Food for Thought

After a long hiatus from reading in general, I am back in the swing and have finished The Way We Eat: Why our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Now let me preface this by saying that I am not a crunchy vegan type despite the fact that I live in Decatur. I don’t even particularly like cats and dogs, though I do have two ungrateful cats. However, this book was pretty darn interesting.

The authors follow American families, ranging from the Wal-Mart meat and potatoes crowd, to a family you could describe as Whole Food-ies, and then a die hard vegan crew to detail and understand these very different types of consumers. Their perspectives on shoppping and eating are considerably diverse as anyone who has strolled through WalMart lately can attest.

In the course of following the families dietary habits, some interesting ethical dilemmas are posed. Envionmentally, the abundance of cheap, processed food is a nightmare. WalMart shoppers ain’t helping. WalMart drives prices down, no doubt. But the margin has to be made up somewhere and that’s where it gets kinda scary.

Factory farming produces considerable waste as does the energy required to transport and grow the feed required to raise all the animals. And what the animals are fed is mostly cheap corn, which is not what cows naturally eat. So, the cows eat the corn so they get fat, because American farmers sell the cows per pound. The problem is that it wreaks havoc with their digestive sytems ( ulcers, infection) so the farmers pump them up with antibiotics. So by the time you get your steak, you are ingesting extra antibiotics, growth hormones and best of all, more corn. Corn does not metabolize in your liver real efficiently either. So we get fatter and more antibiotic resistant. If you don’t want to give up your steak, switch to grass fed organic beef. That’s more compromise.

In most cases, the animals lives are deplorable which really is quite ironic considering how Americans are so into their dogs and cats. Pigs are smarter, supposedly, than dogs and certainly more friendly than cats. However, we seem, as a country, to have no problem pretty much torturing them their whole swine lives so we can get our baby backs. You will definitley be disturbed by how most pork is raised in this country. I say “most” because there are alternatives.

Chipotle, owned by McDonald’s by the way, only uses pork and beef raised by Niman Ranch, a company that does not use antibiotics, growth hormones and raises animals humanely. I want to personally plug the Niman Ranch hot dogs and bacon. Yum. Also, Burger King recently jumped on the bandwagon by vowing to phase out all dairy and beef that is factory farmed over the course of the next couple of years. Smithfield Farms, probably the biggest pork producer, is phasing out “gestation crates” which are a particularly gruesome farm practice. I digress.

In addition, the book also poses the question of how to provide food for a growing population (who can’t necesssarily afford to shop at “Whole Paycheck”) while still providing enviromentally and ethical food choices.

The book also stresses that it is important to consider the energy ( global warming alert) that it takes to ensure that we have strawberries, cantaloupe etc all year round versus the days of seasonality when we would look forward to fall for apples, summer for corn on the cob etc. I think I am right on if I assert that nothing is better than fruit or vegetables that are in season in this country. Peruvian tomatoes don’t cut it. So pass on those. It won’t kill you.

Starbucks, a company close to my heart, is examined at length in the whole “fair trade” and “organic” debate concerning coffee. Coffee beans and the their harvesting are another dimension of the “buy local” issue because many countries who are capable of growing coffee beans rely on this economic reality to survive.

The fishing industry is also called into question as we continue to demand salmon, sea bass (which by the way not sea bass but actually Patagonian toothfish) and our old staple tuna fish in more and more quantity. A lot of seafood is being harvested in countries that have little restriction on fishing which is fast depleting resources and upsetting the ecological balance. Meanwhile, back in Canada and the US, small time fisherman are unable to make a living. Cape Cod, MA was named as such because as recently as a century ago, real cod ran so thick off the coast of Massachusetts, you could hang a basket off the side of a boat and fill it up. No more. Overfished. And not by the hook and line fisherman, but the big old factory boats that netted the cod and everything else in the ocean up with it . Now “cod” ( for all you fish and chips lovers at the Brick Store Pub) is really Russian pollock; much smaller and not nearly as tasty as the real thing. Also, after reading this book, I will not seek out any “farm raised” fished. Gross. It’s like eating out of your aquarium with all the fish poop and ick. But worse.

The authors basically assert that you can be conscientous without being fanatical and that Westernized countries are in the position of effecting change throughout the world. Frankly, the wild-raised humanely-slaughtered kinda food just tastes better. Think ” fresh from the farm” but a real farm where the chickens can run around and the potatoes aren’t covered in toxic pesticides. Yes, it costs more but as someone once said, “If you want civilization, you must raise taxes” or something like that. I think we would all agree that people chowing on McDonald’s is costing us a boatload already in insurance premiums. People are too damn fat here anyway. If you don’t think that’s necessarily true, hang out at Gwinnett Place Mall for an afternoon.

The recurring theme for me, and I am not about to become a full blown vegetarian much less a vegan, is a standard of all things in moderation, including meat ingestion, but probably more importantly, unprocessed and seasonal and with regard for its origin and implications. If we are going to give Al Gore and Oscar, then we need to really understand how small changes in our lifestyles can make a difference. If you don’t care about making a difference, care about eating better tasting food that won’t kill you off nearly as quick as Oscar Meyer “Lunchables”.

Shadow Divers

In keeping with my non-fiction only book streak, I read with great interest, I might add, The Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. This story chronicles the drama and adventure that was involved in the discovery and salvage of a World War II U-Boat.

The two principle divers, Chatterton and Kohl risk everything to pursue the identity of this mysterious wreck off the coast of New Jersey. The author is a journalist who contributes to Esquire and does a great job detailing military history, deep sea diving technicalities, as well as really drawing the reader into the characters of all the principle figures in this tale. As an aside, I understand that Clint Eastwood has bought the rights to this book and is working on a movie version. Let’s hope he doesn’t f*ck it up like that Perfect Storm mess. Anyway the drama, aside from the often life threatening dives and relentless pursuit of the identity of this wreck and her crew, also lies in the personal sacrifice these men made for the truth as well as a borderline obsession to rise to an extraordinary challenge. Two regular guys that rise to the occasion.
Good Stuff.

Spoiling Childhood

I’ve just finished “Spoiling Childhood: How Well Meaning Parents Give Their Children Too Much, But Not What They Need” by Diane Ehrensaft.

This book caught my eye at the library one day; I am not a big reader of child psyhcology or self help books by any stretch but this one looked intriguiging. Basically the author is a child/family therapist and the book is written based on her observations as such in the last 10 to 15 years. While I think that every generation believes that the current one is totally screwed up and doomed this author made some valid points that as a parent I could identify with.

The question that the book attempts to demystify is how in recent history, middle class children have become “over-valued”. By that she asserts that as soon as a woman pees on a stick and gets the news that a baby is on the way; a whole circus erupts which generally involves consuming a whole lot of stuff ( think Babies R Us) before the baby is even close to arriving. And once the child is born the buying and clamoring for the perfect everything doesn’t stop. This phenomenon is attributed to the fact that we have way more buying power than our parents did; and that while our generation is what she coins as “inevitable” ie. your parents got married relatvively young and subsequently or inevitably they had a bunch of kids, we wait to develop our careers and with all the hype about infertility and the like we are led to believe that every pregnancy is fully intentionalized miracle of sorts. I personally coin this as the “LBJ” syndrome ( little baby Jesus). This snowballs into every kid is so awesome and deserving of as much crap as we can buy them because we wanted each one SO BADDDLY. So from these beginnings we move into the phase the author describes as “kinderadults”…we treat our progenty like little adults by indulging all their desires and overstimulating them but at the same time over coddle and over nuture them from experiences that we think might put them in harms way. Here is an example…nowadays, parents have to carefully plan and itinerize their kids summer; shuttling them from one paid activity to the next safely ensconced in the oversized SUV. Gone are the days of wandering around your neighborhood, finding other kids to play with and attending the school of hard knocks. However, we have no problem burdening our children with all the graphic details of the Tsunami disaster ( my kids school had a fund raiser !) or other disturbing imagery and ideas as long as its on T.V. You could argue a current news story may have something to do with protecting kids too much from real life and then suffering devastating consequences…could the teen girl from Alabama ( straight A student and “good girl”, everyone who goes missing or is killed in an accident is, by the way if you pay attention to the news) been too sheltered to know that heading the beach with a bunch of drunk local boys in a foreign county that you didn’t know from a whole in the wall be an incredibly stupid idea ???? A stretch you say ? Maybe not. If your whole experience was vacation bible school and cheerleading camp in a priveledged suburban envionment, maybe you wouldn’t think it was a bad idea.

The other interesting observation is how we describe our kids with so much hyperbole..”My kid is the greatest, cutest” whatever, fill in the blanks. The contention is that kids are smart enough at some point to spot the B.S. I mean, go stand in any playground and listen to all the parents tell their kid “Good Job” for some insanely obviously do-able kid thing like sliding down a slide or something. So this action actually backfires into low self esteem because if every kid gets a trophy and is told how great they are, then nobody is. It rings false.

O.K. so what’s the alternative ? The author suggest that we carefully examine why we treat our kids the way we do. Do we think we could have been better people, greater successes if only our parents had given us every opportunuity or more attention? Are we just trying to shut them up because we don’t have the stamina to not take the path of least resistance ? Do we actually intend to create a generation of people who equate happiness with a trip to the mall to buy more stuff ? Thought provoking at the least. It made me think about some of the things I probably can improve upon as a parent and made me feel better about not trying to keep up with the ultra child-centered set, which based on personal experience particularily when my kids got into school is pervasive and nauseating. Thanks for hanging with the rant.