mattwb

Wayne Rooney

I think it would be prudent for you to read that article I linked to. You may not intend it, but it certainly feels like there is a class-blind perspective in your argument - the perspective that JimH and others object to (myself included), with reason. Yes, it would be ideal if food improved in this country - it might even be cheaper to operate Medicare/Medicaid as a result. However, calling on this nation's poor - as part of the greater population - to change the foods they buy as if they were anyone else is not reasonable. There are many, MANY factors involved in the choices one makes in the food they eat, and some people do not have the time, financial means, et cetera, to make ethics their #1 priority or a factor at all. Even if they want to. Don't assume that, since they buy "processed foods," that they believe that it's the tastiest and/or best food out there. Maybe making things from scratch ends up taking less time when calculated out, with time spent on medical treatment and such added to the equation. However, I'm sure many of these people don't feel they have the time to investigate these options. I'll say more later, but right now I'm supposed to be working. ← Hi there, I understand where you are coming from. However I am not 'blaming the victim'. The people who are the 'choiceless poor' aren't really to be found reading food websites... Despite some of the reactions to the writing I'm really not trying to be 'preachy'. I really wanted to highlight some of the facts and figures that I found out by doing just a little research. Then I thought I'd post them on a forum that would be read by people interested in the food they eat. I also thought that I had presented them in a way that a lot of people would find humorous. Bottom-line, there are plenty of people who read these forums who DO have a choice and then make questionable choices for a short-term cash benefit. I'm not having a pop at the poor, or single-mothers etc. And I guess that any lazy slobs out there aren't changing their minds any time soon either. Really I guess the best I could hope for is that a good number of average people choose to shop smarter... Is that really such a bad thing?

Well it is much cheaper for the airlines to stop serving nuts and serve those other rather odd snack things. So they are happy to help. I remember when BA took the cashew nuts out of the mixed nuts in First Class. They saved a fortune annually.

I'm not smug.....

Blimey. This is for people that you are inviting into your home to give them food that you've spent your time and effort over? They don't deserve any of you!

...

No you shouldn't, you should carry on with the amazing work you're doing... You are a saint! If more people could have the benefit of your lessons then they could afford to make a chicken go abit further. They could choose to buy foods that aren't as harmful to themselves or the environment. After one of your creative egg lessons they could make a choice... they could think, why buy a crap piece of chicken, why not buy a few really lovely eggs and have a kick-ass omelette.... they might actually save money. I think that a lot of accusations of privilege are being aimed at me, when in fact for the privileged, the food budget is a much less significant percentage of overall spending. It is much more important for the less well-off to be savvy about what they spend their food dollars on. It seems like you give a lot of your time to those people for which you should probably get more recognition than you do.

There are so many non sequitors and red herrings, I don't know where to start. But we've been down this road before and there's no winning so I'm not biting except to say I work in ag and I deal with a lot of farmers/growers/corporations and it's not a question of organic versus non-sustainable. It's gross profits versus obscenely gross profits. ← Again, thank you for moving this conversation forward. As I said in response to JimH earlier, it's easier not to think. It's easier to tell me I don't care about the poor. If I didn't care I'd just stand by, let them continue poisoning themselves while my butler serves my organic asparagus along with my Wagyu Beef. It's easier to say that my ideas are radical than to wonder how the CEO of Tyson made $24.6m in 2007 by selling crappy chicken to poor people. If I was to tell you that there are people who sell products to marginalized, uneducated poor people that they crave but which make them sick and wreck communities whilst racking up personal fortunes and flouting laws you'd think I was describing a cocaine-baron. Not chicken farmers.

The search for good meat in America. Part Two. Some solutions. Like I said… cheap beef kills people. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes it’ll just make you wish you were dead. But it doesn’t have to be like that. No it really doesn’t. Like many intelligent people I’m sure that from time to time you take a look at the world and really want to change some things. Maybe things concern you like Global Warming, dependence on foreign oil and the environment. Maybe it really bothers you. Keeps you awake even. But then you think about it a bit and changing things seems really hard. Or impossible. Well if you think of it in a certain way it is impossible. You can’t single-handedly make the United States sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Maybe you don’t even know what that is. You can’t make people give up their SUVs for Hybrids. You can’t build a wind-farm. No-one has voted for you and probably won’t. But you can make a difference in lots of ways. Now I’m not about to tell you to be a vegan or weave your own moccasins from your own hair. I am not a hippy and you probably shouldn’t be one either. But there are some practical solutions. Here are some you can try at home. Three words. Stop buying garbage. Simple as that. No more factory-produced meat. No more eggs that are not from free-range birds. And definitely no more fast junk food. In fact try to forego anything that has been processed at all. Buy raw ingredients. Buy whole cuts of meat from reputable sources. Buy fresh fruit and veggies. Don’t buy food that requires scientists to create it. Try making your own bread. You know what bread is… flour, water, yeast. A little salt. That’s it. Stop reading this for a minute and go get a loaf of commercially produced bread from your kitchen. Look at the list of ingredients. Do you know what more than half of them are? Why are they there? Is that for your benefit or for the guys who sell the bread? Bread-making is easy. Also it’s not time-consuming. No really. It isn’t. Let me explain. Bread-making is all about very simple recipes and a little technique. Overall it does take some time to produce a loaf but your presence is only required in short energetic bursts interspersed by natural things happening on their own. Imagine the time you spend on any given evening watching some fine American television programming. All the time of yours it takes is the bits when the adverts are on. Not really precious time. In fact it’s time you would prefer not to have. Convert it into something really precious. Google bread recipes. Bake a little bread. Make your life a little better. Re-examine your relationship with the food you eat. Like any worthwhile relationship it takes a little effort to really feel the benefit, but to labor the analogy, a little effort is well worth it. So try and get closer. Get closer to what your food is. Chickens don’t naturally come in nugget-form. You (or your kids) want nuggets? Buy a decent chicken. Take the breasts off and pop them in a bowl. Next take the legs off, pop them in a bag, put the bag in the freezer. Put the resulting carcass in a pot with some chopped up carrots and onions, cover with water and boil. Take the wings off those breasts. Toss them in a little flour and throw in a hot oven for 15 minutes. Those are yours. As a treat. Shake a little Hot Sauce over them and crack open a Beer. You see… you are already being rewarded! Cut the breast meat into nuggety pieces. Toss in the flour you had left over and then into a little beaten egg. Then into some breadcrumbs. Then bake off in that oven of yours that is still hot. 15 minutes later you’ll have your nuggets. While the nuggets are in the oven, peel and boil some potatoes, make some mash. And the boiling bones? Reduce them, thicken with a little cornstarch and you have some gravy. All from scratch, all pretty tasty home-cooking and all without having to deal with fake colonels with dodgy beards. And best of all, you aren’t buying garbage. Get closer to where your food is from… Shop local. Reward the producers near to you who take pride in the goods they sell. It also cuts down on road-trips to the mega-mart. If you have a good local butcher, for the sake of all that is holy please use them. They’ll get to know you and reward you. They may occasionally give you some free meat, but they’ll always give you meat free from fecal coliform. Walk around a Farmer’s Market. You’ll see fantastic produce that will inspire you. You’ll see vegetables fresh from the field with no more packaging than a little of the earth they grew in. You’ll probably meet the very people who grew or raised the food you’re going to buy and eat. You’ll start to actually enjoy your food shopping. Buy local. (There is a difference) Think about what it takes in order for your food to get to the point of sale. There’s little credit to your vegetarianism if all your veggies are being flown halfway round the world to you. I believe the moral high-ground is mine if I buy a Lamb Chop from a farm a mile down the road while your guacamole is made from avocados who clock up more air-miles than Richard Branson. If you make the decision to buy local you can enjoy the changing seasons and you’ll end up with a much more varied diet instead of just eating stir-fried Chilean mange-tout all the time. Which is boring. And while you are at it, stop creating so much garbage too. Of course you should re-cycle but go a step further. Or rather go a step smarter. Think about the amount of trash you are creating. Buy products that have minimal packaging or none at all. Re-use shopping bags. Stores will actually give you money for doing this! Oh and while you enjoy your tasty burger, made by you from steak you ground in your own kitchen from beef reared by a committed artisan farmer on a low-intensity farm, give yourself a pat on the back with the other hand. Allow yourself few pats. A well-deserved pat for your humane attitude toward animal husbandry, another for not contributing to the rampant obesity clogging America and yet another for not poisoning yourself nor helping fund the poisoning of others. And perhaps a final one for not destroying all life on planet Earth. A nice bonus (and a tasty burger).

OK, so now you want to make spinach too expensive for the poor. I wonder what the cost basis is for watered beds vs field grown spinach. I don't think they use antibiotics on spinach nor do I believe do they feed it "frankenstein foods" to make it grow. Again, it would be nice to have a selection of organic foods at our local stores but to feed our population we do need "food factories". I would like my food to be humanely treated as much as possible. I don't want my chicken to be drop kicked before it's killed nor do I want my beef to be skinned alive. Nothing's perfect so I expect some problems like this to creep into the system, people are not perfect. To be honest though, if it takes the occasional kicked chicken to put some meat on the table of a poor family I don't mind. Another thing, up thread you mentioned having a farmer's market. It's a wonderful thing, something I've brought up with our Mayor. The poor shop for the lowest prices to stretch their food budget, that means chain stores. Farmer's Markets are for people who have the leisure time to shop. When I was a young child (before the advent of a grocery store every few blocks) my Mother bought meat from the butcher, greens from a produce stand and groceries from the corner store. Milk was delivered and in the Summer you would have trucks drive down the ally hawking fresh produce. Since then our population has almost doubled and continues to grow. You cannot expect to feed a growing population using organic methods without price increases. Price increases hurt the poor disproportionately, look at what happened to corn prices when the U.S. switched from MTBE to ethanol. Should the poor in Mexico, Central & South America make do with less corn for tortillas and other staples? If you have a problem with fast food, that's fine, more power to you. Having been in a position where all I could afford to eat was rice for a month I can see where this push for organic foods, regardless of the consequences, would seem offensive. ← Make up your mind. I'm either offending you for advocating the 99c Organic Spinach or I'm offending you by trying to price it higher for some reason. I'm simply putting information out there that I don't think people have. It is an easy thing to do to reach for the 69c a lb chicken parts in the mega-mart. (price-checked at King Soopers today. 10lb of frozen Chicken Quarters for $6.90) I understand that. However, given all the facts, knowing everything about that Chicken I think a lot of people would buy a smaller amount of meat, add some extra veggies and feel alot better about the food they were eating. It really doesn't come down to rich or poor. It comes down to knowledge. It is easier to not think. It's easier to ignore stuff. But if you are poor in America, you really ought to think because you better not get sick. And there are way too many unscrupulous companies who'll take your thoughtless dollar in exchange for garbage.

I'm not sure whether you're responding to my post at all, but what you're saying here is not news to me (or many many others). I haven't been to a supermarket for about 7 months (for food--I still have to buy toothbrushes, paper towels, etc., there) and I buy all of my meat from local organic producers (luckily for me, its available year round except for chicken). Its double the price but I've begun to eat half the meat (it balances out that way). I appreciate the enthusiasm with which you are arguing your case, but sometimes that enthusiasm gets in the way too. Most people don't want to spend the time to seek out local products or cut their consumption of meat in half. Some people can't afford to shop this way because of their budget. If you suggest to people that only radical change is the answer, they will shut off. I'm trying to offer some thoughts about practical ways to begin changing people's thinking about food. ← Radical change is AN answer, but much more preferable would be ANY change from people. There are some truths that a lot of people don't want to face though. Good food doesn't have to be expensive. But cheap, processed food is never good. It's not a nice thing to have to think and upon reflection realise that you are lazy and thoughtless. And irresponsible. But what if it's true?

Don't you know that Americans consuming flash frozen farm raised shrimp from Zimbabwe is better for the environment than a local tomato? ← Beautiful! I love your sense of irony. But there are those who can't detect cyber-sarcasm. Still as an added bonus, whilst flying sub-standard seafood around the world, wrecking oceanic eco-systems and depriving hard-working American fishermen of a time-honored trade we can also prop-up a crypto-fascist genocidal regime in Africa. Bottom line though, it doesn't even taste good!

I love it! This article and the ones to follow really require a response from the reader. There will be people who agree and they unfortunately will probably get least from this whole thing. Then there are those who kind of know but don't have access to alternatives or time to find them themselves. For these guys, keep checking in and reading, you're in for a wonderul time! Then there are the other people. Now I don't ask, expect or require people to agree with me. However, if you really disagree with this first article and vehemently defend the industrialisation of the food that you and your families are being asked to eat, you need to have a moment of pause. Really, truly look inside yourself and ask yourself what you are defending. And what is it that I am promoting that you don't like so much.... Anyhoo, enjoy! MWB

Food choices are guided by budget and ground beef is nowhere near $1.05/lb. Having been poor I can understand the need for cost effective shopping and again I'm not talking about fast food. We all would like to have the ability to buy organic foods but you could not feed 300 million + people using only organically grown/raised foods. If you tried, it would be ecologically harmful to the enviroment. ← Wow. Raising organic food is harmful to the environment? Food industrialisation is responsible for a catalogue of ills in the US and abroad. Many cultures know how to feed themselves well and cheaply. It is a shame that in such a multi-cultural society as America, these skills are being lost to generations only interested in McNuggets.

Well it doesn't take farmland, rather watered beds. Also the cumulative effect is far nicer to the environment. No pesticides, no antibiotics, and you don't need fields of GM grian and soy so you can feed the Spinach 'Frankenstein foods' to make it grow.

You misunderstand. I don't advocate vegetarianism for the poor or indeed anyone. However I do believe that the food choices people make don't have to be guided by one's budget and they certainly shouldn't be guided by a red-headed clown. Ground Beef is indeed a staple and there's nothing wrong with it per se. The problem comes when people think it should cost $1.05 a pound. Compounding that problem by then introducing a box of Hamburger Helper into the equation is just an unfortunate issue of taste.

This is a myth perpetuated by bakers & pastry chefs!

The poor could probably benefit the most from such a change of diet. Just because it's possible to produce a Hamburger retailing at 99c doesn't mean you should. And you certainly shouldn't eat them. A great local store in Boulder, Lucky's, will sell you a bunch of Organic Spinach for that same 99c. It should be a no-brainer. It is sad that it isn't.

Well, it would take a huge amount. Probably a prohibitively large amount. So the real question is.... given that we can't produce the same amount of Beef ethically as we can un-ethically, isn't it the case that we shouldn't be producing as much Beef? As I say in the article. we need to eat less meat, pay more for it but ultimately eat better as a result.

I'll post some solutions later this week.... I understand that pretty much everyone here on eGullet represents the choir, but when I looked into how bad things were I was really shocked. I lived in Notting Hill, West London where we had a daily Farmer's Market right through the year and you couldn't move without tripping over organic meat and produce. Now I live in Boulder, Colorado and despite Boulder's 'green' reputation it is very hard to find ethically produced food in regular stores. In our local Safeway there was not a single free-range chicken to be had and it wasn't because they had sold them all! Still hopefully the chicken issue is soon to be solved by becoming the producers ourselves! We'll let you know how it goes!

The search for good meat in America. Part One. Some problems. Americans love meat. Actually I would go so far as to suggest that even more American than the proverbial Apple Pie would be a nice thick juicy steak. However, I have to go one further and suggest that sadly it isn’t a lovely, marbled piece of well-aged Beef that most defines America… It’s a Burger. And what a burger it is. What a piece of work. A huge amount of money, time and energy have gone into the business of producing burgers. The business of transforming a noble protein into garbage. The business of taking a simple, classic and satisfying dish and turning it into what amounts to a weapon of mass-destruction. Now this may sound like alarmist nonsense to some of you. However, consider some of the facts. Whether you know it or not factory farming produces nearly all of the animal products (I hesitate to call a lot of it food) in the United States. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, puts it thus, "Americans have to pretend factory farms don't exist. They turn their eyes away, because there's no alternative, there's no choice". These methods of intensive meat production cause harm on many levels. Even if one discounts any considerations regarding animal welfare, the processes and products have serious consequences and the results are harmful to humans. Fact. It can be proved and it has been. It could even destroy the planet. Factory-reared livestock no longer stroll and graze on rolling green pastures. They are intensively raised in sheds, cages or pens and fed (mostly) GM grain and soy. Cattle alone account for 70% of annual US grain-production. Just to produce the fertilizer for that grain adds 40 million tons of CO2 to the US national carbon-footprint. Then all those tractors, combine harvesters and transport trucks etc add another 60 million tons. The basic tasks of animal-husbandry as well as milk production account for another 30 million tons. These figures don’t take into account the amount of CO2 that would have been absorbed by those rolling pastures and the effect of de-forestation for the purposes of cattle production. And then there’s methane. Methane is another ‘greenhouse gas’, for those who don’t know these are the emissions which hang around in the atmosphere soaking up the heat from the Sun and thereby causing Global Warming. CO2 is pretty bad for this but Methane is a monster! Methane is regarded as "20 to 30 times more effective at absorbing infrared radiation" than Carbon Dioxide. In total, an estimated 104 million tons of methane is released annually by cattle alone. That could equate to the ecological nastiness of 24 YEARS of CO2 damage, caused in a single year, EVERY YEAR. For burgers. And not even tasty ones. "The voluminous evidence now strongly suggests that unless we act boldly and quickly to deal with the underlying causes of global warming, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes including more and stronger storms like Hurricane Katrina, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific." (Al Gore – An inconvenient truth) Wouldn’t a straightforward way to tackle one of the underlying sources be to reject factory-produced meat and meat products? This involves a simple decision to eat less meat, pay more for it, but to eat better as a result. But these are long-term issues that might not kill anyone for ages….. Forget the big, planet-size problems. What about the really tiny virus-sized ones? In the scientific study, ‘The effect of commercial production and product formulation stresses on the heat resistance of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (NCTC 12900) in beef burgers’ the production method of processing, storing and cooking burgers was replicated under laboratory conditions. This study found that commercial processing and product formulation have profound effects on the heat resistance of E. coli O157:H7 in beef burgers. Put in simple terms it shows that the way burgers are made, stored and served commercially, actually makes this killer bug stronger. So how bad can E. coli be? Well, in May 2000, 1,300 cases of gastroenteritis were reported and six people died as the result of E. coli contaminating drinking water in Walkerton, Ontario. So it can kill you. Oh and by the way health authorities investigating that very case determined that the most likely source was cattle manure runoff. Manure from dairy cows is also thought to have contributed to the disastrous Cryptosporidium contamination of Milwaukee's drinking water in 1993, which killed more than 100 people, made 400,000 sick and resulted in $37 million in lost wages and productivity. This should tell you something about commercial food processing. Not only are the products unpalatable, they are dangerous. The food that results from these processes is unappetizing, unhealthy and unnecessary. And as a completely unforeseen by-product they are ‘beefing-up’ E. coli (sorry, couldn’t resist) So there you have it. Cheap beef kills people. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes it’ll just make you wish you were dead. But it doesn’t have to be like that.