Food in the news

As you may well know, folks, my pet issue these days is food. Food policy, food safety, unhealthy food, and, my personal favorite, eating good food. So it's cool to see all these articles popping up lately that are dealing with food issues. Not too long ago there was this Time magazine cover with an apple wearing a sticker that read "Forget Organic. Eat Local." (Thanks to Time for not putting that article behind a firewall.) And it is a really good read, especially if this is your first foray into the issue of Good Food (food can be deemed "Good" in the capital G sense of the word if it successfully answers the where/how/who/when questions of its production, or inception, rather).

But alas, there is more. Food born illness is a big deal these days, what with E-Coli bagged spinach and peanut butter floating around. Not to mention deadly pet food (for pets, that is). These are not examples of Good Food because they fail in the where/how/who qualifiers: "factory farms," "industrial ag. techniques," and "agri-business" being their answers, respectively. And while industrially (probably not a word) produced food accounts for most (~80% I think) of all the food in our "Food System," we can't really blame agri-business for growing and making food that is killing us when our nation's regulatory agency doesn't have the ability to oversee them. See this article from the Washington Post a few days ago, saying how the FDA [and USDA] just seem to let this small sorta thing--you know, protecting us from food born illness--fall through the cracks, and what is worse, they say there is nothing they can do about it! Bullshit I say, although no one has cared to ask for my thoughts on this (thank god for blogs). Also, no real shocker here that the Bush Admin has stripped all of their funding and regulatory ability. Nor is it a big shocker that Dems, avid poll and newspaper readers that they are, now say they want to do something about food safety.

Luckily, Prince Charles will save us all. The Agrarian King, if you will. That is, once he becomes King. Turns out he's a bit of a foody-enviro-nut, much like the Domestique (except that he has the riches and resources to grow his own food, whereas I have just enough riches and resources to waste them at my local Whole Foods).

Unluckily, not even Prince Chuck will be able to save us from China. China is the world's largest exporter of fruits and veggies, and yet there is almost no regulation of food production in China. They routinely used banned pesticides and other chemicals, and chances are their farming practices are not what even a Texas oilman would call "green." And the whole deal with Good Food is that it is what goes into the food that makes it Good or not (think of this Good label I've created as a spectrum, some things can be better than others, while still not being very Good, while in other cases some things are clearly good and others are clearly not good, regardless of their relation to one another). Know what I mean? The qualitative valuing of food that I am shooting for here is a holistic approach, or an ecological view of food, if you will. All of it matters: where it was grown (and how far did it have to drive to get to your dinner place), who it was grown by, and how it was grown. When is important too, because food (at least fruits and veggies) start to loose their nutritional value the second they are picked from the vine.

ANYWAYS, the point of this post was to offer up some good and interesting links on food in the news, and what is more interesting than a few articles on the failed policies of our current administration, the growing danger of everything China, and an update on our ole pal Prince Chuck? Not much by my standards (which I admit, do appear to be excrutiatingly low).

But I just had to start ranting and babbling in this post because I think it is important for everyone to have a better idea of where their food comes from and I think that all of these stories nowadays (and there are tons more) indicate that our food system is fundamentally flawed and is undermining our nations' health. I think we (you and I) ought to try to and bypass or opt-out of the food system as presented to us at Safeway, Giant, Rainbow, Cub, (fill in your local grocer) and find ways to get good quality, healthy food. In that regard, the best thing any of us urban-dwellers can probably do is to join a local farm through a community supported agriculture program (or CSA). This means you essentially buy a share in a farm for the summer, and get food delivered fresh weekly. Its still early enough in some parts of the country that you might be able to join one for this summer yet. Find a CSA near you here.