I'm a fan of the "ready-made" post, so here's something I wrote for a food storage email list I'm on.  A new person on the list posed the question of why we are pursuing such extreme versions of food stockpiling, rather than the more traditional "emergency stores" version of food storage (you know, have enough food for a 3 days and water for a week version?).  Well, here's my response.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I promised myself I was going to go sit on the couch and read a magazine.

... let us instead turn our attention to one of the companies that Baby Boomers run!  Monsanto!  Here's a piece off of the Ethicurean which is Made. Of. Awesome.  See bottom of article for attribution.

I was listening to an NPR food story about cloned beef, and how the FDA has now approved it for marketing.  Okay, fine.  Unlike many people, the thought of cloned meat doesn't really freak me out too much, although gee whiz would I like the label to say what it is.  But the story sent me on a bit of a mind-wandering on two points...

Thank the gods for the website Ethicurean!  They're on top of things for us, letting us know what our current threat level is for things that actually matter.  With the first hamburger recall of the year for E.coli under our belts (yes, already), I bring you:

Michael Pollan interview on CBC's "The Current"--good stuff.  About 25 minutes long.  Find it here. (Requires RealPlayer, or something that can open a .ram file)

Just released yesterday...





*squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

*faint*

I got my hands on a 2001 edition of the book "Nourishing Traditions."  I don't really know how much of this book I can take.  It's odd--I actually, more or less, agree with most of the claims she makes, but I so far deplore the way she goes about justifying them.  She cherry-picks studies, cherry-picks the results of the studies, ignores mountains of possible explanations for "Fact X" while concentrating on one-and-only-one explanation... and on and on.  I'm trying to stick with it, really I am.  I'm only on, like, page 26, but I've already had numerous *headdesk* moments.  I mean, here's just one example:  much of this work was kickstarted by Dr. Weston Price, who in 1938 studied 15 indigenous culture's native diets and found high consumption of animal fats & other animal products, little to no consumption of polyunsaturated fats, and no significant amount of cardiovascular disease or other chronic diseases.  And so he concludes that animal products and fats must be great for you and a requisite (and large) part of all human's diets.  I don't doubt that he did find these cultures, or that they did have the relevant diets and the relevant rates of diseases.  What bugs me is that the author (writing much later than 1938--the first edition was in the 80's, I think) just ignores all the other cultures we now know about who have radically different diets and similarly low rates of chronic diseases.  I mean, for God's sake, look at the much-touted Mediterranean diet.  They hardly eat any animal products at all!  Hell, she even cites the Mediterranean diet to bolster her claim about high-fat diets being safe (as the Med's get about 70% of their calories from fat), but totally ignores their nearly complete lack of animal products, which in other places are considered "essential for health and life."  AAARRRGGGHH!  Nevermind the around 8 billion-and-1 variables which come into play when looking at wildly different cultures and their diets, any one of which might confound making generalizations about this diet to our own Western lifestyle.  What frustrates me is that, buried somewhere in this book is probably some pretty good information, but I don't know if I have the inclination or energy to try and weed through the nonsense.  Shoot, as far as I can tell, she's bang-on right about absolutely everything she says, but she uses such terrible argument tactics that I don't trust hardly any of it!  ERG!

EDIT:  Nevermind, it's nonsense.  I could cite numerous examples of its ... er ... "nonsensitude", but I'll give you just one--about half of her citations are from her own work, the work of her partner, or publications from the Weston Price Foundation.  The other half is evenly split between reputable sources (e.g., The Lancet or the NEJM) and other, not-so-reputable sources, like The Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry.  No, I'm not making that up, and please try not to think about it too hard--it hurts.

Yup, I gave the sermon yesterday at church.  If you're interested, look behind the cut.  It was basically on my own path towards something like a coherent ideology of eating.  Typical UU service, eh?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/09/milk.prices/index.html

Yeah, check out them milk prices.  And the story (which is probably at least somewhat true) is that the price-spike is due to lack of production in Australia and Europe.  That's right.  Our dairy distribution system is now so huge that our milk prices are partially dependent upon production on other continents.  I'm sure it also has more than a little bit to do with the market shift of corn-for-cows to corn-for-fuel (btw, why are we feeding corn to cows again??).  Good grief.

Anyone want to join a local cowshare, and get milk from good, healthy, sanely-and-locally kept, grassfed (i.e., not cornfed) cows?  Check out http://www.realmilk.com/. 

Oh, and btw, if the Dairy Council would release it's strangle-grip on the USDA food pyramid,* maybe schools could start stocking soy & rice milks instead of just dairy milk.  Seriously, check out what some of the parents are saying in the article--"We need our milk" and "I'd prefer my children to drink milk instead of soda" as if these are the only viable choices?!  Ever heard of water?  Soy milk?  Apple juice?  Hell, cowshare local milk (okay, so that's actually more expensive, but at least it's cost isn't dependent upon Australia, fer chrissake).

* "Dairy requirement"???  WTF?  There is no "dairy" requirement, there's a calcium requirement.  Having a dairy requirement is like there being a "hamburger" requirement, for god's sake.

\ rant

I took the challenge.

http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/2007/07/choosing-local-.html

The challenge is to spend a certain amount of money per week on local foods, rather than foods shipped to you from... well, who knows really?  (And wouldn't it be nice to have those pesky Country-of-Origin Laws passed, too?)  Local is typically defined as 100 miles from your home, but I like the "bulls-eye" metaphor used by Sharon over at Casaubon's Book (see my blogroll) -- the bulls eye is your home, and the goal is to source your food from as close as possible to the bulls eye.  Do the best you can.  The challenge allows one to set however much money she want/can, for as many weeks as feasible for him/her.  I went with $10/week for 12 weeks, cause I'm really not sure about what will happen around here come winter.  And maybe, for future reference, it's fair game to distribute the money we spend during the summer out over the winter, as long as we're still eating the local foods we bought with it (canned, frozen or cellared). 

And remember, buying local should not be a pricey enterprise!  Actually, it should save you money (or at the worst, break even).  Taking a few pieces of produce off of your shopping list and add them to your farmer's market list makes a huge difference to the local farmers in your area.  Or find a local orchard to source some apples.  Hit the roadside stands (but be wary--I think I was had today by some "local amish" strawberries that had a "Naturipe, LLC" sticker on them... grrr...). 

< / soapbox>

Okay, I'll finish the raviolis pretty soon, and hopefully I'll have a good picture post of that.  I'm trying "no knead bread" which I find a dubious proposition, but we'll see.  I know already that it is way too soft, but who knows, maybe it'll work despite itself, eh?  I've got lots of milk in the fridge, and numerous dairy projects planned for this week!  Yum!

Okay, folks, you're gonna love this one (emphasis mine). 

The [N.C. Department of Health] is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding a dozen people in Wilkes County who recently became ill with Campylobacter, one of the most common bacterial causes of diarrhea, after drinking raw milk from the same farm. Samples of the milk came up negative for the bacterium, although Engel said that does not discount raw milk as his team's "leading theory" for the recent spate of illnesses.

Raw milk advocate Ruth Ann Foster of Guilford County has been following the investigation closely and believes that the health department's stated agenda against raw milk is causing the investigators to overlook more likely causes, including reports issued by Engel's own office of widespread viral gastroenteritis (the so-called stomach flu) causing similar symptoms. Foster points out that state investigators have only asked people who were recently sick and who also drank raw milk to come forward, which she says is a blatantly unscientific way of finding data.

Engel responded that if his office asked everyone who recently experienced gastrointestinal illness to come forward, they'd "be overwhelmed, because that's a common illness."

Foster says that proves her point. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, most Campylobacter infections are "sporadic and not associated with an outbreak." The bacteria are commonly found in the intestinal tracks of humans and animals with no sign of illness. A recent two-year Minnesota Department of Health study found that 88 percent of poultry sampled from local supermarkets tested positive for Campylobacter.

Nonetheless, Engel says raw milk is the "common thread" among those who have come forward.

{{{ more incoherent rage noises from Jedimomma }}}

Excerpted from http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A155882  "Drink It Raw:  Why is unprocessed milk the only illegal food in North Carolina?"  (Well, except for my incoherent rage noises--those were added just for my blog.)  The whole article is worth a read.

Okay, every week or so, when we go to the library, I pick out a cookbook.  I like to expand my repetoire of foods to prepare.  Lately, I've been getting primarily vegetarian cookbooks, as I'm trying hard to expand our meatless diet (so's we can afford the happy-cow/chicken/pig stuff).  Fine.

Every introduction to every cookbook, both veg and non-veg, has some discussion of "nutrition".  Now, as a general rule, I hate the word "nutrition" as I feel that it leads directly to the religion of "nutritionism"--a bizarre collection of anecdotal stories, reductionist assumptions, and scientific faith-based arguments, often found on bottles of supplements--but that's a different rant (and it's coming soon... believe me).  But what just gobsmacked me today, for some reason, while reading yet another cookbook introduction, is this insane recurring theme of the importance of nutrition especially for vegetarians.  WTF?  Do vegetarians have some kind of different molecular structure that makes them need more of various nutrients??  Vegetarians need the same nutrients (or, as I prefer to call it, food) as everyone else, they just choose to get it from a different set of sources.  And notice that I did not say a smaller set, just a different one.  It's been my experience that, if anything, the vegetarian's food set is typically much, much larger than the omni's.  I mean, sure, omnis get to eat dead pig, but very few of them have waded into the wild world of kale, kohlrabi, broccoli rabe, chayote, seitan, fiddlehead ferns, or any other of the non-green-bean-or-potato vegetables available to us.  (NB:  yes, yes, yes, I know that many of y'all on my f-list are both omnis and healthy eaters--I'm not ranting at you, I'm ranting with you.) 

So what gives about this attitude of "and especially if you're a vegetarian"?  Yeah, veg's don't eat dead animals for protein.  So what?  Do Americans think that meat is the only source of protein available to us?  Oh, wait, I'll bet we do believe this... crap.  Anyway, criminy people!  We did the math one day--if you DOUBLE the percentage of protein in your diet recommended by the WHO (and then actually round it up to 10% for easier math), based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, you need a little less than 2 oz. of protein a day.  Yeah, 2 oz.  That's, like, half of a small McD's plain burger (okay, a little more than that, since a McD's burger has more gack in it than just beef).  And there are at least 18 bazillion other sources of protein in the world besides meat.  Good grief.  So why is supposed to be oh-so-much harder for a vegetarian to have a healthy diet than an omnivore?  I'd say the omnivore has pretty much the same dilemma as the veg, and (as I said above) is just using a different set of foods to try and satisfy the dilemma.  It's just more nonsense that makes the vegetarian lifestyle seem mysterious, unnatural and inaccessible.  I mean, I'm not even a vegetarian and even I can see the nonsense of it.  And what is so particularly gauling is when it's the vegetarian cookbooks saying this stuff!

So try this sometime when you've got a couple of weeks of undedicated reading.  Check out from the library "The Earth is Flat" from Thomas Friedman (but for the love of god, do not buy it).  Read it, and revel in the uber-capitalism-saving-the-world-again attitude of the author as he interviews CEOs on golfcourses throughout India and China, revealing the wonders of open markets and their magical reworking of these countries economies.  Immediately after finishing (or at least, getting as far as you can through) "Flat", go and either check-out or buy "Hope's Edge" by Lappe (a continuation of "Diet for a Small Planet").  Remarkably, this book takes place in the same countries as Friedman's book, but somehow I think they must've had different tour booking agents or something.  In "Flat" Friedman waxes lyrical about the highly sought-after tech support jobs available in India, the 200 carefully selected hires that Dell recently made this year for their next cadre of tech trainees and the wonderful, open-market sponsored life they're about to embark upon.  Lappe, on the other hand, seems to be concentrating on the 19,800 other Indian applicants who were not selected for the Dell jobs, who have to return to their small villages and dying growing fields now decimated by drought and the lasting effects of the "Green Revolution"--the Monsanto-led charge to "modernize" native planting practices.  Now their ground is sterile, the pests are all resistant to any of the -cides they try, the seeds are sterile and patented, and they are 3-years income in debt trying to chemical their way back out of this hole.  Small organizations, highlighted in Lappe's work, are trying to re-teach these people their own old ways of planting--you know, the ones that worked, but it's slow going, and Monsanto returns every year with a new, more toxic, often bioengineered quick-fix that will solve all their problems.  At least, until the relevant pest develops resistance and the price of the new technique/spray/seed/whathaveyou has tripled.  Really, reading these two books back-to-back is quite an experience.  I keep wanting to photocopy bits of the Lappe book and send them to Friedman with a post-it note attached asking "Did you meet any of these people?"

Yeah, try this while reading Alan Moore's "Watchmen" interspersed between them if you really want whiplash.

And for a more, shall we say "balanced" picture of globalization than the one offered by Friedman, try anything from Stiglitz.  He rocks.

R.

We had a fairly packed weekend.  We got our Christmas tree, and after some minor modification to the trunk, it is up and seems pretty much unlikely to fall over.  It's even decorated!  We discussed finally breaking down and buying a new tree-topper, but so far we've not done it.  We currently have the good ole cardboard star covered in tin foil on top (it's even attached to the tree with twist ties).  Truth be told, I'm a little edgy about getting a new, cool tree topper.  Have you ever noticed that in like every movie about divorce or family problems the tin-foil tree topper becomes the symbol of all that was lost, or traded in, or given up for the sake of careers, or....  You know the ones--the divorce papers are about to go through, and the soon-to-be-ex husband & wife start packing their things, and one of them finds *sniff* the tree topper that they made *sob!* when they were in college/just married/in their first apartment/etc.  *cry*  It reminds them of how they used to be, what they used to value *whaaa!*.  Then, with tears in their eyes, they take down the ultra-cool, $150 tree topper they had and re-attach the tin-foil star (why do these things always happen over christmas?), and then they tear up their divorce papers and LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!!!!  Oy vey.  So, by extension, if we buy a new tree topper we are consigning ourselves to at least one decade of unhappy,  loosing-contact-with-each-other-and-our-values, probably will try to divorce, trauma.  We can only hope to find the tin-foil star in time to save our marriage!  I don' t think I'm ready for that sort of thing....

I've also noticed a recent, and to me disturbing, spate of media relating to organic farming and related practices.  These have all been terribly skewed against organic farming, IMO.  Now, I don't expect much from the Today Show's coverage ("Look!  It has *more bacteria on it* than conventionally grown food!"), but the article in The Economist really worries me.  Those people are supposed to be smart, and as such I have to assume that whoever wrote about food politics for them was actually trying to present biased information.  Or, and maybe just as likely, s/he is suffering from the same sort of economist tunnel-vision we see in other areas--like the popular economic assumption that we have an infinite supply of energy (no, I'm not making that up).  So, for example, the Economist article complained that by offering a guaranteed minimum purchase price for coffee, Fair Trade coffee is propping up a system of coffee overproduction--that is, the farmers are currently overproducing coffee, and they'd be able to get by if they would diversify their farming.  There are only three HUGE problems with that analysis, which any economist ought to be able to detect with a minimum of effort:

1. Coffee has a regular 5-year boom/glut cycle, and has for at least the past 200 years.  Farmers might be overproducing coffee this year, but they will be underproducing coffee in 3-4 years, and that's just how it works.  So, the complaint that farmers are overproducing is spurious at best, since we'll need them to be producing at these levels in a few years.  This brings us to--
2. Farmers want to diversify, but they can't because they don't have the resources.  This is where schemes like *gasp* Fair Trade come in, because they often offer training in diversification, and even occasionally small or micro loans with low interest.  The Economist article claimed that guaranteed minimum pricing is a disincentive for farmers to diversify, but in practice this seems to be nonesense.  These farmers know what will happen to them if Fair Trade ever disappears for any reason--they're toast.  They want and need the skills to protect their farms from hostile purchasing when coffee is on it's high cycle.  And, of course, there's the final problem of--
3. The main reason farmers can't get a decent price on their crop has far more to do with the 18,000 middlemen the coffee goes through to get to market than anything else.  Fair Trade is doing nothing more than removing the middlemen, allowing them to purchase coffee at a fair price directly from the farmers, rather than after a hundred price markups between the farmer and the distributors.

Argh!  None of this is brain surgery!  Good grief!  The article even claimed that only 10% of the price of a fair trade coffee from a coffee bar goes to the farmer.  Well NO SHIT SHERLOCK!  It's from a COFFEE BAR!  They have a horrendous markup on the coffee even after retail pricing.  That $3.75 latte only costs about $.75 to make at home from retail goods (at most).  Wanna bitch about how little money makes it from Starbucks to the farmer?  Bitch at Starbucks, then! 

*sigh*  Well, anyway...

In other news, Ian had his 2 year checkup, and he's golden, if BIG.  He's barely off the charts on weight, although as she pointed out in about 10 days he'll be back on the charts.  He doesn't seem to be overweight, though, so no one's really worried.  I think it's his thighs--you should see them, they're gargantuan!  Which made it easier for the RN to give him his vaccinations (man, I hate those... I wish I'd ever heard of delaying vaccination when Alex or Ian were born).  I'm expecting some crankiness and fever soon, but so far he's doing fine.  Anyway, time for lunch, as my eldest keeps politely reminding me.  PB&J today, I think.

R.

So earlier today I was working on one of the lesser-known Federal Superfund toxic sites--that is, our kitchen the day after gaming.  Given the extraordinarily hazardous nature of this activity, I was put in mind of the many perspectives surrounding environmentalism and sustainability.  I was, as usual, using a bleach-water solution for much of my cleaning.  I recalled being lectured (politely) by a well-meaning woman about the dangers of bleach, and just how much damage I was probably doing to my family.  She gave me a helpful, explanatory brochure with her contact info on it, and asked me to read it.  Sure, I thought. 

(This is quickly turning into a series of posts.  To see the first post in this series, click here.)

So, the first thing to say here is, HOLY CRAP MY FATHER ACTUALLY KILLED SOMETHING!!!  My father went hunting, and successfully felled a deer.  We never really thought that was possible.  In fact, the running theory was that he was actually going out to protect the deer (alerting them to the presence of other, more adept hunters by firing wildly into the air).  But no, he has now three times in his life killed a deer.