You're not allergic, just picky.

30% of people think they have food allergies. Only 8 percent actually do.

Learning to accept consequences

I just wanted to give everyone an update on the current state of my digestive track, as I went out for Szechuan hot pot for the first time last night. But first allow me to set the scene for you...

Picture me on the edge of a cheap, wooden chair in a small, brightly lit restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown. A few minutes after the waiter has finished asking the standard Are-you-sures, he sets down a junky, old burner with such an old connector to the gas can that it seems like it could explode at any minute. He soon brings out a huge bowl and sets it on the burner. Like a grunt on recon, I probe cautiously at first, picking out familiar pieces of beef, shrimp and mussels from a boiling cauldron of spicy broth. I like what I taste, so I start fumbling with the chopsticks more rapidly as I stop discriminating and start pulling out pig intestines, liver, and other unmentionables.


The heat begins at my lips as the numbing effect of the infamous peppercorns takes hold and doesn't stop until the heat of the chilis have warmed by whole throat and stomach. The sweat begins as beads on my forehead but quickly advances to a full-on flop sweat. My hair is naturally thin so as the sweat bonds my hairs together, you can clearly see my pink scalp. The spiciness is becoming hard to handle and I'm breathing so heavily that I'm almost grunting. The occasionally moan of pleasure dueling with pain emits from a deep-down place in my body I can't even control.

With each bite, my shirt is getting flecked with stains of red chili oil as the toxic substance drips through my beard and down my chin. My mouth is so numb from the peppercorns that I basically have a speech impediment, but I'm wide-eyed and rambling nonstop at Rachel because the pain has released so many endorphins that I'm practically delirious. She is saying almost nothing because she is starving and didn't really want to go this restaurant anyway and the food is too incendiary for her to eat. She tries in vain to mask her contempt for me, but who can blame her?

Eventually my belly is so full that I can eat no more and waive the white flag. The table and napkins are ruined. The aftermath must look like some deranged savage cut the throat of his own horse and scooped out the entrails with his bare hands. The restaurant is cash only, so I borrow some money from Rachel, throw down the cash on the table, and stumble out into the night, still drunk on heat.

Flash forward to today: My stomach is bubbling and gurgling like a volcano getting ready to erupt. I sit in my cubicle like a prisoner on death row who has exhausted his appeals, resigned to my fate and waiting for my inevitable date with destiny in what I hope will be my sanctuary: the least frequented restroom in the office.

Tell me why non-endangered whales shouldn't be harvested.

I saw an online Greenpeace petition that wanted me to tell Obama to oppose any relaxation on a ban of commercial whaling and it got me thinking.

I don't know much about the international ban on whaling but I've always heard it was because whales were hunted to the point of extinction. Overfishing of whales was one of those short-sighted practices of centuries past before the idea of environmental stewardship had really taken hold. Without getting into the history of whaling, which has been happening for millennia, and the specific numbers of whale populations, if you assume for a minute that whale populations have rebounded enough to safely allow some limited harvesting, would you have a problem with it?

I think a lot of people would say "No whaling under any circumstances." If that's your stance, I want to know why. Aside from being a mammal, what makes a whale different from a sardine or a tuna?

If you're vegetarian or vegan and don't think we should be eating animals at all, that's fine. I disagree, but that's fine. I'm not really concerned with you, though. I want to know what would make a omnivore be opposed to whaling.

I would imagine you could make the sentience argument for cetaceans, but that's getting dangerously close to speciesism. I just don't think we know enough about animals to assume that a whale or dolphin has sentience but that a pig or chicken or cow or oyster does not.

I have to admit that there's something troubling about eating and killing animals that I have paid just to try to get a glimpse of and that might be more intelligent than we are, but my brain tells me I shouldn't let my emotions get in the way of an ethical decision. Do we really want our dietary decisions made for us based on someone deciding that an animal is sufficiently intelligent.

I also probably wouldn't make whale or dolphin a regular part of my diet based on mercury consumption alone, but I'm having trouble finding any reason that limited whaling should be banned if the population numbers have truly rebounded. Tell me why I'm wrong.

You don't eat meat but you do eat fish?!

With rising mercury levels, species like blue fin tuna disappearing, and the horrendous impact of farmed fish, how can anyone look at me with a straight face and tell me they don't eat meat but then concede that they do eat fish?

Part Two in AgLaw/BioLaw's series on the FDA

I tried to put up a comment last week asking the author what she thought about the rather tenuous link between high cholesterol and heart disease, but it wasn't approved. That's splitting hairs, though, because the point is not whether high cholesterol really does cause heart disease but whether products can claim that they can lower your cholesterol without subjecting themselves to FDA regulation.

http://aglaw.blogspot.com/2009/09/post-two-of-series-relationship-between.html

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Post Two of a Series: The Relationship Between the Level of Regulation under the FDCA and the Health Status of a Product’s Targeted Population

The first post of this series began by asking whether functional foods should be regulated as drugs if they claim to treat abnormal health conditions. For example, was it appropriate for the FDA to characterize Cheerios as a drug as a result of its advertising claim that “you can Lower Your Cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks?” An abnormally high level cholesterol level is a serious risk factor for disease and those with high cholesterol levels are in an abnormal state of health. By virtue of its claims to help this group of unhealthy consumers with their struggle to return to a normal state of health, should the manufacturer of Cheerios be required to undergo the FDA's premarket approval process to show that eating Cheerios is effective in lowering cholesterol as claimed?

The answer to this question may become more apparent by looking at another category of products that claim to help unhealthy people return to a normal health status – weight loss products.

Click here to read the rest.

Pollan on health care reform

Why forcing health insurance companies to stop denying coverage on the basis of chronic diseases or pre-existing conditions could help turn the tide on reforming the farm bill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10pollan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: September 9, 2009

Berkeley, Calif.

TO listen to President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are.

We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.

The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers’ market in front of the White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He’s even floated the idea of taxing soda.

But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America’s fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system. At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some powerful corporate interests on its side — like the large segment of the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.

That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness. Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

The market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will afflict one in three Americans born after 2000, is one of the brighter spots in the American economy. As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

As for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it’s much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill.

But these rules may well be about to change — and, when it comes to reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like “pre-existing conditions” and “underwriting” would vanish from the health insurance rulebook — and, when they do, the relationship between the health insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.

The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.

AGRIBUSINESS dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and has swatted away most efforts at reform. But what happens when the health insurance industry realizes that our system of farm subsidies makes junk food cheap, and fresh produce dear, and thus contributes to obesity and Type 2 diabetes? It will promptly get involved in the fight over the farm bill — which is to say, the industry will begin buying seats on those agriculture committees and demanding that the next bill be written with the interests of the public health more firmly in mind.

In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to support, and perhaps even help pay for, public education efforts like New York City’s bold new ad campaign against drinking soda. At the moment, a federal campaign to discourage the consumption of sweetened soft drinks is a political nonstarter, but few things could do more to slow the rise of Type 2 diabetes among adolescents than to reduce their soda consumption, which represents 15 percent of their caloric intake.

That’s why it’s easy to imagine the industry throwing its weight behind a soda tax. School lunch reform would become its cause, too, and in time the industry would come to see that the development of regional food systems, which make fresh produce more available and reduce dependence on heavily processed food from far away, could help prevent chronic disease and reduce their costs.

Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they determined that promoting the concept of a “foodshed” — a diversified, regional food economy — could be the key to improving the American diet.

All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health — which means going to work on the American way of eating.

But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us on that course.

For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good hard look at the elephant in the room and galvanize a movement to slim it down.

[Mostly] Spot-on San Francisco Take

Sorry for the lack of posting. I wish I could say that I've had better things to do than to transcribe my ramblings, but the truth is that I've caught a raging case of the lazies when it comes to writing.

To tide all three of you over, here are Anthony Bourdain's thoughts on my current home. For the most part, I think he does an excellent job of describing it. Tune into the Travel Channel tonight to see the SF No Reservations.

I'm Not Angry
By Anthony Bourdain on August 9, 2009 11:57 AM Permalink

Let me come right out and say it. I love San Francisco. I am helpless and unwavering in my affection--in spite of every effort over the years to find fault, to dismiss, to sneer. And there's surely lots to sneer at, San Francisco and the Bay being pretty much the epicenter of so many of my most cherished aversions: political correctness, veganism, rich hippies, sanctimoniousness about food, food fetishism, animal rights terrorists, gastro-dogma, and loud locavores who actually get their produce flown in from Chino Farms in San Diego.

But at this point, I bore even myself railing against the above. Hell, I'm not even bitter about San Francisco taking the lead in banning smoking anymore. They won that battle long ago. Game over.

I guess it's like any love that's true--sooner or later you learn to accept the good, bad and silly all together. It's all part of the package when you know, without any question, that you want the package. It doesn't even matter if one's love is returned.

Okay ... it does still drive me berserko watching a blissed out St. Alice, burning up a few cords of firewood (in Berkeley no less!) to cook two eggs for an unusually credulous Lesley Stahl.

But in general, I got it all wrong, didn't I?

It may be the town of Alice Waters but it's also home to Dirty Harry. The Grateful Dead? Yes. But also the Dead Kennedys. The excrutiating and treacherous lite FM sounds of the Jefferson Starship? True enough. But also Blue Cheer, the Count Five, Big Brother, Sly and Family Stone and the greatest band that never was: the Brian Jonestown Massacre. None of these entities could have come from--or taken root--anywhere else.

I don't think you could have one San Francisco without the other. If the San Francisco area weren't the perceived headquarters of anti-foie gras forces, I doubt very much there'd be an opposing force doing something as crazy as developing a foie gras vodka. I don't know that a less crunchy community would require a stuck-joyously-in-time museum of beef like House of Prime Rib. It's like a yin and yang thing ... a balance, man, one thing creates a need for another.

San Francisco, underneath a gossamer thin veneer of granola is in fact, a two-fisted drinking town, a place of oversized martinis, silver zeppelins overloaded with bleeding slabs of meat, restaurants you could call "institutions" that defiantly refuse to suck, and in an ever tidier, cleaner, Disneyfied world--where even New York's Times Square looks like a theme park, still, a delightfully nasty, dirty, beautiful, carnivorous, vice-filled town.

And you can, apparently, recklessly careen around town at high speed in a rented Mustang (from whom we received, by the way, absolutely no money, consideration or thing of value), shooting guerilla-style, possibly without appropriate permits or safety precautions--and the local constabulary can be remarkably understanding. I doubt they would have been as tolerant of the impromptu filming of a car chase where I'm from.

Oh ... and I'd like to mention that though Swan Oyster Depot does not appear in the show (because we shot a segment there for the previous series), I ate there almost every day while shooting in town. Mopping fat and roe out of those Dungeness crab backs with sourdough bread and washing it down with a cold beer? Perfect happiness.

How does food policy relate to health care?

Check out this editorial on Civil Eats. Paula Crossfield argues that all this health care hullabaloo really misses the mark. While liberals and conservatives are arguing about socialism and single payer systems and all this other crap that we can't understand from the proposed bill anyway, nobody has bothered to ask what's making us sick in the first place.

Why are people unhealthy? For those who see our food system as the magic bullet, the answer is pretty obvious. And while the food system is the number one contributor, bad urban planning is a big part (see Public Space). And Crossfield makes a great point about how financially dependent we are on The System and how that hurts our overall health.

Higher education is so expensive now that workers are bound to their workplace because of massive debt, feeling compelled to overwork in order to keep their health insurance, and therefore are too exhausted to cook. It’s all related.

The greatest strength of Crossfield's article is that she points out Obama's greatest weakness so far*: his inability to get the lobbyists out of Washington. Definitely no small task, but his pre-election rhetoric on this point was pretty strong. All you have to do to figure out why which politicians are aligning themselves on which sides of this issue is to follow the money. You will inevitably find ties to the business interests that have a stake in the outcome.

To fix health care--to fix our lives--we need big changes. We can do everything we can on a local and personal level, but it would be nice to see Washington working with us on this rather than against us. For that, Washington is going to have some major surgery of its own. Let's see if Dr. Obama will really follow through on his diagnosis and cut out the tumor known as special interest lobbying.


*Keep in mind we're not even a year into his Presidency.

See "Food Inc." for free and a great profile of an urban farmer

Will Allen, the ultimate urban farmer and a truly larger than life figure, was profiled in last week's New York Times Magazine. It's a great read and indirectly poses an important question: Can the good food movement be sustained without some sort of subsidy, whether it be in the form of private grant or government pay?

Michael Pollan, when I saw him speak at the Herbst Theater (click here for video), argued that no food system has ever been successful without some sort of subsidy. That's why some have argued it's important that we redirect our government emphasis on commodity crops like corn and wheat and soybeans and reward more complex systems that grow a variety of plants, such as vegetables.

My grandmother told me that she would love if it were economically viable to grow something else besides GMO corn*. Is there any reason the Farm Bill won't pay Will Allen a dime and would discontinue paying my grandparents if they planted a row of broccoli next to the corn?

*Whether it is realistic for octogenarians in South Central Kansas to switch to organic farming at this point is a question better left for another day.
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http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2009/07/free_screening_of_food_inc.php

Free Screening of 'Food, Inc.'

By Tamara Palmer in Events, Palmer

Wednesday, Jul. 8 2009 @ 1:30PM

Still haven't seen Food, Inc.? Your procrastination is paying off, for once. Catch a free screening of the startling film -- sponsored nationwide by the burrito chain Chipotle -- on Thursday, July 16, at Embarcadero Center Cinema (One Embarcadero Center) at 7:30 p.m. Get there super early to guarantee yourself a seat; you know how people can be when it comes to free things.

More info on Chipotle's screenings is here, and to get in the spirit before you go to the theater, read SFoodie Editor John Birdsall's conversation with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner.

Double Feature Sunday: Woody Allen and Food Politics

Is "Food Inc." a movie for the average person?

"Food Inc." is the new documentary* about the way we produce and eat food in America and the latest attack on Nutritional-Industrial Complex. It basically takes Michael Pollan's and Eric Schlosser's writings and reduces them to an easily consumable 90-minute documentary.

Being familiar with just about all the stories in the film, I found it easy to follow and still found myself outraged at the actions of the government and the corporations who are most responsible for our Western diet and all the diseases that come along with it: cancer, obesity, and whathaveyou.

Towards the end, I started wondering if they weren't trying to present too much information or spending too little time on certain aspects. I found myself wanting to hear more about the court cases Monsanto brought against farmers, more from Joel Salatin, or more about what people can do to get involved. I was a little surprised the letters C-S-A weren't mentioned even once.

So I was left wondering if it's a movie that is perfect for elucidating the average viewer who eats at McDonald's and buys groceries at Wal-Mart or if it was simply another sermon to the converted to make us high-fallutin' liberals feel better about spending half our income on fancy food. I honestly don't have a good feel for what the answer to that question is.

And maybe I don't have a great answer to that because so far it has made barely more than a million dollars at a mere 83 theaters** (compare that with 4300 for Michael Bay's latest defecation on celluloid). It still has yet to hit one major outpost in the Corn Belt that I know of, Kansas City. I suspect, though, that the movie is probably intentionally enjoying a slow release so word of mouth buzz can spread. Its $2,900 average per theater puts it way ahead of mainstream movies like "My Sister's Keeper" and "Year One."

So it's proably going to take more time to see if this movie will have any crossover appeal or if it will get lumped in with all the other indie documentaries like "King Corn." I do know that some farmers near where I grew up weren't that impressed. I feel like farmers are the real heroes of the film, but I can see how my grandparents, who grow commodity crops in Pratt, KS, would get upset that Big City-types think that they know what's best for folks on the farm.

So if you've seen the movie, now would be a good time to tell me what you think. And please see if you can't get a somebody who isn't converted to go see the movie and report back.

*Follow link for trailer.
**http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
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"Whatever Works"[insert pun about how well or not well you think the movie works]

Discolure: I am complete Woody Allen apologist. I may recognize the occasional fault in some of his films but I have enjoyed every single one of them on one level or another.



After seeing the man himself in the stands at the marathon Wimbledon final on Sunday, it was a no-brainer to see "Whatever Works" last night.

There are so many things I love about Woody Allen but almost above all, I love that he continues to work no matter what. Even if he were to acknowledge the existence of writer's block, you wouldn't be able to tell because he would still release one or two movies that year.

I love that no matter what else is going on in the world, I can count on that familiar smile coming to my face as a black screen with plain white type appears, old-timey jazz starts playing and I am informed that Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe were executive producers of the movie I'm about to see (even though Charles Joffe is dead), and I'm about to find out some more universal truths about love, death, and the human condition.

I love that though so many themes and plotlines tend to show up again and again, each film seems to be a different statement from the director about himself. Is the initial tone of this film so much more angry because Woody is pissed about what's going in the world? Is he getting cranky in his old age or is it just because he wanted to write a character who would be easier for Larry David to play? Is there any way his overall theme of telling everyone to stop being so damn judgmental is not influenced by everyone in the world judging him for choosing to ignore society and fall in love with the most unlikely of brides?

I suspect many will deride the movie for not being funny enough, for the characters being a little too caricatured, or for the narration direct to the audience just not working. I don't think Larry David is going to ever be successful at not playing himself, but he definitely excelled in the role as Boris. All of the characters were well cast as well and by the closing credits, they had somehow gone from caricatures to dynamic characters.

For a Woody Allen apologist, this was classic latter-day Woody. In the end, I laughed; I learned something; I didn't feel like I wasted $11.

Rooftop Farming; Change Comes to Kids First

First, the New York Times reports on rooftop gardens, which I have been saying for a while is the best way to bring health and change to the food desserts in inner cities. We still need to reclaim some of the urban sprawl for farmers--especially for small animal farms--but producing food in the middle of the city on existing infrastructure makes so much sense that I imagine it will sell itself.

Inner cities have become hotbeds for childhood obesity and family disconnect, but the acts of gardening, cooking and eating have been community-building activities for millenia. Bringing back real food and family meals could help rebuild some of our most impoverished. According to Shawnee Mission School District nurse, Nancy Nicolay, who is occasionally prone to hyperbole, some of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City have been transformed by the simple act of planting a community garden.

Speaking of schools, it looks like the cafeteria might be seeing some of the most attention from the Obama administration. While the President has made some minor concessions to the growing number of food activists, such as a White House organic garden and whathaveyou, I have yet to hear anything that makes me think radical change is coming to the industrial food complex.

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, seems to be the one who will be spearheading this issue. She recently said:

"To make sure that we give all our kids a good start to their day and to their future, we need to improve the quality and nutrition of the food served in schools. We’re approaching the first big opportunity to move this to the top of the agenda with the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. In doing so, we can go a long way towards creating a healthier generation for our kids."

It's great to hear that the First Lady wants to put healthy and safey on the top of the agenda. She has said that her own children, representatives of our next generation, have been lecturing her about what to eat and have encouraged her to change her eating habits. Hopefully, Mrs. Obama will have the chance to speak with Ann Cooper, the revolutionary lunch lady who tranformed the Berkeley school lunch system and is now headed for Boulder.

Though the dark forces who want to keep things the way they are will come up with a thousand reasons why it's impossible to change our agricultural system, it will much harder to argue that we shouldn't be feeding our kids better while they're at school. The school lunch reauthorization is a great opportunity to fight obesity before it's already hit and to set up the future generation with knowledge about what food actually is.

Video of the Day and Free Wild Salmon Dinner

First, the follow up to last week's dance mob from Sasquatch from one of my favorite bands, Lucero.

They're one of those great bar bands that will probably never make it big but keeps on grinding it out. They have put out something like seven albums, they have a rabid fan base, but they still don't play venues any bigger than a few hundred people*. To me, there is something about that business model that is just goddamn awesome--like a un-depressing and more successful Anvil.



Here's to professional bar bands and here's to Henry, one hell of a dancer.

*I saw them a few weeks ago at a sold-out show Slim's and (along with Black Joe Lewis), they blew the roof off that place. Check them out next time they're in town.

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Second, if you're broke like me, then why not check out a free traditional tribal salmon bake tonight on Ocean Beach? Fresh Klamath salmon caught by Yurok fisherman will be served at 6:30.



Plus you'll be supporting Salmon Aid, a really cool organization devoted to protecting wild salmon. And according to Salmon Aid, the best way to protect them is by eating them. Sounds good to me.

Can't make it tonight? Check out the festival in Oakland this weekend. Zydeco, afro-beat, blues, and salmon galore.

Two quick reads

The BLT challenge from Ruhlman, in which he asks his readers to grow their own tomatoes & lettuce, cure the pork belly, and make the bread and mayo from scratch. Very interesting. I don't have a smoker anymore, but I think I can get away with cured bacon and do this.



Mark Bittman, longtime fish eater, writes in the New York Times about how complicated it is these days to eat fish. I, too, have become sensitive to these issues. A trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium where I picked up one of their sustainability cards pretty much sealed the deal for me. I am now a finnicky eater when it comes to seafood. I ask where the fish was caught and with what method. I sometimes long for the days when eating was little more than a hedonistic act for me, and in no way political, but now that I know fish are disapprearing from the oceans, how could I in good conscience continue to eat sea bass and bluefin tuna and farmed salmon?

"Food, Inc." opens a week from Friday.

So far, the word has been pretty solid on the new documentary about our industrial food system. From the preview, it looks like the movie will have a much more serious tone and far-reaching scope than 2007's "King Corn."



I'm not going to be able to pre-screen this before it comes out, but I'll be sure to let you know how great/awful it is when I do finally see it.

And check out the trailer for "Pressure Cooker," which at first glance seems to be the "Hoop Dreams" of cooking:

http://www.nonsequiturproductions.com/pressure_cooker.html

The Real Reason We Love to Cook

Great post from Ruhlman on a great article in the New York Times about working with your hands and how cooking helped us evolve. I don't really have much to say about it other than please, please, please read what these brilliant men have to say.

More proof that the Internet is allsome.

In an article in today's Wired, the magazine highlights a Bay Area start-up with an aim to connect small farms to restaurants through a type of social networking site.

With a suite of mobile apps for use in restaurants and on farms, FarmsReach wants to create an online food marketplace that would directly connect farms with restaurants.

“The food supply industry is ripe for ‘disintermediation’ because of the internet,” said Alistair Croll, a startup consultant working with FarmsReach. In other words, middlemen beware: Food could undergo a transition like the one that swept through classified ads, air travel and dozens of other industries.

If it catches on, this could be a boon to farmers, restaurants and eaters everywhere. But I say why limit it to restaurants. Wouldn't connecting smaller, local grocery stores make as much, if not more, sense?

Better to get this good food directly to people's stomachs at the lowest cost possible, which usually doesn't involve a chef's expertise and a wait staff. I love to eat out as much as the next person, but I'd much rather be able to get good produce from a local farm at my neighborhood grocery store for when I missed the weekly farmer's market. Maybe there is already an answer to this that has to do with distributor contracts or bullshit USDA regulations?

Still, this is great news. Maybe with the help of the Internet, my favorite burrito places can afford to use local produce and meat and keep costs low. And then I won't feel guilty for supporting CAFOs and Big Agribusiness when I'm eating my second Super Burrito al Pastor on the day.

Can efficiency be a bad thing?

Despite having a profound mistrust of those with blind faith in the Free Market, principles of economics often do make a lot of sense in almost every arena of life--if applied correctly. Generally, the ultimate goal in free market economics is efficiency: when the dance between suppliers and consumers results in perfect harmony and production proceeds at the lowest per unit cost.

This morning I was reading Michael Pollan (a current daily ritual), and the author marvels at the brutal efficiency of our industrial food system. With a mere 1 million farmers, we are able to feed nearly 300 million hungry consumers. For a handful of quarters, a customer at McDonald's can get more calories than most people in Africa consume in a day*.












From an energy**-cost perspective, this is remarkably efficient. There was a time when food was scarce, calories were much harder to come by, and calorie binging then made much more sense.

But,, if you are asking yourself whether this calorie surplus is actually beneficial to the modern consumer, you probably wouldn't be alone. This seems to be one instance where "efficiency" can lead us down a dangerous path if all variables aren't considered when calculating what is efficient.

Read this article by Andrew Leonard about the dangers of efficiency as an end goal in the business world.

"If we are simply optimizing bad processes, efficiency as an end-goal means very little."

Hear, hear.


* I just completely made that up, but I'm 99 percent sure it's correct.
** By energy, I mean that calories are the energy that the human body needs to run.