Culinary Treasures Organic Bone Broth Chicken by Bay Valley Foods

I saw a new product at my local Costco and was excited to try it. But one of the ingredients is "organic chicken flavor" which can be almost anything. Catchment ingredients like that can be a disaster for people with food allergies.  I was discussing this with my kids when another shopper stopped her shopping to listen. I'd said I might call the company to find out the source of the ingredient. She said she wanted to know, too, and she was enjoying learning more about food ingredients and "Hey, you should have a blog!" 

So I figured in case she ever searched it, I'd post my findings here.  Well, anonymous fellow shopper, here's the scoop...

I searched for "Culinary Treasures" but could not find contact information.  Then I searched for the distributor "Bay Valley Foods".  I called them to get information about the ingredient listed as "organic chicken flavor". After several days and 3 phone calls I got the useless answer: it's proprietary AND if I wanted to play a guessing game with each of my allergies via multiple people of unknown knowledge, I might hear back about what the product does NOT contain, not that I'd trust the answer because the person I'm talking to wouldn't know what it DOES contain.  The pleasant representative who did such a poor job listening spent their time interrupting me and telling me how rosy this process was.

The end result: this product is a non starter for people with allergies. I'm so disappointed in this product that looked promising.  They're selling an Organic product to a health-conscience target group and playing unacceptable games with our health.

Good thing Costco has a good return policy. Back you go Culinary Treasures Bone Broth!

Spring Update

Spring is here!

Community Garden: I've continued to rip out the broccoli at the community garden.  The bean seeds are sprout well.  Some tomato starts are struggling.  The cucumber and carrots are sprouting minimally.  Likely the seed is too old.  I dug out some cosmos from the garden box and brought it home to enjoy here.

Around home: The Mr. says he wants more flowers in our yard, which we've done very little with since moving in.  So I bought a dahlia this week and added that with cosmos to a prominently placed pot in the backyard.  Also, there was this old, scraggly and sad poinsettia plant in a pot in a fake well decoration that I was sick of looking at.  The location is tough due to water issues.  Now I'm trying some succulents in there.  We'll see how that works.





















I'm loving the apple tree blossoms in the front yard that we walk past multiple times daily.



These little freesia are blooming in a spot we see out our back windows.

Many of our potted plants I topped off with finished compost.  Some I planted seeds in, including some Super Snow White Cherry seeds I'd saved from 2012.  It was an incredibly sweet and flavorful cherry.  I doubt those old seeds will sprout, but its worth a try.

I also put Basil in a pot and some flowers, including these Bachelor Buttons, Carnations and a Black Eyed Susan, which I'm hoping will vine up a tomato cage.









We've had a heck of a time this winter with first DS, then DD, then DH getting pneumonia.  I'm grateful to say that no one currently has pneumonia or is on antibiotics.  Everyone is on probiotics, though!

McNeil Children's Medications Recalled

I am so ticked about the cluelessness of my local pharmacy staff that I gotta rant.  Have you heard about the recent McNeil recall of children's medicaitons?  Well, my local pharmacist hasn't.  I went through my medicine cabinet and of my 6 products in varing degrees of used/new-ness, 5 of them were involved in the recall.  The 6th was a store brand of ibuprofen.  So I called that store just to make sure it wasn't included.  The tech and pharmacist assured me it wasn't and, by-the-way, there was no recall on either the Motrin or the Benadryl anyway.  WRONG!  After looking this information up on the pharmacy chain's website I called back the pharmacist to tell her she'd better read the internal communications to give accurate advice to other families.  She said, oops, she'd just checked the shelves and it did look like some of the Motrin and Benadryl was recalled.   She actually told me, and I'll paraphrase, that she didn't get the memo.  When asked, she still said, no the store brand wasn't affected.  I'm not sure I believe her.  Her actions don't inspire a lot of faith in her advice or in her knowledge of her own limits.

Breastfeeding saves lives and money - BIG money

Breastmilk is amazing.  "The United States incurs $13 billion in excess costs annually and suffers 911 preventable deaths per year because our breastfeeding rates fall far below medical recommendations"  "...95 percent of these deaths, are attributed to three causes: sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); necrotizing enterocolitis, seen primarily in preterm babies and in which the lining of the intestinal wall dies; and lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/05/breastfeeding.costs/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

I know from experience that it isn't always easy to breastfeed, though.  Families need support (LOTS of it) and education.

I was impressed this winter when my family got a bad stomach bug.  It killed my 92 year old grandfather.  DS (4 years old) was still throwing up a week into it.  I was sick for days and days.  DD (over 1 year old) was sick for about 4 hours!  She still nurses.  Amazing.

King Corn

DH and I watched the documentary King Corn yesterday.  I highly recommend it.  The movie was entertaining and very educational about how we developed such a glut of corn and how it is in almost everything we eat (beef, bread, crackers, etc).  They connect the dots of the redone Farm Bill in 1973 to the rise of high fructose corn syrup, obesity, diabetes, and declining life expectancy.  It makes me wonder how far we could go in stemming the explosion of health care costs if we just stopped subsidizing corn so that empty calories weren't the cheapest.  And here's a far out idea - if we want to support farmers, we could subsidize local, organic farming such that healthy foods became cheaper.  What would happen to our nation's weight if a fresh salad from the local market were cheaper than a fast food burger and soda?

Swine Flu

Friends and family keep asking me about my take on the swine flu vaccine.  We've decided not to do the vaccine due to my concerns that it may have unknown side effects that we aren't yet aware of because it has been rushed to market.  My understanding is that the 1976 vaccine for swine flu was rushed to market and was associated with, but never proven to cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome.  Since this rare nerve disorder is understood to be partially autoimmune and we have Celiac Disease (autoimmune) in the family, we aren't going there.  We do the annual flu shots - 'cause having the flu is so crummy and I feel like the shots have decent safety records.  Most of the media reports I hear are that H1N1 has similar mortality rates as regular seasonal flu, but of course, more targeted to younger populations - likely due to some cross protection from a prior strain that circulated.  Today I went surfing on the CDC to find the mortality rate data.  Sadly, I didn't find exactly what I was looking for - # of deaths per 1,000 cases.  If you find that data, I'd like you to send me the link.  I did find this interesting chart regarding the flu deaths.  This season's curve doesn't look so bad yet, until you realize that this is only week 41 and that the other week 41's aren't really even on the upslope of the curve.  We all know that this swine flu continued through the summer (you can see that in pink in the graph above) and is getting going again early this season - but wow - the curves really say a lot.  If you add a normal flu season onto this swine flu curve, it is going to be pretty big.  Yikes!  I hope I'm making the right decision.  I realize that it is highly likely that our family will get the swine flu and feel terrible with it.  I just hope we won't have any serious consequences from it, like the side effects I fear from a rushed vaccine.  All our schools around here have LOTS of H1N1, include DS's preschool as of this week.