4 ms·

> Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the si

> Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory. Not at all. The fact that this is even being brought up in the argument illustrates how much the industry needs to be regulated. I had an organic burrito on Thursday because my wife in our old age is obsessed at buying only organic products... largely from a bodega in a Dominican area of Brooklyn -- not even Whole Foods. The following are the ingredients involved: 1. Flour tortilla -- made in Brooklyn by a small plant that sells them to bodegas and small supermarkets. In a strange coincidence I used to walk by that plant and I talked to the family that owns it. The tortilla contains the following ingredients: * Flour, Salt, baking soda, pork fat, water their tortillas keep in a fridge for about a week and half. I asked him why would not he add preservatives? His answer was "Because they cost money and tortillas dont taste as good. Mine are a bit more expensive than the ones from giant companies but I make a lot more money than them" * Ground beef ( could be organic ) She buys it from the butcher that grinds it on premises or at Whole Foods or I buy a whole 30 lb of sirloin and grind it myself. * Dried beans ( could be organic ) * Rice ( could be organic ) * Tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro, radish, jalapeno, cucumbers, avocado, limes ( all could be organic ) * Cumin, salt, pepper * Sour cream ( mostly organic but definitely that as the totality has the following ingredient list: milk, enzymes ) That's what an organic burrito looks like. If you are on a west coast, especially in SF it would be called "Mission Burrito". Cheap as hell because it has no extra process inputs. Qdoba and Chipotle manage to make gobs of money selling them: because their COG on one are about $2.50.

war1025 8y ago
I believe the standard for restaurant food is that the food itself should be 1/3 of the purchase price. Which looks to be right on target, since I think a burrito at least around here is usually about $7.50
cwyers 8y ago
> 1. Flour tortilla -- made in Brooklyn by a small plant that sells them to bodegas and small supermarkets. In a strange coincidence I used to walk by that plant and I talked to the family that owns it. The tortilla contains the following ingredients: > * Flour, Salt, baking soda, pork fat, water What's in the flour? Is it bleached? Treated with a maturing agent? (Most AP flour in the US has been treated with both.) Has it been enriched to replace nutrients lost in the processing?
- notyourday 8y ago
  The person to whom I replied was talking about "organic burrito" which is either USDA certified 100% organic or an irrelevant label. If it is USDA certified 100% organic it has strict rules for every component that goes into it.
jdietrich 8y ago
Where did the wheat come from? What chemicals and microbes were in the soil and water that the wheat grew in? What substances have been intentionally added to the soil and water? What are the genetic traits of that wheat and how have they been altered? What was added or removed from the wheat when it was processed into flour? What contamination might have happened during the journey from field to plate? How was the chemical composition of the wheat affected by the specific processes used during the production of the tortilla? Each of those questions has a long, complicated and potentially uncertain answer. At any stage in that process, that plain and simple flour could become seriously toxic. The same applies to every ingredient in the burrito, with a far longer list of questions for meat and dairy products. "Simple" is rarely simple and "natural" is often far from safe. Organic vegetables are frequently severely contaminated with dangerous bacteria due to inappropriate processing of organic fertiliser or contaminated groundwater. Some aquifers have dangerously high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, rendering the surrounding land unsuitable for many types of agriculture. A lot of common cooking and handling processes can produce toxic chemicals or drastically increase the risk of bacterial contamination. There are a million different ways for food production to go badly wrong. If you spent every waking moment of the next five years trying to understand precisely what went into that grocery store burrito, you'd still come up short. The simplest of ingredients is still immensely complex. Our food chain is built on trust; trust in the farmer, trust in the distributor, trust in the manufacturer, trust in the retailer. That chain of trust is held together by regulation. You as a consumer are almost entirely powerless, because you don't have the means to validate the claims being made by anyone in that chain. That's an uncomfortable thought, but it's true and it's why evidence-based regulation and effective enforcement are so vital.
- notyourday 8y ago
  So from "organic burrito" being complicated we are down to single ingredient being complicated. USDA certified 100% organic flour is super simple. It pretty much requires that every single step in a process take only USDA certified 100% organic inputs. The really funny part is that the parent's comment sound like it was written by the old food giants whose lunch was being eaten by the organic food companies -- the ones that the old giants are buying for hundreds of million dollars because they can't figure out that the fewer ingredients there are and the fewer processes there are the fewer problems there would be. Food is like code. The fewer lines of code, the fewer bugs. The fewer libraries, the fewer bugs.

war1025 8y ago

I believe the standard for restaurant food is that the food itself should be 1/3 of the purchase price. Which looks to be right on target, since I think a burrito at least around here is usually about $7.50

cwyers 8y ago

> 1. Flour tortilla -- made in Brooklyn by a small plant that sells them to bodegas and small supermarkets. In a strange coincidence I used to walk by that plant and I talked to the family that owns it. The tortilla contains the following ingredients: > * Flour, Salt, baking soda, pork fat, water What's in the flour? Is it bleached? Treated with a maturing agent? (Most AP flour in the US has been treated with both.) Has it been enriched to replace nutrients lost in the processing?

notyourday 8y ago
The person to whom I replied was talking about "organic burrito" which is either USDA certified 100% organic or an irrelevant label. If it is USDA certified 100% organic it has strict rules for every component that goes into it.

jdietrich 8y ago

Where did the wheat come from? What chemicals and microbes were in the soil and water that the wheat grew in? What substances have been intentionally added to the soil and water? What are the genetic traits of that wheat and how have they been altered? What was added or removed from the wheat when it was processed into flour? What contamination might have happened during the journey from field to plate? How was the chemical composition of the wheat affected by the specific processes used during the production of the tortilla? Each of those questions has a long, complicated and potentially uncertain answer. At any stage in that process, that plain and simple flour could become seriously toxic. The same applies to every ingredient in the burrito, with a far longer list of questions for meat and dairy products. "Simple" is rarely simple and "natural" is often far from safe. Organic vegetables are frequently severely contaminated with dangerous bacteria due to inappropriate processing of organic fertiliser or contaminated groundwater. Some aquifers have dangerously high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, rendering the surrounding land unsuitable for many types of agriculture. A lot of common cooking and handling processes can produce toxic chemicals or drastically increase the risk of bacterial contamination. There are a million different ways for food production to go badly wrong. If you spent every waking moment of the next five years trying to understand precisely what went into that grocery store burrito, you'd still come up short. The simplest of ingredients is still immensely complex. Our food chain is built on trust; trust in the farmer, trust in the distributor, trust in the manufacturer, trust in the retailer. That chain of trust is held together by regulation. You as a consumer are almost entirely powerless, because you don't have the means to validate the claims being made by anyone in that chain. That's an uncomfortable thought, but it's true and it's why evidence-based regulation and effective enforcement are so vital.

notyourday 8y ago
So from "organic burrito" being complicated we are down to single ingredient being complicated. USDA certified 100% organic flour is super simple. It pretty much requires that every single step in a process take only USDA certified 100% organic inputs. The really funny part is that the parent's comment sound like it was written by the old food giants whose lunch was being eaten by the organic food companies -- the ones that the old giants are buying for hundreds of million dollars because they can't figure out that the fewer ingredients there are and the fewer processes there are the fewer problems there would be. Food is like code. The fewer lines of code, the fewer bugs. The fewer libraries, the fewer bugs.