[conspire] CABAL meeting this Saturday

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (tony at of.net):

> I was just telling my boss at lunch how I passed up on some Planters
> peanuts at the safeway because of the corn syrup solids and MSG and
> got store brand instead.
> 
> It's amazing how many things are sweetened that shouldnt be: even
> almost all grocery store spaghetti sauce and salsa!

This is a situation that just came together rather than being planned,
but essentially it's a taste preference people are conditioned to have 
by the foods they become used to.  The food companies know that people
will eat more of foods with those ingredients, et voila.

Among the consequences of people being conditioned to eat more of
(actually) _less_ tasty and _less_ satisfying foods with
flavour-enhancing ingredients is an epidemic obesity, type 2 diabetes,
circulatory disease, and other problems of the "Western diet".  Again,
the real eye-opener is to compare and contrast with the French diet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox

At my family, we're going mostly with fresh _in season_ local fruits and
vegetables, whole grains, and meats from animals raised on natural
diets (e.g., free-ranged and eating grass).  When the Half Moon Bay
farmer's market reopens for the season (May), I intend to go there 
for locally caught fresh fish.  

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/farmers-markets.html

The fruit, vegetables, bread, eggs, and meat I buy at farmer's markets
actually tastes better, too.

Dealing with fresh, whole, in-season foods is sometimes a little more
work, sometimes not -- but the really _easy_ win is via what _not_ to
do:  Don't buy industrialised foods.  Nothing with textured soy
proteins, nothing with corn syrup, nothing with hydrolysed vegetable
oils, nothing with more than a half-dozen ingredients for no good
reason, most of which you don't even understand the names of, nothing 
that has sweeteners inappropriately added.  It's really simple:  You
just stop buying and eating it.

By the way, this summer, for my home-made jams, I've switched to a type
of pectin ("Pomona pectin") that doesn't require sugar in order to jell.
So, finally, I can make jams with much reduced sugar.