Tag Archives: Npr

What’s behind Oregon’s Marionberry mania?

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I love the berries, especially the tart blackberries.

marion-barry-1They grew voraciously in my aunt’s backwoods where as kids, we’d pick them by the bucketful. She also made great pies.

According to Tove Danovich of NPR, blackberries also grow voraciously in the Pacific Northwest and it’s not rare to stumble across rural barns or abandoned homes that have been completely consumed by the thorny vine. Let them grow too close to a window, and they’ll break the glass. They’re common — easy to forage and hard to get too excited about. At least compared to the marionberry, a type of blackberry that has become an Oregon obsession.

One of the reasons the marionberry is so beloved is because it is entirely a product of Oregon. It’s “born and raised” in state, so to speak.

The marionberry, a cross between Chehalem and Olallie blackberries, was bred at Oregon State University as part of a berry-developing partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that dates back to the early 1900s. It’s named for Marion County in the Willamette Valley, where most of the field trials took place (not for former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, right, exactly as shown).

marionberryWhen the berry was introduced in the 1950s, it was widely hailed as the most delicious blackberry commercial cultivar around. Even today, people rave over its tart-yet-sweet flavor — think of a cross between raspberries and blackberries. (Though there is some raspberry in its DNA, the red fruits are more like a genetic great-great grandparent to the marionberry.)

Food safety competes with this? FoodPorn, circa 1600s and now, more about status than appetite

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Tove Danovich of NPR writes that in the 1600s, when famous still life artist Jan Davidsz de Heem was eating, people showed off their meals with paintings.

food.porn.1600s.jul.16A new study by Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab found that capturing and showing off decadent and expensive meals is a decidedly old-fashioned practice. Brian Wansink, author of Slim by Design, and Andrew Weislogel, a curator at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art, studied 140 paintings of “family meals” from 1500 to 2000 and found that the majority of foods depicted were not part of the average fare. Some of the most likely foods to appear were shellfish, ham and artichoke. For the common classes during the time these paintings were made, Wansink says, more likely items to eat would have been chicken, bread and the odd foraged fruit.

People don’t usually Instagram frozen foods they put in the microwave. Instead, the most successful #foodporn is often an item the photographer laboriously made in the kitchen or found in either an expensive or out-of-the-way restaurant. A recent top #foodporn on Instagram is a photo of seven elaborately decorated eclairs. In the caption the food blogger behind @dialaskitchen compares the Toronto-made pastries to some found a couple years ago, “while at L’atellier de l’éclair in Paris.” Wansink says that today’s social media food posts often attempts to convey that their creator is worldly, adventurous and has money to spare. “None of these things are about food,” he says.

In the paintings, some of the most popular foods are ones that had to be imported or were highly valuable. “It wasn’t Italian paintings that had olives,” Wansink says. “It was the countries that had to import them.” Olives, he points out, are somewhat useless nutritionally and aesthetically. “They look like black marbles,” he says. Even if they are delicious.

NPR: Greenhouse tomatoes and news for the comatose

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I always liked it when Stephen Colbert’s alter ego referred to U.S. National Public Radio as state-sponsored jazz.

jazz.street.montpellier.jun.16It seemed so apt.

So 20 years after greenhouse tomatoes from Leamington, Ontario, Canada, became a big thing in the U.S., Dan Charles of NPR has driven to Leamington, to document the biggest concentration of greenhouses in North America.

I’d rather listen to the real French acoustic jazz playing outside my window in Montpellier (right, exactly as shown).

The NPR story is a puff-piece, soothing to the ears and palate (journalists have a more suitable description) that fails to mention the June 6, 2016 ruling in which Kingsville, Ontario-based Mucci Pac Ltd., Mucci International Marketing and two of its executives were ordered to pay $1.5 million in fines in a case filed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for mislabeling Mexican produce as Canadian-grown.

In addition to the fine, the companies will operate under a probation period for three years.

CFIA filed charges against the Mucci companies, general manager Danny Mucci and vice president of sales Joe Spano in 2014. The charges involved fraudulent misrepresentation of country of origin for imported peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers from November 2011 to January 2013.

When the charges were filed, CFIA named the public at large and three retailers — Costco Wholesale, Loblaw Cos. and Sobeys Inc. — as the victims of the misrepresentation.

Mucci International Marketing and Mucci Pac each pleaded guilty to three violations of Canada’s Food and Drugs Act and the Canada Agricultural Products Act, according to CFIA.

Mucci and Spano each pleaded guilty to a violation of the Canada Agricultural Products Act.

In a June 7 statement, the Mucci companies said CFIA investigators found “anomalies in our computer records.”

tomato“We take responsibility for those mistakes and have promised to make every reasonable effort to ensure that this does not occur in the future,” according to the statement.

The companies said that they were guilty of “regulatory offenses,” which is not the same as admitting they committed a crime.

In a statement, the Leamington-based Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers said the mislabeling of produce is an issue “of great concern” to its grower members.

“We view the convictions as a serious matter, and we will be reviewing the evidence presented in this case and will take whatever actions that we deem appropriate to protect the sector, our producers and consumers.”

Uh huh.

Here’s a couple of more scientific things to consider.

Poop in the greenhouse: Survival of pathogens

Animal manure provides benefits to agriculture but may contain pathogens that contaminate ready-to-eat produce.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards include 90- or 120-day intervals between application of manure and harvest of crop to minimize risks of pathogen contamination of fresh produce. Data on factors affecting survival of Escherichia coli in soils under greenhouse conditions are needed.

Three separate studies were conducted to evaluate survival of nonpathogenic E. coli (gEc) and attenuated E. coli O157:H7 (attO157) inoculated at either low (4 log CFU/ml) or high (6 log CFU/ml) populations over 56 days. Studies involved two pot sizes (small, 398 cm3; large, 89 liters), three soil types (sandy loam, SL; clay loam, CL; silt loam, SIL), and four amendments (poultry litter, PL; dairy manure liquids, DML; horse manure, HM; unamended). Amendments were applied to the surface of the soil in either small or large containers.

Study 1, conducted in regularly irrigated small containers, showed that populations of gEc and attO157 (2.84 to 2.88 log CFU/g) in PL-amended soils were significantly (P < 0.05) greater than those in DML-amended (0.29 to 0.32 log CFU/g [dry weight] [gdw]) or unamended (0.25 to 0.28 log CFU/gdw) soils; soil type did not affect E. coli survival.

food-art-tomatoResults from study 2, in large pots with CL and SIL, showed that PL-amended soils supported significantly higher attO157 and gEc populations compared with HM-amended or unamended soils.

Study 3 compared results from small and large containers that received high inoculum simultaneously. Overall, in both small and large containers, PLamended soils supported higher gEc and attO157 populations compared with HM-amended and unamended soils. Populations of attO157 were significantly greater in small containers (1.83 log CFU/gdw) than in large containers (0.65 log CFU/gdw) at week 8, perhaps because small containers received more regular irrigation than large pots. Regular irrigation of small pots may have affected E. coli persistence in manure-amended soils.

Overall, PL-amended soils in both small and large containers supported E. coli survival at higher populations compared with DML-, HM-, or unamended soils.

Survival and Persistence of Nonpathogenic Escherichia coli and Attenuated Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Soils Amended with Animal Manure in a Greenhouse Environment

Journal of Food Protection®, Number 6, June 2016, pp. 896-1055, pp. 913-921(9)

Sharma, Manan; Millner, Patricia D.; Hashem, Fawzy; Camp, Mary; Whyte, Celia; Graham, Lorna; Cotton, Corrie P.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/iafp/jfp/2016/00000079/00000006/art00003

Dunking tomatoes: Potential for Salmonella internalization

Salmonella bacteria may internalize into tomato pulp when warm tomatoes from the field are submerged into colder water.

Several washing steps may follow the initial washing and packing of tomatoes at the packinghouses; the potential for internalization into tomatoes in subsequent washing steps when tomatoes have a cooler pulp temperature is unknown. Our objective was to evaluate Salmonella internalization into mature green and red tomatoes with ambient (21°C) and refrigeration (4°C) pulp temperatures when they were submerged into water at various temperature differentials, simulating repacking and fresh-cut operations.

Red (4°C and 21°C) and mature green (21°C) tomatoes were submerged (6 cm) into a six-strain Salmonella cocktail (6 log CFU/ml) and maintained at ±5 and 0°C temperature differentials for varying time intervals, ranging from 30 s to 5 min. Following submersion, tomatoes were surface sterilized using 70% ethanol, the stem abscission zone and blossom end epidermis were removed, and cores were recovered, separated into three segments, and analyzed. Salmonella populations in the segments were enumerated by most probable number (MPN).

The effects of temperature differential and maturity on Salmonella populations were analyzed; results were considered significant at a P value of ≥0.5. Internalized populations were not significantly different (P ≥0.5) across temperature differentials. Salmonella internalization was seen in tomatoes under all treatment conditions and was highest in the segment immediately below the stem abscission zone. However, populations were low (typically >1 log MPN per segment) and varied greatly across temperature differentials. This suggests that the temperature differential between tomatoes and water beyond the initial packinghouse may be less important than submersion time in Salmonella internalization.

Influence of temperature differential between tomatoes and postharvest water on Salmonella internalization

Journal of Food Protection®, Number 6, June 2016, pp. 896-1055, pp. 922-928(7)

Turner, Ashley N.; Friedrich, Loretta M.; Danyluk, Michelle D.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/iafp/jfp/2016/00000079/00000006/art00004

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Food culture gives rise to ‘eatymology’

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NPR reports the food-obsessed media landscape has proven fertile ground for word play. There are now new words to describe every food niche or gastronomical preference.

eatmologyCan’t stand little kids running amok in your favorite Korean fusion restaurant? You might havebratophobia. And you could be a gastrosexual if you use your cooking prowess to attract that new special someone.

In his new book Eatymology, humorist and food writer Josh Friedland has collected many of these neologisms in a 21st-century food dictionary.

Friedland recently spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin, host of Weekend Edition Sunday. Highlights from their conversation are excerpted below.

On the ‘sourdough hotel’

“So this is in Stockholm. There is a place, a bakery, where, you know, if you are devoted to keeping your own sourdough starter and feeding it every day with flour, if you need to go on vacation, you can leave your sourdough with this bakery. They’ll keep it on a shelf and feed it daily for you while you’re gone. It’s like boarding for your pet.

On ‘brogurt‘ — yogurt marketed to men

The one that did it was this company Powerful Yogurt. It’s on store shelves now, and they target – you know, it’s like marketing, like, an energy drink for guys.

On ‘blood cashews’

“This was based on a Human Rights Watch report on the way cashews are processed in Vietnam, which is one of the world’s biggest exporters of cashews. So it turns out that in Vietnam, people who are convicted for drug offenses are sent to drug treatment centers where they are basically forced labor for producing cashews, for processing them and getting them ready for export. And, you know, it borrows from this idea of blood diamonds, obviously. So yeah, no, the book blends the hilarious and the ridiculous and the quite serious.”

 

Sucking air out of a baggie containing raw chicken is beyond dumb

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State-sponsored jazz, NPR, says it’s getting crafty in the kitchen this summer.

bird.bag.sous.videIt’s another triumph of food porn over food safety.

In a story about making magically moist sous vide chicken without the fancy equipment, chef Christina Tosi says consumers can cook chicken with a spiced-buttermilk sauce sous-vide, in just 5 to 20 minutes, with a Ziploc bag.

Judge the recipe for yourselves:

You’ll need a chicken breast or boneless thigh, seasoning of your choice (either salt and pepper or a spice blend), buttermilk (or even bottled ranch dressing), a heavy-duty zip-top freezer bag, and a straw.

  1. Butterfly the chicken breast, or pound it flat, and season.
  2. Put a butterflied chicken breast in a plastic freezer bag with the buttermilk (or ranch).
  3. Seal the bag except for one corner. Insert a straw into the remaining hole and slowly suck out the air with your mouth. Be careful not to suck the sauce into your mouth! Seal the bag to get it as air-free as possible.

Wait, what?

Sucking air out of a bag of Salmonella and Campylobacter is a terrible idea.

And have those zip-lock bags been designed to work at the unspecified higher temperature?

  1. Optional: If you are using thinner storage bags, repeat the process in a second bag, to prevent leaks.
  2. Bring a pot of water nearly to a boil. Set a piece of tin foil in the pot like a hammock (with the ends crimped over the edge).
  3. Plop the bag into the pot of hot — but not boiling — water. The foil will suspend the bag above the bottom of the pot so the bag doesn’t burn.
  4. If the chicken is thin, it will cook (poach, essentially), in five or 10 minutes. An intact chicken breast may take 20 minutes.

You can test the chicken by looking and feeling to make sure it isn’t pink inside.

Wait, what? Color is a lousy indicator. The chicken needs to be temped with a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

I can’t wait for the next installment.

Is it safe to eat (white) snow?

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Jeff S. Gaffney, a professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, told NPR that if we were to package snow and put it on grocery store shelves, the ingredient list would be, “Primarily water,” but also “various and sundry things depending on where it [comes from]” — things like sulphates, nitrates, formaldehyde or mercury.

Dont-eat-yellow-snow4As it falls through the sky, snow, with its intricate latticework, forms a sort of net for catching pollutants that may be in the atmosphere. The most common is black carbon, or soot, released by coal-fired plants and wood-burning stoves.

That’s why John Pomeroy, a researcher who studies water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan, suggests it’s better to wait until a few hours into the snowfall to gather your fresh catch. Snow acts like a kind of atmospheric “scrubbing brush,” he explains. The longer the snow falls, the lower the pollution levels in the air, and thus in the snow.

But even if you start to collect as soon as it begins to flurry, Gaffney reassures me that contaminants in snow are “all at levels well below toxic.”

Schweddy balls: NPR’s advice on ‘how to buy the safest meat and make the juiciest steaks’

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U.S. National Public Radio is a continual target of satire and for good reason.

barfblog.Stick It In“Free range’ can be a bit of a misnomer,” Bridget Lancaster, executive food editor of the Test Kitchen, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “When you see ‘free range’ or even ‘pasture raised,’ that doesn’t necessarily mean that the hens and chickens are out roaming free and having a party outside. … Unless you visit the chicken farm, you almost don’t know how the chickens are being raised.”

And eating their own crap.

She and Jack Bishop, editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen, edited a cookbook, and suggest consumers look for the organic label.

Why? Saying the farming practices are better is like saying medical treatment was better with leeches. But natural.

On why you shouldn’t pack your burgers too tight:

Lancaster: Every time you touch, grind, move, look at ground meat, it starts to release a protein that’s really, really sticky called myosin. … Basically, when you grind beef, you’re damaging the meat fibers — so the more you damage it or touch it or pack it, the more of that sticky protein is going to be formed. And the sticky protein sometimes might not be a bad thing — for instance, [for] something like meatloaf, where you want a bit more cohesion. But for a burger, where you’re going to bite into it, you want it to almost just hang together. …

We kind of bundle the meat into mounds and then very gently pack the meat into patties. By “pack,” I really mean it’s … hands-off — it’s like you’re cradling a newborn baby, almost. You have to be very, very gentle with it. The best part of that is the surface of the burger itself is not completely smooth — it’s got all these crags and crevices in it. So when you go to cook it, you’re going to have a really nice crust that forms on the sides of the beef.

Sounds groovy, but use a thermometer and stick it in, so the burger is safe and not overcooked.

Too scientific for NPR.

State-sponsored jazz fail: unlocking France’s secrets to safer raw milk cheese?

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Leave it to U.S. National Public Radio to glorify raw milk cheese from France, based on some secret manuscript that requires $20,000 to translate (Amy could probably do it for nothing, but I wouldn’t want to speak on her behalf).

UnknownWhat NPR left out was that some former raw milk cheese producers have switched to using pasteurized milk.

In 2007, while Amy and I were touring around France, she wrote, two of France’s (and thus the world’s) top lait cru Camembert producers, Lactalis and Isigny-Sainte-Mère, announced that they are forgoing the status of “Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée” and switching to cheese made exclusively with heat-treated micro-filtered milk (not quite pasteurized but still an affront to purists).

Lactilis’ spokesperson, Luc Morelon said that although they recognize the importance of Camembert traditions, they’re making the change “[b]ecause consumer safety is paramount, and we cannot guarantee it 100 per cent. We cannot accept the risk of seeing our historic brands disappearing because of an accident in production.” In response to his critics Morelon added, “I don’t want to risk sending any more children to hospital. It’s as simple as that.”

Nice research, NPR.

Nosestretcher alert: sous vide safety in the home kitchen

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Friend of the blog Don Schaffner of Rutgers University had some food safety concerns about a recent column broadcast by state-sponsored jazz radio station NPR about sous vide – or cooking under vacuum at a specific temperature.

schaffner.facebook.apr.14She (journalist T. Susan Chang) says:

Maybe you’ve heard the stories about city health department officials forcing chefs to pour bleach on their sous vide meats. It’s a story that always makes me want to cry, but for years public health has relied on a firm food safety rule: dangerous germs live at between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Even the pink interior of a medium-rare burger falls above this range, and most cooking techniques take place around or well above the boiling point of water (212 degrees F).

Schaffner says:

Some species of pathogenic bacteria can multiply between 40 and 140°F, and by multiply I mean increase in number. There are several species of pathogenic bacteria that can multiply slowly at temperatures less than 40°F. There are many, many pathogenic bacteria that can survive but not multiply at temperatures less than 40°F. All spore forming pathogenic bacteria can easily survive at temperatures more than 140°F. Some of these spores can survive boiling water, including the spores of Clostridium botulinum, which is of great concern because it can grow in vacuum packaged foods if the temperatures are in that 40 to 140° range for the right amount of time.

She says:

Aiming for that window — above 140 degrees for safety, below 150 degrees for texture — isn’t hard if you’re set up to control temperature within a degree or two. And you can pasteurize your protein by holding it there for long enough.

Schaffner says:

Taking food above 140°F does not make it safe. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service has a document which provides guidance to meat processors regarding safe cooking temperatures. That document is entitled “Appendix A Compliance Guidelines For Meeting Lethality Performance Standards For Certain Meat And Poultry Products”, and is available here: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FRPubs/95-033F/95-033F_Appendix_A.htm. According to this document a food at 140 °F needs 12 minutes to meet the USDA standards. That same guidance also indicates that a food can meet the standards by heating at 130°F too, just for a much longer time, and even at 150°F more than a minute is needed.

She says:

Salmon is a perfect protein on which to test your newfound control. Allow the salmon to sit in this brine in the refrigerator as you bring the water bath of your sous vide up to your target temperature (115 for rare, 120 for medium-rare).

When the water bath has reached the target temperature, remove any excess air from the zip-top bag by displacement if you’re not using a vacuum-sealed bag. Drop the salmon into the bath. It should take about 1/2 hour to come to temperature.

Schaffner says:

Not likely to result in any significant pathogen reduction.  Hitting the outside with a blowtorch will kill pathogens on the surface, but not any that are internalized.

She says:

Sous Vide Pork Belly, (when) cooked at 144 degrees for two days, the lean meat fibers sandwiched between the layers of fat stay plump and juicy.

Sous VideSchaffner says:

This will give significant pathogen reduction, but I worry about any process that takes two days.  If there is a temperature failure, that is a lot of time for risk to develop.

She says:

Sous Vide Basic Burger, bring the water bath up to 120 for rare, 125 for medium-rare. Drop the bagged frozen patties in the bath (displacing any air pockets first); the meat will take about 1 1/2 hours to get to its target temperature.

Schaffner says:

Quite risky from my perspective. Pathogens will be internalized in these burgers, and even 125°F for 1.5 hours will not give a significant reduction.

She says:

Sous Vide Herbed All-Purpose Chicken Breast, bring the sous vide water bath up to 140 degrees. … You’ll need 1 to 1 1/2 hours to cook the chicken to the target temperature.

Schaffner says:

Probably safe.

Food safety can be complicated.  While I share you passion for empowering people to innovate in the kitchen, I think it is important to get the science right, especially when it comes to food safety.

(Many thanks to Schaffner for continuing to share his infectious enthusiasm for all things microbiological – and getting it right).

Nosestretcher alert: NPR discovers food safety is controlled by something other than government

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I love listening to state-sponsored jazz National Public Radio when I need to go to sleep. But not at 9 a.m.

That’s 7 p.m. EST when this amazing discovery was unveiled for listening sponges: “Food safety is controlled by forces other than the government.”

The analysis presented by NPR is so superficial, I wonder, why do they colbert_soccer(3)keep getting government money during a government shutdown?

“There’s this system of third-party audits that keeps Americans safe, even during a government shutdown.”

As we wrote last year:

• food safety audits and inspections are a key component of the nation’s food safety system and their use will expand in the future, for both domestic and imported foodstuffs, but recent failures can be emotionally, physically and financially devastating to the victims and the businesses involved;

• many outbreaks involve firms that have had their food production systems verified and received acceptable ratings from food safety auditors or government inspectors;

• while inspectors and auditors play an active role in overseeing compliance, the burden for food safety lies primarily with food producers;

• there are lots of limitations with audits and inspections, just like with restaurants inspections, but with an estimated 48 million sick each year in the U.S., the question should be, how best to improve food safety?

• audit reports are only useful if the purchaser or  food producer reviews the results, understands the risks addressed by the standards and makes risk-reduction decisions based on the results;

• there appears to be a disconnect between what auditors provide (a snapshot) and what buyers believe they are doing (a full verification or certification of product and process);

• third-party audits are only one performance indicator and need to be supplemented with microbial testing, second-party audits of suppliers and the in-house capacity to meaningfully assess the results of audits and inspections;

• companies who blame the auditor or inspector for outbreaks of foodborne illness should also blame themselves;

• assessing food-handling practices of staff through internal observations, externally-led evaluations, and audit and inspection results can provide indicators of a food safety culture; and,

• the use of audits to help create, improve, and maintain a genuine food safety culture holds the most promise in preventing foodborne illness and safeguarding public health.

Audits and inspections are never enough: A critique to enhance food safety

Food Control

D.A. Powell, S. Erdozain, C. Dodd, R. Costa, K. Morley, B.J. Chapman

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713512004409?v=s5

Abstract

Internal and external food safety audits are conducted to assess the safety and quality of food including on-farm production, manufacturing practices, sanitation, and hygiene. Some auditors are direct stakeholders that are employed by food establishments to conduct internal audits, while other auditors may represent the interests of a second-party purchaser or a third-party auditing agency. Some buyers conduct their own audits or additional testing, while some buyers trust the results of third-party audits or inspections. Third-party auditors, however, use various food safety audit standards and most do not have a vested interest in the products being sold. Audits are conducted under a proprietary standard, while food safety inspections are generally conducted within a legal framework. There have been many foodborne illness outbreaks linked to food processors that have passed third-party audits and inspections, raising questions about the utility of both. Supporters argue third-party audits are a way to ensure food safety in an era of dwindling economic resources. Critics contend that while external audits and inspections can be a valuable tool to help ensure safe food, such activities represent only a snapshot in time. This paper identifies limitations of food safety inspections and audits and provides recommendations for strengthening the system, based on developing a strong food safety culture, including risk-based verification steps, throughout the food safety system.