Real Food University

That’s Not Red Snapper

Delish – Consumer Reports Finds 22% of Fish Purchased is Mislabeled

Consumer Reports other findings as per the article:

• “Only four of the 14 types of fish we bought — Chilean sea bass, coho salmon, and bluefin and ahi tuna — were always identified correctly. Eighteen percent of our samples didn’t match the names on placards, labels, or menus.”
• Fish were incorrectly passed off as catfish, grey sole, grouper, halibut, king salmon, lemon sole, red snapper, sockeye salmon, and yellowfin tuna. Four percent were incompletely labeled or misidentified by employees.
• All 10 of the “lemon soles” and 12 of the 22 “red snappers” we bought weren’t the claimed species. One sample, labeled as grouper, was actually tilefish, which averages three times as much mercury as grouper.

Why would they do that? Well, Red Snapper commands a higher price, as does King and Sockeye Salmon, typically. And since Red Snapper is a fish found predominantly in the Gulf of Mexico (and already overfished), you can bet that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill there in 2010 did plenty to further decimate stocks of real Red Snapper. Bottom line, find a fish source you trust to provide you with what they are actually charging you for.

Nevada Stops Dangerous Criminals

Farm To Consumer – Farm-to-Fork Dinner Fiasco

A little over a week ago, Quail Hollow Farm in southern Nevada hosted a farm-to-fork dinner, made with the freshest, realest ingredients possible. But the Southern Nevada Health District had other plans. They worked hard to put a stop to the dinner.

The only way to keep our guests on the property was to destroy the food.

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can.

Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food.

We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.)

Again, a call to Susan and another negative response.

It’s a good read and a telling look at the level of freedom we as thinking adults have, or rather the level we don’t have.

New Site To Help You Find Local Food

I want to let you all know about a new site launched by my friend John Moody. John runs Whole Life Buying Club, the local buying club here in Louisville that I’m a member of. His new site, Food Clubs & Coops, is basically designed to help people create their own buying groups to improve access to organic, local, sustainable foods.

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