GM? No way, no thanks

First, an advert for healthy eating brought to you by Earthmother productions. Worried about your health? Eat organic and for colour! Nature has kindly colour-coordinated its plant nutrients so you can mix-and-match. Step forward orange carotenoids for vitamin A production and purple and deeply-green antioxidants for cell-restoration.

If the veg is organic you get more antioxidants for your money. Here’s why: if you spray a plant with pesticides (which is how most western food is grown), then its ability to produce antioxidants is decreased. Antioxidants are the fighting army that protect a plant from pests and there are more in organic food because the organic plant gets to keep its antioxidant army. Fade on ad.

And the UK government wants to re-open the GM debate! Crikey, as if we don’t have enough to contend with just trying to grow a few unsprayed organic veg.

GM crops are modified in a lab to tolerate a herbicide (weed killer) or produce an insecticide (insect killer). Farmers have to buy the GM seed and the proprietary pesticide (umbrella term for herbicide, insecticide and fungicide).

If GM seeds or pollen arrive accidentally on a field, GM companies can sue farmers for patent-infringement. California voted to protect farmers against such lawsuits in August. It’s more fair if the polluter-company pays for GM contamination, as the Welsh Assembly government proposes – and not the hapless farmer.

The pro-GM marketing spin says GM can feed the world – how selfish of me to stop a technology that saves the hungry! But it’s a lie. There are no GM crops designed to help the poor. The current GM crops are engineered for insect and weed-spraying – not to improve yields, vitamin A, drought-prevention or any of the other mythical scenarios dreamed up by well-meaning but misguided press officers.

The (so-called) environment minister, Phil Woolas, said people like me have a year to prove GM is unsafe.

A body of evidence is growing; the ill-health effects on animals is well-documented. But the fact is the science has not been done. Commercial planting of GM especially in the US has pushed ahead regardless.  Listen, there has only been one trial published worldwide on humans eating GM food. And that showed worrying results.

I think we need more science on the health effects of GM.

And, Woolas – it’s not up to me to provide it.

On a gentler note: the ingredients for supper came from Better Food organic supermarket, which also grew the organic veg 12 miles away. The chard was steamed, the carrots grated and the beetroot, cut very small, was – new discovery – pan-fried in olive oil for 20 minutes with sliced onion. Served on a bed of brown rice; 1 mug of rice to 2 mugs of water, simmered for 30 minutes – enough for two, and a rice salad the next day.

Baked apples

I searched my trusty cookery books but in the end only Mrs Beeton’s yielded a recipe for baked apples. I customised it, omitting sugar, and used chopped-up organic dates and prunes plus sultanas and sunflower seeds to stuff the de-cored apples. I dotted butter on top, and placed the stuffed unpeeled apples in an ovenproof dish with a thumbnail of water and baked it for an hour at Gas mark 4 (180 degrees).

They emerged from the oven, fluffed-up apple-flesh bursting from their heat-withered skin. Hmmmm, worthy contenders for a competition, methinks…

My apples were organic, natch, because I didn’t fancy the cocktail of factory-made pesticides sprayed on most apples.

I had bought my big fat organic cooking apples at Bristol Farmers’ Market from the stall of the wondrous Avon Organic Group (below). I say wondrous because it is a voluntary group that helps maintain a local organic orchard and allotments in the city. Where would we be without such dedication?

It’s Apple day on October 21. I keep noticing the little darlings ripening on trees in the stillness of autumn.

If you love baked apples, and you ever come across an apple-corer, do not hesitate. Just buy it. A corer costs a few pounds and will be your lifelong-kitchen friend even if you only use it once a year.

I value mine so much, I photographed it on a velvet cushion (see below).

PS Emboldened by Antonia’s invite (see comments), I hereby enter the humble apples into their second competition at Food Glorious Food, organised in aid of British Food Fortnight.

Bread and organic ghee

This morning’s breakfast: toast from Hobbs House Bakery and organic ghee from Pukka, both bought at the Soil Association’s Organic Food Festival this weekend.

I have wanted to buy ghee for months – it’s a healthy fat that can be used at high temperatures without burning. But I have been deterred by the ingredients list. This ghee, however, has nothing in it but clarified butter from organic milk.

I have pledged to eat unpackaged local and organic during Organic Fortnight. As this is impossible, I Ask Questions instead.

“Why is the organic ghee from Austria ?” I sternly ask Pukka’s Helena Kowalski. Turns out Pukka works with an Austrian farmer who specialises in making ghee on his small farm. Perhaps this is a new way for west country organic farmers to add value to their milk?

My breakfast toast is from Hobbs House Bakery in Bath – local points there. The Hobbs people (see their colourful stall below) were jubilant about their win at the Soil Association organic food awards on Friday. So they should be – their bread is so damn delicious, I was heartbroken when I ate my last slice an hour ago.

The whole mood of the Organic Food Festival was buzzy and warm. It’s a wonderful feeling to be involved in something which does the planet good. And is successful.

At the festival’s launch, Barny Haughton from sustainable gastro-paradise restaurant, Bordeaux Quay, said business had never been so good.

The recent food price rises are linked to the price of oil. The lynchpin of industrial farming is factory-made fertiliser, a process that relies entirely on burning oil.

In contrast organic farmers fertilise their fields naturally, courtesy of the sun, by using crop rotations, nitrogen-fixing clover and composting. As oil prices rise, organic farming becomes more profitable.

In an oil-depleted world, local organic is the future. Common sense, don’t you agree?

Our Daily Bread blog competition

Bread is one of the most messed-up foods on the planet. Made from hybridised wheat, grown for quick-machinability (forget taste, nutrition and digestion), modern bread is subjected to chemical processes you know nothing about.

If you want to freak yourself out, read the list of gunk in an ordinary loaf of sliced bread in Bread Matters by baker Andrew Whitley. Classified as non-nutritive processing aids, their job is not to feed you but to add texture, quickly. Hence the additives (including animal or GM-derived enzymes) do not legally need to be listed on the label.

In real food-world, you need four ingredients:  flour, water, a raising agent. The fourth is time. And the result, such as Emma’s bread (see above at Exeter’s farmers’ market), is tasty and sustaining.

Emma is teaching these skills at a breadmaking day at Occombe farm in Devon. If you join the Soil Association the day is free.

Or use a book to learn – I like Warren Lee Cohen’s Baking bread with children. And check the coming campaign for real bread.

Now for the competition. Food bloggers, what’s your favourite real food? Its tastes are enticing but not from a laboratory and it nourishes as nature intended.

The winning blogger (more details below) gets a copy of the new DVD, Our Daily Bread. Released on the 8 September 2008, this award-winning documentary observes without judgement and with an eye for beauty the world of intensive food production. Do we really know how food is made? Our Daily Bread shows what is usually hidden.

Here are the competition guidelines, and good luck, fellow food bloggers.

1. Write a blog on real food (it does not have to be about bread). One ingredient or a dish. Usually factory-made, but you eat the real thing. Baked beans, mashed potato, fresh fish and chicken Kiev come to mind. What’s yours? And extra points for local and organic ingredients.

2. Link it to this blog.

3. Post a comment on this (Our Daily Bread) blog displaying a link to your blog entry.

4. The deadline is October 8 2008 at midnight.

I look forward to hearing from you.