Get to Know Your Food

Recent conversations with people who have recurring digestive issues make me think it could be time for another installment of Get to Know Your Food. Today, let’s talk about restaurant food.

It’s the general consensus that fast food may not be the healthiest for you. But we may believe that choosing the salad at a fast food restaurant is okay. The thing is, and this is true of food in your grocery store aisles as well, many packaged foods contain things you don’t think about – coloring, flavoring, preservatives – that serve to enhance flavor and lengthen shelf life.

If your fast-food salad is topped with deli meat, it may contain more sodium than you bargained for. If it is topped with fried protein, the make up of the fat content could be problematic. And fried is generally less desirable than grilled. Plus, salad dressings may be filled with artificial flavors. Any or all of it may irritate your digestive system.

So if we avoid fast food, then restaurant food should be fine, right? Well, it depends. Restaurant profits are reliant on turning tables. That means getting you in and out quickly helps the bottom line (in general, bars may benefit from you staying longer if your table is drinking heavily). Key to the turn is how long it takes to prepare your order.

If you order an omelet, the eggs may come from a carton – even in a small local restaurant. Liquid, sugared eggs may also be found in local baked goods. Liquid eggs make perfect sense from an efficiency and speed standpoint but may contain preservatives and come with a prop 65 warning.

Spoonful of soup lifted from white bowl on white plate with partial torso of woman in background.

Soups are a healthy-sounding restaurant option. It’s easy to assume they’re made from left-over fresh ingredients that the kitchen doesn’t want to waste. They may be.

They also may begin with a base that includes hydrolyzed soy protein, coloring, corn starch, corn syrup, autolyzed yeast extract, and disodium inosinate. Even if the restaurant adds fresh protein and vegetables, you’re getting a dose of unexpected ingredients. Starting with a packaged base is faster and more efficient than slow-cooking stock from scratch. (The only ingredient in this list that will be tagged as an allergen is soy.)

Restaurant soups like chowder & potato, and even mac & cheese sometimes begin with a powdered cream soup base that gets mixed with warm water. This is another tool that saves prep time. Cream bases may contain palm oil, maltodextrin, modified food starch, modified whey, salt, soybean oil and fully hydrogenated soybean oil (with tbhq and citric acid for freshness and dimethyl polysiloxane [prevents foaming]), MSG, sodium caseinate, xanthan gum, dipotassium phosphate, mono and diglycerides, silicon dioxide (flow agent), natural flavor, sodium hexametaphosphate, and colorings. That’s a whole lot of added ingredients that aren’t required for a soup that can be made with water, potatoes, milk or cream, potatoes, salt, and pepper.

The gumbo you ordered may have begun with a packaged base as well. Ditto for mushroom soup and crab bisque. If a restaurant designates such soup as homemade on the menu, they could technically be considered correct if they’re adding fresh ingredients, but they probably shouldn’t claim from scratch.

We’ve only covered soup and salad and it’s easy to see how many unexpected things you may ingest in a single restaurant meal. I’m not advocating for eating every meal at home or never using boxed chicken stock. The point is that having restaurant food in the mix when you’re attempting to determine what’s messing with your digestive system can be like going into the search blindfolded.

Attempting to keep your diet healthy when eating restaurant food can be more difficult than you think. You’ll have the best luck by seeking out local, farm-to-table restaurants where questions are welcome and you can chat with the chef at less busy times.

If you’re frustrated by recurring digestive problems and can spare the time, try cooking all your meals from scratch (not prepared, packaged from the market) for a couple of weeks. Avoid any ingredients you think may be problematic. Write down how you feel each day.

Keep an open mind. Conventional wisdom can cause us to avoid the obvious because it goes against what most people believe. Go with your observations. A significant difference in how you feel can give you some insight into how restaurant food may be impacting your system.

The more you know, the easier it will be to increase the amount of time you feel good. That’s why it’s always helpful to get to know your food.

Winter Garden

It’s time to get serious about the winter garden. Due to my neglect this summer, it’s in need of more prep than usual.

The work has begun. I removed long weeds and a black widow spider. I stepped around the ants and squash bugs to harvest green beans and arugula that produced to the end. Next, I need to till in some high-quality soil or fertilizer, prep the rows, and plant.

But all that prep work won’t matter unless I have something to plant. Even though I’m woefully behind, I’ll most likely use seeds. There’s just something about going from nothing on the surface to a shoot peeking through that’s especially satisfying. Not to mention, I have seeds on hand.

I also have row markers I always intend to use but never do. Hopefully, I’ll be more diligent with this planting.

Rainbow chard lying on white surface. — Vibrant bunches of rainbow Swiss chard with bright stems and green leaves, a nutritious and organic vegetable

My hardiness zone is 8a. That means leafy greens grow adequately in winter. My top choices are bok choy, chard, and arugula. I may attempt more traditional cabbage as well. Radishes, beets, and turnips don’t flourish in my moderately rocky soil even though they’re climate friendly.

I always wonder why chard isn’t more popular in the US. My first encounter with it was in New Zealand where it was called silverbeet. I loved it from the first bite. I now grow several varieties.

If you value the benefits of a Mediterranean diet, you may want to add chard to your repertoire. In a 35-calorie serving, you’ll get almost 4 grams of fiber, 300% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin K, half of the RDA for vitamin A, and a decent amount of vitamin C, magnesium, potassium, and iron. Pretty impressive nutrients for not many calories. It’s also high in antioxidants.

These characteristics make chard the perfect choice for a home gardener. Our gardens don’t need crops with long, sustained growing seasons like commercial farms may.

If you’re not familiar with chard (also known as Swiss chard), take a look at photo. Rainbow chard is beautifully colorful. And it’s tasty raw or cooked. The stems have a texture akin to celery and soften beautifully when cooked. If you can’t find it in local stores, consider growing some.

Some ways to enjoy chard:
Use it in breakfast smoothies. It can replace spinach or kale.
Add raw leaves to a salad.
Sauté by itself in olive oil or olive oil and butter. Season however you prefer your greens.
Add to other sautéed vegetables. Cook stems until soft and leaves until wilted.
Wilt, then add butter, cream, nutmeg, salt, and pepper as a substitute for creamed spinach. For a variation, wilt and add butter, goat cheese, and a small bit of milk.
Use as wrappers instead of grape leaves or tortillas.
Make chard lasagna.
Add to chicken and rice.
Feature in a frittata.

Chard won’t be the only delight from the winter garden, but it’s one not to be missed.

Now it’s time to get my hands in the dirt!

Sweety Drop

You haven’t had a perfect veggie board until you’ve had one that features red sweety drop peppers! First, they’re adorable and the bright red color looks amazing beside the green, orange, purple, and yellow of other vegetables on a platter. They’re my new food obsession.

Even better than their appearance, their taste and texture add just the right note after a cucumber dipped in tzatziki, a carrot smeared with hummus, or a piece of seared broccolini. Shaped like a tear drop and smaller than a Hershey’s Kiss, sweety drops have a sweet and tangy flavor that’s bright, but not hot. Texture will vary with preparation, but the peppers have a natural crispness.

Sweety Drops is a nickname for biquinho peppers (Capsicum chinense) that come from the region of the Andes Mountains. They’re relatively new to the international culinary market and increasingly available. Peru is a significant source, but the peppers are now grown in various locations worldwide.

In warm climates, you can grow them yourself in containers or in the garden. While seeds and starter plants may not be widely available at the local nursery, they’re not too hard to find. Easier to find are lightly pickled sweety drops in a jar. While I haven’t yet found them on the shelves of a local supermarket, I can order them through local markets to be shipped to my home.

Once they arrive, sweety drops are perfect for afternoon porch parties. They can be served alongside the rich, creamy cheeses I usually have on hand – brie, mascarpone, and goat cheese. In fact, they can even be stuffed with goat cheese. But they’re also delicious with Manchego, goat cheese mozzarella, and white cheddar.

At one of these porch parties, my chef neighbor mentioned that he uses sweety drops in a pesto to dress Italian Grinder sandwiches. He seems to love them as much as I do.

I can see them garnishing drinks, served on bruschetta, in a tapenade, on a salad, in pasta, on an antipasto platter…the possibilities are endless. I feel certain they’ll make my holiday table this year.

If you haven’t tried these little bulbs of joy yet, don’t be alarmed that biquinho is translated little beak. These peppers don’t bite. They don’t burn. Instead, they delight! Do yourself a favor and try a sweety drop!

Get to Know Your Food

If you really get to know your food, will you want to eat it? When it comes to processed food, probably not. But will you make more informed choices? Obviously.

Withholding information as a way to influence or control has been a theme in my life. As a result, I like information, the bottom line, evidence. Give me the bad news. I can take it.

I’m not saying I’m tough. I just understand that withholding means I cannot make the best decision possible. We simply must know what we’re dealing with to make informed decisions. Data before the fact is a better option than recalls.

Information is power. You and I may make different decisions based on identical data, but having the data gives us that choice. Without it, we are at someone else’s mercy. Often, withholding information is used as a power play. When anyone or any entity refuses to provide or goes to extreme means to tightly control information, their motives are suspect.

In the food industry, we know the motive is profit. Since Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, we’ve been aware of the lengths to which industry will use and abuse humans in service of profit. We like to think industry is more enlightened, business more humane, and ourselves less tolerant of abuse now. But are those facts?

Alice Driver’s 2024 book, Life and Death of The American Worker gives an inside look at conditions we currently tolerate as well as what’s really in those chicken nuggets we’re feeding our kids. Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in America, is the study of this book.

With regard to chicken nuggets, a product Tyson created for McDonald’s, here’s part of the description: “The nugget recipe involved forty-pound frozen blocks of chicken parts: three blocks of chicken breast; two of ground skeleton mixed with blood, necks, and other bits; and one of chicken skin and fat. Victor began his shift by using a crowbar to open the frozen boxes of chicken parts. In his experience, ‘Many times, the chicken is rotten. It smells. It arrives like a rock. When we open it, it is already a different color, not pink. It is green or purple.’”(1)

I know, it’s a shocking and disgusting description. But it’s real. This book has been painstakingly fact-checked. And it’s knowledge. And knowledge is power.

So why aren’t the alleged harsh conditions, inadequate medical treatment, and child labor in the food industry front and center on the news? Well, as you know, money is also power. Besides, in 2024, John Tyson brought the Arkansas (where Tyson Foods is headquartered) Razorbacks a hall of fame basketball coach. And we all look to sports for role models.

Also, there are Ag-Gag laws in some states. Arkansas is one. Enacted in 2017, the law seeks to gag whistleblowers and undercover activists and empowers businesses to sue whistleblowers for exposing the truth about industrial agriculture. Arkansas’ law goes further by banning undercover investigations of nursing homes and daycare centers.

It is hard to see economically successful members of our communities as anything but upstanding and morally centered. And they sometimes are. But the bigger story may be more complicated.

To get to know your food, you may also get to know sad, unspeakable abuse. And you may learn some unpleasant truths about people you have trusted. That’s how it is with truth knowing. Many truths are heartbreaking.

But embracing knowledge, shouldering heartbreak, and deciding what we can and are willing to do to make things better is a more courageous choice than looking away or trying to whitewash the story.

Want to make informed choices? Read Alice Driver’s book, I am. It’s an important way to get to know your food.

(1) Driver, A. (2024). Life and death of the American worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company. Simon and Schuster, p41.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”