Turn back the clock on country's food production

Grandmother Mauer grew up in Alton, a downstate farming community. As a kid I was fascinated by the rows upon rows of gleaming bottles filled with rainbow-colored home-canned goods that filled the cellar. Her pantry yielded pink rhubarb, homemade deep-red chili sauce relish and pale green pickled watermelon rind.

Decades ago, a friend of mine helped open and operate The Green Earth, an organic food store in Evanston. The yogurts came from California (Alta Dena), the local, organically grown produce looked fairly shabby compared to that in a supermarket, but at the time it was the best they could find. They also sold a few flavorful, but dense, whole-grain, whole-wheat organic breads and cookies. Times have certainly changed.

A few years later, while camping my way down the Oregon and California coast, I tasted raw (unpasteurized) milk for the first time; its cream floating on the top of the milk, just as the cream on milkman-delivered milk did when I was a kid. It tasted sensational. Pasteurization guards against ill-health, but also makes milk taste cooked. Fresh, cold unpasteurized milk tastes sweet and clean; the way milk should taste.

At that time I believed (and still do today) that organic food tasted better than its conventionally grown counterparts. Could it be self-fulfilling prophesy?

I also thought organically grown foods brought healthier food to my table. Without pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers food just had to be healthier, didn't it? I was no scientist then, and am still not one today, but it made sense to me.

In "Omniovore's Dilemma," Michel Pollan writes that in 2000 secretary of agriculture Dan Glickman stated organically grown produce was no better than conventionally grown produce. A statement taken for absolute truth, until the University of California-Davis published two studies that proved organically grown produce contained significantly more polyphenols, nutrients known to be important to human health.

When I was in my twenties, my uncle owned a farm near Kenosha, Wis. where he used no herbicides, pesticides or petroleum-based nitrogen to grow crops to feed the farm animals. His cows produced great tasting milk. The eggs from chickens allowed to live outdoors not only tasted better than store-bought eggs, but they had thicker shells and, during summer months, had deep orange-yellow yolks. Store-bought just don't make scrambled eggs as good as those made with my uncle's eggs.

My uncle dreamed of raising and selling organic beef. The USDA overruled that dream with regulations favoring mega-meat processing and packing corporations. Thanks to the movie "Food, Inc.," I've learned that the USDA protects large, conventional meatpackers. Do we benefit? Hard to tell.

I dream of a day when the direction of our food production returns to the past, when natural and organic is the rule not the exception, when, using sustainable practices, we produce healthier food for everyone and all family farmers can once again be proud of what they're producing.

Grandmother Mauer knew best.

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe make-over requests. Write him at don@theleanwizard.com.