The research continues as I investigate companies that produce dried fruits and dried fruit powders in my quest to perfect a few homemade oatmeal recipes. The going has not been easy, but it has brought me to an interesting understanding of food and how I relate to it.
The short backstory is that my favorite oatmeal producer (Producer #1) stopped producing my favorite oatmeals. One week, they were all on sale, and the next week, they were nowhere to be seen. They only persist online, as various retailers sell what’s left of their stock. I could buy these up, but the writing is on the wall: these oatmeals will never be made again. My second favorite oatmeal producer (Producer #2) insists on adding bovine collagen to their oatmeals. I’m not going to say that bovine collagen is bad for you – I don’t know that it is – but it’s very much a fad supplement, the production of which is mildly disgusting to me, so I’m motivated to make my own blueberry oatmeal instead.
The beautiful thing about Producer #1 is that they say exactly where all of their ingredients come from, as in, who grows the food [specific farm names], and where those growers are located. The only ingredient that isn’t something I would add is vitamin e, which was apparently used to give their oatmeals a slightly longer shelf life. Because all of the other ingredients are whole foods which can be purchased, I realized that the only thing stopping me from making these oatmeals myself was finding the ingredients (from companies that sell to consumers) and mixing them together in the right proportions. Producer #2 does not say exactly where their ingredients are from, which is a nuisance. [Plot twist, the bovine collagen could easily be tainted garbage from China, as is supposedly common with supplements]
One thing I have learned from this endeavor is that the vast majority of dried blueberries are all sweetened, and since you can’t easily inject every berry with extra sugar, the sugar has to be stuck on, which is done using some variety of oil. This is so incredibly common that I’m led to believe it’s an essential element of the drying process. It’s easy to think, “Why can’t they just dry out the way grapes do (thus becoming raisins)?” to which the answer is, “Because they’re not grapes”. It’s like the people on amazon who complain that macadamia butter is too runny, because they failed to understand that the non-runniness of peanut butter and almond butter is an essential property of why those foods are made into butters in the first place. Foods only fit into a similar category by pure circumstance – just because we label them “nuts” doesn’t mean peanuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, brazil nuts, and macadamias all crush the same. That peanuts, almonds, walnuts, and cashews do crush fairly easily into (apparently tasty) butters, is a property of them being fairly high in fat, and it is otherwise pure circumstance that they are neither too runny nor too solid (although cashew butter is frequently supplanted with added oil).
I have found all of two suppliers who produce dried blueberries with no added sugar or oil and are otherwise not sketchy (by my own subjective definition). One of them sells a 4oz bag for $24. Insane. So again, I think the sugar and oil are likely essential additions that allow the berries to be dried in the first place, otherwise the process is much more involved, and the product much more expensive. Just speculating.
To be fair, though, Producer #2 uses sweetened blueberries in their oatmeal, so if I’m trying to replicate their recipe, I don’t necessarily need to pay an insane amount for dried blueberries, though these are still not cheap. What you’ll notice, too, is that companies who resell combinations of ingredients (most companies) often put as few of the expensive ingredients in as possible. Compared to the oat base, the blueberries are probably way more expensive than the oats, so you get barely a teaspoon, it would seem. It’s like the apple oatmeal made by Producer #1: there’s very little apple in there.
As far as blueberries go, what’s amazing to me is that so many of these blueberry products either come from China or Estonia. Does the United States not have boatloads of blueberries? Why do so few people want to the process them here? Is labor too expensive and demand too low to make a profit? Is that why that one family farms sells 4oz of dried blueberries for $24? Why don’t the European blueberries come directly from Finland or wherever? Why are they always processed in Estonia?
I have never in my life been pushed so far into the supply chain of food. It’s nothing against Finland, but I’d prefer my food from ‘Murica. My grandparents were farmers in their day, why can’t I get me some dried blueberries from the sweet soil of the motherland, where those who yearn to breathe free are sated? Didn’t Estonia used to be in the USSR? Can you trust blueberries from ex-commies?
I’m kind of joking, but you’d think you could buy stuff like this easily in your backyard. Turns out you either can’t or it’s difficult. And that’s a crazy wake-up call to me.
To be fair, plenty of foods are grown here. My roommate was part of some grocery co-op last year, where you get a weekly supply of produce from local farms, and I always thought that was cool. Purple bell peppers are a thing, and I’ve never seen them in stores, but it turns out that if you’re connected to local farms, you might get a few, and that’s pretty cool. It makes me wonder what kind of biodiversity we have in our backyards, so to speak, but instead we settle for imports from God-knows-where, hidden by a mass of paperwork and trust-me-bro guarantees around freshness. Don’t get me wrong, fraud is local as well as international, but if you can shake the hand of the guy who grew your food, that’s an element of connection that doesn’t lend itself to fraud very well.
As mentioned in a previous post, it turns out my blueberry powder is made by a company that is really just a shell for a Chinese distributor. I’m not sure I trust it. Moreover, though, I’m also an idiot, as it is “blueberry extract” instead of “blueberry powder”, so it’s no wonder my experiments with it have largely failed. [The difference is that extract is from the juice, whereas powder is the whole fruit, both then freeze-dried and pulverized]. I broke down and bought the acai powder to try it (also because I’m an idiot), and I’m not super impressed. I like the idea of my oatmeal being fruity, but acai powder is also one of those fad “health” foods, and when it doesn’t come from its native Brazil, it sounds like China produces a lot, probably to fill the market gap for cheap “health” ingredients so companies can market them to hippies who are willing to part with their money (and, ya know, loser software developers who are comfortable lighting their retirement savings on fire).
It’s tempting to go for exotic foods, but I wonder if there’s a way to keep my personal supply chain a little tighter. Raisins taste great in oatmeal, what’s wrong with them? They are cheap, abundant, and often come organic. Using them might make a lot more sense. The dried blueberries are still an option, but I’d prefer to control the added sugar content instead, but portioned properly, they maybe aren’t so bad.
There’s obvious a lot to think about, but now my mind is thinking over-time. Where does our food come from? What is my connection to it? Why is that I only know of one company bold enough to say exactly who their suppliers are? Why the heck is there bovine collagen in my oatmeal?