Dished Up

... By The Food Industry

By golly... I just finished the book "Chow For The Folk" (Futter fürs Volk by Angeres, Hutter and Ribbe).

Dunno bout countries outside Europe but here it´s freaky, maybe it´s better to not know too much! (No!)
Quality? Forget it, it´s all just bout money, money, money - also at the expense of health (just be reminded of BSE).

Here are some unyummy, unbelievable or (to me) unknown facts:

Lets talk about milk... a(n industrial) cow gives 9000 - 9500 kg milk per year! And needs 2 - 2,6 tons (!!) highly concentrated pellet - which is mostly imported: soy coarse and carcass meal (bu-huuu)). Esp with the soy-stuff or as example "citric drop-off" we also import pesticides that are forbitten here (for a reason, huh?), and dioxin was/is found in milk, too.

I´m not such a fan of milk, but think further ahead - I loooove cheese!

Note to Ingo: We really need to look for quality in Emmentaler, the name has to be "Allgäuer Emmentaler" for being real and not watery stuff. Or buy at Alles BioKäse.

With all the processing the "freshest" milk we can get is (apart from directly from the farmer): UHT-milk .

Oh, and... a modern cowshed - at least in 2005 (slowly as things change maybe also today) - produces more liquid waste/sewage than milk!!!


Let´s switch to meat, shall we?

It´s getting cheaper. Or rather: cheapest! We all know this, anyhows I was astonished by this fact: An average worker had to do his job 2 hours in 1960 to buy one kilo of roast chicken - today he needs merely 15 minutes! (do you really call that kind of chicken also "broiler"?! This is how East-Germans call it (and now all Germans cause it´s such a funny word!)

Back then 50% of your money went down for food. Today that´s 16%. Or now maybe even less.

(note... forgot to note the notes, aka pages... so...sorry Ingo. You have to read the whole book, but I start now again)

Note also (huh?! What´s this with all the notes?! ;-)...) that:
when we get all the highly concentrated pellets from overseas... we not only "feed" the animals but also get the semi-liquid manure. Manure also contains nutritive substances - that hence are lacking at the place where the pellets came from, a huge imbalance is created. (128)

Back to BSE... Great Britain admitted at some point that they even processed cows with BSE to carcass meal! (149)

Let´s go to eggs. People now want "healthy" eggs, from "happy" chicken (free-range eggs), they want to pay more for that, too. But... Germany has to import about 60% cause they can´t deliver! (198)

Tortured, grilled, eaten - the short life of a "Masthuhn" (industrial).
The industry sells us broiler & Co as free range - that is as if to describe a car as "guaranteed with 4 wheels and a steering wheel" - broiler are held "on the ground" always - but don´t ask for the space they get! (211).
Chicken are allowed 5 weeks to reach their slaughtering weight - they manage that with the same "food" said cows get, plus heaps of antibiotics, as we all know, right? What I did not know: they gain 6% of their weight - each day! Their skeletons can´t grow as fast, you can imagine how they suffer, huh?
I hate to admit: I love "breast-meat". But I guess... oh, boy, poor guys have 35-40% of that meat on their body cause heaps of people like the stuff. They naturally knock over, hardly make it to the food bowl, and that´s "good" cause when they don´t move, they gain more weight.
We always thought Wiesenhof is good quality and all "bio" as they state. According to this book it´s a nasty lie (213, 215) and from now on I´ll stop at the farmer I pass on the way home (on those rather rare occasions anyways).

Day and night, hah. 24 hours neon light is what they get, so they don´t forget to eat. (214)

Now let´s pick some of the food-scandals, how about that?

March 31st 1988 - cancer-causing solvents are found in certain products of Olive Oil - poeple are told to not use/buy it. Late in the year the EU allows a longer transition period due to massive pressure from the agricultural lobby - and that said oil returns to the supermarkets without declaration!!! (222)

April 4th 1994 - Lindane, a pesticide, forbitten in Germany since 1980, is found in Baby-food!!

August 19th 1997 - due to BSE many people prefered poultry. Then they found 1440 tons of old poultry that was supposed to become animal feed (yikes!) - but was found in the supermarkets in Great Britain again! It was made looking nice with certain chemicals - most of it went to retirement homes.

May 18th 1999 - Dioxin is found (again) in broiler, eggs and products with eggs (surprise, huh?). They also find itr in pork and discover that over 500 companies of each are involved and the reason is: old industrial oil and transformer coolings were added in their "food". (230)

March 2nd 2005 - in 3 of 18 tested babyfoods Semicarbazide is found - it develops by foaming for producing cartridge seal. In animal experiment it was found to produce cancer. (239)

There is a whole chapter on genetic engineering - I ordered a book on that only.
And another chapter on food from alembic/retort. I didn´t know that real food has light energy, that we need and get only from that and not from chemical substitutes... (304)

And did you know that many a fish caught in the German North Sea has visible signs of illness and is used anyways and that shrimp/crap caught in that same German North Sea are shipped to Morocco to get shelled and then are transported back to Germany?! (354)


I´ll sure have a closer look on direct marketing in Lower Saxony and Slow Food and Eurotoques, foodwatch is in my list(blogroll already for ages.


Note (again, huh?!) This book is a revised version from 2005. Some things have hopefully changed (to the better).

Oh, yikes. Just what did I (and still do - can you help it that fast?!) to my body, the animals and nature all those years?!
I for sure will change certain things.