food contamination

Spring is here! As we put those tender seedlings into the ground, up sprouts the constant question: should I go Organic, or should I show up my neighbors by using Miracle Grow? Will I poison my children if I use it on my tomatoes? Is my neighbor’s cancer due to Round Up™, and did it blow over into my yard? If a lawncare company treated my grass, are my grass clippings poisoning my compost?

So many questions for such a busy season!

“Organic” is a shady term to start with. We think of hippies and happy sheep, and fields strewn with mulch and recycled orange peels, when in reality it just means the land cannot have been treated with synthetic pesticides, fertilizers (including Miracle Grow), or GMOs for three years. Sounds nice, right? Except that two of the three companies licensed by the USDA to certify organic farms are for-profit (Oregon Tilth is not). The farmer wanting to be certified pays the company to license them. That’s like paying a teacher to give you a grade. The problem is worse overseas: 100 countries export “organic” produce to the USA, and though they are supposed to abide by US law, the countries inspect and license their own. And let’s not forget that a good percentage of “organic fertilizer” in many countries is human in origin. (The E. coli that keeps poisoning lettuce is usually animal in origin).

Won’t chemical fertilizers like Miracle Grow poison me? No. Plants don’t care where the nutrients come from, horse manure or a green and yellow box. Plants use them the same way. The issues with Miracle Grow are 1) the concentration of ammonium phosphate may be too high for some plants. MG makes different formulas for roses, tomatoes, azaleas, etc. Choose the one you need. 2) The greatest issue for chemical fertilizers is that heavy rains can wash a recent fertilizing away. If twelve homes get washout, and it flows into the brook behind them, too high a concentration in water systems can cause algal blooms that suck up oxygen and kill wildlife.

Okay, but what about Round Up™? If I kill the dandelions in my walk, won’t I die?

Uh, that’s a loaded question. Yes, more than 14 countries have banned Round Up (chemical: glyphosate), and while the courts have said yes, Round Up causes cancer, the US maintains it does not. And there’s the difference: In Europe, you must prove a chemical is safe before it hits the market, and that’s hard to do. In the US, chemicals are presumed innocent and you must prove they’re harmful – which is really easy to sidestep even with math and science. In America, it is up to the manufacturer to show their product is harmful, not the government (Got that? The man making and marketing the product must show that what he’s selling is harmful.) When the people with highest exposure to Round Up were studied (ie, farm workers), they had a 41% higher risk of a type of cancer called Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. People with heavy, frequent exposure over time. NO risk was found in people who go outside three times a year and spritz a weed. If you want to use it, do so sparingly, wear rubber gloves, and wash with soap immediately after, and whatever you do, don’t inhale it.

But if those chemicals wind up in my compost bin, won’t they pollute my compost? Mm, depends. According to John Reganold, Professor of Soil Science at Washington State University, “The heat and microbial action of most compost piles break down many produce pesticides.” So don’t feel bad throwing that non-organic banana peel in the pile. BUT: some pesticides (like clopyralid – Reclaim) can become concentrated. Things like termiticides bind to the soil and last a long time. And even treated and composted animal/human waste can still contain parasites. If in doubt, buy local, where you can ask what might have been sprayed on the food.

But rest easy: Miracle Grow has never been shown to cause cancers.

So, is organic worth it? Depends on what you’re willing to pay. The most chemical-contaminated foods in the grocery store are strawberries, peaches (more than 57 pesticides on one sample), celery, lettuce and greens (and that’s not counting the E. coli risk), and most other fruit. If you want to reduce your pesticide ingestion, consider buying organic just for fruits (or grow your own), and wash, wash, wash what you do bring home.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are about the best thing there is for your body, and growing your own, organic or not, is a fun (and tasty) experiment anyone can do anywhere. Try growing some popcorn, or a yellow or brown or purple heirloom tomato. Pole beans are great for kids, because they grow incredibly fast and are very prolific, as are grape tomatoes (so why are they so expensive?).

No matter which method you use, read further on gardening in these topical books:

Starter Vegetable Gardens : 24 no-fail plans for small organic gardens by Barbara Pleasant

Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

101 Organic Gardening Hacks : eco-friendly solutions to improve any garden by Shawna Coronado

Rodale’s All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, edited by Fern Marshall Bradley and Barbara W. Ellis

Organic Gardening for Dummies / by Ann Whitman, Suzanne DeJohn,

The Organic Lawn Care Manual by Paul Tukey

Vegetable Gardening : from planting to picking by Fern Marshall Bradley, Jane Courtier

High-Yield Vegetable Gardening : grow more of what you want in the space you have by Colin McCrate and Brad Halm

Northeast Fruit & Vegetable Gardening : plant, grow, and eat the best edibles for Northeast gardens by Charles Nardozzi

The Vegetable Gardener’s Container Bible by Edward C. Smith

The unofficial nickname of Connecticut is “The Nutmeg State.” This stems from a story dating back to the mid-1800’s, whereby a southerner called foul that his order of nutmegs were made of wood – and they do look similar. One thought is that shrewd Yankee traders were cheating by carving wooden nutmegs to pad out a sale and thus increase profit at the expense of the consumer, but another assumption is that the ignorant southerner didn’t know nutmegs had to be grated, and tried to eat them like a walnut.

Either way, the practice of substituting one food – or non-food – substance for another has probably been around since the dawn of man. Egyptians did it. Romans complained about it. And all the way up until Victorian England, food adulteration could kill you.

That’s the subject in Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, by Bee Wilson. The book was far more interesting than I thought, chronicling the history of food cheats, such as substituting chicory or wood shavings for ground coffee, or adding alum to cheap bread to make it whiter. The medieval guild system helped keep staple foods clean, but England gave up the guilds earlier than Europe, and suffered more malnutrition for it. Poisonings and deaths were common, as bad food was often colored with copper and arsenic to make it prettier. Finally, the microscope helped discern without a doubt what was real and what wasn’t, starting the “pure food” campaign that continues today. It wasn’t until World War II’s shortages that people began to embrace modern chemical foods, and the decline of modern health can be clearly linked to it.

A similar book is Death in the Pot: The Impact of Food Poisoning on History, by Morton Satin. Satin, a retired expert in microbiology and food-borne illness, traces several turning points in history that were likely caused by accidental or deliberate food poisoning, from the Great Plague of Athens to the Salem Witch trials, right through modern day KGB tactics. Satin also reiterates Wilson on discussion of the “Poison Squads” of the early 20^th century, human guinea pigs who consumed chemicals to see if they were safe to put into foods.

Perhaps the Granddaddy of the entire subject, dredged up in almost any conversation on food safety and purity, is the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the seminal book from 1906 that sent such shock through America that the Pure Food and Drug Act followed just five months later. Sinclair, a socialist pushing for unions in the horrific meat-packing industry in Chicago, slipped inside the factories to investigate the situations for himself, and what he found was chilling, from rats mixed into the meat to allegedly men themselves that fell into the rendering vats. When President Roosevelt sent men to investigate, they, too, were appalled that it was true. While he didn’t bring many converts to socialism, he cleaned up the food supply as well as working conditions in the meat packing plants. As Sinclair said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

More modern – and thus frightening – is Eating Dangerously, by Michael Booth and Jennifer Brown, a balanced book which discusses modern food safety in the wake of so many deaths from salmonella, E coli O157, and other bacteria, that kill people, especially children and elderly, every year. Nothing makes you scrub your hands like reading about deadly germs, and, outside of undercooked meat or that dire warning to never eat your raw cookie dough, most of the deadliest food poisoning outbreaks have centered on produce that is eaten raw: lettuce, spinach, sprouts, cantaloupe, and peanuts. The authors acknowledge what farmers and the government already know: producers can’t wash every leaf of spinach adequately, even in the best scenario. Animals walk through fields. Birds poop in flight. Flies are everywhere. WASH YOUR PRODUCE. It grows in dirt. Wash it. The biggest problem with US Food Safety? Continuous cuts to the CDC, inspectors, and FDA, lawmakers afraid of industry lobbyists, and unclear departmental responsibilities. And the huge demand for out of season produce shipped from other countries, where growing practices aren’t as clean as the US.

It’s hard to separate sensationalism from fact when it comes to health. Today’s fact is tomorrow’s proven gimmick. Poisoned food, however, is a reality we live with each day, from undercooking our meat to leaving that mayonnaise sitting out, or the grim fact chickens are BORN positive for salmonella. Wash your food. Wash your counters. Wash your hands. Watch your food temperatures. Know what’s in your food – remember, cellulose can mean wood pulp, too. Still love raw cookie dough? Make it with Eggbeaters, which is pasteurized, and you won’t have to worry.