Milk Madness

In more catch-up blogging, Sasha Khokha did a report on Marketplace a couple weeks ago about raw (unpasteurized) milk. He discussed a growing trend for people to spend $12 a gallon buying raw milk for its supposed health benefits, and quoted a mother who'd been giving her daughter raw milk since infancy saying, "I knew if breast milk is all natural, there has to be another all natural way to feed your baby." Obviously if it's "natural" it must be okay (see previous rant about "natural" radiation).

Statements like this are so disappointing - it's clear that well-educated people are being deceived by so-called “experts” who prey on their skepticism or disappointment with real science and medicine. Somehow they don’t start thinking that there was a reason Louis Pasteur invented the process named after him - people were getting sick from bacteria in their milk. Why on earth would drinking raw milk be healthier? This is the same false logic that people use when they get conned by vitamin salesmen or “doctors” selling a treatment with no scientific backing.

I feel a bit hypocritical in that I've always thought the fact that we don't allow unpasteurized cheese in most states is silly, but then (a) I am a bit cheese-obsessed and (b) I’m sure you can get different flavors from unpasteurized cheeses, but I certainly don't think they're healthier. And now that I’ve heard this story, I might have to reconsider my stance. As proven by the pasteurized La Tur I had this weekend during my visit to Berkeley, you don’t need to raw milk to get some exquisite flavors.

Wait till you hear my recipe for making my own dirt!

Yesterday morning, instead of listening to KUOW, I tuned into our other local NPR station - KPLU (aren't we lucky that we have two?). KPLU markets itself as "NPR News and All That Jazz" but more importantly it also boasts my friend A filling in as the local host of Morning Edition this week! Listening to the radio when you know the person who's speaking is a whole new experience, and a lot more fun. A did a great job - her voice was very soothing, and we all enjoyed listening to her call traffic "sticky". I'm hoping she uses one of my suggested phrases for traffic tomorrow, and actually intend to pay her money (or give her extra chocolate) if she calls it "slower than a cat putting on its pajamas". Most impressive, however, was when she managed to not laugh out loud while setting up an upcoming segment on Do-It-Yourself Designer Water.

In this segment, Dick Stein was interviewing a Seattle Times food writer and got the story turned on him when she asked him to tell her about his secret recipe for "making water". Based on the description, I was expecting anything from a machine that takes hydrogen fuel cells and purifies the water they create to hand-blown glass bottles filled with water collected at Lake Valhalla. It seems I was nowhere close. Mr. Stein was convinced that carbonated water from Europe has smaller bubbles, and is therefore tastier, than cheap-o local carbonated water, but he didn't want to pay more for water than he does for gas (in these days of $4 gas, that's saying something). Instead of going the fancy restaurant route (led by, among other places, Chez Panisse, located in the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley where I grew up) or choosing to go my grandfather's route and buying a home seltzer machine for his tap water, thereby both saving money and not wasting plastic bottles, his "recipe" consists of taking a bottle of QFC sparkling water and adding some plain water from his tap and a lime. I was very entertained, both that this could be called an actual recipe, and that anyone would choose to give it air time.

At the same time, as A pointed out, he did say that drinking grocery-store fizzy water was, "like swallowing an electric fence". So props for the funny analogy at least.

Horsey Dilemma

Yesterday on The World, Genevieve Oger reported on the Bridgette Bardot Foundation’s efforts to get French people to stop eating horsemeat. Horsemeat used to be poor man’s meat in France, but now it only accounts for 2% of meat eaten, and it’s more expensive than beef or pork, but the Foundation is focusing on giving out pamphlets and pressuring markets to stop carrying it. They admit their real goal is to try to get people to eat less meat in general, but they say that such a goal is unrealistic so they’re focusing on this particular issue.

As someone who gave up red meat with no problems 4 years ago (and pork a year or so ago; that’s much harder even for a good Jewish girl like me…mmmm…bacon) I have no real interest in trying horsemeat, although since I do eat meat when I travel abroad I wouldn’t be averse to trying it if I were in France. However, images of My Little Pony aside, I have two issues with the Bridgette Bardot Foundation’s plan:

1. I really don’t see how eating horsemeat is any worse than eating the meat of any other large herbivore. If anything it might even be better when it comes to the environment and humane treatment of the horses since there aren’t any large factory farms that raise and slaughter horses. I assume that therefore most horse’s lives while alive are probably a great deal better than your average meat cow, and they probably consume more grass and less oil-based-fertilizer-enhanced corn.
2. Convincing people not to eat horsemeat is not going to raise the number of people who are vegetarians or even those who eat less meat. I would be willing to bet that for every person who goes to the store to buy horsemeat and doesn’t find it, they will simply buy some other meat product. Why is the horse more special than any other mammal? It’s really just a cultural thing – it’s the reason some cultures eat dogs but no one here would even consider it – and if France’s culture still thinks eating horses is okay, albeit for a very small percentage of people, that’s fine by me.

At best this is a showy effort to bring attention to the plight of animals that are bred for the food chain. Realistically though, I think this is much like the efforts of a few socialites ten years ago or so to pass an anti-horsemeat initiative in California – it was an activity for folks with too much time and money on their hands, and the opposition encouraged us to, “Just say Neigh”.

2008: The Year of Yet More Foodies

My plan was to make this the first post of 2008 before I got all grumpy about caucuses (and I'm not done yet!) so you'll just have to pretend. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't written more about food since, what with my double-whammy Berkeleyan AND Jewish upbringing, I'm a bit obsessed. Anyhow, as J and I were driving back from our very snowy cabin on New Year's Eve, Amy Stewart on All Things Considered was ranting about people talking too much about food, particularly local food.

Now I can understand how people who are not as into food as I am might find juicy discussions about the orgasmic pleasure of Rover’s Scrambled Eggs with Lime Crème Fraîche and White Sturgeon Caviar a bit boring and perhaps even unhealthy. For instance, I was considering buying a new book by the author of one of the food blogs I regularly check out – Gluten-Free Girl – as a Christmas present and perused the customer reviews, many of which were appalled by the loving, some said obsessive, language that she uses about food which I find simply poetic. So I get that not everyone is into it. And really, it’s no longer creative to write a “How I Ate Locally” memoir – been there, done that.

But people, you do have a choice! You don’t need to buy cookbooks or food memoirs. You don’t need to watch the food channel! You don’t need to go to dinner parties (at least not at my house). But don’t take away the joy from those of us who love food. Following chefs through markets on TV (which Ms. Stewart derides) may not be news, but it is entertainment for people like me. There’s no such thing as “just grocery shopping".

Ultimately, I can think of few things more depressing than Ms. Stewart’s suggestion of the book of 2008 - My Year of Never Ever Talking About Food, Even Once: Your Quest of Finding Something Else to Say At Breakfast.

Sushi Economy

On Marketplace today Kai Ryssdal interviewed Sasha Issenberg, author of "The Sushi Economy" in a fascinating story. First of all, it made me hungry because they did the interview while sitting down over what sounded like really tasty sushi. Secondly, it was interesting to hear the premise of the book, which is that sushi one of the unabashedly positive* products of globalization. Globalization has helped the fishermen who can catch their fish and get access through fax machines in remote villages to find out exactly how much fish is selling for so that they can get a good price. Quick travel (by plane) and fancy deep freeze machines have also meant that fishermen can expand their reach. On the flip side, globalization of culture has also meant that what was a strange Japanese roadside snack is now a luxury available worldwide, so the market for sushi has expanded tremendously. Overall, more people being happy eating wasabi around the globe (except they aren't actually, but that's a whole other story...). And that's a good thing.

*Of course, by eating more sushi we're also contributing to the over-fishing of the oceans and probably to the destruction of the planet et cetera...but let's stay positive today people, shall we?

Everything tastes better when you're thirty

This week The World Today (along with most other programs) seems to be doing a series of environmentally-minded shows, likely because of Earth day last weekend. It was also my birthday this week, so maybe they're doing it for me - who knows. Either way, it's been pretty interesting.

On Tuesday night, they reported that Richard Branson is touting Virgin Air's plan to use an ethanol-like fuel instead of regular gasoline at some point in the future. I was glad that they tried to debunk the "we're so socially minded" advertising by interviewing an environmental activist pointed out that bio-fuels aren't that great, because they have a large carbon footprint when you add up all the fertilizer used to grow and store them. Unfortunately, after starting off strong, he began to discuss how if you used grasses or cut down rainforests (why on earth would you do that?) to get the fuel rather than using corn, you would be releasing carbon into the air that the plants were currently locking into the ground (?) and you'd be replacing them with a monoculture (?) and by the way the solution was that we should all stop flying airplanes for the next 15 years or so while we collected fuel from renewable sources. Okay, glad they got someone realistic there.

On Wednesday night, James Fletcher did a great report about indirect carbon footprints. Instead of just looking at our direct CO2, he argued, we should look at the CO2 released by all the things we buy and eat. As an example, he figured out the amount of CO2 released by a cheeseburger. To do this, you need to add up the amount emitted by growing the tomato and lettuce and wheat for the bun, the amount thrown off by transporting the food to the restaurant or processing facilities, the amount used in cooking, and most importantly, the amount that comes from the cow through it's regular bodily functions. A cow releases methane of course, which is apparently 28 times worse for the ozone layer than CO2, and, I guess because they have four stomachs with which to ferment food, and especially because of all the corn the poor things are fed in our industrialized farming society (which causes intense indigestion) - they burp and fart a lot. Enough that the footprint for one cheeseburger is four and a half pounds of CO2! Just another reason for me to be glad I don't eat red meat.

As it was meant to be

In my previous rant about carbon offsets and semi-rant about the Green Restaurant Certification, I argued that true conservation is about reducing consumption to saving both the environment and dollars (rather than spending more money to make yourself feel good). Today on Morning Edition there was a great example of this - a story about how a prison tried to get more environmentally friendly and ended up saving $1.3 million dollars. This WA state prison made a few changes for environmental reasons - they moved to low-flow shower heads and toilets, and they started composting food waste, using it to start an organic vegetable garden*. But after doing this, they got an engineering report on their planned new sewage treatment facility and found out that by taking food waste out of the system, they actually didn't need to build the new facility at all, thereby saving $1.3 million dollars. Now that's conservation.

*I don't know how I feel about prisoners getting fresh organic food when many working poor are unable to afford it but that's a different issue - either way, it's better for the environment and saves taxpayers money.

Food Math

One of the comments made on the Day to Day story regarding green restaurants really stuck with me.

"Okay, so the calculus of sustainability is complicated"

I couldn't agree more. I have an unhealthy addiction to non-fiction books - I just finished Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry by Dan Hurley (review to come in a future post) and am in the middle of both Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich. The problem is that, aside from feeling like a bit of a freak for reading all these random books, the more I learn, the harder it is to make good choices, and the more complex the calculus gets. Since most of the non-fiction I read is food related, let me write out just a partial list of the things I have to consider when deciding what to eat:

1. Is it locally grown or raised?
2. Is it organic, or fed organic food?
3. Is it sustainably grown or raised?
4. If it's an animal, is it free range?
5. Was it killed humanely?
6. Was it raised in an eco-conscious manner?
7. Was it allowed to live and eat the way that it would naturally have done?
8. Are the workers who picked the food or raised the animals paid a sustainable wage?
9. Are the workers given health insurance and benefits?
10. Are the workers who sell the food and manage the people who sell the food well-paid and not laid off for being too old or making too high of a salary?
11. Is it packaged in an environmentally friendly way?
12. Is it packaged in a material that might leech into the food?
13. Is it low in fat and calories?
14. Is it high in vitamins and minerals?
15. If it's enriched with vitamins and minerals, does it actually contain the amount that it says it does, and if so is that too much?

I could go on, but you get the point. By the time I get to "does it actually taste good?" I'm so worn out I almost don't care. And I actually like calculus - I can't imagine what would happen to someone who didn't!

So much to choose from

I must have been in the car more today than usual, or NPR was just having a really good day, but I heard at least five stories that I thought were worth commenting on. However, I will spare my good readers (all three of you :-) and stick to just brief comments on two of the stories:

1) During a report this morning about President Bush's trip in Latin America, the snarky NPR (and yes, this time it was NPR and not KIRO that I was listening to by mistake) reporter played every quote that included the President talking about food. Based on the quotes, it sounded like he spent his whole trip saying he was hungry for dinner or lunch, having the president of the countries he was visiting describe the menu planned for the day, or discussing the quality of blueberries in Ecuador (or wherever). I found this all particularly amusing because I've read a lot about the fact that on past trips to foreign countries Bush rarely stayed long enough to actually eat - preferring his Texas steaks on the plane I'd imagine. I suppose this time he had to actually stick around so he could continue to not answer questions about Chavez, who was wandering around Latin America at the same time (way more nutty, but probably not talking about food as much)

2) On The Beat today Greg Atkinson was interviewed about the food inventions that were created in wartime that we can find in our kitchens today. He said that basically all food processing and mass production techniques were created to get food to the battlefield and that after WWII the factories were repurposed to make pre-processed food for the civilian population - and that's how we ended up with some of the tasty but chemical-pumped food that I'm embarrassed to admit exists in my pantry today. I thought this was interesting because it brings to mind the theory that all sorts of technology that we use in daily life (Teflon, velcro, etc) was invented during the 1960's as we were trying to get man to the moon (although some dispute this). It's sad but unsuprising that technologies we discovered during war are now so prevalent as well. I guess there are many different types of "needs" to drive creativity.

More of the same

In my previous rant about carbon offsets, I blogged my annoyance about people who buy carbon offsets as a way of then feeling good about using as much energy as they wanted. There was a story on Day to Day today about something similar, and one of the commentators actually made this point, which I thought was great.

In this story, they reported on a trend of restaurants that were "going green" by trying to implement energy-saving policies in order to get a certification from the Green Restaurant Association. This sounds great on the surface, as understandably restaurants use an enormous amount of energy, produce a ton of waste, and use a lot of water. There are many things the restaurants can do such as recycle their fryer oil, compost their food waste, use recycled products etc. that make great impacts.

However, one of the restaurant owners was really honest and said that along with wanting to do good, she hoped that this would encourage more people to come into her store because her customers were really environmentally conscious. And that gets to the main point, which James Goldstein, a senior fellow at an environmental research group made really well - there are incompatibilities with a consumer society and sustainability. Ultimately restaurants are going green to try to get us to buy more - and we can only be really sustainable if we try to consume less. So overall, while I laud the effort of the Green Restaurant Association and I'm glad that restaurants are interested in saving resources (and money, since they end up spending less on energy and garbage) I'm wary that overall this will just cause people to wrench their arms out of their sockets patting themselves on the back and then go on to buy more.

One more reason I don't want to go to jail

Today on All Things Considered Patricia Murphy interviewed the author of Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras, Jeff Henderson, who is currently head chef at the Bellagio but got his start in cooking when he was spending nine years in prison for cooking crack. His story was inspiring - in prison he found that he really enjoyed cooking and when he got out he found an African-American chef at a restaurant in Vegas who he looked up to and basically pestered him until he agreed to let him work in his kitchen. Henderson washed dishes and cleaned the bathrooms and came in early and left late, even when he wasn't being paid overtime, just to prove to the chef that he was trustworthy and capable of learning, and eventually ended up as a head chef in his own restaurant. He actually compared the process of blanching vegetables to the process of cooking crack out of cocaine (I never realized it was such a science) and the delicacy you need in cooking foie gras to the issues you'd have if you messed up a batch of cocaine.

However, the most surprising thing to me was the fact that he said he got into food in prison because you're always hungry there - he said by Tuesday you're thinking about what you'll get for dinner on Saturday. It never occurred to me that you wouldn't get enough food while in prison - I assumed the food would be bad, but not unsubstantial. Now that I know, the thought of going to prison is even that much more horrifying. I don't think we should be serving feasts but I think we're doing everyone a disservice by not having prisoners fed healthy, reasonably substantial meals. In the long run you'd think the medical fees we'd save in and of themselves would make this worthwhile.

More Meat

Apparently meat is now the #1 item stolen from grocery stores. Not any old meat, mind you, but "premium" cuts of meat. Since I don't eat red meat I'm not a very good judge of what constitutes premium meat - obviously filet mignon but according to NPR also lamb chops. Here's the scenario that apparently causes this meat theft trend - people go to the meat section to buy cheap hamburger, but then decide that they "deserve" fancier meat. They then stick it under their jacket and take off, sometimes buying other grocery items. Women are apparently more likely than men to steal meat - men steal things they can resell.

So this makes me think

(1) are we all crazy? Who really needs meat that much? I'd understand more if people were desperate and stole the cheap cuts to feed their hungry children but they just really want prime rib.

(2) it's interesting that women, who generally don't get sterotyped as meat-devouring, are stealing more of it. Perhaps it's just because they do more of the grocery shopping?

(3) i can imagine few things more off-putting than sticking a dripping, bloody saran-wrapped package of animal flesh under my jacket. Yuck.

First Post

Everything I know I heard on NPR. Or at least that's how it seems. Once a week during FOT lunches, or during my Tuesday or Wednesday night set dinners with "family", our topics of conversation range widely but we always come back to the good ones - the things we heard on NPR. This blog probably won't always be about things I heard on NPR, but it's certainly a good start. The rest of the time I'll probably write about random things happening in my life, if I write about anything at all.



So current thought from NPR: Yesterday, I heard Kai Ryssdal (who would have thought he spelled his name that way) prompt a story about Barry Glassner's book which says that descriptions of food at the supermarket are intended to make us feel like we're doing a social action by buying "free range" or "organic" food. Since I'm currently reading the Omnivore's Dilemma, along with the lovely ladies in my book club, I was interested to hear more about what Michael Pollan calls "Supermarket Pastoral". (I love that term, it brings me back to my high school Latin class.) I was really excited that even though I missed the story, I was able to read the transcript at Tues Night Family Night (TNFN) on http://markeplace.org/, but then totally disappointed to find only the most superficial interview on the subject. Now I wonder whether all the other interviews on Marketplace are equally flimsy and I just didn't notice it because the topic isn't something I'm very familiar with like food, or if the rest of the interviews are great but this one is not so good. Besides this NPR discussion (and another few interviews today too), in the last couple days since I started reading the Omnivore's Dilemma every place I look seems to be related - I've read a couple articles already in an old issue of Time Magazine I had sitting around at home that were relevant, as was a blog I read very irregularly that I just happened to check. I wonder if everyone is obsessed with the dilemma of what to eat or if it's just me.