Some food additives can be dangerous to public health -- such as adding melamine to infant formula. So understandably, government agencies policing food safety should focus on health issues related to food additives and food poisioning. But there are perfectly safe food additives that are just aimed at increasing the profits of food distributors, and it looks like Americans might want to research their cheese suppliers a bit more closely.

• The FDA found that Castle Cheese Inc wasn't selling 100% real parmesan cheese -- just a lot of fillers (e.g., cellulose) and cheaper cheddar cheese. It's not unsafe to eat, but an estimated 20% of hard Italian cheeses in the US could be deceptively labeled. [url]
• Cellulose is a common food additive, so if you saw headlines of "wood pulp in cheese" -- it's nothing new, really. It's not sawdust, and food scientists have tried to source cellulose from non-wood plants, but it's not as easy to get. Cellulose has been used as an anti-clumping agent in baking, and the food industry claims it provides a healthy source of dietary fiber. [url]
• The adulteration of food stuffs has been a tempting way to increase profits since forever. Olive oil was once the most adulterated agricultural product in the EU in 1997-1998. Olive oil is easy to dilute with cheaper oils and has been tampered with as far back as ancient Greece, and adulteration can be difficult to detect -- even with modern chemistry. [url]

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There was a time when making your own alcohol wasn't a completely legit thing to do. Sure, now anyone can just go down to a corner store almost any time and pick up a chilled alcoholic beverage, but if you're a real do-it-yourself-er, you won't want to drink just anything that comes in a pretty bottle. Here are a few projects you might want to check out someday when you're not feeling like guzzling something made by Anheuser-Busch-Inbev-SABmiller.

• Folks can brew beer from a lot of unusual stuff, so why not use day-old bread to prevent some food waste? Toast Ale uses surplus bakery bread to make its beer, and it plans to open source its recipe so that more people can find a productive use for baked goods that might otherwise just go in the trash. If you're not a beer drinker, there's also vodka made from potato peels. [url]
• PicoBrew is a way to brew your own beer at home with the convenience of a Keurig coffee maker. So yah, you can make custom craft beer at home, and you just need to buy these fairly sizable packages of pre-measured hops and grains -- then voila, you'll have fresh beer in about a week. [url]
• If you'd like to try to make your own moonshine, but you don't really want to go out into the woods and find a source of running water -- just get a tabletop still for your kitchen. It doesn't even require running water, and it'll make about a half gallon of booze on demand (if you're patient). And maybe make sure to discard the first few drops to make sure you're not drinking too much methanol. [url]

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As you may recall, late last year Australia put into effect a wonderfully ambitious data retention law that required ISPs in the country to do... well... something involving data retention. The problems began immediately, with ISPs unsure of exactly when they were supposed to start collecting all of this data, as the law allowed for some to petition to delay implementing the data collection, but the government hadn't bothered to get back to many of them. Never mind what would happen once this same inept government actually received the mountains of data it had requested.

But those concerns are all about the practical utility of such a law, not the larger concerns over whether this kind of data collection ought to be happening to begin with. To see an example of why a free people shouldn't allow the government to crack open this door, however, one needs only look again at the law in Australia. What was supposed to be collection chiefly to combat major criminal actions is now a collection that even the food police are trying to get in on. And, yes, I really do mean the food police.

If you are in the business of selling lamb chops, make sure you are weighing them properly: the National Measurement Institute wants warrantless access to Australians’ metadata to help them hunt down supermarkets skimping on portions. The NMI is one of 61 agencies that has applied to the attorney general, George Brandis, to be classed as a “criminal law-enforcement agency” in order to gain warrantless access to telecommunications data.

As part of the government’s assurances that there would be sufficient privacy safeguards, it reduced the number of agencies that could access the data. But agencies could reapply, with the permission of the attorney general, if they were involved in enforcing “serious contraventions” of criminal laws.

Now, this is still in the application phase, so the NMI, a government group tasked with investigating retailers to make sure they're packaging their goods properly, doesn't yet have access to Australian's metadata, but its petition did have to be approved by the attorney general as being relevant to even get that far. This is what happens when you crack open the door: the bulk of government will try to force its way in. Keep in mind that the efficacy of bulk collection practices for combating even terrorism and serious criminal actions is debatable, but now we're dealing with the food and retail packaging police wanting in on the action? This really should tell you everything you need to know.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam said: “The only saving grace the government was able to claim when they passed it was that they were narrowing the range of agencies that could access the data. On the face of it that was true, and obviously that’s just been blown to pieces.”

Just because slippery slope arguments are almost always lame, that doesn't mean they don't occasionally apply. It seems on bulk surveillance, they certainly do.

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

• Fish and other aquatic animals caught from the Passaic River in New Jersey should NOT be eaten -- because toxic waste has been dumped into that waterway for decades and proposed cleanup projects would cost well over a billion dollars (and have not yet started). The Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (aka the Lower Passaic CPG is offering a "fish exchange" to swap frozen tilapia for any fish caught from the Passaic. Yum. Three-eyed fish [url]
• California, Oregon and Washington produce the most Dungeness crab in the US, but right now, the ~$60 million industry isn't doing so well. Domoic acid is being measured in marine wildlife along the West coast, caused by a bloom of algae in the Pacific, and levels are decreasing. With justified caution, though, crab catchers are staying away from their usual crop until levels are deemed safe, saying "We are not like the beef industry. We don't do recalls." [url]
• The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (a joint effort for the CDC, USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service) published a report on foodborne illness, covering hundreds of outbreaks between 1998 and 2012. If you don't eat beef or any vegetables grown in rows, what's left to eat? [url]

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Maybe you've heard that the word 'salary' comes from Roman soldiers being paid in salt. That's seems like a fuzzy bit of history, and no one actually knows with certainty how early Roman soldiers were paid, but at some point, they were paid with coinage -- or perhaps with some other kind of allowance to purchase salt. Luckily, most people don't get paid in spices anymore, but there are a few food items that are expensive enough that they could be used as currency. (And if you want to really get off the grid, you might want to know about how much it'll cost to really make everything yourself from scratch.)

• Saffron, by weight, is probably the most expensive spice you'll ever consume. It takes about 85,000-150,000 flowers (just the dried stigmas) to produce 1 kilogram of the spice. About 80-90% (or more?) of the world's supply is grown in Iran, and the industry and enthusiasts may start DNA fingerprinting to crack down on fake or diluted saffron. [url]
• If you want to spend a lot of money on a sandwich, you could order one with foie gras or truffles... or you could make one from scratch yourself. It'll only take you 6 months and about $1,500 to grow all the vegetables -- including the wheat to make bread -- and to raise and slaughter your own chicken. (Or spend a lot more and order lab-grown meat if you don't like killing animals.) [url]
• So you could grow your own saffron, if you really wanted to. When you get good at it, you can probably pick about a thousand flowers an hour, but it'll still take a few more hours to separate out the stigmas and dry them. Not quite a Chia Pet hobby. [url]
• If you want to try something exotic, cook a peacock recipe from 1612. Impress your 17th century spice baron friends, and remember that people used to risk their lives for a few valuable spices. [url]

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Biometric scanners are hardly a novelty these days, but how the data they generate can be used is still controversial. Here's a good example from Venezuela of how function creep there has turned fingerprint readers into instruments of pervasive surveillance:

In Caracas or Maracaibo' supermarkets and drugstores, buying a kilogram of grain or a pack of cookies has become a complex procedure: it's required for you to deliver an ID, full name, phone number, address, date of birth and to slide both thumbs in a device: the emblematic "fingerprint scanner"; a device which usage by stores was originally voluntary, but which evolution, months afterwards, is one of omnipresent machinery, kind of a necessary toll for the acquisition of a simple pack of gum in any chain store.

As a post on the Digital Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean blog explains, the Food Safety Biometric System was supposed to be a boon for citizens, ending Venezuela's food and medicine shortage. Not only has it failed to do that, it has helped create one of the world's most complete and intrusive population profile databases:

Along with biometric and personal data requested to the customers at the moment of the purchase, stores are obliged to preserve a great deal of information regarding the transaction, demanded by the government's tax collector. The extend [sic] of the databases that the Venezuelan government possesses regarding their citizens would be heaven for any big data analyst. With enough computer skills, it wouldn't be difficult to establish a detailed profile of every Venezuelan citizen, starting from data such as address, the places where he shops, how much money he expends and the products he acquires. Nevertheless, no one outside of the government possesses the capability to know if ... systems are intertwined, or where this huge quantity of information is stored, much less what's the policy for its retention and storage.

That would be worrying anywhere; in Venezuela, it's doubly so, because of the country's experience with something called the Tascón List:

a list of millions of signatures of Venezuelans who petitioned in 2003 and 2004 for the recall of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, a petition which ultimately led to the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, in which the recall was defeated. The list, published online by National Assembly member Luis Tascón, is used by the Venezuelan government to discriminate against those who have signed against Chávez. The government also claimed some private firms were using the list to discriminate in favour of petitioners.

According to the Digital Rights post, because of the Tascón list, some Venezuelans found themselves shut out from things like mortgage loans, scholarships and job opportunities. The fingerprint scanners of the Food Safety Biometric System are already being used to deny people access to even more essential items -- food and medicine:

those marked by the system shopping in quantities superior to those of their established quotas, go to a blacklist, and are blocked completely from the system. This makes them use the (illegal) black market in order to purchase food, medicines and basic products.

Venezuela is clearly the country to watch if you want to see how not to use biometrics.

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We've noticed some Christmas dinner traditions that might sound a little strange. But there are some traditions around this time of year that are curious enough to warrant some quick fact-checking. Whatever the case may be, enjoy whatever traditions you follow!

• Is Chinese food really the most popular restaurant choice for Christmas? A quick look at some Google search trends shows that searches for Chinese food spike around the Christmas season. And apparently, a growing number of kosher Chinese restaurants serve 'Jewish Christmas' meals without pork or shellfish. [url]
• The origin of candy canes isn't clear, but they might date back to the 17th century. Candy canes may have started out as straight sticks, and there's little evidence that they're in a J-shape for Jesus. There is a patented candy cane machine that improved the process for making the J-bend without breaking the candy, filed back in 1957. So the "modern" candy cane can be traced back to a Catholic inventor -- Father Gregory Keller. [url]
• During Justice Elena Kagan's 2010 confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court, Kagan testified that she was probably at a Chinese restaurant for Christmas. While other kinds of restaurants (besides Chinese) are actually open on Christmas, it seems that Chinese food has evolved to cater to American tastes. [url]

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It's not always easy to nurture plants so they grow and thrive, but it's especially difficult without land -- and gravity. Farming in space isn't exactly a common activity, but if any significant number of people are going to live in space for longer than a few months (without re-supply cargo ships or huge stores of packaged food), astronauts are going to need to figure out how to grow their meals. Space station residents have only just started to eat plants they've grown in space, so it'll be awhile before anyone is growing potatoes on Mars.

• Not too long ago, astronauts on the International Space Station ate vegetables grown in space for the first time. A greenhouse for growing plants has existed on the ISS since 2002, but no one on board ate the experiments before. It's far from a sustainable habitat up there, obviously, but we haven't exactly perfected sustainable farming techniques on the ground, either. [url]
• The very first space-grown vegetables were aboard the Mir space station in 1990, producing fresh radishes and Chinese cabbage. The first time plants were grown from seeds that were produced by parent plants that were also grown in space happened in 1997. A complete lifecycle (seed to seed) for growing plants in space isn't as easy as just adding water and setting up some lights. Microgravity and a variety of environmental conditions make it difficult for some plants to propagate. [url]
• The 'Seeds in Space' program allowed thousands of students to witness the differences of growing plants in space versus growing them on Earth. The kids observed how plants (rocket lettuce) grew in all directions both in micro-gravity and without a light source. [url]

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Cities have enacted laws against smoking, salt, sugar, trans fat... and it's raising awareness of these unhealthy habits. But is it really effective at improving general health? Maybe not. It's difficult to actually measure what effect these health warnings have when the result is essentially a decades-long experiment on participants that aren't monitored that well. However, smoking is down, diabetes is no longer on the rise, and consumption of sugary soda is also down. (NB: It probably wasn't warning labels alone that caused these trends.)

• NYC is starting to require a "salt warning" on restaurant menus for items that exceed 2,300 milligrams of sodium. While sodium intake can contribute to high blood pressure and complications, it's not clear that targeting salt intake alone is a silver bullet for improving health. [url]
• Too much sugar isn't healthy, and there's a surprising amount of "added sugar" in packaged foods. The website sugarscience.org is dedicated to informing everyone about the possible health impact of too much sugar in a diet. [url]
• Food labels warning about trans fat might not actually make us measurably healthier. Eaters gonna eat. But education can't hurt, right? [url]

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Penicillin and its derivatives haven't actually been around for that long in the scheme of things, but antibiotics have enabled an incredible age of prosperity without people having to worry about common infections killing us off. Unfortunately, nature has a way of evolving and adapting to our not-so-clever use of antibiotics, and we've been breeding superbugs in our hospitals and in our industrialized food chain. Sketchy meats have been around for a long time, but hopefully, it won't take a public health nightmare to get folks to take a closer look at food safety.

• The overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry could be creating superbugs in our food chain -- and a surprising amount of these resistant microbes are already in commercial foods. Consumer Reports looked at a variety of meat samples and found over 80% of the turkey meat it tested contained superbugs. Ugh. Cook your Turkeys thoroughly next Thanksgiving.... [url]
• The 1993 E. coli outbreak from hamburger meat killed at least four kids and poisoned hundreds of people. That outbreak was followed years later by other infectious contamination in produce, cheese and cookie dough... and the food safety system still isn't perfect. Salmonella in chicken is another potential problem, and the food industry is responding -- though perhaps a bit slower than some would like. [url]
• Bacteriophages as biocontrol agents in foods were approved by the FDA in 2006, but it's not approved for infant formula. Bacteriophages -- viruses that specifically attack bacteria -- are abundant everywhere, so they're presumably safe and environmentally friendly -- and could prevent babies from getting terrible illnesses. These phages could be an important tool to combat food-borne microbes, but we may still want to be careful not to over-use them or over-engineer them to the point that they might attack microbes indiscriminately. [url]

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