Went to a panel discussion at Housing Works today cosponsored by The Center for Communication. It was billed as:
Media and the Politics of Food
When it comes to food, what you don’t know can hurt you, and it can be hard to keep up with each new healthy way to eat. Join the experts in a discussion of new trends and old facts, what to believe and why. With Nina Planck (creator and manager of farmers markets; author, Real Food), Mary Cleaver (Chef, the Green Table) Jay Weinstein, (chef; author, The Ethical Gourmet) Peter Pringle (author, Food, Inc.) and Ed Levine (author, New York Eats; New York Eats (More); co-author, Pizza: A slice of Heaven).” From the Housing Works Used Book Cafe Website
This really is not how it went but some interesting issues were raised during the evening. Each person started by explaining a bit about what they write about.
Journalist, author Peter Pringle began by explaining he tries to take a middle path – take everything with a grain of salt whether it is Monsanto or Greenpeace. His book is Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto — The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest. Some people call them genetically modified foods and some people call them Frankenfoods. Do research like a journalist. He mentions the 355 Promoter Gene gotten from Cauliflower Mosaic Virus as an example. Anti-gm foods sites list this as very scary – he calls this a myth of green people. It is used in many gm-foods. [Site claiming it's scary, PDF claiming it's not scary, Falling in the middle - it's probably not scary.]
Nina Planck has written a book called Real Food. Real Food are old foods, traditional foods like wild salmon, raw milk, eggs, butter (she mentions butter a lot – must be a favorite). These are foods prepared in the same way they were many years ago and are not tampered with in some industrial fashion. She posed a question – why are people on seemingly healthy diets (according to the media) getting sick? What is responsible for obesity, diabetes, heart disease? Her conclusion is that it is industrial foods as opposed to real foods that are responsible for these ills. Nutritional advice given is politically correct but not nutritionally correct. The Food Pyramid is fattening America.
Mary Cleaver is a caterer known for using local food. She begins the evening mentioning how in 1977 you could not buy local produce if you wanted to. It is about that time that Green Markets started – making it a lot easier.
Jay Weinstein has written The Ethical Gourmet. He talks about how everyday choices we make about food have an impact. Fish can be endangered by fertilizer run-off – choose a non-endangered fish over an endangered one. Coffee and chocolate bought can be fair trade or produced by slaves in Africa. Social and environmental ills are connected to food. Everyday choices like should you buy an organic apple from New Zealand or a regular one that is local (from NY). [He would vote for the local one because of the environmental cost of transporting the organic apple. At the same time he would choose organic milk because the animals are treated better. Ideally, you should get local, organic products.] It is about environmentally sound choices for him.
Ed Levine the moderator at this point raises the question of price as some of these choices are more expensive. Jay Weinstein’s response is that you should do what you can. Nina Planck responds too that price is but one attribute of food. There is also nutrition, flavor, provenance. Jay Weinstein brings up the problem of petroleum in transport. This made me think of ecological footprint calculators.]
Peter Pringle mentions Texmati rice at this point as an example where you should look a second time. The genes for the rice crop were taken from Indian Basmati Rice Farmers and recreated in the U.S. This has destroyed the economy of the farmers from far away. Again a question of impact.
Nina Planck adds that one should use their dollars to affect change in a capitalist marketplace. And Peter’s comment relates to Regional Foods as a subsection of Real Foods.
Back to Jay Weinstein who talks about bottled water. In a place where it is unecessary (NY and other major U.S. cities have good tap water) it is the fastest growing beverage industry. Mentions a ridiculous example of bottled water being shipped to Arkansas from Minnesota and also from Minnesota to Arkansas – all the while causing air pollution along the route and pollution runoff from shipping is polluting water, destroying waterways.
Jay Weinstein again brings up non-endangered vs. endangered fish such as eating non-endangered Arctic char vs. salmon. Cream Cheese and Arctic Char Lox anyone?
At this point I commented to Jocelyn that the evening wasn’t what I thought it would be…
Next Nina Planck asserts that journalists are not doing their jobs when it comes to these issues. And that there are issues for family farmers regarding organic certification. (Her background is that growing up her family ran a farm.) Many family farmers can’t afford certification. She talks about the importance of farmers at farmer’s markets making positive statements about their food – explaining what they do and don’t do to the customers directly.
The conversation goes back to genetically modified foods and biotechnology. Genetic modification of foods can be about environmental, health, human goals. Some crops require fewer pesticides because of GM at the same time these solutions are tied to big companies. Sometimes useful research is shelved for lack of profit in using it. Biotech is not all bad – especially if you have ever used vegetable rennet (in cheeses) or insulin.
At this point Nina Planck mentions that she is taliban on truth in advertising – here in the context of what is in food and whether it is GM or not. But it seems to me like a strange metaphor to use ever.
At this point the audience asks questions:
The first question is about Raw Milk and the link to TB addressed to Nina since she is a proponent of drinking raw milk.
She responds that is a complex answer (check her website for a more complete answer) but in short pasteurization was a response to unhealthy cows and unhygenic dairys historically. There is now testing and better conditions.
Someone asks about vegetarianism as an ethical choice.
Jay Weinstein fields this question by stating it can be an ethical choice and also you should source your meat. If you can, find out where it is coming from, how is the animal treated, how far away is it coming from. Nina Planck mentions http://www.paleodiet.com/ Jay Weinstein continues with the point that we are overfed in the U.S…We can eat less and pay the same (making ethical choices.) The percentage we spend as Americans on our food out of our total budgets is much smaller than Europeans or Chinese. Maybe we should be spending a higher percentage making ethical choices. (YEs, not really related to the question but vaguely on the ethical choice part.)
The next question is about soy and the controversy over plant estrogen, thyroid disruption, how it is banned in some places – that it has anti-nutrients that don’t allow you to take in calcium and Magnesium – how it is not a good source of protein
Nina Planck responds that the amino acids are not in the right ratio. It is not a first class protein like meat, dairy, eggs, fish. She recommends reading The Whole Soy Story and looking up information from the Weston Price Foundation.This question is a big deal to me – I will have to do the research – I definitely use soy as a protein source as a vegetarian.
The conversation then turned to the importance of patent reform. This includes issues like biotheft from the third world (like with the rice strain.) Foods can be stolen and patented and then the original communities cannot sell their own products. An example given at this point is canary beans. Greed can be a problem. Interesting how this returns to the issue of free culture too. Around the time of this panel discussion blogs were commenting on Yahoo!’s application for a patent for Flickr’s interestingness feature. (boingboing, technorati search)
The panel talks about Hunger is an issue of politics and distribution not an issue of production. Some of the solutions to food scarcity have come from genetic modification of food. At the same time it raises some dilemmas. At one point African nations with starving populations refused GM crops from the U.S. [My comment on media coverage at the time: To begin with it seemed like an unsophisticated choice and that they were refusing it because of a GM Food bogeyman they were afraid of.] Peter Pringle points out that they did not want to accept the crops because their main exports of their crops are to the EU. The EU refuses to import GM foods. They were actually afraid of contaminating their crops so that they could no longer provide exports to the EU. They were weighing future costs of accepting the food. [Some cynically accused the U.S. of offering these crops to them as a way of getting GM foods in to the EU on the backs of starving nations.]
Nina Planck goes on to talk about how important it is to demand labeling of food. For example the current labeling of trans-fat in foods. This is important as the National Academy of Sciences has declared there is no safe level of trans-fat. [Saturated fat is also bad for you so don't get too excited if a food you're looking at has no trans-fat but tons of saturated fat.] New York City has become the first U.S. city to ban trans-fat in restaurants. Restaurants won’t be able to use most frying oils with artificial trans fats by July, and will have to get rid of the artificial trans fats from all foods by July, 2008.
Jay Weinstein then explains the differences in the UPC numbers on fruit stickers. A four-digit number means it is conventional fruit. A five-digit number starting in 9 means it is organic fruit. A five-digit number starting in 8 means it is genetically modified. He points out it is a great way to check if your local stores are labeling/pricing their fruit correctly. This was cool – I never knew this.
An audience member asks for the panel to recommend sources of information:
They don’t really answer the question. They tell the crowd to do a lot of research – to check studies to see who is funding them. They explain that most newspapers do not have staff dedicated to food issues. Even the NY Times only has three people on staff – which may explain the dearth of useful information. Someone recommend food writer “Pete Wells,” a google search reveals he is a Brooklyn -based writer who has written for Food & Wine, New York, Time Out NY and Salon.com.
Jay Weinstein brings up Wallet Cards put out by the Blue Ocean Institute, The Audobon Society and Monterey Bay Aquarium that advise on sustainable seafood eating choices.
The next audience member goes on for a long time about how she is a documentary filmmaker, anthropologist, foreigner about knowing your body about quality of food as a false issue about how snacks are an American concept about Community Supported Agriculture about going to the Amazon in Brazil and talking to indigenous people about the effects of the soy industry about (soy?) corporations clearing land and infiltrating communities. She went on for a long time and made it sound like evil corporate farmers were murdering indigenous community farmer babies in their sleep….
The end note of the panel was that you don’t need to sacrifice pleasure, choices you make have an impact and do as much research as you can.
Mary Cleaver didn’t say very much throughtout the whole evening.
Peter Pringle was definitely a character who threw in random comments when he felt like it – maybe I just like him because he’s British.
Nina Planck had a lot of opinions that seemed informed – I definitely would want to read her stuff on her website. It seemed like she had a lot to say – and she tried to get a lot out. But, it was a bit grim – though she did just give birth (mom was holding the baby in the back of the crowd) maybe it wasn’t grim just tiredness.
Jay Weinstein raised some interesting points about choices we make. Specifically enjoyed the comment about mine al water, the trick with fruit UPC codes and the resource of seafood lists (though they’re not relevant in my life). It was funny he seemed to have preconceived notions of what the members of the panel would support so at some point when he was trying to raise positive points about GM foods he turned to Peter for back-up. Nina was right next to him and saying how she had actually worked as a spokesperson for GM foods and did not have an issue with them on principle. He didn’t hear her and was physically turning away to get support from one of the men. She was literally in the spot right next to him it was a bit weird.
Ed Levine was a bit worthless as a moderator. He made random comments on somewhat food-related subjects and didn’t do much moderating. At times it seemed like the Nina and Jay Show with a sprinkling of Peter Pringle.
Conclusion: Would invite Peter to a dinner party. Would invite Mary and seat her next to someone extroverted or have her cater yum! Probably would not invite the rest.
