Food, Inc. in Columbus
A new movie about agribusiness called Food, Inc. has been the buzz of the foodie world this past week. It focuses on the extent to which a small number of corporations have dominated the food production industry in America, to the detriment of farmers, consumers, and the environment. It was released on the coasts and was so successful that it has now been released throughout the rest of the country.
Well, most of the rest of the country.
You can read about it here, in the Columbus Dispatch. You can watch the trailer here. But at least according to movietickets.com, you won’t be seeing it in the Columbus area soon.
Perhaps that’ll change. We hope so. After all, the goal of Slow Food is to improve the American food system for everyone, and this movie is about what the American food system is really like.
At least, that’s what we’re told.
If you’d like to see Food, Inc. in a theater near you, drop a line to booking@magpictures.com and let them know.
Update: When I did this, a nice guy named Neal wrote back to me and told me that it would be opening at the Drexel East in Bexley on July 17 — almost one week after PolyCultures at Studio 35! We’ll look forward to seeing it!
Time for Lunch campaign launches
This morning marks the launch of Slow Food USA’s Time For Lunch campaign, the organization’s first coordinated nationwide effort to bring about change in the American food system by focusing the attention of consumers on its shortcomings. (There is a blog post here that explains the campaign, and an official Time for Lunch homepage here with more information about how you can get involved by signing a petition, contacting your legislators, and getting involved in an event on the day of action chosen by Slow Food USA — Labor Day, September 7.)
Last week, we sent out a notice in the newsletter asking people who were interested in planning and organizing an event on September 7 to email us and let us know. Once we’ve received all of your responses we’ll be having a meeting of interested parties to discuss exactly what form the event should take. Some members of the convivium have been brainstorming ideas already, and we’ve kept track of some interesting ones to propose, so if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to drop us a line and get in on the planning at the early stages!
Slow Food on a Budget
Establishing a frugal heritage
One of the more controversial aspects of the Slow Food movement is that of cost. When Leslie Stahl interviewed Alice Waters for 60 Minutes, Waters’ comments on the affordability of good, clean and fair food (”We can’t not afford it”) prompted renewed criticism of a chef and a movement that some see as catering only to the top tier of society. The movement’s founder, Carlo Petrini, while admitting that better food will have to cost more, argues that it shouldn’t have to cost much more—that moderation, and increased demand for quality local products, will bring costs down. Still, as Petrini points out in Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food, it’s absurd to think that all food is equally good, or that one should be able to purchase better food without paying more for it: the “demagogy of price” is “little more than an alibi for those who produce low-quality goods in large quantities.”
Unfortunately, these realities can leave one with the impression that a diet of good, clean, and fair food is beyond the reach of middle-class Americans, and certainly beyond the reach of, say, those in dire enough economic straits to be eligible to receive food aid from the government.
But is it?
Consider the following story from Salon about a couple that decided to see whether they could adopt a lean, spare, ethical diet on exactly such a budget:
My husband and I would eat conscientiously for a month, not just on our regular grocery allotment but on the government-defined, food-stamp minimum: $248 for two people in our hometown of New Haven, Conn. We would choose the SOLE-est products available — that is, the sustainable, organic, local or ethical alternative. We would start from a bare pantry, shop only at places that took food stamps and could be reached on foot, and use only basic appliances.
The details are in the article itself, which is well worth a read. The upshot is that the experiment was a success:
[O]ur four-week hypothetical did provide a feasible way for my husband and me to eat sustainably long-term: When the month finished — with a magisterial $1.20 left in the cache — we decided to stick with most of our experimental changes. We now eat slightly larger quantities of meat, fruit and cheese, and pepperoni pizza is back in the menu rotation. But apart from that pepperoni (and I’m still looking for an ethical source), I’ve yet to purchase any recurring items that aren’t SOLE-justified, and our grocery bills have stayed lean. … These sorts of practices no longer seem like a statement or an effort. In fact, they seem natural enough that the one question I’m left with is: Why didn’t I start cooking and eating this way sooner?
School Lunch Food for Thought
As our national discussion on the subject of school lunches swings into high gear, it’s worth asking ourselves what it’s really possible to do in school lunch programs. A recent New York Times editorial co-authored by Alice Waters and Katrina Heron on the subject outlines one possibility, a wholesale scrapping of the existing school lunch system in favor of one that gives the nation’s schools the ability to prepare and serve unprocessed foods that have been grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, where possible from local sources. Unfortunately, the price tag—$27bn, up from the current $9bn, not counting the one-time conversion costs—will probably raise taxpayers’ eyebrows, especially in the present small-government recessionary environment.
Casting the debate in these terms may be unfortunate, and unwise. There could be much to be lost, in this case, by letting the best (and, exponentially, most expensive) be the enemy of the good, especially given that the status quo is very bad indeed. A compelling entry on a blog called interestingemailforwards (via slashfood) demonstrates, through photographs of school lunches from countries around the world, that even those that are far poorer than we often manage to put relatively healthy, balanced meals in front of their children.
A few samples:
China
Sweden
South Korea
France
USA
Doonesbury on Food
Garry Trudeau’s series of cartoons skewering the American fast food industry (can sit-down restaurants with cheap, massive calorie-packed meals even be called “fast food” any more? “Megafood” might be more appropriate) have been a source of great amusement for many of us here at Slow Food Columbus, and on a slow Monday morning we’re pleased to note that Mr. Trudeau is gearing up for another week of them:
Doonesbury’s Daily Dose page will have the most current strip.
Food Organizations Database Project
One of the most remarkable changes in Columbus, as well as in the country more generally, in the past decade has been the growth in interest in food and food-related issues. This interest has led to a focus on the improvement of all levels of the American food system — improving access to good, clean, and fair food; promoting local agriculture; practicing sustainability; eradicating hunger; improving the quality of school meals and children’s health.
Many of these goals are pursued, with different degrees of emphasis, by nonprofits and organizations like Simply Living, Local Matters, Slow Food, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, the American Community Gardening Association, and others. Working separately, they accomplish remarkable things.
Working together, they could accomplish even more.
That’s why Slow Food Columbus has launched the Food Organizations Database Project — an attempt to gather contact information and mission statements about food-related organizations in the mid-Ohio region. The database will be free for everyone to consult at any time. The form to use to enter an organization’s information can be found by clicking here, and the database is below it on the same page.
Slow Food’s Columbus chapter is also finalizing the details for a follow-up to the database project — a Local Food Summit, designed to bring together representatives of these organizations to share information about their plans and projects for the coming year and to discuss the possibilities for collaboration in an informal setting. Slow Food member Bethia Woolf deserves special mention as originator of the Food Summit idea and sponsor of the event.
Slow Food Slows Down: Slow Cooking at Cubano Pig Roast
Ticket to Roast
Tickets quickly sold out for the much anticipated Slow Food pig roast. It was the culmination of much hard work by the organizers. Slow Food members teamed up with some of our favorite food purveyors to gather an impressive assortment of Caribbean inspired sides.
The McPeek Lodge in Granville served up the setting for our dinner and evening of culinary entertainment. A little Slow Food karma kept the rain at bay and allowed all in attendance an evening outside with the aroma of roasting pork passing through the air.
Members: Jane (uncharacteristically smiling) and Alyssa signing in diners as Heather oversees
The evening started with a greeting from Jane and Alyssa as they provided a flight attendant style orientation to the facilities and presented a menu listing all courses of our meal.
As with any Slow Food event, our members stepped up as volunteers to help with all aspects of the night – from setting up tents and tables to prepping food and sorting recycling. All was in good hands. Our group includes many camera toting foodistas, bloggers and photography buffs. Check out Xan and Liesl’s Pig Roast photo album and feel free to add your own photos as a link in the comments section.
Rick Malir from City BBQ served as CPR (Chief Pig Roaster) with several assistants and supporters on hand.
Follow instructions and add pig
Rick introduced a different style of Pig Roast using China Box slow cooking. Most of us have visions of a whole pig on a spit or roasting in a pit. The China Box uses a different approach with the heat from the coals “cooking down” to the pig. Other cooking approaches can take 18 hours our more, this approach is quicker..but subject to variables as we would learn later in the evening.
While Rick roasted, helpers toiled away prepping our side dishes and others took care of all the other little touches to make the night flow right. The rest of us strolled down the hill to sample salsa and cerviche.
Cuban Salsa and Chips donated by John Hard from CaJohn's
Members and guests enjoyed the appetizers and good conversation. Since the event was BYOB, we also enjoyed sharing and sampling beverages among ourselves. Bocce was played while the day transitioned to night. Do you happen to recall how I mentioned variables and pig roasting.
When cooking real food with real cooking methods in real world conditions not all things can be precise. A good pig roast is like a fine wine, it takes time. Our pig, christened Fidela for the occasion, took her time to roast. The cooking temperature lingered near the magic 160 degree mark a little longer than planned. Joseph, one of the organizers took this opportunity to tell us about where Fidela came from, Slow Food Columbus and he introduced the people that made our evening possible. It was noted that the temperature of Fidela went up four degrees during Joseph’s speech.
While this was going on, the bread course was served – grilled Cuban Bread from Starliner Diner. (Makes for a great PBJ sandwich the next day).
Rick Malir from City BBQ fields questions - with an entralled Zach looking on
Rick described the China Box cooking method, shared some City BBQ history and answered assorted questions. Rick’s BBQ and A added in the extra few degrees needed to finish Fidela. It was feasting time.
Let them eat pig!
Slow Food Snails scrambled from their tables (which were nicely adorned with tropical fruits and eco friendly tableware from the The Greener Grocer).
While Rick and company sliced and diced the pork, guests queued up for a serving of side dishes supplied by Kevin Caskey from Banana Bean Cafe.
Fu Fu de Plantanos Muduros (with garlic and thyme)
Spanish Catalan roasted calabeza squash with sultanas and pinion
Vegetable Escabeche
We found ourselves transported to Cuba for our meal. The sides were wonderful as was the pork. There would be no leftovers to worry about the next day and nothing was wasted from Fidela. Speaking of waste not want not, the few table scraps remaining were transported to the Flying J Farm for composting.
Adios Fidela
We ended our evening with servings of Jeni’s Ice Cream. Jeni’s trademark Salty Caramel was scooped out with a serving of Lime Cardamom.
Slow Food does not endorse snails smoking Cuban cigars - because Cuban cigars are illegal
It was a good evening with good food and good people. Have you joined the Slow Food Revolution?
As an aside, many of our donated items came from North Market vendors, if you have not been to the Market, make it a point to do so.
At the Market:
Opinion: The Dimensions of Clean
People engage in irrational cognitive consistency—the tendency (to oversimplify a bit) to believe that good things go together, or that bad things go together, even when they don’t, necessarily—all the time. Psychological studies have found, for example, that more attractive people are believed to be more intelligent, more successful, and so on, despite the existence of Donald Trump.
So it is in the food world. We like free-range animals, in part because we know that they taste better and have a substantially lower impact on the environment. We are wary of GMOs, in large part because the billions that they represent can lull the better angels of our nature (if not drag them into a dark alley and garrote them outright). These are the right instincts. But they cannot be unconditional. My own sense is that, if we are to be effective advocates for good, clean, and fair food, we must be responsible, informed, and balanced advocates. That means taking an unflinching look at some uncomfortable facts so that we can begin to address their implications.
An op-ed from today’s NYT illustrates this point. The op-ed, on the subject of free-range pork and health, brings to light some disturbing facts:
Scientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites. … The study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that brought these findings to light last year sampled more than 600 pigs in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. It discovered not only higher rates of salmonella in free-range pigs (54 percent versus 39 percent) but also greater levels of the pathogen toxoplasma (6.8 percent versus 1.1 percent) and, most alarming, two free-range pigs that carried the parasite trichina (as opposed to zero for confined pigs). For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.
A couple of paragraphs later, the author writes, “Pork lovers, supporters of sustainable meat and slow-food advocates have long praised the superior taste of the free-range option. … Given such superlative enthusiasm, it’s worth wondering how this latest development will play out among the culinary tastemakers.” And that’s the heart of the issue: How will it play out?
First of all, as Jerusha points out on the Slow Food USA blog, there are legitimate questions about the study’s provenance: the study was funded by the National Pork Board, a fact that is now mentioned in an Editor’s Note below the online version of the op-ed. Moreover, the authors found antibodies to the diseases, not the diseases themselves, in the pigs in question. (Edit: The original author’s response, found here, addresses these issues in more depth than I did in what follows and is well worth reading.) Many members of the Slow Food movement will be content to use these facts as a reason to ignore the findings altogether.
That, I think, is a mistake, and a bad one. We can’t just ignore the potential health implications of free-range pork. This particular study may (or may not) have been designed to make free-range pork look bad, and it may have been funded by people who have an incentive to do just that, but that doesn’t alter the fact that it succeeded. The researchers did find more antibodies in free-range pigs than in confined ones. Antibodies to diseases are evidence that a pathogen was present at one point, though they are not conclusive evidence that the pathogen remains in the animal’s system. And the story explaining the presence of pathogens—that free-range animals have a greater chance of encountering them than confined animals—is, unfortunately, plausible.
In order to be responsible advocates for good, clean, and fair food, we have to make a particular effort to face the facts that we like the least, because those are precisely the facts that our opponents can most effectively use against us. If the problems with free-range pork are genuine, we should be trumpeting them as well—and we should be working to find solutions to them that won’t be so expensive that they drive small farmers out of business. As the controversy surrounding HR 875 demonstrates, health regulations can be especially burdensome for small farmers. It would be best to be out front on this issue, voicing our opinion that it must be addressed in a way that incorporates both the health concerns of the nation and the needs of small farmers.
I mean, really… wouldn’t it be a beautiful irony if a New York Times editorial driven by data from a pork-industry-sponsored study prompted a government program to help small farmers prevent salmonella, toxoplasma, and trichinosis in free-range pigs—thereby making free-range pork more competitive?
* * *
(Oh—and a final note for those of you attending our Cuban pig roast in May: The pig is from an Amish farm in Ohio but is not free-range… and we’ve confirmed that preparing a pig in a China box does in fact bring it up to hygienic temperatures. The preparation will be in the capable hands of City Barbecue’s Rick Malir, so we have every confidence that our pig will be not only safe but thoroughly delicious.)
Ohio Wine Survey
As a follow-up to our Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash event from last November, and in preparation for this year’s Wine Clash II, Andrew Hall, the event’s organizer, has put together a brief survey about Ohio wines. Andrew writes:
Please take a moment to participate in my Ohio Wine Survey. In preparation for the 2nd edition of the Ohio/Michigan Wine Clash, I am gathering data about the perception of Ohio wines and their positioning the marketplace. This information will be used to help us refine the Clash and as a seed to help grow more restaurant and wine retailer participation. The survey is in two parts. The first is 10 questions about one’s experience with and perception of Ohio’s wines. The second survey for which a link will appear when the first is completed is a list of Ohio wine types and wineries to see what people have experience with. There are no commercial interests in this survey. All data anonymous. If you wish to be apprised of the results or participate in further communications, there is a voluntary part of the survey to include your email.
Another impetus of this survey has been the several Ohio wine conferences in which I have participated. “Locavore” and “Slow Food” has been bandied about by the marketing people and my personal opinion is that they have a deep disconnect with their potential markets. Right now, these are just words and trends to them. With that perception, they risk alienating and ultimately losing that audience. Whatever the commercial disposition, this is a bad thing for us as it is going to take a serious recognition of both the values and the market force of the “Slow Food” and “locavore” memes for us to demand better products and to create a change in the whole food system. Over time, I intend to present the data collected in this survey as well as other venues to show the producers, restaurants, retailers and other parties the depth and dynamics of this movement.
Thanks,
Andrew Hall
Please click here to take the survey. It’s not terribly time-consuming, and the results will help comprehend and describe people’s perceptions of Ohio wines going into the next Wine Clash, as well as improve communication between Slow Food and the wine world more generally. Thanks!
Imagining the Future Food System
This article from Mother Jones raises some worthwhile and provocative points about the future of the food system, and the conclusions are most likely not what its readers would have anticipated:
When most of us imagine what a sustainable food economy might look like, chances are we picture a variation on something that already exists—such as organic farming, or a network of local farms and farmers markets, or urban pea patches—only on a much larger scale. … But that’s not the reality. Many of the familiar models don’t work well on the scale required to feed billions of people. Or they focus too narrowly on one issue (salad greens that are organic but picked by exploited workers). Or they work only in limited circumstances. (A $4 heirloom tomato is hardly going to save the world.)
The point is not (despite the arresting subtitle) that organic farming and local agriculture are passé, but rather, that in the quest for a food system that is both less broken and more sustainable, we might encounter some tradeoffs between sustainability and a large-scale emphasis on organic, local, non-GMO, etc., food. Such tradeoffs are, needless to say, the bane of the gastronome/ecologist’s existence; but if they exist, we’re better off understanding them than hiding our heads in the sand.
Does this line of argument imply the death of organic and local food? Again, hardly; despite the rhetoric, there’s probably a substantially larger place for organic and local food in the author’s future food system than exists today. But as the movement away from conventional agriculture grows, it will have to adapt, and the author has some worthwhile points to make about the difficulties of extrapolating current practice to a global scale, as well as some thoughts about more flexible models that might be of use in a more diversified food system.
