On the health of your digestive tract

On of the followers of this blog made an observation in a previous post that got me more worked up than it should have and I posted a comment on my own blog (gasp!), but the point bears repeating in a longer thought.

Badscribbler said that he wouldn't drink something that had been sitting out for 2 months as a matter of principle. It got me thinking about our distance from food production and how little most people know about how food is made. Salami for instance is dried and aged in a cool, but not cold environment 50-60°F, an aged steak is in a similar environment and that white stuff on the outside of your salami (actual artisan stuff not the shit you buy in your local grocer) is a healthy kind of mold, Yogurt is filled with probiotics but ultimately these are bacteria. Cheese is made with Renet(stomach acid) and and active culture (more bacteria). The manufacture of food, and USDA's insistence that food last for an eon has lead to the introduction of preservatives or chemical additives that kill the healthy cultures that make up and make our food. Ever stop to wonder the reason blue cheese stinks? These are living pieces, and they help us digest and are vital to healthy systems. We used to eat much more fermented foods, but the funk fell out of favor for sweetened and murdered by processing food.

Now you will have to pardon me, because I am a tiny bit passionate about these types of things and they are a very big part of my hobbies. I haven't made cheese in a while because it really is pretty expensive and the preggo shouldn't eat it(listeria will kill the baby, even if it just makes her sick). But when compared to buying living and beautiful artisan cheese some of the amazing cured artisan meats around here the cost of my hobbies is surprisingly less than it seems like it would be. The reason it is less is they mostly take time, so if it is time you are willing to spend, then they are not as costly if you value your time in different ways then producing your own food is incredibly expensive. We have a immersion bath for making yogurt, and are waiting for my wife to not be pregnant to use it, I am saving to buy the meat grinder for the kitchenaide and will produce sausages in due time. My wife is disgusted by it, but I plan on making sauerkraut this winter in a Red Wing crock no less!

In short I think knowing where your food comes from is important, and I am working on being a locovore (eating food that is from near me) and for the things it doesn't make sense to make I buy and try to buy it from producers in my state. I cannot buy a Pineapple from Washington obviously, but temperature/climate sensitive items aside with a little work you can find things produced near you, and the premium is relatively modest now but as gas prices continue to go up I think you will start to see parity and even declining prices for locally produced foods.