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1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

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2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

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3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

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4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

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5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

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6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

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7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

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8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

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9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

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10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

Images: little blue hen, FotoosVanRobin, St0rmz, Taras Kalapun, avlkyz, R’eyes, lucianvenutian, Karl Palutke, Emily Carlin, blgrssby

In the wake of Unprocessed October, you may have developed a taste for more simply-prepared fare. Problem is, you can’t trust your senses. Think that rolled oats are as untouched as food gets? Think again – and check out the rest of this list of 10 surprisingly processed foods!

1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

Images: little blue hen, FotoosVanRobin, St0rmz, Taras Kalapun, avlkyz, R’eyes, lucianvenutian, Karl Palutke, Emily Carlin, blgrssby

I’ve always been a cheese fanatic. It started when I was a kid with sharp cheddar cheese from Wisconsin and the massive blocks of baby Swiss my father used to receive from one of his patients during the holidays. I would gleefully trim off ever-so-thin slices, curl each one into a roll and start nibbling while thoughtfully eyeing where to cut off the next piece.

As many cheese lovers, my taste continues to mature, and now I’m more likely to reach for say, aged Gruyere and goat Gouda. In one of my recent grocery shopping experiences, while I carefully selected organic yogurt and organic milk, I realized that when it came to cheese, I wasn’t so sure of what I was buying. With gourmet cheeses, such as specialty goat cheese or cheese from sheep’s milk of the Basque region, I wasn’t so worried, but what about cow’s milk cheese from the U.S.? Is there a chance that it has come from cows treated with growth hormones?

I was having these thoughts when I came across this article from Grist about the recent decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an Ohio law regarding the labeling of food produced without growth hormones.

“Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio’s ban on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods.”

Later, the article goes on to say:

Thanks to consumer pressure, approximately 60 percent of milk in the U.S. is rBST-free at this point, labeled or not, according to the Center for Food Safety. However, that leaves an enormous amount of milk still being produced with these hormones, and by extension cheese and most brands of ice cream, except for Ben & Jerry’s.

The bit about ice cream got my attention. Not only do I love cheese, but I also adore ice cream. (You mean, I can’t eat Haagen-Dazs?) It seems that as I’ve been selectively buying organic milk, I may have been eating cheese and ice cream made from non-organic sources. Yikes. (Yet another reason to go D.I.Y. in the kitchen.)

I suppose I should have thought of this earlier, but I guess my love of cheese and ice cream blinded me. If anything, however, it is yet another reminder that companies should not only be allowed to label their food, but should be required to label it. Consumers need to know and have the right to know what they’re eating. I look forward to and am hopeful for the time when the FDA does the right thing in this regard. I just hope it isn’t another decade before we get there.

In the meantime, I’ll be more consciously buying cheese from such locales as the Cowgirl Creamery, certified organic. And ice cream? Looks like I’ll be making it at home.

Image: Jeffrey Coolidge

FarmVille is the green place to be for city folk reaping the rewards of rural relationships and cooperation through good, clean social gaming.

The hugely popular farming sim has my friends and family bragging on Facebook about a season of planting cash crops, helping neighbors grow lettuce instead of lawns and finding new homes for lost little duckies. It quacks me up!

The strategy of the Zynga grainchild: The user is given the chance to start their own farm, build it out and move up in levels.

After they have plowed the land and their crops are ripe for picking, they harvest the food and sell it for cash to buy new crops. Other ways to get money include helping friends with their farms or sending free gifts to friends, such as trees and farm animals.

“This is a good game because it’s not superficial where you are going out and buying clothes or houses like in other virtual games,” says my 13-year-old daughter, an avid fan who set up a farm for her 10-year-old sister in recent weeks planting eggplants, soybeans and strawberries. “You’re building crops and helping neighbors with their crops and in the coming years, it will really come down to that.”

My teen, now at level 7,  finds FarmVille lets her and her Facebook friends associate a fun game with something not product-based, and that it helps train her generation to think green.

That’s the main reason an employer in Minneapolis, Minn. set up a real organic farm as a playground and work perk for his employees. His concept is a hit as the Haberman public relations team clocks time hoeing and raking after hours.

You don’t get points with your boss for playing FarmVille so my cousin, Alan Finkelstein, plays in his spare time when he’s off work. He’s at the top of the heap with an impressive level 31. He’s a god in his neck of the woods. You don’t get to level 31 without logging some serious computer time.

“Okay, FarmVille police, I was forced to play, they kidnapped me and made me play,” Alan jests, defending his highly-coveted acreage. “I do notice more things in the world that are related to farms than I used to prior to playing.”

Alan says he gave it a go when a friend was playing and really loved it. He finds the game makes him more aware of things associated with farming and holds a “zen quality” for the L.A. journalist, husband and Facebook fanatic.

“I like to strategize, collect, plan, design, steal other folk’s designs, send gifts to friends, receive gifts from friends, and having to be patient in growing my own farm,” he says. “My cousins say to me, ‘Dude, your farm is amazing and thanks for sending me the horses’ and it’s nice to have that interaction.”

Del Monte should only have such interaction. This sim is clearly a brand of socialism Americans can get behind.

According to Virtual Worlds News, FarmVille has gained over 1 million new players per week since its June 19 launch, and currently boasts more than 11 million daily active users.

Apparently, that’s the total achieved by lead designer Mark Skaggs over his entire career with Electronic Arts where he designed other strategy games such as Command & Conquer and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. He says FarmVille will probably break records, largely because he’s keeping it fresh.

“One of the really fun and successful features we added is what we call the ‘Lonely Cow’ feature,” Skaggs told VWN. “You can help find it a home, then somebody claims it. You’ll get a brown cow instead of the white cow you had before. Then you milk the brown cow and you get chocolate milk! That’s a ‘moment of delight,’ totally unexpected but cool.”

We once felt that same moment of delight when competitors landed on those high-priced blue properties we monopolized – Park Place and Boardwalk – and had to fork over big bucks for encountering our big, red hotels.

I much prefer a society that works together to land big red barns, sustainable crops and organic chocolate milk. As my wise daughter said, it will really come down to that.

Main Image: Sabrina.dent

I hope you’re not one of those people who squirms when a mother breastfeeds her baby in public, because I’m one of those publicly breastfeeding mothers. If that makes you uncomfortable, well, talk to the breast!

There is no better food for babies than breast milk, of course, so it’s a great decision for mothers who are able to do it. And when it comes to social graces, I’m just not sorry to say that I won’t run off to nurse in a bathroom or tote bottles around to preserve a faux Victorian modesty (ahem, Facebook). We see more breast online and at Fox news than I could possibly compete with.

Besides, the breast is the ultimate eco-friendly feeding option. Formula is made from either cow’s milk or soy, and both come with problematic environmental implications. Then there are the bottles, usually made of plastic, which even when BPA-free, still need petroleum to be made.

What’s with our shyness? I say it’s high time to get rational and respect the breast. There’s no need to look away in embarrassment or frown disapprovingly if you see my baby noshing on my nipple. After all, what could be more sane, healthy and normal than using breasts the way nature intended? Sure, the world might be sex-crazed over boobies, but for my baby, it’s what’s for dinner. Nomnomnomnom.

Image: Raphael Goetter

No downer beef, if you please. But gimme slabs of chocolate and cheese -  and all of the other upper foods that help effect serotonin and dopamine, the two neurotransmitters in the old brain. Who says the Gods must be crazy? We’ve sampled the forbidden fruit and want more! Give us more!

Dopamine is related to pleasure and euphoria while serotonin has to do with mood, memory and sleep. Both of these pathways can be stimulated by food, as well as by exposure to light and exercise.

No food, of course, should replace prescribed medication for serious depression (unless your doctor and nutritionist sign off on it). But for many of us, who are only slightly depressed from the realities of life, they can provide a little boost (yippee!) as well as antioxidant properties and nutritional fiber.

To compile a list of those happy foods, I went to Mindy Dopler Nelson, a post-doctorate research fellow at Standford University specializing in nutrition biology. Before handing over her list, she told me not all foods affect people the same way.

Mindy Dopler Nelson, PhD, Stanford University

“What gives you comfort is going to vary across culture, age, gender and psychological factors as a result of your life experiences,” says Nelson. “Each hormone or neurotrasmitter in the brain has to bind to something to make it active. What it binds to are called receptors and they aren’t the same in everyone.”

Researchers have found that if you are exposed to high fat and sugar early in life, you tend to develop more of a craving for it to boost your spirits. There also is a genetic factor. Some of us (35% of the population) simply don’t have as many receptors and tend to be overweight due to a need for more happy foods to get the same effect as those with ample receptors. In other words, you might be satisfied with just one piece of California Brittle from a box of Sees Candies while gluttons like me must devour the box. I love you Mary! I love you soooo much!

“One food across the board everyone is going to agree with is chocolate,” adds Nelson. ” That’s because it contains the chemical phenylethylamine which releases dopamine.” The compound is thought to be  responsible for the high you experience after eating chocolate because it releases natural feel-good chemicals called endorphins in your brain.

According to All Chocolate, PEA is released by the brain when people are falling in love, and this might explain why chocolate and Valentines Day are so closely linked.

Here is Nelson’s breakdown of what you can choose to beat the blues:

Image:  Suavehouse

Chocolate: Chocolate is a stimulant that will release the dopamine that creates that pleasure feeling. It’s in the cocoa. There’s more of it in dark chocolate than in milk chocolate. But there’s something about the fat in the milk that also will make you feel good. Some people associate a comfort food with a high-fat food. There also are antioxidants in the dark chocolate, but watch the dosage! Excess can be harmful for your liver and pile on the pounds. Dopamine has an amphedamine effect, hence the term chocoholic. You also cannot ignore the fact it contains mucho caffeine that will keep you up at night. (And if you don’t get enough sleep it will effect your serotonin level.)

Image:  FotoosVanRobin

Cheese: The thing to be careful about is the fat, but if you go with the potent tasting cheeses, you can usually still get the phenyl while eating a moderate amount. You eat less because it is so strong. And remember, go organic when you can.

Image: Saquan Stimpson/Monstershaq

Almonds: As a raw snack food, they have good fats associated with reducing the risk of heart disease. But eat them in small doses because they also can promote weight gain and headaches. Many amines can cause headaches triggered by foods like almonds, so people prone to migraines are told to stay away from them.

Image: hikljgk

Red Wine: Wine has the phenyl in it, as well, and you also get the benefit of the antioxidant resveratrol, which helps your heart. Many people like to pair wine with other upper foods like chocolate and cheese. Although we think more is better, when it comes to wine and beer, this is a case where you need just enough. More is not better.

Image: Avlxyz

Tomatoes: In addition to having phenyl, they have lycopene, an antioxidant associated with reducing the risks of some types of cancer, especially prostate cancer. Imagine a glass of wine with cheese and tomatoes, sliced apples and chocolate to top it off!

Image:  Beeside

Apples: The skin, especially in red apples, has antioxidant properties, plus the benefits of fiber which is a tectin that can help lower cholesterol. It binds it. That’s why the American Cancer Society touts apples as a great snack. You can overdose on these, too, because of the natural sugars. But they are an ideal choice when you eat a reasonable portion.

Nelson adds that additional foods high in tyrosine get converted to dopamine, but there is no guarantee that just because a food is high in these compounds, the tyrosine or tryptophan will cross the brain barrier to increase dopamine or serotonin.

Among these foods are chicken (390 mcgs of tryrptophan); salmon (250 mcgs of tryptophan); tofu (280 mcgs of tryptophan); eggs (200 mcgs of tryptophan); milk (220 mcgs of tryptophan) and yogurt (140 mcgs of tryptophan).

Main image: Zara

Serious hikers and those who travel are quite familiar with the many varieties of portable water testers. But who would have imagined that here in the United States we would ever feel the need or desire to test our pet food or baby formula?

With an estimated 50,000 Chinese children sickened and several deaths after drinking melamine contaminated formula, and the reported deaths 8,500 dogs and cats in the United States from contaminated pet food produced in China, the folks at Purdue University were inspired to invent a new analysis method that can detect the kidney-damaging chemical in a matter of seconds.

“This situation created an immediate need for an analytical method that is highly sensitive, fast, accurate, and easy to use,” said R. Graham Cooks, Purdue’s Henry B. Hass distinguished professor of chemistry on the Purdue website. Hass led the team that developed the analysis method, which included Guangming Huang, a postdoctoral research associate, and Zheng Ouyang, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. A paper detailing their work was published online in the journal Chemical Communications and will appear in the next issue of the journal.

Cooks said that even without direct contamination, trace amounts of melamine sometimes make their way into consumable products because melamine is used in manufacturing and is found in many packaging materials. At trace levels, said Cooks, the chemical is not known to be a health threat and has been deemed safe by the FDA. Our analysis, he added, provides a way to determine whether the amounts present exceed safe levels.

The Office of Naval Research Research Tools Program funded this research.

Image: Maldivian dude

Security was exceptionally tight surrounding the sentencing in the tainted milk scandal in China. Police roadblocks were set up and grieving parents of the young victims were not allowed into the courtroom to hear the verdicts. Three people were sentenced to death (including a middleman who peddled the poison to milk stations) and several others were ordered behind bars, including the head of the dairy that knowingly produced the melamine-contaminated formula.

Tian Wenhua, who pleaded guilty, received a life sentence plus a $3.6M fine. Why did the court spare the life of the Sanlu dairy executive? We only know that the parents of the victims expressed outrage that the punishment did not fit the crime.

One mother, whose baby died from the milk, fell to the ground crying, arguing Wenhua should be shot to pay for the death of her child. Who among us can’t feel that mother’s pain? Keeping her out of the courtroom was just another way to control a population that exists in another kind of prison, one rife with human rights abuses in which women and young people (babies and protesting college students) are too often the victims.

At least, this time, the government admitted it is partly to blame for adulterated milk deaths. In an interview in Science Magazine, Premier Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying leaders were especially lax in “supervision and management.” He added that he would handle the incident sincerely and seriously “and draw deep lessons from it.”