When I returned to PTS, I noticed that there were several books on the "free shelf" in my hall. Upon closer inspection I noticed that someone had placed The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, on said shelf. As I'd heard about this book from several different friends, I decided it would be a good read when Greek wasn't taking my time. Since Greek has been taking very little of my time, I'm already halfway through the book.
Anyway, the simplest way to describe the book is to say it's about America's broken relationship with food. Pollan takes the time to follow several different meals from start to finish - from a fast food hamburger to a hunted and gathered feast. I've only read about two of the meals so far, fast food and "industrial organic." Reading about the industrial organic meal led me to make my first trip to Whole Foods ever. I'll write more about the book when I finish it, but for now it's the grocery store.
It was an interesting and strange experience. It's definitely a niche market. Whole Foods wouldn't last a week in a low income neighborhood where people are feeding themselves on a couple dollars a day. When I was a kid, my mother had about $300 a month to feed three people. That's just a little more than $3 a day for each of us. Organic gooseberries and whole wheat bread were definitely not on the menu.
I splurged a little, buying root beer made with real cane sugar, a .4 ounce piece of "organic smooshed" raspberries, some freshly made pico de gallo and a bag of fancy potato chips cooked in olive oil and topped with parmesan and garlic. The lowbrow version probably would have cost me less than $5, but at Whole Foods I spent over $12. (And, let me tell you, those chips and pico de gallo will last all week.) It's infuriating to me that the more nutritious a food is, the more it costs. And people wonder why poor people are also fat people.
Whole Foods is sort of a bittersweet place. It's wonderful to have access to organic fruits and vegetables, but buying from a place like Whole Foods does very little to support local growers and is only marginally more sustainable than conventional mega-farms where the cows are pumped full of hormones or chickens are fed beef fat to make them bigger faster. They still use just as much petroleum for transporting and processing their foods which grow in huge monocultures instead of polycultures, which is what nature intended.
All this makes me committed to growing as much of my own food as possible when I have a place to grow it. I'm also considering becoming a de facto vegetarian, eating meat only when it's served to me at someone's house or when I can get it from a farm that grazes its livestock. Eggs and dairy products present a products present more of a problem because I love both of them and don't know how easily I will be able to move away from eating them... Of course, the whole vegetarian idea is still an idea. We'll see.
Anyway, rant over for now.
7 comments:
I have some friends who are hardcore environmentalists, the "omg you shopped at a big evil corporate grocery store you have to go to the little corner organic co-op!!!". I've tried pointing out to them that, if everyone did this, there's no way we could sustain food production for even a fraction of our populace. Honestly, I sometimes get pissed off that there are people starving in the world, and yet there are groups protesting every manner of industrialized farming that could allow these regions to produce the crops they need.
Also, it annoys me that I have no way of knowing if I get any responses to this post, unlike Livejournal.
This is going to sound harsh and and a bit simplistic, but if we hadn't produced so much cheap corn and soybeans using lots of synthetic fertilizers, etc., the world population would have been kept (more) in check by food production and there wouldn't be as many starving people or as many overfed people as there now are. Now that we're in the middle of the problem, though, the question remains: how do we develop a system of farming and feeding the world that is sustainable and productive. You should really read the book, Dan, I bet you'd like it. Or, at least, we could have some great conversations about it.
I am very interested in this conversation - but i have not read the book. One thing I can say is that our local co-op does sell produce/cheese/dairy products/hummus, etc. from local farmers.
In Ithaca we also have a vibrant farmer's market, community supported agriculture programs, local butchery, etc. You could, reasonably, support a family on completely local food. But I know that Ithaca is an anomoly, especially in rural New York. I'll be sad to leave.
RGR - I think that there is access to such things in most cities and towns, it's just that Ithacans are hyper-aware of their community in many ways. So, for instance, there is a farmer's market in Trenton (less than twenty minutes from Princeton) that is open six days a week, at which Central New Jerseyans have access to locally grown produce, but there are so many other options (Whole Foods, etc.) that very few people are going to go twenty minutes out of their way to buy some farm fresh eggs.
I think one of the biggest problems in this whole conversation is that Americans are addicted to cheap food at convenient locations, which allows them the luxury of no planning. I know I am, but I want to be less so.
"Cheap food at convenient locations" is definitely a key, Kate. Santa Barbara has farmers markets almost daily, at different locations. Farmers from all over that area of the state come to sell their produce - tons of options, and pretty good prices due to all the different farmers being there. Lots of middle- and upper-class people, plus many of the downtown restaurants shop there. Still, lower-income families often can't afford those prices or to schedule the time to shop there. Additionally, most farmers markets can't/don't take wic/welfare/food stamps. I agree with you Kate, it's a tragedy that it costs so much money to eat healthy if you don't have a place to grow your own food.
Aha, but see, if we weren't using technology to allow very few people to feed the rest of us, there'd be a lot fewer people who could afford to be philosophers, artists, architects, musicians, scientists, and yes, even theologians. And honestly, I think better medical care has done a lot more to facilitate the population boom than food overproduction.
I've added the book to my Amazon wishlist, noting that the paperback version comes out August 27th...
You're right to point out the other factors in overpopulation. It never pays to think of biology as a closed system (one of the points that Pollan makes in the book). There's never just one silver bullet that would cure the ills of the world.
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better for fewer people to practice the profession you named. In fact, sometimes I think I should be getting out of it, but being a lazy American, I'd rather have a job where I can sit on my ass, reading and thinking all day long.
It's funny that the paperback isn't available on Amazon because I'm reading a paperback copy...
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