Thursday, October 31, 2013

Perguntar Nao Ofende: Comida Contaminada

Se la he assim, imagina aqui? 
Voce se surpreende com esse artigo abaixo? Nao deveria.

F.D.A. Finds 12% of U.S. Spice Imports Contaminated

Graham Crouch for The New York Times
A spice seller in India, among the countries whose exports to the United States were studied.
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NEW DELHI — About 12 percent of spices brought to the United States are contaminated with insect parts, whole insects, rodent hairs and other things, according to an analysis of spice imports by federal food authorities.

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The finding released on Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration is part of a comprehensive look at the safety of spice imports that has been years in the making. The federal authorities also found that nearly 7 percent of spice imports examined by federal inspectors were contaminated with salmonella, a toxic bacteria that can cause severe illness in humans.
The shares of imported spices contaminated with insect parts and salmonella were twice those found in other types of imported food, federal food officials said.
The agency’s findings “are a wake-up call” to spice producers, said Jane M. Van Doren, a food and spice official at the F.D.A. “It means: ‘Hey, you haven’t solved the problems.’ ”
The agency called spice contamination “a systemic challenge” and said most of the insects found in spices were the kinds that thrive in warehouses and other storage facilities, suggesting that the industry’s problems result not from poor harvesting practices but poor storage and processing.
John Hallagan, a spokesman for the American Spice Trade Association, said Wednesday that he had not seen the report, so he could not comment on it. But spice manufacturers have argued in the past that food manufacturers often treat imported spices before marketing them, so F.D.A. findings of contamination levels in its import screening program do not mean that spices sold to consumers are dangerous.
F.D.A. inspectors have found that some spices that claim to have been treated are contaminated nonetheless. And the high levels of filth from insects and rodents is a problem that is not easily resolved because, unlike with salmonella contamination, simply cooking or heating the spices will not rid the products of the problem. Insects can also be a source of salmonella contamination.
What share of the nearly 1.2 million annual salmonella illnesses in the United States result from contaminated spices is unclear, officials said. Fewer than 2,000 people had their illnesses definitively tied to contaminated spices from 1973 to 2010, and most people eat spices in small quantities. But people often fail to remember eating spices when asked what foods might have sickened them, so problems related to spices could be seriously underreported, officials said.
Recent legislation in the United States grants the F.D.A. the power to refuse entry of foods that the agency even suspects might be contaminated — strong leverage to demand changes in harvesting, handling and manufacturing practices in foreign countries.
Spice imports from Mexico and India have been found to have the highest rate of contamination. Nearly one-quarter of the spices, oils and food colorings used in the United States comes from India, according to the F.D.A.
The F.D.A. commissioner, Margaret A. Hamburg, had intended to visit India this fall and meet with spice industry officials to discuss the agency’s concerns about spice safety, but the government shutdown delayed her plans, she said. Indian spice officials are offering incentives to get farmers to change some traditional harvest and handling practices that could lead to contamination.
Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the F.D.A., said that the spice industry needs to clean up poor storage practices, a difficult effort.
“There is no magic wand for any of the problem we’re addressing,” Mr. Taylor said

Dialogo Do Mes

Triste dialogo ouvido num pais onde humor é caso serio e politica é brincadeira. Depois nao reclame do seu futuro.

De um empresario de onibus em SP para outro:

"Wanderglayson, como estao os negocios na sua empresa?"

"Joseleycleysoon, o negocio esta bombando aqui".

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Vinho De Verdicchio. Show Para Poucos

Verdicchio. Mais uma das centenas de uvas viniferas que existem no mundo que você não vai conhecer, mas deveria.

Verdicchio eh plantada e processada largamente e creio que somente na regione de Le Marche, um dos paraísos desconhecidos por turistas tontos que vão em busca dos outlets italianos.

Problema eh que Le Marche não faz muita propaganda de si. E esse delicioso vinho típico da região sai dali para outras regiões (estados) em quantidades ínfimas. Como vários outros de outras regiões.

Curiosidade: Os marchegiane puros tomam verdicchio com água em um copo normal mesmo. O vinho mais simples e barato comprado de galão serve como refresco no verão. Vinho bom fica gostoso ate mesmo em copo de requeijão.

Quem voa de Alitalia executive tem uma ótima opção de verdicchio. Conheço a vinícola, muito pequena...e os azeites que fazem são dos melhores que já provei na vida.

Não sei quem importa e o que importa hoje de verdicchio no Brasil, mas vale a pena conhecer esse vinho delicioso. Lembrar que vinho branco sofre bem no transporte...nunca vem tão gostoso quanto estava na vinícola. Por isso mesmo de preferência aos reservas e mais estruturados que os mais simples (e baratos).

Enquanto isso milhares aqui ficam so no (eca) chardonnay chileno/argentino/australiano. Melhor –para mim ---um Milk shake do Bob’s de ovomaltine.


Beba menos, mas beba melhor. 

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Consumo De Chopp E Cerveja Despenca

Ja ha algum tempo eu escrevi que o consumo de cerveja havia caído para níveis interessantes (se voce nao he acionista dessas empresas). Aqui um dado que ajuda a explicar essa queda (http://economia.estadao.com.br/noticias/economia-geral,precos-da-cerveja-sobem-o-dobro-da-inflacao,168514,0.htm ).

Semana passada estava conversando com vendedores de chopp e cerveja em pizzarias e afins. Todos confirmaram o que os donos e gerentes me contam ha um bom tempo; o consumo despencou no ultimo ano. 

Lei seca, alto preco e essa tal crise são os primeiros culpados. Nao me lembro de mais algum...mas ate pode ter.

Ah, as pizzarias de ''nivel elevado'' em SP apresentam uma perda de receita em torno de 33%. Fonte: duas redes famosas. Sub-fonte: Radio forno. Por enquanto elas tem reservas para queimar, mas se durar mais um pouco....


Monday, October 28, 2013

Italia E Brasil. Semelhancas Incriveis. E preocupantes

Conheco bem alguns paises. Italia e Brasil estao entre eles. Todas as vezes que estou na Italia me sinto em casa, e isso no mau sentido. A Italia tem de muito melhor que o Brasil a natureza, comida, seguranca, vinhos, sistema de transporte e talvez educacao de boa qualidade gratuita. Tirando isso (leia o texto) temos muito de ruim em comum. E o legado do Berlusconi he exatamente  o legado que aquele um de poucos dedos deixou: um pais onde corrupcao he uma boa alternativa e nao ha vergonha nisso. Veja o pedaco do texto que toca no assunto. 

Por que a Italia ainda se encontra entre as maiores economias do mundo? Inercia. Q= m x V

Boa leitura.


Italy Breaks Your Heart



ROME — ON my first night back in Italy, at a dinner party in Milan, I watched and listened to a successful couple in their late 40s plot their escape from a country that they love but have lost faith in. They cleared the plates, opened a laptop, and began checking out real estate in London, where one of them had been offered a transfer. The prices horrified but didn’t deter them. They have a 10-year-old son, and they fear that Italy, with 40 percent unemployment among young adults and an economy whose listlessness has come to seem the new normal, doesn’t promise a particularly bright future for him.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Frank Bruni
Ben Wiseman

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Two days later and about 200 miles southeast of Milan, it was an older Italian woman — early 70s, I’d wager — who sang her country’s blues. I was having lunch on a mountaintop in the Marche region, and with wild boar sausage in front of me and a castle overhead, I could have convinced myself that I was in heaven. “A museum,” she corrected me. “You’re in a museum and an organic garden.” That’s what Italy had come to, she said. Each year the country lost more of its oomph, more of its relevance.
Because I was lucky enough to live here once and am always circling back, I’m well accustomed to Italians’ theatrical pessimism, to their talent for complaint. It’s something of a sport, something of an opera, performed with sweeping gesticulations and musical intonations and, in the past, with an understanding that there was really nowhere else they’d rather be.
But the arias have been different this time around. The whole mood has. Ask Italian students what awaits them on the far side of their degrees and they shrug. Ask their parents when or how Italy will turn the corner and you get the same expression of bafflement. You hear more than you did 10 or even five years ago about migrations to Britain, to the United States. You hear less faith in tomorrow.
I’ve been startled by it. Also spooked, because I arrived here straight from our government shutdown, and I’ve observed Italy’s discontent through a filter of America’s woes, processing it as a cautionary tale. Italy is what happens when a country knows full well what its problems are but can’t summon the discipline and will to fix them. It’s what happens when political dysfunction grinds on and on and good governance becomes a mirage, a myth, a joke. Italy coasts on its phenomenal blessings rather than building on them and loses traction in a global economy with more driven competitors. Sound familiar? There’s so much beauty and promise here, and so much waste. Italy breaks your heart.
And it’s not all Silvio Berlusconi’s doing. His recent criminal conviction for tax fraud, along with a related prohibition from holding public office for several years, hasn’t produced the sense of release and new beginnings that you might expect. It has instead forced Italians to recognize that while he squandered time, made matters worse and was a cartoonish, buffoonish distraction, the country’s bedrock demons — excessive regulations and a rococo bureaucracy that stifle enterprise; a closed system of favoritism that foils initiative; corruption and the cynicism it breeds — transcend him.
In the second quarter of 2013, Italy’s public debt rose to 133 percent of its gross domestic product: the second highest in the euro zone, trailing only Greece’s. The decline in Italy’s G.D.P. of about 8 percent since a pre-crisis peak is worse than Spain’s or Portugal’s. There’s been no meaningful recovery yet, though modest growth may finally come later this year.
But you don’t need numbers to measure Italy’s drift. Just step off the high-speed train (which is terrific) or exit the autostrada and travel the lesser byways, crumbling into disrepair. Or try to throw your empty gelato cup into one of the proper trash cans in the country’s storied capital, Rome. They’re seemingly always full or overflowing. The one I turned to near the Italian Chamber of Deputies one night had gone unattended for so long that people were just leaving their garbage at its base, where a hump of refuse rose: the eighth hill of Rome. In a city whose stressed budget and inefficiencies mirror the country’s, garbage has become a huge issue, a symptom of the body politic’s iffy health.
On Tuesday I visited the doctor on the case. His name is Ignazio Marino. In June he was elected the new mayor of Rome, beating the conservative incumbent, who was backed by Berlusconi, with an impressive 64 percent of the vote, which suggested Italians’ eagerness for something new. Marino, 58, entered politics only seven years ago, and spent his professional life before then as a transplant surgeon specializing in livers (though he dabbled in kidneys and pancreases) and living for the most part in Pennsylvania.
He told me that running Rome wasn’t unlike one of his operations.
“A controlled emergency,” he explained.
He has the world’s best office, in a Renaissance palace on the Campidoglio, a hilltop piazza designed by Michelangelo. A balcony near his desk juts like the tapered prow of a ship over the ancient columns and arches of the Roman Forum. There, at your toes, is the spot where Mark Antony supposedly spoke after Caesar’s assassination. And there, at your fingertips, the Temple of Saturn. It’s a spellbinding view, but also a taunt, a reminder of past glories, of a grandeur long gone.
From a different part of Marino’s office, we gazed out a window to where he parks his bike, which he rides to work daily, partly to encourage a new mode of transportation in a city with too much traffic and poor mass transit. It looked awfully lonely. Romans prefer their scooters.
BUT while improving the transit and garbage situations are high on his to-do list, there’s a fuzzier item at the top, and it’s to run the kind of transparent, results-oriented administration that contradicts Italy’s current way of doing business, which he, like so many Italians I talked with, said was based on personal allegiances, debts owed and time served instead of merit.
“If we change that, the money and the investment will arrive,” he said, adding that he returned to Italy to make his successful bid for the Senate in 2006 because he figured it was time to stop bemoaning the country’s maladies and start treating them. Physician, heal thy homeland.
I asked him about the condition of the patient, meaning Rome.
A long, judicious pause.
“It’s salvageable,” he said.
I asked about Berlusconi’s legacy.
“The damage is the culture that he created,” Marino said. “Accountability was not a value.” Berlusconi made Italian life seem like an adolescent party, an endless rope-a-dope with the rules, in which what you achieved mattered less than what you could get away with, the spoils going to the slipperiest.
And now, the hangover. The wake-up call.
In the newspaper La Stampa two weeks ago, the columnist Luca Ricolfi apologized for not having weighed in for a while, but explained that there was nothing fresh to say. For 20 years, Italy hadn’t stirred. “Everything is inert and frozen,” he wrote.
In the Corriere della Sera a week later, the columnist Ernesto Galli della Loggia rued the country’s “years and years of paralysis,” during which a sort of gerontocracy prevented any real meritocracy. He was careful to note that while Italy was “slowly unraveling,” it wasn’t quite “plunging into the abyss.”
A large enough number of Italians remain just comfortable enough that they cling to the status quo, holding on to what they have now. But that only heightens the uncertainty about what they’ll have down the line. The future, after all, is built on flexibility and sacrifice, on making waves rather than treading water. Still they tread. In that, they have ample company in Western Europe and the United States.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Paolo Crepet, an Italian psychiatrist and lecturer whom I met on this trip. “We’re a creative people. We’re known around the world for our creativity.” But what he detects in his patients and audiences isn’t dynamism; it’s helplessness. “They’re waiting for somebody to lead them out,” he said. “They’re waiting for Godot.” Listening to him, I felt my stomach clench. Is fatalism what comes after too many years of pessimism? Is that where America is headed?
For Italy’s lack of direction, I encountered a metaphor almost too easy and convenient: road signs that could no longer be read, because untended, untrimmed grasses and branches obscured them. I was zipping past wonders, zooming through splendor. But I hadn’t a clue if I was actually getting anywhere.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Acho que esse ainda nao rolou aqui. Bolero de Ravel. Quem nao conhece essa musica, deveria.



De Trambique Em Trambique O Mercado Vai. Para Baixo

Novo rico = velho trouxa.

Durante o periodo em que o pais pensou que fosse uma Suica, Finlandia ou Dinamarca, houve uma explosao no consumo alguns produtos que sao estigmatizados como ‘’de classe alta, gourmet, gente culta’’, etc.
Entre eles estavam os produtos trufados, ou de trufa, ou a base de trufa. Deus, o Obama e meu contador sabem que vendi um monte disso.

Na mesma epoca de voos lotados de italianos a GRU trazendo trufas escondidas nas calcas, apos um mini curso com um produtor serio de trufa cheguei a conclusao triste que muitos sao enganados o tempo todo. E esses produtores (em grande maioria Italianos) jogam contra o mercado. Por que? Porque colocam precos nas alturas, o tonto de primeira viagem compra o azeite, o creme, a manteiga e voila; gosto mezza boca, nada espetacular. 

Paga-se R$ 80.00 por um potinho cheio de batata e aromatizantes.
O cara me fez olhar os rotulos um a um dos produtos disponiveis no mercado. Deprimente. Tartufo nero em fatias? So olhar o genero e especie predominante Aestivum. Nao he o verdadeiro tartufo nero (melanosporum), mas sim o de verao. Basico para muitos de voces? Sim. Para mim foi somente mais uma aulinha triste.

Problemas em se comprar o tartufo de verao? Nao. A questao he comprar gato vagabundo por preco de lebre de primeira.

Para mim o pior mesmo foi o conteudo lotado de batata no creme. Segundo esse produtor nao ha ninguem no mercado nacional que importe/comercialize um produto feito realmente com trufas 100%.


Essa conversa mais uma vez me lembra a historia de varios produtos que as pessoas compram somente uma vez, e desiludidos com o resultado voltam ao tradicional mesmo. Segundo esse produtor na Europa ha otarios tambem que compram aos montes os mesmos produtos e invariavelmente o resultado he o mesmo: desilusao ou resignacao do tipo "acho que nao tenho paladar para as boas coisas".


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Pensamentos Aleatorios: Como Vai? Tudo Bem?

Me cansei de ser uma pessoa honesta e sincera nas respostas ao famoso "oi, esta tudo bem com voce"?

Eu sempre respondo "nao, nao esta tudo bem, mas talvez minha vida esteja 85% bem. Ontem eu estava 87% bem e espero bater nos 90% bem amanha".

He impossivel estar tudo bem. Sempre ha um cabelo despenteado, um pneu com 29 libras ao inves de 30 . Ou estou sem ovos na geladeira, ou ainda as minhas secretarias gemeas estao de ferias.

Ao perceber que as pessoas nao entendiam porque jamais digo ''nao esta tudo bem, mas 100> xx % bem" eu estou pensando no que dizer de volta. 

Um velhinho cliente meu (ex-chefe da secretaria da seguranca do governo do estado de SP, hoje com 96 anos) uma vez me falou que se irritava com o ''como voce esta'''? Ele sempre replicava um '' nao he do seu peculio''. 

Lovely.


Monday, October 21, 2013

Espalhando Coisas Boas. Grande Artigo

Quem me enviou isso sera um diplomata que sera sustentado por nosso dinheiro, mas he otimo saber que meu dinheiro paga por pessoas assim. 

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/joaopereiracoutinho/2013/10/1359584-diario-da-europa.shtml


Café Brasileiro, Ainda Muito Longe Dos Melhores

Dona Barata me trouxe um café estraga paladar da Guatemala. Plantado (e oh, colhido) a 1550 metros de altitude o café amadureceu como as grandes uvas de altitude e clima corretos: Devagar, sem pressa, apurando o açúcar e a acidez.

Para “piorar”ainda mais as coisas o café foi colhido manualmente.  Esta sendo meio deprimente voltar a tomar café brasileiro após mais uma experiência favorável com café dos estranjero.  Por que ‘’nosso’’ café não esta on a par com os melhores do mundo?

Fatores que influenciam uma ótima bebida:

Clima, altitude, tratos culturais, colheita manual, secagem correta e constante, torra, armazenagem e transporte.

Já pensou ter uma fazenda de 1500 hectares de café e colher tudo a mao?  E para secar tudo isso no brazo?  A conta não fecha (como ocorre nos países da Colômbia para o norte)

Ah, o preço que ela pagou em Seattle foi muito mais barato que os cafés da moda no Brasil. Suplicy, Santo Grão, Coffee lab, Octavio’s, museu de Santos.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Pensamentos Aleatorios: Frases Dos Perdedores

Adoro as desculpas que as pessoas que perdem alguma competicao, empresa, dinheiro, fama, mulher, ou casa dao: Essa aqui entao he uma  perola: http://www.totalrace.com.br/site/indy/noticia/2013/10/nao-perdemos-defende-helinho-apos-vice-na-f-indy

Recado: Voce perdeu, SIM. Esta la no placar. Vice, perdeu.


Saturday, October 19, 2013

Leitura De Sabado. Dedicado Aos Corredores

E ai, pisar com a frente do pe ou com o calcanhar?? Conversa ja meio batida (sem trocadilho) entre corredores. Como em quase tudo na vida ve-se vantagens e desvantagens. E a toda hora ha um estudo novo para desmentir o estudo anterior, como nas dietas, no vinho e saude, etc.

Adoro estudos patrocinados por laboratorios que confirmam que certos componentes quimicos feitos por eles sao melhores que outros.... anyway, read on.




Pounding Pavement by Heel or Toe


Thomas Barwick/Getty Images
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Phys Ed
PHYS ED
Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.
Heel strike or toe strike?
With the fall marathon-training season in full stride, it is time once again to argue about running form. How a runner’s foot should strike the ground incites passionate debate among athletes and coaches, despite scant persuasive evidence to support either position.
But a noteworthy new study may help to quell the squabbling, by suggesting that each style of running has advantages and drawbacks, and the right way to run almost certainly depends on what kind of runner you already are.
For the new study, published in June in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers at the Tampere Research Center of Sports Medicine in Tampere, Finland, began by using motion capture technology to determine the running form of 286 young adults from the area who played team sports. None competed in distance running. All wore their normal running shoes during testing.
The testing showed that 19 of the women and 4 of the men struck first with their forefeet while striding.
These small numbers tally with other reports, most of which have found that an overwhelming majority of modern runners, whether male or female, slow or swift, are heel strikers. In a telling study published in May in The International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, almost 2,000 runners participating in a recent Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon were filmed midway through the event and their form analyzed. About 94 percent proved to be heel strikers, including quite a few of the fastest runners.
Similarly, when researchers in New Hampshire studied middle-of-the-pack runners during a marathon there, they found that almost 90 percent were heel-strikers according to filming conducted six miles into the event. Interestingly, of the remaining 10 percent, most had shifted to a heel-strike form when filmed again near the race’s end, as they tired.
Regardless, some running coaches and other experts question the wisdom of heel striking, noting that when runners don’t wear shoes, presumably the most natural way for humans to run, many, although not all, adopt a forefoot-strike running style. This suggests, enthusiasts say, that forefoot striking is the inherently right way for humans to run.
If so, however, forefoot striking should lessen the odds of a running-related injury. And it was that possibility that the Finnish researchers hoped to explore.
So they next matched the 19 forefoot-striking female runners with an equal number of female heel strikers of similar age, height, weight, and running pace. (There were too few forefoot-striking men to include them.)
The women were fitted with additional motion-capture sensors and filmed again while running. They also underwent measurements of leg and hip strength.
Plugging the resulting data into formulas validated in other experiments, the researchers determined just how much force the women were creating with each stride and, of greater interest, where that force was hitting hardest.
In general, the knees, ankles and Achilles’ tendons are the sites of most running-related injuries, previous studies have found. And in this experiment, many of the women runners jarred their knees, especially when they landed on their heels. That running form resulted in about 16 percent more force moving through the knee joint than when women landed near their forefeet. The elevated forces were particularly evident along the heel strikers’ kneecaps and the medial or inside portion of their knees, where the joint is known to be particularly vulnerable to overuse injuries.
But the forefoot strikers’ legs were not immune from force. They simply absorbed it differently, with almost 20 percent more force moving through their ankles and Achilles’ tendons than among the women who hit with their heels.
In essence, the findings show that you can’t escape the cumulative impact of running, however you stride, said Juha-Pekka Kulmala, a Ph.D. student, now at the University of Jyvaskyla, who led the study. Hit with your heels and you stress your knee, possibly leading to conditions such as patellofemoral stress syndrome. Strike near the ball of your foot and you’ll jolt your ankle and Achilles’ tendon, potentially increasing the risk of such injuries as Achilles’ tendinopathy, plantar fasciitis, and stress fractures of the foot.
There is, in other words, no one invariably right and painless way to run.
However, Mr. Kulmala said, the results also indicate that strategically altering how you land could be advisable for some runners. “People suffering from knee problems can benefit from forefoot striking,” Mr. Kulmala said. “Those who have Achilles’ tendon complaints can benefit from rearfoot striking.”
Switching form is not simple, though, as countless runners who have tried will attest. “I think that experienced runners are able to change stride pattern” relatively easily, Mr. Kulmala said. “But nonexperienced runners find it more difficult.” Consider contacting a local coach for advice, and have an obliging friend or spouse film you running, so you can document how your foot hits the ground. Incorporate any changes slowly, Mr. Kulmala cautioned.
And if you have little experience with injury and are comfortable with your stride, then by all means, stick with it, as is. The best running form, Mr. Kulmala said, is any that keeps you moving regularly.