The writer of my book turned out to be Shannon Hayes. An amazing women and great writer who turned her commitment to her household and her curiosity about this commitment into a book called Radical Homemakers. (I mentioned this upcoming work here, and it is basically a thesis of what Michael Pollen mentions when he talks about labor/time/gender and the ways in which these are linked to how we eat (see below) The history of the development of consumer culture and the creation of cheap food is also addressed in an article I wrote, which can be read here)

I don’t even need to give a summary as she has done so for Yes! Magazine and you can read it here. She also wrote a piece for the Chelsea Green Blog- read here. The themes are very Mind-to-Mouth and I hope you all take the chance to read Hayes’ work.

                          

The best of these interviews so far has been with Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdek Kouddous on Democracy Now. They tell him at the beginning that their “food rule” for him is “no sound bites” and he plays along (probably eager for the chance to elaborate really). Even if you have read his books and/or heard him talk, and he does do a lot of repeating, as I guess is necessary, this interchange is worth watching. As he does in the other interviews, he really brings together the complexity of the food culture with clear ways out of many of the tangles we’re in but he goes a bit deeper than the rest and seems a bit more forthright.

My favorite point is his mention of the feminist/labor issues around food and how processed food and classic feminism went, unfortunately, hand in hand due to the need for more income and less entrapment of women in a domestic role. I think this questions gets to the heart of our daily food life; who cooks for us, why don’t we cook ourselves, why don’t we prioritize the time and money to eat well? I really feel that addressing these questions and making changes that align with our heart-of-heart values with the answers can be really empowering, healing, and have great impact on the world.

My least favorite point is his use of the word “fat” as if there is one category and none of the members of that category have any distinction. I know he understands this because he is very current on the research on the role of fat in the diet. People generally understand that there a “good fats” and “bad fats” so he could just at least say “bad fats” but he could take it a step further and separate out whole, traditional fats from industrial oils. He does this already with meat. There is no such thing as meat as one category- there are animals that are eaten that have completely different diets and nutritional profiles even though they are technically the same animals. He explains that he eats less meat than he used to and he eats different meat than he used to (only grass fed for beef for example). I wish he would make the same distinction with fat. He mentioned that school lunches are so deplorable because it is the disposal method for surplus cheap food and because the meals have calorie minimums not maximums. He says the meals need to have less fat- well school lunches have low-fat milk, but we know that’s not really the best choice in terms of providing whole food. So schools have followed the low-fat mantra, but are still terribly unhealthy. He doesn’t really mean that they need less fat, they need less of the processed foods and chemicals that are contributing to disease and obesity in children, which is not whole milk- it is soda (which he does mention), and highly processed carbs, and industrial fats. I wouldn’t change much about what he said, and I don’t think he should bring down the ease with which he communicates by bringing this up in such a way (as I do), but it would help his message stay consistent if he would at least make a careful distinction in this regard.

                          

I realize that of all the animals in the world mice do not exactly get a lot of sympathy and most people are pretty comfortable with killing them especially when they inhabit and muss up, if not partly destroy, parts of our houses. The mouse that Robert Burns turns up in her nest with his plow in his famous poem about mice and men is, I would think, more of a poetic mouse representing the ways “…man’s dominion/ Has broken Nature’s social union”. My mouse stands in for wildlife that have been wrongly implicated in the presence of harmful bacteria on our salads. At least in California- for now

As great as the impact of our food production is on water, air, and soil quality and on the other creatures trying to live in spite of our agriculture industry, great strides have been made towards planting additional vegetation along waterways and crops to lessen this impact. These efforts have even been put in large non-organic farms. It is a little effort that goes a long way in protecting wildlife and our own health in terms of water quality. Much more about Farmscaping here.

In a post on Civil Eats I wrote about the dubious reasons the majority of the leafy green industry in California (providing a good deal of the rest of the country’s greens especially this time of year) has decided to remove these good farmscape efforts and blame non-crop vegetation and the creatures who inhabit it for harmful bacteria like E. Coli. Most farmers need to sell their crops to a buyer (versus being able to sell directly to the consumer via Farmer’s Markets and relationships with some restaurants) and 99% of California buyers are requiring that wildlife not come in contact with crops. This requirement is not based on good science, nor is it even a reasonable expectation, and farms are having to poison birds and wild rodents as well as remove the vegetation that ensures clean water through agricultural areas.

Robert Burns lamented over the destruction of a mouse’s simple nest and forgave her for taking an occasional ear of corn. Not to get too poetical but these best laid plans of trying to feed people has truly gone awry. The hugeness of our production system means it is harder to produce safe food and to make up for this reality we are furthering the problems caused by our agriculture with these backwards efforts rather than changing that scale.

                          

Wheatley’s work focuses heavily on leadership in and organization of the workplace. Particularly after reading Steven Greenhouse’s “The Big Squeeze” it is clear that most people’s jobs are like cogs in an awkward machine. If companies were to move into a more 21st century understanding of human potential and the important of relationship many of the problems in the treatment of workers described in Greenhouse book would be addressed.

In Michale Pollan’s most recent book “In Defense of Food; and eater’s manifesto” he describes the problem of nutritionism, which is basically a reductionist approach to food- an appreciation of only their specific parts (some isolated nutrients) and not of the relationships of those parts or the food’s relationship with our bodies’ systems. The video below talks about the book’s concepts generally but addresses the problems of reducing a carrot down to simply beta carotene that leaves us with very little understanding of the value of this vegetable. Worth watching.

In addition to needing better understanding of our food, our food system as a whole could improve with some of Wheatley’s ideas about organizations and leadership. Currently there are at least five agencies that have some role in regulating food and none of them work with each other (big surprise). Huge improvements would be made with greater communication between these agencies and a better understanding of the relationships between their various goals and interests would lead to a system much more in line with reality.

The approach to organizations and leadership that Margaret Whealey believes in is coherent and intensely positive. Recent events, like the election of Barack Obama, indicate to me that we are more than ready for a similar approach in our various efforts for change.

                          

Consumer spending is close to 70% of our national economy, therefore we should never underestimate the impact our individual choices have on the overall system. We are not individual households engaged in the process of buying goods that is somehow separate from our neighbor’s ability to buy goods and support themselves. The economy is strained because our system operates with a eye only to the bottom line.  This priority has cut out workers and thus reduced the amount of consumers. By making decisions simply based on increasing the difference between spending and incomes, companies have undercut the sustainability of our communities.

Will anything change if households operate in the same way? We have to reassess the standards by which we make our spending choices, thinking beyond simple subtractions. Clearly we only have so much to spend and must make choices within that amount. But the majority of us have been guided to spend our money on as much as possible for as cheap as possible. If we shift the amount of stuff we buy to spend more on goods that support our neighbors, our bodies, and our environment we are taking the power we have as consumers and doing something about the mess the nation (world) faces financially.

Two recent New York Times articles have addressed the high costs of high quality food. In a post titled “When Money Is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons” health writer Tara Parker-Pope asks “How much does it really cost to eat a healthy diet?” She goes on to write about a couple who spent 30 days seeing what they could eat on a dollar a day, an extreme budget that reflects what many impoverished people around the world are able to spend on food including some American families with very limited food stamp allowances. A worthwhile experiment to be sure, but Parker-Pope doesn’t really answer her own question and she could also have asked a better question relevant to most of us with more choices than a dollar a day food budget: How much does it really cost, the nation and world as a whole, for people to eat unhealthy diets?

In “Budgets Squeezed, Some Families Bypass Organics” the decline in spending on organic (mostly processed, packaged) foods is addressed. Unfortunately this article doesn’t compare the decline in all spending compared to the identified slump in organic goods, so its hard to say if this trend really shows a unique change in spending. It also doesn’t looks at spending on organic whole foods (bulk grains, veggies, butcher meats etc) compared with processed or value added foods (which are by far the easiest way to spend too much on food).

Many [vendors of organic goods] are worried that if the economy continues to flounder, consumers — particularly those who only occasionally shop for their products — may decide they can no longer afford to let their conscience dictate their shopping list.

If it’s not values then what does guide us in the grocery aisle?

NPR’s Marketplace had a more encouraging report on the ways in which many people are looking at their tighter budgets and letting values trump. That is to say we may now be taking a broader look at our overall spending, across all areas beyond food, and how we use what we buy to prioritize certain goods that will often be more expensive in unit to unit price comparisons.

Here is what they say in this Marketplace report:

When Whole Foods reports its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, analysts expect to see sales growth between 0 and 1 percent… Which is not to say that consumers are ready to throw in the towel on organic food. What they are doing, is buying in bulk from organic wholesalers or shopping more at Whole Foods’ competition — lower-cost local grocery chains and food co-ops. Barth Anderson is a director at The Wedge food co-op in Minneapolis. He says business is up.

Barth Anderson : It’s wonderful, actually. The downturn in the economy has really brought a lot of people home. They don’t say, “Well, we’re going to order a pizza.” They actually cook.

But, will they keep buying more expensive organic ingredients to do that cooking? Sam Fromartz thinks they will. He’s author of the book “Organic Inc.”

Sam Fromartz: Consumers, if they really believe in the value of organic foods, they’re going to continue to buy it because it’s what they’re putting into their bodies. So, they’re going to cut back in other areas. They’re going to try to get them for as cheap as they can.

Daily reports on the role of slowed spending in the current recession reminds us of our purpose as consumers. As depressing as this fact might be the exchange of goods and services can be something fulfilling and meaningful.

In a simpler world there would be no question if you should buy the cheapest good when you have less money. But these are not simple times and buying cheap food limits others’ ability to support themselves and undercuts our own health. Paying more for better food supports more positive things than you could ever buy with the few dollars and cents you kept individually. I think we are ready for better questions that get to the complexity of the choices we really have in front of us, and if the decisions we make aren’t based in what we think is right, what kind of world are we buying into?