Food: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Food, glorious food — or is it? Did you know that to produce cheese, a cocktail party favorite, the methane gas released into the atmosphere is 25 times more dangerous to the environment than carbon? Or that processed cheese contains high levels of nitrosamines, which may cause Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease?

Pre-grated cheese contains cellulose, which is extracted from wood. Most chickens are pumped full of drugs; “freerange” can mean chickens, packed tightly, may gaze at “a ray of light streaming through a door.” And last year, the World Health Organization proclaimed processed meats like bacon were in the category of Group 1 carcinogens — along with cigarettes and diesel-engine exhaust fumes. Vegetables can be full of pesticides; bagged salads can be toxic. Lettuce emits more carbon per calorie than bacon, and cranberries destroy wetlands. And the list goes on and on — for 10 pages in fact, in a recent New York Magazine piece devoted to the dangers associated with food, and its oddities: Octopuses, for example, apparently possess Houdini-esque characteristics and can open jars and escape from fish tanks. (Those of you who’ve seen the recent film “Finding Dory” will not be surprised by this.)

Like many other things in life, a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing. For several years, a friend and I ate dinner before the symphony at a particular Baltimore restaurant. We enjoyed spicy soups and capacious salads served by an attentive waitstaff — until I read, in this newspaper, that the restaurant was closed due to many violations, including families of mice living in the kitchen. Overall, however, Baltimore has many wonderful restaurants with chefs cognizant of the food industry, offering many farm-to-table options.

So how does one become a discerning diner? Personally, I say you could ask a lawyer. For many years, whenever I conducted writing and editing workshops for law firms in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, even London, I always could count on lawyers offering suggestions on improving my palate as I improved their writing. Their restaurant recommendations were uniformly excellent. As a result, I ended up writing several columns for Legal Times on lawyerrecommended restaurants.

But I digress. Perhaps the most disturbing parts of the New York Magazine article were the descriptions of hideous and inhumane conditions that many workers in the food industry are forced to endure. For example, in Thailand, where most of our shrimp comes from, workers are paid $4 for a very long day. After buying gloves and boots, they have almost no money left.

When Whole Foods recently discovered that tilapia was sourced from a private prison in Colorado, where inmates earn $1.50 per hour, they stopped selling it. (Inmates in Georgia and Texas earn nothing for this work.)

And a recent report by Oxfam America found that Tyson Foods, the largest chicken producer, routinely denied their factory workers basic rights, such as bathroom breaks.

According to New York magazine research, roughly one in six Americans gets food poisoning each year. That’s a huge number. So other than farming your own animals and growing your own vegetables and fruits, what can the average person do to stay healthy? Actually, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama and others, local vegetable gardens are now becoming more and more popular, especially in urban areas. It’s a great way to control pesticides and prevent other chemicals from invading our food.

We also need to strengthen and support the Environmental Protection Agency; they help police the food industry.

Fortunately, here in Maryland, especially in the Baltimore region, the areas with which I am familiar, we have many local farmers’ markets. We need to support them.

As for me, in addition to patronizing my favorite restaurants and food markets, I try to eat at least eight servings of fruits and vegetables loaded with antioxidants a day, then hope for the best.