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One night last week my wife and I decided to make tacos for dinner. We had tomatoes from the garden, but needed a few other supplies. It was getting late, so I made a quick run out to the store. This is what I purchased:- 1 lb organic ground beef
- 1 head organic lettuce…
- fresh tortillas made in-store
- a bag of store-brand, already grated cheese Now, you might think that one of those things doesn’t quite belong with the others and you would be right. Unlike the other ingredients, the cheese was processed, prepared, and on sale. I was saving time and money and the tacos were pretty good. It wasn’t until the following day that I was looking at the back of the package of cheese and noticed that the last ingredient in the list was something called natamycin. This caught my attention because my experience as a pharmacologist and as a consumer has taught me that compounds with such a suffix are likely to be antibiotics. Indeed, I looked up natamycin and found the following World Health Organization report describing the anti-fungal drug that was in my cheese. Now, I’m not sharing this story with you to raise alarm and I’m not saying that natamycin is unsafe for consumption. My point is simply that I did not know that it was in my cheese and that I prefer to consume cheese sans antibiotics. This also makes me think about the true costs of what we eat. I mentioned above that I saved time (already grated) and money (inexpensive store brand) on the spot by purchasing the cheese that I did. However, I have to wonder what the long-term effects and costs for myself and for society will be if we continue adding antibiotics to the food supply. Thus, I hereby commit to read labels more carefully. No more drugs in my cheese.
Sincerely,
Larry