Tag: meat
Save Money With Fish Heads And Potato Scraps

Save Money With Fish Heads And Potato Scraps

By Chris Taylor

NEW YORK (Reuters) – We all like to moan and complain about how there is not enough money in our budgets at the end of the month.

Well, here is a simple step that could save a family of four $1,500 a year: Stop wasting food.

It sounds flippant, but it is not. About 40 percent of the food America produces goes to waste.

Separate out households from commercial entities like restaurants, and around 20 percent of what we purchase at the supermarket eventually finds its way into the trash bin, estimates Dana Gunders, senior scientist at the National Resources Defense Council and author of the new book “Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook.”

It is not a minor expense: The USDA estimates that food waste amounts to around 2 million calories a year for a family of four, costing roughly $1,500, which is over $100 a month for the family, or $375 per person annually.

“Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to waste food, but it happens in little bits and pieces,” says Gunders. “We are so price-sensitive in the store, but when we get home and eventually throw out a quarter of the cheese we just bought, we don’t realize that’s another $1.50.”

Reducing food waste takes planning and discipline.

The book by Gunders gives 85 tips for reducing waste in various food items. Some of these are:

  • Shop deliberately, from a list, for just a couple of meals ahead of time. Otherwise your eyes will be bigger than your stomach, and much of what you buy will end up in the trash.
  • Use up leftovers by making catch-all dishes like soups, stir-frys, fried rice, frittatas and risottos.
  • Stale bread? Make menus involving croutons, French toast, or bread pudding.
  • Learn to store food properly. For instance, lettuce usually lasts longer in the crisper, while apples, mushrooms and peppers need more aeration and do better outside those drawers.
  • Do not get freaked out by expiration dates, Gunders advises. These are just a manufacturer’s best guess about peak freshness. Use your judgment; do not throw away food just because of a number on a carton.

For more pointers on maximizing food budgets, we talked to a few high-end chefs. In the restaurant world with its razor-thin margins, if you do not utilize every possible scrap of food in your kitchen, you are out of business.

  • Fish heads
    Most consumers toss them, but Marjorie Meek-Bradley, executive chef of Washington, D.C.’s Ripple, and a contestant on “Top Chef,” likes to debone the head and make lettuce wraps with the meat.
  • Carrot tops
    Along with the leafy tops of other root vegetables, says Meek-Bradley, they make the foundation of an excellent pesto sauce.
  • Potato scraps
    Don’t get rid of them, say Bruce and Eric Bromberg of Blue Ribbon Restaurants. They are ideal for making potato pancakes.
  • Kale stems
    The natural instinct is to toss them, but they make crispy, healthy, kale fries, say the Brombergs.
  • Citrus juice
    If you have some left over, it makes an ideal kitchen cleaner, says John Johnson of Four Seasons New York. It is biodegradable, non-toxic, and degreases like nothing else.
  • Bones
    “I always use leftover chicken or turkey bones to make soup,” says Troy Guard, chef of Denver-based TAG Restaurant Group.
  • Plant scraps.
    Tomato insides, carrot peels, day-old brown rice, mushroom stems? You have got yourself a tasty veggie burger, says Guard.

Or, if you have some wildflowers or leftover herb cuttings from your garden, they can provide delicious flavoring for jars of honey, says David Wardynski of Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort.

  • Protein trimmings
    Obviously not every scrap of meat will make it onto a nicely plated steak, chicken breast or pork chop. But Guard says those extra trimmings can easily go into enchiladas, tacos, or on top of homemade pizzas.

(Editing by Beth Pinsker and David Gregorio)

Photo: Vegetables are seen at a farmers market in Los Angeles, California, United States May 10, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Blunt In Middle Of Fight Over Dietary Guidelines, Environmental Concerns

Blunt In Middle Of Fight Over Dietary Guidelines, Environmental Concerns

By Chuck Raasch, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt is in the middle of a fight over the government’s dietary guidelines, which are slated to be updated this year.

House and Senate spending bills working their way through Congress have recently been altered to include language saying that a government committee’s consumption recommendations for Americans went too far afield from the science of nutrition in suggesting that plant-based foods are better for the environment than red meat.

Blunt and at least 28 Senate Republican colleagues, along with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, have expressed concerns about the recommendations made by the committee of outside advisers, which spent months considering the changes.

Blunt, R-Mo., shepherded a Senate Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill out of committee last month with a rider saying new diet recommendations should be based “only on a preponderance of nutritional and scientific evidence.” Two House appropriations bills have similar language.

Blunt and the 29 other senators signed a letter in March challenging the “scientific integrity of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s recommendations to remove ‘lean meat’ from the statement of a healthy dietary pattern.”

The letter also expressed strong concerns that the committee, comprising outside experts pulled together by the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, was “going beyond its purview of nutrition and health research to include topics such as sustainability.”

Blunt said: “The proposed dietary guidelines would expand the advisory committee’s scope well beyond the statute and well beyond dietary guidelines and nutrition into unrelated issues, which is not the job of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.”

A coalition of health and nutrition groups disagrees. The group — ranging from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Center for Science in the Public Interest — called the language in the appropriations bills “a ham-fisted attempt on the part of powerful special interests, led by the meat industry, to have politicians meddle in the government’s nutrition advice.”

Many of the signers of the March letter represent beef-producing states in the Midwest and West. They complained that the committee was ignoring “scientific evidence that shows the role of lean red meats as part of a healthy diet.”

Missouri Democrats have pointed out that Blunt’s wife, Abigail, lobbies for the Kraft Heinz Co. A subsidiary, Oscar Mayer, is a top producer of processed meat. Missouri Democratic Party spokesman Chris Hayden said it was a “wildly inappropriate conflict of interest” for Blunt to spearhead support of red meat in the new diet debates.

Sen. Blunt said his position “represents a widely held, bipartisan viewpoint, and it’s also included in two House appropriation bills.”

Recently merged Kraft Heinz reported that what was then known as Kraft Foods spent $300,000 on lobbying on the dietary guidelines and other issues the first three months of 2015, but said that Abigail Blunt did not lobby the Senate.

“Our company’s objective is to help ensure the” recommendations “are science-based and within the jurisdiction of the guidelines,” said Basil Maglaris, director of corporate affairs for Kraft Heinz.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said she agreed with Blunt that a healthy diet and agricultural sustainability should not be co-mingled.

“The environmental concerns — obviously there is a place for that — but I don’t think that mixing the two makes much sense,” McCaskill said. But she said she is opposed to attaching the restricting language on appropriations bills, saying it was symptomatic of a larger trend by Republicans to retreat from “earmark” reforms and attach unrelated legislation to spending bills.

Photo: Should the government continue to support red meat — or at least support it less? stu_spivack/Flickr 

Conservatives Find Political Red Meat In USDA Diet Guidelines

Conservatives Find Political Red Meat In USDA Diet Guidelines

By David Eldridge, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — From the IRS to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Federal Communications Commission, federal agencies are under more scrutiny from congressional Republicans concerned about regulatory overreach than at any time in Barack Obama’s presidency.

Add the Department of Agriculture to the list.

A group of 71 GOP House members has jumped into a growing controversy over proposed new dietary guidelines for Americans released earlier this year by a USDA advisory committee.

Republicans voiced concerns about the panel, known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, in a March 31 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, calling the committee’s suggestions “conflicting.”

“We are disappointed with reports from observers that the approach of the 2015 DGAC suggests studies were either selected or excluded to support pre-determined conclusions,” the lawmakers wrote. “For example, the DGAC’s recommendation on lean red meat directly contradicts years of peer reviewed scientific research on the benefits of lean red meat as a high-quality source of protein in a healthy diet.”

Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KA), one of the letter’s co-signers, took to Twitter Wednesday to call the guidelines an attack on his meat-producing state. “Where’s the beef? An attack on #redmeat is an attack on the meat state of Kansas,” he tweeted

In its report, the DGAC calls for emphasizing an American diet less dependent on meat — in part because of meat production’s impact on the environment.

Environmental groups have cheered the proposal, which has not been officially adopted by the USDA. But cattle producers and lawmakers from agribusiness states are pushing back, criticizing the guidelines as the latest attempt by the administration to use federal agencies to push the president’s political agenda.

Other Republicans signing on to the letter include Missouri’s Vicky Hartzler, Indiana’s Jackie Walorski and Texas’ K. Michael Conaway.

The House letter follows a similar letter signed by 30 senators, mostly Republicans, sent earlier in March.

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr

Inmates To Butchers: Bill Would Create Meat Processing Program

Inmates To Butchers: Bill Would Create Meat Processing Program

By Jenna Ross, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

SAGINAW, Minnesota – The men filed into the locker room, throwing on red aprons and rubber boots.

“Same jobs as yesterday,” supervisor Michal Jasek told them.

One guy heaved a huge bucket from the walk-in refrigerator. Another started the bandsaw. Then they broke down the hundreds of chickens they had slaughtered that morning — slicing skin, cutting bone, weighing wings.

The workers at this meat-processing shop, part of the Northeast Regional Corrections Center, are inmates. Some state lawmakers hope they will become the next generation of butchers.

Under a bill introduced this month at the Legislature, work shifts at this minimum-security facility would become a formal curriculum, training the men for jobs in meat processing after they’re out. New workers are needed in the industry, some experts say, as the demand for local meat grows and the owners of slaughterhouses and butcher shops grow old.

Two-thirds of the owners of Minnesota’s small meat-processing facilities are at or near retirement age, according to a recent survey by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute. Just one-third have succession plans, the survey shows.

“There’s a need to take some action here and make sure that we don’t lose this vital part of the agricultural infrastructure,” said Paul Hugunin, with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Each year, about 600 men serve short sentences at the Saginaw corrections center, a work farm started in the 1930s that sits on 3,200 acres north of Duluth. They grow hay on about 400 acres.

They plant potatoes, corn, and carrots. They raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

The inmates eat much of the meat for lunch and dinner, but the facility also butchers animals for farmers, for a fee.

The idea of a formal training program sprang from Representative Jason Metsa (DFL-VA), who was trying to think of “creative ways to attract more farmers to our area.” He’s pairing the pilot program with the corrections center’s request for a new $1.2 million food-processing building — pitching a USDA-inspected facility as the answer to local farmers’ laments about a lack of meat-processing spots in northeastern Minnesota.

Keith Nelson, a St. Louis County commissioner, told the House Agriculture Policy Committee last week that some producers in his district have to travel 250 miles round-trip to have their chickens readied for sale.

“There’s a lot of us around that could gain a great deal of value from such an operation,” said Nelson, a beef farmer who serves on the correction center’s board.
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PHYSICAL WORK

Knives, regulations, and a map of the Czech Republic hang in Jasek’s office in the meat-processing plant. After growing up there, in a village of 300 people, Jasek traveled by bus and train for hours each day to study meat processing, part of a three-year degree.

In Minnesota, there is no such educational program for butchers and meat cutters — who, on average, make $18.53 an hour, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. One in Pipestone shut down. But the University of Minnesota offers a broader meat-science degree.

Jasek, a St. Louis County employee, assigns the inmates simple tasks, he said. Some stay only a few weeks. Others he can train more thoroughly.

“It’s hard work,” he said, folding his broad-knuckled hands. “Physically demanding work.”

Partly because of those demands, it’s tough to find skilled help, said Mike Lorentz, chief executive of Lorentz Meats, a meat processing plant in Cannon Falls that specializes in organic and high-end protein. So he’s glad the proposal is raising the issue.

The meat-processing industry is diverse — ranging from small retail shops to Hormel Foods’ plants — so the training varies, too, Lorentz said. Working at an urban butcher shop might require wine-pairing knowledge, he said, while at Hormel, an employee might do a single cut all day long.

“For us, it’s harder to train people up,” said Lorentz, whose 30,000-square-foot facility employees 90 people. “The challenge with the bill is, who are you helping?”
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RISE OF LOCAL MEAT

At the farmers market in Grand Rapids, Jane Grimsbo Jewett sells beef, pork, and chicken. But beforehand, her cows and pigs must travel to a meat processor in Foley — a 115-mile drive each way. The chickens trek to a processor 75 miles away.

“It’s costly in terms of fuel and time,” Grimsbo Jewett said.

But Grimsbo Jewett, a research fellow at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, knows that building and upgrading meat processing facilities is costly, too. “A lot were built in the 1950s — or even earlier — and requirements have changed a lot,” she said.

About 41 percent of Minnesota’s small processing facilities have clocked more than 50 years, the survey by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute shows. The Department of Agriculture offers grants to processors to buy new equipment or expand or upgrade their facilities, Hugunin said.

Southeastern Minnesota offers farmers “pretty good” options for meat processing, said Jan Joannides, executive director of Renewing the Countryside, a nonprofit. But in northeastern Minnesota, “there are real gaps in terms of availability.”

In particular, there are few USDA-inspected facilities, “the gold standard,” as Joannides put it. That inspection allows the meat to be sold in other states. Facilities inspected by state employees according to federal standards can sell to grocery stores and at farmers markets, just not across state lines.

There are few of either in northeastern Minnesota, said Jennifer Stephes, meat inspection supervisor for the Department of Agriculture. Her office has heard from farmers and local producers there looking for closer options.

“There’s this growing interest among the public and among policymakers in having more local foods,” Joannides said. “There are farmers out there willing to do it. But oftentimes it’s the middle part that’s a bottleneck.”

A lack of inspectors might be contributing to the problem, Grimsbo Jewett said. Governor Mark Dayton’s (DFL-MN) budget calls for five more meat inspectors, an increase of $250,000, citing “a significant increase in requests for inspections in the past six months.”
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‘YOUNG AND DUMB to ‘SOLID’

During a midafternoon break, the men gathered in the room with the smoker, opening its door to grab a few browned birds. They spread them on a sheet of butcher’s paper, sliced them open, and dug in.

They paired the chicken with dark coffee, drunk from white mugs scrawled with their names and nicknames. Shawn Wirta’s mug says, “BOSS.”

Wirta was 17 years old and drunk when he crashed his grandparent’s Buick, hitting a car turning into a driveway on Arrowhead Road in Duluth. A passenger in that car, a 22-year-old man, flew through the back window and died.

“It is what it is,” Wirta said last week, shaking his head.

He came to this work farm in Saginaw a “young and dumb” kid. But 18 months of meat processing taught him about hard work. “When I came out of here at 19 years old, I was solid,” he said. “I got out of here wanting to work. It fills up your day, it takes up your time, it keeps you out of trouble.”

Wirta nabbed a job as a butcher, after “showing them what I could do,” he said. He skinned hogs for a season, moving on to sausage making. “I could pretty much cut up any animal you want me to cut up.”

He was sent back to Saginaw for leaving the state, not allowed under his probation. In a month, when he’s released and his probation ends, Wirta plans to spend time with his three-year-old daughter, who visits him here twice a week. Then he’ll head back to his farm in Florida, where he raises goats and chickens.

Photo: Jerry Holtvia via Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS