Market report: raspberries, green beans, pumpkins galore!

I expected big crowds of folks out getting Halloween pumpkins, mums, and great fall produce today, but both the North Carolina State Farmers' Market and the Western Wake Market were fairly quiet.

I splurged today on four quarts of raspberries. They cost $7 a quart, $2 more than that the same stand about 18 hours earlier. You see it can pay to go to the market just before it closes to look for bargains on perishable items. The raspberry guy was cranky today, not topping off the quarts and scoffing at the idea of a discount for buying a flat ("It's $42 ... 6 times 7.") Oh well, everyone else was super friendly as usual.

Other great buys today were free-range eggs for $3 a dozen. One of those eggs is a lovely aqua color, but the photo doesn't show it. Ricky Barbour of East Wake Apiaries and Eggs forgot to bring quarters for change and had a lot of eggs from being at the State Fair intend of at the Western Wake Farmers' Market, so he's having a sale today.

Redbud Farm had gorgeous, certified organic Blue Lake green beans for $2.50 a pound. That's just 51 cents more a pound than the sprayed beans at the State Farmers' Market. Nancy Joyner said that green beans just love cool weather.

The small pie pumpkins were $2 each and the big cheese pumpkin was $5. They'll be decorations until Thanksgiving, then will go one by one into pies and other pumpkin dishes.

I also got apple cider, mustard greens, arugula, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, and the last of the tomatoes, which are cat-faced but still good.

Great food talks in the Triangle area

We've got some great food authors speaking in the Triangle. Hope to see you at both these events!

Shirley Corriher is a biochemist, author and James Beard Foundation award winner. Her books CookWise and BakeWise show how scientific insights can be applied to traditional cooking and baking.
Where: at Meredith College, Kresge Auditorium
When: 6:30 p.m. on Monday, October 25, 2010.
Hosted by: Meredith College Master of Science in Nutrition and Nutrition Graduate Student Association
Get your free tickets here.

Jonathan Bloom will be doing a reading from his new book, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food (and what we can do about it).
Where: Quail Ridge Books & Music
When: 7:30 p.m. on November 3

"Good start" funding for nutritional supplements

What an excellent meeting yesterday with Patrick Brennan, legislative assistant for Senator Kay Hagan. We talked about the need for "good start" money for some people when they first receive nutritional supplement funding such as food stamps, SNAP, or WIC. This money would let them get started and make the best use of resources.

How? By providing a little extra money so they can cook at home, from scratch when possible. The money could be used to buy kitchen essentials, like salt, baking powder, and mustard. For some, it would be used to buy a pot, a kitchen knife, and enough plates and cutlery for everyone. Many people without traditional kitchens could cook if they had an electric rice cooker, crock pot, or skillet.

Patrick said he thought the idea was worthy of being considered as a potential addition to the next farm bill. I'll be sending him more info and keeping you posted here.

Meanwhile, let's thank Senator Hagan for her great work on the Tester-Hagan amendment to the current farm bill. This amendment would protect small, local food producers from regulations aimed at industrial-sized operations. Ask your senators to support this amendment with the Senate reconvenes.

What do you consider to be a kitchen essential? If you were cooking for weeks in a hotel room or on a picnic table at a campground, what would you need?

What have you done to make sure no kid's hungry?

I've heard amazing stories at the Share Our Strength Conference of Leaders about folks raising money, awareness, and opportunities to help make sure people get enough healthy food to eat. What's your story? Do you work in a food bank, attend Taste of a Nation events, volunteer, or work for good laws? Do you work in the food system itself, as a farmer, grocer, chef, or nutritionist? Is making sure your own kids are well fed taking all your energy right now? Tell yours story in the comments.

Eden Pasta finally fixes its site

Eden Organic Pasta has fixed its website. When it was still wrong last Friday afternoon, I penned a hand-written note to the company president. Who knows whether that shocking last measure had any effect, but I'm pleased to see that the serving size matches the nutritional information.

Eden Organic Pasta, Gulliver's Travels, and Knavery

The Eden Organic Pasta website still has bad information about the serving size for much of its pasta, so I've written a note to Eden Foods president Michael Potter. Got a little shiver when I noticed that he shares a last name with Sue Potter, the marketing manager who has been my contact on this issue. I feel bad complaining to one family member about another, if that's the case, but I'd feel worse letting this slide.

Cathy H., a Registered Dietitian and Master of Public Health, wrote saying this is a big deal for diabetics as well as vegetarians and other protein counters:

Probably a more important issue with the mislabeled pasta is that the carbohydrate amounts would be off and if someone is counting carbs in order to match their insulin to the carbs eaten they would be off by 1/2 and with pasta that is a big deal.

When a company refuses to fix such as easily fixed problem (updating a few website graphics) after it has caught the public's eye, then what else is slipping through the cracks?

I've been reading Gulliver's Travels and was struck by this description of the laws in Lilliput:

They look upon Fraud as a greater Crime than Theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with Death: For they alledge, that Care and Vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a Man's Goods from Thieves, but Honesty hath no Fence against superior Cunning: And since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual Intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon Credit; where Fraud is permitted or connived at, or hath no Law to punish it, the honest Dealer is always undone, and the Knave gets the Advantage.

I don't think the Knave Eden Organic is conniving, just permitting. Which honest Dealer is undone? In my case, it was Whole Foods. I quit buying their less expensive and nutritionally superior pasta in favor of Eden Organic's mislabeled product.

Timeline: Eden Organic response to bad pasta labels

I've been trying to let this go, but this statement from Marketing Manager Sue Potter kept me up last night:

We began corrective measures immediately upon learning of our mistake in July.

I believe this is true: they planned to correct the boxes on the next print run. Two months later, they were working on the artwork for boxes that would be printed in a few more weeks.

But many corrective measures weren't in place months after they say they knew about the problem and some still aren't, including easy fixes like putting the right information on their website. Here's a time line (all dates 2010):

• Unknown date: Eden Organic Pasta ships a variety of pasta with boxes showing the wrong serving size, making it seem like the pasta contained twice as much protein and other nutrients as it actually does.


• July 13 — the date Eden Organic says they found out about the problem.


• unknown date — a customer complains and accepts coupons as compensation.


• early September — I search the web for a good version of high-protein, organic pasta. I'm delighted to find that some of Eden Organic's pasta has nearly the same protein level as Barilla Plus. I go to my local Whole Foods and buy every variety I can find for testing. EO's Kamut Vegetable Spirals are good enough that I decide to recommend them in my book and rework the shopping lists and cost calculations accordingly.


• September 19 — During a test for cooking time with the vegetable spirals, I notice that there are far more serving than there should be in the box. I fill out the customer support online form describing the problem. My comment begins like this: "Problem with label on your Kamut Vegetable Spirals. Please help -- urgent request from author with book manuscript due very soon who wants to recommend your products." This is a Sunday, but I hope to hear something Monday morning.


• September 20, 2:00 p.m. — I call Eden Organics, since I haven't received a response to my email. The Customer Support representative says that marketing knows about the problem and I'll have to talk with the Marketing Manager, who will call me back.


• September 20, a while later — Sue Potter calls and tells me "everyone makes mistakes" and she's glad customers are willing to work with them. Work how?, I ask. After a fairly heated exchange, she asks what I would consider acceptable. I say, a refund and communications to the customers so no one else has this problem. I recommend she talk with others at EO and let me know what I should tell my readers.


• September 21 — Sue emails me offering a 55-cent coupon for the product of my choice. (I'd paid $3.69 for the pasta with the bad label.) She says the website would be updated within the day. I respond, refusing the coupon, asking again for a refund, and pointing out that the website has incorrect information for several other products. I blog about the problem. At least one reader also contacts Eden Organic to complain.


• September 22 — The website is corrected for Kamut Vegetable Spirals but not for other products in the same line with the same error. I draft a newsletter article about the problem.


• September 22, 3:08 p.m. —Sue emails me with an apology and an offer to send me a refund for $4.00. She says that EO will put stickers on the boxes they have in inventory to show the correct serving sizes. I'm happy to hear about the stickers, so I update the newsletter and this blog.


• September 23, 8:28 a.m. — The EO website is still has the wrong serving sizes for other pasta in the same line.

The persistence of bad information. Many people never read labels, but even those who do probably don't read them often. Once you find a product that works, why would you go back and re-read the fine print? Here's how a problem spreads when bad labels remain on the shelves and on the Internet:

• Other families might do what I did, research pasta looking for the most nutritious choice, find an acceptable one, make it the family choice, and move on to other issues.


• Other writers and menu planners might do what I did, use the Internet to find healthy food to recommend for their readers, clients, and patients. Once the decision and perhaps purchase order is made, why go back to look for label changes? Given how many colleges are offering green and vegetarian meal options, I wonder how many are serving Eden Organic Pasta without realizing there is a problem.


• Other vegetarians might do what we didn't do, go back to eating meat when they felt hungry and weak after days of being short on protein. These people would now be at the meat counter, not in the pasta aisle scrutinizing high-protein pasta labels. Other families might quit having their Meatless Mondays for the same reason.

This is why I felt it was worthwhile pursuing this issue. It's not about getting a $4 refund after two emails and two phone calls. It's about making sure people have the correct information to eat healthy, organic food that is low on the food chain. Doing so is good for your health, the economy, and the environment.

What seems like just a "typo" to Eden Organics seems like a barrier to slowing global warming to me.