Caution: What I'm about to talk about is going to be really unsavory, and may well turn your stomach. YES, it's about the food we eat, so if you are really squeamish and prefer NOT to know…. Go visit another one of my posts, please.
I like to joke about the amount of processed food we eat, by saying there is a Racoon Rule. If you can't scrub it in water like a raccoon would do before HE ate it, then you shouldn't be eating it.
The rule doesn't apply to things that you make from scratch at home -- like, say, if you bought a bunch of fresh veggies and then made a nice salsa to top off a nice grilled chicken breast.
The thing is, what about your breakfast cereal? Your bread? Anything in the snack aisle, dairy aisle, baking aisle, or most anything we put in our carts weekly, is not going to follow this rule. It's an IDEAL, but it's going to be very tricky to go 100% with this very healthy suggestion.
WHY is this suggestion so healthy, you ask. Well, here's where we're gonna get GROSS.
At Ohio University, they have estimated that in the US, we eat about one to two pounds of insects each year without knowing it. Want to avoid getting some fly bits in your canned soup? Wish you knew where to buy flour without any roach legs in it? Well, sorry folks, but it's not going to happen.
Every level of PROCESSING our food goes through, between it's natural, live state and when we eat it, gives the opportunity to introduce contaminants. Of course, if you had a garden and grew a head of lettuce, you would expect occasionally to find a fly, worm, or other insect living in your food. And you could remove it before eating it, just as you would with that head of lettuce you buy at the grocery store.
Want to buy tortilla chips that don't have human hair in them, cook some pasta without mouse hair, or feed your kids a breakfast cereal that doesn't include rat feces? Well, this also is never going to happen. NEVER! Want to buy fish that is natural, not farmed, and doesn't contain parasites? TOO BAD!
The fact of the matter is, the way we raise, store, process and transport food these days lends itself to these problems. You might think I'm exaggerating here, but you can look up the fact that, for almost any major processed food type, the FDA has set a legal limit on how much insect and rat "filth" is allowed to be in it. ALLOWED!
If I buy an organic apple at the store or farmer's market, and proceed to make and can apple sauce, I can tell you without a doubt how much rat feces is in it. And it's ZERO, as in 0ppm. Because if a rat dared to show up in my house, I would scare it to death with my screams in a split second, and it would have NO WAY of getting anywhere near my cooking or canning activities!
If I buy a free-range organic chicken breast at the store, and prepare it, it too will have no rat poop, human hair, machinery-related mold, or insect bits in it, because I would wash it and then prepare it meticulously in my own kitchen. It would never be stored in massive bins before going into my recipe, where a roach leg here or there might be overlooked.
I can even wash rice before I cook it, and depending on where you get your eggs, those come hermetically sealed and should be safe.
We are at the mercy of Big Food Machinery, however, when it comes to grains and dairy products. No matter how careful they are with your milk, it's going to contain SOMETHING. And wheat flour? PUH-LEASE! Can you say Major Mouse Attractor? Oats are surely no better. How many grains do you buy in their whole, natural state, that you can wash for yourself before preparing?
Mmmmmhmmmmmmm….
It gives me pause though to wonder: Is it unsafe to eat a human hair? A small amount of rat feces? A roach leg? And really, when you think of the processing before and after your purchase, the most likely answer is NO. This doesn't mean you don't want to minimize it, though!
Personally, I am very allergic to many types of molds, so these are the things I would concentrate on. Poop, however, is still poop, no matter how it's prepared. And I don't want to eat it!
Does this mean I don't buy and eat the things that I know are going to contain such contaminants? Absolutely not. A little sterilized roach leg hasn't killed me yet. I barely even tasted it! But does it mean I can't increase the number of "healthy" buys I make at the grocery store by 10, 20, or even 50%? ABSOLUTELY.
So, next time you go to the store, stop for 1/10th of a second each time you put something in your cart and ask: "Can I wash it like a raccoon?". It will change the way you think about snacking, to be sure!
For more information, please visit http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm
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