I'm too lazy to find any actual poll numbers on this, so I could be wrong, but my strong guess is that most U.S. consumers involved in the recent growth of organic food are choosing organic for health reasons. One might even think of the organic boomlet as a subspecies of the general American health mania -- the same one that sent customers herding toward fat-free and low-carb food.
If this is true, we wouldn't expect consumers to particularly care about how far the food has traveled or what size farm it was grown on. They see "organic" as another health label; if it has any specific content to them at all (as opposed to vaguely healthful connotations), they probably associate it with lack of pesticides, and pesticide-free is pesticide-free, whether from an industrial farm in Chile or Farmer Bob's family farm down the road.
How can we get U.S. consumers to care about the broader food system? There are two basic ways.
One would be to develop a label or certification program related to food miles traveled. That way consumers who do care about local food could act on their convictions, and those who don't might at least pause to give it some thought. This option has been discussed quite a bit.
But there's another: getting American eaters interested in flavor. Meats, fruits, and vegetables can travel thousands of miles and sit for days or weeks in delivery trucks and on warehouse shelves and still be organic, but they can't do that and still taste good. Real, quality flavor cannot be faked; it comes from farms where animals and plants are produced in a healthy environment, and it's eaten shortly after being harvested.
If we could get Americans interested in quality food -- demanding it -- much of the rest would take care of itself.
The problems with this strategy are legion, though. Americans' dysfunctional relationship with food, well-documented by Michael Pollan and others, is longstanding. For one thing, we think of time spent seeking out and carefully preparing food as time wasted. And we think of money spent on higher quality food as money wasted.
Also, it takes time to cultivate a sophisticated palette. Just as a novice beer drinker will think all stouts taste the same -- perhaps dimly sensing differences -- someone who loves beer will instantly be able to distinguish a quality stout from a cheap one. Most Americans are raised on a diet of fatty, salty food and have developed a craving for that kind of tawdry instant rush.
You could even put the point more broadly: Puritanism and the protestant work ethic are alive and well in U.S. culture. We simply do not take pleasure seriously. We take very little vacation time and compartmentalize our recreation. We have the same conflicted binge/shame relationship with food that we do with drugs and sex.
We're not good at leisure, and as Europeans know, well-done leisure is a skill like any other.
Anyway, I have no big answer here. It just strikes me that we're always discussing the food system in moral and environmental terms, when we could get to much the same destination via the sensory and savory.
In this, as in so many other areas, the green life is not drudgery and difficulty, but delight and gratification. That, I fear, is precisely why America has not taken to it.
Comments
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bookerly Posted 5:13 pm
26 Aug 2006
David,
One problem with advocating local farms as better than distant farms is the basis. Clearly Americans have shown little resistance to buying things manufactured elsewhere, so why would they object to buying things grown elsewhere?
If you want to claim a moral value to local farms, you should know that most Americans are aware that Farmer Bob exploits undocumented workers with the best of them. He might be in love with organics, but his relationship to his workers is not always any better than Big MacFarmer, the industrial guy.
BTW, most Chinese farms are not industrial, they are too small. You can criticize them for being far away, but they are not industrial.
The taste argument would work, but really, for a nation that likes industrial pizza and chain fast food, I don't think it will go very far.
There is also the danger of sounding, hmmm, ummm, elitist.
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 5:32 pm
26 Aug 2006
You make another excellent point: We ought to make a practice of looking in on Farmer Bob. And of asking him what's what regarding his workers.
Why in the world are the local NYC chapters of Sierra and Audubon not on top of this already?
God!, is this why we need Grist??
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KathyF Posted 5:36 pm
26 Aug 2006
Especially when it's going to sit in the home fridge as long as a week before it's eaten.
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caniscandida Posted 6:02 pm
26 Aug 2006
Tom Philpott and others could be much more eloquent on how it matters, and why it matters.
I am just a little, street-scrambling Merkin, knowin' nothin' 'bout nothin', and yet I would gladly testify before Chief Justice Roberts himself, admirable straight Catholic white male, that yes, indeed, there is a difference.
David's excellent question, though, has nothing to do with the law, and nothing to do with nature, and nothing to do with science. It has to do with us: Why in the world have we been reduced to this point, in which we care little or nothing about flavor?
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WriterByNature Posted 9:02 pm
26 Aug 2006
David's article and everyone's comments are fascinating food for thought.
I was raised on a farm - it's hard work. Even years later, I can taste a fresh-picked vegetable. I can tell a one-day old, two-day old, etc. The flavor changes with time.
In my lifetime I have seen a tremendous disconnect from the sources of our food, shelter supplies, etc. It's much easier to sit behind a desk for hours on end than to bend over picking vegetables, washing the soil off the leaves, preparing or preserving it.
Even the farmers in my local Hudson Valley area have pointed out that they cannot find people willing to pick crops at $10 an hour or more.
We are not going to revert to an agrarian society, so I'm not sure there are answers. What I do know is that when I want fresh-picked these days, I go foraging in the public parks.
I've picked enough lamb's quarters to preserve some for winter use.
I was on a foraging tour with a group of inner city kids last week. It occurred to me that what we are taught to see has everything to do with our attitude toward food - and consequently our health.
JJ Murphy
WriterByNature.com
Creative Content for Your Nature Endeavors
1-800-WRITE-02
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Tom Philpott Posted 12:02 am
27 Aug 2006
But how do you get Americans, two generations off the land and with nearly all regional food traditions nearly dead, interested in flavor--especially with all that fast food and supermarket garbage available at artificially low prices?
The best answer I've come up with is school lunches. Start 'em young. Indoctrinate youth in the sublime skill of enjoying a meal. Reinvest in school cafeterias, which have become crude reheating facilities; bring recent chef-school grads to act as chefs de cuisine in each school, with the goal of grooming a current kitchen staff member for the job. That way, you're not only giving kids well-cooked food, but also delivering skills to a woefully deskilled work force. Finally, and most importantly, dedicate large chunks of school playgrounds to vegetable gardens, using the biointensive techniques of John Jeavon's How to Grow More Vegetables as a guide to serious food production. Chicken yards could provide eggs and fertilizer to the process. And who would do the work? why, child labor, of course. Meanwhile, the schools could combine to form buying clubs to source meat, dairy, and butter from local farms. How would they ever afford extra-virgen olive oil--that critical ingredient? Bought in the vast quantities, the schools could get a good price. Imagine all the learning that could get done: economics, politics, history, biology, chemistry ... it's all there. Alice Waters must become secretary of education!
We harvested 350 pounds of amazing heirloom tomatoes yesterday. Later, we cooked up a meal for a few friends of fresh pasta with eggs our hens had laid that day, pesto with basil and parsley from the garden, a tomato salad, and a green salad with walnuts and beets. For desert, we toasted, shelled, and ground cocoa beans someone brought us from Guatemala, and made it into ice cream using those same eggs.
Maverick Farms has been called a food cult. I wish you all could join.
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sunflower Posted 12:07 am
27 Aug 2006
Growing food is far less labor intensive than preparing and cooking food. And it is a pleasure to be outside meditating while working the garden.
Also, I feel more self reliant and have less fear of the possible collapse of the industrialized economy, less vulnerable.
Only on a purely economic basis does it not make sense as I save only a few dollars per hour of labor, but that is a minor point. I do not pay taxes on those saved dollars and I have garden security not under the thumb of human authority.
I get headaches from neurotoxins in pesticides, plenty of motivation for organic produce.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:52 am
27 Aug 2006
Food, exersize, converstaion.. it all has the capacity to be orgasmic. Why waste the short time we have worshipping quantity?
Eat less food. Eat food that is local and in season, preserve it for later use yourself. Even if you don't grow it yourself.
Use the transcendant power of coincidence. Be in the right place at the right time.
Coincidence is real, the linear time/space cause and effect thinking that takes all value to the "bottomline" is the grand illusion.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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bookerly Posted 3:22 am
27 Aug 2006
Alas Dear CanisCandida, for those who labor in the medival world, where all was kind and gentle, it must come as quite a shock to face the ugly truths of our modern society. I am distressed that I have forced you to look at the underside of your head of lettuce. But I note that it has not dulled your wit at all! (smile)
http://www.therationalradical.com/documents/farm_workers....
http://www.greatvalley.org/indicators/econ05/farm_employ....
http://www.usda.gov/nass/graphics/data/fl_allwg.txt
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/02/ap/business/mai...
http://business.und.edu/BBER/textonly/ND%20Hourly%20Farm%...
While farm wages of eight to ten dollars an hour seem pretty decent, a couple of points need to be considered. These are often migratory wages, and the work is not steady. (One site suggests that the average hours worked is about 1000). At these wages, there is no health insurance, no retirement plan.
For thosw workers who are migratory, there are also the additional costs of travel. Housing tends to be scarce or expensive. (There are still farm workers who live outdoors as they follow the crops.)
While there are many honest farmers, there are also those who cheat migrants (native or immigrant) with little fear of retaliation.
One reason it is hard to fill those jobs is that the overall life is hard and not fulfilling with little chance of improvement, and very difficult on families.
It is lovely that some people have gardens, how rich they are! Most people do not, nor is it easy for them to have one. (There are wonderful urban gardening organizations, but as those who followed the South Central LA saga know, their life is always at risk).
Perhaps my ideal society is not possible, but folks, when you look for allies to "save" the environment, and find that people are busy working to help migrant workers so that they don't have time to sip tea at Sierra Club meetings, you may have your explanation for failing to stop global warming.
This is why there is a Mainstream Environmental Movement and an Environmental Justice movement, and why they rarely meet.
Too bad.
patrick
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bookerly Posted 4:30 am
27 Aug 2006
In China, most farms are small (very very very small by American standards), and most labor is by hand or close to it.
People from local farms come into the city and set up stands (or sell to someone who does). Recently, the apricots have ripened, and begun to appear on the street, lovely and golden. Yum. And dates are coming in.
Just outside the city (say 20 KM or so), there are many small farms. The farmers set up tiny stands all along the roadside, selling whatever is fresh that day or week. Drivers stop and buy goods, but I have gone by bus to do so as well.
Mostly people here buy enough fresh vegetables for one or two days. I have never seen frozen or canned vegetables (except pickles, in a jar), though I am sure there are some around somewhere.
Despite the size of the city and the huge numbers of people, most folks eat food that is fairly local and fresh, and in season.
This is changing somewhat, but not for the vast majority of people.
While I hate it when I can't get one of my favorite dishes because the vegetable is not available, I have come to associate the changes in what I eat with the seasons.
Of course in the large foreign supermarkets, it may be different, but I don't shop there....
patrick
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Corey McKrill Posted 7:48 am
27 Aug 2006
Americans don't recognize good flavor because the stale, refrigerated restaurant food that they eat is being marketed --incessantly-- to them as fresh, premium quality, flavorful, and nutritious. And as long as it looks like the one shown on TV, people may even think it tastes as good as the advertisement insists.
The fact that these marketing strategies work could suggest a couple of different things:
That people do care, they just don't know any better
They care because they are told that flavor is what matters. But then they're told that lack of flavor is actually good flavor. Wouldn't that be ironic ...
Grist's InterActivist ... creating a one-of-a-kind portrait of on-the-ground activism.
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Corey McKrill Posted 7:54 am
27 Aug 2006
Grist's InterActivist ... creating a one-of-a-kind portrait of on-the-ground activism.
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jscorse Posted 10:23 am
27 Aug 2006
However, here's a novel idea: higher health premiums for people who don't eat well, which would reflect the cost to society- this might make people think a little more about eating Big Macs- we all pay different amounts for car insurance depending on where we live, our age, and how much we drive, so no reason that people who eat like crap and impose huge costs on society shouldn't pay more for health insurance. Maybe eating badly should be viewed just like smoking cigarettes.
J.S.
J.S.
htt://voicesofreason.info
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:48 pm
27 Aug 2006
I would also modify Jason's idea of a higher health premium for people who do not eat well, in part because I would be hit with the maximum penalty. Defining what it means to eat well would also be impossible. The things people around the world eat would curl your hair--caterpillars, rats, bats, snails. Obesity is the remainder of calories taken in minus calories burned. You can get fat eating "healthy food" if you eat enough of it. Some insurance companies are giving out bonuses to people who meet certain health parameters, like body fat and cholesterol levels. What you eat doesn't matter as long as you meet the health criteria. A good example of a free market solution.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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bookerly Posted 8:34 pm
27 Aug 2006
There are (as usual) problems with free markets and school lunches.
First of all, schools don't have unlimited spaces to prepare a huge variety of choices. Secondly, as a matter of economics, they tend to buy in bulk, which means centralized purchasing.
So, why doesn't the market work? Well, gee, soft drink manufacturers will sell at a discount to corner the market (locking out milk producers), and large fast food producers will lock out the local producers.
The market gives us mickieD and Coke.
There are other problems (for instance, I volunteered in a school where the food was so bad that none of the teachers would eat it, local school board member's brother had the contract, it was a poor school, no clout by the parents, no media interest).
Higher health premiums for the sick? Hmmm, the point of insurance was, I thought, to spread the burden around.
So, basically, the sick won't be able to afford insurance (under Jason's scheme) and then they can all just, what? Die?
Who decides what eating badly includes? All meat? All fish? All vegetables? We can have cultural wars over this!! Remember what happened to a certain TV host when she suggested eating meat was bad?
Funny, poor people usually don't eat as well, so under Jason's scheme, they would pay more, or lacking money, do without. Sounds somewhat like our current system.
This same problem applies to Biodiversivist answer. Do people really believe that all health problems are due to bad habits?
The free market is a pretty sounding answer for all problems, but it rarely works in the real world.
And is definitely not a good answer for anything related to health care!!
patrick
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bookerly Posted 8:40 pm
27 Aug 2006
Car insurance is not benignly priced according to a set of fair principles. Rather it is priced according to state standards that list pricing rules and regulations.
The reason we have those, is that when left to their own devices, car insurance companies invariably ended up discriminating on the basis of class and race.
Even today, when under the watchful eye (at least once in a while) of state governments, they have problems.
One is that for the sake of efficiency, it is easiest to put people in large classes. All 18 year olds, everyone who lives in a city, and so on.
The problem is that geography was a favorite risk factor. But there was this funny little problem. Certain zip codes had high accident rates, so people paid more. Fair, right? Well, it turned out those were zip codes with highways going through them, and the accidents were mostly involving non-residents. Who didn't pay. The univolved residents paid. Many of whom were poor and minorities.
Gee, the market is so swell!!!
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 10:53 pm
27 Aug 2006
Or no, something really really red. Intensely red. Are tomatoes up to the challenge? Hmmm. How about grapes?
Oh, OK, sure, Roz will come up with something.
Main course:
Breast? Wings? Crunchable digits? Ears? Head?
No eyes, surely.
Tongue? Probably bat's tongue was mentioned in Petronius, I cannot remember, one of Trimalchio's special treats.
Anyway ...
Poor Biodiv. What we do, for our children! A single slice of cheese, in white bread! Washed down with chocolate milk! Yuck! What kind of country do we continue to live in, in which chocolate milk is legal, and marijuana is illegal??!
What would be the problem with setting up a connexion with the Southwest Indian Foundation, and running in a steady supply of green chili salsa? From New Mexico!!
I mean if you are going to die choking on a piece of American cheese on white bread, why not at least smear some New Mexico green chili on it first.
Scripsit Biodiversivista: "Defining what it means to eat well would also be impossible. The things people around the world eat would curl your hair--caterpillars, rats, bats, snails."
Having little hair left to curl, I am happy to assert myself as a bold experimentalist.
Concerning bats, enough said. Yum yum. Not the eyes though. Nor the fuzz.
Snails are escargot, and presumably, nos tre's bons amis les francais know exactly what to do with them. They are mollusks, after all (snails, that is, not the French, who are I believe a kind of crocodilian), and we all love to munch on clams and oysters, squids and octopodes, don't we. So why not snails? Admittedly, the one and only time I ever was served escargot, it tasted like cigarette ash. But, hey, that was anecdotal.
On caterpillars: Well, I like butterflies as much as the next lepidopterophile and fan of Nabokov, but I do not think they are exactly endangered. Anyway, bug-eating desperately needs to be studied and researched and explored. I am on the record for professing my love of chapulines, grasshoppers or locusts or crickets or whatever, an important part of Oaxacan cuisine. I am also on the record for encouraging the development of bug food for farm-raised fish, as opposed to fish food.
On eating rats: Oh whoa. Not my cup of tea. But who knows, this is where Art moves in, and what better place than Seattle!: Rat-tail omelette!; Rat-haunch salad!; Rat-belly milk shakes!; Rat-liver pate'!; Rat-claw pizza!; Rat-ear chocolate mousse!; Rat-eye frozen margaritas! By all means, get all that organic stuff workin' round and round!
Myself, I have my eye on the Rat-claw pizza. Thin-crust, of course.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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amazingdrx Posted 11:33 pm
27 Aug 2006
Did you ever hear of Terracycle?
http://www.terracycle.net/
They make organic fertilizer from garbage. And sell it in recycled soda bottles, with recycled pump sprayers.
The quirk in this story? How do you get organic fertilizer from poisonous garbage, the byproduct of chemical agriculture. you would need organic garbage.
So how does one go about restarting the whole cycle, organically? Where does the local cage free,farm fresh egg producer down the road get their chicken feed? From worms!
But what do you feed the worms? Oranic garbage from organic produce, and you also feed the chickens feed crops like clover and oats that grow in the rows between the organic veggies (besides the high protien worm meal).
Fertilized with the liquid fertilier from the worm poop.
So there you have it, a whole new food cycle. the farmer gets 4 dollars a dozen for the organic eggs. And double the price of supermarket tasteless veggies for the produce and chickens.
But why not take the subsidies away from agribizz and give part of it to the farmer as tax incentives? seems right to me. Help the little guy overcome the big monopolies.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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mihan Posted 3:35 am
28 Aug 2006
I have friends who do not cook at all: they eat pre-packaged things out of boxes in the freezer. When I feed them real food, they acknowledge that it is delightful and incomparable, and yet they aren't interested in duplicating it for themself. Why? Americans do not want to spend time or money to eat well. It is not that they don't see the benefits of eating more pleasurably, it is that they are not willing to shell out (time, money) for it.
I remember seeing all the wonderful (and unfamiliar) fruits for sale at street markets in Italy. I asked my dad why we couldn't buy cool fruits in the US, and he said, "Americans would never pay the money for those."
So we have to do more than lead them to the water. We have to get people to where they see the value of shelling out for good, real food.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:54 am
28 Aug 2006
No food police!!! There are plenty of measurable ways to test people for the quality of their diets which they can influence- e.g. bad chloresterol, trans-fat, etc.
I think it is paternalistic to assume poor people can't eat well- with Wal-Mart moving into organics and other developments this is less and less the case- everyone has agency
With greater incentives comes greater demand comes greater supply of healthy food
I stronly support food stamps for farmer's markets
J.S.
Assistant Professor
Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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bookerly Posted 10:54 am
28 Aug 2006
When I volunteered at a poor school in Boston, there was no cafeteria, so lunches were brought in pre-packed and micro-waved (this was in the early days of the machine, so they were maybe partially to blame).
The food was considered inedible by adults, but the kids were poor and hungry. One wonders if they ever developed a "taste" for the nicer foods?
One day the lunch consisted of partially thawed peanut butter and jelly on white bread, all soggy and half frozen.
Don't know it if was local or not.
patrick
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peahen Posted 4:13 am
29 Aug 2006
Today many average middle-class American couples look like this: have two salaries, long commutes away from the big house on a small lot, many within the safety of a gated community; all this to pay for daycare and after school activities, the big TV, the SUV, some video games and rushed meals at junk(ed) food restaurants most nights.
Just imagine the benefits from simplifying! One hardly knows where to begin, but surely better nutrition while eating together as a family - unrushed - is a good start.
I've discovered a new website that might help those who would like to learn more about food preparation from a chef that emphasizes quality ingredients and simple cooking techniques. So no matter your lifestyle, his free online tips and demonstrations will help you eat better.
http://www.lrn2cook.com/
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willa Posted 11:52 pm
16 Sep 2007
In case you didn't know, body size/shape, cholesterol levels, etc, are determined by a lot of things. Diet is certainly one of them, but as a fat person who eats a very healthy vegetarian diet and is more fit (by any measurement other than weight) than most thin people, I would really like to think I won't ever be penalized financially for my size. I'm already punished for in in enough other ways, thanks.
I'd also like to think people with high cholesterol, or even people who like to eat jelly donuts, won't ever have to pay higher insurance premiums for their bodies' quirks, or their choices to do things they find pleasurable.
It's interesting how the pleasure of food is only considered a good thing when people are taking pleasure in the "right" things. Yes, I prefer fresh produce over jelly donuts, but I have the good sense not to go around claiming to be morally superior every time I eat a local peach. Jeez, you people are enough to drive me to drink (or maybe jelly donuts?).
Oh, and David, a "palette" is a thing you put paint on. I think, perhaps, you meant a "palate"?
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