QuikTrip Corp. is voluntarily recalling grilled chicken salads from its Arizona convenience stores because of a possible contamination with grape tomatoes, reported the Associated Press. Andrew Williamson Fresh Produce notified QuikTrip of a grape tomato recall because of the possibility of contamination with salmonella.

Officials with Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip told the news agency on Friday that there have been no reported illnesses and the recall only affects its grilled chicken salads sold in Arizona. They said the grilled chicken salads with the recalled grape tomatoes are sold with lot codes located on the front of the package containing 506261, 506263, 506264, 506265, 506266, 506267, 506268, 506269, 506270, 506271, 506272, 506273, 506274 and 506275.

The recall has also affected Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets Inc. stores. The El Segundo, Calif.-based small-format grocer said on its website that "a supplier of Fresh & Easy is issuing a voluntary recall for some of their own brand Organic Grape Tomatoes due to a positive salmonella test. Fresh & Easy's Organic grape tomatoes come from the same supplier so through an abundance of caution we are removing them from our shelves and notifying customers."

It said that only fresh&easy organic grape tomatoes with the "display until" dates of SEP 09 to OCT 05 are affected. The rest of our grape tomatoes are not organic and therefore not affected, the retailer said.

There have been no reported illnesses, it added. San Diego-based Andrew Williamson Fresh Produce said late last week that is has expanded the geographic scope of its voluntary recall of organic grape tomatoes. Although the volume of cases from the original production lot has not changed, the company recognized the possibility that some customers may have distributed the organic grape tomatoes beyond the original 18 states; therefore, the company has extended the recall to the entire United States. The recall also includes Canada, as initially indicated.

The recall notice is being issued out of an abundance of caution because one clamshell of Limited Edition organic grape tomatoes tested positive for salmonella in a random sample collected and tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Michigan.

All customers who received the organic grape tomatoes directly from the company were notified on September 28 and advised to discard any existing product. No illnesses have been reported in association with this product, the company said.

The organic grape tomatoes are sold in 10.5-oz. plastic clam-shell containers containing UPC code 033383655925, located on the front of the package, below the barcode. The containers also have the words "LIMITED EDITION" and "Product of Mexico" printed on the label. The organic grape tomatoes are also sold in 7 oz. plastic clam-shell containers with Barcode 20025465, and marketed under the "Fresh & Easy" brand.

The voluntary recall only involves Limited Edition and Fresh & Easy labeled organic grape tomatoes and does not involve any other Limited Edition or Fresh & Easy branded produce items. Consumers who have any remaining product with UPC code 033383655925 or Barcode 20025465 should not consume it, but should instead discard it.

As an added safety measure, retailers are encouraged to check their inventories and store shelves to confirm that product is no longer available for purchase. Andrew Williamson Fresh Produce customer service representatives are contacting retailers to confirm that the recalled product is removed from commerce, it said.

Separately, Louisville, Ky.-based Thorntons Inc. is recalling its 6-oz. Garden Salads and 5.6-oz. Chef Salads because they have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella.

The recalled salads were manufactured and distributed by Cincinnati-based Greencore USA Inc. to select stores in Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Evansville, Ind., Lexington and Nashville, Tenn.

No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with this problem. Greencore is recalling approximately 57 pounds of salad products containing meat and poultry, because the grape tomatoes used in these products may be contaminated with salmonella, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS) said.

The products subject to recall include Fresh Ground Turkey Chubs: 5.6-oz. plastic bowl containers of "Thornton's Quick Cafe's Chef Salad" with an "Enjoy By" date of "09/30/11," "10/02/2011" or "10/03/2011."

Each package bears a label with the establishment number "P38518" inside the USDA mark of inspection and the enjoy-by date as noted above. The products subject to recall were produced on September 26 and September 28, 2011.

The problem was discovered when Greencore USA was notified by its grape tomato supplier, Pearson Foods, that a specific lot of grape tomatoes was being recalled due to potential salmonella contamination.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Food and Drug Administration lifted an import alert against a Florida company that’s threatened to sue Oregon over a cantaloupe investigation.

Del Monte Fresh Produce said in a statement that it has reached “an amicable resolution” with the FDA, ending the alert imposed in July against its cantaloupes from Guatemala. They were pinpointed by Oregon and other epidemiologists in a salmonella outbreak that sickened 20 people in Oregon and elsewhere earlier this year.

A statement from the Food and Drug Administration said it agreed to lift the alert following a third party audit of Del Monte’s plant. Tests also failed to turn up bacteria and the FDA confirmed that the company is following good manufacturing practices. In turn, Del Monte asked that its federal lawsuit against the agency be dismissed without prejudice.

No one died in the outbreak, unlike the ongoing illnesses traced to Colorado cantaloupes. That outbreak, which is not linked to Del Monte Fresh Produce, has sickened more than 70 people and killed at least 13 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

The ongoing outbreak involves listeria, a much more dangerous bug than salmonella, which caused the illnesses tied to Del Monte Fresh Produce.

In March, the Florida company recalled nearly 60,000 whole cantaloupes imported from its facility in Guatemala that were sold at Costco. In July, the FDA imposed the import alert, cutting off nearly a third of Del Monte's supply. It said the company had to show that its Guatemalan cantaloupes were safe.

In August, Del Monte Fresh Produce lashed out against the FDA and Oregon. It filed suit against the federal agency over the alert, saying no tests had linked its cantaloupes to the outbreak. It also filed an ethics complaint against Oregon’s senior epidemiologist William Keene and threatened to sue state health authorities.

Del Monte Fresh Produce, which is no longer linked to Del Monte Foods Corp., said its cantaloupes had never tested positive for Salmonella Panama, the outbreak strain, and had been implicated by “an apparently cursory investigation” that involved a “clear error of judgment.”

The ethics complaint was dismissed by Oregon’s Ethics Commission earlier this month. So far, Del Monte has yet to file a lawsuit in the case. It has two years to follow up on its tort claim.

State health and judicial authorities have not commented on the case, but a spokesman for Del Monte Fresh Produce said lawyers for the company and state are in discussions.

Read the rest of this entry »

The produce industry says it would be too expensive to force supermarkets to display on fresh food what the price they've paid to growers. The Produce Marketing Association is the umbrella group representing 3,000 growers, distributors and retail outlets.

The group's Michael Worthington says legislation proposed by federal independents Bob Katter and Nick Xenophon is well meaning but unworkable. "It's very, very difficult for supermarkets who buy from wholesalers, sometimes from packers or processors, and there's not a clear line to what those organisations paid growers."Senator Nick Xenophon has dismissed the criticism.

He says there should be a national debate on what growers are getting for their produce, because they feel squeezed by the big retailers. "This is about farmers getting a better deal and consumers getting more information, and if it puts pressure on those in the middle, the middle men in the supermarket chains, that's a good thing," he said. "I think this is part of a package of measures, a stronger enforceable Horticultural Code of Practice."

Read the rest of this entry »

The quality of adolescents’ diets can influence their mental health over time, a new study shows. In a study of data collected from 3,000 Australian adolescents in 2005 and again in 2007, researchers at Deakin University found that “diet quality and mental health were linked, with healthier diets associated with better mental health in 2005 and also predicting better mental health in 2007. This relationship even persisted when mental health at the starting point was taken into account," said Dr Felice Jacka from Deakin University’s Barwon Psychiatric Research Unit, who led the study.

For the study, published in Plos One, participants completed questionnaires about their normal diets and their psychological symptoms. Other factors which may be associated with both diet quality and mental health, such as the socioeconomic status of the family, age, gender, physical activity levels, dieting behaviours and weight, were also taken into account.

“Importantly, we found that changes in diet quality over time were linked to changes in mental health," Jacka said. “On average, adolescents whose diets improved over the two year period also experienced an improvement in mental health over that time, while those adolescents whose dietary quality deteriorated over a two year period experienced an associated deterioration in mental health. This wasn’t explained by changes in physical activity levels or weight."

The researchers also noted that the relationship didn’t seem to work the other way. “We also examined whether the relationships that we saw could be explained by ‘reverse causality’; that is, was diet quality in adolescents a response to mental health symptoms rather than the other way around? We tested this idea, but did not find any evidence that this was the case," Jacka said.

Read the rest of this entry »

"I thought you said you would cook dinner?" said my sister as she leant against the kitchen worktop, sipping a glass of wine. Was that a slight sneer I detected, creeping across her face?
"I am cooking dinner," I said as I took the container out of the microwave, triumphantly spooning out the sloppy contents onto two plates. I opened a packet of salad and plonked it in a bowl.

"That's not cooking," said my sister as she carried the plates through. "Yes it is," I protested. "The food was cold, and now it's hot." She rolled her eyes. "No, that's called reheating, Max," she said. "Cooking is when you take the ingredients, cut them up, and turn them into a meal."

OK, she was right. But in my defence, the belief that reheating a ready-meal counts as cooking is widespread – and it is worrying. While the adverse effect of processed food on physical health is well known, there is evidence to suggest that it can impact on mental health.

The British Journal of Psychiatry last week published evidence that highlights the impact that diet has on the incidence of depression. Researchers at University College London found that people who ate a diet high in processed food had a 58 per cent higher risk of depression than those who didn't. They also found that eating lots of vegetables, fruit and fish reduced the risk of depression by 26 per cent.
Of course, depression is a complex disease, and it's probably safe to say that eating a frozen lasagne isn't the sole reason why people are taking Prozac. But we are increasingly reliant on pre-packaged food, and nowhere more so than in schools and hospitals.

People were horrified when Jamie Oliver exposed the extent to which processed food was being served in schools, and then showed its impact on children's behaviour. Yet these catering practices are rampant in NHS hospitals, too. What is worrying is that members of society at increased risk of depression – such as the elderly or those with chronic illnesses – are those more likely to be in hospital.

While the poor standard of hospital food is well known, few realise the underlying reason. The responsibility for provision of hospital food has been increasingly outsourced to catering companies. Meals are mass-produced off site and transported to hospitals where "cook-chill" dishes are reheated on the wards, in trolleys or in individual containers, or "regenerated", Dr Who-style, using high-pressure steamers.

In fact, such is the reliance on this type of food in some of the new hospitals built under Private Finance Initiative, that, unbelievably, there are no kitchens at all. But while it might be cost-effective to outsource catering, it may be a false economy: patients who are undernourished because they aren't eating the food that is being served, or because the food is of poor quality, take longer to get better.

More worryingly, hospitals could be exacerbating mental health problems in the very cohort of people already vulnerable to them. There is one simple answer to this: reinstate hospital kitchens and staff them with trained cooks. It can be done. NHS trusts in Cornwall, for example, buy all their supplies from local and sustainable sources. Several hospitals have decided to shun fast food, employing chefs to make meals from scratch. Great Ormond Street Hospital has fully functioning kitchens and employs a host of chefs because managers believe good nutrition improves the wellbeing of their young patients. They mash their own potatoes – even the chicken nuggets are made from real chicken breasts. I'm sure my sister would agree, that is proper cooking.

Read the rest of this entry »

Citrus fruits have stippled rinds that surround pulp that's tart, juicy, and rich in vitamin C and other nutrients.  Most citrus fruits are first peeled, then the pulp is either eaten out of hand or squeezed to make juice, but some, like the kumquat, are eaten peel and all.  The peels contain fragrant oils, and their zest is often used to flavor foods.  When buying citrus fruit, select specimens that are smaller, thin-skinned, and heavy for their size.  They keep longer if you store them in the refrigerator.

Read the rest of this entry »

Visitors to the Peterborough Wednesday Farmers' Market will soon have a new opportunity to help feed people in need — while giving farmers a boost, too. As part of a provincewide initiative funded through a $40,000 grant from RBC, Kawartha Food Share will collect newly purchased fresh produce from market visitors to offer food bank users healthy, local food.

"That's how it works," said Kawartha Food Share manager John Alleyne. "There will be a booth set up."It's called Buy Local, Share Local, and features a travelling information display that will visit 10 Ontario farmers' markets this month and next. The program, an initiative of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, was launched Wednesday with the new booth at the market, which is held at the Louis St. parking lot.

The program benefits farmers by helping to promote local produce, Alleyne said. Anna Olson, host of Fresh with Anna Olson on The Food Network, is the face of the program Alleyne couldn't say how much of the $40,000 donation will make its way to Peterborough. "I know the amount is for the whole province," he said. Kawartha Food Share is a distribution warehouse offering food to 42 food banks in the city and county.

More than 8,300 people use these food banks every month, with 36% of those being young people and children, Kawartha Food Share reports. Food is also distributed to school nutrition programs.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re looking to eat amazingly fresh food, support local farmers, and live a more sustainable lifestyle, then consider investing in a farm share. Also known as Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA), farm sharing has become an increasingly common option for consumers to purchase food directly from a local farm. For the uninitiated, it works like this:

Farms sell “shares” of the produce, meat, or dairy that they will produce over a specified period of time, generally between 12 and 30 weeks. Consumers buy these shares, essentially investing in the anticipated production of a farm and providing the farm with working capital for the season. On a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly basis, the farm delivers food to centrally located sites for consumers to pick up.

There are a number of benefits to buying food through CSAs—from getting fresher food that lasts longer and tastes better to reducing the distance food travels and its environmental impact to supporting the local economy rather than multinational corporations. However, in my experience, some of the most direct and lasting benefits came from the variety and unpredictability of produce from farm shares.

Revolutionize Your Diet With A Farm Share

With produce farm shares, what you get is dependent on what’s growing at that time of year in your region. It’s also dependent on what happens to mature first, which is often unpredictable. No matter what, you will get an assortment of veggies that are sure to last you through the season, but be prepared for some surprises.

Not knowing what veggies you’ll be eating that week can be challenging, but with the right attitude and a little creativity, you’ll find some delicious new options that will revolutionize your diet forever. In fact, I can directly attribute a substantial portion of my current diet to produce I was exposed to through farm shares.

If it were not for farm shares, I would never have tried my hand at cooking things like swiss chard and kale or including greens like mizuna and arugula in salads. There are even types of veggies that I didn’t even know existed until I pulled them out my box from the farm share! While that may seem a little intimidating, fear not; cooking with farm shares can be both easy and fun.

Tips on Cooking with Produce from Farm Shares

Don’t try to plan. At least not the veggie part of your meals. You may have a good sense of what’s coming your way if you know what’s grown in your region and what’s in season, but even so, you’ll often be surprised—and that’s a good thing.
Work with what you’ve got. While you don’t get much choice in the matter, that can be a liberating experience (especially when it means getting a bounty of amazingly fresh and tasty vegetables delivered every other week!). No longer will you have to spend your precious time negotiating the vast and perilous produce section.
Be ready to experiment. A positive, adventurous attitude will go a long way to getting the most out of your farm share. If you’ve never cooked something before, welcome the opportunity to try something new. Many farm shares provide guides to what’s in your box ‘o’ veggies along with recipes that incorporate one or more of the items. And, of course, there’s always the Internet.
Meat and Dairy Farm Shares

In contrast to their produce-based counterparts, meat and dairy farm shares are usually quite specific about what you’re getting. They also tend to deliver more goods, less frequently. With meat shares, you buy a set number of pounds of one or more types of meat to be delivered once a month, or sometimes even just once a year.

What cuts of meat you get can vary, so the same rules of cooking with produce from farm shares apply. While it’s not particularly difficult to cook a pork chop, you might need a little creativity or the help of a cookbook to use some of the less common cuts. The only caveat is that you should make sure you’ve got plenty of freezer space. It can be difficult to use 30 pounds of lamb before it goes bad, after all, and you’ll have a lot more flexibility and freedom in what you eat and when.

Is Buying a Meat Share Worth it?

You may find that meat shares are significantly more expensive than buying the same items in a supermarket. On one hand, you’re paying a premium for the ecological and ethical benefits raising animals sustainably and humanely. On the other hand, once you’ve tasted local grass-fed beef, you may not even care.

A lot of the value that comes from meat and dairy shares is in the quality and freshness of the products. Not only are they tastier, they’re also significantly healthier to eat than their mass-produced brethren. Due to better animal feed, lack of artificial hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides, and overall better treatment, meat from farm shares tends to be leaner, more nutritious, and host to fewer contaminants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last spring, I wrote a story about trying to produce enough food in the city to be self-sufficient, using my own yards in Notre Dame de Grâce as a test case.

With tips from Action Communiterre, a community group that runs collective gardens in Montreal’s west end, I dug up about a third of my front-yard lawn and planted beets, onions, carrots, peppers, beans, rhubarb, strawberries, arugula and potatoes. Our backyard is very shady, but we planted cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, beans, beets and onions in the sunniest parts, and hoped for the best.

With lots of sunny days this summer, our front-yard garden blossomed. Our tomato plants are more than five feet tall and still producing fruit into early fall. We’ve been getting rhubarb all summer, and have eaten our fill of arugula. Even in the shadier backyard, we’ve eaten the first cucumbers we’ve ever grown ourselves, and picked lots of baby lettuce to toss into salads.

We got some surprise tomato plants growing from our compost, and some mystery melon is growing in our front yard. No one seems to know what it could be, but a farmer I consulted suspects it’s a cross between a squash and a melon.

But it hasn’t been all good news on the gardening front. A blue jay and several squirrels have been eating our cherry tomatoes the second they turn the faintest shade of yellow, never mind getting all the way to ripe, juicy perfection. We suffered a terrible assault by slugs, who decimated our bean plants and usually got to our few measly strawberries before we could. The onions proved irresistible to the squirrels who dug them up as quickly as we could plant them.

Since the goal of the project when we started was to see how self-sufficient we could be, over the summer we kept track of everything we harvested from the garden. While we definitely couldn’t live on what we were able to grow, we were able to save $86.05 so far by growing our own food instead of buying it. It cost us about $90 to buy the seeds, plants and extra compost to get the garden started, so it’s just a matter of days until we break even. Labour was minimal, once everything was planted.

Here’s a look at what our garden produced, and what I would have paid for the equivalent amount of produce at our local organic food store. This doesn’t include arugula, onions, beets, carrots, rhubarb, peppers, potatoes and soup beans that have yet to be harvested, nor the dozens of still unripe tomatoes on the plants:

Arugula: about 300 grams    $8.60

Basil: about 1 small bunch    $3.69

Beets: about 3.4 kilograms so far    $14.68

Cucumber: 4 so far    $12.00

Green beans: 230 g    $3.00

Tomatoes

beefsteak: 2 kg    $10.95

cherry: 230 g    $2.00

plum: 3.7 kg    $17.50

Peppers: 110 g so far    $0.55

Potatoes: 1.1 kg    $3.09

Rhubarb: 2.6 kg    $8.55

Strawberries: about 110 g    $1.44

TOTAL    $86.05

Read the rest of this entry »

Taking care of your eyes is one of the most important thing as eyes are the most important part of your body. Few fruits and few foods will help you prevent your eyes from cataracts, macular degeneration, and other eye problems.
Avocados

Avocados (Persea americana) is one of the most nutrient-dense foods. So they are good for your eyes. Avocados contain more lutein when compared to other fruits. Lutein is important in the prevention of macular degeneration and cataracts. Lutein are also a great source of other important eye nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B6, and vitamin E.

Carrots
Carrots have long been recognized as an eye food due to their high levels of vitamin A.

Broccoli
Broccoli is a good source of vitamin C, calcium, lutein, zeaxanthin, and sulforaphane.

Eggs
Egg contains vitamin A, zinc, lutein, lecithin, B12, vitamin D, and cysteine which is an excellent source of eye nutrients.

Spinach
Spinach, is a good source of vitamin A also contains lutein and zeaxathin which is again good for eyes.

Kale
Kale is a good source of vitamin A, lutein, and zeaxathin, like spinach.

Tomatoes
Tomatoes are also a rich source of vitamin C and lycopene which is again a good source of vitamin c.

Sunflower Seeds
Sunflower seeds contain selenium, a nutrient that may prevent cataracts and promote overall eye health.

Garlic
Garlic contains selenium and other eye nutrients such as vitamin C and quercetin.

Salmon
Salmon which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are important for maintaining overall eye health. It also contains folic acid, vitamin D, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and vitamin A.

Read the rest of this entry »