THE OMNIVORE'S DIALOG

"Rethinking the Meat Guzzler" NYT Article

You may want to take a couple of minutes to read this New York Times Article in today's paper before biting into your hamburger. It is very clear that by consuming meat, in particular grain-fed beef, we are causing a significant carbon footprint. It does not mean that everyone should turn into a vegetarian, but some cutting back would be good for both our health and our planet. Quality, not quantity.

Then, Now and Tomorrow

To know where your food comes from. It’s been a rallying call for the past few decades, intended to help people “connect the dots” between field and sea, to pantry and table. Injecting that question into the national conversation has worked. There’s a heightened awareness that food doesn’t simply “come from the supermarket,” and there is increased interest in understanding how our “food system” impacts the environment and economies of the world.

But along with making the connections between soil and plant, and animals and vegetables, the forces of civilization also influence “where our food comes from” – those societal forces of politics and trade, technology, power and belief.

To get a glimpse of the evolution of the buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts- that chart the evolution of what has sustained us, check out the Food Timeline - I guarantee you’ll find something of interest.

What is in Your Child's Lunch?

Today's Washington Post has an article that will really give you pause.  Warning, reading this is not for the faint of heart.  It will reinforce the desire to pay more for locally pastured organic beef, support the desire of these farmers to humanely slaughter their own animals (not legal yet), and consume meat mindfully, respecting the animal that gave its life for our sustenance.  Thanks to the local Slow Food member who sent me this article before I had a chance to read today's Post.  To take action on this article click here.

Update from Saskatchewan

Percy Schmeiser, a farmer of Bruno, Saskatchewan is once again duking it out in the courts with Monsanto. Many people will recognize farmer Percy Schmeiser from the film The Future of Food which included mention of his first court battle when Monsanto sued him for "growing" GMO seed in his fields. Schmeiser claimed the seed blew into his field and contaminated his crop. The Guardian reports Schmeiser and his wife, Louise, are suing for the C$600 (GBP300) it cost to hire contractors to dig up several of Monsanto's GM oilseed rape plants he found growing in a field he was preparing for a mustard crop in 2005. Schmeiser argues the stray plants are pollution, and the polluter should pay. The company refused unless he agreed not to talk about it.

International Festival of Food and Film

International Festival of Food and Film
Bologna, May 7-11, 2008

Culinary cinema is coming into its own. In 2007 the prestigious Berlin Film Festival had a first ever Eat, Drink, Watch Movies- a break out thread to celebrate culinary cinema. 

2008 will continue with the international festival of Cinema and Food promoted by Slow Food movement and Cineteca di Bologna.

Slow Food on Film aims at promoting a new critical awarness of food culture through the screening of films, short films, documentaries and TV series focusing on food-related issues (drives, preversions, identity and emotional implications), in an original way and as well as on the agricultural and food industry's repercussion on society and the environment, and on gastronomic memory as a common heritage to be safeguarded.

Shorts fiction, documentary, TV series and features are all represented.

For more information on the festival:
Slow Food on Film

To submit a film:
Entry Form

FoodMuse is a voting member of the Academy of Food and Film.

A Quaint Reminder

You never know where you will find your daily dose of inspiration.
Remember this:

Betty Botter

Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."

So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

And You Thought Omega 3's Are Over Rated!

It's true that we are literally swimming in droplets of health info, but if you have a few minutes to spare watch this YouTube video on some research with rats using Omega 3's.  More reasons to eat a varied and balanced diet of real food. 

Downsizing Health Food

I came across this article (Nine Health Foods That Aren’t, from the Health section of MSNBC) while browsing the web Sunday. I wasn’t expecting much, and it isn’t much, except solid common sense and what we’ve been blogging about. These guys did a nutritional analysis of various prepared foods from the store, not junk food, but what Pollan would call processed health foods, and the results are amusing. It seems McDonalds isn’t the only place where subliminal super sizing and the judicious use of high fructose corn syrup are used to enhance sales. I wish I had the space to run through the whole list.

 

Bran muffins – 420 calories, 20 grams fat. This sounds a little thin compared to an English muffin topped with poached egg, ham and cheese, which weighs in at 300 calories and 12 grams of fat. Whew, leave the cheese off mine, and I’ll take two for the price of a bran muffin.  The bran muffin is loaded with sweeteners to make it gooey and delicious, plus it’s the size of three regular muffins like your mother would make. You’ve seen these offered as “alternatives” at Dunkin Donut and Noah’s Bagels.

 

Chicken Wrap – offered in the deli as low carb, the plate size tortilla had twice the carbohydrate as a regular bun, and was covered with mayonnaise to the edge. This health food sandwich was 700 calories and 35 grams fat, compared to a grilled  chicken breast sandwich which would be 375 calories and 15 grams fat, roughly half, and available from McDonalds – just skip the fries and shake.

 

Yoplait yogurt with fruit – it turns out the fruit is mostly fructose. Compared to an equal weight of plain yogurt with your own fruit which reduces the calories from 190 to 110, and cuts the sugar in half.

 

Caesar salad with chicken – these premixed salads are swimming in fake dressing, on a ready to serve plate. This one had 900 calories with 60 grams of fat. If you grill the chicken and serve on mixed greens tossed with balsamic vinaigrette, it reduces the damage to 400 calories and 20 grams of fat, less than half. Also, in this part of the country this usually uses Napa cabbage as the only green (longer shelf life) so that it wilts less in the dressing. They should call it Caesar Slaw. Yuck.

 

I won’t bother you with what’s in a fruit smoothie, the generation-X alternative to a chocolate shake. Because the point is, the damage to all these items is in the preparation and storage, not the ingredients. Pollan explains it simply – if your grandmother wouldn’t have bought it in the grocery, don’t eat it. These dishes not only have far more calories than the ingredients they come from, but a lot of the calories are placed to affect the texture and shelf life. Mayonnaise keeps the tortilla from drying and cracking. HFCS glues the muffin together, and prevents mold growth. The yogurt uses fruit preserves instead of fruit to prevent spoilage. The result is a bran muffin at Starbuck’s has more fat than an Egg McMuffin.

 

I would add one further piece of advice. Don’t assume that a food is healthier just because the manufacturer says it is. This applies to healthy sounding food as well. There are no government standards for freshness and health, all the maker has to show is that it’s non-toxic, just like rat poison. I prefer it that way, actually. If the government started deciding what was healthy for us, fois gras would be replaced with thousand calorie muffins. The founding fathers wisely refused to design a state religion that satisfied everyone, and so it should be with a state diet.

 

For further reading, consult Eat This, Not That by David Zinczenko.

New Word to Replace Locavore

A new catch-word for ethical food consumption was just spotted on Eating Liberally, a fun read on intelligent eating and those forces that work against it.  The acronym for 2008 seems to be "retrovore".  After burning the midnight hours with Michael Pollan's brilliant new book, In Defense of Food, this seems to be an excellent choice of words.  Locavore made one feel very guilty, especially in January, when a strong temptation to purchase ripe persimmons from an Asian market tugs at taste buds jaded with a mother lode of winter greens and squash.  Of course, one could argue that retrovore can cause that same guilt, depending how retro you reach.  Our ancestors, after all, had no access to tropical fruits if they lived in Northern climes.  But back to Michael Pollan's new book, he implores that eating real food as a pleasurable experience is in fact very health promoting.  This might imply an occasional foray into forbidden fruits.

As an aside - let's credit Mr. Pollan with using what for me is the most esoteric word I have encountered in a long time: Brobdingnagian.  He is, after all, a professor of journalism at Berkeley!

Reading for Eating – the Enlightened Palate

Chefs possess what we call “educated palates” – an ability to discern ingredients, flavors, and techniques.   Restaurant critics and food writers hopefully have “sophisticated palates” – a taste for what represents refined cuisine and meets high standards.   But in the current era of environmental threat, global warming, and the declining health of our population, we need more: enlightened palates. 

Heed the plea from many mothers: who do I believe, what really is the best for my children, how should I be feeding them?  Or the growing middle age and elder population: what should we eat to maintain our health or regain our health and insure quality of life in our senior years?  In this age of overabundance, the choices are mind-boggling. When news bites bombard us with health-snippets, often funded by food conglomerates or pharmaceutical manufacturers, it is small wonder that we remain confused.

Perhaps we need to return to a simpler solution.  Perhaps we should narrow our focus, put blinders on and eat only real food, grown in a sustainable manner, and for the most part, as close to home as possible.  One caveat – we might have to pass up computer time and hone our cooking skills.  I remember my home economics class in junior high. Girls took home economics and boys took shop – a luxury of well-funded schools and painfully divided sexes.  Here were 12 and 13 year-old girls learning to use Betty Crocker brownie mix and various cake mixes – home economics indeed!  No wonder the tradition of cooking suffers.

Segue to today – a program such as The Edible School Yard needs to become part of every school curriculum.  What good are math and language skills if we don’t know how to feed ourselves to remain healthy, brains forever fogged from lack of nutrients in the formative years?  Why do so many children lack the knowledge of food – real food?  Immigrant children, when they first arrive in this country, eat a healthier diet than the majority of our own children.  As they adapt to the Standard American Diet (SAD) and succumb to the lure of the average grocery store, the health of these families deteriorates.  Look around that same grocery store – how much real food do you see?  Unadulterated, unrefined, unprocessed real food. 

Where to start the process of enlightenment.  To become fired up for change – The Omnivore’s Dilemma by the man who brought food consciousness into the mainstream media, Michael Pollan.  To educate yourself for navigating the grocery store and more – What to Eat by Marion Nestle (if only she had a different last name!).  To steer yourself towards a knowledge of the healthiest natural foods (and make you hungry!) – Real Food by Nina Planck. To give yourself an edge towards a healthy longevity – Secrets of Longevity by Dr. Maoshing Ni, a revered 38th generation doctor specializing in longevity with real food solutions to health issues.  All of these books are around $10 and available in paperback.

With these tomes in hand, relax, visit your local farm market, fire up the stove, check out The Omnivore’s Solution, gradually purchase some of the recommended cookbooks and most of all,  have fun.   Fill the kitchen with the aromas of real food, engage the children, grandchildren, or neighbor's child.  The art of cooking holds possibilities available to all of us.  Know that you are doing the best for yourself and your loved ones.  Above all, enjoy sharing your accomplishments and love of pure food with family and friends.  Healthy, tasty, love-infused real food is the greatest and most nourishing gift you can give.

Addendum: January 10, 2008.  Having just finished In Defense of Food - need I say brilliant (I didn't see how he could match the impact of The Omnivore's Dilemma, but voila!) - I stand by the above post stronger than ever.  I found myself jumping up off my chair and saying "YES"!  This should be required reading for every high school curriculum.