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News about eating and drinking
There are some staple items that could be purchased at Amazon Grocery
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Awesome! I want to go here, especially since I’ve never been to Venice Beach.
This spring Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee & Teaplans to open a coffee bar the likes of which the world has never seen. The cafe, still under construction in Los Angeles’ Venice Beach, will feature five stations and five baristas who will personally attend to each customer who walks in.
“We want the role of the barista here to be like a sommelier or a great server at a restaurant,” says Intelligentsia CEO Doug Zell.
As Zell explains it, guests will be greeted at the door by a barista and taken to an individual station to talk about the kind of coffee experience they are looking for. The barista will help direct their choices from “beginning to the end. After they make the coffee they can discuss it with the guest or take them to the home brewing area and help explain some of the coffee or equipment for sale. They can also suggest pairings for the coffee.”
Intelligentsia Coffee is the default coffee bean that I buy. Nearly always perfectly roasted, and fresh. Even better is an espresso pulled by an expert Intelligentsia barista. I wish there was a location closer to me.
President Obama’s fondness for Chicago’s Spiaggia has already been documented, but apparently fondness is too mild a word. Levy Restaunts flew Spiaggia’s chef to a Washington Wizards vs. Chicago Bulls game and surprised the President.
Levy Restaurants handles specialty catering for the Verizon Center and, it just so happens, owns Spiaggia. So when the company got the heads-up (with about 24 hours’ notice) that President Obama would be dining in the owners’ box Friday night, somebody got the bright idea to ship Mantuano out to make the president’s favorite dish. “I got on the plane the next morning,” Mantuano says. “And next thing you know, I’m riding up the private elevator.”
And what, pray tell, is the president’s favorite dish? “Wood-roasted scallops,” Mantuano says. “He always orders them. Because we run the Verizon, I knew we had a wood-burning oven there.
“When Obama walked out and saw me there, he did a classic double-take and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ It was hilarious. He called the photographer over and said, ‘Take a picture of me with my favorite chef.’
“He said favorite chef,” Mantuano says. “I’ve got witnesses.”
Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation show visited Chicago last summer, the episode was first aired last Tuesday.
In the bad old days of the culture wars, when the “Forces of Darkness” had aligned against the “Forces of Goodness and Light,” Chicago was a key battleground and an early, crucial loss for the good guys. Foie gras had been declared illegal and the ensuing ripples of fear spread cross country. Gutless, craven punks everywhere deserted their comrades like Vichy shopkeepers while animal “activists” terrorized chefs’ families and children, vandalized businesses, and strong-armed retailers. But even though chefs like Wolfgang Puck — for instance — suddenly discovered their preference for fluffy cute ducks over their fellow chefs or their traditions and headed for the lifeboats, a few lone heroes stood tall, proudly extending a stiff middle finger at the advancing horde. Doug Sohn, owner/proprietor of Chicago’s magnificent emporium of all things meat in tube-form (basically a lunchtime freakin’ Hot Dog joint) was just such a hero. After Chicago alderman Joe Moore slipped his own proverbial weiner into the body politic, ramming through legislation forbidding the sale of foie in the city, Sohn created an homage of sorts, the “Joe Moore” dog, a duck, foie gras and Sauternes sausage topped with truffled foie gras and Dijon mustard sauce, selling it in flagrant, open defiance of the law. It was the opening shot of what turned out to be a winning strategy: making the anti-foie gras forces look just so utterly ridiculous that the law was eventually overturned and balance returned to the universe.(For a detailed account of this epic struggle, with a full accounting of who was good, bad, principled, hypocritical, cowardly or heroic when the chips were down, read Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro’s excellent and illuminating
(Simon and Schuster 2009).
I’m ambivelent about a lot of places, but I am unrestrained in my love for Chicago. Only Chicago could convince me that the New York hot dog was not, in fact, anywhere near the apex of the hot dog arts.(The Chicago Red Hot deserves that honor) . Two respectably old school baseball teams, great, great bars, a tradition of unapproachably good and important music, its own, truly imposing style of architecture, an attitude both big city wise-ass and heartland lack of bullshit, a city open to the bestand most excessive/creative of new, experimental cooking styles, loaded with great chefs (many of whom are pals), it’s simply another place I’ll use any excuse to visit. Tonight’s episode was just such an excuse. [Click to continue reading: Tube City]
I do have Hot Doug’s on my list of places to take tourists to, mainly to try this at least once in my life, but so far, no takers. One of these times…
With the exception of the cringe-worthy Mancow segment, the episode was good. There is a photo journal here with some other photos of Bourdain in Chicago here.
The last eight years1 have not been good for regulatory consumer protection. The FDA is in need of some serious mission change – Obama’s new team has their work cut out for them. Case in point: honey laundering, as Andrew Schneider of the Seattle PI reports. The US imports a lot of honey from China, and it is often contaminated with chloramphenicol or some other antibiotic that is illegal in any food product. The FDA doesn’t seem too concerned, nor does Congress.
Two-thirds of the honey Americans consume is imported and almost half of that, regardless of what’s on the label, comes from China, the Seattle P-I reported last month.
The newspaper’s five-month investigation into honey laundering — the intentional mislabeling of the country of origin — found that tons of Chinese honey coming into the U.S. is tainted with banned antibiotics.
But when the contamination is discovered by the industry through internal testing, insiders say, federal health or customs officials are almost never notified, and the honey ends up being dumped back on the market.
[From Honey Laundering: Tainted product still slips easily into U.S.]
Even the tiny percentage of honey that is inspected is frequently tainted, but it doesn’t get destroyed on the spot.
“We don’t want to risk this tainted honey ever getting packed and distributed for human consumption,” said Haff [newly elected president of American Honey Producers], who believes the industry could solve the problem if companies simply alert the Food and Drug Administration each time they discover a tainted shipment.
Instead, some major packers simply return bad honey to the importer, naively trusting them to destroy the shipment and not seek another buyer.
Said Haff: “We run the risk of the importer trying to resell this same adulterated honey for a cheaper price somewhere else.”
That happens all too often. Court documents the P-I obtained after the arrests last year of two Chicago-based executives with Alfred L. Wolff, a German food distributor, reveal how rampant the sale and resale of bad honey is.
Testimony from federal investigators and informants offer a glimpse into a typical deal: Wolff sold Chinese honey to a U.S. honey producer. The packer tested the shipment and found traces of antibiotics. Wolff took the honey back and resold it to another packer who didn’t test for contaminants.
If convicted, the Wolff executives face up to five years in prison for conspiring to falsify country of origin on the Chinese shipments.
In its series, the P-I reported that it had received shipping papers showing that Chinese honey, falsely labeled as a product of India, was sold to several U.S. honey packers, including one of the nation’s largest — Sue Bee Honey Association.
About 2 years ago, we started using agave-based honey instead, lower glycemic index, dissolves easier, tastes as good as regular honey. There could be problems with it too, but since it is a more specialized food, perhaps not.
Anyway, the US food supply has been seriously corrupted by producers like Sue Bee Honey and their enablers at the FDA and other agencies. Disgusting, really.
Read more of the Seattle PIs exposé, including the revelation that the FDA turns a blind eye to the practice of unloading foreign honey of indeterminate origin and dubious quality across the border in Canada. The honey merchants wink at the FDA, and ship the honey through the lightly-regulated NAFTA loop-hole, claiming the honey is now magically “Canadian” because it sat in a Canadian warehouse for a couple of hours.
Footnotes:We were out doing errands yesterday, and noticed a van with the logo for Irv and Shelly’s Organics Fresh Picks. We looked them up on the web when we got home:
Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks™ offers year-round home delivery in the Chicago area of local and organic produce, meat, dairy and eggs. You can order online anytime to choose the specific items you want, or opt for a Fresh Picks Box that is automatically delivered to your door weekly or bi-weekly.
We are committed to working with local sustainable farms we personally know and trust. Our fresh picks will arrive at your door ripe and bursting with flavor, vitamins and minerals within hours of leaving the farm. We’re as proud of our farmers as they are of their food, and have developed tracking systems for the great local products in your order so we can tell you who raised them and how they protect your health and the environment.
…
We live in Chicago with our kids Miles and Lia, and like you, we want to have an easier time getting locally grown and organic food.
When we talked with independent farmers working hard to grow food without using chemicals, hormones and antibiotics, they told us they could use help getting their food to Chicago. So we decided to start Irv & Shelly’s Fresh PicksSM to deliver ripe food bursting with flavor, vitamins and minerals right to your door within hours of leaving the farm.
We want to partner with farmers to grow the market for local organic food and to improve our health and the environment in the process. We wanted to cut out as many middle men as possible and return the maximum dollars back to the farm so small independent farmers can flourish. That is why we are delivering local food to your homes fresh from the farms and directly to you. You can learn more about the benefits of eating locally grown food.
[From ABOUT US]
Very cool. Sometimes we get so busy with work, and don’t manage to make it to the local Farmer’s Markets, or even get to the grocery store. Having fresh produce around makes eating healthily much easier.
A couple of years ago we looked into Chicago area CSAs – a service which delivers a box of produce all year1, but we never signed up. Too much of a commitment I guess, and neither of us are really fond of winter root vegetables. Fresh Picks is a variant on the CSA concept, but also allows for the consumer to select specific items, via the web. If I’m happy with the quality, I might consider using their biweekly automatic order for certain staple items, but at least I can stick my proverbial toe in first.
Yesterday, I placed my first order at Fresh Picks. I might have been a bit hungry when I was browsing, ahem:
2 Zucchini each 1.69 3.38
1 Bok Choy 3.49 3.49
2 Avocado – Haas each 2.49 4.98
1 Mushroom, Crimini, 1/2 lb 2.99 2.99
1 Lemon each 0.75 0.75
1 Pepper, bell red 2.99 2.99
1 Tomato Grape, 1 pint 2.99 2.99
1 Lettuce Red Leaf 1 head 2.49 2.49
1 Cheese Goat aged 5 oz. 8.99 8.99
1 Fennel, head 2.99 2.99
1 Cilantro bunch 1.99 1.99
1 Arugula 5 oz. 3.99 3.99
1 Parsley Italian bunch 1.99 1.99
1 Tofu 1 lb. Firm 2.49 2.49
1 Cheese Cheddar Raw Sharp 8 oz. 5.99 5.99
1 Pizza cheese mushroom 6″ 3.99 3.99
1 Pasta Sauce, Garlic Lovers 7.50 7.50
1 Sprouts, Red Clover 4 oz. 3.99 3.99
1 Microgreens, Radish 2 oz. 5.99 5.99
1 Microgreens, Sunflower 2 oz 5.99 5.99
3 Lime, each 0.45 1.35
1 Tilapia FIllets 2-3/pack 8.49 8.49
2 Cucumber 1.99 3.98
1 Bread, 12 grain loaf sliced 4.99 4.99
1 Beets, Chioggia 1 lb. 2.49 2.49
The prices are comparable to any other organic grocery store, Whole Foods, or the Chicago Green City Market, or the Green Grocer over on 1402 Grand Avenue. I’ll report back as to the quality of the produce as soon as they bring me the goods…
Footnotes:Lest you were confused, as I was.
Mocked for my farro-equals-spelt assumption, I tried to exonerate myself by proving just how widespread is this misperception. Google “farro (spelt),” and you’ll get 2,100 hits, many for recipes that claim the grains can be used interchangeably. Even my family’s cookbook hero, Suzanne Goin, makes this claim in “Sunday Suppers at Lucques”: “Farro, also known as spelt, is probably my all-time favorite grain.” She cooks hers simply, in parsley and butter, or bulks it up with kabocha squash and cavolo nero. Farro is also wonderful in soups, like the hearty farro-and-kale soup in Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox’s new cookbook, “Olives & Oranges.” (It’s clearly gaining ground. Recently, 2 of the 17 contestants on “Top Chef” offered dishes containing farro.) But Harold McGee, in “On Food and Cooking,” clarifies that farro is the Italian word for emmer wheat; of spelt, which he calls “remarkable” for its high protein content, he says, “Often confused with emmer (farro).”
So there you have it from me and McGee: farro is not spelt. Which still raises the question, How do you eat spelt if the whole-grain version so severely cramps a man’s body and spirit? Whole spelt berries are used (judiciously) as a healthful textural addition to muffins, stuffings and salads. Ground spelt is a popular substitute for wheat flour because of its lower gluten content
There is a pretty good tortilla made of spelt flour, but many spelt breads are pretty bland. This Mushroom Farro dish sounds pretty tasty, I’ll have to look for farro.
Michael Pollan appeared on Bill Moyers recently, and said he most certainly did not want to be Agricultural Secretary. Can’t say that I blame him, but somebody needs to be appointed, and hopefully, not somebody who is closely aligned with the Monsantos and ADMs of the world.
The fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has yet to be named has some chefs, farmers and animal welfare advocates wondering whether food and farming have been shoved to the Obama D team.
To help move the process along, nearly 90 notable figures in the world of sustainable agriculture and food sent a letter [PDF] to the Obama transition team earlier this week offering their six top picks for what they called “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.”
The hope is that the new secretary will be less aligned with industrial agribusiness and commodity farming than secretaries past. And if he or she embraces the connection between food, health and the environment, well, that’s all the better.
The letter lays out a tall order:
“From rising childhood and adult obesity to issues of food safety, global warming and air and water pollution, we believe our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a vision that calls for: recreating regional food systems, supporting the growth of humane, natural and organic farms, and protecting the environment, biodiversity and the health of our children while implementing policies that place conservation, soil health, animal welfare and worker’s rights as well as sustainable renewable energy near the top of their agenda.”
[From A Pitch to Obama on Food and Farming – Diner’s Journal Blog – NYTimes.com]
The Obamas do seem to enjoy quality eating, so maybe there is still a glimmer of hope for us who are fans of natural foods, local grown produce and the like.
Fridgedaire from the Future…
I’m so dependent upon spell check, I probably never noticed there was alternative spellings of the word for the amber liquid. I tend to write whiskey1 when not thinking too deeply about the subject. Of course, now the word just looks weird2
I’m looking out there for the one person who apparently was not offended by the spelling of “whiskey’’ in my column on Speyside single malts. If you are that person, allow me to explain.
Whiskey is a word with an alternative spelling, whisky. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Dictionary.com seems to prefer whiskey. The New York Times stylebook definitively prefers whiskey:
whiskey(s). The general term covers bourbon, rye, Scotch and other liquors distilled from a mash of grain. For consistency, use this spelling even for liquors (typically Scotch) labeled whisky.
But clearly, definitively, and somewhat aggressively, people from Scotland and many fans of Scotch have informed me of their preference for whisky over whiskey, judging by the flood of comments and emails I received yesterday. Here is a brief sample:
Graham Kent of London wrote: I cannot pass over the unforgivable use by a serious writer on wines and spirits of ‘whiskey’ to refer to Scotch whisky. He goes on to say: I am afraid I found the constant misspelling of the product made your article quite unreadable. It is exactly the same as if you had called it ‘gin’ all the way through or were to describe Lafite as Burgundy. It is simply a basic error that a reputable writer should not make.
People who write such letters chastising writers over the use or non-use of the letter e in a word really need to find other hobbies. Come on. The comments to this post are funny, in a pedantic idiocy vein3.
Could one live, like so many of my ancestors allegedly did, on a diet consisting of mostly potatoes? Cecil Adams says, well, nearly.
The good news: A spuds and milk diet definitely has possibilities — the Irish, to cite the best-known example, got by mainly on potatoes until the infamous blight of 1845 wiped out their main course. The bad news: (1) Considering the quantities you’re going to have to eat, you’d better really like potatoes. (2) If you’re literally going to eat nothing but potatoes and milk, you risk — brace yourself — serious molybdenum deficiency.
Years ago I tackled the question of whether you could live by bread alone. (See The Straight Dope: Can man live by bread alone?) Answer: Yeah, for about six months, but then you’d die of scurvy. Things won’t be anywhere near that bad on milk and potatoes. Before the Great Famine, the traditional Irish peasant meal consisted mainly of potatoes, milk, oats, beans, barley, and bread. Potatoes were the mainstay. As the years grew leaner, dairy products largely disappeared from the Irish diet, since poverty forced many farmers to sell their milk to pay rent. By the time the famine hit, the peasants were eating pretty much just potatoes, supplemented with some salt fish and oatmeal. I’ve seen it said that a third of the population lived on potatoes and nothing else, although that seems doubtful, as we’ll see. Edward Wakefield, an English land agent and amateur social scientist who traveled Ireland from 1809 to 1811, calculated each Irish peasant family member consumed 5.5 pounds of potatoes per day. An 1846 source claims a working man needed at least 8 pounds of potatoes a day to survive if nothing else were available; a typical family of six would need 26 pounds.
How did the Irish do on this diet? We can’t be certain — nobody was conducting nutrition studies in those days. But there’s reason to believe they were healthier than you might guess. In the century before the famine, Ireland had the highest birthrate in western Europe. Some credit potatoes, saying the availability of easy-to-grow, easy-to-cook spuds made it practical to raise large families. Telling evidence on this score, one historian writes, “is that the Irish in general and Irish women in particular were widely described as healthy and good-looking.” I don’t know about you, Josh, but any diet that gets results like that is good enough for me.
[Click to continue reading The Straight Dope: Could I survive on nothing but potatoes and milk?]
I knew I loved potatoes…
and if one supplemented one’s diet with the occasional bowl of oatmeal, and even some salad, you’d be well enough to down pints of Guinness Stout.
“The Big Lebowski – 10th Anniversary Edition” (Universal Studios)
Can’t say I’m a fan of the drink, just of the film that inspired the revival.
AMONG the significant dates in the history of Kahlúa, the Mexican coffee liqueur, surely March 6, 1998, rates a mention.
That was the release date of “The Big Lebowski,” the Coen Brothers movie about an aging slacker who calls himself the Dude, and who, after a thug urinates on his prized rug, becomes caught up in a Chandleresque mystery.
Played with slouchy brio by Jeff Bridges, the Dude’s chief pursuits involve bowling, avoiding work and drinking White Russians, the sweet cocktail made with vodka, Kahlúa and cream or milk.
The movie was a flop when it was released, but in the decade since, “The Big Lebowski” has attracted a cult following, and as the film’s renown has grown, so has the renown of the White Russian, or, as the Dude calls them, “Caucasians.” The drink is the subject of experimentation at cutting-edge bars like Tailor, in SoHo, which serves a crunchy dehydrated version — a sort of White Russian cereal. The British electro-pop band Hot Chip, meanwhile, recently invented a variation named the Black Tarantula. Not long ago, the cocktail was considered passé and often likened, in its original formula, to an alcoholic milkshake.
…
Believed to date to the 1950s or early 1960s, the White Russian has no great origin story; its culinary precursor is the Alexander. Having been popular in the disco ’70s, the cocktail is, in the words of Mr. Doudoroff, “a relic of an era that was the absolute nadir of the American bar.”
As it happens, this was the period when Jeff Dowd was living in Seattle, driving a taxi and doing a lot of “heavy hanging,” as he put it. Mr. Dowd, 59, an independent film producer and producers representative, is the inspiration for the Dude — a character Joel and Ethan Coen created by taking what Mr. Dowd was like back then and exaggerating a bit, although the White Russians preference is spot on.
“There was a woman I lived with named Connie,” Mr. Dowd said, by phone from his office in Santa Monica, Calif., beginning a rambling oration that was highly Dude-like. “She and her boyfriend, Jamie, were mixologists. We were hanging out and drinking at that time. We went from White Russians to Dirty Mothers, a darker version of a White Russian. It was a very hedonistic period.”
Mr. Dowd moved on from White Russians years ago, but has started drinking them again, mainly so as not to disappoint fans. “When I first met Cheech at the Sundance Film Festival,” he said, referring to Cheech Marin of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, “the first thing we all wanted to do is smoke a joint with him so we could tell our grandchildren, ‘Hey, I smoked a joint with Cheech.’ Well, people want to say they had a White Russian with the Dude. I don’t want to turn them down, which has added a little extra tonnage to me.”
[Click to continue reading A Revival for the White Russian – NYTimes.com]
“Metrokane V1 World’s First Vacuum Decanter” (Metrokane)
I wonder how useful this vacuum wine decanter would be? Seems sort of cool, but I don’t often have dinner parties these days.
- World’s first vacuum decanter maintains wine character until next pouring
- Set features 52-ounce handblown crystal decanter
- Also includes stopper with vacuum gauge and hand pump
- Lead-free decanter eliminates worries about leaching into wine
- Wash decanter by hand; 5-year warranty on stopper and pump
“Texas Monthly” (Emmis Publishing)
Calvin Trillin ruminates about Texas barbecue, and a recent Texas Monthly article purporting to list the top 50 joints. I’ve never been a huge fan of BBQ, Texas, or any style, but I’ve eaten it enough times, and have stopped into many a shack on the highway between Austin and East Texas.
In discussions of Texas barbecue, the equivalent of Matt Damon and George Clooney and Brad Pitt would be establishments like Kreuz Market and Smitty’s Market, in Lockhart; City Market, in Luling; and Louie Mueller Barbecue, in Taylor—places that reflect the barbecue tradition that developed during the nineteenth century out of German and Czech meat markets in the Hill Country of central Texas. (In fact, the title of Texas Monthly’s first article on barbecue—it was published in 1973, shortly after the magazine’s founding—was “The World’s Best Barbecue Is in Taylor, Texas. Or Is It Lockhart?”) Those restaurants, all of which had been in the top tier in 2003, were indeed there again in this summer’s survey. For the first time, though, a No. 1 had been named, and it was not one of the old familiars. “The best barbecue in Texas,” the article said, “is currently being served at Snow’s BBQ, in Lexington.”
I had never heard of Snow’s. That surprised me. Although I grew up in Kansas City, which has a completely different style of barbecue, I have always kept more or less au courant of Texas barbecue, like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L. standings now and then just to see how things are going. Reading that the best barbecue in Texas was at Snow’s, in Lexington, I felt like a People subscriber who had picked up the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue and discovered that the sexiest man alive was Sheldon Ludnick, an insurance adjuster from Terre Haute, Indiana, with Clooney as the runner-up.
An accompanying story on how a Numero Uno had emerged, from three hundred and forty-one spots visited by the staff, revealed that before work began on the 2008 survey nobody at Texas Monthly had heard of Snow’s, either. Lexington, a trading town of twelve hundred people in Lee County, is only about fifty miles from Austin, where Texas Monthly is published, and Texans think nothing of driving that far for lunch—particularly if the lunch consists of brisket that has been subjected to slow heat since the early hours of the morning. Texas Monthly has had a strong posse of barbecue enthusiasts since its early days. Griffin Smith, who wrote the 1973 barbecue article and is now the executive editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in Little Rock, was known for keeping a map of the state on his wall with pushpins marking barbecue joints he had been to, the way General Patton might have kept a map marked with spots where night patrols had probed the German line. I could imagine the staffers not knowing about a superior barbecue restaurant in East Texas; the Southern style of barbecue served there, often on a bun, has never held much interest for Austin connoisseurs. But their being unaware of a top-tier establishment less than an hour’s drive away astonished me.
[From Letter from Central Texas: By Meat Alone: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker]
Trillin asked Evan Smith how come Snow’s came to be chosen number one.
He did acknowledge that his decision to name a No. 1—rather than just a top tier, as in the previous barbecue surveys—came about partly because everyone was so enthusiastic about Snow’s product but partly because its story was so compelling. Smith himself was not in a position to confirm the quality of the product. Being from Queens is not the only handicap he has had to surmount in his rise through the ranks of Texas journalism: he has been a vegetarian for nearly twenty-five years. (The fact that he is able to resist the temptation presented by the aroma of Texas pit barbecue, he has said, is a strong indication that he will never “return to the dark side.”) As a longtime editor, though, he knew a Cinderella story when he saw one. It wasn’t just that Snow’s had been unknown to a Texas barbecue fancy that is notably mobile. Snow’s proprietor, Kerry Bexley, was a former rodeo clown who worked as a blending-facility operator at a coal mine. Snow’s pit master, Tootsie Tomanetz, was a woman in her early seventies who worked as the custodian of the middle school in Giddings, Texas—the Lee County seat, eighteen miles to the south. After five years of operating Snow’s, both of them still had their day jobs. Also, Snow’s was open only on Saturday mornings, from eight until the meat ran out.
[also the Texas Monthly piece on Snow’s is worth a glance for the photos, provenance and bona fides…]
If the FDA and its client, Monsanto, had their way, consumers would never realize if the food sold at grocery stores and restaurants was some sort of franken-food created in a laboratory, with long-term health effects unknown. Furthermore, Monsanto and a few other similar corporations would own the patents to the majority of the world’s food supply, with seeds that only lasted one year. Their nefarious plan is well on the way to being permanently in place.
Alexis Madrigal writes:
Wired Science – Wired Blogs:
The other part of the explanation is that US consumer attitudes don’t actually matter very much to the current GM food business. All Monsanto needs is for you to love Twinkies and Coca-Cola, the food machinery of this country does the rest. Monsanto’s model is business-to-business (B2B), like server sales or logistics. Monsanto is more like Oracle than Apple. To the average consumer, GM crops are invisible, especially because you don’t have to label them in the US.The attitudes towards GMO that matter to Monsanto are those held by big agribusiness seed buyers and corporate farmers, not Joe Six Pack. And the IT managers of the farming world love Monsanto. The chart is of US GE crop adoption of their big three products, corn, soybeans, and cotton, which just happen to compose 75 percent of the revenue generated from non-fruit and vegetable cash crops.
If you’re an opponent of GM foods, here comes the scary punchline. A big chunk of all that genetically modified corn and soy go right into our processed foods and into feed for the animals we eat. So chances are, unless you are a raw or organic foodista, you ate a GM food derivative this very day.
Even organic food is probably tainted in some degree by GM food.
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” (Michael Pollan)
Michael Pollan1 wrote a fascinating open letter to the upcoming new administration.
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.
[From The Food Issue – An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief – Michael Pollan – NYTimes.com]
Reading around the blogosphere2, there are already calls for Obama to hire Pollan as Secretary of Agriculture, or similar.
oops, never posted this article3, and now Obama claims to have already read the open letter:
was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
[From Swampland – TIME.com » Blog Archive The Full Obama Interview «]
So there you have it…
Pippen reading Omnivore’s Dilemma
