Like so many, I find reading Michael Pollan exciting. It's like having your suspicions validated by someone who actually went out and bothered to do the research. After all, it's hard to look at the way we produce food today in America without coming to the conclusion that much of it flies in the face of common sense. A food chain based on corn and petrochemicals seems absurd, and when that extends to how we produce meat it's not only disgusting, it's also ethically difficult territory.
The locavore movement attempts to address this, but it's riddled with problems. It's tough to eat a varied diet of fresh foods when most Americans live in places with limited growing seasons. Considering this in the Business section of last Sunday's New York Times, Damon Darlin compared to locavore movement to Mao's Great Leap Forward with regard to steel production. By decreeing steel production be relegated to cottage industry he assured that many resources were wasted in the production of useless pig iron. Substitute the kale in your CSA basket for pig iron and you get the comparison. Darlin concluded that we have to find the happy medium between these extremes. Easier said than done.
Quite a bit of money has been spent to convince those with enough disposable income that buying "organic" was that happy medium. Unfortunately "organic" has become an increasingly meaningless label placed on products that aren't that different from those produced in a business as usual fashion. Same goes for "free range". Do terms like "carbon footprint" and "food miles" have any meaning? How do we make decisions about food that incorporate concerns about tastiness, ethics and healthfulness when we have no clear criteria for judging such things?
I'm with Pollan on eating real foods - only things someone's great grandmother would recognize - avoiding industrially processed crap whenever possible. That's a bit of work, but probably worth it. It'd be quite the leap of faith to assume new creations of food science and marketing are more wholesome than traditional foods. The last century's record hasn't been that great. What is there to put faith in? Breakfast cereal? Oleo? Baby formula? TV dinners? Spray on cheese? "Instant" whatever? Soda pop? HFCS? No thank you, unless I'm on the road, doing the best I can.
Meat is more troublesome. My wife has pretty much decided that she wants no part of corporate meat at home. Thankfully, all bets are off when we go out to eat. I don't see it as too different from neighbors of ours who keep kosher kitchens, but go out for a cheeseburger once in a while. Still, it has upped our food costs.
I go along with this because supermarket meat really doesn't always cut it. Aside from the ethics issues that bother my wife, there are quality issues that bother me even more. Flavorless chicken with a weird texture doesn't appeal to me, regardless of how cheap it is. I'd go so far as to say supermarket chicken kinda sucks. Fortunately I live right next to Chinatown, and many Chinese seem to feel the same way. This means I can get heritage breed (and ostensibly free range, locally raised) birds at Chinatown prices. These taste and smell like the chicken I remember from my childhood. Not much of a big deal to get used to buying them with the head and feet still on. I'd recommend that anyone looking to up their game on the chicken front without breaking the bank check out their local Chinatown (or their local Asian markets).
What about beef? We don't eat much beef at home, but I'm torn nonetheless. I don't think cows should be fed corn when grass is what they're supposed to eat. It isn't good for the cows or the environment, and I don't think it makes their meat good for us to eat. But... corn fed prime steaks taste good, so once in a while I'll buy them (from the butcher). For me they're in the same category as foie gras - an ethically murky treat that isn't exactly healthy, but you eat it once in a while anyway. The rest of our beef these days is expensive, grass-fed and best braised or stewed.
We do spend the extra $$$ for butter and cheese made from the milk of grass fed cows, but we don't consume enough butter and cheese for that to be much of a big deal, cost-wise. (Many imported dairy products qualify, since we're one of the few countries crazy enough to feed corn to our cows). Haven't made the switch as far as milk is concerned, but we do buy the hormone free milk, which is at least a start. The farmer's market, specialty shops and a locavore cheesemonger serve as sources for these things.
What about pork (my go-to meat)? Here the wife and I disagree. I say pigs are omnivores, so it doesn't matter what you feed them. Corporate hogs might not be pleasant to think about, but they taste fine. My wife wants happy pigs. I get this, since they're probably the smartest things we eat. Perhaps their misery is of higher value than that of dumber beasts? I don't know. They are cute. She buys the pork at the farmer's market. If she doesn't buy it often enough I'll still buy corporate pork, even if it means getting static from her. She's in the process upping the static level to the point where I stop. I expect this will take a while to play out. She'll very likely get her way, but I will have impressed upon her the importance of pig meat being ever at the ready in my kitchen. I can go weeks without beef or chicken, but only days without pork.
Lamb is another fine line. Lamb and goat are the only meats I'll still buy at the supermarket on a regular basis, but I get the good stuff at the butcher. I don't think they've figured out how to feed corn to lambs yet. That doesn't stop my wife from buying lamb at the farmer's market, too. We're eating the stuff more often, but in small portions. It is rich.
Fish is murky. Farmed fish is fed corn, and wild caught fish comes with varying ethical problems related to overfishing and environmental concerns. Some fish is even toxic! What do you do? I don't know. We still eat fish, though. Mostly flounder, canned tuna and sardines. We're not eating salmon like I used to...
What about veggies? Local is good, so is fresh. In season local is the best of both worlds. Unfortunately in the Northeast our seasons are pretty short. We eat too many veggies to go completely local. I appreciate eating seasonally, so I don't eat things like slicing tomatoes, summer fruits or asparagus out of season. Winter is about cabbages and root veggies, anyways. I try to minimize the amount of California produce I buy, as I'm not convinced trucking it across the country is a good thing for flavor or the environment. I'm still buying most of my fruits and veggies from the supermarket or my neighborhood greengrocers. I'm not averse to paying twice as much to support local agriculture in season, but I'm not ready to get dogmatic about it.
Specialty items like coffee, wine, olive oil and the like are off the table as far as ethical shopping goes. The best coffee I can get my hands on (from Counter Culture) happens to be labeled "fair trade" and "sustainable", but I have no idea whether those labels are in any way meaningful. Nor do I care. Being a home cook is already a part time job. Trying to be so "aware" only complicates complicates it. I guess it's worth it, though. My wife is no longer queasy about the meat we eat. My food tastes good and I have every reason to think it might be a little healthier.
The fact that I'm frugal means we can afford to do this without our grocery bill going through the roof. A day's worth of eating for the two of us (lunch and dinner) still rarely exceeds $12 (before wine), usually coming in under $7. (I'm not one to be zealot about my ethics, but I will be about my food costs!)
This is a far as I'm willing to go at the moment. I guess it constitutes my "happy medium". I don't know if "happy" is really the right word. Pain in the ass is more like it.
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6 comments:
Mark and I have really been working at being "ethical" and healthy eaters. We have some happy cow in our freezer. Although it is not organic and quite possibly ate some corn (although not exclusively), it was raised in a local barn and led a fairly calm and happy life until it ended up in our freezer. We have just ordered our CSA for this year as well.
I watched Michael Pollan on Oprah. Who by the way is urging her audience to really become more mindful about what they eat--see she is not so bad--:) Anyway, I have yet to read his books or watch his movie but it is on my list. I travel in the supermarket and am horrified by the "poison" heavily packaged in plastic that I see masquerading as food.
We do buy organic milk and the best measure of good eggs for me are ones from chickens that are approved by the Humane Association rather than "free range" chickens since that is a slippery label.
The more you know the more you can make better choices on a regular basis. But I agree with you, too, JP it is about balance. You can do as much as you can but if I go to the nice neighbors house who is serving me hamburger helper with iceberg lettuce salad I am going to smile and dig in. Like wise I will enjoy that occasional plate of fries and cheeseburger at the local pub. But the whole time knowing that the new roasted beets with anise seed recipe is calling me back and that I still have a happy dead cow.
Ha ha! Good comment, Jmo!
You'll enjoy Pollan. Omnivore's is a great read, but it's long and doesn't attempt to answer any of the questions it brings up. In Defense of Food might be a better start, even though it follows Omnivore's.
We all do what we can. What works for me might not work for others. I'm not going to assume my choices are the "right" ones. I do hope they're meaningful, which is enough of a challenge! There's plenty of money being made by convincing people meaningless choices are "greener", more ethical or healthier. Who knows how good a job any of us can do trying to cut through that?
The biggest danger of trying to be ethical is coming off as smug or holier than thou. I liked your Hamburger Helper bit, and I agree with you. If someone is kind enough to invite me over for dinner it's not an invitation to proselytize. Eat the Hamburger Helper, die a little inside and be gracious. For me it would be less of an ethical issue than an aesthetic one, but I cling to the idea that the two are interrelated on some level. The reason simple farmhouse cooking of previous generations worked was because the ingredients were good. The reason industrial convenience foods suck is because they're made from poor ingredients. Salt, fat and sugar can disguise poor ingredients, but how much of that combination one wants to eat when other options are available is something to consider.
I don't think there's ever a reason to proselytize about this stuff, since we really don't have enough information to know whether or not we're really doing the 'right" thing. We're just acting on strong suspicions. And this blog post is how those suspicions have got me acting.
One more thing to be aware of: concern over the provenance of one's food has traditionally been a very bourgeois thing, meaning it can come across as incredibly pretentious to some folks.
I have it easy - I live in a town where being a little bourgeois is not just acceptable, it's pretty much the norm. Not to mention how some folks who would laugh at the very premise of food ethics will still argue passionately over which Italian bakery makes the best cannolis.
Jmo, you have it pretty easy as well, since buying local in your neck of the woods is just celebrating how good you have it, foodwise. You've got it pretty good!
I have heard of the book Defense of Food--perhaps that is the one he was promoting on Oprah. I will give that a try over the other one. Great blog and comments JP. It is always so enjoyable to think through these things with others. I have found a small group here who is interested but like you said, I don't want to proselytize and I get the feeling more people are less interested in this than I am.
I do belong to TOPS (Take off Pounds Sensibly). The group is mainly comprised of older women. As the co-leader I have been talking with them about eating whole foods etc.... I thought they were thinking I was crazy. I was always careful to say these are just my choices of how to do things. Many have really become receptive. Perhaps there is (pardon the pun) a real hungering out there for more tasty and nourishing foods!
Keep up the good work, love the blog!
Think about it, Jmo:
There's an entire generation of (mostly) women who counted calories, followed whichever food trends were in at the moment and bought "lite" or "lo fat" versions of whatever processed foods they grew up eating. Guess what? Many of them ended up fat, so obviously that strategy didn't work. For a while it was fashionable to blame dietary fats as the source of all ills, then it shifted to carbs. Neither proved to be a solution.
So eating "whole foods" is as good a guess as any. It makes sense intuitive sense, although that doesn't make make it a sure bet. But as the amount of process food in our diets increased we have gotten fatter, and generally the fattest people you meet are the ones who eat disproportional amounts of highly processed food. That's reason to suspect a correlation.
If sensible weight loss is a goal here's another thing to consider: Even before the advent of highly processed industrial food it was known that the Western diet led to obesity, hypertension and diabetes. The British noticed this back in the colonial days. As soon as colonials switched from their traditional diet to a more Western style diet guess what happened? Obesity and diabetes rates jumped.
So in the interest of avoiding simple solutions to complicated problems it might be wise to consider inditing the Western diet, with highly processed foods just exaggerating its effect.
Of course this is just for you to consider. It might not be wise to suggest to a group of your peers that the very way of eating they grew up with might be the source of their health problems. No one wants to hear that. But there's reason to suspect it might be the case...
JP I really dig reading your blog (as I dig your music also!). I'm from Sydney, Australia and while we don't quite have the variety of foods you have in New York, some of the ideas you have thrown up are possible.
Really like the recipes too, especially ones that involve doing interesting things with leftover food! Keep it up, Jon.
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