Every spacefaring race has two things in common. First, they have a food identical to what humans call “Swedish meatballs.”

– G’Kar

Actually this explains a lot, although I would’ve guessed “turnip.”

People were still serving liquor in bars swearing that the bottles were from before the bad batches. 

I have to be honest, I tend to think of people in the US as being more lax about that but I think that maybe our lawsuit culture takes over there.

As for eating processed meat, on one hand you *have* to know you are taking more risk. But that should be educated risk. 

Maybe if it was something people are often disturbed to eat in the west like rat, dog, cat, or lizards.

In fact, have they looked for those meats?

The bit about organic eggs upsets me. My constant battle with autoimmune disease has recently forced me to change my diet *again* and while I try to figure out how to get my blood sugars under control without tripping the gluten wire, or messing my thyroid up more I’ve gone back to including some meats and egg.

I have to admit I spent a good 10 minutes picking up six of the eggs that made me feel the least distressed. I hate to think that all that was for nothing. Makes me miss the days when we raised chickens.

Already, before I had stopped eating meat I couldn’t stand to eat any ground meats because inevitably I taste pork in there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X1VjGsZeyw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSrnZPzb3E4

I decided to make Italian meatballs instead using mostly ground lamb, and a little pork for the fat content… at least I think it was lamb and pork.

ETA: This just in. Those locally produced, free range, organic eggs weren’t so after all. So, even those who make a point of not buying processed stuff are being scammed one way or another.

So the business grew.  It’s massively profitable – and it takes just a tiny minority of people to make exceptionally sure they get especially rich, however they do it.

The more I learn about it, the more I work to eradicate any and all processed food from my world.

I’m learning to bake bread, and after reading the pragmatic words of Andrew Whitley in “Bread Matters”, I was again amazed at not only the rubbish that goes into industrial baking, and how it’s done, but the inclusions in the manufacturing process that they don’t even need to list, on the basis that they are ‘processing aids’ and not ingredients.

I’m not an arm-chewing radical, but jeez – what a disgusting bunch of stuff there is in our food world.

“Fast Food Nation” was perhaps the first wide-selling book to come to our attention, as in, beyond the sphere of the vegans and puritans, but still, it really takes a long time and evidence mounted on evidence to cause change.

Having ranted, let me say I’ve eaten a horse steak – in ignorance – and it was rather tasty.  I wouldn’t necessarily order it at a restaurant, but given the choice between veal and horse, well – horse.

End point – we as consumers must push very very hard against the food supply chain to ensure authenticity.

I insist, I am not horrified that people will willingly eat horse meat. I am horrified that they are not up in arms because they (we) are being fed mystery chow without having any say in it. 

Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and France.

The meatballs were made in Sweden (hey! at least we know they’re Swedish!)

If there is a world beyond those frontiers, I know not of it.