Food: A Documentary Pt. 5

ERIC LARSON

Consumers really have a lot of control. It is just they don’t tend to exercise it.  If a consumer truly wants to buy local fruits and vegetables, number one are Farmers’ Markets.  You can’t sell at a farmers’ market unless you are a California grower.  San Diego County is a San Diego grower.  Right there, you know instantly that you are buying locally.  If a farmer ships out of the area, goes to a nutritional packing house, they will only get 19%-20% of the food dollar.  If it stays local and takes the middlemen out of the equation, they might be able to give a better price for the product they sell.

HOST

Tomatoes are the number one favorite fruit among Americans.  As reporter Ed Joyce tells us, San Diego county grows the nation’s largest fine, ripen crop.

ED JOYCE

San Diego County has the largest community of organic growers in the state and nation, with 343 farms growing more than 150 crops.  We wanted to find out what the difference was between organic and conventionally grown tomatoes and whether the way they were grown affect the taste.  While tomatoes might be America’s favorite, they’re also the fruit we’re least satisfied with when it comes to grocery store produce.  So we went to the OB People’s Organic Food Market to talk with the coop’s marketing director, Amber McHale to find out why the store only buys and sells organic tomatoes.  As a disclaimer, I’m a member of the coop.

AMBER MCHALE – Marketing Director, OB People’s Coop

Some crops have been proven organically to have a higher yield of certain of vitamins, not all.  That’s a study that is still ongoing.  But again, for me and for most of these shoppers, it is not the extra added nutrition, although again, we have healthy soya, we are going to have a healthy product.  It’s the lack of what’s not in there: the synthetic, toxic pesticides, those fertilizers.

ED JOYCE

Organic growers say residue from pesticides can be harmful, especially to children.  The EPA recently announced it will begin a series of test on pesticides and their effects on human endocrine systems which regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction.  An environmental group in Washington, DC ranked 43 fruits and vegetables based on the amount of pesticides, but not the toxicity of its pesticide found on them.  Tomatoes rank halfway down the list, with 47% of the tomatoes containing pesticides.  Peaches were the worst offender with 97%.

ED JOYCE

Where do these tomatoes come from?  Do they come from San Diego County, they come from California?

AMBER MCHALE

Right now, all our tomatoes are coming from California.  The jumbos, the cherry and the heirloom are coming locally from BY’s ranch and the Romas are coming from the Central Valley, so it is regional and it is not local.

ED JOYCE

KC Anderson is an organic grower.  He and his mother grow 13 varieties of organic heirloom tomatoes in Valley Center.  It is late in the season, so Anderson’s crop is winding down, but buying locally grown organic tomatoes at a farmer’s market is as direct and fresh as they come.   But do they taste better?

CASEY ANDERSON – Local Grower

They all have different tastes.  I mean, the green zebras, this is fully ripe.  I mean this is what they look like.  They are really sweet but they taste like they have lime drizzled over the top; they are really tangy.

ED JOYCE

When it comes to flavor, it may just be a matter of taste.  However, most tomatoes bought at the grocery store have been picked while they are green so they can survive long trips across the country.  They’re ripened artificially with ethylene gas.   Temperature also plays a role.  Tomatoes won’t ripen in temperatures below 50⁰.  Some varieties are also bred for shape, color and shelf life, not necessarily taste.

In California, most tomatoes are destined for cans.  The state produces 90% of the country’s processed tomatoes.

HOST

Americans eat more per capita than ever before.   According to government statistics, 1/3 of us are obese.  We buy $.99 hamburgers and chicken that cost less than a dollar a pound.  Producers in the food chain tell us we want cheaper food and we want more of it.

BILL BRANDENBURG

Obviously, the consumer vote tells you what it is going to do.  If you are raising something that the consumer doesn’t want, then you don’t sell it.  You are not going to raise it again.  So you will vote.

HOST

And we have voted with our money.  We don’t have enough time to peel our own oranges and we are too busy to find out what’s in our food.

JEFFREY GRAHAM

 

The soccer moms don’t have enough time to do everything that she does and worry about the quality or the source of the fish sticks she feeds her kids.  Then she can look at these websites to figure out how to do this.

 

HOST

 

Can we actually track our food on the dinner plate to the farm, field or ocean?   Most of it, we can’t.  What happens when that search leads us here?  The video you are about to see is graphic and disturbing.  Last year, a California meat company issued the largest meat recall in history.  143 million pounds of beef was recalled after humane society video revealed sick cows dragged to slaughter.  It is illegal to use sick animals in the meat supply because of the risk of disease.  We had several questions for the USDA when we began our investigation into food.  They didn’t respond to most of our emails or our request for an interview.  We did learn however, that so much of this information is available to the public on government and trade association websites and in the scientific literature.  Maybe we just stopped paying attention because the new mass produced food chain has made life easy and the food we eat cheap or maybe, we just don’t want to know where our food comes from.

 

You can find out more about our food investigation by going to our website, kpbs.org/food.  You can also leave a comment; we would love to hear from you.  For KPBS and Envision San Diego, I’m Joanne Faryon.  Thanks for watching.

Food: A Documentary Pt. 5 has been transcribed by Affordable Grocery, a leading grocery philadelphia provider along with starting a new “feed the homeless” program in the Philadelphia region.

Food: A Documentary Pt. 3

JEFFREY GRAHAM – Marine Biologist, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

For every pound of growth of a salmon, it takes approximately five pounds of fish that are caught and ground up and turned into pellets or some kind of feeding way or feeding mechanism to give to these fish.  So 5 to 1.  That is a fairly steep ratio.  What you are essentially doing then and part of the two-way street, the two way argument that is given about aquaculture, as well, is it takes the pressure off the natural populations.  However,  if you have to catch five pounds of fish from the natural environment to rear one pound of salmon for high-end table consumption, then the Arithmetic just doesn’t work out in terms of the long term benefits to the ocean.

JEFFREY GRAHAM

There is a lot of experimentation going on and we do a lot of it here on our species, that is looking to replace that fish meal on the diet, with soy protein or other processing by-products like beef or chicken by-products, basically waste-in-process that can be turned around and used as a protein supplement to replace the fish meal.

HOST

According to the National Renderers Association, cow and chicken by-products, including cattle blood and bone and poultry feathers have been fed to farmed fish for decades.  The association told KPBS that cattle fat, blood and bone meal are being increasingly used in fish diets as alternatives to fish oil and other proteins.  So by now, you might be asking what we asked when we learned fish were eating cattle by-products.   Can fish get Mad Cow disease?  Mad Cow or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE is a neuro-degenerative disease in cattle that can be passed on to humans.   The European countries have banned cattle by-products in fish feed because if fish eat contaminated cattle and cattle eat contaminated fish, there is a risk that in theory, the disease could be transmitted to the food chain.  Here in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of most cow by-products as feed to other cows in 1997.  But the same rules do not apply to fish feed.  However, a new regulation does ban the use of cattle brains and spines in fish feed.  Both contain the highest concentrations of infected material in diseased cattle.  There has never been a case of human contracting mad cow from eating farmed fish.

Meanwhile, there continues to be an ongoing debate over the Omega-3 content of farmed versus wild fish.  Omega-3s are the healthy fats that can help prevent heart disease and Alzheimer’s.  One large grocery chain claims on its website that farmed salmon actually has more Omega-3 than wild salmon.  KPBS put their claim to the test and sent fish samples, wild and farmed to a lab in Oregon.  The test results confirmed that farmed salmon did have nearly twice the amount of healthy Omega-3s as wild salmon, but you have to eat nearly four times the amount of fat to get those nutrients.

Americans eat more chicken than any other meat; about 74 pounds per person, each year.  Most of it is white meat.  Consumers like white meat and so the industry has found a way to give us what we want.

CURTIS WOMACH

These are my fast-growing Kurdish cross, and they’re what are in the supermarkets and restaurants, this kind of chicken.

HOST

Most of the chickens we buy in the grocery are called broilers, a cross between two other chickens, a Cornish and Plymouth Rock.

CURTIS WOMACH

They’re bred to grow really fast and have lots of white meat because see how wide it is and you see the big breast.

HOST

But none of these chickens will end up in a grocery store.  Curtis Womach raises these chickens on a farm just outside of Julian.  Most chickens in a grocery store are raised on a factory floor.  Womach sells his chickens at a farmers’ market.  He decided that he will no longer raise this type of chicken.

CURTIS WOMACH

They can’t physically mate because of all the white meat gets in the way.  They are still chickens and they want to be like chickens but they can’t move.  They would like to go under the trees and the shade but it is too hard for them to walk over there.

HOST

Their breasts are so big, these chickens can barely walk.  Look at this, a different breed and able to run away from our camera.  Chickens are raised mostly on corn, fish meal can be added to their feed, even chicken feather.  Antibiotics are used but it is illegal to use hormones in chickens in the United States.  So when you see labels like these, no hormones added, well it is illegal to add hormones to all chicken.  In fact, it is against USDA regulations to say no hormones have been added unless this line follows, see that line in small print?

Food: A Documentary Pt. 3

Food: A Documentary Pt. 2

HOST

Studies have suggested corn-fed cattle may harbor more virulent strains of E. coli than grass-fed beef, although a new study out of Kansas State University is now challenging that assumption.

Feed lots have also led to wider use of antibiotics and almost all the beef you buy in the grocery comes from cattle injected with hormones.

BILL BRANDENBURG

Because it is much more expensive to produce beef without hormones.

HOST

Corn makes cattle fat.  Hormones give them more lean muscle tissue.

Bill Brandenburg says that the cattle can grow 10% bigger with hormones.

BILL BRANDENBURG

Without hormones, the cattle will have just a lot more fat in them so they are going to produce a lot more of those upper grades of beef.

HOST

Don’t they have more fat in them because we are feeding them corn?

BILL BRANDENBURG

It is the combination of corn and the fact that what the hormones actually do is the animal produces different ratios of estrogen and testosterone.   The hormones don’t actually go into the blood stream per se, but it causes the animal to produce its own different levels, so it maximizes the production of lean and minimizes the production of fat.

HOST

But if we didn’t feed them corn, isn’t it that corn feed that gives them the fat?

BILL BRANDENBURG

Yes.

HOST

So if we didn’t feed them corn, they wouldn’t necessarily need the hormones to make more less fat?

BILL BRANDENBURG

Well, you can do them grass-fed on without implants and you would still have a product but wouldn’t taste as good as corn-fed beef.  That’s what the consumers in the United States like; it is the flavor and the tenderness that goes along with corn-fed.

HOST

American beef is banned in Europe because of the use of hormones.  Shelton Murinda is an Animal Scientist Professor at Cal Poly Pomona.

SHELTON MURINDA

The Europeans will use what I will call the precautionary principle which simply indicates that if there is not enough scientific evidence, it is better to be on the safe side.

HOST

Isn’t it?

SHELTON MURINDA

It is always better on the safe side if you don’t have sufficient scientific evidence.

HOST

Why do we still use hormones in beef in the United States?

SHELTON MURINDA

The situation is rather different here.  The poison corns have been thrown about.  Some of them are what I indicated the potential side effects.  As far as I know, there has not been enough risk assessment that has been done with relevance to decide the effects of those hormones in the human population.  Not enough research has been done to gather that information, so there is no risk assessment that has been done.

HOST

So why not go on the side of caution like the Europeans?

SHELTON  MURINDA

We rather think differently.

HOST

So will any of these cattle end up on your plate?

SHELTON MURINDA

The chance of getting beef that is raised in California is rather slim, in other words.  Most of it comes from outside California.

HOST

The average American eats about 17 pounds of fish per year.   Half the fish we eat is farmed fish.  That means that the fish was born, raised and fed in a net not far off the coast.  We wanted to know whether farmed fish was as healthy as wild caught fish.  The answer, it all depends on what farmed fish eat.  Just wait until you hear what we are feeding them.

DON KENT

I grew up in San Diego when San Diego was the tuna capital of the world.  You go down at Embarcadero and tuna sanders were tied up next to each other, three deep along at Embarcadero.   That is gone now.

HOST

Don Kent is president at Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute.  Here, they are developing new ways to farm fish from the hatchery and now, to your table.  Hub Sea World wants to establish the largest fish farm off U.S. Coastal waters, five miles west of Mission Bay.  Kent sees it as a boon to the local economy and a way to take pressure off depleting fish stocks.  The debate over fish farming has traditionally been about how to do it in a way that doesn’t contaminate local waters.  Hubbs believe that by establishing nets five miles off the coast where the water is deep and the current is swift, it can minimize contamination concerns.  But there is another issue, fish also eat other fish.  If farmed fish are fed fish, the practice could deplete dwindling stocks.  So the challenged is to find other sources of fish food and fish oil to feed farmed fish.

Food: A Documentary Pt. 2

Food: A Documentary Pt. 1

Hello everyone!  I’m Joanne Faryon.  Welcome to this Envision San Diego Special: Food.  It is something we take for granted.  After all, California is the largest supplier of food to the country.  Grocery store aisles are stocked with just about anything we care to buy: chicken for less than a dollar a pound, steaks the size of a dinner plate, every species of fish and fruits and vegetables, no matter the season.

It may seem as though the cost of these groceries continue to rise.  But we actually spend less money on our food than we did a couple of generations ago.  Just how all of these foods make its way to the grocery store and your dinner plate is the subject of tonight’s investigation.

We’ll also tell you why it is relatively cheap to buy beef, chicken, and even fish.  Some of it, you may not want to know.  But at the end of the program, we hope you walk away a better informed consumer.

Forty million pounds of San Diego oranges are on their way to countries as far away as China.  13,000 head of cattle are being fattened in Imperial Valley.  One in five will be slaughtered for sale in Japan, the others distributed across the country.   In Mission Bay, scientists are trying to figure out what to feed farmed fish.  Thos cattle you just saw, well, they could be on the menu.

The food chain doesn’t look like it used.  Fish no longer eat fish.  Cattle eat corn even though it can make them sick.  Chickens eat fish and fish are eating cows.  Even chicken feathers become food.  We grow oranges but send them away because they are too hard for us to peel.  The ones we eat come from Australia.  Just how do they get to be this way?  Is it good for us?

Tonight, we look at the food we eat from the dinner plate to the farm, field and ocean and how our demand for cheap food and more food has altered the food chain.  A food chain that is motivated by making the greatest amount of food for the cheapest cost, in other words, efficiency.

Americans consume nearly 20% of all the beef in the world, but only make up about 5% of the world’s population.  In 2008, the U.S. slaughtered more than 34 million cattle; slightly more than the year before.

We wanted to know whether we were keeping track of where all those cattle came from and where they all ended up.  In other words, if you bought a steak in San Diego, could you trace it back to the ranch?  So we followed the chain and what we found was a fast-growing corn-fed, hormone and antibiotic injected animal that likely travelled thousands of miles before it ended up at your table.   Most of the 1.4 million dairy cows in the state are also destined for your table as hamburger.

Let’s start at the beginning.  In Southern California, most cattle start out like this, eating grass on a pasture.

JIM DAVIS – S.D. and Imperial Valley Cattleman’s Association

In the 40s and 50s when my grandfather was running cattle here, he would basically sell his cattle as two or three-year olds that would be taken to market here in San Diego County and then distributed here in San Diego County.

HOST

It doesn’t work that way anymore.  Now, cattle are raised on grass for six months, and then sold at auction to another rancher, usually out of state.  We don’t have enough grass or rain to feed all our cattle year round.  Once they are sold, they’ll live another six months on grass and then sold again.  This time, they go to a feed lot.  Large pens where cattle are sent to be fattened before they are slaughtered.  This one in Imperial Valley houses 13,000 animals.   It is considered small.  Some are home to more than 100,000 animals.  Cattle spend four or five months here.  They’re fed mostly corn.  The U.S. introduced cattle into feed lots and corn into their diets after World War II.  Both had a dramatic effect.  The animals grew faster and fatter.

Broc Sandelin is an Animal Scientist Professor at Cal Poly Pomona and a third generation cattle rancher.

HOST

Is there any research that says that they have a tough time digesting corn?

BROC SANDELIN

I’m not familiar with any example.  I’m not a nutritionist so I really don’t know for sure, but I’m sure you could probably find something for you, if you want to.

HOST

Is it easier for them to digest grass than corn?

BROC SANDELIN

Yes, because this is what they’re naturally eating and that is grass.

Food: A Documentary Pt. 1

Going Organic On A Budget

Buying affordable groceries and going organic may seem impossible, especially considering how organic food has expensive farming methods and higher delivery costs. Go green without increasing your monthly expenses with these tips.

1. Go local. More logistics costs are incurred the further away the processing occurred. Groceries coming from a local farmer’s market will be cheaper than getting organic food from New Hampshire.

2. Go with the season. Nectarine is a good fruit to buy organic because of the heavy pesticides in the non-organic variety. However, if you include them in your February groceries, the nectarine was most likely imported and charged extra for delivery.

3. Go on a menu. Before getting your affordable groceries and throughout its consumption, plan your meals properly. By organizing a menu and sticking to it, you can buy organic food in bulk.

4. Go for larger stretched-out meals. Getting groceries for five microwave dinners is not cheaper than a beef stew made from purely organic food. The preparation time might be longer but the larger proportions allow you to skip a session of cooking and serve its leftovers for lunch.

5. Go gardening. Consider growing your own herbs in the backyard or even on your sunny kitchen sill. This way, you have more money to purchase other affordable groceries.

6. Go for inedible skins. If you and your wallet are not yet ready to convert to organic food in its entirety, only buy thick-skinned non-organic fruits and vegetables. The pesticide on the surfaces of bananas and onions, for example, won’t affect the consumed parts.

7. Go back to the traditional way. Before powdered broth and canned beans were part of the usual groceries, chicken stock was made from boiling its bones and beans were actually cooked to perfection. Organic food is also ideal and healthier for such practices.

8. Go for meal extenders, not meat extenders. Processed food does not make for a filling meal. Cook organic food and serve potatoes, brown rice, and whole wheat bread during the main course to stifle the need for unhealthy and expensive desserts.

In the end, organic food always amounts to affordable groceries and a better budget. What you lost out on with cheaper processed food is outweighed by the health benefits you gained. To top it off, the organic methods you are encouraging farmers to adapt is helping provide a brighter tomorrow for future generations.

Home: The Summer Grocery Haul

Grocery Haul

Hey, guys. So, I’ve gotten your quest on grocery haul forever and I just never – that be interesting enough to post on its own video but since this own question, just watch the store. We got home yesterday from our trip and my fridge is empty so I need to stock up some things, obviously we have food. So, I have five Whole Foods bags. This is about much food that I buy in one fell swoop. I don’t like buying a lot of food filling at one time because I don’t like it to spoil but we have literally nothing in our fridge except for like half and half some apple or something. So, I need to re-stock up on food. So, I’ll just going to pull things up and show you in a casual manner. I always have freezer bag with me and I put cold items in. And this is a very typical large size grocery haul for me, so I have this organic chicken breast from Pine Manner farms, done up little grills for me. I like to have them for my salad for lunch or keen on for dinner.

These are not my favorite eggs. Actually they did not have my favorite eggs at the store today. But these are the same kind of eggs. These are organic cage-free omega 3 eggs but 365 organic everyday value, the kind I usually get is by organic valley. It’s just the Whole Foods brand that one and I believe they are about the same thing. And this is the one that I usually buy, but they’re out of that one that I usually get.

Let’s see. I got my favorite organic cottage cheese from horizon organic with two percent non fat. Oikos plain greek yogurt by stonyfield organic. This is the milk drink, organic valley, 2 percent milk. And I got two of these. These are my favorite, frozen quick grab it lunch. I just throw them away to microwave oven for just few minutes. These are by evol burritos, the fire grill chicken fajita is my absolute favorite. They’re so yummy. Then I got a couple of the Whole Foods premade things I got there because we’re going to have some fajita. I also got my favorite fresh mango salsa, so good. I use it in place of dressing in my salads and it’s just so tasty. That was everything that was in there.

Then I got small container of SO delicious dairy free coconut milk and the unsweetened. We’re stocking up on my favorite blue diamond almond breeze in vanilla unsweetened. I usually put them in coffee or smoothies or anything in that nature. Rudi’s organic 14 grain bread, I’d prefer the double fiber, it’s very rare that they actually have the double fiber in stock. I don’t know why, so that’s why I have the 14 grains like my back up choice. My favorite sauce, they were out, so I bought two stock up. This is by Amy’s and its’ the organic tomato salsa in medium. It is so good. Then I bought few Luna bars to stock up on those. Two of these smores, I know I love those. Then, I also got two different one I don’t eat very often. I don’t think I ever have caramel nut brownie, so I bought one of those to try. And white chocolate macadamia, I can’t recall that I have one of those either. But I do loving this year, so I thought it would be interesting.

This is a bar soap that I use in the shower. This is Whole Foods brand, 85 percent organic, triple French milled soap in lemon borbana. It’s one of my favorites, so we bought more of those.

And the reason why all the bags look crinkling because I wash them in a washing machine and then I just didn’t have time to press them and that’s what happened. So, there it is.

Then, I got our Earthbound Farm organic spring mix lettuce, my favorite lettuce. And a big carton of mushrooms, these are from Illinois. Organic baby carrots from 365 organic, I got a lot of organic broccoli, one of my favorite easy-go-to dinners. This done in chop up and steam the broccoli and then sauté the mushrooms with sliced garlic, I forgot to buy garlic. I used to buy garlic, too. And we have chemo with grilled chicken, they are organic zucchini, the time of year to have them and I love them with hamburger or something out my grill. Organic cucumber, I like those in my salad and two organic avocados. I’d have those in my salad as well for my lunch.

This one is on sale, I don’t remember, it’s two for something. We both like this pop chips. I like this soap and vinegar, and then Donald likes the barbeque potato, they’re just less fattening potato chips. They’re not fried and not baked but somehow popped. I don’t know but they’re less fattening and therefore you must still taste it.

Some organic bananas, I like them green. I got three organic bell peppers for our fishy dust. I like to buy organic produce whenever possible. I’ve got organic strawberries, organic local cherry tomatoes, this is from Wisconsin, organic raspberries and organic blue berries. So, I’ll wash them off and cut strawberries and those go to my yogurt in the morning. Two apples of brand, not a brand, kind of apple that I’ve never heard of, it’s crisp pink apple. And when I saw it immediately, I don’t know why but my mind immediately it was a typo and this should have been crisp at pink.

And then the last bag here, we have tortilla chips. These are my favorite, their local name Chicago, totally delicious. I always buy Martha Stewart Halloween hand book when it comes out, but I noticed it looks exactly the same in a different year and it says special collector’s edition back in print. So, I’m going to compare with my other one in previous year and see if it is really exactly the same.

Here’s my list. I always bring my grocery list to the store. And it’s sticky now and it’s just like attacked and stick it on to the handlebars in my cart so it’s easy and I organize my list obviously, section of the store like go to the store. And I stocked up on my favorite laundry detergent by Ecos earth-friendly product in a lemon grass flavor.

And that is my grocery haul. I’m going to put everything away now. I hope you, guys, enjoyed this little different look at haul and I thought it’s interesting. This is really basically what I buy, I mean like I said I don’t buy all at once all the time, but a lot of these are stapled products for us. And like I said, we’re going to make a special dinner or something. I like to go and buy those things separate. Some things I might spoil in our pantry and our plans tend to change the last minute.

But, I hope you, guys, enjoy this. Thanks for watching. Let me know about my grocery haul and take care. Bye, guys.

Home: Laundry Based Groceries Needed Beyond Detergent

Detergent alone may not be enough to ensure clean clothes. These additives need not be limited to bleach and chlorine. Here are three friendly groceries that also alter into fabric superheroes.

 

Baking Soda: The secret ingredient behind the bubbles in pancakes and quick bread, baking soda is more than just a leavening agent. In fact, more and more consumers include sodium bicarbonate in their groceries because of its amazing cleaning capabilities. Laundry is no exception. It removes detergent and bleach odors while helping them perform better. It neutralizes acids and bases before they can damage other clothes and suds before they overflow. When looking for multi-purpose groceries, add fabric softener and rejuvenator to baking soda’s list of capabilities as it can soften even old stains making them easier to remove.

 

Table Salt: A staple in food groceries, sodium chloride can be used as more than just a salty seasoning. Half a cup of salt during the last wash of new clothes will prevent its dyes from staining the water and other clothes. A larger amount can bring back color to paler curtains and rugs. Soak white cotton or linen in a tablespoon of salt with a quarter cup of baking soda to remove its yellow tint. Salt’s most selling feature as a staple in affordable groceries is its ability to remove stains such as blood, gravy, grease, ink, mildew, rust, wine, and even perspiration stains. If you have a pair of mismatched stockings, you can boil them for a few minutes in slightly salty water to get a pair of the same color.

White Distilled Vinegar: If you get a lot of dirty laundry, recalculate your groceries’ consumption as adding a quarter cup of vinegar to your last rinse can do a lot of wonders. Vinegar dissolves the alkaline properties of soap and detergent on the fabric and thus removes the soap smell. It also removes all other odors that remain even when the stain has left. Vinegar acts as a fabric softener and prevents lint from clinging to your clothes. It also kills the mold and mildew that clings to wet and forgotten laundry. Aside from that, heavy duty stains can be soaked in a bucket mixed with a cup of vinegar to soften it up for the regular detergent.

Getting affordable groceries means finding multiple uses for the items that you buy. However, don’t use all of these items at once as they produce different chemical reactions when put together that may lead to a disastrous day of laundry.

Grocery Delivery Stores

With the growing popularity of the grocery delivery stores, it becomes extremely difficult to point out the negative aspects, which has led to the bankruptcy of such stores. Many stores have crumbled like deck of card in recent years. This business got all the hype due to market demand and profitability in several locations, yet it failed to retain its customers.

Man is considered a social animal, but when grocery is delivered at home no one would prefer to go out for shopping. This reduces interaction between people. Single people go for shopping to hunt for a date and family goes for grocery shopping to spend quality time together. All this is not possible with a grocery delivery service. This turns out to be the major reason as to why people started preferring shopping than homedelivery.

Another reason customers sidelined these stores is delivery of stale and rotten fruits and vegetables. When ordering on phone the quality of the fruits and vegetables delivered is unknown, they can be fresh or rotten. There is always a high probability of the fruits to be rotten as the delivery person is allotted a fixed time for one delivery and in a hurry they pick up fruits which come in their hand first. The customer has to accept the items delivered to them even though they are bad for their health.

Local markets get new stock for fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. The same is not true for a grocery delivery store. Their order depends on how successfully they have sold the already existing stock of vegetables. Inability to sell vegetables and fruits on a certain day leads to the same stock being used till it is sold out completely. This may take a day or a week.

When purchasing meat, fish or eggs shoppers want to the cut they are getting. The freshness of these is determined by the colour and odour. But if they are purchased from a grocery delivery store all that can be seen is the picture of the available meat. Seeing a picture nothing can be concluded. The pictures displayed may not be of the fresh meat they can be taken from any website or forged. Customers stopped purchasing non vegetarian items from these stores, thus reducing the revenue of these stores as the major profit margin comes from selling of meat and fish.

There is no doubt regarding the effectiveness and usefulness of a grocery delivery store, still there is long way to go before it can truly capture the market.

Home: Seven Days and Seven Ways To Prepare Rice

Get inspired with a week of these rice delights and add your own touch to the dish, as well. The best part about it is all the ingredients can be ordered on your next grocery delivery.

Monday: Chicken Rice Porridge

For the manic Monday rush, rice porridge is simply practical. Your grocery delivery list needs to include chicken and ginger. Boil rice in three times its volume of water or more for a longer stirring session, softer rice, and more soup. When the rice is half-cooked, add the strips of chicken and ginger.

Tuesday: Cooked Rice and Toppings

Now that you have a little more time on your hands, pair up plainly cooked rice with a saucy favorite recipe. Cook a two-day portion of the rice from your grocery delivery. Serve the rice in bowls and top it with your stew or soup. The remaining rice should be stored in the refrigerator for tomorrow’s meal.

Wednesday: Fried Rice

With your remaining cooked rice, you can make an easy brunch. Try out whatever is on your usual grocery delivery list as the main ingredient. To start, fry garlic and onions in a pan with enough oil for the rice and any other ingredient that absorbs oil quickly. Add the ingredients that take the longest to cook first.

Thursday: Pilaf

Rice does not need to be boiled in water to be edible. You can try a Middle Eastern pilaf and cook your grocery delivery staple in broth. Remember to rinse the rice first before adding it to the broth. All types of rice undergo milling and enrichment processes before being packed into the sacks brought over by grocery delivery.

Friday: Arroz con Pollo

For a Latin American-flavored Friday night, cook your rice in simmering chicken. Different countries have different ways of cooking this meal so pick one that matches your cooking skills and preferred tastes. Look up a simpler recipe version to stay within your grocery delivery budget.

Saturday: Paella

Treat yourself to a Spanish meal without going over budget by using chicken, spare ribs and sausage for your meat choices. Replace saffron by ordering yellow food coloring from your grocery delivery service. If you are willing and able, splurge for the extra seafood that would make the paella and tomorrow’s jambalaya extra special.

Sunday: Jambalaya

Similar to Saturday’s dish, jambalaya is made up of meat, its stock, and vegetables. The main difference is the preference for a spicier and gamier recipe. Of course, the original jambalaya of alligator, boar, and turtle might not be something your stomach is really up to. Your grocery delivery service might not have these ingredients either.

There you have it…..7 days and 7 different ways to cook rice. Eat healthy!!

Healthy Food and Grocery Hauls

Grocery Haul

Hello everyone! If you followed me on Twitter, you know that a little less than a week ago, I purchased Tone of diet plant for healthy living and just to be eating healthy and just putting healthy natural products into your system and obviously that helps you lose weight but it also helps you to just be healthy in general. And I’ve already done a ton of weight loss in terms of, like major weight loss stuff with isogenics three years ago or something like that. So I really don’t need to lose that much, maybe I want to lose maybe about ten pounds but this is really about healthy eating and just putting more natural products into me and not putting in all those chemicals and the junk and stuff.

The other day, my Mom and I went grocery shopping and we went and buy a ton of awesome healthy products. But I wanted a little bit of a grocery haul for you, guys, because a lot of you on Twitter were really interested in some health videos and stuff like that. So, I want to show you guys what I picked up that was like all healthy foods. So if you’re interested, keep watching and please subscribe. You can probably see a bunch of it behind me there at the greens. I’m going to start at the dairy staff just because it really desperately needs to be refrigerated. First thing that I got and this is something that I haven’t tried before but I’ve always been kind of curious about is Greek Yogourt. I got this in strawberry just in case I didn’t like it. Obviously the strawberry has a bit of flavor into it but I didn’t want to get the plain. I know the plain seem like a better option. You can do flavoring as well but the plain one, I just want to be sure that I like it and I’m a huge strawberry fan so I got this Greek Strawberry Yogourt. I actually tried this a little bit already and it’s so yummy, really good for you, way healthier than like most yogurts. It’s got lots of probiotics and other good stuff in there that talks about. If you guys buy that diet plan, you’ll have all the information. Net item that I got the grocery store, in the same dairy section was Cottage Cheese and it’s one percent cottage cheese so it’s low fat. And cottage cheese is something that I always thought was kind of gross, never wanted to eat or try it or go near because I always thought “Eeew, it’s kinda weird”. But I tried it and it’s actually super yummy and I really, really like it.

If you also tried like pure mozzarella then it’s very, very similar in taste but obviously a little bit more watery but it actually tastes really, really good. So I got some cottage cheese and these are two new things that I never would have picked up at the grocery store before. Now speaking of mozzarella, I did actually get a mozzarella ball which is actually really big size but I think it was about $5.00 and mozzarella is way lower in calories and fat than most cheeses. I mean it’s not something that I would recommend eating on a daily basis or anything like that but for a nice light treat, mozzarella’s actually really, really yummy. You see like a huge cheese fan like – I just, I could eat cheese all day and be thousand pounds because I love cheese but obviously I have to like have some self-control but cheese is so yummy I could put on everything.

This is something that I tried like over a year ago and I actually really decided I like it. It sounds weird and almost like I don’t know. Before, I would never have thought to try this but it’s Almond Milk, two flavors. One of them is just the original so it’s like got no flavoring or anything. It’s just plain I guess it’s a close to regular milk – ‘coz I put it in my cereal kind of thing and I like the chocolate almond milk because it’s kinda like chocolate milk but it’s obviously not chocolate milk. But it’s chocolate flavored almond milk so it’s really good for you and has that chocolaty taste so you can get that chocolate milk curbing of your appetite. For my bread type products, I’ve actually been eating this bread for over two years I think. It’s the Body Wise bread. Kind of pricey, it’s about $3.50 for this loaf and its very thin slices that you can see. There are 50 calorie slices of bread per slice so really low calorie, less in like fatty ingredient and stuff that are way better for you, has all natural products. And yet I was actually looking for Ezekiel Bread but I can’t find, probably got to Whole Foods. Always a huge fan of wraps like wraps are probably one of my favorite foods other than sandwiches and stuff to eat so I got some whole wheat wraps as well. So it’s like tortilla wraps but you can use this, I make tuna melts in them and so many different yummy foods and like so many awesome recipes that I’m reading in the wrap section of my Tone It Up Diet Plan so really excited to try some of those.

And the last thing that I got, it’s more like actual big carb like wheat kind of product is Shredded Wheat. My mom and I both got a box of this. I’ve tried the flavored shredded wheat. This is like super plain shredded wheat. Fruits, I could eat all day everyday like fruit and cheese I could live off for the rest of my life kind of thing so I got a ton of fruits when I like all natural products right? So I get crazy with fruits so I got tons of these. Three oranges, these are just regular oranges I’m not gonna juggle with them. I would like to attempt it as tempting as but it’s a failing. I also got some apples and unfortunately this is the only one left. I got some three apples again. This is just I think the red delicious apples but this one left. Grapefruit, which I’m not definitely juggling with these ones, grapefruit is so yummy and I honestly love, love, love grapefruit. I usually in the spring and summer have at least a half to a whole grapefruit a day. In the morning for breakfast before I eat anything else, I’ll have like a glass of water and some grapefruit. I also get a couple of things in terms of berries which I love berries. Berries are one of the best fruits ever. I got this, what are these even called? I’ve had them. I always call them like bumble berries or something, blackberries. That’s what they are, blackberries. They’re so cool-looking and I just love the texture of them. I’m like a huge texture freak with food like I just love just how like texture these are. Just like, look at them. I hate blueberries. I’m just not a fan of like blueberries. They just taste like skin to me. I don’t like those. It’s just gross. But then I also, of course I’ve got strawberries because strawberries are one of my all-time favorite fruits ever. So, some of strawberries. This is a sort of a fruit but kinda not. It’s just a can of Allen’s pure all-natural apple juice like 100% pure, there’s no sugar added kind of thing but this is for a recipe in the Tone It Up Diet Plan that I’m using so I needed some of that and I’m like a weird child, 20-year old child like I love apple juice. It’s so weird.

And now it’s time for all the greens. I have so many greens. I’ve never bought so many greens in my life. I’m a huge salad fan and I really love cucumbers but there’s some other greens that I’ve started to try that I don’t normally eat but I decided to go out of my comfort zone. So, I got some sugar snap peas. I don’t know if there are regular snap peas. If there are, I could not find them. But these ones are not really, they’re like natural sugared. Surprise but I actually really like them are actually really great snacks for you so they’re crunchy kind of like an alternative to chips maybe. Obviously it doesn’t have all the salt and stuff but sugar snap peas are really, really healthy and really good for you and actually so yummy. I actually hate mushrooms but I bought mushrooms to try at a couple recipes from my Tone It Up Plan. I feel like the flavor of mushrooms tastes really good but growing up, I just never really liked mushrooms but I’m trying to like change that and force myself to try more recipes at least to see if I like them for sure or not. So we shall see how me and mushrooms go. Okay more greens, we are getting bored of all the colors. I got broccoli. I actually love broccoli as a child. This is probably one of the only vegetable I really, really like but for some reason my parents kind of tricked us into calling them, we love – movies like the Land Before Time and my brothers were a huge dinosaur fans and obviously a group of my younger brothers were like into boy’s stuff but they will call them like little trees so when they’re all cut and cooked and everything, they look like trees and so my parents were kinda be like “Yeah, eat your little trees!” So, we were like excited to eat broccoli and it was cool, it’s a great parenting trick but I don’t know, I just love broccoli. Eat broccoli.

And I got some green beans, Oh my, gosh! I love green beans. These are so yummy. You just like steam them or, I don’t know, we usually steam them. I don’t know how else you can cook green beans. Fry them maybe, I don’t know but we steam them. It’s healthier to steam them and green beans. Yeah, kind of boring how to plant them, it’s just a few bunch of them. This is probably about two meals, two or three maybe, maybe three meals for like single servings because I’m doing portion sizes and cooking for myself and quick plan of meals. These are my favorite things ever, mini cucumbers. They’re like tiny sized. They come in a package but I took them out. I wanted to keep them in a refrigerator and if you just leave them normal, then they going to go bad really easily which I learned the hard way before but these are yeah, I love them. Instead of just getting like the long ones because what I do is I use one of this per salad, when I make a salad so I use one sizing of the mini cucumbers. I have four left. This is living lettuce. It looks gross. It has the roots attached to it. So, it’s living from the root and they pull the root and they make its living in the container. So, it’s super fresh and, oh my god, it’s organic. It’s so yummy and like you can like open it up and smell how fresh it is, obviously because it’s living lettuce and stuff. You have to clean the leaves very thoroughly because there is like black—on it like dirt and stuff, just see all that crap but it’s so worth it because it tastes so yummy.

The last thing I would not even looked at, at the grocery store but it’s called kale. I had no idea what the hell it was before. I would just like, I don’t even touch half of the greens section. I go to the straight plain normal stuff and I’m trying to like bunch on organic and new things. This is kale. It kind of looks like seaweed or something and it’s kind of gross I guess but I’ve tried it in my salads already and I cut off some stuff and use some of it and it’s actually really yummy and tastes normal. My Mom says it tastes a little bit more bitter than regular lettuce leaves but I don’t really taste that big difference. I forgot celery which I left in the fridge, sorry, and a couple other things like small things and probably forgetting but that was like it’s all healthy foods. I guess not completely. I guess pretty all healthy. So yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this grocery haul. Sorry if you guys were bored and don’t even want to watch this or aren’t interested in them. Let me know if you guys don’t want me to film these videos. I won’t film them anymore or put them in my second channel or something which if you guys want to subscribe to my second channel, it’s in the bottom bar but if not, whatever. I just thought I would put this video up for those of you who asked and wanted to see this and kind of because I’ve always wanted to do a grocery haul. This is my first one so it’s kind of interesting. So I hope you guys enjoy this video. If not, just be honest about it. I would like to see you guys in my next video which is a beauty video for sure. So, I apologize anyway. I’ll see you guys later.