The Pleasure of Food: Weapons for Change-Agents

by Nikki Henderson

One of my favorite memories: eating my father’s food experiments. Every so often, the six-foot, muscular beast of a man would roll up his sleeves and dive into the kitchen. Flour would fly, rouge apples would squish underfoot, and hours later a somewhat-suspicious looking pastry would peek from the oven. My brothers and I initially scoffed at dad’s “apple crumb cobbler”, but the ill-shapen crust creation soon became a household favorite. Our mouths would water at the sound of knifes slicing through apples and spoons scraping against the sides of bowls. We would sit down at the kitchen table and just…indulge. The whiney complains would drain from my brothers, my teenage angst would rise away with the steam, and our moods improved with every apple-filled bite.

The Pleasure of Food could be the ultimate weapon for change-agents of today. If families, organizations, and individuals harnessed this wonderful feeling of comfort for their aims, those in power would be defenseless against them. I could stamp my feet and bang my fists against a brick wall if I was trying to change local legislation, or I could show up at a press conference with tasty organic in-season fruit and distribute them to the reporters. Even if they refused to talk to me, they would take one of my apples—mission accomplished. They will remember my apple, and with the right t-shirt, the name of my issue and the sweet taste of working with me to resolve injustice will never fade away.

I would love to see social justice organizations and individuals use the pleasure of food in this manner, as a strategic tactic in the struggle. What if kicking-and-screaming town hall meetings concluded with plate after plate of home-cooked food? Congressional deliberations should have fruit and veggie platters, full deli bars, and sweet tea. Rallies and protests about the harshest of circumstances—police brutality, gang violence, and crime—need decades-old recipes filled with love to shatter the hate.

This is urgently needed to help create change and ease the strain of communities.  The food system is brother to many other broken systems, from energy to the economy. Many good soldiers in the social justice movement have tried to weave together broken jobs, broken communities, and broken families with little to no success. Fighting for those without the means to fight for themselves requires every discipline, every strength, and every shred of compassion. Maintaining sanity after finding oneself repeated victim of a shattered system requires the same. This battle is draining to all involved—a good meal can replenish all involved.

Every act of celebratory activism involving the pleasure of food weaves a thread of joy through circumstances in desperate need of hope. If a more direct “Food as a Catalyst for Change” movement arose from the greater food movement, I would be first in line for a plate.

In the name of food safety: bulldoze, rip, shoot and poison!

by Biodiversity intern Regina Fitzsimmons

Last month, HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, passed in the House.  While this legislation marginally amps up government food oversight by granting the FDA power to force food recalls and increase inspections of food processing plants (a power—you got it—the FDA can now only recommend), spokespeople for small farmers have big concerns if this bill passes in the Senate.  You can read a breakdown of the bill by the Washington Post and keep up on the current Congressional actions at the Library of Congress online. 

In sum-up, though, concerns arise from a couple of things: for one, identical regulations will be imposed on both small and large food enterprises.  In tangible terms, this bill would require all food handlers.  Under this legislation a big company like Kraft would pay the same FDA registration as an artisan cheesemaker with a couple of goats. A second concern is that the legislation also grants the FDA the power to set standards determining how crops are grown, requiring the adoption of tracking technologies—a process significantly more taxing for small operators.  Food writers like Gourmet’s Barry Estabrook are hoping that Senate won’t follow in the Houses’ fast-tracking footsteps and will instead allow a sustained debate with the inclusion of possible amendments like Kaptur-Farr legislation that was glazed over in the House.  Estabrook hopes the Senate will address these concerns because as he put it, “being a conscientious farmer is a tough business [and] Congress just made it tougher.”

It isn’t surprising that the House steam-rolled through the review and vote of HR 2749.  This bill comes a month after yet another food recall: this time, Nestle’s Toll House refrigerated cookie dough.  In the past three years, we’ve avoided bagged spinach, ground beef, tomatoes (even though Serrano chile peppers were the real culprit) and peanut butter, among other foods.  People are getting sick and we all want to know the answer to the most basic of questions: what’s okay to eat?

More after the jump

Slow Food USA Staff Organize Warm-Up Eat-In in Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Gordon Jenkins

If the office workers on lunch break in Brooklyn Bridge Park could hear anything over the roar of Q trains crossing the Manhattan Bridge, then they were treated to a rare public performance: Slow Food USA Executive Director Erika Lesser, in makeshift headdress, giving a passionate reading of the Slow Food Manifesto. As she hit doleful lows (“We are enslaved by speed”) and soaring heights (“Slow Food guarantees a better future”), twenty of her colleagues cheered and hissed in unison. Eyewitnesses in corporate offices across the East River report seeing the industrial food system shake in its boots.

Lesser’s performance was a highlight of an event billed as a warm-up to the National Eat-In taking place on Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009. On that day, people in communities across America will gather for public potlucks that send a clear message to Congress: It’s time to provide our children with real food at school. As organizers nationwide prepare for their events, the staff at Slow Food USA headquarters in Brooklyn decided to practice what they preach and cook up their own favorite dishes for a lunchtime Eat-In.

Roast beef and fruit salad and pickled okra and homemade baba ghanoush appeared on the table, alongside plum cake and chocolate mousse for dessert. While they ate, staff members took turns giving performances to rally spirits in preparation for the final stretch to Labor Day. A school nutrition director named Margo Roundbottom made a brief but moving appearance to knight Leah Gorham and Callie Gleason in the Order of the Lunch Lady on their second-to-last day working on the campaign (it’s August, and they have to return to school); Jenny Trotter sang a very beautiful song; Deena Goldman, Jerusha Klemperer and Julia Middleton sang their bosses’ praise and folly; and Josh Viertel closed the meal by channeling his inner chain-gang member and leading a passionate rendition of a 1930s Mississippi work song.

If they couldn’t hear, the office workers sitting nearby did stare and smile appreciatively. Everyone likes to watch people enjoy a meal together, even if it’s a ragtag group of food activists who interrupt their meal with manifesto readings. On Sept. 7, many thousands of such food activists will impress many thousands of such passerby in parks and town squares across America. Join the effort today at http://slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

The Edible Garden

Green space is necessary in a big, gray city like ours (that’s NYC, for those of you who didn’t know where the Slow Food USA home office is!).  These days, more and more green spaces are growing things you can eat: there’s a boom in rooftop gardens, community ag projects, urban farms, and fire escape/window produce planting.

The New York Botanic Garden, recognizing the trend, has created “a summer-long celebration of growing great food.” They’ve got exhibitions and programs designed to inspire the public to “grow, prepare, and eat garden-fresh produce, and understand how plants provide the food and drink essential to maintaining life and enhancing wellness.”

This Thursday Slow Food USA will be there:

Biodiversity Program Manager Jenny Trotter will moderate a panel on how home gardeners, orchardists, farmers and chefs all play a role in conserving rare and place-based fruit and vegetable varieties (6-9 pm)

Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel will give the keynote address.

You can read excellent, introductory posts by Jenny and Josh, here.

Hellman’s can’t fool me

by Youth Programs Intern Reece Trevor

A few days ago, Cecily posted a piece on the Slow Food USA blog about Monsanto’s rather disingenuous efforts to market a commitment to sustainability on public radio shows. Monsanto’s radio spots are the latest in a long string of corporate attempts to “green-wash” their products and actions by spending lots of money on glitzy environmentally-themed public relations efforts even as they continue to conduct business as usual. Green-washing seems to grow more and more rampant by the week, so I thought I’d throw in my two cents.

My two Canadian cents, that is. Earlier this summer, Hellmann’s (of mayonnaise fame) launched a web site called Eat Real, Eat Local. It’s a slick flash-based site designed to “educate” Canadians about the importance of eating locally-grown foods. The site’s centerpiece is an animated short highlighting, for the most part, Canada’s considerable food trade deficit. Hellmann’s frames the issue primarily in economic terms, often veering towards the nationalistic as well with its portrayals of hard-working Canadian farmers losing out to foreign producers.

Okay, fair enough. Economics is certainly a viable component of locavorism. But then the movie fades, and a brave little jar of mayonnaise—you’ll never guess what brand—appears at the head of a mighty phalanx of broccoli, carrots, and beets. Have no fear, good people of Canada! Hellmann’s cares, and they’re here to save you from the corporate masterminds who want to corrupt your nation’s food system!

More after the jump

Full frontal gardening

A while back I wrote about Fritz Haeg’s art-cum-ag project called “Edible Estates.”  Well this news just in: for the new edition of the book they are looking for more reports from across the country from those that have decided to engage in “full frontal gardening.”

Have you replaced the lawn in front of your house or apartment building with a completely edible garden? Questions and submissions can be sent to: assistant[at]fritzhaeg.com

They will need:
- a 500 word story about your garden
- 4 or 5 photos of your garden at the highest resolution
- your name, mailing address, size of garden, date established, and USDA Plant Hardiness Zone

 
• Zone 9 includes: Houston, Tampa, New Orleans
 
• Zone 5 includes: Des Moines, Chicago, Detroit
 
• Zone 4 includes: Minneapolis, Burlington, Anchorage
 
• Zone 3 includes: Northern Minnesota, Montana, and Maine

Find the detailed map here or go here to find your zone by zip code.

Edible Estates (http://www.edibleestates.org) has initiated a series of regional prototype front yard gardens since 2005 for families in Salina, KS; Lakewood, CA; Maplewood, NJ; London, UK; Austin, TX, Los Angeles, CA; Baltimore, MD; and most recently, the Lenape Edible Estate: Manhattan, which will have it’s public opening on September 14th:

A Call to put away the Lunch Box

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

I get Google Alerts about blog posts and articles that mention “school lunch,” and lately the emails have had lots of links to stories about how to pack a healthy midday meal. I’ve been getting alerts about everything from packable recipe ideas to the latest stylish lunch boxes. All of this reminds me that while more than 30 million students participate in the National School Lunch Program each year, another 20 million forgo cafeteria fare and bring lunch from home.

Many parents pack lunch for their children because they don’t consider chicken nuggets a healthy meal. I don’t either. But before you resolve to pack lunch for your child every day this year, think about this: one of the best ways to get better food into public school cafeterias is to put away the lunch box and become a loyal lunchroom customer.

I’ve blogged before about how cafeterias operate much like restaurants. Since their revenue comes from a mixture of federal per-meal reimbursements and student dollars, cafeteria directors need to bring students into the lunch line to stay afloat. They do that by offering the foods kids like — pizza, chicken nuggets, nachos and French fries. The hope is that students will look at the menu and say, “Mom, I want to buy lunch today because the entree is popcorn chicken.”

That means kids have a lot of power when it comes to determining what’s for lunch at school. But it also means that parents have a lot of power. After all, parents are the ones who supply the lunch money.  If parents — and I’m talking big groups of parents — started using that power, cafeterias would probably be pretty receptive. If cafeterias had to cater to parents instead of kids, they probably wouldn’t serve popcorn chicken.

More after the jump

No More School Lunch Baloney

by Claire Stanford

My school lunch awakening began the summer after I graduated from college, in 2006, when I volunteered as a counselor at a free day camp in New Haven, Connecticut. The point of the camp was many-fold: to teach kids about the environment, to keep kids off the street and out of trouble all day, and to exhaust them enough during the day that they’d stay out of trouble when we let them out, too. And, importantly, to give them free breakfast, lunch, and snack every day, provided by the New Haven public school system.

For many kids, school lunch (and the less well-known school breakfast) serve the invaluable function of providing two guaranteed meals a day, something I didn’t realize until that summer. Kids were allowed to bring their own lunch; out of the forty-or-so kids, I could probably count the number who actually did bring brown-bags on one hand. 

Every day at noon, the kids would sit in a big circle on the floor, and we would pass out lunch, the most typical one being a baloney and cheese sandwich (one slice of baloney and one slice of processed American cheese on white sandwich bread), a bag of carrots, and a small carton of chocolate milk. In the middle of the circle were three bins labeled trash, recycling, and food waste. The plastic wrappers for the sandwiches and the carrots went in the trash bin, the milk cartons in the recycling, and anything the kids didn’t eat into the food waste. At the end of every lunch, after everything had been cleaned up, one counselor would weigh the bin of food waste. We recorded these weights on a chart posted on the blackboard; the goal was to get below one pound of food waste. If the goal was reached, the head of the camp promised, she would shave off her eyebrows.

More after the jump

NPR and Monsanto

I love my public radio station. I’ll admit I even drive to work some days just to listen to the morning news (note: I live in New York City, where driving to work takes more time, costs more, and is just plain silly). On the way home, I’m usually back in the car just in time to hear the tail end of Marketplace, the daily broadcast of the day’s economic and financial news. Marketplace is a great show – they explain complex content simply and with humor (I have a radio crush on the host, Kai Ryssdal) and they always play good music between the segments.

Lately, however, I’ve found myself cringing with disgust as I listen. It’s not the bleak financial news day after day or the fact that Kai and I mostly likely will never date that causes my reaction, but the fact that Marketplace is now sponsored by Monsanto – the biotech company responsible for Round-Up, Agent Orange, GMO corn and soy, and all hosts of other types of evil.  And as if it couldn’t get any worse, the announcer, in a smug and confident voice, informs me that Monsanto is “committed to sustainable agriculture.”

Um, WHAT?

If someone asked me to name a corporation that epitomized the opposite of sustainable agriculture, the name Monsanto would be out of my mouth before they even finished the question.  But I’m not going to rant about Monsanto here, you can read all about how they’re destroying the planet here. And if that’s not enough, go here.

What I want to rant about here is Greenwashing.  Greenwashing is the process by which a corporation disseminates a false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness in order to conceal or obscure damaging activities.  Now, I’m not green about greenwashing.  I know it’s all over our food packaging in terms like “all natural” or “made from the best stuff on earth,” but Monsanto’s blatant usurping of the term “sustainable agriculture” makes my blood boil.  Why? Well, for one, they’re insulting our intelligence.  And for two, I’m scared.  Really scared.  Scared that people will believe them.  Allowing Monsanto to piggyback on public radio, which is seen as a credible, reliable – albeit left-leaning (which, let’s face it, makes it worse) – suggests that their message is all these things.

More after the jump

Take Action on Food Safety Bill HR 2749

Call your representative today and urge them to support the Kaptur-Farr Food Safety Proposal.

H.R. 2749, The Food Safety Enhancement Act, has been moving through committee and now is slated to go to the floor of the House on Wednesday, July 29. The bill will go to the house floor under a suspension vote, which means limited debate and no amendments can be introduced on the floor. A two-thirds majority is needed for passage.

Last week, representatives Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Sam Farr (CA-17), Maurice Hinchey (NY-22), Jesse Jackson Jr. (IL-2), Peter Welch (VT-at large), Chellie Pingree (ME-1) and Earl Blumenauer (OR-3) submitted a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee with specific proposed changes to HR 2749 that addresses many of the concerns raised by the sustainable and organic agriculture community.

H.R. 2749 contains provisions that could hinder sustainable and organic farmers’ access to markets, require expensive fees, and lead to dismantling of important conservation practices and wildlife habitat.

Please call your Representative today, Wednesday, and ask them to join the effort to protect small and mid-sized family farmers, the environment, and consumer choice by supporting the provisions in the Kaptur-Farr proposal to HR 2749. 

It’s easy and only takes a minute to do:

Click here to find your Representative’s name and enter your zip code in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

Then call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Representative’s office: 202-224-3121.  You can say:

“I am a constituent of Representative___________ and I am calling to ask him/her to support the Kaptur-Farr proposal to HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.  I am also asking him/her to vote against HR 2749 unless the proposals included in the Kaptur-Farr letter are included in the final bill.”   

For more information, read the action alert from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and an overview of the legislation from Food & Water Watch last month.