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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The new front in the culture wars: food
  • Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:52:41 -0700


Didn't I say that about cost of cooking simple, great food at home?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The new front in the culture wars: food
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/26/AR2010112603494_pf.html
By Brent Cunningham and Jane Black Saturday, November 27, 2010;

If you shelled out $10 a pound for a "heritage turkey" this Thanksgiving,
tea-brined it and stuffed it with rosemary bread (that you made), speck (from
the local charcuterie guy), fennel (from the farmers market) and lemon (okay,
there are limits to this), you might assume that everyone, if given the
opportunity, would support such a makeover of a meal that not long ago was
dominated by frozen Butterballs and jellied cranberry sauce.

In fact, not everyone would. And that is an important thing to understand
about the effort to remake America's food culture. Advocates of fresh, local
and sustainably raised food say it is healthier, better-tasting and morally
sound. If everyone could afford that heritage turkey and had a local
charcuterie guy, the argument goes, then all Thanksgiving meals would be
elevated to ethereal heights.

But many in this country who have access to good food and can afford it
simply don't think it's important. To them, food has become a front in
America's culture wars, and the crusade against fast and processed food is an
obsession of "elites," not "real Americans."

Consider these shots from leading conservative voices in just the past month:
Rush Limbaugh, responding to the report of a Kansas State nutrition professor
who says he lost 27 pounds eating mainly Twinkies, said: "I know liberals
lie, and if Michelle Obama's gonna be out there ripping into 'food deserts'
and saying, 'This is why people are fat,' I know it's not true." Sarah Palin
took cookies to a Pennsylvania school to register her disapproval of policies
that forbid sweets. Glenn Beck suggested that food-safety legislation was a
government plot to raise the prices for beef and chicken and thereby turn us
all into vegetarians.

Both sides in this gustatory dust-up understand just how dangerous it is to
tell people how to eat. The right's cultural warriors see an opportunity to
turn the complicated issue of food into a class-war weapon - and to make nice
with the fast-food industry, which has donated generously to the GOP. They
are banking on the fact that over the past 60 years, the American way of
eating has moved from small farms and home-cooked meals to industrial
production and drive-throughs. The Golden Arches long ago replaced Mom's
apple pie as a symbol of the all-American meal. Thus, "Don't let them take
away your Big Mac!" becomes a rallying cry.

This transformation has been sold to us as progress, though not without
consequences: Obesity-related diseases cost $150 billion annually.

Proponents of a more progressive food system - liberals mostly - have sought
to avoid a paternalistic tone, too. They have focused on systemic failures
that prevent families from making healthier choices. Michelle Obama's "Let's
Move" initiative, which aims to end childhood obesity within a generation,
addresses access (Is fresh food available?) and affordability (Can poor and
working-class families afford to buy it?). When reformers talk about personal
decisions, they are mostly urging people of means to "vote with their forks"
by consuming from places such as farmers markets and Whole Foods.

Access and affordability are indeed problems. But the sense on the right that
this is fundamentally a culture issue is also correct, even if its message is
wrongheaded.

We moved this month to Huntington, W.Va. - the town where celebrity chef
Jamie Oliver set a reality TV show about healthy eating this year - to
research a book about efforts to change the way the city eats. Like most U.S.
communities, Huntington is dominated by fast and processed food. Still,
finding affordable, fresh and even local food there has not been as hard as
we expected. We have found plenty of organic produce at the supermarket.
We've bought local eggs, buffalo meat and un-homogenized milk in glass
bottles.

So far, we've prepared nearly all our meals at home and are averaging about
$100 a week on groceries. That breaks down to $2.38 per meal, per person,
though it doesn't include the gas and time it took to run down leads on food
sources.

In other words, access to and the cost of "elite" food isn't beyond the
budgets of many, perhaps most, Americans. Our meals cost less than the
"Shrimpzilla" deal at the fast-food joint Captain D's - $4.99 for 30 fried
shrimp and two sides - or the $2.59 McDonald's McRib (plus tax).

Those who would reform the U.S. food system need to address the question of
values that Limbaugh, Palin and others criticize as elitist. They need to
consider the role that socioeconomics plays in determining those values and
how to begin to change them. They have to make the case for why eating well
matters at the local level, and that case will vary by community. In the
Huntington area, residents spend $1.25 billion annually on food, but little
of it stays in the region. Local food as economic development is a more
persuasive argument in places where good jobs are scarce than is the
do-the-right-thing mantra that echoes from both coasts. Good food is also at
least part of the solution to the region's health crisis: high rates of
obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

For the good-food revolution to have a chance, people have to make finding
and preparing fresh food a priority at a time when everything about our
modern food system urges us not to bother. And that won't happen if people
think healthy food is an elitist plot to take away their McRib.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Brent Cunningham is managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Jane
Black is a former Post staff writer. They are writing a book on Huntington,
W.Va.'s efforts to change its food culture.





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