What I “Gleaned” from the Good Food Conference? Local Food = Community Support

Of all the conferences I have been to, I have never been to a conference with a focus on food.  Not knowing what to expect, I was mostly irrationally excited to see some of my local food heros (Evan Kleinman!) and others who I know nothing about (D’Artangan Scorza).

I arrived about an hour and a half early after inaccurately estimating my travel time on LA Metro. Sooo, after checking out the Levitating Mass (which isn’t as big as I thought it would be), I happened to wander into the museum right when the pre-conference Good Food art tour was making their way to the galleries. Despite what you may assume, the Programs Director did not show us only still life paintings of food.  She showed us a lot of various styles of serving ware and the histories behind these objects.  A German pitcher from the Crusades, highly detailed wine cisterns, British serving tiers from Britain.  As someone who usually breezes through these portions of art galleries, I will try to take a closer look from now on.  I also learned that European art program directors really like Downton Abbey. A lot.

The British used this fancy silver tiered serving contraption to eliminate the need for human servers to attend to guests for all of their food courses.

Although all of the pieces we looked at came from nobility and families of wealth, they showed how food was included in everyday life, and in these cases, one’s social status.  The displaying and serving of food on these fancy, intricate art pieces allowed people to show off their wealth.  This really drives home the point that good food is, and has always been, more accessible to the wealthy. That brings me to what I believe is the take-home message of the conference: real good, local food is food that comes from and supports the local community.

Jim Slama, founder of Familyfarmed.org, which organizes Good Food events throughout the country, addressed this question: Why is there still so little local, organic food?  He answered with five reasons for why we aren’t seeing more local food.

• Processing Plants: most urban centers do not have enough processing plants that support organic processing.
• Need for Farmers: there are not enough local farmers to grow food near large cities (especially young farmers).
• Lack of Aggregation Hubs: there are few places to aggregate and distribute food
• Limited Access: most locally produced food is bought by the more affluent (e.g., at Whole Foods and at restaurants)
• Food Safety: there are a lot of food safety practices and regulations that must be understood by farmers

To these I would add lack of policy promoting and supporting local, organic food, which was also addressed at the conference.  Paula Daniels, the Food Policy Advisor to Mayor Villaraigosa, talked about the advances the L.A. City Council has recently taken by approving a resolution that requires the City to purchase a percentage of its food from local, responsible sources.  The daughter of Will Allen (who was unable to make it due to illness) Skyped to the audience from halfway across the country and ended her discussion by emphasizing the need to promote policy that supports urban agriculture practices. In fact, the four focus areas of her organization, the Community Food Center, in Milwaukee, are grow, bloom, thrive, and food policy.

Although there is still a lack of local food, each one of the speakers at this conference is doing their part in trying to grow, distribute, finance, and promote local food for EVERYONE in a community.  Mel Glasser and the folks at Food Forward glean (my new favorite word) fruit from backyard trees or unused orchards and donate it to pantries and other organizations.  They are also starting to collect other left-over produce from farmers’ markets at the end of the day. D’Artangan Scorza, apart from having the most awesome name ever, returned to his hometown, Inglewood, to start up 100 Seeds of Change, a program of the Social Justice Learning Institute. This school and garden nutrition program has numerous initiatives for food policy, community health events, and school gardens. They recently started a CSA program and helped start a farmers market in Inglewood.

There were so many good things being said at this conference by people who were actually doing things. It was hard not to be motivated.

The day ended with a discussion of GMOs and Proposition 37, which is likely not going to pass.  The overwhelming majority support Prop 37, of course.  (You can read our former posts on Prop 37, if so desired.)  The one lone “opposer” on the panel was not opposed to Prop 37 but said there are a few instances where GMOs can improve livelihood, such as growing modified rice with Vitamin A in areas where deficiencies are prevalent.  I feel like he was added to the panel for the sake of having at least one argument in the discussions.

What can you do to support local food? Volunteer at organizations like Food Forward (which I am now going to start doing!) or a local community garden. Oftentimes, community gardens have “work days” posted on their websites. And, of course, buy local!  One of the farmers from a “local” farm in Kern County (which he jokingly referred to as the Greater L.A. Area) had some good last words: “Shop at farmers’ markets.”  This is the best way you can go straight to the source, buy you food, and interact with the people that grow it.  How much easier can it get than that?

Sustainable GMOs? That can’t be right?

In my hunt for blogging gold across the Internet this morning, I came upon a very disturbing (if not entirely surprising) article on the Organic Authority website. Written by Jill Ettinger, this article investigates the new Monsanto ‘sustainable’ sweet corn being sold at Wal-mart.

That label, in and of itself is FULL of contradictions, the most glaring being that GMO corn is in no way sustainable (I feel like we are saying that a lot recently). Announced last August, and set to Hit Wal-Mart Shelves this summer, Monsanto is pimping this new variety of sweet corn with tag lines like ‘“Simply put, farmers choose to grow biotech sweet corn because of all of these benefits—they can grow healthy plants in a sustainable way while producing sweet corn that is nutritious, fresh and flavorful.” We are going to intentionally leave aside the political ramifications of Wal-Mart selling unlabeled GMO corn, and how it will effect prop 37 in California this fall, for this blog post. But lets take a look at that wonderfully crafted PR statement. Except the part where they state that farmers are the ones that grow corn, all the other words are in service of a false sense of security Monsanto is cultivating around this product.

Wal-Mart has always presented itself as providing good quality products for the lowest prices, and weather or not I agree with that, many people who need to stretch their dollar do. We touched on a few problems with GMOs in a previous blog, but it needs to be pointed out that up until this point, no one has been eating GMO corn directly off the cob. It is going into things like cornstarch, HFCS, dry goods and animal feed. This new GMO sweet corn will have the pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis in every cell of the plant, and people will be putting these cells directly into their, and their children’s, mouths thinking that it is good for them.

We, at Currant Table, take a firm stand against GMOs. They are far too new to be able to predict any of the long term health ramifications, their cross pollination with regular varieties of veggies could have a catastrophic effect on species diversity, and since their introduction into our food system, food related allergies have spiked (see earlier post for details). In short, GMO’s are bad news.

Which brings us to the crux of this problem: Intentionally mislabeling and misinforming consumers so that they will continue to eat something that could be bad for them. We see this across the board in American food culture, and it is most often applied in a bait and switch maneuver. “Hey look over here! This is all natural! Hurry an eat it quick before you have the time investigate and realize that it contains GMO’s/Hormones/Bacteria/Pesticides.” This happens all the time, and in a later post we will go into detail about the pitfalls of supermarket labels. For now it is enough to say that everything must be taken with a grain of salt when you are the one to whom something is being sold. Be an informed consumer!

None of this comes as a shock to us, but in this case, misusing the term ‘sustainable’ to support a GMO product is unforgivable, and Monsanto is suggesting that Wal-Mart label what has been dubbed ‘frankencorn’, as just that. Sparing you a longwinded explanation of the triple bottom line of sustainability, we at Currant Table take it to mean that something is leaving the environment better for future generations, creating economic sustainability, and supporting the community. GMO’s represent the exact opposite of this, and we believe that everyone should be allowed to make up their own mind about eating them.

In this country, we allow, and often encourage, those who may not have adequate financial means, or the desire for knowledge that those of you reading this blog do, to purchase food that could be harmful. They are tricked into doing so because valuable information is being withheld. In this case, the argument from the biotech companies is that if something is labeled GMO then people will think it is not as good, and therefore choose to purchase something else. In many cases, yes, this will happen. However there are many people who will continue to purchase those food items despite what they contain, but at least they will be doing so AFTER they have all of the information.  It is not the job of Monsanto, Wal-Mart or, as is sadly the case, the USDA to make our decisions for us, and withholding information is tantamount to saying that we don’t have the right to make up our own minds.

Although knowledge, as they say,  is power, and if the consumer were to suddenly have all the information, that could potentially cause an uncomfortable shift for those at the top.  People will always make poor decisions, but at least if I am going to make them, I want to have all the info in the first place. Do french fries make you fat? Yes. Do I eat them from time to time ANYWAY? Yes!

Especially in light of prop 37, ‘The Right to Know’, looming on the horizon, it is even MORE important that we get involved, make sure our voices are heard, and, in the words of Pollan, vote with our forks!

As always, keep the comments constructive and respectful, we will make no progress without supporting each other. We would also like to thank everyone who commented last week, and made Meatless vs. More Meat Mondays our most viewed post! If you have topics that you would like to hear more about, please just let us know!
Organic Authority: Wal-Mart to Sell Monsanto’s ‘Sustainable’ Sweet Corn

Natural News: Monsanto’s Bt GMO corn to be sold at Wal-Mart with no indication it is genetically modified

Meatless vs. More Meat Mondays

Now that we are back in action here at Currant Table, it feels good to have a forum in which we can highlight the positive changes (Prop 37 on this fall’s ballot) and call into questions those that set us back. In the case of the recent scuffle between the USDA and the NBCA (National Cattleman’s Beef Association) . . . . set us WAY BACK.

In quick summary, at the end of July, the USDA announced that they were in support of ‘Meatless Monday’s’, a movement that strives to improve the health of Americans and the environment by cutting meat out of our diets for one day a week. May I note here that there are still 6 MORE days in the week where a participant could subsist entirely on meat if they so choose? In response, the president of the NBCA, J.D. Alexander, released a statement accusing the USDA of not supporting the beef industry, and calling Meatless Mondays ‘an animal rights extremist campaign to ultimately end meat consumption.’ He also claimed “This is truly an awakening statement by USDA, which strongly indicates that USDA does not understand the efforts being made in rural America to produce food and fiber for a growing global population in a very sustainable way,”

If you just laughed out loud . . . don’t worry, so did I. There is NOTHING sustainable about the way we farm beef industrially in the United Sates. And, call me crazy, but announcing that you ‘support’ Meatless Monday, does not in fact mean that you hate meat, or believe that people should stop consuming it. I understand the perceived conflict of interest on the part of the NBCA, however, could it not also be seen as the USDA supporting the one other facets of industrial agriculture for one day? ‘Support Tomato Farmer Mondays!’

I could go back and forth, and come up with my own snarky unfounded assertions to match those of Alexander, but I won’t. As annoyed as I was by the official NBCA statement, they do have a right to a government who protects their interests as much as the next person.

However, we kick this confrontation up a notch when those in DC get involved, and call for the over consumption of meat on the following Monday. The two following tweets are from Senator Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Congressman Steve King (Iowa).

Grassley’s office, with a handful of other co-conspirators then went so far as to call for a celebration of Meat Mondays.

This photo was posted to the facebook page of junior senator John Cornyn, and depicts the lunch purchased from a local BBQ restaurant in DC. A staffer said that the lunch included  a total of 52 orders of barbecue beef sandwiches, brisket, sausage and ribs, as well as sides of cornbread and macaroni and cheese. Do you all remember those annoying boys in middle school who, when faced with someone else’s effort to, say ‘Save the Whales’ would wear an ‘I hate Whales’ t-shirt? I do, and it is even more obnoxious when adult men engage in the same behavior, and order more meat than an entire office could consume (WASTEFUL) just to make a rather asinine point.

From a food standpoint, since that is what we, here at Currant Table are all about, Meatless Mondays provide a day for American’s to think outside the box of ‘meat/vegetable/carb’ dinners, and get creative while improving their health and the health of the environment. It SHOULD be supported by government offices, because the government is supposed to have our best interests at heart (right?).  I personally know sustainable meat farmers (poultry, beef, pork etc . . .) who engage in Meatless Mondays themselves, without having their entire business crash down around their ears. So it begs the question, what is the NBCA so concerned about? It can’t possibly be that one day a week a fraction of Americans choose not to eat any type of meat (again, 6 more days in the week) so it must be something else.

Could it be that they are starting to feel the squeeze, albeit just a pinch at this point, caused by those of us fighting the fight in the name of accurate information?  We stated in an earlier post, that there is a LOT of it flying around, and that sometimes it is tough to make heads or tails of what you are reading. But in this case it is fairly straightforward:

-Meatless Monday’s are intended to improve the heart health of Americans and help stave off the obesity epidemic.

-Meatless Monday’s are intended to reduce the carbon footprint of an individual, reduce water usage and reduce fossil fuel usage.

-Meatless Monday’s are not intended to turn everyone into vegetarians.

-The NBCA is afraid of Meatless Mondays

In response to the negative outpouring of statements, and actions, only a fraction of which I have mentioned, the USDA recanted their endorsement of Meatless Mondays. This is yet another example of the uphill battle that those of us who believe that we deserve better food are facing.  I know how we at Current Table feel about this, but how do you all feel?

We endorse Meatless Mondays, and encourage all of you reading to visit their site for delicious menu ideas, and information about how you can promote it in your community!

You heard me . . . . Currant Table supports Meatless Mondays! Come and get us NBCA 🙂

Meatless Monday: http://www.meatlessmonday.com

http://www.beefusa.org/newsreleases1.aspx?newsid=2560

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30/meatless-monday-chuck-grassley_n_1720505.html#slide=more241780

The Incredible Edible (Vertical) Garden

Long Beach has been making recent strides in trying to establish the presence of sustainable community gardens throughout the City.  I took a trip to City Hall today to check out their new vertical garden demonstration project.  The Civic Center Edible Garden has been around since 2009 and makes use of a space just east of City Hall to grow a variety of vegetables and flowers.  They use it both for providing produce (to organizations like Food Not Bombs) and as an educational resource for youth.

The new vertical element to the edible garden really shows just how easy it is to grow multiple plants in a small space. I have never used wall-hanging plant holders but these fancy-schmancy “Plants on Walls” contraptions seem like a great way to grown multiple herbs without taking up all your patio space.

Or, if you don’t want wall-hangings, how about shelving?

I managed to miss the cooking demonstration AND the garden demonstration but I did get to find out a bit more about Lot 59, a newer 1-acre community garden in Long Beach that has historical roots.  Back in the day (like way back to 1881), Long Beach was American Colony and Willmore City.  American Colony was broken into 20-acre farm lots numbered 1 through 185.  Unlike the other areas, the current location of Farm Lot 59 was never developed because of it’s topography.  After replacing soil four feet deep, building a greenhouse, and getting some chickens, this one-acre farm is growing lots of good stuff and making good use of a historical site.   They offer weekly boxes of produce to the public and work with businesses and schools in the community to provide produce and education.  If you are interested in getting involved with Lot 59, they have volunteer days every Wednesday, Friday, and second Saturdays from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM.  They are located at 2714 California Avenue.

It’s very cool to see all of the good things that Long Beach is doing to try to create a more sustainable and healthy city.  Now go out there and grow some veggies!

Yes on Prop 37 – Right to Know Act

In November, California voters will be able to say “yes, we want to know if there are genetically-engineered organisms in our food.”  Thanks to the efforts of the California Right to Know Campaign, the Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will be on the November ballot as Proposition 37.

This act does not ban GMO foods but merely requires products with genetically-modified ingredients to be labeled as “GMO.”  The vast majority of the food we eat contains GMOs.  So what?  Why should we be worried about GMOs?  Farmers have always purposefully selected certain phenotypes of crop varieties, thereby altering their genetic makeup. So, what’s different now?

Well, let us tell you!  There are a number of reasons for why we should at least be cautious about eating GMO foods.  Of course, you can make your own decisions about these things, but here are a few reasons why GMOs cause problems in our food supply:

1. Pesticide Resistance: GMO corn and soybeans are designed to withstand high levels of weed killers and other pesticides (a.k.a. “Round-Up Ready” crops).  By using bacteria genes and splicing them into corn and soybeans, the plants become resistant to weed killer.  So when the field is doused with weed killer or pesticides, all of that poison is still on the corn and soybean plants and, therefore, part of our food supply.

2. Unknown Allergies: Since genetic modification involves taking genes from any plant, animal, or other organism, even those we don’t actually eat, and putting them into plants that we do eat, there is potential for new food allergies to emerge.  In order to know whether allergens are present, testing must be done, which is difficult when the organism from which the gene is coming from is not eaten by humans.

3. Cross Pollination: Obviously, not all farmers choose to use GMO seeds.  However, if this farmer has a field next to a farm that does use GMO seeds, cross pollination can occur.  This is problematic not only because now the non-GMO farmer now has contaminated crops, he or she can also be sued by large agribusinesses like Monsanto.  These large companies own the patents on these seeds and if a company like Monsanto finds their GMO crops in a non-GMO field, they will sue that farmer for illegally growing their product.  Is that not $@&$-ed up or what?  On a related note, farmers are not allowed to collect the seeds after the growing season and use them again next year because they have to buy them again from the patent owner, Monsanto. Monsanto lawyers are a step above serial killers on the morality ladder.

So, in short, you should really consider voting YES on Prop 37 in November just so we can have a CHOICE in selecting what we want to eat!

Additional Information:

California Right to Know Act Campaign: http://carighttoknow.org/

Monsanto, Chemicals, and GMOs (this 5-minute video really summarizes Monsanto’s influence on crop production really well): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbvYwg-Aqis

Bt Corn (not only is it pesticide resistant but the Bt gene itself can be toxic to us!): http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/06/dangerous-toxins-from-gmo-foods.aspx

Back to Business

Sorry for the delay in posts… we have been quite busy here with wedding planning, business plan classes, that other job, and putting our material together for the Green Long Beach! Festival, which we participated in last Saturday.

The 3rd Annual Green Long Beach! Festival was organized by the good people at Green Long Beach!, a local organization committed to bringing together individuals and organizations to promote environmental awareness in our lovely city.  The event was full of a variety of environmentally-minded individuals and organizations, eager to show you their psychedelic paintings, talk about urban foodscapes, or tell you about their succulents grown in antique watering cans.  We set up our humble table and quickly realized we were not in the ideal place for “food-related” foot traffic (between the Henna booth and fluorescent spiritual paintings? um, no).  After moving (twice), we began to feel a little more comfortable.  We talked with interested festival attendees and other vendors and collected some new contacts.  Our presentation on “Decoding Food Labels and Common Catch-phrases” attracted some attendees that were not our friends so, for us, that was a success!  Overall, it was a good opportunity and I’m glad we were able to take advantage of it.

We would like to thank all of our friends who came out to support us, including Joe and Tova, Perica, Maria and Sabrina, Jen, Gabrielle, Amanda and Colin, Sean, and John!  We were very happy to see so many of our friends taking time out of their weekends to come visit us.  Also, thanks to Melissa for urging us to participate and helping us get situated!  We may not have been there otherwise.

Try using this link for downloading the handout for our “Decoding Food Labels and Common Catch-phrases” workshop.

TMI . . . No not THAT kind!

‘Ugh, Traffic’

When I first got to college I found myself with the same dilemma that most newly matriculated students are met with: Too Much Information. No longer were teachers printing out the relevant sections of books and guiding us to the main ideas of a particular concept; we were handed stacks of reading, and suggested reading (which is code for ‘read this if you want an A’), and left to determine on our own what the really important information was . . . and what was eloquently written fluff. If you were anything like me, my first few college textbooks look like abstract art, so compulsive was I about underlining everything. It was overwhelming, and before I learned how to read ‘college style’ my conclusions were scattered and beliefs changed with each new sentence I read.

Recently I found myself in the same pickle, with some articles sent to us here at Currant Table dealing, once again, with hidden practices and chemicals found in the foods that we eat. There was simply TOO MUCH INFORMATION, once again, and it was unclear to me what was true, what was false, and what decision, in the end, I needed to make about all of it.

Let us begin first with an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times on April 12^th, entitled ‘The Myth of Sustainable Meat’ by James McWilliams. McWilliams is an award-winning, PhD holding Professor of colonial history teaching at Texas State University. He contributes food oriented op-ed pieces to the New York Times from time to time, and holds clear opinions about the role that sustainable meat should play in America’s food future. After a bit of digging, I discovered that said strong opinions consistently denounce the value of meat produced outside the conventional factory system.

In ‘The Myth of Sustainable Meat’, he goes so far as to claim that not only are they a poor substitute for industrial methods (tell the chickens trampling their roommates to death that) but that ‘Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.’ The evidence provided is flimsy, and he goes on to say that if we decentralize meat production into smaller outfits, it will not be able to sustain the current production and those virtuous small farmers will eventually be forced to reform into a brand new, non-sustainable meat industry.

I mention this article not to tear down his opinions, which he has a right to (though I disagree with them), nor to rebut the facts point by point, which he provides to support his argument. I include it here because shortly after it was published, Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (mentioned in The Omnivore’s Dilemma) wrote a response. In this response he outlined McWilliams’ factual errors and potential ethical shortsightedness. It is well written, if a hair on the scathing side, but he does make one important argument against McWilliams’ credibility that could easily be translated to himself; the accusation that McWilliams is paid by those whom his argument supports. Salatin makes his living from sustainable farming practices, so he is certainly paid by those whom his argument supports . . . even if I believe that he is the one in the right. So here we are, presented with two compelling and well-written articles on two sides of the sustainable meat ‘fence’, both with obvious bias and both with scattered factual errors. Who do we believe? What is true? I tried, in reading and re-reading both, to look deeper and not jump to any conclusions, but at the end of the day, I was frustrated with the seed of confusion planted when I read them in tandem.

This is the difficulty with the amount of information circulating about our food sources, it is not easy to suss out the truth from opinion, and then form your own opinion afterwards. Doing so is far more time-consuming than most people have the patience for. We at Currant Table happen to like the debate surrounding conflicting op-ed pieces and new information, but most of you would prefer to have the best choice for feeding your family laid out in a concise and accurate fashion . . . and I don’t think that is too much to ask.

So where to do we go from here? How do we pare down the glut of information circulating about the food we eat, and make good choices for ourselves and families on a daily basis? Sadly the government is going to be zero help in providing accurate information. In our opinion, the first step would be to go with your gut, if something sounds biased, it probably is, but does that bias automatically render the information unhelpful? One of the most import lessons I learned in my quest for collegiate success was that you really do need to read everything before you have a handle on the big picture, and you need a handle on the big picture before you can form an eloquent opinion. Through this blog, we try to keep you as informed as meaningful items come to our attention, without forcing our opinions on you. Bias can be very helpful, if only to steer you in the opposite direction.

I have provided links to both the articles mentioned above, and would challenge interested readers to take a look at them (as well as an additional piece by McWilliams) and let us know where you think the shortcomings are. Which brings us to the second step: conversation! The more discussion that takes place, the better off we will all be as we try to wade through the rising tide of food research. We hope that you will read, respond, and suggest pieces that you have found helpful or infuriating. Open, respectful dialogue is to everyone’s benefit, so please remember the old adage ‘do unto others’ and no mean-spirited rebuttals.

A parting piece of advice: form your own opinions . . . it was never the regurgitation of someone else’s thesis that got us those A’s in college and it certainly won’t bring us closer to the truth now!

The Myth of Sustainable Meat, by James McWilliams

Joel Salatin Responds

Free Range Trichinosis, By James McWillams

May Garden Update!

If there was any concern about our seedlings not making an appearance in the past, we can safely say that concern has disappeared.  Our ten-by-ten plot is becoming a highly productive green “mini-farm,” minus any sort of livestock, of course.

We’ve been able to harvest lettuce and baby beets from our plot, both of which are tasting really good.  We see signs of peas, beans, and cucumbers flowering and our corn is alreadyabout knee-high. Even Sean’s hops are looking good!

We have both been very busy lately (as shown in our delay in blog posts) but visiting the garden is always an exciting, rewarding trip that we rarely let pushed aside.  Look forward to more interesting blog posts coming soon but here are some photos for the meantime!

The lettuce after we harvested it from the garden. It lasts for a long time in the fridge.

Spring mix and red-headed lettuce.

Beefsteak tomatoes in the foreground with cabbage, peas, and lettuce behind them.

The only squash that sprouted from the seeds really likes it here.

What’s in my food?

Other than air, water, and shelter, food is an essential part of life.  We all have to eat in order to survive.  Anthropologists argue about what early human diets were comprised of but today we can generally say they are based on fruits, veggies, meats, grains, and various products derived from these sources of food.  Well, at least they are supposed to be.  The industrial revolution led to an increase in processed food in order to feed the masses.  It’s important to keep our population healthy and make food available for everyone.  The processing of things like wheat led to cereals, breads, and other other baked goods.  Kraft perfected the production of processed American cheese by getting rid of bacteria and molds so that the cheese would last a long time without spoiling, which was greatly appreciated, or at least tolerated, by World War I and II soldiers.  Now we are known for having a weird plastic-like cheese product with unnatural fillers that happens to taste really good on In-n-Out burgers.  (Side note: I used to eat this cheese so much when I was a kid that my family just started calling it Leah cheese.  I would like to let everyone know that my cheese palette has improved since then.)

Over the last century, companies have turned food into “food.”  What exactly is in Cheetos?  And did you know there are 21 types of Cheetos? And, we are almost used to hearing about the strange things being found in our food – pink slime in our beef, arsenic in our chicken, and bovine growth hormone in our milk. This week the Huffington Post posted an article on the “6 Ingredients You May Not Want In Your Food,” listing six ingredients found in common foods that have been processed to the point that I would consider calling them just “products.”  To summarize, these products include:

• TBHQ (butane) in chicken nuggets as a preservative;
• estrogen in milk as residue from the hormone doses given to cows by the farmers;
• spinach dust on veggie snack sticks, which doesn’t have any of its original nutrients left;
• propylene glycol (antifreeze) in cake and brownie mixes (think Betty Crocker), salad dressings, low-fat ice creams, and dog food to maintain smoothness;
• artificial vanillin (derived from left over wood pulp resin) in anything with artificial vanilla flavor, and;
• castoreum (beaver anal gland excretions) as artificial raspberry flavor in cheap ice cream, Jell-O, candy, fruit-flavored drinks, teas, and yogurts.

These ingredients are added for reasons deemed important by the food industry, such as preservation and cheap flavoring.  However, would you rather eat food or beaver anal gland excretions?  Our tongues may not pick up on the difference but our bodies do and I wouldn’t call these ingredients “food.”

Another article on weird ingredients in food was published this week in the New York Times Op-Ed section.  “Arsenic in our Chicken?” discusses two recently published studies about chemical testing on chicken feathers.  The idea behind this is that chicken feathers, like hair and fingernails, collect chemicals that are found in the body.  The purpose for testing chicken feathers this way is to determine what industrial agriculture operations are actually feeding to chickens since they are not very willing to tell the public outright.  Not only was arsenic present but so were caffeine, the active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, illegal antibiotics, and the active ingredients of Prozac (in chickens from China).  Apparently, Benadryl, Tylenol, and Prozac are used to relieve stress in chickens.  Huh.  Maybe if these chickens were not crammed together in close quarters and walking over their dead roommates, they wouldn’t be stressed.  These chickens aren’t scared because the sky is falling – they are scared because their sky is a series of flourescent lights that are never turned off.

And, of course, I can’t talk about weird ingredients in food without talking about pink slime.  The notorious concoction of ammonia, beef scraps off the floor, and connective tissues that is blended together to form a “lean finely textured beef” and then mixed with hamburger meat was given a lot of attention starting in March when The Daily ran an article on it.  The substance has been around for a while, but more prevalently in the last decade, as shown in a timeline put together by the Food Safety News about the company Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) and it’s pink slime.  If you ever watched Jamie Oliver’s TV show Food Revolution, you may have seen the episode where he makes this product to show kids and their parents how wrong it really is.  (If you haven’t, you can find it here on YouTube.)  Not only am I disturbed about eating pink slime but there is something morally wrong with a society that has to use these techniques to make food.  In my opinion, we shouldn’t have to be telling companies like BPI that we don’t want pink slime in our food; it never should have been made this way in the first place. Do you agree?

I know organic and sustainable foods have become more mainstream than ever before, but I cannot stress enough the need to have a social shift in the way we make and consume food.  Yes, it is important to have food available for the masses but we need to reconsider the way we raise and process chicken and what sorts of ingredients we are putting in our vanilla ice cream.  We should be able to enjoy food for what it is, not some strange variation of food with filler ingredients that aren’t even made from food.  Part of what Currant Table is trying to do is to support this social shift by bringing more real food to restaurants.

So, what do you think?  Please share your thoughts on what you think should and should not be in food.

Here are some resources that relate to the discussion above:

Huffington Post Food News and Opinions: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/

Food|Grist Magazine: http://grist.org/food/

The Salt: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/

And information on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution campaign is found here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/home

To eat . . . or not to eat? A shockingly complicated question!

This blog, in large part, has been a fairly tongue-and-cheek chronicle of our gardening adventures. Following this trial-and-error venture with a sense of humor is fun, though touching on why we are doing this in the first place is something that we haven’t gone into great detail about. Leah and I, though we are partners in Currant Table, may not necessarily have arrived at the conviction that we need to change the way we appreciate food in the same way. We do, however, agree on the underlying need for change.

Right now, in the United States (though frighteningly enough it is spreading to other countries as well) we have a sense of entitlement towards foods. We are entitled to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. Pineapples in Maine in February? Of course that is a reasonable expectation . . . . leaving aside the fact that Hawaii is about 5,000 miles away from Maine. ‘Plump’ juicy chicken breasts for 99c a pound? Totally expected, ignoring the fact that the reason they are plump is from water absorption. Sleek flamingo-pink salmon fillets? They should be cheap and available in unfailing abundance, and, through the ‘magic’ of aquaculture, they are.

I know that I am dancing on the line of sounding preachy, and I do firmly believe that deciding what to eat is personal, and should be respected. I don’t believe, however, that everyone has all the information. We had a professor at UCLA who made the most amazing analogy about how Americans treat their food supply. He said to think of it like a credit card. The immediate consumption of the foods I mentioned above is the swipe of the plastic. Should you really buy that skirt? No, but you can deal with the fact that you can’t really afford it later. The problem with putting off the reality of payment is that you lose touch with the value of things. We don’t have to pay the full price for readily available chicken, salmon, or pineapples right now, but eventually that debt will have to be settled. In the case of food the debt to be paid is in destruction of the planet, natural resources, community support, and even morality.

Sustainable food is, quite simply, a nearly debt free food. To keep this from getting long-winded, lets just talk about salmon. Sustainable seafood is incredibly complex (I happen to be obsessed with it), but the bottom line is that the seafood you purchase is deemed sustainable if it is harvested from a population without putting it in jeopardy, and using a responsible harvest method (think dolphin safe tuna). It is also sustainable if it is farmed in an ecologically responsible way. Flamingo-pink salmon is none of these things, and while it tastes great (yes, I admit it) there are better choices to be made.

One of our primary goals at Currant Table to is to help educate people so that whatever decision they make is coming from an informed place. A good rule of thumb going forward is to ask! Ask the fish guy where the salmon comes from, and if he can’t tell you, be concerned. Ask the meat guy if you don’t like what types of meat they have available. Ask the produce guy how old that anemic February pineapple is! Michael Polan urges people to vote with their forks, and we agree. Make sure the things you want to eat are available by asking for them, otherwise how would anyone ever know they were needed?

I have included links to books that changed our way of thinking . . . and cannot recommend them highly enough! Please ask us questions, leave comments, or suggest sources of your own. Going forward, we will touch upon all of the facets of sustainability but for now, lets just say that we are passionate about making a difference, and that no change (however small) is insignificant!

Books:

In Defense of Food, Michael Polan

Eating Animals, Johnathan Safran Foer

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver

Four Fish, Paul Greenburg

Links:

Seafood Watch: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.

Seafood for the Future: http://seafoodforthefuture.org/