/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>6165752
I don't know whats wrong with "regular food" but I'm gonna say this. It's not "regular food" that's causing diabetes, obesity and cholesterol issues. Those things are caused by idiots either eating too much or eating garbage (in some places both).

>>6165752
Organic, natural, fair trade, occasionally gluten free are all scams.

Free range and cage free depends on the certifying agency. I think the best option is to source locally as much as possible, if you have farms around you to buy eggs from, or local butchers, etc that's your best option. You can google to find out the most humane options for buying mass produced items, there's a ton of information easily searchable that outlines the difference between scams and everything else.

This is all of course implying you're worried about humane treatment or reducing environmental impact. If you don't care about any of that just buy the cheapest shit.

>>6165752
>Whats wrong with regular food?
Eggs are cheap for a reason.

>>6165794
Free range and cage free are both shit claims for eggs, if you're looking for something actually sort of humane. Too many people cheating the system.

"Pastured" is what "free range" is supposed to imply. Some compiled info http://www.cornucopia.org/organic-egg-scorecard/

>>6165804
Hence my claim that it depends on the certifying agency, there are like 5 major agencies that certify things that basically all mean free range/cage free, but each has different requirements for what that actually means.

Thanks though.

>organic
No pesticides or growth hormones, "as nature intended". Sometimes worth it for seasonal fruit and vegetables.
>fair trade
Moderately sketchy, as rules can be bent very easily, but this means that the workers who made/processed/harvested the food got a fair share of the profits. Often, but not always suggests (slightly) better quality of food.
>gluten free
Suitable for coeliacs. Make of that what you will.
>cage free
Chickens who made these eggs weren't kept in cages. Again, make of that what you will.
>free range
Again, moderately sketchy, means not-factory farmed, but this can mean all-but-name factory farmed. What it SHOULD mean is that the animal is given a certain number of hours a day to rootle around outside. Often, that's not the case.

What certainly isn't a scam is "single reserve" or "single estate" or words to that effect. This means the food/booze is verafiably from a single place that cares about whatever you've got in your shopping trolley.

It's kinda tinfoil to assume that things are more expensive to deceive customers into paying more. Sometimes it's the case, as I'm aware that business in general is unscrupulous. Fairtrade and free range, are, in your terms, for the most part "scams". But if you're buying coffee or chocolate, why eat shit?

However, if you care about the welfare of the animal you're eating/eating the product of, >>6165804
seems to know what he's talking about.

what do eggs care if they're free range, they can't even walk

>>6165809
Well, just taking away the cages still leaves the chickens in a horrifying black barn from hell. Free range minimum is a doggy door in the side of said hell barn that leads out onto a concrete lot... The minimum doesn't capture the spirit of the words at all, as expected.

You're right about buying local, that's the only way to know for sure you're not being lied to.

>>6165810
organic also forbids sewage sludge as fertilizer, irradiation, and gmo's, and I think antibiotics (at least the routine preventative kind), so there is quite a bit that goes into the label. whether there is adherence is a different story.

Having lived with people with Coeliac disease, gluten free stuff is legitimate. It's expensive and surprisingly difficult to get sometimes, but you can blame the idiots who don't have coeliac disease and are buying it just because it's trendy for that.

>>6165752
>>gluten free
>>eggs
I want to strangle people who do this.

>organic
I buy regulary organic vegetables because I eat them in huge quantitives so I try to avoid pesticides.
>fair trade
it's too expensive in comparison to unfair-trade
>gluten free
I worked in an 'organic grocery store' (or whatever you call them in murrica) and like every second customer bought our gluten free produce...which was 3-4x times more expensive.
A sucker is born every minute etc.
>cage free
>free range
my only prerequisite is that the animals can get into the sun.
I don't know if it increases the quality of the meat but my gut feeling tells me that it's a good way to measure how the animals are treated.

>>6165810
>>organic
>No pesticides
>>6166787
>>organic
>avoid pesticides
Except pesticides are totally allowed on organic foods. They just have to be derived from 'natural sources.' Which means exactly fuck-all if you're concerned with health or safety, as there are enough dangerous natural substances. These also seems to be much less oversight on the safety of these pesticides and their use, because people think natural = good/healthy. This also means that organic farms can't use more modern, better tested and more efficient synthetic pesticides. Because muh nature.

>>6166855
I should have clarified it some more.
My vegetables come from a local farmer who makes his own pseudo pesticides from chili's and garlic.
It's like 50% more expensive then store brough organic food.

>>6166870
I hope I didn't come over as saying ALL organic food uses pesticides. I just wanted to say that organic does not automatically or always mean that no pesticides were used. (Or that it's neccesarily safer, healthier, more nutricious or better for the environment.)

>>6166855

This.

"Natural" and "organic" labels really don't mean shit, at least in the US that's the case. Organic stuff generally is better but there are lots of chemical fertilizer and pesticide that can be labeled as natural and organic.

Chemical nutrients aren't necessarily a bad thing, a bigger issue is the hardcore chemical pesticides and runoff from other farms. Almost all of the ecoli and other outbreaks come from farm runoff from animal shit. If an organic farm is down the shit-stream it isn't going to mean much in the end.

>>6165752
>>organic
The egg came from a chicken with a beard that likes Indy music.

>>fair trade
The egg came from a chicken that was haggled with his farmer for some more luxuries in life

>>gluten free
The egg came from a chicken with bad taste.

>>cage free
The egg came from a snitch chicken, never spent any time in a penitentiary

>>free range
The egg came from a chicken that had some defects so the farmer got it for free

These terms are mostly legit, but food conglomerates would love to make them as meaningless as "natural".
Until the way animals are raised for food changes on a large scale some of the terms won't really mean what you think it means.

>>6165752
organic, fair trade, gluten free are all meaningless.

Eggs from chickens that got to go outside are tastier though. Grass fed beef also tastes better.

>>6165752
>Whats wrong with regular food?

That is regular food. What you've been eating is industrialized food.

>>6166855
Organic depends on how its certified.
For some agencies, it even includes no pesticide.
For some agencies, it also includes "no antibiotica used"

For the most, at the least in more rural countries and areas, Organic just means that the farmers don't have enough land to warrant the purchase of artificial artificial fertilizer.
Which is a shame, because 1900s fertilizers are fucking neat.

>>6166929
saved.

I'm from /k/, I'll just leave this here.

>>6165752
its further filtering of generic products for more variety.

if americans knew the kind of eggs and how they function overseas, itd be a whole lot different.

its just people looking for more variety and options