Perhaps no one has clearly highlighted the fault lines between the food movement and processed food as Anna Zeide in the book Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry. Last week I reviewed the book as a whole. This week I delve further into her perspective with particular emphasis on quality of fresh and canned vegetables. I also briefly … Continue reading Grade standards and canned vegetable quality

Canned may well be the most important book written about processed food in recent years. Anna Zeide traces the history of the canned food industry, primarily in America in the 20th Century. She uses specific canned products in each of the six chapters to illustrate the development of the industry and how these events shaped the industrialized food system and the modern processed-food industry: condensed … Continue reading Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry

Can you remember when the hottest trend in the healthiness of food was antioxidants, particularly antioxidant vitamins? It doesn’t seem that it was that long ago, but it is hard to find a recent article on the internet touting their benefits such as slowing down the aging process. In a quick search I only found one that has appeared in 2018. I have had an … Continue reading Antioxidants in foods

As indicated in Vitamania, vitamins are essential chemicals our bodies need to maintain health. They are also viewed as miraculous molecules found in bottles of supplements and packages of functional foods as glorified by both small and large companies in either the pharmaceutical or food industries. How vitamins and their micronutrient companions, the minerals, function in the body is poorly understood by most purchasers of … Continue reading Vitamins and Minerals 101

by Hrvoje Verži   It was bound to happen. As a professor I directed enough graduate students to eventually find one who was as eccentric and as provocative in dealing with me as I was in dealing with my major professors when I was a grad student. Hrvoje (Herbie) Verži was that student for me. He gave me a better appreciation of what my former professors faced. … Continue reading The (Non) Sense of Nutritional Supplements

                     Catherine Price takes us on a journey to Vitamania*, a land where foods cause angst in our daily lives while vitamins and other supplements provide hope for a healthy life. This journey takes us back to a time when unknown diseases were debilitating and killing unsuspecting victims. Fortunately, over a long period of time chemists were able … Continue reading Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection

I typically use the fifth Tuesday of a month to update items from previous articles on the blog. This week I wish to defend a governmental action, two items my parents fed me when I was young that are now much maligned, and one of my go-to snacks that is also coming under fire. Nutritional information on restaurant menus and displays is now required. The … Continue reading In defense of nutritional information in restaurants, chocolate milk, sugar-coated cereals, and energy bars

Sometime while reading It’s Not About the Broccoli I began to wonder how well my parents did at cultivating good eating practices in me. Let me state up front that the 50s were a very different time than today. I was a free-range kid who walked a mile to school and back twice a day as I ate lunch at home during our 90-minute lunch … Continue reading Grading my parents on instilling healthy eating patterns

“Never before has a nation known so much about nutrition, yet eaten so poorly,” states Dina Rose in It’s Not About the Broccoli. But does America really know that much about nutrition in the 21st Century? When I was growing up in the 60s, American culture was hung up on self-psychoanalysis so we could have a more fulfilling life. There are still many self-help books … Continue reading Seven principles of pop nutrition

by Dana Crater My wife and I have a total of six weeks of experience as parents. Nieces and nephews have come to visit us, one at a time for a week to give us a taste of what it must be like as a parent. Thus, I am completely unqualified to comment on anything resembling parent-child relationships. For help on a follow-up to It’s Not … Continue reading Healthy Eating in Families: Avoiding the Power Struggle