From Debra Lynn Dadd
I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but today, two new food guides were released.
The first to come into my email inbox is the 2014 Good Food Org Guide, produced by The Food Think Tank in partnership with the James Beard Foundation. It highlights more than 400 organizations across the United States leading the way toward building a better food system. Good to see so many groups working to improve our food supply!
The second announcement was from Environmental Working Group, announcing their new food database Rate Your Plate. With information on more than 80,000 foods and 5,000 ingredients from 1,500 brands, EWG’s unique scoring system rates foods based on nutrition, food additives, contaminants and degree of processing.
I have to say, I think Rate Your Plate will be more useful as an educational tool to find out what is in your favorite processed foods, rather than a tool to find something safe to eat. I’m not sure how useful the ratings are going to be here. I looked up “pickles” and only 7 brands were rated “1” (best). I clicked on one and they weren’t organic. This is what happens when you combine concerns. You get a weighted score instead of a clear score in one area. So it’s not a tool for finding organic pickles, but it will show you the 282 brands of pickles rated 5 (not so good).
The benefit I see is that you can type in virtually any processed food on the market that you might be eating and find out how bad it is.
I’m going to stick with my homemade fermented garlic dill pickles. Organic ingredients, no processing, no additives. Beneficial probiotics.
I agree, it is great to see that there are many group efforts in this conscious food movement toward a better system. But there are many missing from the list—The Weston A Price foundation for example, was not recognized on the The Food Tank Guide…
And yes, there is no comfort of knowing what is in your food like making you’re food from scratch!
Thanks for all you hard work Debra & your site is looking great!
Agree there are some missing, but I learned about many I didn’t know existed.