Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: beef, flavors, food, grass-fed, local food, milk, preservatives, taste, turkey
A few months ago, I convinced my wife that we should start drinking milk from a local source. We shelled out the extra $1.75 for a half-gallon of milk and the $1.50 for the reusable bottle, which we accepted as the price of responsibility. But when we got home we found something that was a little harder to accept. The milk in that glass bottle didn’t taste the same as the milk we had grown up on. Not better, not worse, just different. And as much as I wanted to be a responsible consumer, I just couldn’t get used to it. A few weeks later, I returned to my much cheaper mass-produced dairy product.
But that got me thinking about how food SHOULD taste. For example, grass-fed beef may be tougher than its conventional counterpart. I don’t eat much beef, but when I do, I want it to cut with a butter knife. Turkey is on the table more frequently, and while there are claims that wild turkeys have a more rich, intense flavor, we are probably more likely to buy a conventionally grown, oversized turkey breast that tastes more like “chemical stew”, and could be pumped full of preservatives and chemical flavors. As Eric Schlosser points out in Fast Food Nation, the flavor of most of the food we eat is produced in factories in New Jersey. Any number of chemicals may go into giving our food “natural” flavors and smells.
All this makes me wonder what I am missing out on. What delicious flavors are out there that I’ve never experienced because I’m “enjoying” the chemical alternative? Have we moved so far away from eating natural foods that the chemicals we create now comfort us? Why can’t I order a burger and expect that all I’m getting is a pure beef patty?
While I contemplate this more, I’ll just continue to suck on my watermelon Jolly Rancher (I hate the taste of real watermelon) and consider going back to glass bottled milk. But maybe I’ll get the Root Beer flavored milk this time.
- Jeff Severin
PS: This puts a whole new perspective on one of my favorite SNL skits from my youth – which was evidently too long ago to be on YouTube.
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“They” say it takes something like 10 times to introduce a new food to a child. And I remember I once had this same debate with my friend Diana – she simply refused to drink organic milk because she said conventional milk tasted better. The one drag about milk in bottles is it goes bad faster (nothing is nastier than confirming that by taste). Would you be willing to try again – or are you back to your old milk for good? (Iwig chocolate milk is heavenly!)
Comment by j500 March 4, 2008 @ 7:56 pmSimran
I wish that everybody could start out life eating only organic. Then what we didn’t know about and weren’t exposed to (GMOs, pesticides, etc.) couldn’t kill us! I have an older friend in Vegas who has a 6-year-old who she has raised on an all-organic diet (she used to live in Colorado, where organic markets and Whole Foods live street to street). Every time she takes her daughter to her grandma’s in Arkansas, she can tell when her kid has had conventional food—she says she looks “puffy” and usually gets sick. Isn’t that amazing?
Comment by kimwallace March 4, 2008 @ 8:50 pm—Kim
Great points, Jeff. You referenced Fast Food Nation–a book I think every American who eats food should read (so, everyone except for the robots…) I thought that book did a great job of detailing how all of these chemical additives serve the purpose of taking low-grade “food” and pumping them up with flavors that trick the mind.
In my own personal weening off of high-fructose corn syrup, I’ve found that it’s not easy switching to organics…like you said, at first they don’t taste right. And the bread I buy now spoils much faster than breads packed with preservatives.
I recently switched to my organic raisn bran for breakfast and hated it at first…but after a few forced-feedings, I’ve actually come to love it. Soy milk was a similar experience…now I’ve come 180 degrees and I think that cow’s milk tastes strange. People can change their tastes, but it does take an active effort–and some patience.
Great post!
Comment by rarab March 5, 2008 @ 10:08 am–Ranjit
Oh, one more thing…Loved the Chris Rock skit…I’ll see your Nike Turkey and raise you one Super Colon Blow:
http://video.aol.com/partner/hulu/saturday-night-live-colon-blow/feqaU4X8926BBZoi11DZMELJ2TunZ9oc
–Ranjit
Comment by rarab March 5, 2008 @ 10:14 amI’m also slowly being introduced into the organic world and I agree, with some products it can be an acquired taste. For the people who don’t have a Whole Foods (or the like) down the street, you can buy many organic, free-range, grass-fed, etc. products online. I just started working for a specialty food company, marxfoods.com, and soon we will be selling whole, half and quarter (it’s also available in smaller quantities) grass-fed beef. You need a lot of freezer room for something like this, but it’s an economical way to purchase what is typically pricy meat.
Comment by fiddlehead fern March 5, 2008 @ 10:37 amKim – that’s really pretty frightening about your friend’s swelling son. We may be doing the same thing with all the anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning products we use. Just as insects become resistant to pesticides, bacteria may become resistant to antibiotics as we use more antibacterial products. At the very least, we could be raising a generation with weakened immune systems. I grew up playing in a creek that was just downstream from a hog farm and seem to have a much stronger immune system than kids that are growing up in an antibacterial environment.
- Jeff
Comment by jseverin March 5, 2008 @ 11:02 amSimran & Ranjit – I think the problem with spoiling so quickly is why I had trouble with bottled milk. If light is one of the culprits affecting flavor, I wonder if it would help to put it in brown bottles? “They” claim it worked for keeping beer fresh. In any case, there is more milk drinking going on in my house these days, so maybe I’ll give the bottled brand another chance.
Oh, and Colon Blow is another one of my favorites. I wonder if it comes in Organic, yet?
-Jeff
Comment by jseverin March 5, 2008 @ 11:20 amIt does take a bit to get used to the flavor of local milk. Why? You are tasting the milk from grassfed cows. The flavor of the milk actually varies seasonally, and even regionally. This quality is what makes certain cheeses from Europe so distinctive. With conventional milk, you lose the real diet of the cow (they eat corn, which is very hard on them) and all the milk is blended from various dairies, so you get a fairly tasteless end product. Further, the fats in the grassfed milk are higher in conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, a healthy fat. Try the spring milk, it’s the best. And, frankly, pastured turkey and chicken is amazing. So are pork and lamb. Grassfed beef is an adjustment for the leanness, but now I prefer it to the fatty cornfed variety by far. Pastured eggs also are higher in nutrition and have more flavor. I’d say embrace the new flavors and try to expand your palate.
By the way, that conventional chicken and turkey are anything but conventional. They have been bred for breast size to the point that many can barely walk on their own, and none can breed on their own.
Enjoy the adventure!
Comment by ExPat Chef March 5, 2008 @ 11:42 amJeff,
I agree with you about the hand-sanitizer craze that is going on. Good ol’ soap and water does the trick—but of course, in the name of convenience, hand sanitizer can be thrown into a purse or a pocket for on-the-go “clean.”
I remember in junior high, my school had the hand sanitizer dispensers at the front of the line where you go into the lunch room. And at hospitals now, hand sanitizer is everywhere. These supergerm builders scare me, too.
Comment by kimwallace March 5, 2008 @ 2:19 pm-Kim
Visiting the family farm years ago, there’s nothing I desired more than lying under a cow (a docile one preferably) and with a deft squirt of her udders, have fresh milk trickle down my throat. I thought nothing would be healthier. Well, I never got to indulge my fantasy, but after it was boiled on the cold stove and left to cool, that and eating fresh vegetables and beef from a cow that had been slaughtered on the odd occasion, were the closest I’d come to enjoying truly organic produce.
So yes Jeff, I can relate to your desire to want to organic but having the convenience of mass-produced goods that “taste” like the real thing and then reverting to natural produce must surely confuse the senses. But, I think on the balance of things, I’d rather have my milk go off quickly and, as Ranjit says, bread that spoils faster than those packed with preservatives, as opposed to having chemically-enhanced, artificially-flavored, pseudo-natural goods that might give me an extra nipple or make my toenails yellow.
As to taste, its weird that if as you suggest natural has almost become an acquired taste. If it’s just not that easy on the palate, does it mean that all these big companies have mastered the art of producing food of such quality that the senses end up rejecting all that is so natural and good?
Food for thought, isn’t it?
-Denzyl
Comment by denzylj March 5, 2008 @ 3:34 pmExPat Chef – It appears that I’m missing even more than I imagined. I have heard about vegetables tasting different based on the soil they are grown in, but hadn’t thought about the differences in dairy. From your description of the variety that can occur in milk, it sounds like I’ve been settling for Velveeta when I could be having Valencay. Thanks for helping wake up my taste buds.
- Jeff
Comment by jseverin March 5, 2008 @ 10:16 pm[...] as new cans in as little as 60 days. Do you really need 20 ounces of soda, anyway? You can even buy milk in returnable glass bottles at local grocery stores. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)It’s Easy Being [...]
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