docsconz

Doc I know quite a few farmers (and ex farmers). Everyone should feel good about their work. I also know many people who work for large corporations and feel just as good about what they do. A lot of folks who work for Monsanto for example should be proud of the work the company is doing to alleviate hunger. Are they any less (or more) "noble" than a farmer? Let's remember that all corporations are people. I feel this is a silly game of tit for tat--who's the noblest of them all. I have no particular stake in defending large corporations. It is difficult to assess each persons criteria Few of us do any work purely for enjoyment so money is most always an issue whether you work in the fields or in a field (chosen or otherwise). Truth be told I am more suspicious of the self righteous. I can deal with the capitalist--I understand the game--I benefit--they get my money. I am a bit unsure of the altruist--but the situation is the same--if they make a good product I like--I buy it. Either way, I respect the result of their hard work--why they do it is up to them. I also believe that starry eyed altruistic people leaving the big city rat race for the simple life and a chance to serve mankind aside--much of the artisinal farming today is a result of serious professional farmers who have turned to these crops and products from less profitable one's. (I know personally both types of folks). Even the most altruistically motivated people are in the game for money to a certain extent--no one is giving products or labor away for free (ok Mayor Bloomberg works for a dollar a year). Who do I trust most--someone who is motivated to produce the best quality product for whatever reasons. I simply don't ask and don't care. If it's to make a lot of money great! (outside of Wall Street--I really don't know many people who work hard for only money and remotely enjoy what they do. There are always trade offs. You make some very good points. I always read your posts carefully. I don't really disagree with you--I think we are looking at the same issue a bit differently here. ← John, I respect your opinions and posts, which is one reason I engage with them. i also agree that for the vastest part of this topic we are not really disagreeing. My point on the farmers wass not whether that is "nobler" than anything, just that the profit motive is not very high on the list of what makes someone want to be a small farmer. Of course, they are better off growing things that will sell and off which they can make a living. I also don't mean to impugn anyone who works for Monsanto or any other specific business. They are all doing a job. sometimes, though I think the job itself may be an issue though and whether or not it considers my or anyone else's long-term best interests as opposed to the job's. Sometimes it can be an issue of self-righteousness. Sometimes not as for opposition. I am also not anti-capitalist. i am all for making a profit and think the market is often a good way and often the best way for things to sort themselves out. When things get too big, however, sometimes the market economy gets left behind. In any case I enjoy your posts when we joust and also when we agree.

A few photos from Ferran Adria's small group demonstration: The line-up of Texturas Products. Ferran chats with Dr. Tim Ryan, President of the Culinary Institute of America through an interpreter. Harold McGee and Ferran Adria. McGee was the moderator of the session. Potato vs. truffle. How would the potato be viewed if it was as rare and costly as a truffle? A demonstration and discussion. Ferran and his lightly cooked clams. Rafa Morales and Ferran Adria squeeze shrimp heads. Lightly cooked shrimp. Rafa Morales pours melted ice cream into an Isi "Gourmet Whip" to make whipped cream. Many of Adria's techniques are transferable to a home kitchen. Adria makes carrot "air". Using Xantham Gum. Ferran with a can of agar. Making fresh orange sorbet with liquid nitrogen. Though it has taken awhile, this concludes the content for my presentation of this incredible conference that I was fortunate enough to attend. I hope that you have enjoyed it and perhaps more inclined to set a place for Spain and Spanish food at your table.

John, how many of these farmers, do you really know? I can introduce you to more than a few who would disagree vehemently with you. Sure they are in business and hope to turn a profit, for without one it is difficult to continue. I daresay, though that if not for altruism and desire for a certain lifestyle, most of these people would not be doing what they do. Unlike big agribusiness, there is not a lot of money in the field compared to the amount of work and risk that goes into it. The fact is that most of these farmers feel very good about what they do and for the reasons they do it. The financial returns simply are not the reasons though. That they do feel good about what they do and the reason that they are making enough money to stay in business, is largely for the reasons you ascribed, however, as chefs do appreciate and demand quality and an increasing segment of the population is as well - ue to a significant extent to article's like Pollan's and movements like Slow Food. Sometimes people do, because it makes them feel good for other reasons. My wife recently bought some granola from a farmers market. I ate it expecting it to be good, but it was like eating sawdust. It was terrible. I certainly won't be buying that again no matter how good it might be for me. Ah, the "C" word! Not all "chemicals" are created equal and not all synthesized chemicals are either, a point that I expect you will agree with. That these "chemicals" have been around the food supply in one form or another in one place or another for quite some time is really beside the point. What makes them relevant for this discussion though is that in no case that I am aware of have nutraceutical claims been made for any of them. I am all for them if they are used in such a way as to enhance my gastronomic pleasure. John, you are consistent in your defense of large agribusiness in this topic and elsewhere. One of the reasons many are so distrustful of them is that their raison d'etre is profit and not altruism. Of course not as that is what business is. If the nature of the business were to look for long-term profits and sustainability over short term gains and maximizing current profits for stakeholders, concerns would be much less. However, they are responsible to current stakeholders and maximizing current and near-term profits potentially at the expense of later generations. In addition the stakes are huge. Is it any wonder that so many are suspicious of their motives and their actions? It is not as if big business in general has historically cared for anything other than profits. That is not to say that big business is evil or hasn't contributed great things to the world or even that what large agribusiness is doing and has done is necessarily wrong or not good. At least some of it probably is. Sometimes the interests of big business and the rest of the world do intersect, but their motives must constantly be scrutinized.

Maybe so, but is it sustainable? On a separate note, one element that does not get nearly as much credit as it probably deserves in terms of increased longevity and quality of life is the major improvement in dental care in this country. Not only does that allow people to eat better for longer, it probably has very real benefits in terms of an individual's overall health. perhaps ironically, given the nature of this discussion, it is probably an additive, fluoride, that has done more than any other single thing to achieve the improvements seen.

A lot of these books tend to come from chefs either with a constantly evolving cuisine such as Adria or those with a very broad cuisine such as Ducasse. Others tend to be more technique focused such as joan roca's or many of the pastry books. It will be interesting to see how that develops in this country as more chefs become focused on evolution and cataloging a body of work. I can see chefs like Achatz, Cantu and Dufresne for example catalogue their work like their European peers. This phenomenon of ultra-high end books in Europe is not limited to the culinary world either. Rizzoli for example has built a major business on putting out ultra-high end, expensive Art books.

I am in absolute agreement with you here, Steven. To paint an entire cuisine as broadly inferior due to a number of mediocre practitioners is absurd. While it may be easy to grill a fish at home, the process of doing it well is much more difficult than it appears starting with selecting the best fish. When done well with top quality ingredients the results are sublime. Then that is only a small portion of what comprises Greek cuisine.

Thanks for the link to her obit, Kate. Her book is special. She appears to have been just as special.Her shoes will be difficult to fill to maintain that book up to date.

7 and 9PM are good times in NYC. Try 5:30 or 10:30! Then again 10PM is probably prime time in Madrid, San Sebastien and Barcelona. Nevertheless, though the customs may be different I know from whence you speak.

you might not, but many other people do. and they're not all innocent dupes of evil corporate mind-engineering. ← Let me make my point more clearly, then: I don't think that people usually have the same motivation for getting a whopper that they have for getting prime beef and micro greens, nor do I think those three products are marketed to the same demographic or on the same basis, for the most part. ← You know Pan, last week I would have agreed with you. But, last week, someone, gave me a light slap up the side head, and let me know that prime beef, micro greens, and whoppers, do co-exist within the same customer. It's more complex than you or I thought. ← Is anything simple or straightforward?

This is a very interesting post and question. I can not think of one American chef's book that approaches the publishing quality of the elBulli books or the Ducasse books. While I don't have any answers, I do have a few observations to add. One is that the meals at the Michelin three star restaurants in Europe are generally more costly than those in the United States - one exception being elBulli, which is relatively affordable. That cost difference is magnified by the current exchange rate between the dollar and the euro or the pound. While the Ducasse and elBulli books are examples of European restaurant driven books, it seems that high-end pastry chef books are even more common than those from their savory colleagues. I always enjoy perusing the pages of the latest J.B. Prince catalogue to see what is out there.

Thank you, Judith for the repeated kind responses. I do appreciate them. Those marcona almonds are nastily addictive though, aren't they? Don't get started on iberico though! That can be a very expensive habit.

I am 100 per cent in agreement with FG on this. This entire issue has been politicized. The discussion has become rife with ill supported conventional wisdom. It has been corrupted and confused by various groups with political agendas--so called movements. There is also a nasty thread of anti capitalism, anti big business running through a lot of it that appeals to self loathing and self obsessed Americans. I find it interesting that these discussions invariably turn from processed foods to corporate America and MacDonald's a linkage that always seems to be bubbling just below the surface. The debate and discussion of interesting and important topics has become poisoned by a good vs evil mentality that has made rational thought something that just gets in the way of the cause. For example the term "processed." Most every food is processed as has been noted here. yet we can't have the discussion because to many this is not really about what we eat etc it is about polemics--" processed" is a code word for MacDonald's et al. it really means "processed our way vs processed their way." I also agree that leaving out a critical element like exercise renders most of these discussions about health and nutrition moot. Same for ignoring the reality of our overall health today vs the our health in the past. Another factor often left out is taste and the pleasure of eating. Eating is about a lot more than nutrition, and health. I find the current selling of wine as a healthy product with claims of disease prevention obnoxious. How about we like it with our food and enjoy the effects of alcohol! That's good enough for me! How about process with the goal of producing food that tastes good! Then we can talk about process in terms of saving the planet or the animals or the whatever. All the agonizing over statistics and dire warnings of we're killing ourselves, processed food is killing us, we gotta join a movement --healthfood, slow food, organic food, no food, yadda yadda yadda. Eating and health? The answer may be all too simple. Moderation and exercise! But hey--that's too easy. One can't sell many books based on advice that obvious. ← Did you read the article? If so, I am not sure what you are ranting about here on this topic. The reason I suggested that this article be "required" reading before engaging in discussion in the politicized food topics is because I think it does a good job in conveying the complexities of the situation while also recognizing the realities of the issues facing today's world. Neither the issues nor the solutions are simple. They are complexly inter-related defying the easy fixes of nutritional supplementation, which are aimed squarely at a demographic looking to have their cake and eat it too. I would like those easy fixes too, but realizing that they don't exist, I am making a conscious decision to eat what pleases me and not pay too close attention to the purported health fads of the moment. I don't worry about it too much because I happen to enjoy eating a varied diet. I do, however, sometimes have trouble understanding what "moderation" means.

I agree with most of what you are saying, and would like to add that a doctor friend once told me that all of the intervention-type medical care has only added something like 6 days (weeks? I can't remember - must need ginkgo biloba...) to the overall life expectancy. The two things that added tremendously to our life spans in the late 19th and 20th centuries were improved sanitation and vaccinations. ← While it is true that much "interventional" health care does indeed get utilized at the end of life, extending life for limited periods and at questionable quality of life, I believe that you took his staement out of context. Where do you think improved sanitation and vaccinations came from? There are also plenty of day to day examples of interventional health care that save lives routinely. An appendectomy, now considered routine, was once a routine killer of otherwise healthy people - the one death on Lewis and Clark's expedition resulted from appendicitis. As deadly as cancer often still is, many more people now live significantly longer and with much improved quality of life thaan they used to. That more people are in fact getting cancer is another question, which may actually be pertinent to this discussion of nutritionism.

I'd like to see good information where coronary bypass and stents have been "in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive. Certainly, there are instances where it has been so and the technology and knowledge continues to be honed, but I know of no-one in the medical field who feels that these procedures have not been an overall huge advance. As for eliminating diabetes medications - I know that if I had not had access to those medications and I were still alive, my life and the quality thereof would be markedly different than it currently is. Of course, if I did not prematurely develop diabetes in the first place it would likely be a moot point. Of course, it may very well be the case that if all those elements of health care were removed "people would still be living much, much longer," but I doubt it.

They are certainly processed. They may or may not be refined. Besides the question is not really whether some of this is an issue. The question is whether the predominance of refined foods is an issue and how much. Deny it as much as you want, but there is clearly an epidemic of diabetes in this country along with all the ills that go along with it. Maybe diet is not the culprit, but then again maybe it is. Unfortunately, nutritional science really isn't mature enough to make any real determinations though elements are strongly suggestive.

That would be a situation in which the quality of the service was particularly important! In all seriousness, I think your distinction between processed and refined is valid.

There are a lot of factors that can explain increases in disease. A big one is that when people live longer they get more diseases. Another is the "epidemic of diagnosis," which identifies diseases earlier and at lower thresholds than ever before. And I'm not ready to pin the puniness of 19th Century man entirely on malnutrition -- unless you want to define malnutrition as the diet Pollan recommends. Middle class people were also smaller and weaker well into the 20th Century. As long as we're making lists of required reading, let's ass Gina Kolata's July 2006 New York Times piece, "So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You." There are indeed many factors that can influence an increase in disease, but in the diseases that we are talking about - namely diabetes - I can assure you that the disease is occurring (Type II) earlier in life than ever and to more and more people who do not fit the classic profile. Along with the earlier incidence of this disease comes earlier sequelae. Let's not forget the advances that have been made by modern medicine that have increased people's lifespans and reduced the effects of certain chronic diseases - namely the effects antibiotics have had in reducing respiratory problems by reducing the incidence and severity of tuberculosis, a disease that had been quite common and unfortunately is regaining steam in a frightening way due to a combination of antibiotic resistance and the prevalence of HIV in certain parts of the world; the incidence of chronic respiratory problems like asthma do not appear to be declining, but increasing in a similar fashion to diabetes; valvular heart disease's lowered incidence can be attributed to antibiotic related reduction of rheumatic fever; arteriosclerosis due to the emergence of statins; and back and joint problems due to less hard physical activity, more rest when injuries do occur and better treatment. Most of these advances have little or nothing to do with nutrition. The argument can be made, as to how much better we might be doing with a better diet. I think one of Pollan's most salient points is that none of this occurs in a vacuum. It is all inter-related and difficult to reduce to independent variables. Many of the "improvements" that we think we are making by taking a "nutritionism" approach appear to not be improvements at all. Of course the irony here is that the very same nutritionism techniques are used to demonstrate that they don't work as those that demonstrate that they do.The bottom line is that there is no clear cut answer from a nutritionism perspective - at least not with the science in its infancy.

Fewer people are existing on a subsistence level with malnutrition. That may be one reason why people are bigger, stronger and living longer. However, the incidence, no the explosion of physiologic disease seen at the last quarter of the past century continuing today is no figment of the imagination. Data that eating less, though nutritionally sound advances longevity is at the very least highly suggestive. My problem though is that I enjoy eating too much to give it up and to truly eat less. I prefer quality over quantity in years. Of course the risk is that I expose myself to the possibility of too many years of low quality with chronic physiologic disease - a real conundrum.

What I found interesting about the article was that there are no easy answers or magic bullets. The science of nutrition is quite complex and as he well shows in its infancy. The article reinforces for me what I learned from my parents growing up - anything in moderation (I would add - even processed foods as they are subject to the same scientific nutritionist vagaries as anything else). The problem is figuring out what moderation means.

Do you really recommend this? Well, if so I can deduce my own conclusion about Inopia. ← Vedat, for what they try to achieve, that is traditional tapas food, I don't think they fail at it, although one could say the price point is a bit high. ← Silly, are you referring to Tapac24, Inopia or both?

Sam likely knows more than I do, but recent communication with Paul revealed that he is indeed working on something that he is not currently at liberty to discuss. Man, I would love to be at that test dinner that Sam mentioned in Grub street!

This NYT Magazine article by Michael Pollan should IMO be required reading for this discussion. It is being discussed here. It offers elements that can be used in support of the proposed ban and elements that can be used to argue against it.

I would suggest that this article should be required reading for anyone interested in taking part in any of the debates/discussions on health and food currently taking place.

Formerly of the acclaimed One.Waterfront at The Cape Grace Hotel in Cape Town, Bruce Robertson left the hotel and opened a new restaurant in Cape Town - The Showroom. Inventive with a deft hand for fusion, Robertson has taken the plunge in opening his own place. He is an alumnus of the Gordon Ramsey School. I am curious to learn of any experience with this new restaurant. I very much enjoyed his work at One.Waterfront, the helm of which has now been taken over by Craig Paterson. The Travel Section of the New York Times highlighted both today with an article on Cape malay cuisine.

I am a big fan of Jordan's but I disagree with your statement that without him Varietal would be gone. Ed Witt also happens to be a very talented chef and his food is quite good. Most of the discussion has not been about whether or not either chef is not producing good food, but about their clear difference in style and the effects positive or negative that that has on the restaurant and customers perceptions. I do agree though that without Jordan, much of this discussion would not be taking place. As the person who started this topic, I can say that it was indeed Jordan that drew me there in the first place.