Moopheus

In fact, the unit of the USDA that produces the grading is the Agricultural Marketing Service. I'd guess the main advantage for the producer is that it is a widely recognized standard. The USDA spells out in gruesome detail what the grading means.

To give Whole Foods some credit, they are better at stocking local products than the big chain supermarkets. But they do charge a premium for them. And they do have some standard of quality. My neighborhood Shaw's is a terrible place to shop for fresh produce or cheese; low quality and not good prices either. They're more useful for canned goods and nonfood items.

Not all of it, just the things I usually buy. Russo's also has a lot of fresh Asian ingredients that are hard to get elsewhere, like fresh curry leaf. Fruit is definitely cheaper. In fact, I've been told (not sure how reliable this is) that Russo's supplies some of the local WF's with their conventional produce; so it's exactly the same goods. Maybe it is different in New York, but face it, elsewhere you can often do better than WF.

Here in Cambridge we have three of them. Plus two Trader Joe's and two or three regular supermarkets, but I go out to to Russo's in Watertown to buy produce, because it is cheaper and just as good. They have an excellent cheese counter that's much less expensive than Whole Foods. Sure, if I really want to spend a lot for no reason, I could go to Cardullo's in Harvard Square, but I never buy anything there. There are a few things I will go to Whole Foods for, but at least in this area, they may not be the most expensive, but they are not a bargain by any means.

Is there any agency in China that enforces manufacturing standards for goods sold in China? It does happen that oven models are rejected by the FDA for failing to meet its standard, which suggests that QC is not necessarily so stringent at the factory. I do remember that when microwave ovens were becoming popular in the early 70s people were kind of afraid of them. I also think early models were not as tightly regulated; there were some problems with leakage. It's not impossible to get a burn from a poorly-sealed unit. If you have any reason to think your unit is not sealing correctly because of damage or wear, just replace it.

USDA quality grading is an optional service that processors pay for. Presumably it is cheaper for TJ's to make up their own grading than pay the USDA for theirs. This is separate from the required "wholesomeness" inspection ("it didn't smell too bad when it left the plant"). And there are red angus.

Composters are not absolutely necessary. At another place we had with a bigger yard, we just piled up stuff in a corner, mixed in some dry yard waste, and let it sit. But there is a certain convenience/management aspect to the composter. If I end up with more than I need, I know people who could use the excess.

Similarly, here Cambridge has been promoting composting pretty heavily--you can drop your food waste at the DPW if you don't have your own composter, and they sell below-cost composters. We'll probably get one this year; we're going to be converting some of our (tiny) yard space to more garden space.

365 is one of Whole Foods' store brands, I'd be kind of surprised if it weren't available.

This is true, carageenan is not a health issue. A taste issue, perhaps, but not a serious health issue.

Similarly, it's equally silly to suggest that if you are not an "expert" you can't comprehend or discuss an issue meaningfully.

This was my experience after we bought a house a couple of years ago--before, cheap old apartment stove, after, monster Wolf Range stove. The difference, with exactly the same set of pans, was like night and day. I had been thinking about investing in copper heat diffusers, but with the Wolf, they're totally unnecessary.

Because we are really bad at delayed gratification, at least in aggregate. Our frontal cortex can't make the hypothalamus understand the concept of finite resources. Organisms reproduce until they've exhausted the resources needed for further expansion, then they die off. With our big brains and tools and agriculture we've managed to cheat the system, but there's no guarantee we will always be able to do so. As Herb Stein said, if something can't go on forever, it will stop.

I'm sure there is a whole host of corporate/economic issues at play as well. 'Big Milk' is very much in charge of the US milk supply. One of the factors that works against the smaller and more local dairy (and local produce generally) is centralized purchasing. When I go to Shaw's, I see Garelick milk. Garelick is a regional producer, now owned by Dean, which owns a bunch of similar producers. Shaw's is owned by Supervalu, which also owns Albertson's. This means that one buyer can make a deal with one seller to supply all of their stores. The buyer at Supervalu doesn't want to make hundreds of little deals; that's too much work, and they don't get as good a price. Whole Foods will do it because they know their customers will pay the premium to get the local product, whereas Supervalu has to worry about Walmart and Costco.

This is basically true. Dairy production has been more resistant to the kind of concentration that has taken over the meat business. But the shelf-life demands are probably more driven by the large supermarket chains, who want the most shelf-stable product. If I go to Whole Foods or Russo's (a local produce market) I can get High Lawn cream, from a dairy in the Berkshires. If I got to Shaw's or Stop & Shop (parts of large conglomerates), I can't. The labeling thing isn't really that complicated. Most of our cream is labeled heavy, light, whipping, or half & half (cream and milk). People reasonably expect that heavy cream has more fat than light cream, so there's some standardization there.

This is my thinking as well. Also, adding gums and stabilizers means that producers can use the minimum fat for the labeling requirements.

At least some of use are not giddy about them. For some applications it makes not much difference, but I don't like gunk in my ice cream. Also, ultrapasteurization is less desirable for ice cream too. I'm not real big on gelatin, either.

It's pretty normal here now for cream to be ultrapasteurized, with stabilizers. Whole Foods house brand was unadulturated the last time I bought some, but maybe that's changed. It's possible to get regular pasteurized gunk-free cream, but these days it may mean a special trip to one of few places that carry it. As to fat content, it can vary a bit from dairy to dairy. I think cream marked "heavy" cream has to be at least 36%.

Meh. The couple of times I've been there the cakes were stale. Which is a little surprising given how busy the place is; you'd think there'd be better turnover. The hot chocolate is pretty good but the rest of I didn't think was worth the hassle of going there.

This is true. As much as we might sometimes like to believe otherwise, in every government agency there are employees--career civil servants--who actually want to do their jobs and carry out the mission of their department as well as they can. The problems come largely at the political level--the appointees who run the department and make policy, and the congressmen who control the funds. They can control what the enforcement priorities are, what problems will be deemed no significant, and how much resources are given.

A pretty sizable portion of the meat sold in this country comes from a very small number of suppliers: Tyson, Smithfield, Cargill, and a Brazilian company called JBS, which recently bought Swift and National Beef. Perdue and a couple of others make up the second tier. There isn't that much difference between them in terms of their basic operations.

Except that it does happen. Here in Boston, in the North End, I know that there is at least one cafe on Hanover Street that gets at least some of its baked goods from a bakery down the street, which also has its own cafe seating and coffee service. And one dessert place I frequented in Brooklyn was getting its coffee (the beans, at least) from the cafe/roaster right across the street.

That sounds tasty. But I don't think you can solve a problem caused by overuse of antimicrobials with more antimicrobials; that way lies madness. The inertia of the system works against change: the food producers have designed their system to be able to process meat as quickly and cheaply as they can, pretty much regardless of any consequence. Introducing quality or safety controls slows the process and hence increases costs; the processors will fight tooth and nail (or hoof) to resist. And they have a lot of power to do so, with friends in Congress and the agencies that are supposed to oversee them.

I think what they are saying is new is the presence of drug-resistant strains. And there's nothing in the report that suggests that authors intended this to be a comprehensive, definitive survey; it was published as a "brief report." They actually make no claims that this can be extrapolated universally. In fact, quite the opposite, only that wide study is needed. Indeed, the FDA and CDC have been tracking the prevalence of drug-resistant diseases in your meat supply for some years now. You can find the reports here. It would appear that the only reason the drug-resistant staph was not found before is that it is not one of the diseases tracked by NARMS, which is to say, just because this is the first time someone bothered to test for it.

When I was an editor, I wanted to submit a proposal for a diet book that had on page 1 a) eat reasonable amounts of real food b) don't eat too much junk food and c) get off your ass and get some exercise you slug, and then 159 blank pages. But I never did it.