'Tis the season

Shhhuuush.  Be verwy, verwy quiet.  It's tax season and that always make Mrs. Phactor a bit edgy, so on those few occasions when we do see each other, TPP tip toes around. This particular weekend TPP  \mainly tip-toed around the kitchen.  On Saturday he was cooking the main dishes for a quite nice Cuban menu for our dinner group: ropa vieja and Moros y Christianos, beef stew Cuban style and rice with black beans.  On Sunday TPP harvested his annual batch of corned beef a few days late for St. Patrick's Day. You simmer it until it's quite tender, and somewhat de-salinated. And then it's baked with an orange marmalade-whole grain Irish whisky mustard glaze (yum!) served with a lovely mushroom soup, colcannon, and apple sauce.  This year's batch came out quite well  according to those what were fed (hint: don't hurry the process; use good spices). You cannot buy corned beef like this in a store. That was a lot of cooking, but TPP did stay out of trouble by keeping the kitchen untrashed more or less and making some nice cocktails: Irish whisky - sweet vermouth (1:1) on a big rock and a dash or two of bitters.  There won't be any more entertaining until after April 15th!

Produce bus for food deserts

There are places even in small cities where grocery stores

are too far away for walking/biking access. This is especially important when it comes to fresh and sustainable produce. In urban areas with well developed mass transit, there will often be small, strategically placed markets at major transit hubs, but neither of these is common place in the USA. This produce bus idea makes the produce market movable and capable of serving several neighborhoods. Many parts of the world still operate with lots of small markets, many specializing in just one component of groceries: green grocers, butchers, bakers, dairy, but in the USA someone invented the car and then someone else invented the super market, and while it had everything it isn't convenient for in and out shopping, so people had to buy a week's worth of groceries. This then requires much bigger refrigerators and more storage, a whole cascade of inefficiency. So it's fun to see this all devolving change back toward small and local. Friends of ours retired to a Chi-town high rise over looking Lake Michigan, a non-gardeners paradise, and they have a convenience store for dairy, produce, and meat in their building. TPP's own neighborhood has just barely walkable shopping; it takes about 20 min to walk to the "people's" market and about the same to walk to the small business areas on either side of our campus, but those areas are both bereft of real grocery shopping. While TPP does this regularly, few of his neighbors do. While living in Zurich, TPP was quite enamored with small, convenient groceries at tram stops selling food in smaller quantities, e.g., eggs come in cartons of 4, 6, and 8. Beer came in 3 bottle packs. Fresh pastas and sauces were just enough for 2, and so were smaller loaves of bread. In all of this TPP sees some hope. For example, the USA has gone through a beer revolution. There was a time when every city had one or more breweries; our own little city had up to 5, the influence of German immigrants. Then someone invented pasteurizing and bottling for beer, and bigger breweries bought up small breweries, closed them and then distributed their product over that area. And of course the beer was brewed to be all things to all people, so mediocre at best. This continued until there were only 37 breweries left in the whole USA! Now microbreweries have proliferated and more craft beers are consumed than Budweiser, once the number one beer. So smallifying and local is good if a trend.

A green, sustainable New York City?

Well, if you can do it for NYC, you can do it for almost anywhere, but really, folks?  Think about it for a moment. If you only consider food, you have to have an area about the size of Connecticut just to grow enough food for the population of NYC. There is no magic; the food must come from somewhere, in fact it comes from thousands of somewhere that in total are larger areas than the neighboring state, and all that transportation does have a cost in terms of energy and pollution, and food quality too. It's an interesting idea, but easier to visualize and realize on much smaller scales, e.g., Salem, OR.  Places like Detroit might be easier too because they have so much less population and so much more green space available. A green NYC would be a much nicer place to live just in terms of easier on the eyes. Even out here in the agricultural heartland, TPP grieves to see uncontrolled and sprawling growth convert some of the best farm land in the world into dozer-blighted 'burbs'. It should be criminal, and it shows that even modest-sized, university cities are headed in the wrong direction, but it is government by and for developers who do not bear the cost of ruining farmland and making mass transit unworkable. 

Observations on students on a tropical field trip

One of the more rewarding aspects of TPP's work is taking students on field trips, and none are better than rainforest ecology.  Here are some observations.
This year's class is very observant; they are noticing lots of things that most people would simply walk past.  Learning to observe is really important so this is quite pleasing. 
Typical of students from the Midwest, many of them are not adventurous about food and they approach new foods with suspicion.  They are really picking eaters.  And we're not talking about terrible stuff either. About 50% passed on the best fried plantains ever; the other half of the class finished them off so nothing was wasted.  Fish is avoided by a significant number of them; they don't like things that are "fishy" even when they don't taste "fishy".  On the other hand their reaction to the fresh fruit juices has been very different from previous classes.  Fresh fruit is blenderized, and large, heavy pulp is sieved out, and then diluted with cold water. In the past such juice was only palatable when rendered drinkable by several spoonfuls of sugar.  This year's crew are not such sugar freaks.
The students this year are showing some pretty good work ethics.  They have more energy than TPP, so you have to be good at providing direction.
Students have been good this year about wearing their boots, which deal with the water and mud, and the risk of snake bite.  They worry more about the snakes than the mud.  Smart. 
Spiders are a hot topic this year, orb-weavers, jumping spiders, wolf spiders, but they give one student the creeps.  What fun! 
It takes about two days here for the students to change, in their minds, from newbie tourists to jaded old rainforest veterans heaping scorn on other newbies.  No hazing is allowed. 
It takes several days for students from two different universities to begin to mix, to socialize, and then it's usually female-female or male-female interactions. 
Some of our students always look totally clean and even pressed, downright neat!  Others always seem to have been wallowing in the mud.  They all have nicer field attire than TPP whose field gear has seen many seasons.
For the undergrads, this is often their first time to attempt a research project, and some of them are finding that it's rather satisfying to figure out something real.  Yes, in a manner of speaking this course is proselytizing, trying to convert passive learners into active learners, and trying to recruit people who will develop a life-long love of learning and a passion for finding things out.  And it's working.  Yea!  This is why we do it. 

Botanical meetings - New Orleans

Well,  TPP is back in New Orleans for the annual botanical meetings, back because we done this here before, so while fond and the memories are rather foggy because that was 40 years ago.  So two of my older colleagues, one seven years my senior, and one thirteen years my senior, and both still active faculty, and myself took our lovely wives out to dinner at NOLA.  Wonderful place, wonderful food.  The blueberry lavender flower sorbet was just magical.  The duck and Andouille sausage gumbo was excellent.  This is New Orleans and the food is wonderful.  The street scene is amazing; lots of costumes of various sorts, if you get my drift.  So for the next few days the blogging may be erratic, but it'll be coming from the botanical meetings, live and direct.  Tomorrow is for field trips, and meetings, and a big social mixer.  Another group is also having a conference here in NO, but they won't get mistaken for botanists, or us for them; they dress pretty fancy, black tie and evening gown type of thing tonight.  Botanists just don't do formal, except for one guy, a past-president, who once came in a tux, and everyone just figured he was weird, or making a joke, or something.  Hawaiian shirts are a more usual fashion statement in the botanical world and khakis.  Of course, after so many years, these people are my friends and it's great fun to see them once each year except what with all the science going on it can be hard to socialize with many of them.  There isn't enough time.  Science is a community, and we interact at many different levels, so socializing is a very important thing to do.  The symposium "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), Evolution is True" symposium is on Monday, and TPP will let you know how it goes. 
TPP sees elsewhere that another blogger is getting paid to report on the protist meetings out west in Vancouver.  TPP has been there twice for meetings and it's a lovely city, and again the meetings were nearly 30 years apart.  It does kind of rub my rhubarb that a science blogger is accepting money to do something that they should do anyways, and even worse that TPP hasn't been offered any such support, which is why food came first.  So now, having driven too far, and eaten too much, it's time to get some sleep because the field trip starts early.

Is there horse meat in my burger?

Does anyone else have strange encounters while grocery shopping?  This is not TPP's usual chore; he's a pedestrian and lacks a trunk.  So perhaps this is just because such shopping is so novel to him in general that it makes grocery-shopping normal seem a little strange.  While perusing the butcher counter, and considering making a meatloaf, always a bit of an ambiguous appellation anyways, meatloaf covers a lot of categories, and a woman confides in me that she isn't going to buy any ground beef until she's sure there isn't any horse meat in it.  So TPP asked, "Why would that be a problem?"  After all if you want to worry about something in burger, worry about pink slime.  This was local, ground-in-the-store beef and they don't use pink slime, and where would the horse meat come from?  Well, just the thought of eating horse meat was just more than she could bear.  Would bear be OK, or camel, or goat?  And didn't this horsemeat thing happen in Britain, not Lincolnland?  She gave me a worried or puzzled or incomprehensible look, TPP gave her his best quizzical look, and she fled for the produce section. This is an interesting example of an American food taboo, which are largely about meat.  Horses are not seen as food animals in North America, where the horse is an exotic introduced animal.  A colleague tells of a graduate student who vomited after finding out the the delicious BBQ'ed morsel from the market in Peru was guinea pig.  TPP can understand be surprised, but vomiting?  Who's in control over there?  A few years ago, a meat packer here in the Midwest landed a major contract to supply horse meat to France, and the small town could have really used the 100 or so jobs, but protests from horse-lovers prevented the "slaughter".  Yes, that's what it's called when you kill animals for food.  TPP is just old enough, and grew up just rural enough, to know people who really knew their food; they grew it, they killed it, they ate it. People are just so far removed from their food supply that they worry about all the wrong things.  Horse meat in your burger is the least of your worries.  However, the decision was made to buy some sausage; no expectations, so no worries there.   

Chemicals in food - Oh My!

The Phactor's opinion about the UK's Guardian online news is generally positive.  However, it must be admitted that large portions always remain unread, so hard to judge the overall quality except to say better than HuffPo.  But when they run a contest for a science book give-away, well, that attracts your attention.  OK, so here's one of the science questions.  Ready?
Food that doesn't contain any chemicals  1. is known as organic; 2. was grown without pesticides; 3. will help you lose weight; 4.  is much healthier

Well, what was you answer?  As a biologist the Phactor has what may be a surprising answer.  None of them are correct.  Food that doesn't contain any chemicals doesn't exist.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but food is nothing but a bunch of chemicals.  Some are not digestable (cellulose), some are used primarily for the energy locked up in their chemical bonds (starch), and virtually all that can be digested are used for raw materials for making people chemicals.  Maybe the Guardian quiz makers should read some of the books they're giving away.  This is a great example of a common error in thinking.  "Chemical" has gotten such a negative connotation that people fail to realize that stuff is made of chemicals.  Misuse of terms causes many such errors.  "Natural" isn't necessarily good or better than its opposite, artificial; starting with A, arsenic is natural; aspirin is artificial.  Take your pick.  Now time for some lunch chemicals.   

World Food Day

Today, October 16th, is World Food Day, and TPP has a spectacularly inappropriate lecture and lab today: sugar.  Sugar is not actually food.  Sugar is not needed for a healthy diet, although some sugar-containing foods (fruits), some roots, are parts of healthy enough diets.  And yet we like sugar.  Here's several things to think about.  That sugar in your sugar bowl is 99.99% pure sucrose, probably the chemically most pure substance in your house, and what it actually represents is solar light energy stored in the form of chemical bonds.  No wonder a bit of candy can brighten your day.  Our instinctual like for sugar is perhaps linked to choosing ripe fruit as a good candidate for being safe and nutritious food.  Other than honey, glucose secondarily from plant nectar, sugar is pretty hard to find in nature.  If remembered correctly dates have the highest sugar content of all fruits, basically a self-preserving fruit.  Did you ever wonder how the sense of taste works?  Sugar sensors on your tongue detect certain soluble carbohydrates when the molecule fits into a receptor site somewhere on your taste buds and a signel is sent to your brain identifying a molecule with a particular shape as "sweet".  Sweetness is a molecular shape.  Even some sugars, e.g., lactose, barely trigger you sweet sensors, so that sugar isn't sweet.  And sucrose tastes sweeter than maltose, and fructose tastes sweeter than sucrose, so supposedly the better the molecular fit the sweeter the taste.  Artificial sweeteners work because part of their molecular structure mimics the shape of sugar and triggers the taste sensors.  A few plants use non-sugar sweeteners to make their fruit taste sweet even though no sugar is present.  The sweet taste of Stevia leaves is produced by a protein. This is sort of fun to know: the word sugar is derived from an ancient word in Sanskrit for sand, "sakkara", and even more fun, candy comes from another word in the same language for pebbles, "khandra".  No question about it, raw, "brown" sugar looks like sand and pebbles.  And lastly way too much of our food has sugar added even if we don't think of it as sweet.  Of course there is the wretched excess of breakfast cereal that isn't just sugared, they have become predominately sugar, but even things like pasta sauce often have sugar added.  TPP seeks out the brands that don't add sugar because you don't need sugar.  Pasta sauce tastes better without it, so don't train your taste buds, or particularly those of your kids, to expect sugar in everything.  Remember, sugar isn't food. 

Food quest in action

The food quest of a couple of days ago is being put into action, and the Phactor has just spent 30 mins carmelizing a pound and a half of purple onions. Apparently a dozen or so people are coming for brunch tomorrow. So let's see what's cookin'. For starters, curry-spiced bloody marys, shrimp with eye-popping, sinus-opening cocktail sauce, a Phactor speciality (love that horseradish), and a modest little chicken liver pate on slices of baguette. The main dish is a lovely smoked salmon potato frittata with dilled sour cream accompanied with some baked applewood bacon, an arugula salad with balsamic carmelized onions, and a rosemary foccacia (semolina used here). For finishers, an apple-cranberry crisp and a spiced (5 spice powder & almond flour in here) cranberry almond bundt cake with orange frosting. More or less our usual Sunday morning fare.

Food quest

On the Phactor's honey-do list is a quest for several odds and ends, more the former than the latter, for some sort of cooking event. Five-spice powder is most commonly composed of star anise (a basal angiosperm), cloves, cinnamon (but the Chinese use Cassia bark instead of real cinnamon), Sichuan pepper (not real pepper) and fennel seeds, blended to achieve a certain balance of jin and yang. Sounds like a trip to an Asian grocery, which is always fun. Almond flour, and here we certainly hope this wasn't supposed to be "flower". OK, so some really finely ground almonds must be somewhere. Dill weed. This isn't a problem, and the weed means foliage as distinguished from dill seed, but while dill is rather weedy, it does seem rather a harsh label. Semolina flour is puzzling. By definition semolina are the middlings, the little pieces, left over after grinding durum wheat into flour, so it's either flour or semolina not both, and yet there we go. Maybe this is simply a way of designating durum flour from breadwheat flour, and it is hard to tell tetraploid endosperm from hexaploid endosperm once it's made into flour. My real worry is that everything is an ingredient in a single recipe, sort of like that goofy cooking contest show where the chefs get a basket of ingredients and have to combine them all into a dish. At least this list doesn't include cheetos like one of the baskets on the cooking show. Pretty funny that, giving cheetos to a chef. This happens frequently to the Phactor, monthly actually, and in high correlation with the arrival of one or more cooking magazines. Maybe that's why yesterday my shoppinglist included a turkey red wine, limoncello, and several bottles of very dry champagne. This is sounding better all the time. So we are thankful that we have, and can afford, and enjoy, such bounty.

Food for thought #bad11

Food is taken for granted by way too many people in our society. People neither know nor apparently care what their food is or where it comes from, a symptom of plenty. For the human race in general let the Phactor tell you what food is: endosperm. Probably not a word you are familiar with, but there you have it. The vast majority of human calories for the entire human population consist of endoperm, a starchy tissue that forms inside of seeds as the result of a 2nd fertilization. In particular endosperm forms the bulk of cereal grains, those one-seeded fruits of the grass family so central to human nutrition for these past 10,000 years. In the form of rice, wheat, and maize grains, endosperm feeds people. That's what stands between us and starvation, and the single biggest challenge over the next few decages will be to figure out how to grow enough endosperm to feed 8 billion people, without destroying the Earth and its biodiversity along with it. People who blightly predict such a population can be accomodated do not include the environmental cost into their accounting. The predictions of increased food production do not take into account any problems from climate change. Frankly as a botanist, it scares me. Getting enough food will allow people, and governments, to make all kinds of rationalizations for doing lots of things because who can argue for conservation, or neighborly relations, when people are hungry? And most likely the problems will surface first and most acutely in Africa. Back 40 years ago when a student, population was a serious topic, but it disappeared from discussion for a number of reasons mostly because it invariably raised discusion of birth control and family planning, a political non-starter of an issue. So it is most interesting for population and food to once again be a topic of public discussion, about time, but no different than before, just more cronic, and just as difficult to deal with. And this is what all comes to mind when someone asks this blogger to think about food. Too bad the Phactor cannot be more optimistic, but we live in an age when policy makers find it convenient to ignore simple scientific truths and difficult to enact long-term policies. One thing to be certain about, botanists will try to increase our food supplies, and they will indeed do so, but the real worry comes from the lack of leadership and political infastructure around the globe.

Blog Action Day - Food October 16

Well, here's an interesting idea. The topic for this year's (! they done this before?) blog action day, coming up on October 16th, is food. Food is a good thing, unless you have too little of it, and it's a topic about which everyone knows something, so it should make for some interesting blogging. To register your blog for participation go here.

Economic Botany vs. Midwestern Students

Tomorrow the contest begins. The Phactor vs. a certain midwestern complacency and parochialism that most students do not even know they have. Suffice it to say there was more ethnic and language diversity it my freshmen dorm in New York than there is among my students here in Lincolnland. The idea is simple really: start thinking globally. What's true for you is not universal. The good news is that a very effective means of bringing this home is via the topic of food. None of my students will ever put rice in their list of most important food plants; what a complete difference when the same exercise was done in Thailand. Also funny is when my students are unable to actually think of 10 food plants after you explain that Sugar-coated Chocolate Bombs are not a food plant. One of the things they are assigned, and you may find it interesting too is a photo essay entitled What the world eats. The photos are great, but study the groceries. You can learn a great deal: who of this group seems to have the best diet, the most diverse diet, the most monotonous dies, who eats the most fresh food, who eats the most packaged/processed food, who eats the most junk. Then the students have to compare this to their own diet. Parents may shudder at the thought of what their 20 somethings would eat when left to their own devices; it's sometimes as bad as you may think. How many of them do you think actually cook? Hint: don't hold up too many fingers. Your insights, comments, and feedback will be appreciated.

What's for dinner world?

Everyone asks that question, but in many parts of the world it goes without saying it'll be a bowl of rice or grain porridge. So maybe they don't ask because they know. Food is without question one of the most important things to know about and to understand. Yet many of citizens of the modern world have so little connection to the production and processing of their food that they know virtually nothing about it. Having taught the botany of economically important plants for a few decades now it has been the Phactor's aim to "edumatcate" a certain small fraction of our youth that food is not just something that is delivered to your door in a broad flat box! If you've never thought about food from an international perspective, here's a link to a Lester Brown article on the geopolitics of food. It's food for thought. Perhaps some international readers will offer some comments.

Vertical Gardening at Chelsea & Your Food Supply

Ever been to the Chelsea flower show? The Phactors attended a few years ago as part of our 2nd botanical geek tour. If you do go, save enough time the next day to see the Chelsea Physic Garden only a short distance away; it's worth it. The amazing thing about Chelsea, and what sets it apart from all other flower shows, a lot, is the size and complexity of the garden installations. We found ourselves constantly asking "How did they do that?" The logistics are quite mind boggling like having picture perfect floral displays all week long of 50 different varieties of you name it, and getting them all to flower at once in large enough numbers to produce the display. This year a vertical garden installation will be featured to illustrate how to grow a big garden in a small space. One side of the building is all plants, one side solar cells, and the areas within for composting and propagating. Practical? Probably not, but imaginative, clever. Just think a rectangular building with two sides facing south. Think about it.
Of course the point of this is that cities have a problem. While they put lots of things and people conveniently close together, as they get larger the convenience decreases, and important things like water, sewage, and food must be dealt with at increasingly further distances away. Now some cities have solved the space for food production problem. Detroit now has enough vacant space to probably feed itself, but this wasn't planned. London is supposed to only have four days of food on hand at any one time, and this is probably true for most large cities. It's why the shops empty so fast during disasters. So what kind of person are you? Mostly to suit our busy lifestyle and our make it from scratch approach to food, the Phactors keep a considerable supply of basics on hand: canned goods, pastas, flours, beans, frozen stuff (but only good for a few days if the power goes out), and do not dare overlook the wine cellar. This is sort of a throw back to a rural childhood where winter storms frequently left you marooned for a few days, and a big garden tended to overwhelm if produce wasn't canned or frozen. But you must remain vigilant; just yesterday when fetching a decent bottle of red yours truly pointed out that the entire stock of red wine was down to just 9 bottles. Mrs. Phactor almost fainted. What if a disaster struck? For some reason our on hand wine stock is at its lowest in over 25 years. But that's another story. Although it might get a bit dull & some things would disappear quickly, we wouldn't starve for at least a month (but the squirrels better watch out!).
So what kind of person are you? How long could you hold out? Are you one of those real hard core survivalist with a year's supply? Wow! That's be a lot of wine! Or do you go day by day?

Feeding a hungry world

This is good news if you want a career in botany and plant science. The world is going to need lots of people who understand plants, who understand ecology, who understand conservation, who understand people, and who can put it all together. Because who else is going to feed a hungry planet? Pay attention people, this is the future calling.

Let's get fresh.

With respect to food, does fresh mean anything any more? Even air is fresh, and if it isn't we have air freshener! Are the 2 week old eggs in my fridge fresh? Are those mangos "fresh from Mexico?" Clearly refrigeration and more rapid transportation have changed the meaning of fresh. It used to be simple, if you took the egg out of the nest that morning and picked a mango from its tree on the way to the house, they were fresh. Beans out of the garden are fresh; beans at the store are not. Mangos from Mexico are not fresh, but if being a localvore (spelling? or is it locovore?) means not having mangos every now and again here in Lincolnland, then count me out. And then there are somethings that absolutely must be fresh like sweet corn. My Father wouldn't even pick it unless the water were already boiling. The new stay-sweet varieties allow even local farm producers prolong "fresh" and it still troubles me deeply to pick up a "fresh" ear at the local farm stand and feel how cold it is.

Why fresh is as bad now as "home-made". There was a time when home-made meant cooking or making something from scratch. But for all too many people it means taking it out of the box, stirring in water, baking it, and calling it "fresh, home-made cake". The mix had only been in the cupboard for a couple of months, and before then in the store, and then in some warehouse.

So let's just ban fresh unless followed by the word "picked" meaning about 20 minutes ago.

No nutritional benefit to organic food?

A meta-analysis (a study of relevant studies) of the nutritional and health benefits of organic foods concluded that there were no differences between organic and conventionally produced foods. This makes perfectly good sense biologically, and as a trained skeptic, the Phactor has always doubted the nutritional claims made by organic foods advocates. Of course this is like putting a stick into a hornet’s nest and stirring because these advocates defend their beliefs with religious fervor. And having once launched a marble through a hornet’s nest with a slingshot (a youthful dalliance), and been chased a considerable distance by the rightfully infuriated horde, the imagery for me remains quite vivid.

First, let me go on record as saying conventional production of many foods is often done poorly, and over-use of fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones is just plain dumb and wasteful. Second, the overall quality is mediocre as with any mass produced commodity. Third, no one should have to worry about stuff in their food that shouldn’t be there. Let’s farm smart. To their surprise, students of mine who expressed such worries were unable to find any traces of pesticides in samples of produce in local markets. But we live in an era when unsubstantiated claims are used as scare tactics to influence everything from marketing to politics. This works because the cynics who use such tactics understand that a lot of people just do not think for themselves anymore.

Now before the stones start flying, allow the Phactor to say he is a great fan and patron of local organic farmers, but it’s not because of the health and nutritional claims, it’s because their produce is produced with care, picked and sold fresh. In other words they deliver quality goods and deserve a premium price. Back when more conventional production was done locally, on smaller scales, and marketed by the actual producer, the qualitative differences between organic and conventionally produced foods would be negligible.

Understand this, spinach does not know or care where its nitrogen comes from, and it makes the same spinach molecules regardless. A soluble nitrate ion is the same to a plant whether from compost, manure, or 10-10-10. And since plant growth and reproduction is limited by available nutrients, making sure plants have sufficient inorganic nutrients is important to production. Without enhanced nutrients, organically produced plant foods may be slightly lower in inorganic nutrients like phosphorus and potassium, but the differences are not enough to alter their nutritional value. The overuse of pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics simply cannot be defended.

Bottom line, at present organic produce, when locally produced is quality food, but the health/nutritional claims simply are not supported by any evidence. Big stores now have “organic” food sections, particularly in produce, to compete with local producers, and this strikes the Phactor as an organic food scam.