Food Foibles

The U.S. food system is a tangled network riddled with flaws but ripe with possibilities. In the absence of a traditional food culture, the system that has evolved is closer to an industrialized factory system than the bountiful, pastoral, nourishing illusions featured on food packages. It is malignant, harmful to our health and our society. But there are alternative movements working toward healthful, equitable, enriching food networks. These networks have the potential to raise us out of the mire of the American food system and revolutionize this intimate and inevitable part of our life.

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So what is a "food desert?"

In spite of the fact that over 11 million Americans live in food deserts and most of us at least live near one, most people don't know what living in a food desert really means.

Food deserts are exactly what they sound like. They're neighborhoods and communities where real food is scarce. In our shift from localized food systems and small markets to suburban supermarkets, these places were deserted and left with fast food restaurants, gas stations, and liquor stores. While these places have food, it's expensive and unhealthy, which does not cater well to a low-income population in need of a primary food source.

According to the USDA, a food desert is a “low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.” While there are more specific definitions, this basically means that about a fifth of the population of an urban area is impoverished and lives a mile or more from a grocery store. In rural areas, this is extended out to five miles.

So what qualifies as a food desert? Check out this map from the USDA  of food deserts across the country:

There are food deserts everywhere. I live in one, and now that I know that, I see it everyday. You start to notice that there really isn't a supermarket or any source of healthy, affordable food. Sure, I can walk around the corner for a soda, some chips, or a 3-dollar-onion, but that's not what I need. If I'm baking with my friends and I'm short on flour, there's nowhere to walk to get some where I won't spend twice as much as I should. And I'm lucky: I have a car. 

But a lot of people who live in food deserts are low income. That's what makes it a food desert, and that's what makes it a problem. If you're low income, you probably don't have a car. You also probably don't have the money to pay for a taxi. And lugging a week's worth of groceries on the bus just isn't fun. A lot of farmers' markets are now accepting SNAP or food stamps, but you simply can't get everything you need at a farmers' market, and in most places, you can't even go year round. 

Aside from inequity and inconvenience, this is a huge health problem. While living close to a grocery store correlates with better health, living in a food desert correlates to higher incidence of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and even years of potential life lost.

Our switch to a supermarket food system has created a lot of problems. Some communities simply don't fit into the supermarket model with its need for floor space, huge parking lots, and access to trucking routes, and these communities become food deserts. So what's the solution? We need to relocalize our food system with corner markets and farmers' markets and encourage not only selling but also growing heathy, affordable foods in these communities with urban farms, community gardens, and home grown food.

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For the past week, I’ve been participating in the “Food Stamp Challenge” at my university.  The challenge is to spend only $28 on food and beverages for the entire week. As today is the final day of the challenge, I’ve totaled my spendings.

While most participants went to the store at the beginning of the week to buy all of their groceries, I did things a little differently. I already had a lot of the food I knew I would eat, and with the semester ending this week, I didn’t want to buy more food and have it go to waste. So instead, I’ve kept a log of what I’ve eaten and how much it cost when I bought it. I also didn't count the full cost of packages, but rather counted halves of packages if I did not intend to eat all of it including oatmeal and a crate of clementines, which would last me two weeks or longer.

My total for the week was just over $20*. I realize that I bent the rules a little, but I think it’s realistic to buy things not just on a weekly scale but on a more long-term basis. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would eat and actually put more effort into what I ate than I usually do, which in a way I kind of enjoyed.

The hardest part of the challenge for me was the inconvenience. Especially with it being the end of the semester, I’ve been on campus longer than usual, and I’m not used to bringing full meals with me. Honestly, I usually don’t really eat full meals; my friends joke that I “graze.” This made it difficult because it's definitely more cost-effective to make meals. By the time I got home some days I was uncomfortably hungry, and just part of the way through my Wednesday night class I could feel my attention span waning. I realized that I definitely take for granted my ability to buy food when I’m out.

Although I went under the allowance, I would never say that being on SNAP is easy. A lot of people I know don’t realize the effort that goes into planning meals on a tight budget or the convenience that comes along with increased buying power. Allowing snack foods and dessert items in the SNAP program makes it tempting to spend more money than necessary on foods that are less nutritious. But there are definitely some healthy foods such as nuts, a produce-based diet, or an entirely organic diet that are simply out of reach on food stamps.  Things I normally buy like tofu and almonds are out of the question. The policies and subsidies that skew the food system like this are a different topic, but it’s clearly a problem that while you could eat Spaghettios and mac ‘n cheese all week on food stamps, it’s difficult to eat a diet that your doctor would actually approve of.

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The motivation behind GMOs

A couple weeks ago I attended an event about GMO technology. A knowledgeable professor from my university and a Cornell University professor named Peter Davies presented opposing arguments on the use of genetically modified organisms. They approached the issue from very different perspectives, but both brought up interesting points.

Anticipating an environmental and health-focused attack from the environmental advocate and constant critic of agribusiness that is Professor Dick Andrus, Davies addressed issues of exposure, health, leeching and emissions. According to him, some GMO crops allow farmers to use less fertilizer – particularly nitrates – when growing their crops. When used intensively, these chemicals can leech into water supplies, wreak havoc on aquatic ecology, and pose health threats to people who drink the water. This reduction also spares farmers and farm workers from having to handle dangerous chemical pesticides and  herbicides while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions and reducing erosion. There are also GMOs in the works that will provide nutritional benefits to consumers such as carotene in rice that will prevent child blindness and death.

As wonderful as Davies’ pitch sounded, I have a hard time believing that GMO producers’ goal is really to “benefit the farmer, the environment, and the consumer.” His repeated references to saving children and attempts to make genetic engineering seem run-of-the-mill gave me pause. Any time an argument relies on pictures of cute kids and claims that a product is meant to “save the children,” I for one get a bit skeptical. And claiming that all DNA is just DNA – so fish or plant DNA is really just the same thing – and implying that the genetic engineering done in laboratories could be done by anyone with access to a Home Depot is just absurd. Presumably this is done to counter concerns that genetic engineering is unnatural and unsafe and convince people that genetic engineering is really “nothing new.”

Andrus took a different approach to the issue. Instead of making counter claims that would inevitably lead to a “he said she said” argument, he focused on the corporations in question and the ethical implications of their control of the food supply. He referenced the quote from the honorary chairman of Nestlé, Helmut Maucher, who said, "Ethical decisions that injure a firm’s ability to compete are actually immoral." Essentially, according to Andrus, it is unethical for corporations to follow an ethical framework. He pointed out that the corporations that produce GMOs are not concerned with feeding the hungry; poor people don’t have land to farm or money to pay for their technology. They're interested in farmers they can trap in their cycle of consumption by forcing them to continuously buy engineered seeds and the herbicides they now depend on. He questioned the decision to let these corporations control the food supply, citing a quotation from a Monsanto representative who said “Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job.”

There’s a lot of complicated science involved with GMO technology and a large pool of conflicting claims and research about its safety and benefits. In a lot of ways, it’s up to you to look at some of it and decide what you believe and what you support. However, aside from that I for one agree with Andrus; we can’t expect a corporation focused on profit to protect us. Unfortunately, the dominant players in agribusiness operate to make money, not to promote health or to feed the world. It’s pretty obvious that so far they haven’t done either of these things, so I’d say some healthy skepticism is definitely in order.

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Even though Thanksgiving has passed, many of us are still enjoying a crucial component of Thanksgiving: family. That might mean spending the day with relatives from out of town, visiting with family before your own flight home, or catching up with your friends, a different sort of family. However, having spent most of yesterday in the kitchen, many of us are pretty tired of the other big part of Thanksgiving: cooking.

After the somewhat manic balancing act of roasting a huge bird while cooking several vegetables, stuffing, and an assortment of pies and desserts, many people are sick of cooking altogether. In fact, today is probably the biggest day of the year for leftovers. No one really wants to make another big meal; very few people even want to cook a regular meal.

Thanksgiving gets a little crazy, and if your family is anything like mine tensions get a bit high. Deciding who will make what and how can get tense, especially if you have people with different tastes.

I don’t have much interest in cooking today either and I’ve already enjoyed one round of leftovers. But unfortunately this weariness toward cooking is becoming all too common, and it isn’t just restricted to the post-Thanksgiving respite.

This quintessential cooking holiday – and the cooking stupor that seems to follow it – has me thinking about the ironically named “Cornucopia.” The Cornucopia is a 3D food printer that is being developed by several teams including Cornell University. NASA is even funding the project as a way to provide for astronauts’ nutritional needs. Check out the video above for more on what the printer does.

So the main idea is that you can put whatever dried or liquefied ingredients in the cartridges and the machine “prints” layers of food while instantaneously hydrating and cooking them. This will allow astronauts, chefs, and eventually normal people cooking at home to use well-preserved foods to cook meals with novel taste and texture combinations that are tailored to their nutritional needs. Because the ingredients are highly preserved, this should reduce food waste. Proponents also argue that this would allow a new level of creativity and artistry in cooking and provide a wealth of data for nutrition and health research. For more on the argument supporting food printing, go to the linked TEDx video at the bottom.

While in a way I’d love to get my hands on one of these machines to play with, further mechanizing food production sounds dangerous. People are already conceptually separated from the factory farms that produce the majority of their food and the industrialized food system that processes it. If you take away the last connecting link for people with their food, I for one am afraid of what it will do to us.

As I’ve discussed, cooking at home correlates with better health outcomes. For me, it also adds a distinct richness to my life and gives me a great way to connect with people. Whether that’s telling someone about something fun I made, exchanging recipes with my mother, or cooking with friends, I wouldn’t trade any of that for pushing a few buttons.

If all you have to do is load those cartridges, you never really see the food you buy and eat. It’s so processed you really won’t know much about it at all, which will give companies even more freedom with our food. Many people – myself included – would prefer these companies to have less freedom, not more.

So before we accept this technology whole-heartedly, let’s look at what we’re gaining and what we’re losing. Proponents would say we’ll gain texture and flavor combinations, efficiency, and time (estimated at about 150 hours per year). However, we can improve efficiency in other ways and personally, that’s not a 150 hours I want to reallocate to watching TV or doing more work. So if the only real benefit is novelty and the cost is freedom, control, and knowledge about what I’m consuming and the personal and social enjoyment I get from cooking, I think I’d rather pass.

TEDx Printing Food

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From crave to Krave

If you think about it, sugar addiction makes a lot of sense. Everyone has a few snacks they just can’t resist, and sometimes you think about Oreos or a nice, cold Coke for hours. Kids will scream their way through the supermarket trying to get their parents to buy them sugary snacks and cereals like the aptly named Krave.

Food companies routinely take advantage of this. They actively work to make customers crave their products, adding just enough sugar to hit our “bliss point,” a level of sugar they discern from research as producing the best possible response from our bodies. They’ve taken an evolutionary desire for sugar that developed in an environment where sugar was scarce but essential to brain and body function, and they’ve turned it against us. Now when you walk down an aisle in a supermarket, you’re surrounded by sugar. There’s no need to crave it anymore, but our bodies haven’t caught up.

And if all of this availability wasn’t enough, now it turns out we might actually be addicted. As I said in my last post, sugar triggers the same pleasure centers as drugs like cocaine. Testing shows that withholding sugar can trigger symptoms of withdrawal. The argument that sugar is addictive is gaining more and more traction.

“Crave” is the food industry’s favorite euphemism used to downplay this addiction, the exploitation of our body chemistry. Craving is presented as normal and often comical, but ultimately harmless. Because it has been made so innocuous, food producers can publicly acknowledge cravings. McDonald’s even used the slogan "Crafted for your craving" for an advertising campaign.

So what’s the problem? If we naturally crave it, it must be alright, right? The problem is that our craving for sugar, the linkage between our sugar consumption and the pleasure centers in our brains, developed in an environment where we couldn’t realistically get enough sugar to hurt ourselves. However, in modern American society, we have enough access to sugar that we’re developing tooth decay, diabetes, obesity, and related heart diseases and cancers in endemic proportions. Reducing our sugar intake might be one of the best things we can do for our health.

That is, if we can break the addiction.

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Yes or No on 522?

Today is a huge day for GMO politics. Washington state residents are currently voting on Initiative 522. If passed, this initiative would require labeling of products that contain GMO ingredients.

If you’re not clear on what GMOs are, check out my earlier posts on GMOs and the concerns surrounding them.

Generally, supporters of Initiative 522 are concerned that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and/or the pesticides whose use is enabled by genetic engineering cause detrimental health effects including cancer.

Although these concerns are unconfirmed, supporters of the initiative argue that consumers have a right to know what they are buying and eating. For me, it’s about being able to make an informed decision. Even if I don’t know that GMOs are dangerous, I don’t know that they’re safe either. GMO testing is not mandatory, and most of the testing that has been done was done by the companies that produce GMOs.

Opponents of the initiative argue that GMO labeling – especially the prominent labeling required by 522 – would have a stigmatizing effect on their products. They argue that GMOs are safe, but that pointing out that products contain GMOs in such a prominent way would make it seem like there is something dangerous or concerning about them. This cautionary element is undoubtedly exactly what some supporters are hoping for.

However this has not been the case in the Netherlands, China, or France, where GMO labeling has not affected consumer behavior. Still, opponents argue that the type of labeling that would be required in Washington is much more prominent and therefore seems more like a warning.

The other argument against GMO labeling is economic. Opponents argue that labeling will make food more expensive, either through forcing producers to go to more effort so that they do not contain GMOs or by forcing GMO products off of shelves and therefore reducing both competition and selection. At the same time, food producers might enter into costly lawsuits resisting the legislation and its effects.

These concerns have prompted the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents producers including Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, and Kraft, as well as chemical companies Monsanto and Dupont to contribute over $22 million to the anti-labeling campaign.

Supporters including those above and notably including Dr. Bronner's have raised about $8 million.

However, while the campaign might be unbalanced in terms of resources, polls indicate that Washingtonians favor labeling. This was strongly reflected in polls of Washington’s population a few months ago, but a huge influx of anti-labeling funds and advertising have reduced the margin from 45 percentage points to 4.

The fate of Washington’s Initiative 522 is uncertain. It might join Connecticut as the second state to require labeling (and become the first of four other states needed to require labeling in order for Connecticut's labeling to go into effect). Or it might be defeated.

Either way, it seems that sooner or later labeling will be required. Polls show that over 90 percent of Americans support labeling. Americans hardly ever agree that strongly, so when they do, something is bound to happen.

So whether it’s Washington today, Vermont next year, or one of the other 20 states considering labeling laws, GMOs will be labeled. Hopefully labeling will force producers and regulators to mandate better studies on the safety of these ingredients.

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Halloween might be over, but the sugar rush is just beginning

Halloween is over. But whether it’s from trick-or-treating, parties, or just stocking up on those delicious pumpkin-shaped Reese’s cups, if you’re anything like me, you’ve got a lot of candy right now. As a student living in an off-campus urban neighborhood, I bought a couple bags just in case any trick-or-treaters showed up. None of them did, so now I have a LOT of candy.

In addition to our Halloween hordes, we also have the wave of Thanksgiving and Christmas treats approaching. The festive beers, cookies, and seasonal staples are already on display. And unlike the corn, watermelon, and fresh vegetables that come out in the summer, these foods are very high in processed sugar. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas are essentially eating holidays. In addition to homemade cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and Christmas cookies, the food industry is about to release a flood of processed holiday cookies, festive candies, jellied cranberry sauce, seasonal drinks, and a huge assortment of sweet ingredients. Just think, one of the most recognizable holiday staples is a candy cane: a glorified stick of sugar. Holiday recipes call for sweetened condensed milk, chocolate, marshmallows, and brown, white and confectioner’s sugar, and food companies will put out as much as we want – and more.

The market – and our bodies – are about to be flooded with sugar. For many of us, it’s already begun. And for me, all of this happening  just as I’m becoming aware of recent research that suggests that processed sugars are actually addictive.

These studies show that when we eat processed sugar, it triggers the same reward pathways as drugs like cocaine. It causes a release of dopamine that makes us happy. When the scientists took away the sugar, the rats start behaving erratically, similarly to how people behave when they’re going through withdrawal.

I don’t know about you, but all of this makes me a little less comfortable indulging in my favorite holiday treats. The idea of food companies manipulating the addictive properties of sugar to sell their products makes me a bit skeptical of those festive packages of sugar they’re peddling.

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The Invasion of Colonel Sanders

“Let KFC do the cooking.” “Have it your way.” “You deserve a break today.”

Fast food has been undermining the culture of cooking in the United States for years. When our grandparents were kids, real, whole foods were the only options. Organic was the only option. And unless it was a special occasion, cooking was the only option.

Now we have limitless options. You can “Have it your way” and you can “Eat great even late.” You can “Taste the rainbow,” and you don’t even have to go through the drudgery of cooking.

This is the message conveyed by fast food advertisements and snack food slogans. For years they’ve been telling us that we don’t need to cook anymore. They’ll make us whatever we want and it’ll be “G-r-r-eat!”

Even when our parents were kids, they took home economics. Among other things, students learned to cook in home economics. As Michael Moss discusses in “Salt, Sugar, Fat,” home economics teachers taught students to can and pickle foods in addition to using wholesome ingredients to cook meals.

Food companies put a lot of money into phasing out these lessons and making home economics into consumer training, replacing whole ingredients with cream of mushroom soup and Hamburger Helper. They strategically portrayed cooking and other productive activities as wearisome and boring and offered to step in to save time: the ultimate currency.

So now we have Wendy and Colonel Sander making lunch and Stoffer’s making dinner. Dessert comes from Pepperidge Farm. We’ve been told we don’t want to cook or that we don’t have time. But as I mentioned, most of us do have time. And we need to reallocate some of that time to cooking if we want to save ourselves from the Western diseases that kill millions of Americans every year.

So let’s take back our kitchens and revive America’s food culture. People sometimes claim that America doesn’t have a food culture, or that if we do it’s a culture of fast food and TV dinners, Hot Pockets and PopTarts. If you Google "American food," this is one of the top results:

But I think we do have a food culture, or at least we did. And if we go back to the kitchen, back to recipes, and back to ingredients and leave out the microwave and the Betty Crocker mixes, we can revive that culture or even make a new one.

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To cook

Another great indicator of whether you’re eating “real food” is whether or not you’re cooking.

Michael Pollan talks about this in his new book called “Cooked.” According to him, if you cook your own food you’re more likely to eat real food. When you cook, you’re more connected to the food you eat, and you automatically start to care more about what you’re buying and eating.

When you cook, you choose ingredients yourself instead of just glancing at the list of ingredients on a label. And if you’re cooking yourself, you probably won’t toss in any six-syllable chemicals.

Nutritional research shows that it’s not the makeup of people’s diets that determines their health. There are healthy people around the world who eat high-carb or high-protein diets. The problem is processed food. In countries where processed foods are prevalent, people suffer from what some refer to as “Western diseases.” This includes diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Before processed foods are introduced in a society, the occurrence of these diseases is quite low, but once people switch over to processed foods and abandon their traditional diet – whether that meant high-fat, high-sugar or high in lots of things diet fads demonize – these diseases follow close behind.

According to Pollan, the average American cooks less than a half hour per day. This is already a bit strange, but once you find out that “cooking” means simply combining ingredients and that putting milk on a bowl of cereal counts, it’s downright shocking.

Few people are truly so busy that they can’t cook for themselves. But if we have time to drive ten minutes both ways to pick up a pizza or stand on line at McDonald’s, don't we have time to make some pasta, sauté some vegetables, or throw together a casserole?

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Finding real food

People talk a lot about eating “real food.” Although this is a great concept, it takes a bit of explaining and a bit of exploring. There isn’t just one definition of real food.

To some people real food can include things like breads and maybe cereals, crackers, or other obviously processed foods. Others might impose a three-ingredient limit. Still others try to eat only whole foods. The most extreme don’t even consider GMO products “real.” For me, it’s kind of a mix, and honestly I think it’s best for everyone to find their own definition.

A great place to start is thinking about where you shop. If you shop at farmers’ markets and farm stands, you’re definitely eating real food (though it might or might not be organic). Once you go into the supermarket, it gets a bit more complicated.

If you think about it, supermarket layouts can help classify your food. Most of the food on the periphery of a store is real food. This includes the produce section, the meat counter, often the bread section, and usually the coolers where the milk and eggs are stored. The aisles in the center of the store are where most processed foods are displayed. So to avoid processed foods, the best strategy is to shop mostly on the border of the store.

This description obviously leaves out several foods that most people consider real like rice, pastas, olive oil, and other staples. But generally, staying to the periphery as much as possible is a great strategy. When you go into the aisles, look a bit more critically at the boxes and bags you’re putting in your cart. Take a look at the flow chart below and see where your food would fall. And if you have to question whether it’s real food, maybe that’s already an indicator of whether or not you want to eat it.

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Chemical stew & chemical soup

This week I read an article that reminded me once again to not fully trust food regulation.

The article was about arsenic in chicken feed. For years, processors and the FDA have been denying that there is arsenic in the chicken sold to consumers. However, in light of a recent study, the FDA has finally acknowledged that the arsenic in chicken feed does end up in meat, not in the chickens’ feces as they previously claimed. As arsenic is a known carcinogen, even “trace” levels of it are concerning to many consumers.

After taking an environmental law class, I know that we live in a "chemical stew" of known and possible carcinogens. Many products and practices have what my professor called an “acceptable level of kill.” Companies that make these products weigh the costs of legal fees and likely damages they’ll have to pay to a victim or a victim’s family against the financial benefit of using a chemical or continuing a practice. As long as their benefit exceeds that monetary cost of the suffering that they will inflict, they often use the chemical. And because the effect is diffused, this manages to slide through regulation processes. Now, don’t you feel protected?

Our food system is filled with examples of possibly toxic chemicals being use without consumers being warned. While pretty much any water bottle or baby bottle you can buy - at least in our country -  is BPA-free, BPA is still present in many food containers like the cans listed below.

  The reason BPA was removed from so many products was because of a consumer movement against it, not because companies spontaneously grew consciences and decided that poisoning their customers was wrong. So this begs the question: How many harmful chemicals do we ingest or come into contact with that are as bad or worse than BPA, but that lack the consumer movement that developed around BPA?

And what about the chemicals that replace controversial chemicals like BPA? Since I lack in-depth knowledge of organic chemistry, I wouldn’t know what these chemicals are or how they might affect me even if I did know the names of them. However, companies will use them as long as they can get away with it and make a profit. So in order to know the truth we rely on scientists and consumer advocacy.

The new chemical that replaced BPA is BPS. While there isn't a consumer movement against BPS (bisphenol S), a chemical that has replaced BPA in some products, studies have shown that BPS might be just as dangerous as BPA. Wouldn't you like to know?

So if a tree falls in the woods where you live and no one is there to warn you, how likely it is that the tree will crush you? Even if its level of kill is low, how confident are you that you won’t fall into that percentage? How comfortable are you knowing that tree could fall right where your kid is playing or where your friend lives? And how comfortable are you knowing that even if it’s not your kid or your friend, that tree is definitely going to hit someone’s loved one, and the men chopping down trees have no intention of stopping?

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The line between GMO produce and naturally selected produce is blurry. You can argue that both practices are manipulative and unnatural, or you can argue that they are just one more way humans alter our ecosystem to meet our needs. Both arguments can be biased.

Personally, as you can probably tell from my previous posts, I find genetic modification very concerning. However, even though I try to avoid GMOs, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether or not a food product is genetically altered.

A few weeks ago, I saw the fruit in this picture at Wegman’s. Called a “pluot” or a “plumcot,” it is a cross between a plum and an apricot. I didn't know whether or not it had been genetically modified, but I’m not a total purist, so I tried one. It was delicious, but I was a bit concerned as to whose science project I might be eating.

 I found out later that it hadn’t been genetically modified, but it made me think even more about the labeling issue that has become so widely argued recently with Prop. 37 in California and now the “Yes on 522” movement in Washington. I’ll get to these both later, but for now, there are at least a few ways to know more about what you’re eating short of mandating GMO labeling.

Aside from the stickers on produce that give you some information, there are also the “Non-GMO Project Labels” and organic certifications. “Non-GMO Project” and “100% Organic” products are obviously GMO-free. However, keep in mind that to be USDA “Certified Organic,” only 95% of the ingredients have to be strictly organic and there are a few loopholes that allow the inclusion of GMO ingredients.

So for now, keep an eye on those stickers, read food labels, and hope that the government legally mandates GMO labeling sooner rather than later.

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The problem with GMOs

Although there is a general acceptance of - or at least acquiescence to– GMO food products, there are also widespread concerns. Aside from the fact that genetic modification is often unnatural, unnecessary, and off-putting, people question what the side effects of introducing foreign genetic material in an organism. Some people are also uncomfortable with making plants resistant to chemicals so that you can douse them with pesticides and herbicides.

There is a shocking lack of research done to address these concerns. Much of what has been done was done by the same companies that produce, market, and sell GMO products or the biocides whose use is enabled by genetic modification. In addition to this fox-guarding-the-henhouse dynamic, some scientists argue that the studies are not done over sufficient time spans; humans and livestock consume GMOs on a daily basis throughout their lives, not just for a few months.

News of a provocative French study on GMO exposure in rats emerged in September 2012. The gist of the study is that the rats exposed to GMOs throughout their lives developed serious health problems including large tumors and premature death. These effects showed up just after the usual 3-month time span of most studies. For further information on the study, check out the video below.

Critics immediately challenged the study claiming the test groups were too small and the breed of rat used is prone to tumors. This was to be expected in a study that directly incites public mistrust of a large corporation such as Monsanto. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the scrutiny should be dismissed.

Science should always be questioned. The best result of this study and the surrounding controversy would be widespread and comprehensive questioning of the science behind GMOs and their effects on human and nonhuman animal health.

Instead of allowing agribusiness to sell us whatever they want with only their assurances of its safety and only the information they choose to disclose to us, we need to demand information. That means demanding labeling, health studies, and full disclosure of exactly what genes they’re inserting in the food they’re giving us.

Think about it: Is an apple really vegetarian if it contains fish genes? Is science safe as long as we don’t know it’s unsafe? And if this “food” is ruining our health, is it really food, or is it poison?

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Check out this short video for more information on the French GMO study discussed above in "The problem with GMOs"

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What are GMOs?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one major concern with the “food” we eat is genetic modification. To put it simply genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are organisms whose genetic material has been artificially altered or replaced with genetic material from other organisms, often genetic material from a different species such as the exaggeration below.

Plants and animals are genetically modified to increase productivity. Animals are sometimes modified to make them grow faster or to enable them to eat and digest certain foods that they might not otherwise be able to consume. GMO plants are manipulated to survive certain conditions including exposure to weather and chemicals, to last longer before they go bad, or to have certain nutritional or aesthetic qualities, among other reasons.

Genetic modification might sound a lot like selective breeding, which has been done for thousands of years and is widely accepted. Without selective breeding, we wouldn’t have the domesticated species we enjoy today as pets, foods, sources of textile fabrics, and more. Selective breeding has been used to breed cows that produce more milk and grasses that produce larger grains (i.e. corn).

However, there is a huge difference between genetic modification and selective breeding. Selective breeding works within natural mechanisms to emphasize characteristics already present in species over several generations. Genetic modification, on the other hand, involves the unnatural introduction of genetic information into the biological makeup of an organism. For example, genes from a species of fish can be inserted into the genetic code of a vegetable.

But fruit with fish DNA? That doesn’t sound like food to me…

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Relative costs of food

Many Americans say food costs are too high. I’ve heard people say it, people I know. A couple years ago I would have agreed with them as I tried to go out to dinner with my friends on a very restricted budget.

However, it is a little-known fact that Americans spend significantly less on groceries than comparable countries. At somewhere between 7% and 11% of the typical family budget, the amount of money Americans spend on groceries is about half of what the French spend.

With the development of industrialized food in the United States in the past several decades, Americans have spent less and less on groceries. American grocery spending dropped from about 16% in the early 80s. However, this reduction in spending has not been equitable. Grocery spending by low-income families has stayed relatively constant. Therefore, despite the seemingly reduced costs, low-income families still struggle to feed themselves.

Another variable in this cost analysis is the development of food deserts. Food deserts are areas where residents have inadequate access to healthy affordable food. In these communities, families are faced with the choice of spending more time and money on transportation to reach sources of healthier, more affordable foods in grocery stores or paying more money for less nutritious food at convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, and gas stations. Across the United States, 29 million people live in both urban and rural food deserts where they are faced with this daily dilemma.

So, yes, for many Americans, food costs are – or at least feel – high. But if you live in the U.S. and have access to a grocery store you can afford to shop at, you’re pretty lucky. There are people in countries like Egypt spending almost half of their budgets on groceries and marginalized Americans who struggle to even get food.

The quality of all this food is still up for debate.

[foodfoibles]

What is food? (continued)

We know that our food is full of chemicals. We know it’s processed, designed, and deviously marketed to us, but we still eat it.

We treat it like food and even act like it’s healthy even though we know it’s riddled with chemicals our bodies are not designed to process, chemicals we’d never just pick up and drink. 

Even simple things like fruits and vegetables are no longer what they appear to be. Most of them have been genetically modified. Some people argue they’ve become just the idea of a particular vegetable or fruit. Genes from other plants and animals have been incorporated in their genetic codes. In many cases, they’ve been infused or sprayed with poisons – pesticides and herbicides – whose purpose is to kill things that try to eat them. I realize this is putting a biased spin on this practice, and that these chemicals are mostly intended to kill small bugs and weeds. But you wonder how much of these chemicals our bodies can handle before there are negative effects.

With meat, it’s literally a whole different beast. From almost any angle, food animals are no longer the creatures we think of or that our ancestors – or even our parents – ate. Like fruits and vegetables, they have been genetically modified and exposed to a huge amount of external inputs, mostly antibiotics and steroids. The chickens we eat grow larger than the ones our grandparents would have eaten in a fraction of the time. Some of them grow so quickly that their bones can’t keep up with their weight.

These animals no longer even live like animals. Most cows aren’t allowed to walk around and graze as they would naturally. They are forced into huge feed lots where they have to wade through their own excrement to get to their feed, a diet they are not evolutionarily designed to eat that can cause serious health problems for them. In our industrialized agricultural system, these animals are no longer even referred to as animals, but rather as “food processing units” or “biomachines” and then as meat, a concept that has been dangerously abstracted from the live animals it comes from.

This is the current state of “food.” Real foods have been broken up, analyzed, “improved,” and then packaged with images reminiscent of small farms and simple, trusted foodstuffs.  

We have to look beyond this marketing. We have to take control of this intimate and inevitable part of our lives. We have to inform ourselves of the reality behind what we’re buying and eating. In short, we have to “eat food.”