduate of The Ohio State University with a degree in Food Business Management.  My studies included deep immersion into food science, food safety, and operations management for the food industry.  I also have several years of management experience in restaurant management with KFC as well as seven years of total work experience at that chain.  I know food safety from both an industrial and a restaurant level and I know chicken.  Of course I'm not bragging, but rather, laying a foundation so that you don't disregard this email as ill-informed or hysterical.  I have long been a fan of Hooters, and let me say that what I tell you or suggest to you in this email should not be construed as me stating my hatred for the chain.  Quite the contrary, I see great opportunities in improving key issues that I have observed in not just the Newport, KY location, but across several states.

   I went to the Newport location last evening to take advantage of the All You Can Eat promotion and sat at the bar since I was dining alone.  What I observed in the next hour or so astounded me.

I witnessed numerous instances of cross contamination, including:

*Employees grabbing flour covered baskets, then immediately grabbing bowls to sauce wings as well as grabbing the wings themselves.
*I saw an employee put a dirty bowl on top of a bowl of cooked and unsauced wings in order to carry them both to another table.
*I saw sauced chicken falling off the bowl of cooked product on to the uncleaned prep table, only to be picked up and set on the plate and served.
*Employees who had just removed their vinyl gloves(after touching raw product, as they should) but then carrying the bowl used to toss the wings with their bare hands(with their thumb inside of the sauce covered bowl).  This bowl was used for the rest of the night without being cleaned.

*I personally witnessed the manager, Chris, handle prepared foods with his bare hands. His hands were flour covered.  He also picked up a stray tater-tot from the prep table and put it on a customers plate.  He then wipes his floured hands on the front of his jeans before scooping cheese sauce for a server.  He had flour going up his arm to the elbow and the flour by his elbow remained the entire time I was there.  During this time he was constantly reaching into and over things.

  I will say that the two black guys working in the back did an excellent job swapping out gloves in between going from raw to cooked, but all kitchen employees(manager included) treated the gloves as an alternative to hand washing.  In most cases, they wore the gloves too long, didn't wash hands before changing gloves, and did a poor job in the few instances that hands were washed(like still having flour on the arm an hour later).  I'll also say that I have never seen a manager wear a hat when going back to help in the kitchen.  Why?  The cooks obviously cover their heads and so should the manager.

  This all seems very harsh, but let me say that this is a system wide issue.  I have seen issues similar to this and a couple worse in Hooter's in Burlington VT, Columbus OH, other Cincinnati area locations, and in Florida.  My reaction would be to assume that either this is common practice, or this is unavoidable due to the procedures in place.  Either way, your chain plays Russian Roulette with the public's safety on a daily basis and it is miraculous that you have avoided major lawsuits.  This could be due to the fact that people get food borne illness many more times a year than what is reported and since this is a bar, the patrons may be blaming some of it on the alcohol.  Of course, the other explanation is much more sad - they don't complain because that is the kind of thing they expect from Hooters.

   Let me also say that the bartender who served me last night(Chrissy/Christy?) was very nice and even sensed that something was wrong.  In fact, she notified Chris, who personally came over to ask if everything was alright.  I didn't bring any of this up because in a crowded restaurant, I'm sure Chris would have only become defensive and suspected that I was trying to cause a scene.  He even sensed that I was holding something back when he asked, 'Are you sure?'

   This issue goes beyond one location, however, and several changes do need to take place in order to reduce your system's liability.  I have many ideas that will streamline some of your processes as well as guard against food safety issues.  If you like, I can discuss these over the phone or in person.  Again, I am not trying to harm this restaurant chain.  I am a fan of the food and want to help Hooters operate in a way which doesn't put the consumer's safety at risk.

Thank you for your time and consideration in both reading and responding to this email,
Sam Vance.

614.905.xxxx Feel free to call."

I redacted the last 4 digits of my cell phone  numbers and corrected the word 'excellent', which I misspelled.  Other than that, this was the email I sent and the issues are very real.

For those unaware, cross contamination is anytime cooked product comes into contact with uncooked product.  For example:

Raw chicken is breaded in <---> flour.

Flour is on employees <---> hands(gloves optional here).

Uncleaned  hand touches <---> fry basket and is lowered into the fryer.

Product done & another employee lifts fry basket with <---> flour on the handle.

Product dumped into metal bowl <---> bowl carried by hand that touched flour(with thumb hooking inside of the bowl).

Product taken out of that bowl by hand and placed into yet <---> another bowl.

Bowl gripped on the side with thumb on the inside of the saucing bowl <---> and sauce is added and tossed with the wings.

Wing dumped onto a plate which are served <---> to you.

It may seem inconsequential, but you have now ingested whatever salmolnella was in that chicken before cooking due to cross contamination.  Although the wings are heated to a high enough temperature to kill bacteria and the sauce probably has a low enough amount of free water to prevent bacterial growth, the mixture of chicken grease, sauce residue(same bowls used all night), and freshly inoculated thumb do create an environment where harmful microorganisms can not only survive, but thrive.  The surface of the wing is not hot enough for long enough to kill the bacteria it encounters after cooking.

A week after this incident, which occurred the last Wednesday in February, I ventured out to the Florence Hooter's to see if things were any better.

They were not.

The added insult to injury was the inattentive service I got, partly due to it being during a shift change and partly due to the bartender chatting with the regulars.  The kitchen was left understaffed for the shift change.  I'm not sure if people were late, or there was only one 1st shifter in the kitchen, but there was only one person for a while.  The number one enemy of food safety is time.  Something left out too long creates an environment where bacteria grow, and not enough time in the kitchen means that corners get cut.  Food safety lives in these corners and this is where people get sick.

The lone cook, who I think was named Aaron or Eric, had a very troublesome habit.  He worked with a vinyl glove on one hand and no glove on another.  I have observed this practice at several locations, including the putrid Newport restaurant.  People are supposed to be told that these gloves are no substitute for hand washing and that the gloves have to be changed whenever going from raw to cooked or non-food to food.  My theory is that this cook worked Jackson Style to avoid washing his hands and changing his glove.  The ungloved hand held the sauce bowl(thumb in bowl!!) while the gloved hand breaded the product.  When he needed to plate food, he took off the glove but did not wash his hands.

The title to this blog is a clickable link.  You'll see that I'm not alone in these complaints.  If Hooter's management reads this and is upset... you should be.  Correct this before it really costs you.  I am more than willing to consult with you on ways to improve your processes and increase safety.  This blog is long enough and I think I'll leave my specific suggestions for another time.

Real Food.

I have yet to weigh in on the 'real food' phenomenon, so here it goes...

I am a big fan of language. Words matter to me and I try to be very measured in what I type or say. Now I don't want to get into the whole sender-receiver model of communication, but it's important that the words we say are understood by the receiver to have the same meaning. So when someone says something is hot, it's important whether the receiver thinks you mean temperature or flavor.

CNN picked up on a blogger's challenge to eat only real food for a month http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/23/real.food.challenge/index.html?hpt=C1

Within the article, they define real food as not processed foods. They actually say what real food isn't and not what real food is, which I think is intriguing. They define processed food as: "... any food that has undergone a change of character. For example, edamame would be unprocessed, and tofu would be processed."

No.

Processed foods are foods that have a process applied to them. This includes rinsing, chopping, heating, freezing, beating (as in sheer force aka meringue or butter), or sanitizing. Unless you eat your organic grown veggies whole without cooking them, you are eating a processed food.

Any milk that isn't raw would also be considered processed, and therefore, not 'real'.

This can't be the intended definition of real food though, right? Seems a bit too strict, paranoid, and in many instances - dangerous. What do they really mean by 'real food'?

I'll take a crack at it.

They mean guilt free, non-corporate, and pretty.

These labels that the ironically labeled foodies put forth are a complicated mix of all the vitriol and mistrust they feel about the world around them. You see, they feel the corporations are all corrupt and are conspiring to poison the masses and control them through their fake foods. Let's run down the list of these corporate supported evils, shall we?

Instant potatoes - [gasp] The absolute worst. You should be ashamed if you don't have an hour to peel and boil potatoes, then mash them with cream.
**reality** They are mashed potatoes. They're just drum dried (dehydrated) so that they are shelf stable.

American Cheese Singles - Too lazy to invest in a good cheese slicer? No self respecting foodie would be caught dead with this in their refrigerator!
**reality** Developed in Europe, American cheese is made of the melted remnants of other cheeses. It's now made in a more consistant way, but isn't technically a vat cheese. Whether sliced off a block or peeled from the plastic, American Cheese melts better than most and has a mild flavor profile, making it ideal for sandwiches.

Sugar - Did you know that sugar makes everybody fat, causes diabetes, and probably hates minorities. It's so evil, because it's processed.
**reality** I prefer to use sugar that has been inspected, purified, and separated from most pebbles, dirt, and insect parts. Sugar is a food for fermentation also, resulting in alcohol, carbon dioxide, or both. Sugar sweetens foods, helps it brown when baked, and binds free water - making it safe from certain microorganisms.

The truth.

Real food is anything you eat and digest that offers calories and/or nutrition(carbs, vitamins, proteins, fats). When you hear someone talk about 'real food', your ears should perk up and you should start asking questions. You'll almost always find hidden motives, agendas, and irrational paranoia just below the surface.

The Race To Zero.

This week (Feb. 21 - 27, 2010) is National Eating Disorder week and I thought I would share a concern I had since it goes with that theme.

A few years back, I was one of the first member's of Ohio State University's Campus Dining Services Advisory Council. The council weighed in on issues impacting the food and service there of for the 50,000+ students of OSU. Campus Dining Services had taken in $36 million in revenue for the previous year, so they fed a lot of students in their then 22 facilities. The new Union is set to open if it hasn't already and those numbers are sure to grow.

One item of business at the first meeting I attended was to discuss ways to educate the diners on so they could make responsible food choices. One idea was to post the calories per serving for every item prepared in house(prepackaged items already do this). It seemed very reasonable and I even added that they should also post the amounts of protein, fat, sodium, and carbs.

There was a nutrition student in the group, that had a concern.

'What about people with eating disorders?' She asked.

Her experience was that freshman women were already stressing over their figure and by seeing the calories per serving they'll be less inclined to eat certain foods. Anyone remember the Freshman 15? This seems like a good thing considering American's general over-consumption. She explained that they don't stop cutting calories and the people she worked with as a nutrition major were essentially eating like it was a golf match. Fewest calories wins. So instead of having a caloric goal in mind, for instance 100/200 calories less than they typically consume based on activity and body weight, they try to eat only very low calorie foods in an effort to stay as close to zero as possible. They suppliment their diets with things like mints, cigarettes, and bottled water.

I call this the Race To Zero.

Posting calories makes us feel better, like we're doing what we can in the battle of the bulge. I think that battle we wage makes us unhealthier and endangers those in our society who's minds trick them into seeing themselves as bigger than they really are.

The major problem with solutions that many people post are that they are very narrow minded and not based in science and reason. Yahoo! or: thewebsiteIlovetohate! constantly posts stories about the 'worst foods'. They've had stories about the worst restaurants, appetizers, burgers, breakfast foods, desserts, salads, and the latest is fries. What makes these foods the worst? Calories, according to the articles. Every food that is demonized is demonized on calories.

So now we are posting the calories of everything while simultaneously running stories that demonize foods for how many calories are in them. What are people supposed to take from that? Calories = bad. Less calories = good. Zero calories = perfect.

Folks... Zero calories = dead.

The problem with posting calories for one item is that it doesn't take into consideration everything else the person had or will have to eat that day. The only way this can work is if people understand how many calories they need and how many calories they already had.

A very crude measurement is to multiply your weight by 11(for women) or 12(for men). This gives you a crude measurement of how many calories are necessary to maintain that body weight. So ladies, wanna know what it takes to be 115lbs??
You cannot consume more than 1,265 calories a day without factoring in physical activity.
A 200lb man by comparison can consume 2,400 calories a day and not gain.

As I said, physical activity offsets these numbers. This is why Michael Phelps can consume many thousands of calories a day. He trains in a pool 8 hours a day and his metabolism is extremely high. So there are many factors that affect weight. Girls, if you are 5'10" and at least have an average musculature, then I'm sorry, but you have no business weighing 115lbs. Consuming only 1,200 calories a day can kill you.

The numbers I gave were the absolute bottom for maintaining organ function. Standing burns calories. Sitting burns calories. Sleep burns calories. Obviously, things like; walking, running, swimming, weight training, yoga, and pilates all result in your need for more calories. You have to count the calories spent on every activity and add them up to get a realistic idea of how many calories you need.

Henry Cardello has a book called Stuffed Nation where he offers the solution of incentivizing the food industry to cut the calories in the foods they make. I think it's a novel plan but I also think we have a risk of this biting us in the ass.

Let me paint a not so rosie picture...

This plan works really well. Calories are cut by a lot...maybe 30% or more. Everyone wants the incentives and the reduced calories makes their products more profitable. It quickly becomes an R&D's version of an arms race... a Race To Zero. Tragedy strikes! It could be war, drought, early frost, a new ice age, raised ocean levels driving the populations of the world inland and leaving less farmland, whatever situation you can conjure up.

The food supply is now scarce and we are forced to ration what we have so that everyone may have some food. The problem now is the opposite; people aren't getting enough calories and they're getting sick. People's immune systems start to fail. Common colds are debilitating. Manual labor is something we no longer have the energy for. People are weakened and less able to fight in battle. We are overrun by another country. Some assimilate, many more are massacred.

Ok, so that's a crazy Mad Max extreme, but it illustrates that it's the total diet that matters most and not the calories in Outback's Aussie Cheese Fries.

So let's educate people on a diet of moderation. Stop eating when you start to feel full (not after). Try to eat a variety of things(yes, that includes meat and seafood, hippies). Save the rich foods and desserts for special occasions and spend the rest of the time eating reasonably. Go outside, run around, play a sport, get exercise. If you find you have gained weight, monitor the calories in what you eat for a week and see where you are over indulging. That's it.

So we have two extremes; obesity and dangerously thin that are getting all the attention. I suggest our social policy as it related to food and health be well rounded and based in science and education. But whatever you do, please don't turn our nation's diet into a Race To Zero.

Dear Anonymous...

This post is a response to Anonymous' comment on my blog: The Naked Truth. It became too long to not use as it's own blog post. Please re-read that blog if you haven't already and check out her full comment.

My comment about preservatives being neither good nor bad was not a comment on the functionality of the preservative (good, or else food companies would save money by not using them), but rather in terms of healthy/unhealthy. They aren't specifically bad for you, and not specifically good for you either - other than the fact that they inhibit certain microbial growth, thus making the food safer.

It's interesting how everything is either health food or junk food to some people. How do you define health food. Does one serving have to provide specific quantities of every nutrient? Does it have to be low fat, sodium, calories, sugar? If so, are you prepared to show me sound, peer reviewed science that fat, sugar, sodium, and calories of any quantity are bad? Healthy is another loaded term and very much depends on the person and a tally of everything else they have eaten that day/week. For instance, if you are short by a certain amount of fat, protein, and calories... a Snickers bar could complete your diet. In this case, it would have positively contributed to your health and can be considered healthy.

p.s.
Today's clickable link will lead you to the American Center on Science and Health and a study/experiment headed up by Dr. Ruth Kava PhD, R.D. which tried to analyze nutrient intake, and in one instance, see if weight loss was possible on a McDonald's only diet for 30 days.

The Naked Brain: activism minus science.

The winner of the 2010 TED gift is Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and is a nonprofit foundation that features lectures and presentations by many of our species greatest minds. TED presentations focus on science, technology, and humanity. I love their site and have spent entire days watching people demonstrate cutting edge technology. I watched Bill Clinton give a very inspiring speech as he accepted his TED gift. The TED gift is a financial award that the winner can apply to their research or cause.
"I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity"

OK. This sounds great, right? Everyone wants families to cook more and everyone wants little kids to not be so fat, and everyone wants to be sustainable. Whew! I feel all warm and bubbly inside already.

But what does that actually mean?

Sustainable is the most loaded, overused term in the modern era(2nd only to 'fresh'). It should mean that what you do(grow, produce, manufacture) is used in such a way that the component parts that make up what you do are replenished at a rate that keeps pace with what you are doing.

Sustainable logging means that you plant trees to replace what you cut and more trees are ready to harvest before you run out of trees.

Sustainable manufacturing is a little more tricky: I think it's using sources of renewable energy to produce items that are made with recyclable materials.

Sustainable food should mean that, like trees, you are planting what you take. But then people say, 'Well, fertilizers can pollute, so it can't be sustainable if you use those.' Then other people say, 'Hey, this food is trucked 500 miles, so it isn't sustainable.'

It's such a loaded term and what I think people really think it should mean is this: Sustainable means I don't feel guilty anymore.

Jamie Oliver also says he wants to create a movement to educate children about food. His wish is for a movement. His goal is more activism. His wish isn't that children get educated about food, his wish is for a movement. That is fairly important.

Jamie Oliver is a brand. You can assign a value to him as an entity, based on ratings for cooking shows, endorsement deals, cookbook sales, etc. What a brand such as him really needs is a cause... a movement.

My original intent was to separate fact from fiction concerning his movement, but as I investigated, I noticed that there aren't really facts involved, so I will consider the actual idea and theme of his movement.

The title of this blog is a clickable link that goes to Oliver's site where you can see this all for yourself.

So here is what I get from his movement:
Nutritious School lunches using local, sustainable, real food.
Families that prepare meals at home.
Educating kids about food.
Fighting the scourge that is obesity [grrr!]

First off, I'm a little confused by the school lunch program to be honest. Is the goal to provide food since the kids are stuck there for 6-8 hours? Or is the goal to provide complete nutrition, as if the only food they get is at school? This makes a huge difference, by the way. If the idea is that this has to be enough food in case they aren't fed at all at home, then you need much more calorie dense and nutrient dense foods. If you're just providing food to as one meal out of several then you don't need as many calories and it can be just enough to satiate hunger without making the kid tired after lunch.

Jamie Oliver takes several shots at processed foods. The following is from his School Food Charter:
"Don’t just look for the USDA symbol. How many ingredients do you recognize? How many are adding nutritional value to the food? Remember, real food, cooked fresh, doesn’t need additives, preservatives, or anything artificial. Processed food is often full of these things."

Oh boy... First off, he equates the goodness of food with the number of ingredients. Then he makes a statement about real food being fresh(another loaded term) which means that processed foods aren't real. His line of logic then concludes with a statement demonizing preservatives. He's also playing on people's lack of education about food science. It would be impossible to make this arguments stick if people knew what the preservatives were for and that they really are harmless.

These are old, tired arguments from the food hysterics. Processed food is bad and it isn't real, and there are things in it we don't immediately understand, so that makes it bad. Preservatives are neither good nor bad. They're preservatives.

Processed food is real and uses the same methods you would use in the kitchen, just mechanized for mass production. Example: instant mashed potatoes.

What do you do when you make mashed potatoes? Peel and cut potatoes, boil potatoes to cook them, mash the potatoes, and mix in seasonings and cream.

What does a factory do to make mashed potatoes? Peel and cut potatoes, boil potatoes to cook them, mash the potatoes, and mix in seasonings and cream. They just go the additional step of drying the mashed potatoes and packaging the powder.

Do you test your mashed potatoes for micro organisms? Do you have others thoroughly inspect your kitchen for cleanliness and safety every day? No? The factory does.

I'm concerned that Jamie Oliver is simply taking old arguments that weren't based in science and is repackaging them to help sell his brand. After all, a family learning to cook, is going to need cookwear, and a cookbook or an instructional dvd. Mr. Oliver takes digs at processed foods, but look what he has on his site here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/cupboard



Hmm.. That stuff looks familiar. Can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like I've seen that before. I don't see how he has the time to cook all of this food at home and package it for sale. Surely, he doesn't use contract food manufacturers(private labels) to make a product line and put his name on it.

Hypocritical and completely tone-deaf.

He also advocates eating on plates and using metal utensils. Who's going to pay for this?
His plan would essentially turn school cafeterias into 3 star restaurants for children that eat there for a half hour and usually at around 10AM. You want proper table settings? Fine. You will also need to hire additional personelle and you'll need to buy a Hobart C-line dishwasher to accommodate the volume of dishes. You'll need more staff to work longer hours chopping, sauteing, simmering, and roasting food. These are real culinary skills, so you'll need to bump up the pay to attract the talent that can actually pull this off. You want local, raw ingredients? Then you need to contact local purveyors and get more deliveries, more often, and you will pay a premium for it.

Not only does Mr. Oliver not consult food science and nutrition experts on his plans, but check out the people on his must see list.
He lists Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, the movies Food Inc. and Two Angry Moms, and The Centre For Science In The Public Interest (not really science).

What I gather from all of this is that Jamie Oliver is at the very least, misguided about food issues and falls into the same trap many other well intentioned, misinformed folks fall into. More than that, Jamie Oliver is more concerned about his brand than children, evidenced by his TED gift acceptance speech where he states that his wish was for a movement...not for specific changes. This gift coincides perfectly with his new ABC series Food Revolution and compliments his books, dvd's, cookware, and yes, even his line of processed foods.

Can we please return to science and reason as a means to shape policy?