New Seafood Watch Guides are Out!

Know more about the seafood you're eating and what you should avoid. Get the new 2012 updated Seafood Watch guides from the Monterey Bay Aquarium here. They have an Android version too! :)

Eat healthier, but how?

Tis the season to make resolutions. No doubt many of you are resolving to get healthier, to exercise more and eat better and take better care of yourself. There are likely even some of you who are going to make it a quest to eat more organic, stay out of the middle of the supermarket, and hit up Whole Foods more.

Before you do though, read this article from the New York Times and learn a bit more about the effects of what you might be buying. Not all organic produce is created equally, and unfortunately the mass market acceptance of organic being better has resulted in globalized organic production systems that are likely much less "better" for the earth than the evil industrial agriculture complex that it is replacing.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Yet, far from discouraging people from resolving to make their food footprints smaller by buying organic, I'm going to press in the other direction. Organic production, even global organic production on an industrial scale is bound to be better than traditional industrial agriculture with its high dependence on petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Yet it doesn't make organic foods the end all be all. While some people may be purchasing organic products just for the perceived health benefits, the truth is we must examine not only how produce affects us, but how the produce we choose affects others.

Organic is fine, but I agree with my good friend Anthony that the real solution is to reconnect ourselves to our food systems. We need to take a more local, seasonal approach to our food. If you live somewhere that doesn't produce tomatoes in December, then start acquainting yourself with the wonders of kale or winter squashes. Far from being something limiting, eating locally and seasonally can actually expand your horizons and provide you with incredible opportunities to try new things. Check out Anthony's blog for more resources and discussion on the benefits of eating local. And this year, when you resolve to eat better, resolve to eat more local and seasonal too. Just try it.

Finally, on a separate note... to everyone who has been reading my posts this year, thanks so much for the support! Have a happy new year, and hoping to hear more from everyone in 2012!

Fish Crusaders

Recently ran across this great article about fish crusaders in the Bay Area who are trying to change the way that  fishermen, restaurants, and diners relate to seafood. It's a very interesting read with lots of good information on why things are so hard and how much further we have to go. However, it's not an article about pessimism. There is hope and a chance, if we all do our part and play our roles.

From the end of the article:
"Lastly, everyone at every step along the way has got to ask more questions. “How was this fish caught?” is the most important one. If the waiter doesn’t know, ask the chef, and if you don’t hear the right answer (and let’s be clear: “I don’t know” is not the right answer), order something else. Let the restaurant know that sustainability matters to you. If enough people start asking the right questions, even indifferent chefs will find their way to people like Belov."

Read the full article here. (You may have to open it a few times, seems their server is constantly having problems.)

Farming goes Sci-Fi

"The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert."

Researchers in the Netherlands are working on perfecting completely artificial growing techniques in buildings that have essentially no contact with natural environments. They use LED lighting with specific UV frequencies and timed to optimal growth periods tailored to individual plant types to boost growth. These buildings take the greenhouse concept (where food is grown in environments that it normally would not, with the help of protection from a building) to whole new heights where sunlight (and the energy that plants waste to combat the destructive, non productive wavelengths there of) is out. 

It's sci-fi farming for the moon folks!

Yet the researchers say yields are up, resource usage and water waste is down, locations are flexible, and that this is the future of food - grown locally in high-rises and warehouses, year round, with near infinite options. Read the entire article here on NPR, and then decide for yourself: is going organic in probably the most unnatural way you can think of good for food, for us, and for the planet?

Who Owns Organic

Who Owns Organic is a very interesting chart showing corporate ownership of popular organic brands that you might find in your local supermarket or Whole Foods. I don't know how to process this information or if it should change how I feel about some of these brands, but at the very least it makes me feel similar to how I did when I found out that Cascadian Farms has been a General Mills brand for over a decade.

Most surprising for me (although I'm not sure why - I guess I should have paid more attention) are:

Alexia Foods owned by Con-Agra,
Odwalla owned by Coca-Cola,
Naked owned by Pepsi, and
Kashi owned by Kellogg

Does finding out the corporate ownership behind these "feel-good" food companies make YOU feel any differently about them? Should it?

The true cost of....

This is an intriguing article that I saw in a post from "The Consumerist" that shows how federal subsidies for food production affect YOU and affect the "logic" in our food system. Quite interesting. Makes you question what you think you actually know as facts, doesn't it?

 

(Image from Good Medicine Magazine)

Food Inc.

Just watched Robert Kenner's great investigative expose film on the food industry, "Food Inc." and it's enlightening, depressing, horrifying, and maddening. Certainly if you've ever wondered why those crazy hippie treehugging people insist on eating organic or growing their own chickens, this film will help you understand their motivations better. Much like An Inconvenient Truth, it's well produced and a game-changer, but at the same time, it's not going to be converting many agri-business enthusiasts. I'm sure lots of people will also say it's horribly one-sided. No doubt, but what do you expect when you can't get anyone on the other side to talk to you?

Definitely worth watching, and with significant contributions from food revolutionaries like Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, and Joel Salatin, you know you're getting good stuff.

Sustainable Food Movement and Workers

Great read in the SF Bay Guardian about the sustainable food movement and the complex issues surrounding its impact and interaction with the low-income families who supply labor for the sustainable and organic farms and who often can't afford the bounty of local, organic, sustainable food produced by the movement.

Like there isn't enough to think about already with buying/eating local, organic vs. not, small organic vs. industrial organic, eating meat or not, buying at farmer's markets vs. Whole Foods vs. Safeway, etc. - but the article highlights an interesting and important piece of how all this fits into society as a whole (not just the well-meaning, affluent foodies who have the luxury of making these choices). I also especially like how the article not only points out the problems, but also highlights people that are trying to work out solutions (i.e. Swanton Berry Farm and hiring unionized farm workers) to these issues.

Good news on the food front...

A recent article in the new journal "Solutions" talks about a growing trend at Farmer's Markets to accept food stamps - making it more affordable and practical for impoverished people to access healthy and fresh foods.

This is undoubtedly good news (and really, a moral imperative when you think about it.) However, it does not address the issue of a growing co-opting of all of these new healthier food trends by embedded industrial agricultural interests. Reports are out now that many of the Farmer's Markets that we hold dear and believe are helping both our own health and the health of the planet are actually run by large industrial entities that sell you the same food that you could get at your local big-box supermarket. Don't be fooled - not all Farmer's Markets are created equal.

So, what can you do to make sure you're getting the local, holistically farmed foods that you want? Talk to the farmers, do your homework, and gosh-darn-it, get out there and visit some farms too. You might actually enjoy it.

Is the honeymoon over with organics?

"For those farmers, the promises of going organic — a steady paycheck and salvation for small family farms — have collapsed in the last six months. As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry. Farmers nationwide have been told to cut milk production by as much as 20 percent, and many are talking of shutting down.

“I probably wouldn’t have gone organic if I knew it would end this way,” said Mr. Preston, 53."

This is an excerpt from an article from the New York Times. It seems that the honeymoon with organics might be over, at least from the supplier side. It seems that demand is down and thus markets and distributors are scaling back on orders, leaving farmers - many of them who have just converted to producing organic - are left holding full cans of milk. While this article focuses on dairy, you can see how this situation could be reproduced throughout the agro-business industry with any products that use the organic label to sell their products at a premium. In economic downturns, it seems that all of the customers on the margins - the "organic is nice to have but not a way of life customers," likely a very large market and what has supported the rapid growth of organic farms in the past five years or so - well, in downturns, they seem to go away.

Thus, unfortunately, many small producers - many of the ones who saw organic production as the way to save their farms - are taking a boot in the butt for their decision to go green. Likewise, the credit crunch cannot help these cash-flow strapped small businesses. The article talks about a few ways that farmers are trying to address this issue, but outside of selling at losses or a rampant upswing in demand, it seems like some of these farms will be doomed.

One thing we all can do (if we have the luxury of having extra disposable income) is make sure that we all go out and support organic farms by buying the products. I think we can also help by going out there and buying local and supporting any local farmers who show up with organic products at farmer's markets. Grow that market and perhaps farmers can sell at lower prices, direct to the consumers, and still break even.

Finally, another, slightly unrelated thought. One of the big concerns with organic growing has always been how organic production will be able to satisfy worldwide food needs. While there is plenty of support for the notion that organic production done right can actually increase yields... let's not deal with that here. Instead, it seems the problem right now is not enough demand and wildly enthusiastic production. Perhaps as we begin to re-engage organic production around the world, we can use this as a lesson - we don't want farmers to attach ideas of bankruptcy and hardship with organic, but we also don't want to set small farmers on a path to destruction either. We have to grow the organic market, make organic more price competitive with non-organic products, and ensure that supply does not outstrip demand by too much.

Or is there another way?

Full Article from the NY Times Here

Knowing Your Farmer

I just received the latest email newsletter from TLC Ranch - a local ranch that comes to the Mountain View farmer's market selling sustainably raised pork, lamb and eggs (http://www.tlcrancheggs.com/production.html). I was super excited to read about their mobile chicken coops - it reminded me of Joel Salatin's set up described in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma.  I can't wait to buy more meat and eggs on Sunday!

Our food industry

I wanted to share an informative and fairly objective piece in the most recent issue of National Geographic that talks about our food, where it comes from, and how it relates to population. The author does a good job of navigating the complexities, presenting the challenges, reintroducing the idea of Malthusian limits, and sharing the case for agroecology/sustainable agriculture. It's really a very good introduction to the issues involved in (and the results of) our current food production system and enormous population. I highly urge everyone to read it. And on top of it all, it's available free, online, from National Geographic.

"The End of Plenty" by Joel K. Bourne Jr.
From the story:
"It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, obliv ious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound."

The Whole Foods Challenge

So Anthony and I were discussing the perceived price discrepancies at Whole Foods one day while doing some grocery shopping up here in Mountain View. I think Whole Foods is pretty ridiculously overpriced - a place where it just costs a lot to buy stuff whose environmental and health impact is debatable. Anthony thinks that Whole Foods gets a bad rap, and that even if it does cost more, he's willing to do so because he feels like there is a better chance that what you buy at Whole Foods is sourced from more environmentally conscious and sustainable companies. This of course, is a different discussion - one that I'll let Anthony post more on later.

Because the second part of the question was more of a debate, we decided to see if we could get some cold hard data on the first part - prices. Thus, the Whole Foods challenge was born. Basically, we decided to create a list of items that a shopper could find at both stores and compare the prices, head to head. Anthony knows Whole Foods pretty well, and his wife shops at Safeway - the main big box, mass market supermarket around in the Bay - occasionally, so we chose these two stores and had his wife list out products that might be at both.

Safeway also has an online presence, which made finding Safeway prices easier - however, we decided we would still go into both stores to find the items and see if online pricing and in-store pricing might be different. We also decided to list both retail prices and sales prices, knowing that stores like Safeway actually make their living off luring people in with fairly regular "sale" prices.

Finally, before we went, we both decided to predict how many items we thought would be higher priced at Whole Foods, how many would be the same at both, and how many would be higher priced at Safeway.

My prediction?
14 higher priced items at Whole Foods and 6 priced the same.

Anthony's?
8 higher priced items at Whole Foods, 8 the same, and 4 higher priced at Safeway.

Some of our friends also had a side bet going - what would the price difference be? Some of the guesses? 10% higher at Whole Foods. 30% higher at Whole Foods. I thought 20%.

So...... what do you all think? Will Whole Foods be more expensive than Safeway on products that you can find at both stores? If so, by how much? If not, does it go the other way? Or, have we gotten the whole debate wrong?

What would you do?

I went to Trader Joe's this morning wanting to buy 1 lb. of ground beef to make hamburger's and faced a dilemma.  These were my choices:

1. All natural Black Angus ground beef from the US = $5.99 / lb

2. All natural ground beef from Australia = $4.99 / lb

3. Ground beef (not organic or natural) from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico = $3.29 / lb. 

There is also option #4 not at Trader Joe's itself - I know that I can buy grass-fed, organic from a rancher in the SF Bay Area that comes to my local farmer's market for $6.99 / lb (and I go to the farmer's market every Sunday so there is no difference in convenience).  

Based on all that I have read about sustainable food systems (and the potential positive impact this can have on the environment vs. the alternative), my preference is to buy sustainable, local, grass-fed, organic ground beef.  On top of that, I prefer to buy from locally owned "businesses" (i.e. the local bookstore, farmer, etc.) than a large chain where the money doesn't circulate locally and potentially just lines the pockets of the business owners (or shareholders) who are likely very wealthy.  I personally don't mind paying more for this, but I also have to consider my wife's view - she is not opposed to buying sustainable, local, grass-fed, organic but cares A LOT less about that and more about value/price.   Especially in a time when we are thinking more about being cost conscious, the value/price factor seems even more important.  And the dynamic between my wife around money should not be taken lightly.  

So what do I do? I know this choice is very personal to people, but here is my thinking...

 - The cheapest option offers a savings of $4 over the most expensive option (farmer's market).  If the decision were left to my wife, this would probably be her choice. This is also the least environmentally friendly option (not local, grass-fed or organic), and also the most scary - why does this beef come from the US, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia? Sorry, babe, but I'm just not down with this beef. 

- For less than $2 more than the cheapest option (and $2 less than the farmer's market option), I can buy beef that is natural (marginally better than organic) but very not local (I can't believe we import it from Australia and it's cheaper than the stuff grown here) or grass-fed.  My wife probably wouldn't be opposed to this as a compromise. 

- For almost $3 more than the cheapest option, I only save $1 over the farmer's market and buy beef that is natural and at least more local than the beef from Australia, but still not necessarily (and probably not) truly local nor grass-fed. I don't think either of us would be happy with this option. 

- I could pay a premium (more than twice as much as the cheapest option) to buy beef that meets all of my values: local, organic, grass-fed and from a "local business" vs. national chain.  Clearly my choice if I were to make this on my own, but the hardest for my wife to swallow. 

I discussed all of this with my wife (who wonders why I make such a fuss over something as simple as ground beef) and she says she is comfortable with whatever I want to do.  I don't know that she really is (perhaps she's just trying to be nice while wondering why I recklessly spend our hard-earned money) so I punt the decision and decide that I will come back when we are done with the rest of our shopping.  As we walk through TJs, we get to the egg section and my wife asks if it's cool if we buy eggs from TJs (I usually buy them from the farmer's market).  The eggs that she picks up are organic and free-range.  Probably mass-produced on a huge farm and sold through TJs, but on the product level itself, pretty good on the environmentally sustainability spectrum.  And they're $4 / dozen vs. the $6 / dozen I pay for the organic, free-range eggs I buy from a rancher at the farmer's market.  I say of course we can pick up these eggs (it's not a bad choice, offers decent value, and I don't want to dictate her chioces and don't want her to feel guilty).  

And with that, I think we've just implicitly made our compromise about the beef.  We're spending $2 less on eggs at TJs (for a product that is decent, and without the benefits of the local economy / buying from the guy I know), and I can buy the local, organic, grass-fed beef from the farmer's market for $2-4 more.  

That's a lot of consideration over 1 lb. of ground beef for hamburgers.  I know that people have different values and need to make chioces according to those - and I totally respect that.  What would you do? 

"Local Food to the Rescue" @ Stanford 2/19

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan spends a significant amount of time with a Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm, a sustainable farmer who goes "beyond organic". The insights provided through Pollan working on Salatin's farm (and in contrast visiting with large industrial organic farms who seem "green" in name only) are one of the more interesting dynamics in Pollan's well-written and now famous book about food production, food systems, and what we should eat.

Part of The Ethics of Food & The Environment series at Stanford, Joel Salatin will be giving a talk about local food systems.

Event info for 2/19 talk by Joel Salatin: http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/ethics-events/events/view/440/?date=2009-02-19

The Omnivore's Dilemma: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php