From Dr. Barnard’s blog:

“Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans eat 7 billion hot dogs. That’s more than 800 hot dogs a second. It’s as if the entire nation has signed up for….”

Before you light your grill you’ll want to read the rest of the article….while there’s still time to get to the store for better choices.

http://pcrm.org/media/blog/august2011/grilling-hot-dogs-for-labor-day-think-again

Yes, this is a macrobiotic version of fish tacos. We love fish tacos, and it’s always fun to try old favorites with new flavors. This recipe requires planning ahead, as both the coleslaw and the fish need to “hold” for an hour.

I wish we knew more about fish…. Of the animal foods, fish is easiest to digest. Whenever possible, buy fish that is caught wild and fresh; farm-raised fish almost always contains antibiotics, and fish loses lots of its energy and freshness when frozen.

Fish, like all the other animal foods, supports active, physical energy. Macrobiotic cooking tends to use white-meat fish because it is lower in fat and less yang. If you are in good health, don’t be afraid to shake things up with some salmon or tuna every once in a while….But fish should always be balanced with green, upward-growing vegetables. And it’s not unusual to serve a lemon wedge, dessert, and /or a beer at fish meals as well. Raw daikon (always served with sashimi in Japanese restaurants) helps to break down the heavy fats found in some fish.

~ Jessica Porter, The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics

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Fried Fish Wraps with Asian Coleslaw and Rice
adapted from Lisa Silverman’s recipe printed in The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics, by Jessica Porter
Yellow * Serves 4

Asian Coleslaw
3/4 cup Nayonnaise or Veganaise
2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
1 Tablespoon umeboshi vinegar
1 Tablespoon brown rice syrup
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1 cup shredded green cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped

Combine the first four ingredients in a large bowl. Add cabbages, carrots, and cilantro and blend well. Set aside for 1 hour.

Fish

1 pound white fish (such as haddock or flounder)
2 Tablespoons shoyu (or tamari or soy sauce)
1 Tablespoon mirin or sake
1 Tablespoon brown rice vinegar or grated fresh ginger
1-2 Tablespoons sesame oil (start with one)
1 cup cornmeal
lemon wedges (optional)
4 whole wheat tortillas
2 cups long-grain basmati rice, cooked

Mix the shoyu, mirin, and vinegar (or ginger) in a glass dish and marinate the fish in it, turning the fish to cover it with marinade. Marinate for at least 1 hour.

Remove the fish from the marinade and cut into 3-inch pieces; roll each piece in cornmeal. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the fish and fry 2-3 minutes on each side until the fish is tender and golden brown in color. Drain on paper towels.

Heat tortillas on a dry skillet. Arrange rice, fish, and coleslaw on the tortillas and wrap. Serve with lemon wedges.

These cakes are similar to polenta slices – serve them topped with a marinara sauce or salsa, or perhaps with a mushroom sauce. Add steamed veggies and a green salad to make a complete meal.

Millet can be cooked in two ways. Cooking it with plenty of water results in a thick consistency, ideal for stuffings, burgers, and as a hot cereal. If toasted first (dry in a hot skillet) and cooked in a little less water, the result is a fluffy grain similar to couscous.

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Stovetop Millet Cakes
adapted from The Yoga Cookbook: Vegetarian Food for Body and Mind, by The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers
Blue * Serves 4-6

2 cups millet
1 quart water
pinch of salt
1-1/3 cups chopped zucchini
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3 Tablespoons whole wheat flour (or use a gluten-free flour blend)
2 Tablespoons oil
7 ounces firm tofu, drained, pressed, and crumbled

Place the millet, water, and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Lower heat to maintain a simmer, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. Add the zucchini, bring the pot back to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes longer. Cool.

When cold, mash the millet and zucchini. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to make a thick batter. Add a little extra water, if necessary.

Heat a lightly oiled large skillet over medium heat. Form millet into cakes by putting a handful of the mixture into the skillet and pressing down on it with a wet metal spatula. Only cook 2-3 cakes at a time. Cook 3-4 minutes per side, until golden brown. Keep warm until they are all cooked (remove to an oven-proof platter or cake pan that you keep in a 200F oven).

Reading labels is a practice you can never give up. Even when you’ve found a product you love (love!), the manufacturer can change the ingredients at any time, and the only notice they have to give is that ingredient label.

One of the ingredients you may see on a label – particularly for any food marketed as “high fiber” (and especially when you know it’s not made almost completely from whole grain and vegetables) – is cellulose, which also comes to us as cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.

Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products. The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption.

~ Food Freedom

Cellulose also extends the shelf life of foods. Think about it: wood pulp doesn’t rot as fast as food. (Not very appetizing, though.)

It’s also less expensive than actual food products as a binder or filler, which is no doubt the real reason food manufacturers use it. That still doesn’t make it good for humans to eat.

Check here for a list of foods that contain a lot of cellulose. And keep reading labels. You never know when they’re going to change.

The Environmental Working Group reports that meat and dairy have significant environmental impact.

Americans’ appetite for meat and dairy – billions of pounds a year from billions of animals – takes a toll on our health, the environment, climate and animal welfare. Producing all this meat and dairy requires large amounts of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, fuel, feed and water. It also generates greenhouse gases and large amounts of toxic manure and wastewater that pollute groundwater, rivers, streams and, ultimately, the ocean. In addition, eating large quantities of beef and processed meats increases your exposure to toxins and is linked to higher rates of health problems, including heart disease, cancer and obesity.

[...]

Eating and wasting less meat (especially red meat) and cheese can simultaneously improve our health and reduce the climate and environmental impact of food. Choosing grass-fed, free-range, pasture-raised and/or organic products also helps to expand market demand. As the market grows, more farmers and ranchers will choose more sustainable and humane production methods, which in turn will make these products more affordable and available.

Choosing healthier, greener food is important, but significantly cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change will also require governmental action. We all need to get engaged to push for comprehensive public policies that put the nation on a path to greener energy. Reducing meat production’s negative impacts on soil, air and water will take stronger regulatory enforcement and better policies – in addition to significant changes in meat consumption habits.

~ Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health, Environmental Working Group

The report is a goldmine of information on the impact of how we eat. Even if you’re a meat or dairy consumer, you’ll learn a few ways to make smarter choices for the planet.

Try the quiz (as a pre-test or post-test for the rest of the report), and check out the excellent graphics. Then be a smarter, healthier consumer.

Jicama is common in Latin American cuisine, but largely ignored elsewhere. It’s too bad, because jicama is refreshing in the heat of the summer.

This snack keeps well, transports easily and is very tasty! You can also use it as a relish-style salad.

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Jicama Snack
Purple * Serves 6

1 large jicama
juice from 1 lime (or more)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Peel the jicama with a vegetable peeler and slice into 1/4-inch rounds. Slice the rounds into 1/4-inch sticks, put them in a bowl, sprinkle with lime juice and toss with cilantro. Let the mixture set for a while before eating.

What is Pink Slime?

It’s meat scraps turned into meat filler – and it ends up in burgers and tacos everywhere.

This product is actually called ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings. Still not sure? This is the cheapest, least desirable beef on offer – fatty sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, which are notoriously rife with pathogens like E. coli 0157 and antibiotic-resistant salmonella. Once swept up, the scraps are sent through a series of machines, which grinds them into a paste, separates out the fat, and laces the substance with ammonia to kill pathogens.

The USDA allows this ammonia treated meat to enter the marketplace and with no labeling requirement on the packaging to inform the consumer that the meat they are about to buy contains ammonia. It is used to stretch the actual ground beef, and the USDA shockingly allows up to 15 percent of a ground beef product to be this filler and still be labeled ground beef….

According to a New York Times article, The “majority of hamburger” now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings “the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil,” “typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” that contains “larger microbiological populations.”

(…)

McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone. And since the USDA considers it a “process”, Ammonia doesn’t have to be listed on the packaging as a separate ingredient!

~ Judy Molland, Yummy! Some Pink Slime In That Burger?

Of course you can avoid Pink Slime by not eating red meat. If you choose to eat red meat, buy grass-fed beef, which contains no ammonia. Our best advice when choosing animal-derived foods is to buy directly from the source – get to know a farmer (you can find them at farmer’s markets) and visit the farm. Meet the butcher and see the processing facility. Be honest with yourself about where your food comes from.

We love veggie kabobs from the grill. They take a little bit of advance prep, but make dinner time easy – perfect for entertaining.

Some veggies need a bit of precooking – just 2-3 minutes in the microwave or steamer basket will be enough.

Soak bamboo skewers in water for 15-30 minutes before putting the vegetables on, or use metal skewers.

We like to fill each skewer with the same type of veggie (all peppers, for example) so everything gets cooked properly. We just unload them all into a large pasta bowl and toss them with a little balsamic vinaigrette or dijon vinaigrette to serve.

You can also fill each skewer with a variety of vegetables, and serve them that way – some people like the dramatic presentation, and other people like the ease of the bowl (and it may depend on who’s eating!).

Veggies to try *

• Sweet bell peppers (red, orange, yellow, green), cut into chunky strips
• Red onions, cut into wedges
• Pearl onions, whole
• Asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces
• Summer squash (yellow and zucchini), sliced into 1-inch rounds (skewer through the skin)
• Cherry tomatoes
• Sugar snap peas
• Button mushrooms, whole (skewer through the stem)
• Fennel, cut into thin wedges (precook)
• New red potatoes, whole or cut in half (precook)
• Fingerling potatoes, whole or cut in half (precook)
• Baby carrots (precook)
• Broccoli florets (precook)
• Cauliflower florets (precook)

We love Michele Simon’s considered response to the USDA’s MyPlate nutrition guidelines. We apologize for being a bit sound-bite-y here, and we encourage you to go read the full article.

…Allow me to get a few things about the new version off my chest. First of all, the website url tells us a lot: “ChooseMyPlate.gov“. The word choose or choice, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, it’s a favorite of the food industry, to remind us that really, it’s all up to individuals to choose to eat a healthy diet, and that companies provide a wide range of choices for us each to choose from….

As Marion Nestle pointed out, protein is not a food, it’s a nutrient, so the meat industry must be very happy to see it represented so prominently, as they have brainwashed the American public for decades into equating “meat” with “protein.” Most Americans eat way too much protein and certainly need no reminders….

They recommend “protein” but then why is “dairy” and not “calcium” recommended? Ah the politics of inconsistent messaging….

It’s going to take way more than a measly $2 million educational campaign to get Americans to fill up half their plate with fruits and vegetables. It’s going to take a massive overhaul of our agricultural policies…. It’s also going to take addressing the billions of dollars in marketing the food industry spends each year to keep us from eating off of plates at all. (Perhaps a better image might have been a pizza box or a take-out carton?) It’s especially going to take massive political will to stop the food industry’s predatory marketing of junk food to children.

~ Michele Simon, Why we need MyPolicy instead of MyPlate

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer who researches and writes about the food industry and food politics. She specializes in legal strategies to counter corporate tactics that harm the public’s health. She wrote Appetite for Profit: How the food industry undermines our health and how to fight back, published by Nation Books in 2006.