Eating Local
August 12th, 2010 by cbaxter | View CommentsI spent some time learning about the “western diet” that we have here in the United States and was fairly shocked at how dramatically it has changed over the last 20 or so years, partially as a result of a shift in farming policy in the 1980s that encouraged rapid production growth in corn through hefty subsidies. I don’t want to rehash statistics or issues, since they are well covered in Pollan’s books (Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food) and recent documentaries (Food Inc, King Korn).
The basic premise is that corn, since it is over-produced and artificially-cheap has largely taken over elements of the food chain, including meats (corn is the leading feed source, versus grass) and packaged foods / sodas (high fructose corn syrup/HFCS is the leading sweetener, versus sugar). I am certainly no professional in this field, nor am I nutritionist — but intuition tells me it’s probably a good idea to eat less of this industrial food, or none of it all.
That said, I’ve made an effort to avoid corn-fed animals and HFCS, which has proved harder than I expected. Avoiding corn-fed meats (and the embedded antibiotics that are used to prevent a corn diet from killing the animal too early) is tough — more than 50% of the corn grown in the United States goes to animal feeds; everything from cows to chickens to fish. Not eating HFCS pretty much rules out all sodas and 90% of snack/processed foods that are in the supermarket.
The result is that I am cooking a bit more at home and spending more time at Washington, DC farmers’ markets (there’s one in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday and one in Dupont on Sunday — http://www.freshfarmmarket.org/), which bring in locally grown produce and pastured/grass-fed meats. Granted the fat (read: taste) content may be lower on the meats, but it’s nice to meet the farmer face-to-face and know that no hormones or antibiotics were packaged alongside the sirloin.
On a side note, it was interesting to me (from King Korn) that the government’s response so far has been: don’t worry about the food,
just exercise more. This is a pretty funny response that is likely a result of talented industry lobbying. Sure, we can put soda machines in schools, as long as the kids get on a treadmill to burn off the new empty calories. The position has even made it into the new food pyramid (http://www.mypyramid.gov/), where the government doesn’t say “eat less of the crappy stuff” — clearly a good idea, but instead “exercise more”.
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