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If you eat food in America, see “Food, Inc.”

The 90-minute documentary will disgust, infuriate, and inspire you.  Multinational food conglomerates, with the help of their cronies in government, have spent millions of dollars to make sure the average consumer never learns the things you learn in this film.* 

As we watched pigs being roughly herded to their deaths in the nation’s largest slaughterhouse, I turned to Andrea. “So, will you join me? Twice a month and only if you know where it’s from?”

Without missing a beat, she said: “Oh, I made that decision back at the chickens” — the first segment of the film.

The movie has its flaws — as Ezra Klein put it, “It’s driven less by a thesis than by an intuition: Something is wrong with our food production system. It’s just not clear what.” — and you may feel powerless and hopeless by the end.

I think the best take-away is this: you vote for what kind of food industry you want three times a day. Consumers can change the system. You don’t need to give up industrially-produced meat and poultry full-stop, as I have, but you can significantly reduce, as Marco has.  Try food writer Mark Bittman’s “Vegan Before 6” strategy or his “lessmeatism” philosophy. Whatever works for you, do it. But, please: reduce your consumption of industrially-produced meat and poultry (and corn-fed, farmed fish, while we’re at it).

Sadly, most non-meat foods are not much better, because they’re produced with corn- and soy-based chemicals and genetically-modified organisms, and travels thousands of petro-miles to your door. You know the drill: whenever you can, avoid packaged foods, especially ones with ingredients you don’t recognize, and eat what’s grown locally. (Here’s a guide.)

Alright, enough with the soapbox.  I want to end with three images from the film that have stuck with me:

  • A chicken farmer in Kentucky, contracted (and indebted) to Tyson. Driving around in his pickup, he’s overweight, red-faced, jowly, and unhealthy-looking. His chickens are stuffed into huge buildings with black curtains over the windows which Tyson doesn’t allow the film crew to enter.
  • In contrast: Joel Slatin, the infamous “grass farmer” of Polyface Farm.  If you got rid of his funky eyeglasses, he’d be a farmer from central cating: tan, fit, muscular, and at ease as he walks his land, drives a tractor, and butchers a chicken. His animals are the platonic ideal, the image most Americans still have when they think “cow” — grazing on grass, nuzzling one another, basking in sunlight (this is not what the vast majority of cows in this country do every day). The irony is that Slatin is the black sheep and the quiet revolutionary that undermines the dominance of the angro-industrial approach.
  • A machine spewing out slabs of a putty-colored, SPAM-like substance that is destined to be added to 70% of fast food hamburgers in America. It’s a meat filler “cleansed” with ammonia to combat traces of deadly E. Coli found in industrially-produced beef.  That’s right: you are essentially eating bleach.

* Most of which is not news to anyone who’s read Michael Pollan and Eric Schloesser, but seeing bald corruption and abuse of people and animals on the big screen makes it all the more real.

PS: I just got the film’s companion book in the mail, which includes essays from Pollan, Schloesser, food policy maven Marion Nestle, and Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, among others, so I’ll report back on what I learn.

July 1, 2009

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link Michael Pollan: "A Food Revolution in the Making, from Victory Gardens to the White House Lawn"

I’m creating an Urban Agriculture Study Group at the City University of New York (where I’m on the staff of a green building program) with a couple of crazy-passionate, very inspiring students.  One of them went off to Power Shift 2009 and came back excited to change the word through urban farming.  But he hadn’t even read Michael Pollan yet, so I set him to work.  Lesson One: Omnivore’s Dilemna.  (Eventually I hope to go on field trips with the group — maybe to visit my friends at the Queens County Farm Museum!).

I just emailed this HuffPo post to my students…

Resolarizing the food economy can support diversified farming and shorten the distance from farm to fork, shrinking the amount of fossil fuel in the American diet. A decentralized food system offers many other significant benefits: Food eaten closer to where it is grown is fresher and requires less processing, making it more nutritious, and whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience; regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of shocks.

Here are few examples of how we could start:

  • Provide grants to towns and cities to build year-round indoor farmers’ markets.
  • Make food-safety regulations sensitive to scale and marketplace, so that small producers selling direct off the farm or at a farmers’ market are not regulated as onerously as a multinational food manufacturer.
  • Urge The U.S.D.A. to establish a Local Meat-Inspectors Corps to serve and support the local food processors that remain.
  • Establish a Strategic Grain Reserve to prevent huge swings in commodity prices.
  • Create incentives for hospitals and universities receiving federal funds to buy fresh local produce which would vastly expand regional agriculture and improve the diet of the millions of people these institutions feed.

Link via Ms. Cathy.

April 22, 2009

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The “natural” artificial sweetener

“Stevia” is the common name for rebaudioside A, an artifical, no-calorie sweetener that is extracted from the leaves of the stevia plant.  Long popular in Japan, the FDA deemed it safe for use in food and drink this past December — after years of lobbying from “large food and drink manufacturers” who sensed ” an eager audience for a sugar substitute perceived as healthier than the rest,” the NYT reports.

Stevia is gaining popularity, thanks in part to bloggers like The Fitnessista, who champions whole food eating but uses stevia in everything from homemade almond milk to coffee. But what, really, seperates it from Splenda? Neither are things your grandmother would recognize as food (one of Michael Pollan’s rules for eating).

More on the marketing of stevia from the NYT article…

Stevia has one distinct advantage over all the rest. Because it comes from a plant, marketers can call it a natural sweetener. And that allows companies that have invested millions in new stevia products to tap into two powerful markets at once: natural ingredients and low-calorie products. […]

Two of the biggest backers [of stevia], Cargill and Whole Earth Sweetener Company, earlier this year began rolling out packets of stevia-based sweeteners, called Truvia and PureVia respectively. The extract is in the companies’ drinks, too. Among the new stevia products marketed as naturally sweetened are Sprite Green from Coca-Cola and Trop50, from the PepsiCo subsidiary Tropicana. It’s essentially half water and half orange juice doctored with stevia.

To underline their natural claims, stevia products come packaged in green.

April 16, 2009

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link Where the Obesity Grows

Interesting article about the political connection between the obesity epidemic and our industrial agricultural system, starring Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, who calls his “the most important department in government,” and Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

“All flesh is grass” says the scripture. Much of the too-ample flesh of Americans (three of five are overweight; one in five is obese) comes from corn, which is a grass. A quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain processed corn. Fossil fuels are involved in planting, fertilizing, harvesting, transporting and processing the corn. America’s food industry uses about as much petroleum as America’s automobiles do.

March 8, 2009

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link Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture

We need to resolarize the American food chain while weaning the nation from our dependence on foreign oil.  We cannot keep subsidizing corn crops to make unsustainable fuel while most of the world is starving for grains.  We need to get closer to the source of our foods for the health of our bodies, our children, and our planet.

Michael Pollan understands this.  Join me in urging President-elect Obama to make him Secretary of Agriculture (or at least a senior advisor).

For more on Pollan, read his open letter to the next president as well as my writings on him and any of his excellent books (The Omnivore’s Dilemna is the best).

Petition link via WNYC.

November 10, 2008

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Rethinking the American Dream.

Last night in the debate, Obama admitted that his support for so-called “clean” coal makes him unpopular with some environmentalists. Michael Silberman noted: “at least somewhere deep down Obama seems to realize he’s wrong on the oxymoron that is clean coal.”

The truth is, neither candidate offers the leadership and values we need to push this country into the post-fossil fuel era as quickly as scientists say we must.

Michael Pollan’s open letter to the next president, undoubtedly a sample of his forthcoming political manifesto, inspired reflections from the ever-interesting bunnynico on this issues of personal responsibility and political leadership…

“After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.”

-excerpt from Michael Pollan’s essay ”Farmer in Chief” from The New York Times, October 9, 2008.

My brother sent me this link, and I’m a little late to it, but Michael Pollan recently penned an unbelievably inspiring open letter (or, more like an essay) to the next President-Elect regarding the way people live and eat and consume in America.  I definitely think it’s well worth the reading his proposal.

I’m not perfect at all when it comes to the environment, but I do try to do little things that might make a difference, like recycling, using canvas bags to do my food shopping or washing my clothes in biodegradable detergent.  I live close to a food market in NYC where I can drop off food compost four days a week.  If each of us did something small, the world might be a little better.

If it was up to me, recycling bins would be on every street corner, all soap would be biodegradable, chemicals and artificial ingredients would be banned from foods, and all those oil companies raking in billions of dollars would be taxed at a much greater rate.  I’d also propose that sensors be placed in hallway lights in every apartment building, and even on some of the streets.  European cities conserve energy this way, why can’t the U.S. do the same?

Reading Pollan’s open letter reminded me that some of the changes that are needed in the U.S. are not just about taxes and job growth, but include fundamental changes in how we live and eat off the land.  His letter made me question whether either of the presidential candidates is willing to support such a proposal, or something similar to it.  I found myself thinking how incredible it would be to have a candidate that actually believed in the ideas that Pollan writes about.  That is the type of person I would want to see running the U.S.

People always talk about the “American Dream” in capitalistic terms as though everything is about wealth and success.  At this moment in time, my American Dream would include the implementation of Pollan’s proposal, or something substantially similar.

Here’s hoping that Obama reads Pollan’s letter and is inspired by it to make changes that might really improve the way that Americans live and consume.

October 16, 2008

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photo Another Nail in the Coffin of Biofuels? With the global economic crisis dominating the headlines, the global food crisis — which, arguably, has a greater impact on a larger percentage of the world’s population — has faded into the background.  But a report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization put it back in The New York Times, if not on the front page. The authors of the report blame the production of biofuels for the high cost of food around the world.  Farmers can get a better price for their corn and sugarcane crops when they’re converted into fuel, in part because of subsidies set by national governments, including our own. In August, Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, said: “Corn domesticated our land, our diet, and our gas tanks.”  Ethanol, he added, is “the spark that lit the fire of the current food crisis.” The U.N. report urges that nations stop subsidizing biofuels and begin phasing out existing mandates. I’ve heard several people say that because the climate crisis is so grave and we’ve taken so little action, we have room for just one major error.  And we’ve already made it, with our investment in ethanol and other biofuels. The New York Times reports: A host of studies in the past year concluded that the rush to biofuels had some disastrous, if unintended, consequences for food security and the environment. Less food is available to eat in poor countries, global grain prices have skyrocketed and precious forests have been lost as farmers have created fields to join the biofuel boom, the studies said. Worse still, specialists say, so much energy is required to convert many plants into fuel that the process does not result in a savings of carbon emissions. Ethanol is the worst of the biofuels, in part because of the amount of energy it takes to make ethanol from corn, and because our agricultural system is run on petroleum.  On a factory farm, it takes a half a gallon of oil to produce every bushel of corn. I agreed with McCain exactly once during the debate last night.  “I’d eliminate ethanol subsidies. I oppose ethanol subsidies,” he said.  Obama has continued to support them, and included biodiesels, another word for biofuel, in a list of alternative energy sources his administration would invest in. But it seems that, with a global recession looking more and more likely, access to affordable food will be increasingly important. As Pollan said, “Even though the candidates are not talking about it, they will have to.” Photo sources, clockwise from top left: Show Me the Honey, ABC News, Wendy Usually Wanders, Triple Pundit.

Another Nail in the Coffin of Biofuels?

With the global economic crisis dominating the headlines, the global food crisis — which, arguably, has a greater impact on a larger percentage of the world’s population — has faded into the background.  But a report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization put it back in The New York Times, if not on the front page.

The authors of the report blame the production of biofuels for the high cost of food around the world.  Farmers can get a better price for their corn and sugarcane crops when they’re converted into fuel, in part because of subsidies set by national governments, including our own.

In August, Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, said: “Corn domesticated our land, our diet, and our gas tanks.”  Ethanol, he added, is “the spark that lit the fire of the current food crisis.”

The U.N. report urges that nations stop subsidizing biofuels and begin phasing out existing mandates.

I’ve heard several people say that because the climate crisis is so grave and we’ve taken so little action, we have room for just one major error.  And we’ve already made it, with our investment in ethanol and other biofuels. The New York Times reports:

A host of studies in the past year concluded that the rush to biofuels had some disastrous, if unintended, consequences for food security and the environment. Less food is available to eat in poor countries, global grain prices have skyrocketed and precious forests have been lost as farmers have created fields to join the biofuel boom, the studies said. Worse still, specialists say, so much energy is required to convert many plants into fuel that the process does not result in a savings of carbon emissions.

Ethanol is the worst of the biofuels, in part because of the amount of energy it takes to make ethanol from corn, and because our agricultural system is run on petroleum.  On a factory farm, it takes a half a gallon of oil to produce every bushel of corn.

I agreed with McCain exactly once during the debate last night.  “I’d eliminate ethanol subsidies. I oppose ethanol subsidies,” he said.  Obama has continued to support them, and included biodiesels, another word for biofuel, in a list of alternative energy sources his administration would invest in.

But it seems that, with a global recession looking more and more likely, access to affordable food will be increasingly important. As Pollan said, “Even though the candidates are not talking about it, they will have to.”

Photo sources, clockwise from top left: Show Me the Honey, ABC News, Wendy Usually Wanders, Triple Pundit.

October 8, 2008

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Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
—

Albert Einstein

Michael Pollan said that he admires vegetarians because they have taken the time to consider their diet — but that the conscientious omnivore is okay, too.  My admiration of him and my love of meat is such that this pronouncement spelled delicious relief for me.

August 28, 2008

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photo Taking An Idea and Making It Stick: Michael Pollan’s Quest to Put the Sun Back In Our Food The line stretched around three sides of the city block that holds the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens. The casually hip crowd could have been waiting for a “secret” Wilco concert.  Or perhaps a limited delivery of ramps and purslane from a “rockstar farmer.”  But some were clutching books — In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a dog-eared Botany of Desire — and there was no mistaking who the main attraction was: Michael Pollan, the journalist-hero of sustainable agriculture. We waited for 40 minutes only to get about 100 feet from the entrance to the museum and hear this message from an overwhelmed young museum assistant: “We’re sorry, but the lecture room is full.  You can stand outside in the hall if you’d like but…”  Then another assistant came and told us, no, the hallway is full, too. My roommate Andrea and I are proud Pollan fans, so we pressed on, using the cover of a bathroom trip to make a break for the third floor of the converted school building.  We found about 50 people sitting against the walls in the two hallways adjoining the lecture room, their ears cocked to the sound of Pollan’s voice.  I pressed forward to the crowded door of the lecture hall.  The airless, oval space has a mirrored ceiling, and the audience sat on low benches and cross-legged on the floor, amplifying the messianic vibe. His lecture, “Taking the Plant’s Point of View,” outlined the thesis of Botany of Desire: the metaphor of human domination over nature is false, and in fact, certain plants have “domesticated” us, attracting and using us in their quest for survival and reproduction. “Corn domesticated our land, our diet, and our gas tanks,” he said.  Our system for growing corn, cattle, chicken, anything produced in a factory farm, ignores the points of view — the very nature — of the plants and animals.  This has created a tangle of problems for the crops, the environment, and ourselves. “Our assumption is that our relationship with nature is a zero sum game,” he said.  But it needn’t be.  It’s possible for us to get all that we need out of the Earth and leave it more fertile than it was before.  He told the remarkable story of Joel Salatin, the “grass farmer” of Polyface Farm. Polyface Farm’s robust ecosystem is fueled by the sun, an approach that stands in contrast to industrially-produced crops, which are grown with fossil fuels.  On a factory farm, it takes a half a gallon of oil to produce every bushel of corn, one of the reasons why ethanol as alternative fuel is at best a fallacy and at worst, as Pollan remarked, “the spark that lit the fire of the current food crisis.” “We need to resolarize the American food chain,” Pollan declared, hinting at the “political manifesto” that he admitted he is in the process of writing. “We’re not going to make progress on climate change unless we address the food system.  And we’re not going to make progress on the health crisis unless we address food system.” The next Administration will be hearing these words from Pollan. “Even though the candidates are not talking about it, they will have to,” he said, to rising applause. Ask a six-year-old what makes a bean plant grow and she will tell you: the sun.  Resolarizing the food chain is something we all understand.  But what many do not understand is the urgency and the extent of the problem.  This task, Pollan said, “is for the writers, artists, gardeners.  They are the ones who know how to take ideas and make them stick.” With that, he concluded, and we began filing out, eager for the relief of the cool courtyard.  Pollan, surrounded by admirers, made his way slowly to the table outside where a long line of people already waited for him to sign their books. As he walked by Andrea and I, he brushed against her shoulder. “He touched me!” she cried, “Michael Pollan touched me!” She was only half-joking.

Taking An Idea and Making It Stick: Michael Pollan’s Quest to Put the Sun Back In Our Food

The line stretched around three sides of the city block that holds the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens.

The casually hip crowd could have been waiting for a “secret” Wilco concert.  Or perhaps a limited delivery of ramps and purslane from a “rockstar farmer.”  But some were clutching books — In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a dog-eared Botany of Desire — and there was no mistaking who the main attraction was: Michael Pollan, the journalist-hero of sustainable agriculture.

We waited for 40 minutes only to get about 100 feet from the entrance to the museum and hear this message from an overwhelmed young museum assistant: “We’re sorry, but the lecture room is full.  You can stand outside in the hall if you’d like but…”  Then another assistant came and told us, no, the hallway is full, too.

My roommate Andrea and I are proud Pollan fans, so we pressed on, using the cover of a bathroom trip to make a break for the third floor of the converted school building.  We found about 50 people sitting against the walls in the two hallways adjoining the lecture room, their ears cocked to the sound of Pollan’s voice.  I pressed forward to the crowded door of the lecture hall.  The airless, oval space has a mirrored ceiling, and the audience sat on low benches and cross-legged on the floor, amplifying the messianic vibe.

His lecture, “Taking the Plant’s Point of View,” outlined the thesis of Botany of Desire: the metaphor of human domination over nature is false, and in fact, certain plants have “domesticated” us, attracting and using us in their quest for survival and reproduction.

“Corn domesticated our land, our diet, and our gas tanks,” he said.  Our system for growing corn, cattle, chicken, anything produced in a factory farm, ignores the points of view — the very nature — of the plants and animals.  This has created a tangle of problems for the crops, the environment, and ourselves.

“Our assumption is that our relationship with nature is a zero sum game,” he said.  But it needn’t be.  It’s possible for us to get all that we need out of the Earth and leave it more fertile than it was before.  He told the remarkable story of Joel Salatin, the “grass farmer” of Polyface Farm.

Polyface Farm’s robust ecosystem is fueled by the sun, an approach that stands in contrast to industrially-produced crops, which are grown with fossil fuels.  On a factory farm, it takes a half a gallon of oil to produce every bushel of corn, one of the reasons why ethanol as alternative fuel is at best a fallacy and at worst, as Pollan remarked, “the spark that lit the fire of the current food crisis.”

“We need to resolarize the American food chain,” Pollan declared, hinting at the “political manifesto” that he admitted he is in the process of writing.

“We’re not going to make progress on climate change unless we address the food system.  And we’re not going to make progress on the health crisis unless we address food system.”

The next Administration will be hearing these words from Pollan.

“Even though the candidates are not talking about it, they will have to,” he said, to rising applause.

Ask a six-year-old what makes a bean plant grow and she will tell you: the sun.  Resolarizing the food chain is something we all understand.  But what many do not understand is the urgency and the extent of the problem.  This task, Pollan said, “is for the writers, artists, gardeners.  They are the ones who know how to take ideas and make them stick.”

With that, he concluded, and we began filing out, eager for the relief of the cool courtyard.  Pollan, surrounded by admirers, made his way slowly to the table outside where a long line of people already waited for him to sign their books.

As he walked by Andrea and I, he brushed against her shoulder.

“He touched me!” she cried, “Michael Pollan touched me!”

She was only half-joking.

August 12, 2008

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photo Coming to a dinner plate near you… Last night, Michael Pollan told the crowd at P.S. 1 about the “featherless chicken.” “It’s an abomination,” he said.  He did not exaggerate.  I apologize in advance if you have trouble sleeping tonight (or eating chicken.) The diabolical creation is from a factory food company based in Tel Aviv.  Feathers, you see, just get in the way of profits.  This is just the latest development in an industrial system that has zapped the modern chicken of its very chicken-ness, not to mention flavor.  (See this 2000 editorial by Robert Kennedy or this 2007 article about one of my ethical food heroes, Frank Reese, who is producing some of the most delicious and sustainable poultry in the country.) The photo above is by Adi Nes, via Inhabitat.  And for your daily dose of irony, here’s a featherless rooster in a more natural setting:

Coming to a dinner plate near you…

Last night, Michael Pollan told the crowd at P.S. 1 about the “featherless chicken.”

“It’s an abomination,” he said.  He did not exaggerate.  I apologize in advance if you have trouble sleeping tonight (or eating chicken.)

The diabolical creation is from a factory food company based in Tel Aviv.  Feathers, you see, just get in the way of profits.  This is just the latest development in an industrial system that has zapped the modern chicken of its very chicken-ness, not to mention flavor.  (See this 2000 editorial by Robert Kennedy or this 2007 article about one of my ethical food heroes, Frank Reese, who is producing some of the most delicious and sustainable poultry in the country.)

The photo above is by Adi Nes, via Inhabitat.  And for your daily dose of irony, here’s a featherless rooster in a more natural setting:

August 9, 2008

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