90 replies to this topic

[jrshaul]

Dishonest food? Chicken McNuggets. Krystal burgers (if you are not in the southeast this won't mean anything to you). I am convinced vegetarians can eat Krystal burgers, because I can't believe there is any meat anywhere about them. That said, I want a sackful of them about once every two years. Pop Tarts. Marshmallow Creme.

Marshmallow creme is, usually, sugar and gelatin and not much else. Ironically, it's one of the few prepared foods in the supermarket you can easily make at home.

[SobaAddict70]

And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences.

I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually.

It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

[Mette]

Food cannot be dishonest, only the people producing, processing, marketing, selling and/or cooking it

[annabelle]

Holding everyone to that kind of standard is going to be difficult if not impossible, Soba. If not more than a little preachy.

[gfweb]

And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences.

I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually.

It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

Amazing? I don't think so.

[SobaAddict70]

Holding everyone to that kind of standard is going to be difficult if not impossible, Soba. If not more than a little preachy.

So because it sounds "preachy" (interesting interpretation by the way), I shouldn't mention it?

I had a roast chicken last night for dinner. Should I not care whether it was raised humanely, what food it was fed as it was raised, whether it had a good life prior to meeting its inevitable end?

When you eat "fake" food, be it fast food or highly processed food with a list of ingredients that is not normally found in nature, you're also accepting a set of associated values: that food should be cheap; that food should be the same no matter where you live on the planet; that there are unlimited resources; that the work of those who provide your food is unimportant.

If it sounds preachy to you, perhaps that is because you don't hold it in the same sphere of importance as I do. That's fine, but let's not pretend that the underlying issues, causes and effects won't affect you. Because they will, eventually, if they haven't already.

I choose to care about where my food comes from, and so follow through with it. You can take from that whatever you wish; it's all one to me.

[SobaAddict70]

And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences.

I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually.

It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

Amazing? I don't think so.

"Amazing" is the phrasing I'm using in this forum in the diplomatic sense.

The exact choice of verbiage I would use is something else altogether.

[Mjx]

. . . . Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?. . . .

In theory, at least, the closer the food is produced to where it is sold, the less fuel is needed (and by extension the less pollution is produced) to transport it; at a cumulative level, this can make a difference. Also, you might argue that supporting local (or as local as possible) sustainable agriculture is simply good for the community. Clearly, if you want lemons and live in in Denmark, you're going to be importing. But importing them from Italy has advantages over importing them from China (also in terms of being better able to monitor the labour and hygiene standards in place at the point of origin).

[Shalmanese]

. . . . Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?. . . .

In theory, at least, the closer the food is produced to where it is sold, the less fuel is needed (and by extension the less pollution is produced) to transport it; at a cumulative level, this can make a difference. Also, you might argue that supporting local (or as local as possible) sustainable agriculture is simply good for the community. Clearly, if you want lemons and live in in Denmark, you're going to be importing. But importing them from Italy has advantages over importing them from China (also in terms of being better able to monitor the labour and hygiene standards in place at the point of origin).

This is largely fallacious.

[ChrisTaylor]

And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences.

I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually.

It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

Amazing? I don't think so.

"Amazing" is the phrasing I'm using in this forum in the diplomatic sense.

The exact choice of verbiage I would use is something else altogether.

Settle, pettle.

You misunderstand my point. It's a good thing being able to know that--through a system of labelling, regulation, informed salespeople, etc--that my chicken came from some farm that cares for animal welfare. That the chickens aren't pumped full of God-knows-what and then packed into a shed, Tetris-style, until no more chickens will fit. Literally. That's a good thing. I don't want to devalue that. I do not question the worth of that. I do not question knowing whether my steak came from a grass-fed or grain-fed steer is a good thing or not. I get that. I like that. It helps me make informed choices about the products I buy.

What I do question is--and what I am a touch cynical about--is the obsession with it. The MasterChef and Jamie Oliver thing of TV chefs telling regular punters to ask their butcher/fishmonger/grocer/etc where their everything came from. People are told to ask this question but not until I opened Hawksmoor at Home did I see a single one of these chefs follow it up with a summary what you wanted to hear more in-depth than 'oh yeah, everything is organic and free-range: even the carrots.' It's like telling someone, when they're about to buy a car, to ask lots of really technical questions about the car's performance/the construction process/etc. If you're uninformed enough to have to be told to ask such questions by an expert, there's a fair chance you're uninformed to not understand what counts as a good/bad answer.

I also question whether, for a lot of these TV chefs, if it has much to do at all with the environment/sustainability. Perry's Rockpool is a steakhouse. The star of the show is aged beef. And that's great. I love beef. But I am under no illusions that it is good for the environment. Even if your steak came from rare breed raised on a diet of organic grains and was then finished on grass, it's still really bad for the environment to eat it. It's bad for the environment--really bad--to grill great quantities of it over coal/timber in a restaurant inside Melbourne's largest gambling venue. I argue that concern for the environment/sustainable farming is, for at least some of these cooks--and I don't want to single out Neil Perry here, as I reckon he's a great businessman and writes excellent books--is nowhere near as important as profitability is. There's a lot of money in charging $60-20 for a 'honestly' grilled steak with a dab of horseradish sauce and a drizzle of olive oil. That steak, be it from a farm in Tasmania that specialises in awesome grass fed beef or some nasty industrial place that supplies the likes of McDonald's, is terrible for the environment. Terrible.

And as was mentioned up-thread, there's the whole foraging thing. Oh yeah, I know where this came from, my sous chef and I hand-picked it (mushroom/seaweed/ramp/etc) this morning. That's all well and good, but let's not pretend that's always good for the environment. It, like saying you're selling something dry-aged/honestly cooked/etc, is, I think, in most cases about marketing. It's not about informing the public at all. Except maybe in rare instances.

Forgive me for questioning a sacred cow's right to be sacred.

Edited by ChrisTaylor, 28 February 2012 - 03:16 AM.

[Mjx]

. . . . Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?. . . .

In theory, at least, the closer the food is produced to where it is sold, the less fuel is needed (and by extension the less pollution is produced) to transport it; at a cumulative level, this can make a difference. Also, you might argue that supporting local (or as local as possible) sustainable agriculture is simply good for the community. Clearly, if you want lemons and live in in Denmark, you're going to be importing. But importing them from Italy has advantages over importing them from China (also in terms of being better able to monitor the labour and hygiene standards in place at the point of origin).

This is largely fallacious.

As I said, 'In theory'. I'd want to see hard figures from very, very credible, firsthand sources, and lots of them, before reaching any firm conclusion.
The issue of being able to have a better idea of the labour and hygiene practices involved in the production of food that comes from closer by is less theoretical; it's much easier to have an idea of what's going on in your neighbour's yard, than in the yard of someone you've never met, in the next city.

But what is troubling me increasingly is the sense that 'honest' (with regard to food) is being used to imply 'better', in any or all ways. If someone wants to say, 'X and Y practices/ingredients/sources make for the best/my preferred food', I can accept that. When someone starts babbling about food being 'honest', I just want to beat them to death with my copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

[Simon_S]

When I hear "honest" I don't generally associate it with provenance, or local and seasonal, or any of the other buzzwords that relate to ingredients. I think it's meant as the opposite of pretentious, and that's one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder. In truth, I think there's a wider backlash against the trappings of fine dining at the moment, be it starched linens and snooty waiters or uber-modern food as art. Honest seems short-hand for "great but not fancy, equally enjoyable to your average bloke as to the most discerning gastronome".

Basically, it's a way for chefs to appeal to those who wouldn't normally think of themselves as into fine dining. Put another way, it helps restaurants like Noma broaden their appeal, shake off any hint of pretension, and get more bums on seats. So, not honest at all really!

[gfweb]

It is all marketing jive and, as we have shown in this thread, has no clear meaning.

It is an descriptor that each has to put his own spin on because honesty/dishonesty is not a trait of inanimate objects and the real definition of honesty cannot be meaningfully applied to food.

[annabelle]

Exactly. It is marketing and meant to make the consumer feel more virtuous, more honest, indeed more caring than that guy over there.

[SobaAddict70]

And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences.

I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually.

It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

Amazing? I don't think so.

"Amazing" is the phrasing I'm using in this forum in the diplomatic sense.

The exact choice of verbiage I would use is something else altogether.

Settle, pettle.

You misunderstand my point. It's a good thing being able to know that--through a system of labelling, regulation, informed salespeople, etc--that my chicken came from some farm that cares for animal welfare. That the chickens aren't pumped full of God-knows-what and then packed into a shed, Tetris-style, until no more chickens will fit. Literally. That's a good thing. I don't want to devalue that. I do not question the worth of that. I do not question knowing whether my steak came from a grass-fed or grain-fed steer is a good thing or not. I get that. I like that. It helps me make informed choices about the products I buy.

What I do question is--and what I am a touch cynical about--is the obsession with it. The MasterChef and Jamie Oliver thing of TV chefs telling regular punters to ask their butcher/fishmonger/grocer/etc where their everything came from. People are told to ask this question but not until I opened Hawksmoor at Home did I see a single one of these chefs follow it up with a summary what you wanted to hear more in-depth than 'oh yeah, everything is organic and free-range: even the carrots.' It's like telling someone, when they're about to buy a car, to ask lots of really technical questions about the car's performance/the construction process/etc. If you're uninformed enough to have to be told to ask such questions by an expert, there's a fair chance you're uninformed to not understand what counts as a good/bad answer.

I also question whether, for a lot of these TV chefs, if it has much to do at all with the environment/sustainability. Perry's Rockpool is a steakhouse. The star of the show is aged beef. And that's great. I love beef. But I am under no illusions that it is good for the environment. Even if your steak came from rare breed raised on a diet of organic grains and was then finished on grass, it's still really bad for the environment to eat it. It's bad for the environment--really bad--to grill great quantities of it over coal/timber in a restaurant inside Melbourne's largest gambling venue. I argue that concern for the environment/sustainable farming is, for at least some of these cooks--and I don't want to single out Neil Perry here, as I reckon he's a great businessman and writes excellent books--is nowhere near as important as profitability is. There's a lot of money in charging $60-20 for a 'honestly' grilled steak with a dab of horseradish sauce and a drizzle of olive oil. That steak, be it from a farm in Tasmania that specialises in awesome grass fed beef or some nasty industrial place that supplies the likes of McDonald's, is terrible for the environment. Terrible.

And as was mentioned up-thread, there's the whole foraging thing. Oh yeah, I know where this came from, my sous chef and I hand-picked it (mushroom/seaweed/ramp/etc) this morning. That's all well and good, but let's not pretend that's always good for the environment. It, like saying you're selling something dry-aged/honestly cooked/etc, is, I think, in most cases about marketing. It's not about informing the public at all. Except maybe in rare instances.

Forgive me for questioning a sacred cow's right to be sacred.

It's all part of making your audience aware. If the way JO is going about it seems "shallow" to you, perhaps that is because of the lack of depth (generally) in using television as a medium for education. As you may know, things tend to be weighed towards the lowest common denominator. There's also that "ratings" thing; can't avoid it, have to live with it. Folks -- don't know about people in Australia, but I might know a thing or two about viewing habits in the U.S. -- don't see cooking as education, more like entertainment. If the opposite were true, then I imagine you'd see more of Julia Child and less of Guy Fieri. (PS. I don't watch TV, mostly because I can't stand the inanity of 99% of programming, and the remainder isn't a sufficient reason to bother...so take my comments with a grain of salt.)

The information is out there for anyone who chooses to pursue it beyond TV's threshold. Instead of taking the view that the glass is half empty, I would think that it's an effective "hook" to get the people who might turn out to be truly interested to start learning on their own. In that sense, JO is doing an admirable job with the time and resources available to him.

[annabelle]

If you don't watch television, how can you speak to the value to the viewer, real or perceived? It's like me opining on molecular gastronomy, when I have never tried it or read a book about it.

Jamie Oliver does good work with his restaurant training programs for young tear-aways, but he is not a dietician, an argonomist or an economist. His opinions are just that: opinions.

[SobaAddict70]

If you don't watch television, how can you speak to the value to the viewer, real or perceived? It's like me opining on molecular gastronomy, when I have never tried it or read a book about it.

Jamie Oliver does good work with his restaurant training programs for young tear-aways, but he is not a dietician, an argonomist or an economist. His opinions are just that: opinions.

Yes, annabelle, if I don't eat at a restaurant, how can I opine on whether the food might be of interest to me? But that hasn't stopped people from weighing in on topics of interest to them. Hence why I included the disclaimer "to take my comments with a grain of salt", or did you choose to conveniently ignore that too?

[tikidoc]

"Even if your steak came from rare breed raised on a diet of organic grains and was then finished on grass, it's still really bad for the environment to eat it."

Actually, it can be done in a non harmful way, albeit not as cheaply as beef raised in feedlots on government subsidized Monsanto corn. Pick up a book by Joel Salatin. He explains how it can be done, as he has been doing it on his farm for years. The problem is monoculture. Farms raise one thing, be it chicken or beef or corn or soy. Factory farms produce toxic waste - the sewage than runs out of these farms are loaded with antibiotic resistant bacteria. These animals are not being fed what their guts were evolved to eat. As a result, the animals are chronically sick and must be fed antibiotics due to their poor immune systems. Livestock in the US consume several times as much antibiotics and human, and virtually all of it is as feed additives, not to treat a specific illness. As a result, we have highly resistant strains of bacteria.

Salatin raises a number of species. The cows pastures are frequently rotated. Then a couple days after the cows leave a pasture, he brings in the chickens, who eat the bugs in the poops, and produce more high quality fertilizer. They make eggs that are much healthier than the so called free range eggs in the store (and taste a lot better too). He has numerous other examples in his books. I have seen his farm and how things work there. We have a small farm and use many of his methods and they work for us. Is it a cheap way to raise food? No, but we are improving the soil on our land not using up the nutrients, and the beef and chickens we raise are healthier (both alive and as our food) than anything on a factory farm. The animals are treated humanely too.

The toll of factory farming is adding up. They produce huge amounts of pollutants. Monoculture is ruining the soil of our heartland. I was raised in central Illinois, and the last time I was home, I could not believe how much lighter in color the soil was than when I lived there. This type of farming is not sustainable long term. Feedlots produce tons of pollution. On our farm, poop fom healthy cows is a good thing, not a pollutant.

Bottom line, yes, it is important to me and my family where our food comes from. In our case, as much as possible is from our own farm and from farmers that I know personally. Buying local is good for our community. It encourages sustainable farming techniques. If you know where to look, it does not need to be expensive. It generally tastes better. if you don't think it's important, visit a factory farm. You will change your mind.

Do I eat all local foods? No, I like citrus, and can't raise it in VA. After living in Panama for a while, I developed a fondness for lots of tropical fruits. But I would venture that we eat more sustainably produced food than the vast majority of the population, we don't spend crazy amounts of money on food, and I feel better about what I eat.

I guess you could guess how I would describe "honest food" although I think the term is pretty stupid. Honesty is not an attribute that objects can possess.

Jess

Edited by tikidoc, 28 February 2012 - 09:39 PM.

[Blues_Cookin]

Totally awesome thread, and its really cool to see how folks think and feel about food.

Personally, I think calling food "honest" is simply a marketing term like "home-made" etc. At first glance, it seems to mean something good, but on second thought it is completely undefined and is simply the attempt to give the impression of something good by proximity to a word we all universally like. Kind of like saying you served a hand-carved steak. Or Grandma's oatmeal cookies.

[tikidoc]

With all this discussion, nobody has posted a dictionary definition for the word "honest". So here we go.

1. Marked by or displaying integrity; upright.
2. Not deceptive or fraudulent; genuine.
3. Equitable; fair: honest wages for an honest day's work.
4.
a. Characterized by truth; not false.
b. Sincere; frank.
5.
a. Of good repute; respectable.
b. Without affectation; plain.
6. Virtuous; chaste.

So I think that marketing of a food can be considered honest (using definition #2), but that definition would not work for the food itself. And I suppose a very simply prepared food could be called honest using definition 5b, although it seems a stretch to me.

Seems like a stupid way to describe food, but that's just me.

[annabelle]

It's one of those words like "sustainable" about which I remain puzzled. What does sustainable mean in this context? The same people who complain about overfishing, will complain about farmed fish. Should we just not eat fish in some sort of fruitless protest against fisherman and fisheries? The fish will still be at the market, regardless of whether we take a "principled" stand against buying or eating it.

I guess if a chef serves up an "honest" Chilean sea bass, he is off the hook (so to speak)about serving an unsustainable fish. Assuming he didn't go catch it with his bare hands, to add to the authenticity and thus, the "honesty" of the dish.

Edited by annabelle, 29 February 2012 - 10:03 AM.

[tikidoc]

Well, my understanding of sustainable farming is that the practices used are compatible with the long term. If a farming method continually decreases the soil quality of causes erosion, for example, that is not sustainable. Eventually, you lose the topsoil, then you can't grow stuff. If you pollute the land with millions of tons of byproducts of feedlots or chicken houses, that is not sustainable. If you use antibiotics so liberally that you select for pathologic bacteria that we have no treatments for, that is not sustainable. Most of the farming done in the US falls under this heading. Eventually, we will cause so much damage that we can't continue the way we have. And thanks to lawsuits by companies like Monsanto, it is more and more difficult for farmers who want to farm sustainably to continue, and to maintain genetic crop diversity.

As far as fish farming, it can be done well and it can be done in ways that are very destructive, causing disease in the wild population and resulting in high levels of contaminants such as PCBs in the fish. It's not perfect, but I try to use an ipad app called "Seafood Watch", which is sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, when I am buying seafood. It has pretty good summaries of the issues with both farmed and wild caught fish, and provides ocean friendly alternatives if a fish I am interested in using is on the "avoid" list.

And I still think use of the word "honest" with respect to food is just plain meaningless.

Jess

[ScoopKW]

If you don't watch television, how can you speak to the value to the viewer, real or perceived? It's like me opining on molecular gastronomy, when I have never tried it or read a book about it.

Jamie Oliver does good work with his restaurant training programs for young tear-aways, but he is not a dietician, an argonomist or an economist. His opinions are just that: opinions.

Well, I DO watch Food television, mainly because my wife watches it. So I watch it. I find FoodTV annoying at best, a public nuisance at worst. These TV Food Porn peddlers never, ever, ever mention anything that might cause the viewer to think about where their food comes from.

The only thing you can get out of them is the occasional admonition to "use the good maple syrup." They never mention what good maple syrup is (or more importantly, what it ISN'T.) Because that might upset their advertisers. In this case, Pinnacle foods -- makers of Log Cabin and Mrs. Butterworth's brand table syrup. I don't think those syrups are advertised on FoodTV, but Vlasic pickles by Pinnacle are. So perky Food TV hosts can't ask viewers, "Why the **** are you paying that much money for corn syrup and caramel color?" Because their corporate overlords might lose those precious pickle dollars.

There is a pervasive effort afoot to keep the American consumer in the dark about what he or she eats. Many Americans consume more wood pulp and petroleum than they do carrots. While the information is out there, it simply is not getting into the brains of the people who most need it. The government agencies that are supposed to protect consumers do not. The media that is supposed to inform consumers does not.

Frankly, we need every Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver we can get.

[annabelle]

Of course Food TV is annoying, Scoop. But, so are Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters. And so are posters who proclaim that, of course they never watch tv, because they're better than that. Holier than thou much? TV is entertainment, vast wasteland or not.

"Corporate Overlords?" Those are called sponsers. Without sponsers, the Food Network would be in some back alley PBS channel at 8 am on Sundays.

And none of this has anything to do with "honest" food. Which as tikidoc says, is a meaningless way to desribe food.

[gfweb]

I think the problem is that we (at least me) are somewhat ambivalent about these issues.

On the one hand who doesn't want fresh food that is produced properly?

On the other so many of the proponents of these issues are tedious at best and FOS at worst. Some have agendas that extend past the food problem. Some are preachy and elitist. (Who appointed Blythe Danner's daughter to her current position anyway?). Many make arguments that haven't been thought through to their ultimate outcome.

And its worth mentioning that these concerns are all trivia if one doesn't have enough to eat, the current state of billions of people. If eating a nearly extinct fish feeds my starving kids....

[ScoopKW]

There's a difference between a sponsor trying to sell a product and a sponsor who replaces "honest" food with wood pulp and petroleum distillates. (And then lobbies to have the FDA protect those products as "trade secrets." And then has their partners in television sell the product to an uninformed and unprotected market.)

The US consumer has precious few advocates. What good is it to try to tear down what little we've got?

[Mjx]

I think the problem is that we (at least me) are somewhat ambivalent about these issues.

On the one hand who doesn't want fresh food that is produced properly?

On the other so many of the proponents of these issues are tedious at best and FOS at worst. Some have agendas that extend past the food problem. Some are preachy and elitist. (Who appointed Blythe Danner's daughter to her current position anyway?). Many make arguments that haven't been thought through to their ultimate outcome.

And its worth mentioning that these concerns are all trivia if one doesn't have enough to eat, the current state of billions of people. If eating a nearly extinct fish feeds my starving kids....

Eating the last few of a nearly extinct species will ward off starvation until what, next week? Yes, I get it, you don't think that about that sort of thing when your kid is wasting away before your eyes, but when you are outside the situation, simply contemplating it, it's not a compelling sort of example.

Frankly, I find ALL the extreme points of view on this (actually, any) topic remarkably tedious, shortsighted, and spectacularly ignorant. It's as though everyone is so over-invested in their stance, the option of discussing the topic objectively and rationally is just out of the question. The inverted snobbism of the 'just folks' crowd is at least as nauseatingly dishonest as the wilfully naive and preachy elitism of of the overprivileged, self-appointed finger-waggers.

Yeh, I know: Moderation is boring, but does anyone actually believe that embracing some extreme fringe outlook is going to fix things?

The whole concept of 'honest' food is even more laughable, when framed by the hypocrisy of those who produce it.

[PlatosPlate]

Great thread.

I think that "honest" food is a teleological statement. There seems to be a fascination with a worldly regress to how things were done before civilization. I think it can be defined by the distance from food. The further you are from its production and it's preparation, the less "honest" it is. Which, I think has a valid point somehow, if you think for instance -- slaughter. We have such a denial of death when it comes to food. Perhaps, the closer we come to it the more "honest" we feel in our satiety...can anyone (home food growers, self-slaughter-er's) attest?

[tikidoc]

I think I have more appreciation for food that I have produced. There is a feeling or satisfaction that comes from eating a tomato you grew yourself that you don't get from buying one you bought. Same goes for animal products. We have chickens (mostly for eggs but the roos go in the freezer if they get obnoxious), a small herd of cows (milk and beef) and milk goats. Not only does our home raised beef and milk and cheese taste better and have better nutrition, but knowing exactly what the animal ate gives me a level of comfort feeding it to my kids. No antibiotics, no hormones, just hay and grass and a little grain when the girls are on the milking stanchion.

I also like the idea that my kids know where their food comes from. Beef comes from the steer that was in the pasture last year (named Sir Loin), not in a styrofoam container at WalMart.

[annabelle]

We don't have any livestock, but I have a lot of friends who ranch cattle and horses. We have a very large, I mean it's huge, kitchen garden, an herb garden and a salad garden. We don't have any chickens because our property is only an acre and a half and there are too many critters around here, including a family of fox. A chicken house would have to be too close to the house proper and I don't want to listen to my dogs barking at raccoons and skunks at night.

My parents and my husband all grew up on dairy farms, so where our food came from was never a mystery. People don't like to talk about the ugly side of farming/ranching which includes culling deformed baby animals and cleaning up slaughter. Additionally, farming is tremendously hard work and physically exhausting.

My BIL has a hobby farm in upstate NY, but he doesn't keep livestock. He uses it mainly for a deer hunting preserve and tapping his sugar maples for syrup production.