Balance of Food

The food system is also about who is involved in your food

Do you love food and eating food but hate the idea of undocumented immigration? As Full Frontal with Samantha Bee points out, if you feel this way, you will starve pretty quickly.

Samantha Bee, a documented immigrant herself (she's from Canada) guides us through a path of undocumented immigrants in kitchens. We stop in Philadelphia where Cristina Martinez runs a popular barbacoa restaurant. Martinez is undocumented but was willing to go on camera. (Bee talked later to other undocumented restaurant employees who didn't want their identity revealed.)

Martinez explains in Spanish that she came to the United States to escape her abusive now ex-husband.

Bee also incorporates fellow immigrant Padma Lakshmi, host of Top Chef. Lakshmi talked about the importance of immigrants to restaurants and how they want the same things everyone else wants.

"I think the food landscape in this country would be completely different without immigrant labor," said Lakshmi. "We all have a responsibility to reach down and pull up the people who really break their back for you day in and day out."

The financial reality is that restaurants rely on undocumented immigrants for success. So do farmers to help pick the crops that you enjoy in the grocery store and the restaurant.

You can certainly choose to disagree on what to do with undocumented immigrants but you should acknowledge the realities of the current food system and the impact if these people weren't here.

At the end of the segment, Bee mentioned thegivingkitchen.org, the recipient of proceeds for a T-shirt filled with "thank you" in multiple languages. She noted that the organization provides financial assistance to restaurant workers in crisis.

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee airs Wednesday nights at 10:30 pm Eastern on TBS.

video and photo credit: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee/TBS

UHT milk provides longer shelf life but nutrition and taste are lost

If you need a long-shelf life for your regular milk, you might be excited that you are seeing expiration dates longer into the future. We are seeing this especially in organic milk.

However, those longer shelf-lives come as a result of the milk going through the process of ultra high temperature (UHT) or being ultra-pasteurized. Are the advantages of organic milk being compromised by being UHT?

I learned the different pasteurization techniques via Alton Brown on an episode of Good Eats. The conventional process is 145°F for 30 minutes. Brown referenced HTST pasteurization (high temperature/short time), which is 161°F for 15 seconds. UHT is 280°F for 2 seconds and then cooled quickly.

Brown noted that low and slow is the way to go because it produces better flavor and body.

Nutrition is more important than taste, but a better tasting milk means more milk will be consumed, especially by children. Drinking milk is also about health above and beyond calcium and protein.

Scouring the Internet won't take you long to find articles about the evils of UHT pasteurization, such as altering the milk protein structure is altered and that UHT milk has less folate and could have reduced Vitamin B₁₂, Vitamin C, and Thiamin.

From the Weston A. Price Foundation:

According to Lee Dexter, microbiologist and owner of White Egret Farm goat dairy in Austin, Texas, ultra-pasteurization is an extremely harmful process to inflict on the fragile components of milk. Dexter explains that milk proteins are complex, three-dimensional molecules, like tinker toys. They are broken down and digested when special enzymes fit into the parts that stick out. Rapid heat treatments like pasteurization, and especially ultra-pasteurization, actually flatten the molecules so the enzymes cannot do their work. If such proteins pass into the bloodstream (a frequent occurrence in those suffering from "leaky gut," a condition that can be brought on by drinking processed commercial milk), the body perceives them as foreign proteins and mounts an immune response. That means a chronically overstressed immune system and much less energy available for growth and repair.

If you like raw milk or want to have the milk as little pasteurized as possible, UHT milk goes to the other extreme.

Schitt's Creek amplifies illegality of raw milk

What's Tempting: Finally tasting raw milk

What's Tempting: Fairlife as a milk alternative

What's Tempting: Raw milk from a vending machine

What's Tempting: Raw milk in 2014

Colbert showcases government extreme on addressing raw milk

The UHT process doesn’t add nutrition to the process. UHT milk isn’t safer than regular pasteurization. The primary advantage to UHT is that grocery stores can increase profits. Less milk to throw out and more people will buy milk with a longer shelf life.

You can drink regular milk past the expiration date. Unless you take a long time to consume a container of milk, you almost never have to worry about spoilage. And if you need a long-term, shelf-stable milk, you can buy non-dairy milk.

Your food can be “too safe.” The U.S. has allowed irradiation of ground beef since 1999. Health Canada approved irradiation of ground beef last year but that information must be declared on the label. Irradiated ground beef might be "safe" but I wouldn't want to eat that beef.

We praise Europe’s food process, but the UHT wave comes from Europe. You might remember the Parmalat milk from the 1990s. Finding UHT milk is much easier in Europe, but then again, raw milk is easier to find in Europe.

If I’m going to drink milk, I want to get as much complete nutrition as I can in that glass. UHT milk makes buying and drinking milk less worrisome to some people, but provides no worthy reason where nutrition is concerned.