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Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Do You Like to Go On Gourmet Excursions?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Gourmet” magazine is hosting its fifth annual Gourmet Institute (October 19 -21) in New York. It’s a three day “total immersion” featuring classes, tastings and demos by chefs such as Sara Moulton, Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert. There will be panel discussions, cooking demos and pastry and chocolate demos. The magazine is touting the weekend as a great getaway for non-New Yorkers: for $1,395 clams, you get a welcome gala on Friday night, dinner out on Saturday with four seminars/demos and four seminars/demos on Sunday, breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, plus you can meet editor Ruth Reichl. I’m a pretty big foodie, but I would rarely consider doing something like this. I’d rather go to Spain and eat on my own. Or bike my way through Tuscany on a bike tour. Who likes this sort of thing? Who’s gone to a Gourmet Institute (or other culinary excursion) before? For more info about the Gourmet Institute, go to www.gourmetinstitute.com or call 1-888-308-6133.
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Raw milk’s growing appeal worries health workers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I wrote an article in late July about a small outbreak of food-borne illness in northwest Georgia tied to raw milk, and got several emails from people who drank unpasteurized milk, looking for more information.
One implied I had made up the outbreak to further a government propaganda campaign against raw milk (I don’t make up stories, just in case anyone subscribes to this view). Another wanted to know if the farm that supplied her milk was the one tied to the outbreak. Within a couple of weeks, The New York Times and the Washington Post had published articles on raw milk, and why it inspires such passion, whether from public health officials who are trying to block its availability, or consumers who seek it out as they search for foods straight from the farm. Clearly, it’s a subject that attracts controversy.
Raw, or unpasteurized milk, has been sold quietly in Georgia for years under the guise of pet milk. It’s sold openly in some metro Atlanta neighborhoods, where groups of buyers meet a delivery truck, and at at least one farmers’ market and a small grocery store. It can’t be sold legally for human consumption. But as long as the milk is labeled for pet consumption only, that seems to satisfy state regulatory authorities.
In other states, raw milk has become a battleground between medical authorities and those who believe unpasteurized milk has health benefits that are wiped out by the heat treatment of pasteurization. At the Georgia Organics convention in March, members asked state Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin about legalizing the sale again for human consumption. He deflected the question, saying he’d OK it if, and when, health officials approved.
That’s not likely to happen, given a high-profile campaign warning of the dangers of drinking raw milk, led by the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC. Medical experts describe pasteurization as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, greatly reducing the number of food borne illnesses and deaths. The CDC lists 1,007 confirmed illnesses and 2 deaths linked to raw milk since 1998. Scientists say they’re concerned especially about raw milk being given to children, who are more susceptible to food-borne illnesses because their immune systems aren’t as developed as that of adults. In the Murray County outbreak, some of those sickened with campylobacter were children, including one was who hospitalized briefly.
Raw milk proponents contend that milk from grass-fed cows on clean farms is safer than large-scale, commercial pasteurized milk, and can reduce asthma in children as well as provide other health benefits, such as additional nutrients and probiotics, gut-friendly bacteria that promote digestion. Buyers rave about the creamy taste, and like buying from a farmer they know.
Do you drink raw milk? If not, would you consider it? Is it OK for parents to feed it to young children?
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Where is the best … late-night dining spot?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WE WANT TO KNOW: Where’s your favorite late-night dining spot?
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