Happenings on the Ranch

Being a proponent of locally, sustainably grown foods I refuse to by tomatoes from Mexico or apples from China.  If there is something I want that is hardly grown in the U.S., like plantains, I will purchase it on occasion.  That purchase does go to support the local economy in that country and I view it as a luxury purchase.  Having labels on these products makes my decision in the grocery store much easier when I can’t buy things at farmer’s market or grow it myself.  Even so, I will rarely buy produce in the winter.  I can’t justify the shipping cost and impact on the environment through the use of fossil fuels just so I can have a head of lettuce in February, even if it is grown in the U.S.

So I, personally, was very happy when legislation came out requiring Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) on all nuts, fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood.  But there are quite a few items that this legislation doesn’t cover, like dairy products.  Unless I am able to buy from a local producer or the company specifically puts where the item comes from on their label, how am I to know that the milk or butter I’m buying isn’t using milk coming from New Zealand or, worse yet, China?

Now, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing for legislation to require country of origin labelling on all dairy products including yogurt, cheese and ice cream.  I know I can’t be the only one saying, “hooray” for this one.  Many of today’s consumers are much more conscious about where their food comes from and how it is produced.  Producers that are just as conscious about these issues proudly display where their milk is produced and how it is handled.  But large manufacturers very infrequently put any labeling at all about where their milk is coming from and how it is produced, including whether the cows are treated with bovine growth hormones.

Where do you stand?  Does where your food is coming from affect your purchases more now than before the COOL legislation was passed?  Would this new legislation make a difference in the dairy products you buy?  Sound off, please.  I want to know where you stand.

So, after my Breyer’s temper tantrum I made the trip to Whole Foods on Monday.  I happily strode through the aisles checking off items on my list.  Mind you, I still checked the labels because what I consider “all natural” doesn’t really describe what most manufacturers think it means.

I started where the nuts and grains are.  I picked up some Bob’s Red Mill potato bread mix and read the label.  No funky additives.  Perfect.  Good thing about Red Mill is that they’re available all over the place.  I continued on and after adding some crackers, panko bread crumbs and a few other items I made my way to the dairy aisle.  I bought some milk from Shatto’s – no growth hormones and locally produced.  Not  to mention the glass bottles are really cool.  Then it was time to look at yogurt.

Yogurt has been a bit of a thorn in my side for quite a while when shopping in ‘regular’ groceries.  There have been very few times I would buy yogurt because it’s hard to find one that doesn’t have a whole bunch of gums or other odd additives.  In front of me were a plethora of yogurts, both natural and organic, and as I read the labels I was pretty pleasantly surprised by most.  A few did have guar gum as a stabilizer and I just put those right back on the shelf.  I saw some Brown Cow maple cream top yogurt, made with real maple syrup, on sale but wasn’t quite sure about the flavor.  I opted for a large tub of french vanilla cream top yogurt by Stonyfield Organics.  But I kept eyeing that maple.  While trying to make the decision a young woman walked into the dairy section, walked directly up to the maple yogurt, looked at nothing else, grabbed the tub and walked away.  That was all I needed; it made it’s way into my cart, too.

I continued to stroll the aisles looking at the labels and got a little bit more disenfranchised the further I went.  Being in the ag industry, so to speak, I know better than anyone the definitions of labels and claims by manufacturers and what is regulated and what is not.  I began to wonder if the common shopper really understood what can be classified as “all natural” and what can be included in “organic” foods.

Natural Foods.  There is no actual legal definition for natural foods, nor are there regulations in place (yet) for what can or can’t be included in foods that make the “all natural” claim.  Most companies use the label for foods that have ingredients from all natural sources and have been minimally processed without chemical components.  But there are a multitude of ingredients from natural sources that many consumers don’t want to ingest and these are often included in natural foods.  What’s worse is that some companies use this label in a very misleading way.

There is an organization out there that producers can join which does have standards.  Certified Naturally Grown is a non-profit organization that gives smaller farmers and ranchers an alternative to the USDA organic certification process.  NV Ranch is working toward our certification from CNG.  The standards are basically the same as the USDA National Organic Program but are less expensive and more easily attainable for smaller farms.  Of course, this certification really only helps consumers that shop local farmers but it’s a step in the right direction.

I always check the label on anything that claims to be natural.  It only takes a second to flip the package around and look at the ingredients list.  A quick scan will tell me if there’s anything I don’t want.  Of course, this means being educated on what those funky names for things mean.  But that’s another post.

USDA Organic.  The USDA’s National Organic Program regulates the standards for any farm or producer/handling operation and is intended to assure consumers that certified organic foods they buy are processed in accordance with those standards.  Using the Organic label means the product must contain at least 95% organically produced ingredients.  The remaining 5% can be non-agricultural ingredients on a list approved by the USDA.  Funny, “gums” can be organically produced.  Again not something I want to ingest but it’s allowable in organic products.  There are also 100% Organic items that are required to contain nothing that hasn’t been organically produced or processed.  Again, the “gum” clause applies.

So, even if something is labeled organic I still check the ingredients.  Our farm grows our produce in an organic way that exceeds the USDA regulations for organic farms.  I figure if I’m not willing to grow anything that doesn’t meet my high standards why should I settle for buying something that doesn’t?

Trying to eat things that are completely natural and don’t include any chemically processed ingredients can be difficult.  It definitely makes the shopping trip take a bit longer and may limit your diet a little bit.  But I think it’s well worth the effort.  Don’t trust what the front of the label tells you.  Turn it around, look at the ingredients list and then decide for yourself what you’re willing to eat and what you’re not.  Chances are someone else said the same thing along the way and started producing a product they, and you, are happy to eat.  It just might take a little searching to find it. 

And my ice cream search?  I managed to find an ice cream from Straus Family Creamery that didn’t have any extra junk in it (the way Breyer’s used to be made) and it’s awesome.  I even found an alternative for the one cookie I was guilty of eating that had all kinds of, um, “crap” in it.  My precious Vienna Fingers have now been replaced by Whole Foods 365 brand All Natural Vanilla Sandwich Cremes.  The cool thing is the cream inside tastes the way Vienna Fingers used to taste like.  Careful … they can be addicting.

Oh, and that maple yogurt?  I bought the 32oz tub on Monday afternoon and it’s gone as of this morning … and nobody else in the house got to eat any.  I’d say it was pretty good.

I am an avid ice cream eater.  Always have been.  And for a very long time the only commercially available ice cream I chose to eat was Breyers simply because there was nothing “extra” in their recipe.  Just cream, eggs, sugar and whatever else was there for the particular flavor.  Not artifical flavors, but real strawberries or chocolate.

It had been a while since I actually read the label on my Breyers container.  I noticed when they changed the size of the package.  It was no longer a full 1/2 gallon, but 1.5 quarts while the price remained the same.  Okay, I could live with that.  Other companies were doing the same, anyway.  I continued to buy the product because it didn’t have a bunch of fillers or over-processed ingredients.  I noticed the texture wasn’t quite the same as I was used to, but I thought that was because I generally make my own ice cream at home and was accustomed to that texture.

The package looked the same as it always had.  The “All Natural” print was still there in the same place it had always been.  For some reason the other day during my shopping trip I actually turned the package around.  Maybe it was because I had been looking at the cheaper ice creams to see what their ingredients were.  Maybe because I was looking at all the ingredient lists on my items that day and did it out of habit.  Whatever the reason, I looked.

Imagine my surprise when the list seemed unusually long.  Imagine my even greater surprise when I saw several additional ingredients on my Natural Vanilla ice cream that included, of all things, corn syrup!  Corn syrup?  In my Breyers?  Say it ain’t so.  In addition to the cream being replaced by skim milk, there were a few other “natural” ingredients on that list that weren’t there before.  Tara gum, natural flavoring (instead of vanilla!).  I put the carton back in the freezer case in disgust.

I don’t understand it.  Their product was just fine the way it was.  And I never minded paying more for that carton because I knew – and was able to actually pronounce – the ingredients.  Are they in financial difficulty?  Do they need to add these fillers and cheaper ingredients in order to increase their profit margin?  Whatever the reason, I can’t stand it.  And I won’t buy it.  But how long ago did they change?  And just what are these ingredients?

Turns out that shortly after Unilever took over the Breyers brand, they began adding tara gum to the list of ingredients.  This supposedly was in response to consumer comments about the difference in texture between Breyers and other brands.  According to Unilever PR representative Golin Harris, “When consumers expressed concern over the texture of our products, we responded. By adding a natural gum to Breyers All Natural Vanilla ice cream, we’ve helped to protect the product’s texture while staying true to our all-natural commitment. We use tara gum from natural plant sources to help Breyers ice cream stay creamier and more enjoyable for longer periods of time.”  Natural?  Guar gum is “natural” too, but Breyers commercials used to make fun of companies that used that ingredient.  So I did a little research on what tara gum is.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, tara gum is a stabilizer and thickener derived from the peruvian carob or tara plant that has been deemed safe for use as a food additive.  Other “natural” uses for the peruvian carob?  Manufacture of furniture leather and killing fleas.  Great.  So I’ll be nicely preserved and flea free.  Rabbit droppings and rat tails are “natural” too but I don’t want them in my ice cream, either.

Okay, thickener to make the texture more consistent.  I get it.  But where is the cream and vanilla?  Why skim milk and natural flavors instead?  Due to this change Breyers can no longer even be labeled as ice cream!  It now has to be labeled as a “frozen dairy dessert.”

I took a look at the list of other brands Unilever has conquered over the years.  I had always known their company for making soaps (Lever 2000 and Lifebuoy), cleaning products (Surf detergent) and toiletry items (Suave, Sure, Q-Tips, etc.).  But they own many more food brands than I could have thought.  Some of the brands on their list?  Ben & Jerry’s, Cup-A-Soup, Good Humor, Hellmann’s/Best Foods, Lipton, Skippy, Wish-Bone and more.  I know Hellmann’s Mayonnaise used to just be eggs, vinegar and lemon juice.  Now?  Add soybean oil, natural flavors and calcium disodium.  Skippy “Natural” peanut butter has palm oil in it.  I’m thinking peanut butter should really only have, um, peanuts in it?  Maybe some salt.  I don’t think any recipes for homemade peanut butter say, “Add 1/4 cup palm oil and blend thoroughly.”

I like to make my own ice cream and other foods (butter, cheese, breads, etc.) as often as I can.  But sometimes I don’t have fresh cow’s or goat’s milk available.  Or I just don’t have time to make everything from scratch.   I like to be able to buy items  and have the ingredient list as close to what I make at home as possible.  I’m finding it increasingly harder to go to a ‘regular’ grocery store in our area and be able to buy items that aren’t filled with crap.  I may very well have to start making the 45 minute drive (one way) over to Whole Foods to do my shopping so I can find a variety of items that are truly all natural.

Apparantly, I missed the reading the Breyer’s label for a long time.  Shame on me for not looking.  But really, Breyers, shame on you.