Have some worms with your lettuce?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/opini ... of.html?em

June 21, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Growing up on a farm near Yamhill, Ore., I quickly learned to appreciate the difference between fresh, home-grown foods and the commercial versions in the supermarket.

Store-bought lettuce was always lush, green and pristine, and thus vastly preferable to lettuce from my Mom's vegetable garden (organic before we called it that). Her lettuce kept me on my toes, because a caterpillar might come crawling out of my salad.

We endured endless elk and venison - my Dad is still hunting at age 90 - or ate beef from steers raised on our own pasture, but "grass-fed" had no allure for me. I longed for delicious, wholesome food that my friends in town ate. Like hot dogs.

Over the years, though, I've become nostalgic for an occasional bug in my salad, for an apple that feels as if it were designed by God rather than by a committee. More broadly, it has become clear that the same factors that impelled me toward factory-produced meat and vegetables - cheap, predictable food - also resulted in a profoundly unhealthy American diet.

I've often criticized America's health care system, and I fervently hope that we're going to see a public insurance option this year. But one reason for our health problems is our industrialized agriculture system, and that should be under scrutiny as well.

A terrific new documentary, "Food, Inc.," playing in cinemas nationwide, offers a powerful and largely persuasive diagnosis of American agriculture. Go see it, but be warned that you may not want to eat for a week afterward.

(It was particularly unnerving to see leftover animal bits washed over with ammonia and ground into "hamburger filler." If you happen to be eating a hamburger as you read this, I apologize.)

"The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000," Michael Pollan, the food writer, declares in the film.

What's even more eerie is the way animals are being re-engineered. For example, most Americans prefer light meat to dark, so chickens have been redesigned to produce more white meat by growing massive breasts that make them lopsided. Who knew that breast augmentation was so widespread in chicken barns?

"When they grow from a chick and in seven weeks you've got a five-and-a-half pound chicken, their bones and their internal organs can't keep up with the rapid growth," explained Carole Morison, a Maryland chicken farmer who allowed the film crew into her barns. "A lot of these chickens here, they can take a few steps and then they plop down. It's because they can't keep up with all the weight that they're carrying."

Huge confinement operations for livestock and poultry produce very cheap meat and eggs. But at what cost?

The documentary introduces us to Barbara Kowalcyk, whose two-and-a-half-year-old child, Kevin, went from healthy to dead in 12 days, after he ate a hamburger tainted with E. coli bacteria. Even after his death, it took weeks for the tainted meat to be recalled.

"Sometimes it seems that industry was more protected than my son," Ms. Kowalcyk complains.

She has a point. Agribusiness companies exercise huge political influence, and industry leaders often fill regulatory posts. The Food and Drug Administration consequently dozed, and the number of food safety inspections plunged.

There is some evidence that pathogens, including E. coli, become much more common in factory farming operations. Move feedlot cattle out to a pasture for five days, and they will lose 80 percent of the E. coli in their gut, the film says. And the massive routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals is a disgrace that reduces the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating sick humans.

Pathogens are now seeping into the unlikeliest foods. On Friday, the F.D.A. advised consumers not to eat Nestlé cookie dough - cookie dough! - because of concerns about E. coli contamination, after reports of illness in 28 states.

American agribusiness truly is wondrous. When I moved back to the United States after years of living in China, I remember visiting a supermarket and feeling a near-religious awe. Yet one consequence of this wondrous system is that unhealthy calories are cheaper than nutritious ones: think of the relative prices of Twinkies and broccoli. We even inflict unhealthy food on children in the school lunch program, and one in three Americans born after 2000 is expected to develop diabetes.

The solutions aren't simple, and may involve paying more for what we eat, although we may save some of that in reduced health costs for diabetes and heart disease. In any case, "Food, Inc." notes that we as consumers do have power. "You can vote to change the system," it declares, "three times a day."

[Tsukiyumi]

Organic, and better quality food is all fine and good, but in the end cost really is the primary factor for a lot of people. In another thread, we were discussing school lunch programs; raise the cost of all food, and watch the demand for those programs triple, along with food stamp usage, and the number of hungry or starving children.

Every time I see an article, or a segment on a news program telling people they should "eat better", I'm like "No sh*t. Are you buying? I don't have any extra money." Unless they can figure out how to increase the quality without raising the cost, I'm afraid "eating well" will remain out of reach for the majority of Americans.

I'm going to start a garden this fall, which is great, but not everyone has that option. How do you grow your own food when you're crammed like sardines into an overpriced apartment?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Yeah, honestly that was the first thing that popped to my mind too. It does seem that at least here, at least to some degree, we've paid for or success with our health. Then again, this isn't the case in all "first world" nations by a long shot...

[Tsukiyumi]

Yeah, that's true. I wonder how they can keep the cost low and use healthier ingredients?

We should just give France a swirly until they tell us the secret.

[Foxfyre]

Yeah, that's true. I wonder how they can keep the cost low and use healthier ingredients?

We should just give France a swirly until they tell us the secret.

Nah has a shitty nation they might enjoy being flushed....

[Sionnach Glic]

To be honest, I see it more as a cultural problem. While I've honestly no idea how agriculture over here compares to the US system described in the article, I doubt it's much different (else you'd all be importing tastier foods from Europe, right?).

Then there's the fact that Americans simply eat so much in comparison to Europeans. For example, walk into a McDonalds in (say) Ireland and order a large Big Mac meal. It'll be somewhere between small and regular US portions in terms of size. Regardless of how healthy the Big Mac is for you, eat too much and it will still fuck up your system.

[Tsukiyumi]

Yeah, it seems like the average American eats until full; I personally hold to the idea that I'll eat until I'm no longer hungry, then stop. As a result, I'm surprisingly fit for a guy who has limited exercise options.

[Sionnach Glic]

Yeah, I think we hold the same philosophy over here. Just eat enough so that you're not hungry any more.

[Tsukiyumi]

Yeah, I think we hold the same philosophy over here. Just eat enough so that you're not hungry any more.

Right. There's the problem with most Americans: they'll eat until they're about ready to pop. Idiocy.

Not that that's surprising.

[Aaron]

Does the US government subsidize junk food or something? We eat healthier then we've ever done before; salad with dinner, a limited amount of meat (usually chicken) and small portions and I've found that it's around the same price as eating shite. Looking at my grocery bills the single most expensive item's are always meat, 20+$ for three whole chickens, 20+$ for a pack of frozen chicken, 11+$ for a couple kg's of ground beef. And of course milk.

In contrast it's seven dollars for a pack of five large romaine lettuce hearts, which gives us about 10-15 salads depending if the kids want one that night and bell peppers are dirt cheap along with potatoes.

Part of the problem I've noticed is that junk food doesn't fill you up. Go to McDicks or Wendys and even if I had more then one burger, I'm hungry again in an hour and your on the toilet in 30 minutes.

Yeah, it seems like the average American eats until full; I personally hold to the idea that I'll eat until I'm no longer hungry, then stop. As a result, I'm surprisingly fit for a guy who has limited exercise options.

I manage to stay between 190-198 on a 5'8 frame by limiting my intake and cutting out things like beer (you wanna gain weight? Drink that), I'm not in great shape but I can still walk a fair distance and play with the kids and dog. Not bad considering my injuries.

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm 6' and 210 (I just weighed myself), but like I said, jogging, jumprope; most cardio excercises are out for me. I just lift weights. I'm planning on swimming this summer if I can get my pool pass.

Of course, I drink a lot; I have no prescription for pain meds. That adds a lot of weight right there.

[Aaron]

I'm 6' and 210 (I just weighed myself), but like I said, jogging, jumprope; most cardio excercises are out for me. I just lift weights. I'm planning on swimming this summer if I can get my pool pass.

Swimming is good exercise, doesn't punish your joints like running.

Of course, I drink a lot; I have no prescription for pain meds. That adds a lot of weight right there.

Yeah, I know the feeling. It does add a fair bit of weight but I've noticed that things like Port and Wine are far better then beer, you may as well be drinking bread.

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm 6' and 210 (I just weighed myself), but like I said, jogging, jumprope; most cardio excercises are out for me. I just lift weights. I'm planning on swimming this summer if I can get my pool pass.

Swimming is good exercise, doesn't punish your joints like running.

I can't wait, honestly. I just need to get into the lap pool, and away from all the damn kids.

Of course, I drink a lot; I have no prescription for pain meds. That adds a lot of weight right there.

Yeah, I know the feeling. It does add a fair bit of weight but I've noticed that things like Port and Wine are far better then beer, you may as well be drinking bread.

That's why I switched to Old Crow. If it's good enough for Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant, it's good enough for me.

[Aaron]

I can't wait, honestly. I just need to get into the lap pool, and away from all the damn kids.

No kidding, we used to go during the day when they where all in school. Our kids start lessons in July, so maybe I'll paddle around while they learn.

That's why I switched to Old Crow. If it's good enough for Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant, it's good enough for me.

Is that a whiskey?

[Tsukiyumi]

That's why I switched to Old Crow. If it's good enough for Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant, it's good enough for me.

Is that a whiskey?

Yep.

It does the trick.