Hi Owl,
As you said in your last post, our roommate Crow is moving out this week. I'm very excited for him, but I'll also be sad to have him gone. Unlike you, I haven't known Crow for quite as long, and never got particularly close with him in college. It wasn't until this past year, when we all moved in together, that we've gotten close, and I now consider him one of my closest friends. I'll miss him when he leaves, but it's been great to get to know him better.
Crow, if you read this when you're settled, I hope you like your new home. Thanks for everything, buddy.
This week, we're all helping Crow pack and hanging out together. We've had a bunch of friends crashing on our couch for awhile for Crow's last week in town, and it's been a lot of fun. Almost like being back in college for a week, when we were all living together in the same dorm. It's really nice to have so many friends in close proximity.
I don't have anything deep and insightful to say today, not like Owl's post yesterday about facing the future and setting down roots. I just wanted to post something for Crow to have to let him know we're thinking of him. Sentimental, I know, but there you go.
-Raven
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
On Tree Roots and Crow's Nests
Hey Raven,
So I loved telling you a story the other day, but today I wanted to take a quick break from writing to say something a bit less fictional.
In 4 days our roommate Crow is moving to Seattle to pursue his dream of not shoveling snow every winter. And probably some other dreams too. It's been a really rough week for me and for a lot of reasons it is a difficult transition to face. Crow has been a good friend to me since very early in my college life and a big part of my life since. He's been my roommate for 2 years post college and we lived in the same dorm for most of my 4 years of college as well. It's going to be very difficult losing someone who has been a friend and a constant presence in my life for so long.
It's also, I think the beginning of the end of an era. The era of post college, pre-Adult life. I've lived with friends a lot in the last few years. I've worked odd jobs. I've puttered around trying to find a place that I wanted to be. To settle. I'm not sure I've found the place, but I have found the profession and am taking more aggressive, permanent steps towards work in that profession. The next 2 to 4 years will be spent pursuing my future profession, living where I must to do that and living with friends who can help me shoulder the economic burden of schooling, work, and living a life that doesn't drive me mad or to exhaustion. After that will come settling and finding a place to sink some roots. The idea, while exciting and appealing, is also terrifying because it means big changes, bigger decisions, and a level of Adultness that I don't feel myself ready for just yet.
I hope the next few years will bring me to a point where I am ready, but I think most changes push themselves on us before we really feel prepared for them. I know I didn't feel prepared to live far away from home for college. I didn't feel prepared to live abroad in country where I would rarely use my native language. I didn't feel ready to graduate or to find a way to life on my own. I certainly didn't feel ready for my first or second job (or a few of the jobs that came in between and after). But I also know that all those experiences were (for the most part) very good ones. I loved my life at college. I loved living abroad. I loved speaking only Spanish for days and months on end. I loved living independently and working hard at jobs that challenged me. I know, when the time comes, I'll love planting some roots and settling into a life that will challenge me in new ways.
I am also really, really looking forward to not moving once a year. Every. Single. Year.
Goodbye Crow. I hope you read this when you've gotten to Portland (like you promised you would) and I hope you know that both Raven and I miss you and have loved living with you. You're pretty much one of a kind. And if you don't keep in touch I will hunt you down.
It's a hard emptiness to face, we are all moving forward to great things. And less snow.
~ Owl
So I loved telling you a story the other day, but today I wanted to take a quick break from writing to say something a bit less fictional.
In 4 days our roommate Crow is moving to Seattle to pursue his dream of not shoveling snow every winter. And probably some other dreams too. It's been a really rough week for me and for a lot of reasons it is a difficult transition to face. Crow has been a good friend to me since very early in my college life and a big part of my life since. He's been my roommate for 2 years post college and we lived in the same dorm for most of my 4 years of college as well. It's going to be very difficult losing someone who has been a friend and a constant presence in my life for so long.
It's also, I think the beginning of the end of an era. The era of post college, pre-Adult life. I've lived with friends a lot in the last few years. I've worked odd jobs. I've puttered around trying to find a place that I wanted to be. To settle. I'm not sure I've found the place, but I have found the profession and am taking more aggressive, permanent steps towards work in that profession. The next 2 to 4 years will be spent pursuing my future profession, living where I must to do that and living with friends who can help me shoulder the economic burden of schooling, work, and living a life that doesn't drive me mad or to exhaustion. After that will come settling and finding a place to sink some roots. The idea, while exciting and appealing, is also terrifying because it means big changes, bigger decisions, and a level of Adultness that I don't feel myself ready for just yet.
I hope the next few years will bring me to a point where I am ready, but I think most changes push themselves on us before we really feel prepared for them. I know I didn't feel prepared to live far away from home for college. I didn't feel prepared to live abroad in country where I would rarely use my native language. I didn't feel ready to graduate or to find a way to life on my own. I certainly didn't feel ready for my first or second job (or a few of the jobs that came in between and after). But I also know that all those experiences were (for the most part) very good ones. I loved my life at college. I loved living abroad. I loved speaking only Spanish for days and months on end. I loved living independently and working hard at jobs that challenged me. I know, when the time comes, I'll love planting some roots and settling into a life that will challenge me in new ways.
I am also really, really looking forward to not moving once a year. Every. Single. Year.
Goodbye Crow. I hope you read this when you've gotten to Portland (like you promised you would) and I hope you know that both Raven and I miss you and have loved living with you. You're pretty much one of a kind. And if you don't keep in touch I will hunt you down.
It's a hard emptiness to face, we are all moving forward to great things. And less snow.
~ Owl
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Fern Entry One
Hey Raven,
Sorry I'm the worst and haven't updated in a while. You know the reasons. I'm going to start a story on here. My first sci-fi attempt. Be kind. And feel free to add suggestions and play in the world yourself.
Here goes...
I'm still not sure what this is exactly. My dad says it's a computer. An external processing entertainment machine that dates back from the time of Earth. He says it's a miracle the old piece of junk still works. Not that it did when a customer from uptown dropped it off at the store today. She said she found it still packed away in her family's things in the basement of their house. She didn't know what it was. Neither did I when I first looked at it. But Dad sure did! He gave her more credits than she (and I) thought it was worth and she left, very confused. Maybe it'll sell at the store for more than I think, but sometimes I wonder because Dad has a habit of buying a lot of junk that never sells. But he did manage to fix the thing. I think. It's hard to tell if it's really working right or not.
So now I'm sitting here with something that probably won't even sell and my Dad told me to write. About myself. To test it, he says. Since he's staring at me like I'm a science experiment I guess I'll do what he says. Hi computer! My name is Fern. I'm 16 years old. I live in Chicago. That's in the Northern Alliance Fleet. We're docked at the Teros Space Station Hub at the moment. That's where we get resupplied from the terraformed planets in the Teros system. It's mostly luxury stuff though. We grow and raise all the basics on the ship after all.
I live in what is usually called the Garden. It's near the bottom of the ship and inhabited almost entirely by traditionalists. People who try to live as unplugged from the network as possible. No cybernetics. Few implants. Minimal technological interference. You could probably tell all that from my name though. Most people give their kids normal names. Like Sara or John. Not weird extinct plant names like Fern. Or Heather. That's my younger sister. She's 13. My mom's name is Lavender (the extinct plant names come from her side of the family) and my dad's name is James. He was part of the Engineer Corps until he met my mom and unplugged. He's still got a cybernetic hand though. I think it's pretty cool, though it basically just does hand stuff at this point.
We, my family that is, runs a junk shop that specializes in old Earth-style technology, trinkets, and other treasures. My mom takes in most of the merchandise and my dad and I fix it up. When we can.
I've got school in the morning so Dad says that's all for tonight, but he also says I'll be doing more testing tomorrow. Whatever that means. So I guess I'll write more then. Machine off.
Apparently it doesn't respond to typed or thought commands. I'll have to get my Dad to show me how to turn it off.
Well. I hope that was okay. I had fun writing it and imagining the world. Write more soon. I promise.
Sorry I'm the worst and haven't updated in a while. You know the reasons. I'm going to start a story on here. My first sci-fi attempt. Be kind. And feel free to add suggestions and play in the world yourself.
Here goes...
7.12.5383
22:36
Muir St
Starship Chicago
Northern Alliance Fleet
Teros System
I'm still not sure what this is exactly. My dad says it's a computer. An external processing entertainment machine that dates back from the time of Earth. He says it's a miracle the old piece of junk still works. Not that it did when a customer from uptown dropped it off at the store today. She said she found it still packed away in her family's things in the basement of their house. She didn't know what it was. Neither did I when I first looked at it. But Dad sure did! He gave her more credits than she (and I) thought it was worth and she left, very confused. Maybe it'll sell at the store for more than I think, but sometimes I wonder because Dad has a habit of buying a lot of junk that never sells. But he did manage to fix the thing. I think. It's hard to tell if it's really working right or not.
So now I'm sitting here with something that probably won't even sell and my Dad told me to write. About myself. To test it, he says. Since he's staring at me like I'm a science experiment I guess I'll do what he says. Hi computer! My name is Fern. I'm 16 years old. I live in Chicago. That's in the Northern Alliance Fleet. We're docked at the Teros Space Station Hub at the moment. That's where we get resupplied from the terraformed planets in the Teros system. It's mostly luxury stuff though. We grow and raise all the basics on the ship after all.
I live in what is usually called the Garden. It's near the bottom of the ship and inhabited almost entirely by traditionalists. People who try to live as unplugged from the network as possible. No cybernetics. Few implants. Minimal technological interference. You could probably tell all that from my name though. Most people give their kids normal names. Like Sara or John. Not weird extinct plant names like Fern. Or Heather. That's my younger sister. She's 13. My mom's name is Lavender (the extinct plant names come from her side of the family) and my dad's name is James. He was part of the Engineer Corps until he met my mom and unplugged. He's still got a cybernetic hand though. I think it's pretty cool, though it basically just does hand stuff at this point.
We, my family that is, runs a junk shop that specializes in old Earth-style technology, trinkets, and other treasures. My mom takes in most of the merchandise and my dad and I fix it up. When we can.
I've got school in the morning so Dad says that's all for tonight, but he also says I'll be doing more testing tomorrow. Whatever that means. So I guess I'll write more then. Machine off.
Apparently it doesn't respond to typed or thought commands. I'll have to get my Dad to show me how to turn it off.
Well. I hope that was okay. I had fun writing it and imagining the world. Write more soon. I promise.
Friday, March 20, 2015
The Perfect Day
Every now and then, generally when we need them the most, perfect days materialize out of thin air and surprise us with their persistant delightfulness. Today was one such day.
First, today's news: the elimination diet has been unsuccessful, as I was sort of anticipating it would be. Fortunately, we have another lead to follow on the illness front, and not being allergic to foods I love is, while diagnostically unhelpful, not the worst news I could get. That means that I get to start reintroducing foods into my diet, starting TODAY! To celebrate, I tried a bit of the (soy-laden) chocolates I got for Owl as a thank you gift for her patience in dealing with a sick and grumpy me. So far, so good.
Today Owl and I were able to sleep in, which was an absolute blessing for me, as I've been sleeping terribly all week. Insomnia is super fun, kids! Owl was planning on taking the kids she nannies for to the zoo yesterday, and I was jealous because the zoo is wonderful. She did not end up taking the kids, but today, she and I went to the zoo together, and it was every bit as wonderful as I was hoping it would be.
The local zoo is free and subsists mostly off of donations, so it is understandably small. However, for a free zoo in a small city, it is still rather impressive. It is home to a fully grown Amur tiger who is constantly pacing his domain and stopping occasionally to stare down small children, two giraffes who always try desperately to reach the leaves of the trees just outside of their enclosure, a small pool of harbor seals, two delightful capybaras, an orangutan who likes to use the small plastic pool in his enclosure as a shield so that he can hide when he gets too shy, and a whole host of other creatures. We spent several hours there enjoying the gorgeous spring weather (and the sunshine!) and OwL let me drag her back to the tiger enclosure at the end of the day because big cats are basically my favorite thing ever.
The area around the zoo is one of the most interesting parts of our city. It's in one of the nicer neighborhoods, so some of the stuff there is out of our price range, but that doesn't make browsing around any less fun. We stopped by an oilery, which dealt in olive oils and vinegars, so we could window shop for some tasty fusion oils to taste when I add olive oil back in to my diet. (Soon!) After that we poked around through some of the more ecclectic shops on the street, including a gift shop full of African art run by a sweet older British woman, and an artsy shop next door that specilized in recycled materials, where we picked up some going-away cards for Crow, who is moving soon, but still hasn't read any of this blog so won't have the surprise spoiled. (He says he's waiting to read the blog until he moves, so he has a backlog of our writing to remind him of us, or something equally saccharine. If you're reading this from the future, Crow, we miss you!)
Next we visited my very favorite comic book shop. Our city has several, and I am fond of them all, but this partiuclar shop I like more than any other I've frequented, and I've found comic shops in dozens of cities on two continents and counting, so that is pretty high praise. It's one of those hole-in-the-wall comic shops, which tend to be the best, by my estimation. The owner is an older gentlemen who is incredibly friendly and helpful, and, I'm convinced, knows everything about everything. He knows all the big Marvel and DC comics, of course, but can also talk at length not only about indie comics and obscure manga, but also about video games, TV shows, history, religion, and art. And those are just the topics that have come up whilst discussing the newest issues of our favorite comics. Owl bought a Daredevil comic and a gift for a friend of ours who we haven't seen in several years, and I picked up the first volume of a Mouse Guard anthology, along with a Deadpool pin for my backpack. We chatted with the owner about our comics, he recommended several more, and he handed us each a piece of wrapped candy that he says he has become addicted to. Apparently it's pomegranate and mint flavored, and very refreshing. He's an incredibly nice guy, and his shop is one of the reasons I almost never buy comics online or at big chain retailers. There's not much I can do to stop the inevitable march of progress that will eventually deal the killing blow, first to small comic book shops like his and, in all probability, ultimatley to print comics as a whole, but I intend to do what I can to keep them around for as long as possible.
Owl had to work tonight, but we had time to sit down in the mall for awhile and read our comics. We got coffee from the small stand in the mall, from the friendly guy who works there bascially every day. He recognized me, since I come there often to get coffee for Owl during her shift, and recommended that I try the strawberry bubble tea next time I was there, which, diet allowing, I intend to! I often have trouble talking to strangers, since a combination of my speech impediment and general awkwardness leave me fumbling over my words when I get shy or flustered, but days like today make me grateful that I have encouraged myself to become more outgoing. We live in a world that is becoming increasingly fast-paced and dependent on technology, and human interaction is becoming less a necessity and more an inconvenience day by day. There was a time when I would have given anything to never have to talk to a stranger, even to order coffee, but increasingly, I have come to enjoy the small, simple conversations with store clerks, baristas, people waiting with me for the bus, and folks I would never have had the courage to so much as make eye contact with when I was younger.
After I dropped Owl off at work I went to the Barnes and Noble outside the mall, where I was stopped short by a display on the end of the science fiction and fantasy section. "A Lifetime Remembered", read the plaque, and on the display were a dozen Terry Pratchett books. A Blink of the Screen, a collection of his short fiction, was featured prominantly, and below it, The Folklore of Discworld, the series he cowrote with Stephen Baxter, Carpe Jugulum, Small Gods, The Night Watch, The Truth, and several other of my favorite books. I am not easily driven to tears, but standing there looking at the display I could feel my eyes welling up, not out of sadness, but out of this simple and yet touching memorial to an incredible life. I picked up The Folklore of Discworld, which I have been wanting for a while, and a copy of Good Omens, which despite being one of my very favorite books, I somehow don't own. On a whim I paid a visit to the children's section, the only place in this particular store that I have never yet been, and found a small selection of Pratchett's children's books. I picked up The Carpet People, his very first novel (which he started at seventeen), and have been sitting in the cafe reading it all night.
Soon I will go pay Owl a visit at the store, as Friday nights in a toy store tend to be fairly quiet. But I couldn't bring myself to leave without sharing a part of this perfect day with you, dear friends. Forgive me if I was poetic, or sentimental, but it has been a fairly rough week (or perhaps month, or perhaps even year) for me, and a day like today was exactly what I needed. It has been easy to fall into the habit of feeling badly, pitying myself, bemoaning all the things that are going wrong. But really, I am extraordinarily fortunate. I have an amazing family (I would be remiss if I didn't mention the phone call from my mother, which, even though it was about doctor appointments and medications, brightened my day like it always does), a wonderful and patient partner, a beautiful city to explore, and of course, all of you reading this now.
If you frequent this blog chances are I am terribly fond of you (if you're visiting this because you're a friend of Owl's or because you somehow found it in the recesses of the Internet and don't actually know either of us, that's okay, I'd probably like you too if I knew you) and am grateful to have you in my life. There. I said it! It's sappy and silly and I'm not taking it back. Thank you for reading. I promise I'll go back to talking about anthropology and food allergies and webcomics soon. (The combination of those three caters to a very niche audience, doesn't it?)
-Raven
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
A Lesson in Food Labeling
Hi Owl,
Okay, yeah, so. I haven't been great about writing, have I? I second your proposal for optional weekend updates, because apparently I can't even handle five days a week, let alone seven.
I am almost done with my latest (and hopefully last) elimination diet, so I will soon be back to eating normally. This means not obsessively checking every label to see if a product contains soy (protip: it probably does) and turning down any and all invitations to go out to eat pretty much anywhere. That's pretty exciting, since I haven't been able to find bread that I can eat that lasts longer than two days before molding, and I really miss toast. (And have not had the patience to make my own bread, though my wonderful mother did bake me some whole wheat challah that has been seeing me through my otherwise breadless trial.)
This diet (and all of the diets that have come before this) has been quite a learning experience. A lot of the lessons are obvious (guys, Americans really like putting additives in their food) but some of them have been less obvious (turns out that olive oil is a terrible cooking oil and there are SO MANY better options. Save your olive oil for dressings and dipping bread into, and you'll be happy.)
I wanted to share some of these lessons with you, since I'm sitting in the Starbucks cafe at Barnes and Noble and food is on my mind. (At least I can have coffee still. Thank goodness.)
Lesson 1: Allergen information is surprisingly hard to find
According to FDA regulations, most food sold in the US must be properly labelled. Generally speaking, any packaged food must come clearly labelled with the following, according to 21 CFR 101.3(a): the common name of the food, or if no common name is available, or "an appropriately descriptive term, or when the nature of the food is obvious, a fanciful name commonly used by the public for such food"; what form it comes in if applicable (whole, diced, chopped); whether or not the food is an "imitation" of another food; an information panel with nutritional information, including serving sizes, caloric content, and content and percentage of daily values for fat, sodium, carbohydrates, proteins, etc; a complete list of ingredients, with allergens clearly labelled. The whole list of rules and regulations is muuuuuuch longer and more complicated than this, of course, and includes provisions for where the labels must be placed, when to include preparation instructions, exemptions for fresh meats and dairy products, and so on.
Of course, this just covers prepackaged food. There are separate provisions for food served at restaurants, sold in vending machines, or prepared at grocery stores. Broadly speaking, the rule is that all food should be properly labeled and when a label is not applicable, such as at a restaurant, such information must be otherwise made available.
In reality, however, this is not always the case. For instance, according to the FDA website's page on the Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption, "one exemption, for low-volume products, applies if the person claiming the exemption employs fewer than an average of 100 full-time equivalent employees and fewer than 100,000 units of that product are sold in the United States in a 12-month period." So, if I wanted to order a pizza from Bob's Pizza Palace*, for instance, and Bob's Pizza Palace is a small, locally-owned restaurant with twenty employees, plus Bob, that delivers to a 2-mile radius in Nowhere, Indiana, Bob could apply for an exemption through the FDA and would not be obligated to provide nutritional information for his food. Moreover, the provision for restaurants that stipulates that all waitstaff must provide nutritional information when asked assumes that we live in a world where everybody a) takes their job seriously and b) realizes that terms like "vegetable oil" or "flour" are not necessarily as descriptive as they think. If I ask a waiter what my chicken is cooked in and they tell me vegetable oil, I may assume that they mean canola or rapeseed oil, which is generally the default cooking oil in the US, when in reality the chef used a mixture of sunflower oil and soybean oil. I could ask, and they might go back and check, but the potential for misinformation is still high, and if you're a shy and unassuming Midwesterner like I tend to be around strangers the chances of you even asking in the first place are, let's face it, relatively slim.
So, despite the best efforts of the FDA, it's not a foolproof system. And keep in mind, this is one area in which the US is actually doing pretty well for itself. In many other countries, the requirements for food labeling are much less stringent.
In a perfect world, every food vendor would supply a full list of ingredients for every food product they sell. This means making readily available information for every component of every item, including condiments, beverages, dairy products, flours and spices, baked goods, and prepared foods. Preferably this information would be available with little to no human interaction to minimize the possibility for miscommunication or misinformation.
There are some places that are already doing this, and they might not be the places that you expect. Oddly enough, two of the places that I have found (pretty much by accident) to be particularly accommodating are Taco Bell and McDonald's. While I don't generally look to fast food giants for health information, I was pleasantly surprised to find that both companies had information on their products readily available online. This discovery came while wandering around the mall waiting for Owl to get off of work. Finding myself incredibly hungry and without any "allowed" food in easy access, I took out my phone and began Googling allergen information for the restaurants in the food court. To my surprise, Taco Bell's website went out of their way to provide a handy chart of common allergens and a list of every item on their menu, so that consumers could easily see which of their foods had what allergens in them. This list included a legend that had symbols to demarcate the gradient of contact each menu item had with each allergen, from "contains allergen" to "prepared in common equipment", with a separate symbol for foods which contain soybean oil and a stipulation that soybean oil is not considered an allergen (though for the purposes of my particular diet it is, so I was overjoyed to see this additional note). Of course, there were virtually no menu items that were allowed on my diet available, but the list made it a lot easier to say for sure, and helped me to feel a lot less alone. In a similar vein, a little bit of Googling will get you a searchable .pdf of virtually all of McDonald's menu items with every single ingredient in them, including what they were cooked or fried in and what all sauces, condiments, and dressings contain, with common allergens listed in boldface.
I would love to see either or both of these approaches taken up by other restaurants. I don't necessarily expect this of Bob's Pizza Palace, but it's aggravating to go to Starbucks (which lists ingredients for bakery items made specifically by Starbucks, but has no information available on their beverages and stocks a great variety of non-Starbucks baked goods, such as a chocolate mousse from the Cheesecake Factory, which is known for not providing any ingredient information whatsoever) and not know what I can eat without bothering a barista who is already juggling eight other customers.
Lesson one took a lot longer to discuss than I anticipated, but it is by far the most important, and most in need of addressing. Check back next time for some more Food Knowledge, brought to you by The Hungry Raven. Next week's episode: Learning About Food Substitutes.
*This name is made up (as far as I know), but I would totally order pizza from a pizza palace.
Okay, yeah, so. I haven't been great about writing, have I? I second your proposal for optional weekend updates, because apparently I can't even handle five days a week, let alone seven.
I am almost done with my latest (and hopefully last) elimination diet, so I will soon be back to eating normally. This means not obsessively checking every label to see if a product contains soy (protip: it probably does) and turning down any and all invitations to go out to eat pretty much anywhere. That's pretty exciting, since I haven't been able to find bread that I can eat that lasts longer than two days before molding, and I really miss toast. (And have not had the patience to make my own bread, though my wonderful mother did bake me some whole wheat challah that has been seeing me through my otherwise breadless trial.)
This diet (and all of the diets that have come before this) has been quite a learning experience. A lot of the lessons are obvious (guys, Americans really like putting additives in their food) but some of them have been less obvious (turns out that olive oil is a terrible cooking oil and there are SO MANY better options. Save your olive oil for dressings and dipping bread into, and you'll be happy.)
I wanted to share some of these lessons with you, since I'm sitting in the Starbucks cafe at Barnes and Noble and food is on my mind. (At least I can have coffee still. Thank goodness.)
Lesson 1: Allergen information is surprisingly hard to find
According to FDA regulations, most food sold in the US must be properly labelled. Generally speaking, any packaged food must come clearly labelled with the following, according to 21 CFR 101.3(a): the common name of the food, or if no common name is available, or "an appropriately descriptive term, or when the nature of the food is obvious, a fanciful name commonly used by the public for such food"; what form it comes in if applicable (whole, diced, chopped); whether or not the food is an "imitation" of another food; an information panel with nutritional information, including serving sizes, caloric content, and content and percentage of daily values for fat, sodium, carbohydrates, proteins, etc; a complete list of ingredients, with allergens clearly labelled. The whole list of rules and regulations is muuuuuuch longer and more complicated than this, of course, and includes provisions for where the labels must be placed, when to include preparation instructions, exemptions for fresh meats and dairy products, and so on.
Of course, this just covers prepackaged food. There are separate provisions for food served at restaurants, sold in vending machines, or prepared at grocery stores. Broadly speaking, the rule is that all food should be properly labeled and when a label is not applicable, such as at a restaurant, such information must be otherwise made available.
In reality, however, this is not always the case. For instance, according to the FDA website's page on the Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption, "one exemption, for low-volume products, applies if the person claiming the exemption employs fewer than an average of 100 full-time equivalent employees and fewer than 100,000 units of that product are sold in the United States in a 12-month period." So, if I wanted to order a pizza from Bob's Pizza Palace*, for instance, and Bob's Pizza Palace is a small, locally-owned restaurant with twenty employees, plus Bob, that delivers to a 2-mile radius in Nowhere, Indiana, Bob could apply for an exemption through the FDA and would not be obligated to provide nutritional information for his food. Moreover, the provision for restaurants that stipulates that all waitstaff must provide nutritional information when asked assumes that we live in a world where everybody a) takes their job seriously and b) realizes that terms like "vegetable oil" or "flour" are not necessarily as descriptive as they think. If I ask a waiter what my chicken is cooked in and they tell me vegetable oil, I may assume that they mean canola or rapeseed oil, which is generally the default cooking oil in the US, when in reality the chef used a mixture of sunflower oil and soybean oil. I could ask, and they might go back and check, but the potential for misinformation is still high, and if you're a shy and unassuming Midwesterner like I tend to be around strangers the chances of you even asking in the first place are, let's face it, relatively slim.
So, despite the best efforts of the FDA, it's not a foolproof system. And keep in mind, this is one area in which the US is actually doing pretty well for itself. In many other countries, the requirements for food labeling are much less stringent.
In a perfect world, every food vendor would supply a full list of ingredients for every food product they sell. This means making readily available information for every component of every item, including condiments, beverages, dairy products, flours and spices, baked goods, and prepared foods. Preferably this information would be available with little to no human interaction to minimize the possibility for miscommunication or misinformation.
There are some places that are already doing this, and they might not be the places that you expect. Oddly enough, two of the places that I have found (pretty much by accident) to be particularly accommodating are Taco Bell and McDonald's. While I don't generally look to fast food giants for health information, I was pleasantly surprised to find that both companies had information on their products readily available online. This discovery came while wandering around the mall waiting for Owl to get off of work. Finding myself incredibly hungry and without any "allowed" food in easy access, I took out my phone and began Googling allergen information for the restaurants in the food court. To my surprise, Taco Bell's website went out of their way to provide a handy chart of common allergens and a list of every item on their menu, so that consumers could easily see which of their foods had what allergens in them. This list included a legend that had symbols to demarcate the gradient of contact each menu item had with each allergen, from "contains allergen" to "prepared in common equipment", with a separate symbol for foods which contain soybean oil and a stipulation that soybean oil is not considered an allergen (though for the purposes of my particular diet it is, so I was overjoyed to see this additional note). Of course, there were virtually no menu items that were allowed on my diet available, but the list made it a lot easier to say for sure, and helped me to feel a lot less alone. In a similar vein, a little bit of Googling will get you a searchable .pdf of virtually all of McDonald's menu items with every single ingredient in them, including what they were cooked or fried in and what all sauces, condiments, and dressings contain, with common allergens listed in boldface.
I would love to see either or both of these approaches taken up by other restaurants. I don't necessarily expect this of Bob's Pizza Palace, but it's aggravating to go to Starbucks (which lists ingredients for bakery items made specifically by Starbucks, but has no information available on their beverages and stocks a great variety of non-Starbucks baked goods, such as a chocolate mousse from the Cheesecake Factory, which is known for not providing any ingredient information whatsoever) and not know what I can eat without bothering a barista who is already juggling eight other customers.
Lesson one took a lot longer to discuss than I anticipated, but it is by far the most important, and most in need of addressing. Check back next time for some more Food Knowledge, brought to you by The Hungry Raven. Next week's episode: Learning About Food Substitutes.
*This name is made up (as far as I know), but I would totally order pizza from a pizza palace.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Among the Very Young At Heart
Hey Raven,
I think the writing may be on the wall. Our lives may be too busy for weekend updates. What do you say to optional weekend updates? Yes/No?
But it's Monday - time to begin another week. This week has started out on a good note! I have tons of work this week, but it's all pretty fun, cool stuff so I can't complain too much. Today was one of the best days I have had in a while. I spent the day at my toy store job, which was pretty uneventful but I got to talk to some nice folk. The day was one of the nicest we've had for a while. It finally started to feel like spring so I bought a frisbee, some bubbles the met my friends and spent the afternoon out at a coffee shop and then a park playing frisbee, blowing bubbles and making terrible puns and math jokes (the math jokes were inaccurate because let's face it I'm terrible at math). Then we came home, made delicious grown up dinner (salmon, broccoli, and spinach), played a card game I haven't played since my childhood, and watched cartoons.
Today reminded me that you are never too old to be a kid. It's never too late to play with toys, goof around, and play make believe. Some of the things that made me happiest as a kid still make me happy today. I often feel like I should be ashamed of how much I enjoy doing kid things still, but days like this remind me that frivolity is more than just okay. It's sometimes exactly what every life needs.
So Raven, don't grow old with me. Just grow with me. Hopefully even when we're 90 we'll still be kids at heart.
Best wishes,
Owl
I think the writing may be on the wall. Our lives may be too busy for weekend updates. What do you say to optional weekend updates? Yes/No?
But it's Monday - time to begin another week. This week has started out on a good note! I have tons of work this week, but it's all pretty fun, cool stuff so I can't complain too much. Today was one of the best days I have had in a while. I spent the day at my toy store job, which was pretty uneventful but I got to talk to some nice folk. The day was one of the nicest we've had for a while. It finally started to feel like spring so I bought a frisbee, some bubbles the met my friends and spent the afternoon out at a coffee shop and then a park playing frisbee, blowing bubbles and making terrible puns and math jokes (the math jokes were inaccurate because let's face it I'm terrible at math). Then we came home, made delicious grown up dinner (salmon, broccoli, and spinach), played a card game I haven't played since my childhood, and watched cartoons.
Today reminded me that you are never too old to be a kid. It's never too late to play with toys, goof around, and play make believe. Some of the things that made me happiest as a kid still make me happy today. I often feel like I should be ashamed of how much I enjoy doing kid things still, but days like this remind me that frivolity is more than just okay. It's sometimes exactly what every life needs.
So Raven, don't grow old with me. Just grow with me. Hopefully even when we're 90 we'll still be kids at heart.
Best wishes,
Owl
Friday, March 13, 2015
Sir Terry Pratchett
Floating through space, gently drifting
towards horizons unknown, is a giant turtle. And on his back rest four* elephants.
And atop of their backs in turn rests a large disc, dropping off suddenly into
a giant waterfall that cascades out into space. The turtle is the Great A’Tuin,
the elephants are Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen, and the world is
Discworld.
It is on the Disc that Terry Pratchett set
his forty Discworld novels, and it is
his most wondrous gift to our (rounder but only slightly less improbable)
world. It is on the Disc that gods play dice and laugh at the fates of mortals
atop Cori Celesti, the guilds of Ankh-Morpork turn chaos into
slightly-more-orderly chaos, the witches of the Ramtops and the wizards of
Unseen University (and its brother in Fourecks) play havoc with the
forces of magic, and Death, who is really quite a pleasant fellow once you get
to know him, stalks through his domain.
When I was twelve, my brother lent me his
copy of The Colour of Magic on a
family vacation to Florida. From the very second I first stepped foot onto the
Disc, it felt like home. And the man who created it all, though I never met
him, felt like family.
I do not use the word “hero” lightly but
Sir Terry Pratchett was my hero. He was sharp of mind and brave of spirit, and
one could do much worse than to aspire to be like him. As a writer and as a
human being, I hold Sir Terry in the highest regard, and in his passing, I feel
that I have lost an old friend.
To get to know a stranger through the words
they write on a page, the characters they birth and the worlds they build, the
stories they weave and the jokes they tell**, is a beautiful thing. In his most
beloved characters, I have found friends, role models, kindred spirits.
As a general rule I tend to avoid
definitive statements, especially regarding people I have not met. In this
case, however, I am willing to make an exception: The world was a better place
for having Terry Pratchett in it, and it will feel emptier with him gone. My
world certainly was a better place
because of Pratchett and his creations.
I could cite a list of Pratchett’s numerous
accomplishments, or tell tales of the beautiful yarns he spun, or talk at great
length about the profound personal impact his books had on me. I am confident
that I will write more about Pratchett soon, especially as I expand my already
vast library of his books. But there is time for that later. Now is a time for saying
goodbye to a beloved man, and though I do so with a heavy heart I am glad that
he died peacefully and am eternally grateful for all he gave us.
Sir Terry Pratchett, you were a god among
men. You were an astonishing example of humanity at its finest, and certainly
at its wittiest. You will be missed dearly and desperately. It will be hard to
let you go, but you will live on forever in your creations, in the minds of
your fans, and in those who loved you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
To Lyn and Rhianna Pratchett, and to who
knew and loved him, I am so sorry for your loss. May his memory be for a blessing.
On one final note, I would like to second Neil Gaiman in urging you all to consider donating to Alzheimer’s research in honour of Pratchett and everybody else who suffers or has suffered from this devastating disease.
On one final note, I would like to second Neil Gaiman in urging you all to consider donating to Alzheimer’s research in honour of Pratchett and everybody else who suffers or has suffered from this devastating disease.
Sir Pratchett's official coat of arms. The Latin translates to "Don't
fear the reaper"
*Or possibly five, if you’re into that sort
of controversial thinking...
**And to get to know a person through their
footnotes is a whole new kind of wonderful.
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