I guess I’ve got peanut butter on my face!  I just finished my last post, about feeling safer eating low-on-the-food-chain, freshly ground peanut butter.  Then I took a break, read the paper and discovered that even freshly ground peanut butter has been implicated in the peanut scare!

Before lashing my wrists with a wet noodle, it bears mention that I have been eating my Vitamin Cottage freshly ground butter for two weeks with no ill effects.  Also, it was on the “Remove” list as a precautionary measure only.

What’s more, the point of my last post was not that simpler, less processed foods are immune from contamination.  They certainly can be tainted.  But the chances for contamination seem to increase the more processes a food is subjected to and the more complex the web of distribution becomes.  Simplifying the foods we eat and the food production system means our regulatory dollars can be focused on fewer products and processes–most likely producing better detection and enforcement.

As it now stands, from just companies beginning with the letter “A,” there are over 100 peanut products subject to the recall.  I got too dizzy to count the entire listing.  Peanuts are but one food ingredient.  Imagine a single government agency trying to police the hundreds of ingredients in the market, all combined thousands of different ways in thousands of product variations.

So while we may not be equipped to fully protect ourselves, I continue to stand by my advice of supplementing the FDA’s oversight with some oversight of your own–and some simplification of your foodstuffs.

Wishing you happy, and safe, meals