Sorry the Digest is so tardy today. We aim for no later than 2:30 p.m., but today we were slacking.
New York Times: Our list of favorite food-revolt heroes just got longer, with the addition of Dan Barber, the chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. His op-ed today is a brilliant, sweeping-yet-concise indictment of what’s wrong with the U.S. food system, and why chefs, home cooks, and anyone who likes to eat should care about the 2007 Farm Bill:
because it determines what you eat and how what you eat is grown…And the food that we grow on 200 million acres of harvested cropland is inedible. Stand in the middle of our farm belt and you’ll see cornfields extending to the horizon, but the harvest won’t be dinner, not until it’s milled and processed into flours or starches, or used to fatten our animals on feedlots. Just four crops — corn, rice, soybeans and wheat — account for the vast majority of our harvested acreage. Not surprising, given that these same crops account for 70 percent of the total subsidies allotted to farmers.
No one wants farmers to suffer, especially chefs. But if we’re spending $20 billion or so a year on farm subsidies, we ought to invest in the foods we eat. And I mean eat, not process into something that resembles food.
He’s not just bitching, though, he has concrete suggestions for ways the Farm Bill should be changed. Read it.
St. Petersburg Times: Dennis Stoltzfoos, a farmer near Tampa, FL, agrees with “Omnivore’s Dilemma” hero Joel Salatin that the future of farming lies in interdependent, “beyond organic” ecosystems of animals and plants — not monocultures and regulations.
New York Times: A long business-section profile of Martek Biosciences, which has long been trying to persuade food makers to add an omega-3 fat found in algae — that’s the good kind of fat, also found in grass-fed meat — “to everything from cheese puffs to cornflakes.” So far, they’ve only been successful in the baby-formula market. Nutritionist Marion Nestle is skeptical.
Times (UK): Growing meat in a petri dish from a culture of muscle cells is already possible, and in theory, it’s pretty sustainable (versus raising animals for meat, which consumes vast land and energy resources) and probably healthier, as the meat would be hormone-, antibiotic-, and pathogen-free. But would you eat it? [Via Boing Boing]
Albany Times Union: How to reduce your carbon footprint by changing what you eat.
Bicycling magazine:Comparing the effects of various sweeteners on one’s metabolism, from the point of view of cyclists.
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
Humor:
January 14th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
I love your summaries, even if they come after 2:30.
Have you thought about having more content-specific, bolded sub-titles? And maybe putting the news source in brackets at the end (perhaps bolded as well)? It could make for easier skimming.
It’s a great service that you do. I know from personal experience that these round-ups are time consuming to compose…
January 14th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Dr. V — that’s a great idea! Sometimes one just gets in a rut and doesn’t see obvious improvements crying out to be made. We
ripped offmodeled the Digest format on Salon’s Broadsheet news summaries, which they don’t do much anymore, but you’re right — teasing the topic up front would make much more sense.The Digest is time-consuming, but quite fun to do. Thanks for the compliment and for taking the time to suggest a change.~DQ
January 15th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Um, Dan Barber became a Hero of the Realm (to me) way back on November 23, 2004 with his Food Without Fear op-ed in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/opinion/23barber.html
But, what a great article yesterday, too!