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  • From: Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The new front in the culture wars: food
  • Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:02:47 -0600

I think it is important not to be polarized or to let the movement for growing and eating good food to be polarized by anyone who looks at our society as being in a cultural civil war. I believe that that is just a way to divide us so that the rich will continue to get richer while we're tilting at the windmills that they have set up. I'm not in a culture war with anyone and i'm not elitist. I just want the best for all the people and the planet and there is a cost to that that has to be paid.

Marty



On 11/27/10 9:52 AM, Tradingpost wrote:
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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