I was struck by this article that tries (and mostly fails) to criticize both Warren Buffett's diet and his investments in Coca-Cola:
Warren Buffett will not apologize for his junk food addiction
Like most media news, it produces a sort of ersatz knowledge: it takes something that's technically true (in this case that Buffett has an unhealthy diet) and uses that fact to impose a narrative on the reader (essentially: did you know Buffett drinks Coke and invests in Coke and won't apologize for it at all? What about the children!?!?!).
The reader is left with a totally inaccurate perception of reality and, sadly, becomes measurably dumber after reading the article.
Interestingly, the article is correct about one thing. A few years ago I attended a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, and Buffett did exactly what the article describes: when the meeting started at 9:00 am, he promptly poured himself a can of Coca-Cola, and throughout the meeting both he and Charlie Munger (Buffett's 94-year-old (!) business partner) snacked absently from a box of See's Candy peanut brittle[1] on the table between them.
But back to this article and the narrative it imposes on us: the spurious idea that some journalist, somewhere, has the right to police the diet of somebody else just because he's rich, famous, or both. Or in a broader sense, on how people passively-aggressively try to control others by asking them to justify and explain their diets, their opinions, their position on political issues, even their investments.
By the way, it's not just the media doing this: we do this to the people around us too.
And don't get me wrong, I'm in no way advocating a diet like Buffett's. Just because I criticize someone for criticizing someone else doesn't mean I advocate the thing being criticized in the first place. If you follow me. What I have a problem with is the passive-aggressive idea that somebody else's diet ought to be policed.
Buffett feels zero need to apologize for how he eats--or how he invests. Nor should you.
Recommended reading:
1) Alice Schroeder's excellent biography of Buffett: The Snowball
2) Janet Lowe's useful biography of Charlie Munger: Damn Right!
[1] What was unintentionally hilarious: the microphones in front of them picked up their crunching. It was oddly hypnotizing to hear Buffett crunching violently on peanut brittle while Munger answered a shareholder's question, and then to hear Munger do the same as Buffett shared his thoughts.
***********************
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Showing posts with label food absolutism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food absolutism. Show all posts
When Food Advocates Tell You What To Serve Your Customers
It was interesting to see Chili's re-rejigger their menu recently, eliminating a number of recently added healthier menu items to focus on the chain's traditional fare of burgers, ribs and fajitas.
Yet again, another well-meaning company, while attempting to "healthify" their menu, discovers their customers never went there for healthy food in the first place. Nobody goes to Chili's for quinoa and kale.
But Chili's recent about-face highlights a risk all companies face: not knowing the difference between what people say they want and what people actually want.
Or to put a finer distinction on it: what people who know what's good for us say they want, and what actual customers want.
Consider food policy experts like Marion Nestle or Michele Simon: both would love it, simply love it, if chains like Chili's and McDonald's were to offer far more "healthier" food options.[1] They've both put extensive public pressure on many of these companies, criticizing their current food offerings and demanding healthy items like salads, fruit, and so on. And even when, say, McDonald's does offer a healthier option, it never satisfies: Nestle and Simon will reliably say the company "hasn't gone far enough."
But here's the problem: Michele Simon and Marion Nestle aren't customers of these chain restaurants. Neither would be caught dead eating at a Chili's, much less McDonald's. Hilariously, Michele Simon even wrote in her book that she only enters fast food joints to use their rest rooms![2]
Which takes us to an interesting question: When a food policy expert campaigns for major menu changes at restaurants they'll never go to, can you come up with any reason--any reason whatsoever--why a company would bother to listen? If a food advocate wants to influence what companies offer their customers, is this really the way to go about it?
READ NEXT: The Consumer Must Be Protected At All Times
And: When It Comes To Banning Soda, Marion Nestle Fights Dirty
Amazon Links:
Michele Simon's book Appetite for Profit
Marion Nestle's book Food Politics
Footnotes:
[1] Let's set aside for the moment the highly uncomfortable topic of how recent dietary science has turned upside down much of our views about which foods are healthy.
[2] See Appetite For Profit, page 197: "Another survey showed that nearly all U.S. adults, at one time or another (97 percent) eat at fast food restaurants. For those of us (like me) who only see the inside of a fast food joint on long road trips (and even then just to use the restroom), this statistic is a sobering reminder of how the rest of the nation eats."
Yet again, another well-meaning company, while attempting to "healthify" their menu, discovers their customers never went there for healthy food in the first place. Nobody goes to Chili's for quinoa and kale.
But Chili's recent about-face highlights a risk all companies face: not knowing the difference between what people say they want and what people actually want.
Or to put a finer distinction on it: what people who know what's good for us say they want, and what actual customers want.
Consider food policy experts like Marion Nestle or Michele Simon: both would love it, simply love it, if chains like Chili's and McDonald's were to offer far more "healthier" food options.[1] They've both put extensive public pressure on many of these companies, criticizing their current food offerings and demanding healthy items like salads, fruit, and so on. And even when, say, McDonald's does offer a healthier option, it never satisfies: Nestle and Simon will reliably say the company "hasn't gone far enough."
But here's the problem: Michele Simon and Marion Nestle aren't customers of these chain restaurants. Neither would be caught dead eating at a Chili's, much less McDonald's. Hilariously, Michele Simon even wrote in her book that she only enters fast food joints to use their rest rooms![2]
Which takes us to an interesting question: When a food policy expert campaigns for major menu changes at restaurants they'll never go to, can you come up with any reason--any reason whatsoever--why a company would bother to listen? If a food advocate wants to influence what companies offer their customers, is this really the way to go about it?
READ NEXT: The Consumer Must Be Protected At All Times
And: When It Comes To Banning Soda, Marion Nestle Fights Dirty
Amazon Links:
Michele Simon's book Appetite for Profit
Marion Nestle's book Food Politics
Footnotes:
[1] Let's set aside for the moment the highly uncomfortable topic of how recent dietary science has turned upside down much of our views about which foods are healthy.
[2] See Appetite For Profit, page 197: "Another survey showed that nearly all U.S. adults, at one time or another (97 percent) eat at fast food restaurants. For those of us (like me) who only see the inside of a fast food joint on long road trips (and even then just to use the restroom), this statistic is a sobering reminder of how the rest of the nation eats."
In Defense of Big Farms
Readers, I'm travelling right now, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives. See you in another week or two, and thank you for indulging me while I take a brief break from writing.
**********************************
Anyone who bites into a rock-hard California tomato in February and compares it to a sweet Jersey tomato in August quickly learns an indisputable truth: there are certain things large-scale agriculture can do, and certain things it can't.
And that's one of the many reasons everyone enjoys driving over to the local farmstand to buy produce. Not only are you supporting your local economy, you get a tomato that, well, actually tastes like a tomato.
But what happens during a drought, or a flood, or a poor year for crops in your part of the country? What happens when there's a shortage of local food?
I'll share one recent, and sobering, example of what happens. Remember the rice shortage of 2008? Most Americans don't, for reasons we'll get to in a moment. But sadly, this shortage created severe problems in dozens of countries around the world. In fact, nations like Senegal and Haiti faced skyrocking rice prices, food hoarding--even food riots.
But in the USA, no one even remembers. Why? Because our ag and transport industries adapted so quickly that consumers hardly noticed. In fact, the only evidence of a rice shortage in our local grocery stores here in northern New Jersey was a brief limit of two 20-pound bags of rice per customer. And within two weeks, rice in our local stores was in oversupply and put on sale at 50% off.
Remember: this was a shortage severe enough to cause food riots in some countries. And while there was plenty of panicked media coverage of the horrors of the rice shortage, I never saw a single article discussing how our food industry adjusted to it so effectively.
Admittedly, Big Food and Big Ag can be hilariously easy targets to criticize. To the most paranoid among us, they represent everything wrong with America today: Big Food makes irresistible snacks as part of a master plan to fatten us all up, while Big Ag secretly grows genetically-modified produce, soaks it in e. coli for good measure, and then drives it cross-country in an orgy of fossil fuel consumption.
But this perception is parody, not reality. Today, the options available to American food shoppers have never been greater: the average American grocery store carries some 55,000 items, and in the dead of winter you can find anything from organic California raspberries at $6 a pint to regional potatoes at 59c a pound. I'll leave it to you to decide which is the better value.
In short, food is available to us in a range that is simply unimaginable to our grandparents' generation. And at the same time, American consumers are reaping the benefits of a full-blown renaissance in local food. A truly robust food industry -- one that can handle spot shortages, manage uncooperative regional weather, and adapt to the natural fluctations of food production -- needs to have both local and large-scale food production to work properly.
That's how we can protect the food needs of a nation of 320 million people.
A shorter version of this post ran in Dirt Magazine.
**********************************
Anyone who bites into a rock-hard California tomato in February and compares it to a sweet Jersey tomato in August quickly learns an indisputable truth: there are certain things large-scale agriculture can do, and certain things it can't.
And that's one of the many reasons everyone enjoys driving over to the local farmstand to buy produce. Not only are you supporting your local economy, you get a tomato that, well, actually tastes like a tomato.
But what happens during a drought, or a flood, or a poor year for crops in your part of the country? What happens when there's a shortage of local food?
I'll share one recent, and sobering, example of what happens. Remember the rice shortage of 2008? Most Americans don't, for reasons we'll get to in a moment. But sadly, this shortage created severe problems in dozens of countries around the world. In fact, nations like Senegal and Haiti faced skyrocking rice prices, food hoarding--even food riots.
But in the USA, no one even remembers. Why? Because our ag and transport industries adapted so quickly that consumers hardly noticed. In fact, the only evidence of a rice shortage in our local grocery stores here in northern New Jersey was a brief limit of two 20-pound bags of rice per customer. And within two weeks, rice in our local stores was in oversupply and put on sale at 50% off.
Remember: this was a shortage severe enough to cause food riots in some countries. And while there was plenty of panicked media coverage of the horrors of the rice shortage, I never saw a single article discussing how our food industry adjusted to it so effectively.
Admittedly, Big Food and Big Ag can be hilariously easy targets to criticize. To the most paranoid among us, they represent everything wrong with America today: Big Food makes irresistible snacks as part of a master plan to fatten us all up, while Big Ag secretly grows genetically-modified produce, soaks it in e. coli for good measure, and then drives it cross-country in an orgy of fossil fuel consumption.
But this perception is parody, not reality. Today, the options available to American food shoppers have never been greater: the average American grocery store carries some 55,000 items, and in the dead of winter you can find anything from organic California raspberries at $6 a pint to regional potatoes at 59c a pound. I'll leave it to you to decide which is the better value.
In short, food is available to us in a range that is simply unimaginable to our grandparents' generation. And at the same time, American consumers are reaping the benefits of a full-blown renaissance in local food. A truly robust food industry -- one that can handle spot shortages, manage uncooperative regional weather, and adapt to the natural fluctations of food production -- needs to have both local and large-scale food production to work properly.
That's how we can protect the food needs of a nation of 320 million people.
A shorter version of this post ran in Dirt Magazine.
Taking Away Our Fun
Readers, I want to share a brief exchange between a reporter and Berkshire Hathaway directors Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. It crystallizes the central debate between food advocates who want to limit access to things like soda and snacks--and those who want to eat and drink what they please without getting scolded.
[Andrew Ross Sorkin, CNBC reporter] "Warren, for the last several years of this meeting, you've been asked about the negative health effects of Coca-Cola products, and you've done a masterful job of dodging the question by telling us how much Coke you drink personally.
Statistically you may be the exception. According to a peer-reviewed study by Tufts University, soda and sugary drinks may lead to 184,000 deaths among adults every year. The study found that sugar-sweetened beverages contributed to 130,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease, 6,450 deaths from cancer.
...Again, removing your own beverage consumption from the equation, please explain directly why we Berkshire Hathaway shareholders should be proud to own Coke."
Buffett answers this rather obnoxious-sounding question in his own folksy way (if you're curious, you can see how he responds in the video and article here).
However, what really intrigued me wasn't Buffett's response. What grabbed me was Charlie Munger's answer as he unexpectedly jumped in:
[Charlie Munger] "I drink a lot of diet Coke. And I think the people who ask questions like that one always make one ghastly error that’s really inexcusable. They measure the decrement without measuring the advantage. Well that's really stupid. That's like saying we should give up air travel through airlines because 100 people die a year in air crashes or something. That would be crazy. The benefit is worth the risk.
And if every person has to have about 8 or 10 glasses of water every day to stay alive and it's pretty cheap and sensible and improves life to add a little extra flavor to your water and a little stimulation and a little calories if you want to eat that way. There are huge benefits to humanity in that, and it's worth having some disadvantages.
We ought to almost have a law in the editorial world--here I'm sounding like Donald Trump [NB: here Buffett laughs out loud]--where these people shouldn't be allowed to cite the defects without citing the offsetting advantages. It's immature and stupid." [Laughter, applause from crowd]
Now (finally!) to the point of this post. This answer, typical of 92-year-old Charlie Munger's blunt truthiness, crystallized something new for me about why people get so irritated and annoyed at "Food Police" type food advocates:
They come across like grim, humorless scolds trying to take away our fun.
Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and lots of other people really enjoy things like Coke, ice cream, candy, Doritos, and so on. These humble little things gives them pleasure, make them happy. Frankly, life ain't always all that fun, and many so-called consumer advocates--who seem to think they know better than we do what's good for us--sure do seem like they're trying to take away (or tax, or ban, or limit) something fun that we really like.
They seem like scolds! Like schoolmarms.
Before we go any further, however, let’s make one thing crystal, crystal clear. In this post I am not trying to say that food advocates are wrong. Not at all!
This isn't a discussion of food advocates and their policies. It is a discussion about the perception of food advocates and their policies. There is an enormous difference, mainly because of the sad fact that, for many people, their perception of a thing is more important than the thing itself.
So, imagine: If food advocates could seem a lot less schoolmarmish, a lot less like food policing fun-killers trying to take away our fun, wouldn't they achieve far more traction with their ideas and policies? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for them to find support?
Which brings me to my final question, one I simply can't answer: Why don't they do this?
Readers, what do you think?
READ NEXT: Shopping at More Than One Grocery Store: Worth It, Or a Waste?
AND: Money Sundays: All-Time Favorite Charlie Munger Quotes
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
[Andrew Ross Sorkin, CNBC reporter] "Warren, for the last several years of this meeting, you've been asked about the negative health effects of Coca-Cola products, and you've done a masterful job of dodging the question by telling us how much Coke you drink personally.
Statistically you may be the exception. According to a peer-reviewed study by Tufts University, soda and sugary drinks may lead to 184,000 deaths among adults every year. The study found that sugar-sweetened beverages contributed to 130,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease, 6,450 deaths from cancer.
...Again, removing your own beverage consumption from the equation, please explain directly why we Berkshire Hathaway shareholders should be proud to own Coke."
Buffett answers this rather obnoxious-sounding question in his own folksy way (if you're curious, you can see how he responds in the video and article here).
However, what really intrigued me wasn't Buffett's response. What grabbed me was Charlie Munger's answer as he unexpectedly jumped in:
[Charlie Munger] "I drink a lot of diet Coke. And I think the people who ask questions like that one always make one ghastly error that’s really inexcusable. They measure the decrement without measuring the advantage. Well that's really stupid. That's like saying we should give up air travel through airlines because 100 people die a year in air crashes or something. That would be crazy. The benefit is worth the risk.
And if every person has to have about 8 or 10 glasses of water every day to stay alive and it's pretty cheap and sensible and improves life to add a little extra flavor to your water and a little stimulation and a little calories if you want to eat that way. There are huge benefits to humanity in that, and it's worth having some disadvantages.
We ought to almost have a law in the editorial world--here I'm sounding like Donald Trump [NB: here Buffett laughs out loud]--where these people shouldn't be allowed to cite the defects without citing the offsetting advantages. It's immature and stupid." [Laughter, applause from crowd]
Now (finally!) to the point of this post. This answer, typical of 92-year-old Charlie Munger's blunt truthiness, crystallized something new for me about why people get so irritated and annoyed at "Food Police" type food advocates:
They come across like grim, humorless scolds trying to take away our fun.
Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and lots of other people really enjoy things like Coke, ice cream, candy, Doritos, and so on. These humble little things gives them pleasure, make them happy. Frankly, life ain't always all that fun, and many so-called consumer advocates--who seem to think they know better than we do what's good for us--sure do seem like they're trying to take away (or tax, or ban, or limit) something fun that we really like.
They seem like scolds! Like schoolmarms.
Before we go any further, however, let’s make one thing crystal, crystal clear. In this post I am not trying to say that food advocates are wrong. Not at all!
This isn't a discussion of food advocates and their policies. It is a discussion about the perception of food advocates and their policies. There is an enormous difference, mainly because of the sad fact that, for many people, their perception of a thing is more important than the thing itself.
So, imagine: If food advocates could seem a lot less schoolmarmish, a lot less like food policing fun-killers trying to take away our fun, wouldn't they achieve far more traction with their ideas and policies? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for them to find support?
Which brings me to my final question, one I simply can't answer: Why don't they do this?
Readers, what do you think?
READ NEXT: Shopping at More Than One Grocery Store: Worth It, Or a Waste?
AND: Money Sundays: All-Time Favorite Charlie Munger Quotes
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Does Blaming "Big Food" Sell More Books?
In the last hundred or so years, miraculously, the food and ag industry have nearly solved the problem of food scarcity, a gigantic problem that's bedeviled humanity for nearly our entire history.
And yet, weirdly, many food intellectuals today shake their fists at "Big Food" and blame it for making us all fat! Talk about having an appallingly short institutional memory.
As examples, see any of Marion Nestle's blog, see Michele Simon's fiery book Appetite for Profit, or see former FDA commissioner David Kessler's book The End of Overeating. All of these authors dump the bulk of the blame for obesity at the feet of the food industry.*
It's as if the very moment there's plenty of food, somehow it's no longer our responsibility to think about how much of it we should eat.
Another way to think about this is to consider it from the standpoint of book sales: what would the average reading consumer rather buy: a book that tells readers they are responsible for the food they put in their bodies… or a book that tells readers it was never their fault in the first place?
Which message do you think the typical reader would rather hear?
Readers do you find this ironic at all? Or do you agree with the agri-intellectual argument that the food industry makes us fat?
READ NEXT: How to Resist Irresistible Food
* Jayson Lusk's excellent and well-argued book The Food Police
is one of the vanishingly few books out there taking the opposite side of this debate, as well as articulating the disturbing and illogical implications of many standard agri-intellectual arguments. See my interview with Dr. Lusk as well as his intellectually omnivorous food industry reading list.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
And yet, weirdly, many food intellectuals today shake their fists at "Big Food" and blame it for making us all fat! Talk about having an appallingly short institutional memory.
As examples, see any of Marion Nestle's blog, see Michele Simon's fiery book Appetite for Profit, or see former FDA commissioner David Kessler's book The End of Overeating. All of these authors dump the bulk of the blame for obesity at the feet of the food industry.*
It's as if the very moment there's plenty of food, somehow it's no longer our responsibility to think about how much of it we should eat.
Another way to think about this is to consider it from the standpoint of book sales: what would the average reading consumer rather buy: a book that tells readers they are responsible for the food they put in their bodies… or a book that tells readers it was never their fault in the first place?
Which message do you think the typical reader would rather hear?
Readers do you find this ironic at all? Or do you agree with the agri-intellectual argument that the food industry makes us fat?
READ NEXT: How to Resist Irresistible Food
* Jayson Lusk's excellent and well-argued book The Food Police
is one of the vanishingly few books out there taking the opposite side of this debate, as well as articulating the disturbing and illogical implications of many standard agri-intellectual arguments. See my interview with Dr. Lusk as well as his intellectually omnivorous food industry reading list.How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
“Learn to Live on Lentils…”
The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils."
Diogenes replied, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king."
***********************
A few years ago, I saw perhaps the most staggeringly condescending remark ever on the topic of eating healthy. It was a comment under an article in the New York Times entitled "A High Price for Healthy Food"--one of those typical media articles supporting the ugly, offensive and entirely false narrative that healthy food has to be expensive.
The article opened with the phrase "Healthy eating really does cost more" and went downhill from there, citing a hilariously unrigorous cost-per-calorie study performed by "researchers" who concluded, somehow, that healthy eating therefore must cost a lot more than unhealthy eating.
Now, looking at food costs in cost-per-calorie terms is dumb and deeply misleading, and if you're interested you can read more about why here. But sadly, because this study supported the "healthy food costs too much" narrative that's so strangely popular throughout our media, the New York Times ran an article about it.
But here's where it got interesting. The thing is, regular readers are often a lot smarter than journalists and "researchers"--particularly innumerate journalists and researchers. And readers began leaving comments with helpful solutions contradicting the article's false narrative that healthy food costs more. They began offering ideas for many different kinds of nutritious yet inexpensive foods--exactly the kinds of foods the article author and the study researchers seemed to think didn't exist.
One of the more popular examples given of a healthy, nutritious, yet inexpensive food was--you guessed it--lentils. Nutritious, satisfying, delicious, and laughably cheap lentils.
Somehow, the very idea of the existence of lentils angered the author of this article, Tara Parker-Pope, causing her to make the following statement in the comments:
"The solution that people live on lentils which are healthful and affordable is just ridiculous to me. Nobody wants to live like that." *
This is why the beautiful little story above about Diogenes and Aristippus--and lentils--has both literal and metaphorical meaning to me.
Isn't it interesting, in the modern era, how we are buried with study after study from SCIENCE!!! telling us what and what not to eat, telling us which foods cost too much and which foods don't cost enough--when the ancients had already figured everything out for us? We just had to stop listening to twisted, false narratives like "healthy eating costs more" and instead embrace a far more empowering and far more effective narrative: that healthy food does not have to cost more--in fact, healthy, delicious and nutritious food can quite often be laughably cheap and easy to prepare.
This is why lentils, for me, are a metaphor for solution-minded thinking, and for the rejection of false narratives.
In stark, stark contrast, the "healthy eating costs more" narrative literally hurts people. It teaches that low cost and high nutrition somehow must be mutually exclusive. It kills off solutions. It blinds people to all kinds of healthy and incredibly inexpensive meals, like the many healthy, laughably cheap recipes you can find right here at Casual Kitchen. And yet for some inexplicable reason, this untrue and unethical narrative is wildly popular with "researchers," the media--and with journalists who make condescending remarks about lentils.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. "Healthy eating really does cost more" is one of those lies. Don't support it and don't spread it.
Readers, what do you think?
Read Next: Cooking Up Advantages Out of Disadvantages
And: Bonus Reading!
1) Does Healthy Eating Really Cost Too Much? A Blogger Roundtable
2) Avoiding the Yes, But Vortex
3) The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate
4) Dumb and Dumber: The Flaws of Measuring Food Costs Using Cost Per Nutrient and Cost Per Calorie
5) Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
[*] The Times has since made it somewhat difficult to find this specific comment. You have to dig around a bit for it, but it is there. However, note: if you’re not a Times digital subscriber, each time you click for a new page of comments under this single article, it counts as an extra "free article" toward your monthly quota of ten free Times articles. Pretty lame if you ask me.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Diogenes replied, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king."
***********************
A few years ago, I saw perhaps the most staggeringly condescending remark ever on the topic of eating healthy. It was a comment under an article in the New York Times entitled "A High Price for Healthy Food"--one of those typical media articles supporting the ugly, offensive and entirely false narrative that healthy food has to be expensive.
The article opened with the phrase "Healthy eating really does cost more" and went downhill from there, citing a hilariously unrigorous cost-per-calorie study performed by "researchers" who concluded, somehow, that healthy eating therefore must cost a lot more than unhealthy eating.
Now, looking at food costs in cost-per-calorie terms is dumb and deeply misleading, and if you're interested you can read more about why here. But sadly, because this study supported the "healthy food costs too much" narrative that's so strangely popular throughout our media, the New York Times ran an article about it.
But here's where it got interesting. The thing is, regular readers are often a lot smarter than journalists and "researchers"--particularly innumerate journalists and researchers. And readers began leaving comments with helpful solutions contradicting the article's false narrative that healthy food costs more. They began offering ideas for many different kinds of nutritious yet inexpensive foods--exactly the kinds of foods the article author and the study researchers seemed to think didn't exist.
One of the more popular examples given of a healthy, nutritious, yet inexpensive food was--you guessed it--lentils. Nutritious, satisfying, delicious, and laughably cheap lentils.
Somehow, the very idea of the existence of lentils angered the author of this article, Tara Parker-Pope, causing her to make the following statement in the comments:
"The solution that people live on lentils which are healthful and affordable is just ridiculous to me. Nobody wants to live like that." *
This is why the beautiful little story above about Diogenes and Aristippus--and lentils--has both literal and metaphorical meaning to me.
Isn't it interesting, in the modern era, how we are buried with study after study from SCIENCE!!! telling us what and what not to eat, telling us which foods cost too much and which foods don't cost enough--when the ancients had already figured everything out for us? We just had to stop listening to twisted, false narratives like "healthy eating costs more" and instead embrace a far more empowering and far more effective narrative: that healthy food does not have to cost more--in fact, healthy, delicious and nutritious food can quite often be laughably cheap and easy to prepare.
This is why lentils, for me, are a metaphor for solution-minded thinking, and for the rejection of false narratives.
In stark, stark contrast, the "healthy eating costs more" narrative literally hurts people. It teaches that low cost and high nutrition somehow must be mutually exclusive. It kills off solutions. It blinds people to all kinds of healthy and incredibly inexpensive meals, like the many healthy, laughably cheap recipes you can find right here at Casual Kitchen. And yet for some inexplicable reason, this untrue and unethical narrative is wildly popular with "researchers," the media--and with journalists who make condescending remarks about lentils.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. "Healthy eating really does cost more" is one of those lies. Don't support it and don't spread it.
Readers, what do you think?
Read Next: Cooking Up Advantages Out of Disadvantages
And: Bonus Reading!
1) Does Healthy Eating Really Cost Too Much? A Blogger Roundtable
2) Avoiding the Yes, But Vortex
3) The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate
4) Dumb and Dumber: The Flaws of Measuring Food Costs Using Cost Per Nutrient and Cost Per Calorie
5) Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
[*] The Times has since made it somewhat difficult to find this specific comment. You have to dig around a bit for it, but it is there. However, note: if you’re not a Times digital subscriber, each time you click for a new page of comments under this single article, it counts as an extra "free article" toward your monthly quota of ten free Times articles. Pretty lame if you ask me.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
A Paradox For Locavores
I was reading through Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu's provocative book The Locavore's Dilemma
(I highly recommend it to readers interested in giving their critical thinking skills a workout) when I stumbled onto a fascinating question. I'm paraphrasing:
If we decide to embrace locavorism across the country, how many millions of acres of forest and wildlife habitat should we therefore sacrifice to do so?
I never really thought about this aspect of the local food debate, but this is a serious paradox. It's a terrible conundrum for locavores who also care about the environment.
Here's why: You don't want to use land that just happens to be located within 100 miles (or whatever arbitrary distance you choose) of a given major population center. You want to use the most productive and most efficient land you can for farming. By using the most productive farmland available, almost regardless of where it is, you'll be able to use less land per unit of food.
Think back to 200 years ago. Back then, we pretty much didn't have a transportation infrastructure to transport anything... anywhere. It's quite striking to read how it could take weeks, even months, to get from, say, Boston to Philadelphia--a drive that you can do today in a matter of hours. And in wintertime, forget about it. (Read, for example David McCollough's excellent biography of John Adams,
or his recent book 1776,
for striking anecdotes on how impossibly time-consuming travel was in the early days of the USA).
In those days, by definition, all food had to be local. That's why we essentially clear-cut all of North America, denuding it of trees, habitat, whatever. Habitat didn't matter to anyone back then, simply because people needed to use all land--even the most rocky, unfit, and poorest quality land--to feed themselves. And keep in mind: in 1800 we had a measly population of just 5.3 million, 1/58th of our current population of 309 million!
Whether we liked it or not, we were all locavores back then. Every community needed to grow whatever it could to survive.
Enter our transportation system, which started initially with the use of waterways and canal systems, and then with the dramatic expansion of railroads. In a matter of just a few decades, you could begin to get food not just locally, but from practically anywhere across the east, south and midwest regions of the continent. Suddenly, that crappy, rocky soil in Vermont, with its short growing season and unpredictable early and late frosts, just wasn't worth plowing any more.
This is why, when you drive across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Upstate New York, you see a tremendous amount of forest. Everywhere. That's land that long ago was completely stripped of trees to be farmed, but has since fully returned to basic forest habitat. Yes, of course, there is also some agriculture in these regions, but it's centered mostly around foods that these regions produce best (to give a few examples, apples, dairy and sweet corn among many others). There's no longer any necessity for each of these regions to grow everything they eat, and that's why they no longer use all the available land to do so.
Instead, we can use far more productive farmland in the midwest, in California--or in other places all over the world--to grow far more food with far less land.
So what's important to you? Locavorism? Or prudent, efficient land use? Are you willing to sacrifice forest and habitat in order that you and others can eat local?
Readers, please share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
Ending Overeating: An Interview With Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler
Interview with Jayson Lusk, Author of "The Food Police"
A Cup of Morning Death? How "Big Coffee" Puts Profits Before People
Consumer Empowerment: How To Self-Fund Your Consumer Products Purchases
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
(I highly recommend it to readers interested in giving their critical thinking skills a workout) when I stumbled onto a fascinating question. I'm paraphrasing: If we decide to embrace locavorism across the country, how many millions of acres of forest and wildlife habitat should we therefore sacrifice to do so?
I never really thought about this aspect of the local food debate, but this is a serious paradox. It's a terrible conundrum for locavores who also care about the environment.
Here's why: You don't want to use land that just happens to be located within 100 miles (or whatever arbitrary distance you choose) of a given major population center. You want to use the most productive and most efficient land you can for farming. By using the most productive farmland available, almost regardless of where it is, you'll be able to use less land per unit of food.
Think back to 200 years ago. Back then, we pretty much didn't have a transportation infrastructure to transport anything... anywhere. It's quite striking to read how it could take weeks, even months, to get from, say, Boston to Philadelphia--a drive that you can do today in a matter of hours. And in wintertime, forget about it. (Read, for example David McCollough's excellent biography of John Adams,
or his recent book 1776, for striking anecdotes on how impossibly time-consuming travel was in the early days of the USA).In those days, by definition, all food had to be local. That's why we essentially clear-cut all of North America, denuding it of trees, habitat, whatever. Habitat didn't matter to anyone back then, simply because people needed to use all land--even the most rocky, unfit, and poorest quality land--to feed themselves. And keep in mind: in 1800 we had a measly population of just 5.3 million, 1/58th of our current population of 309 million!
Whether we liked it or not, we were all locavores back then. Every community needed to grow whatever it could to survive.
Enter our transportation system, which started initially with the use of waterways and canal systems, and then with the dramatic expansion of railroads. In a matter of just a few decades, you could begin to get food not just locally, but from practically anywhere across the east, south and midwest regions of the continent. Suddenly, that crappy, rocky soil in Vermont, with its short growing season and unpredictable early and late frosts, just wasn't worth plowing any more.
This is why, when you drive across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Upstate New York, you see a tremendous amount of forest. Everywhere. That's land that long ago was completely stripped of trees to be farmed, but has since fully returned to basic forest habitat. Yes, of course, there is also some agriculture in these regions, but it's centered mostly around foods that these regions produce best (to give a few examples, apples, dairy and sweet corn among many others). There's no longer any necessity for each of these regions to grow everything they eat, and that's why they no longer use all the available land to do so.
Instead, we can use far more productive farmland in the midwest, in California--or in other places all over the world--to grow far more food with far less land.
So what's important to you? Locavorism? Or prudent, efficient land use? Are you willing to sacrifice forest and habitat in order that you and others can eat local?
Readers, please share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
Ending Overeating: An Interview With Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler
Interview with Jayson Lusk, Author of "The Food Police"
A Cup of Morning Death? How "Big Coffee" Puts Profits Before People
Consumer Empowerment: How To Self-Fund Your Consumer Products Purchases
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
A Cup of Morning Death? How "Big Coffee" Puts Profits Before People
Readers, we simply must rein in Big Coffee. This industry is making billions in profits at the expense of our health.
How? Let's begin with the obvious. Experts agree: coffee produces a wide range of terrible--at times even terrifying--side effects and symptoms:
* It can cause severe hyperactivity in both adults and children.
* Side effects include halitosis, dehydration and tooth discoloration.
* Coffee is directly linked to increased blood pressure. In fact, just 2-3 cups daily can raise a person’s blood pressure substantially.
* This blood pressure risk can lead to other serious cardiovascular risks, including heart attack and stroke.
* There is a widely known--but strangely under-reported--link between coffee consumption and spontaneous bowel evacuation.
* When combined with sugar (an addictive substance linked to obesity, hyperactivity and even tooth decay) coffee becomes even more dangerous.
Toxins lurking in your morning Joe
However, no discussion of the risks of coffee is complete without addressing the most dangerous toxin lurking in your supposedly "safe" cup of morning joe: the chemical 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl -1H-purine-2,6-dione.
Let’s start off with something no one can object to: It is never a good idea to put anything into your body that you can’t pronounce. If there’s one truth about Big Food and all the processed crap they foist onto us it’s this: the most dangerous and unhealthy foods almost always have ingredient lists loaded with long and unpronounceable words.
We also know, beyond any doubt, that Big Food hides the use of dangerous chemicals and additives by giving them harmless sounding names. We've seen this insidious practice in the branded boxed cereals aisle, where both ingredient naming and ingredient manipulation techniques are used to mislead consumers into thinking a food has less sugar than it really does.
This is absolutely no different. The 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione lurking in our coffee has all sorts of both known (and unknown) side effects:
1) Known sleep inhibitor. This chemical severely impacts our ability to sleep, and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of studies proving a link between insufficient sleep and all sorts of health and lifestyle problems, such as depression, obesity and a compromised immune system. It also leads to a much greater risk of traffic accidents and industrial injuries.
2) Known vasoconstrictor. It causes our blood vessels to become narrower, impacting blood supply to all parts of our bodies. As we've already seen, long-term heavy use of coffee can cause serious cardiovascular problems.
3) Known to be highly addictive. Many people drink coffee all their lives, little knowing that this beverage is a delivery mechanism for such a highly addictive and dangerous chemical. Many have argued that breaking an addiction to 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)- dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2, 6-dione can be as difficult as breaking an addiction to powerful narcotics like cocaine or heroin.
4) Known to have potentially severe withdrawal symptoms. As with any highly addictive substance, there are potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms to be concerned about, including severe headaches, mood swings, irritability, drowsiness, spontaneous anger and impaired cognitive function. Once Big Coffee hooks us, they want to make sure it's as difficult as possible to get off the 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H- purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6-dione train. Result? We remain steady, profitable consumers dying for our morning caffeine fix.
5) Known fatality risk. Most importantly--and most horrifyingly--in large doses, 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)- dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3, 7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione can be fatal.
Unholy alliance
As someone who cares deeply about public health advocacy, I simply cannot fathom why the FDA and our government haven't taken steps to protect defenseless consumers from this dangerous beverage. Could it be that all isn't as it seems in the hallowed halls of our government?
It could be. Did you know that the largest coffee brands found in our stores--household names such as Maxwell House, Folgers and Starbucks--are owned by gigantic, powerful, multi-billion dollar companies? Many suspect Big Coffee is in some unholy alliance with the government, covertly limiting efforts to regulate what has become an extremely profitable cash cow.
Despite these risks, the powerful companies behind Big Coffee will do anything to sell us more and more of this clearly dangerous beverage. Today, coffee is served in gigantic serving sizes, with twenty ounces now the norm. In the 1950s, this would be enough to serve three people! No one needs that much coffee.
It's clear: by themselves, consumers simply don't have the tools or the weaponry to resist Big Coffee’s enormous marketing machine. Therefore, in order to convince people to stop drinking a known dangerous beverage, something must be done to change the default coffee-drinking environment. Clearly, the time has come for some sort of tax--or better still, a ban--on large coffee sizes. We will do whatever it takes to rein in this greedy, powerful industry.
And yet given all the dangers, given all the health risks and given all the damaging side effects of this beverage, Big Coffee isn't required to put even the tiniest warning label on what they sell. Even something as simple as...
WARNING: this product contains 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2, 6-dione, which is linked to hyperactivity, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack and spontaneous defecation. In large doses 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3, 7-dihydro-1,3,7- trimethyl-1H-purine-2, 6-dione can be fatal.
...written in a reasonably readable font size, would only cover half of the outside of a basic 7-ounce coffee cup. Is this too much to ask? Apparently it is--when Big Coffee is involved. Obviously there's far too much money at stake to take even this tiny step forward to warn unsuspecting, uneducated consumers about the danger lurking in their daily morning beverage.
Clearly, Big Coffee puts profits before people. They simply do not care that their efforts to thwart badly-needed regulation put us--and our children--at risk. It's time to stop these powerful corporate interests from running rampant, and it's time to eliminate this dangerous beverage from our diets and our daily lives.
We've got to stop Big Coffee from exploiting us.
* NOTE: The preceding was satire. If you're not sure WHY it's satire, please read this post. And then this post.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
How? Let's begin with the obvious. Experts agree: coffee produces a wide range of terrible--at times even terrifying--side effects and symptoms:
* It can cause severe hyperactivity in both adults and children.
* Side effects include halitosis, dehydration and tooth discoloration.
* Coffee is directly linked to increased blood pressure. In fact, just 2-3 cups daily can raise a person’s blood pressure substantially.
* This blood pressure risk can lead to other serious cardiovascular risks, including heart attack and stroke.
* There is a widely known--but strangely under-reported--link between coffee consumption and spontaneous bowel evacuation.
* When combined with sugar (an addictive substance linked to obesity, hyperactivity and even tooth decay) coffee becomes even more dangerous.
Toxins lurking in your morning Joe
However, no discussion of the risks of coffee is complete without addressing the most dangerous toxin lurking in your supposedly "safe" cup of morning joe: the chemical 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl -1H-purine-2,6-dione.
Let’s start off with something no one can object to: It is never a good idea to put anything into your body that you can’t pronounce. If there’s one truth about Big Food and all the processed crap they foist onto us it’s this: the most dangerous and unhealthy foods almost always have ingredient lists loaded with long and unpronounceable words.
We also know, beyond any doubt, that Big Food hides the use of dangerous chemicals and additives by giving them harmless sounding names. We've seen this insidious practice in the branded boxed cereals aisle, where both ingredient naming and ingredient manipulation techniques are used to mislead consumers into thinking a food has less sugar than it really does.
This is absolutely no different. The 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione lurking in our coffee has all sorts of both known (and unknown) side effects:
1) Known sleep inhibitor. This chemical severely impacts our ability to sleep, and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of studies proving a link between insufficient sleep and all sorts of health and lifestyle problems, such as depression, obesity and a compromised immune system. It also leads to a much greater risk of traffic accidents and industrial injuries.
2) Known vasoconstrictor. It causes our blood vessels to become narrower, impacting blood supply to all parts of our bodies. As we've already seen, long-term heavy use of coffee can cause serious cardiovascular problems.
3) Known to be highly addictive. Many people drink coffee all their lives, little knowing that this beverage is a delivery mechanism for such a highly addictive and dangerous chemical. Many have argued that breaking an addiction to 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)- dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2, 6-dione can be as difficult as breaking an addiction to powerful narcotics like cocaine or heroin.
4) Known to have potentially severe withdrawal symptoms. As with any highly addictive substance, there are potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms to be concerned about, including severe headaches, mood swings, irritability, drowsiness, spontaneous anger and impaired cognitive function. Once Big Coffee hooks us, they want to make sure it's as difficult as possible to get off the 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H- purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6-dione train. Result? We remain steady, profitable consumers dying for our morning caffeine fix.
5) Known fatality risk. Most importantly--and most horrifyingly--in large doses, 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)- dione 3,7-dihydro-1,3, 7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione can be fatal.
Unholy alliance
As someone who cares deeply about public health advocacy, I simply cannot fathom why the FDA and our government haven't taken steps to protect defenseless consumers from this dangerous beverage. Could it be that all isn't as it seems in the hallowed halls of our government?
It could be. Did you know that the largest coffee brands found in our stores--household names such as Maxwell House, Folgers and Starbucks--are owned by gigantic, powerful, multi-billion dollar companies? Many suspect Big Coffee is in some unholy alliance with the government, covertly limiting efforts to regulate what has become an extremely profitable cash cow.
Despite these risks, the powerful companies behind Big Coffee will do anything to sell us more and more of this clearly dangerous beverage. Today, coffee is served in gigantic serving sizes, with twenty ounces now the norm. In the 1950s, this would be enough to serve three people! No one needs that much coffee.
It's clear: by themselves, consumers simply don't have the tools or the weaponry to resist Big Coffee’s enormous marketing machine. Therefore, in order to convince people to stop drinking a known dangerous beverage, something must be done to change the default coffee-drinking environment. Clearly, the time has come for some sort of tax--or better still, a ban--on large coffee sizes. We will do whatever it takes to rein in this greedy, powerful industry.
And yet given all the dangers, given all the health risks and given all the damaging side effects of this beverage, Big Coffee isn't required to put even the tiniest warning label on what they sell. Even something as simple as...
WARNING: this product contains 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2, 6-dione, which is linked to hyperactivity, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack and spontaneous defecation. In large doses 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine-2,6 (3H,7H)-dione 3, 7-dihydro-1,3,7- trimethyl-1H-purine-2, 6-dione can be fatal.
...written in a reasonably readable font size, would only cover half of the outside of a basic 7-ounce coffee cup. Is this too much to ask? Apparently it is--when Big Coffee is involved. Obviously there's far too much money at stake to take even this tiny step forward to warn unsuspecting, uneducated consumers about the danger lurking in their daily morning beverage.
Clearly, Big Coffee puts profits before people. They simply do not care that their efforts to thwart badly-needed regulation put us--and our children--at risk. It's time to stop these powerful corporate interests from running rampant, and it's time to eliminate this dangerous beverage from our diets and our daily lives.
We've got to stop Big Coffee from exploiting us.
* NOTE: The preceding was satire. If you're not sure WHY it's satire, please read this post. And then this post.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Interview With Dr. Jayson Lusk, Part 2: Recommended Reading
Readers, today we've got the conclusion to our fascinating interview (here's Part 1) with Jayson Lusk, professor of Agriculture Economics at the University of Oklahoma and the author of the intriguing and controversial book The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate.
If you're at all curious to learn more about the food industry, you're in luck: today, Dr. Lusk shares a exceptional list of books, online resources and people to follow. Enjoy!
Once again, I'd like to extend a grateful thank you to Dr. Lusk for spending so much time sharing his views, perspective and resources here.
************************
CK: Who else do you follow and respect on your side of the debate over food? What authors, books, or food industry figures would you recommend to Casual Kitchen readers interested in learning more about your perspective on the food industry?
JL: I’m not sure if I have a "side" but here are a few thoughts in no particular order.
First, books:
In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America
by Maureen Ogle
Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
by Robert Paarlberg. Also see his book Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa
No More Food Fights! Growing a Productive Farm and Food Conversation
by Michele Payn-Knoper
Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic
by Eric Oliver
The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health
by Paul Campos
Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
by James E. McWilliams
The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet by Pierre Desrochers (Note: readers, I'm reading this book right now, and it's quite interesting)
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
by Bjørn Lomborg
Here's a very incomplete list of people who I enjoy reading and following on Twitter (though I do not always agree with them): [Ed: be sure to follow Jayson Lusk on Twitter too!]
Bjørn Lomborg (an ardent defender of cost-benefit analysis),
Baylen Linnekin (a libertarian and free-market food advocate),
Cami Ryan (an agricultural advocate),
Jude Capper (an animal scientist),
Rachel Lauden (a food historian),
Keith Kloor (an environmentalist and defender of biotechnology).
Finally, some of the best and accessible information on economics is Russ Robert’s Econtalk podcasts (he has several episodes on food). For accessible information on agricultural economics, see Choices Magazine or Farmdoc Daily or, of course, my blog: jaysonlusk.com.
CK: Thank you Jason!!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
If you're at all curious to learn more about the food industry, you're in luck: today, Dr. Lusk shares a exceptional list of books, online resources and people to follow. Enjoy!Once again, I'd like to extend a grateful thank you to Dr. Lusk for spending so much time sharing his views, perspective and resources here.
************************
CK: Who else do you follow and respect on your side of the debate over food? What authors, books, or food industry figures would you recommend to Casual Kitchen readers interested in learning more about your perspective on the food industry?
JL: I’m not sure if I have a "side" but here are a few thoughts in no particular order.
First, books:
In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America
by Maureen Ogle Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
by Robert Paarlberg. Also see his book Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of AfricaNo More Food Fights! Growing a Productive Farm and Food Conversation
by Michele Payn-Knoper Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic
by Eric Oliver The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health
by Paul Campos Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
by James E. McWilliams The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet
by Pierre Desrochers (Note: readers, I'm reading this book right now, and it's quite interesting)The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
by Bjørn Lomborg Here's a very incomplete list of people who I enjoy reading and following on Twitter (though I do not always agree with them): [Ed: be sure to follow Jayson Lusk on Twitter too!]
Bjørn Lomborg (an ardent defender of cost-benefit analysis),
Baylen Linnekin (a libertarian and free-market food advocate),
Cami Ryan (an agricultural advocate),
Jude Capper (an animal scientist),
Rachel Lauden (a food historian),
Keith Kloor (an environmentalist and defender of biotechnology).
Finally, some of the best and accessible information on economics is Russ Robert’s Econtalk podcasts (he has several episodes on food). For accessible information on agricultural economics, see Choices Magazine or Farmdoc Daily or, of course, my blog: jaysonlusk.com.
CK: Thank you Jason!!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Rules For Thee, But Not For Me
Readers: Set aside your opinions and preconceptions on food policy for a brief moment and read the following (not entirely hypothetical) dialog:
Person A: There's got to be a way to stop all these greedy corporations from making soda. They spend billions on advertising. They waste [science-y sounding number] liters of water for every liter of soda they produce. Worst of all, they exploit us for profit, and they're making us all fat!
Person B: Well, okay, don't drink soda then.
Person A: But this isn't for me! It's for people who don't know any better. These drinks are incredibly unhealthy, and there are uneducated people out there who don't even know it! We have to change our standards to get away from these liquid calories... we've got to do something!
Readers, what's your take on Person A's thought process? Do you consider it to be empowered? Logical? Do you consider Person A's behavior here to be arrogant in any way--or even narcissistic?
There's a lot happening in this short conversation, and I want to hear your take on the dynamics that you see. Share your thoughts below!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Person A: There's got to be a way to stop all these greedy corporations from making soda. They spend billions on advertising. They waste [science-y sounding number] liters of water for every liter of soda they produce. Worst of all, they exploit us for profit, and they're making us all fat!
Person B: Well, okay, don't drink soda then.
Person A: But this isn't for me! It's for people who don't know any better. These drinks are incredibly unhealthy, and there are uneducated people out there who don't even know it! We have to change our standards to get away from these liquid calories... we've got to do something!
Readers, what's your take on Person A's thought process? Do you consider it to be empowered? Logical? Do you consider Person A's behavior here to be arrogant in any way--or even narcissistic?
There's a lot happening in this short conversation, and I want to hear your take on the dynamics that you see. Share your thoughts below!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Uninstalling Limiting Beliefs With Healthy Food
Sarah writes in (edited slightly for length):
As someone who is at this time below the poverty line AND eats healthy, I can assure you all, it is with sacrifice to the wallet. Take into account that my partner and I can't go through food as fast as a family of four could- So for example I bought bananas the other day- they were green, and today they already started to go bruised looking. Had I bought granola bars instead- I'd have a pack of them for a very long time-they won't go bad. Each town and city is different with costs and each family thinks about more then the initial cost.
You can eat healthy! But it does cost.
First, Sarah, let me encourage you to keep reading Casual Kitchen. You'll find a ton of resources here to help disabuse you of the belief that healthy food has to be expensive.
And let me say it one more time: Just because there are instances where healthy food costs more doesn't mean all healthy food costs more. This is a costly logic error, and it needlessly separates people from their money.
Consider the comparison of bananas to granola bars. Is that really proof that healthy food is expensive? Or is it merely proof that processed granola bars are expensive--and therefore not worth your hard-earned money? (PS: Here's a healthy alternative to store-bought processed granola bars.)
Beliefs are funny things. We tend to "find" evidence that supports the beliefs we hold--and we tend not to find evidence that doesn't. Thus if you believe healthy food must be more expensive, and you don't have the instinct to look for evidence contradicting that belief, well, you've already put yourself behind the economic eightball.
Thus "healthy food will cost you" is a textbook example of a limiting belief. And this particular limiting belief causes consumers to overpay for foods they think are healthier. Even worse, it enables skillful food marketers to persuade consumers that high prices equals high health value. I feel good about myself paying double for organic onions.
By far the worst part, however, is how it causes consumers to throw up their hands and give away their power. Yep, I tried eating healthy and it just cost too much. Big Food's got me stuck eating processed junk.
Here's another option: Consider "uninstalling" this limiting belief. Or actively seek out evidence contradicting it. Not only will you find plenty of examples, you'll save plenty of dough too.
Better still: spend a half hour perusing the tag Laughably Cheap here at Casual Kitchen, and start cooking your way through CK's 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes. You'll find a mountain of evidence that healthy food won't cost you.
Readers, what would you suggest to help out Sarah?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
As someone who is at this time below the poverty line AND eats healthy, I can assure you all, it is with sacrifice to the wallet. Take into account that my partner and I can't go through food as fast as a family of four could- So for example I bought bananas the other day- they were green, and today they already started to go bruised looking. Had I bought granola bars instead- I'd have a pack of them for a very long time-they won't go bad. Each town and city is different with costs and each family thinks about more then the initial cost.
You can eat healthy! But it does cost.
First, Sarah, let me encourage you to keep reading Casual Kitchen. You'll find a ton of resources here to help disabuse you of the belief that healthy food has to be expensive.
And let me say it one more time: Just because there are instances where healthy food costs more doesn't mean all healthy food costs more. This is a costly logic error, and it needlessly separates people from their money.
Consider the comparison of bananas to granola bars. Is that really proof that healthy food is expensive? Or is it merely proof that processed granola bars are expensive--and therefore not worth your hard-earned money? (PS: Here's a healthy alternative to store-bought processed granola bars.)
Beliefs are funny things. We tend to "find" evidence that supports the beliefs we hold--and we tend not to find evidence that doesn't. Thus if you believe healthy food must be more expensive, and you don't have the instinct to look for evidence contradicting that belief, well, you've already put yourself behind the economic eightball.
Thus "healthy food will cost you" is a textbook example of a limiting belief. And this particular limiting belief causes consumers to overpay for foods they think are healthier. Even worse, it enables skillful food marketers to persuade consumers that high prices equals high health value. I feel good about myself paying double for organic onions.
By far the worst part, however, is how it causes consumers to throw up their hands and give away their power. Yep, I tried eating healthy and it just cost too much. Big Food's got me stuck eating processed junk.
Here's another option: Consider "uninstalling" this limiting belief. Or actively seek out evidence contradicting it. Not only will you find plenty of examples, you'll save plenty of dough too.
Better still: spend a half hour perusing the tag Laughably Cheap here at Casual Kitchen, and start cooking your way through CK's 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes. You'll find a mountain of evidence that healthy food won't cost you.
Readers, what would you suggest to help out Sarah?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Anticipated Reproach, And Why Vegetarians Are Such Jerks
I've never in my life met a vegetarian who was a jerk.
But whenever the subject of vegetarianism comes up--even highly flexible and inclusive versions like CK's Part-Time Vegetarianism--there's usually at least one or two vehement responses from meat-eating readers who presume that some jerk vegetarian wants to take their meat away.
Why is that? I mean, anyone spending five minutes at Casual Kitchen would quickly figure out that we're not vegetarians. We're not a threat to the meat-eating world at all. We're just trying to eat a little healthier and save some dough.
Here's the thing. When a meat-lover responds in an aggressive way to a post on vegetarianism, they expect to be pilloried for their food choices. They think a "reproach" is coming from a pack of tie-dyed vegetarian kooks, so they act accordingly.
That, in a nutshell, is Anticipated Reproach. Essentially, people are expecting missiles to be fired at them, so they fire their biggest missiles first--in a pre-emptive strike to protect themselves.
Anticipated Reproach explains how arguments spontaneously appear out of thin air. All you need is to have one person fire a defensive verbal missile, another person to react, and it's on.
I don't mean to pick on meat-eaters (although admittedly, I'm using them as a rhetorical device in this post). And obviously, the veggie/vegan/meat debate is just one of a million places where you can see anticipated reproach in action. It shows up in all kinds of discussions: in political debates, in debates on taxes and entitlements, in debates on corporate power, about the level of government involvement in our daily lives, and in every other hot-button issue we face as a society today.
It helps explain why otherwise well-behaved people start up insane arguments on Facebook, and why people will waste hours attempting to correct the views of people they don't even know.
And if you think it's only other people who do this, think again. All of us are guilty of anticipated reproach from time to time.
But here's the thing: when you anticipate a reproach that hasn't yet been made... well, you're actually imagining something that doesn't exist. You are making it up. And of course it goes without saying, you haven't furthered the discussion by one millimeter, you've taken it backwards into name-calling and defensiveness.
There's a couple of takeaways here. First, for fellow bloggers: try not to take reader comments personally, particularly the nasty ones. Those comments are almost always about the commenter, not about you. Most likely they are thinking of other times when they've been reproached for their views, and they're simply anticipating still more reproach from you.
Second, don't fall unwittingly into the various anticipated reproach traps. Don't pre-emptively escalate your language. Try to use humor, but avoid sarcastic humor (this is a particularly tough challenge for me). Don't make declarative and pontificatory statements. Instead, ask questions, and try, sincerely, to learn the thought process of the people who don't agree with you. Hey, you never know, you might even learn you were wrong!
Nahhh, probably not. :)
In any event, here at CK, you won't find yourself reproached. Ever. This is my solemn promise to you, dear readers.
I created this blog so that we could all have a "no-reproach zone" to talk about cooking, our diets and the food industry. Yes, you will find your assumptions questioned here, and yes, you'll be challenged here to think differently--sometimes very differently--about things.
But don't anticipate a reproach... because that reproach ain't coming.
Readers! What are your thoughts?
Related Posts:In Defense of Big Farms
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation
The Top Lame-Ass Excuses Between You and Better Health
But whenever the subject of vegetarianism comes up--even highly flexible and inclusive versions like CK's Part-Time Vegetarianism--there's usually at least one or two vehement responses from meat-eating readers who presume that some jerk vegetarian wants to take their meat away.
Why is that? I mean, anyone spending five minutes at Casual Kitchen would quickly figure out that we're not vegetarians. We're not a threat to the meat-eating world at all. We're just trying to eat a little healthier and save some dough.
Here's the thing. When a meat-lover responds in an aggressive way to a post on vegetarianism, they expect to be pilloried for their food choices. They think a "reproach" is coming from a pack of tie-dyed vegetarian kooks, so they act accordingly.
That, in a nutshell, is Anticipated Reproach. Essentially, people are expecting missiles to be fired at them, so they fire their biggest missiles first--in a pre-emptive strike to protect themselves.
Anticipated Reproach explains how arguments spontaneously appear out of thin air. All you need is to have one person fire a defensive verbal missile, another person to react, and it's on.
I don't mean to pick on meat-eaters (although admittedly, I'm using them as a rhetorical device in this post). And obviously, the veggie/vegan/meat debate is just one of a million places where you can see anticipated reproach in action. It shows up in all kinds of discussions: in political debates, in debates on taxes and entitlements, in debates on corporate power, about the level of government involvement in our daily lives, and in every other hot-button issue we face as a society today.
It helps explain why otherwise well-behaved people start up insane arguments on Facebook, and why people will waste hours attempting to correct the views of people they don't even know.
And if you think it's only other people who do this, think again. All of us are guilty of anticipated reproach from time to time.
But here's the thing: when you anticipate a reproach that hasn't yet been made... well, you're actually imagining something that doesn't exist. You are making it up. And of course it goes without saying, you haven't furthered the discussion by one millimeter, you've taken it backwards into name-calling and defensiveness.
There's a couple of takeaways here. First, for fellow bloggers: try not to take reader comments personally, particularly the nasty ones. Those comments are almost always about the commenter, not about you. Most likely they are thinking of other times when they've been reproached for their views, and they're simply anticipating still more reproach from you.
Second, don't fall unwittingly into the various anticipated reproach traps. Don't pre-emptively escalate your language. Try to use humor, but avoid sarcastic humor (this is a particularly tough challenge for me). Don't make declarative and pontificatory statements. Instead, ask questions, and try, sincerely, to learn the thought process of the people who don't agree with you. Hey, you never know, you might even learn you were wrong!
Nahhh, probably not. :)
In any event, here at CK, you won't find yourself reproached. Ever. This is my solemn promise to you, dear readers.
I created this blog so that we could all have a "no-reproach zone" to talk about cooking, our diets and the food industry. Yes, you will find your assumptions questioned here, and yes, you'll be challenged here to think differently--sometimes very differently--about things.
But don't anticipate a reproach... because that reproach ain't coming.
Readers! What are your thoughts?
Related Posts:In Defense of Big Farms
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation
The Top Lame-Ass Excuses Between You and Better Health
Can You Resist $107 Worth of Advertising?
"The food industry spends more than $33 Billion — with a B — each year on advertising and promotion. In contrast, the National Cancer Institute spends $1 million a year to promote fruits & veggies.
Surely, the NCI isn’t the only one on our side, but still... this imbalance paints a clear picture of what we’re up against."
I read this blurb last year on Eating Rules, a blog I respect and regularly visit. (PS: I wrote a guest post there that I'm particularly proud of... have a look!)
Okay. This particular quote, believe it or not, has been bugging me for more than a year, and I just couldn't figure out why (yes, I'm obsessive like that). There's clearly an element of defeatism about it--something I hate to read in food blogs, because I believe consumers should take their power and their decision-making capabilities into their own hands.
There was something else wrong with the implicit logic here, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until the other day that I figured out exactly what it was.
Here's what I mean. $33 billion is a lot, right? I mean, that's an incomprehensibly large amount of money to everyone--except perhaps to dudes like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
So when we think about "a clear picture of what we're up against" and that clear picture includes incomprehensibly large sums of money, it's easy to think we're all doomed, isn't it? Nobody can fight off $33 billion bucks of advertising, right? Sigh. Yeah, I give up. Pass me the Doritos.
It shouldn't surprise readers here at CK when I call bullshit on a thought process like this. So I'm going to break out my calculator and do some math--and prove that we're actually "up against" something that's hilariously easy to resist.
The truth is, that $33 billion of food advertising spent annually in the USA works out to $107 per person per year.
You don't think you can resist $107 worth of annual advertising? Nine dollars a month? You're going to cry uncle and give away your ability to choose your own food in the face of nine bucks a month?
Are you so incapable of thinking for yourself that you'd willingly sell your power and your free will at that low a price?
Readers, share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
Prices, Zombies and the Advertising-Consumption Cycle
Ten Thoughts On the True Value of Brands
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, The New York Times Wrings Its Hands
How to Own the Consumer Products Industry--And I Mean Literally Own It
The Economics of Wasteful Foods
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Food Costs
A Reader Asks for Help
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Surely, the NCI isn’t the only one on our side, but still... this imbalance paints a clear picture of what we’re up against."
I read this blurb last year on Eating Rules, a blog I respect and regularly visit. (PS: I wrote a guest post there that I'm particularly proud of... have a look!)
Okay. This particular quote, believe it or not, has been bugging me for more than a year, and I just couldn't figure out why (yes, I'm obsessive like that). There's clearly an element of defeatism about it--something I hate to read in food blogs, because I believe consumers should take their power and their decision-making capabilities into their own hands.
There was something else wrong with the implicit logic here, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until the other day that I figured out exactly what it was.
Here's what I mean. $33 billion is a lot, right? I mean, that's an incomprehensibly large amount of money to everyone--except perhaps to dudes like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
So when we think about "a clear picture of what we're up against" and that clear picture includes incomprehensibly large sums of money, it's easy to think we're all doomed, isn't it? Nobody can fight off $33 billion bucks of advertising, right? Sigh. Yeah, I give up. Pass me the Doritos.
It shouldn't surprise readers here at CK when I call bullshit on a thought process like this. So I'm going to break out my calculator and do some math--and prove that we're actually "up against" something that's hilariously easy to resist.
The truth is, that $33 billion of food advertising spent annually in the USA works out to $107 per person per year.
You don't think you can resist $107 worth of annual advertising? Nine dollars a month? You're going to cry uncle and give away your ability to choose your own food in the face of nine bucks a month?
Are you so incapable of thinking for yourself that you'd willingly sell your power and your free will at that low a price?
Readers, share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
Prices, Zombies and the Advertising-Consumption Cycle
Ten Thoughts On the True Value of Brands
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, The New York Times Wrings Its Hands
How to Own the Consumer Products Industry--And I Mean Literally Own It
The Economics of Wasteful Foods
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Food Costs
A Reader Asks for Help
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
What's Wrong With the Government Limiting Food Marketing to Kids?
I thought I would weigh in on the recent proposed Federal Trade Commission's rules for limiting food marketing to children.
To me this is a fascinating debate. One one side you've got food writers like Marion Nestle arguing (somewhat predictably) that the new rules don't go far enough. Other bloggers are a bit more circumspect and are willing to consider abstract but important aspects of the debate, like unintended consequences, free speech issues and so on. And, sadly (uh, and also somewhat predictably), over at the Huffington Post we have a totally information-free post in which the author jokes about playing games on the Lucky Charms website.
Okay. As usual with any political issue, you ain't gonna find much nuance out there. Most people have agendas that they're pushing, and those agendas typically come from one of two extremes: YAY! More regulation! Corporations are evil! or BOO! get the government out of my life and get off my lawn!
For my part, sure, I would love to see less advertising in general. And long-time CK readers especially know about my particularly insane hatred of overpriced, hyper-sweetened cereals--a food marketed to children like no other, coincidentally. So, yes, I have a bit of a personal axe to grind in this debate too.
And heck, making the contra-argument on this subject is a little like being against puppies. It is not an easy position to take. (Wait, don't you care about kids? You're in favor of evil corporations taking advantage of our children, you bad, bad person you?)
To be honest, I don't really know where I stand on this issue. So instead of advocating a position, I'm going to ask you, readers, a few open-ended questions, in the hopes that we can collectively foster an open-minded and nuanced debate of our own.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the readers here at Casual Kitchen are as articulate and thoughtful as anybody can find anywhere (did I mention for the millionth time how grateful I am for this?). With that in mind, what are your thoughts on the following questions?
1) Is it children who actually buy these foods? (PS: This is a bit of a trick question.)
2) Will rules like these actually change peoples' behavior?
3) What are the possible unintended consequences that might result from enforcing guidelines like this? (Keeping in mind that it's notoriously difficult to perceive a law's unintended consequences when those consequences are unlikely for you.)
4) What are the free speech issues involved here?
5) Is it appropriate to hand responsibility for our food choices over to our government? And to what extent is it appropriate that we give away our power to make choices in the face of advertising--or in the face of our children's demands for certain foods?
6) Are we creating rules to make ourselves feel like we've solved a problem?
Readers, here's your chance to sound off--on any or all of these questions. What do you think?
Related Posts:
What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
Companies vs. Consumers: A Manifesto
A Tale of Two Breakfasts
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
To me this is a fascinating debate. One one side you've got food writers like Marion Nestle arguing (somewhat predictably) that the new rules don't go far enough. Other bloggers are a bit more circumspect and are willing to consider abstract but important aspects of the debate, like unintended consequences, free speech issues and so on. And, sadly (uh, and also somewhat predictably), over at the Huffington Post we have a totally information-free post in which the author jokes about playing games on the Lucky Charms website.
Okay. As usual with any political issue, you ain't gonna find much nuance out there. Most people have agendas that they're pushing, and those agendas typically come from one of two extremes: YAY! More regulation! Corporations are evil! or BOO! get the government out of my life and get off my lawn!
For my part, sure, I would love to see less advertising in general. And long-time CK readers especially know about my particularly insane hatred of overpriced, hyper-sweetened cereals--a food marketed to children like no other, coincidentally. So, yes, I have a bit of a personal axe to grind in this debate too.
And heck, making the contra-argument on this subject is a little like being against puppies. It is not an easy position to take. (Wait, don't you care about kids? You're in favor of evil corporations taking advantage of our children, you bad, bad person you?)
To be honest, I don't really know where I stand on this issue. So instead of advocating a position, I'm going to ask you, readers, a few open-ended questions, in the hopes that we can collectively foster an open-minded and nuanced debate of our own.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the readers here at Casual Kitchen are as articulate and thoughtful as anybody can find anywhere (did I mention for the millionth time how grateful I am for this?). With that in mind, what are your thoughts on the following questions?
1) Is it children who actually buy these foods? (PS: This is a bit of a trick question.)
2) Will rules like these actually change peoples' behavior?
3) What are the possible unintended consequences that might result from enforcing guidelines like this? (Keeping in mind that it's notoriously difficult to perceive a law's unintended consequences when those consequences are unlikely for you.)
4) What are the free speech issues involved here?
5) Is it appropriate to hand responsibility for our food choices over to our government? And to what extent is it appropriate that we give away our power to make choices in the face of advertising--or in the face of our children's demands for certain foods?
6) Are we creating rules to make ourselves feel like we've solved a problem?
Readers, here's your chance to sound off--on any or all of these questions. What do you think?
Related Posts:
What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
Companies vs. Consumers: A Manifesto
A Tale of Two Breakfasts
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation
In food, just like in politics, there are extremists and moderates.
There are, sadly, lots of people out there who are truly militant about what they eat--and often, equally militant about controlling what you eat. "You aren't going to buy those chicken breasts, are you? They most likely came from a CAFO that fed them antibiotics and tortured them. Oh, and that coffee you're pouring me? It better be fair trade and local."
I rarely run into militant proselytizing vegans or vegetarians, but when I do, I enjoy their company about as much as I enjoy drinking rotten mayonnaise. And keep in mind, for every militant vegan there's probably four or five steak-loving nuts who will squirt rotten mayo at you if you try to take away their meat.
So why are people so militant about their food choices?
If you were to ask my favorite psychology blogger to explain food militancy, he'd probably say that people use food--as well as control over other peoples' food--as a way to seek validation. It's a shortcut that lets us view ourselves as ethical and good. Further, it's a shortcut to finding at least some degree of meaning and control in what seems like an increasingly meaningless world.
Lisa: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian.
Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start.
Lisa: Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan.
Jesse: I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow.
Here's the thing: not everyone wants to be a Level 5 Vegan. Not everybody wants to swear off meat, or sugar, or gluten, or HFCS, or carbs, or refined foods, or white foods, or cooked foods--or whatever--for the rest of their lives.
Here at Casual Kitchen, I probably have a few Level 5 Vegans among my readers. But the vast majority who visit here are normal people who have no problem eating things that cast shadows, and who have every intention to remain normal and moderate in their food choices.
So, as a food blogger who wants to help readers eat healthy and spend less money, I have a choice. I could repeatedly and forcibly persuade my readers to become vegetarian and maybe succeed in persuading 1% of them. Or, I could help the "silent majority" of my readers take the far more palatable step of switching to veggie meals just 2-3 times a week.
Which approach do you think will be more effective? Which will piss off fewer readers? Which do you think has a better chance for success? And which would result in a more significant reduction in agregate meat consumption?
The bottom line is this: there is a large, and largely silent, majority of food moderates out there that we can either 1) help motivate with our ideas, or 2) drive away if we are militant or won't concede middle ground.
In food, just like in politics, the center drives everything. If you can gently pull the center in one direction or another, you can have an enormous effect on overall eating behavior. But to attract and influence that silent center, you need to be thoughtful and reasonable, not strident, condescending, or militant. We food writers--and food readers--must grasp this.
Readers, where do you stand?
Related Posts:
Organic Food, Chemicals, and Worrying About All the Wrong Things
The Do-Nothing Brand
Understanding the Consumer Products Industry
On the Benefits of Being a Part-Time Vegetarian
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
There are, sadly, lots of people out there who are truly militant about what they eat--and often, equally militant about controlling what you eat. "You aren't going to buy those chicken breasts, are you? They most likely came from a CAFO that fed them antibiotics and tortured them. Oh, and that coffee you're pouring me? It better be fair trade and local."
I rarely run into militant proselytizing vegans or vegetarians, but when I do, I enjoy their company about as much as I enjoy drinking rotten mayonnaise. And keep in mind, for every militant vegan there's probably four or five steak-loving nuts who will squirt rotten mayo at you if you try to take away their meat.
So why are people so militant about their food choices?
If you were to ask my favorite psychology blogger to explain food militancy, he'd probably say that people use food--as well as control over other peoples' food--as a way to seek validation. It's a shortcut that lets us view ourselves as ethical and good. Further, it's a shortcut to finding at least some degree of meaning and control in what seems like an increasingly meaningless world.
Lisa: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian.
Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start.
Lisa: Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan.
Jesse: I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow.
Here's the thing: not everyone wants to be a Level 5 Vegan. Not everybody wants to swear off meat, or sugar, or gluten, or HFCS, or carbs, or refined foods, or white foods, or cooked foods--or whatever--for the rest of their lives.
Here at Casual Kitchen, I probably have a few Level 5 Vegans among my readers. But the vast majority who visit here are normal people who have no problem eating things that cast shadows, and who have every intention to remain normal and moderate in their food choices.
So, as a food blogger who wants to help readers eat healthy and spend less money, I have a choice. I could repeatedly and forcibly persuade my readers to become vegetarian and maybe succeed in persuading 1% of them. Or, I could help the "silent majority" of my readers take the far more palatable step of switching to veggie meals just 2-3 times a week.
Which approach do you think will be more effective? Which will piss off fewer readers? Which do you think has a better chance for success? And which would result in a more significant reduction in agregate meat consumption?
The bottom line is this: there is a large, and largely silent, majority of food moderates out there that we can either 1) help motivate with our ideas, or 2) drive away if we are militant or won't concede middle ground.
In food, just like in politics, the center drives everything. If you can gently pull the center in one direction or another, you can have an enormous effect on overall eating behavior. But to attract and influence that silent center, you need to be thoughtful and reasonable, not strident, condescending, or militant. We food writers--and food readers--must grasp this.
Readers, where do you stand?
Related Posts:
Organic Food, Chemicals, and Worrying About All the Wrong Things
The Do-Nothing Brand
Understanding the Consumer Products Industry
On the Benefits of Being a Part-Time Vegetarian
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Cooking Up Advantages Out of Disadvantages
Back during the early days of my former Wall Street career, I literally had no time to cook. None. Not only was I stuck at the office for a zillion hours every week thinking up investment ideas in a delusional stock market, I spent what little time I had outside of work enjoying things like my hour and a half (each way) commute.
Oh man, thank heaven those days are over.
But that wasn't even the worst of it. The worst part of this era of my life was how unhealthily we ate--and how we blamed it on not having enough time. We were eating too many prepared and processed foods, ordering takeout too regularly, and generally spending much more money on our food than we really wanted to.
Quite frankly, after a long day and a suckishly long commute, I just couldn't bring myself to cook. Hell, I'd rather gouge my eyes out. And I can't describe how depressing it was to arrive at home and then realize that I'd have my first bite of dinner about an hour after I needed to be in bed.
But here's the irony, and it's a rich one: During this period of my life, when I was too busy gouging my eyes out to have time to cook, I actually figured out most of my solutions and techniques for cooking healthy meals quickly and efficiently.
We took the serious disadvantage of having insufficient time, and we turned it into an armload of advantages. And we did it by applying a small number of relatively simple ideas:
1) We began doing all of our cooking on weekends, making two or three large meals, and then alternating leftovers of those meals over the following week. Result: we never got sick of the leftovers, and we had plenty of food for days and days of lunches and dinners.
2) We focused our weekend cooking efforts on a smallish collection of 6-8 favorite, easy, scalable and laughably cheap recipes. With practice, we became extremely efficient at making these meals, which made our weekend cooking projects a breeze. Before long, weekend cooking became something we actually looked forward to rather than dreaded.
3) We took advantage of economies of scale and began making these favorite recipes in double or triple batches. With the right kinds of scalable recipes, you can make two, three or even four times the food with minimal incremental work.
4) We emphasized one-pot soups and stews that involve minimal cleanup and are easy to reheat, store and divide into leftovers.
5) We began using energy-efficient and low-labor cooking items like crockpots and rice cookers to create meals that didn't require us to stand there and monitor things. This enabled us to cook still more food with still less of a time commitment.
6) We looked for ways to save time and money by shopping more efficiently. We bought bulk volumes of simple whole ingredients for our double- and triple-batch meals. We biased our purchases away from higher-cost prepared and processed foods. We'd go to the store once a week instead of several times, which helped us cut back on snack buying and impulse purchases.
There. Six general principles and processes, created from a position of disadvantage, which collectively produced powerful results: Soon, we were eating healthier, we enjoyed cooking more, and most shockingly of all, we spent far less time and money on food.
And yet, many people cling to an instinctive belief that there can only be zero-sum tradeoffs between cost, time and health. Eating healthier has to cost more! Cooking at home is time-consuming! After all, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? Right?
Wrong. Too often people cling to seemingly rigorous concepts--like the idea that healthy food has to be expensive, or that there has to be a zero-sum tradeoff between time and cooking at home--and they then miss opportunities to think creatively about a problem. Our experimentation with cooking habits and practices actually yielded positive-sum tradeoffs, allowing us to optimize time, money and the quality of our food. Sometimes there actually are free lunches. (A totally unrelated side note: my favorite "seemingly rigorous" concept from Wall Street is markets are efficient. Bwahahahahahaha!!! Oh, mercy me.)
The point is, don't let a general concept that seems rigorous and logical cause you to ignore opportunities and solutions. That isn't rigor--that's intellectual laziness.
A final point: I didn't write this post to brag about how brilliant and creative I was to figure out how to save time cooking. By now, most CK readers have probably figured that I'm just an average guy of (lamentably) average intelligence. The thing is, my average-ness is exactly the point. I'm nobody special, and you don't have to be either to try out a few new ideas with an open mind. Anybody can do this.
Experiment a little bit and add some new processes and practices to your life. Adopt the most effective ones as permanent habits, and maintain those habits while you try out still other ideas. Let necessity be the mother of invention, and your disadvantages will become advantages too.
Readers! In your lives, what kinds of disadvantages have you turned into advantages? Share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
A Recession-Proof Guide to Saving Money on Food
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Food Costs
How to Use Leftover Ingredients
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Oh man, thank heaven those days are over.
But that wasn't even the worst of it. The worst part of this era of my life was how unhealthily we ate--and how we blamed it on not having enough time. We were eating too many prepared and processed foods, ordering takeout too regularly, and generally spending much more money on our food than we really wanted to.
Quite frankly, after a long day and a suckishly long commute, I just couldn't bring myself to cook. Hell, I'd rather gouge my eyes out. And I can't describe how depressing it was to arrive at home and then realize that I'd have my first bite of dinner about an hour after I needed to be in bed.
But here's the irony, and it's a rich one: During this period of my life, when I was too busy gouging my eyes out to have time to cook, I actually figured out most of my solutions and techniques for cooking healthy meals quickly and efficiently.
We took the serious disadvantage of having insufficient time, and we turned it into an armload of advantages. And we did it by applying a small number of relatively simple ideas:
1) We began doing all of our cooking on weekends, making two or three large meals, and then alternating leftovers of those meals over the following week. Result: we never got sick of the leftovers, and we had plenty of food for days and days of lunches and dinners.
2) We focused our weekend cooking efforts on a smallish collection of 6-8 favorite, easy, scalable and laughably cheap recipes. With practice, we became extremely efficient at making these meals, which made our weekend cooking projects a breeze. Before long, weekend cooking became something we actually looked forward to rather than dreaded.
3) We took advantage of economies of scale and began making these favorite recipes in double or triple batches. With the right kinds of scalable recipes, you can make two, three or even four times the food with minimal incremental work.
4) We emphasized one-pot soups and stews that involve minimal cleanup and are easy to reheat, store and divide into leftovers.
5) We began using energy-efficient and low-labor cooking items like crockpots and rice cookers to create meals that didn't require us to stand there and monitor things. This enabled us to cook still more food with still less of a time commitment.
6) We looked for ways to save time and money by shopping more efficiently. We bought bulk volumes of simple whole ingredients for our double- and triple-batch meals. We biased our purchases away from higher-cost prepared and processed foods. We'd go to the store once a week instead of several times, which helped us cut back on snack buying and impulse purchases.
There. Six general principles and processes, created from a position of disadvantage, which collectively produced powerful results: Soon, we were eating healthier, we enjoyed cooking more, and most shockingly of all, we spent far less time and money on food.
And yet, many people cling to an instinctive belief that there can only be zero-sum tradeoffs between cost, time and health. Eating healthier has to cost more! Cooking at home is time-consuming! After all, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? Right?
Wrong. Too often people cling to seemingly rigorous concepts--like the idea that healthy food has to be expensive, or that there has to be a zero-sum tradeoff between time and cooking at home--and they then miss opportunities to think creatively about a problem. Our experimentation with cooking habits and practices actually yielded positive-sum tradeoffs, allowing us to optimize time, money and the quality of our food. Sometimes there actually are free lunches. (A totally unrelated side note: my favorite "seemingly rigorous" concept from Wall Street is markets are efficient. Bwahahahahahaha!!! Oh, mercy me.)
The point is, don't let a general concept that seems rigorous and logical cause you to ignore opportunities and solutions. That isn't rigor--that's intellectual laziness.
A final point: I didn't write this post to brag about how brilliant and creative I was to figure out how to save time cooking. By now, most CK readers have probably figured that I'm just an average guy of (lamentably) average intelligence. The thing is, my average-ness is exactly the point. I'm nobody special, and you don't have to be either to try out a few new ideas with an open mind. Anybody can do this.
Experiment a little bit and add some new processes and practices to your life. Adopt the most effective ones as permanent habits, and maintain those habits while you try out still other ideas. Let necessity be the mother of invention, and your disadvantages will become advantages too.
Readers! In your lives, what kinds of disadvantages have you turned into advantages? Share your thoughts!
Related Posts:
A Recession-Proof Guide to Saving Money on Food
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Food Costs
How to Use Leftover Ingredients
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, The New York Times Wrings Its Hands
Indulge me for a moment while I rant about the fundamental bias of this well-intentioned article from the other day's New York Times:
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries
The underlying bias--the very framework beneath this article--is that eating veggies (or more generally, eating healthy) is too hard to do. And that is demonstrably false. It is not too hard to do.
But when the Times frames up a debate about eating vegetables in terms of "us vs. Doritos" or "helpless consumers vs. an evil and omnipotent food industry" it simply encourages readers to give their power away to the food industry, rather than take action on their own behalf. After all, what can you possibly do against a delicious, "flavor-blasted" Dorito sold to you by an all-powerful food industry?
Worse, when the Times manufactures generalized and unsubstantiated opinions disguised as facts in order to fit this bias (e.g., "And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, [vegetables] are a relatively expensive way to fill a belly," an arrogant and false trope I've repeatedly read in the Times), people will once again just wring their hands--and again, not take action.
What should be a discussion about ideas and solutions becomes an enervating and circular "yes, but" argument.
I doubt the reporter who wrote this article has any idea of the enormous disservice she's doing to her readers. But the most pernicious biases are the ones that we have but don't know we have.
I'd like to gratefully thank readers Melissa Ortiz and Eurica Chang for spurring the ideas behind this post.
Related Posts:
Don't Fall Victim to False Logic With the Food Industry
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries
The underlying bias--the very framework beneath this article--is that eating veggies (or more generally, eating healthy) is too hard to do. And that is demonstrably false. It is not too hard to do.
But when the Times frames up a debate about eating vegetables in terms of "us vs. Doritos" or "helpless consumers vs. an evil and omnipotent food industry" it simply encourages readers to give their power away to the food industry, rather than take action on their own behalf. After all, what can you possibly do against a delicious, "flavor-blasted" Dorito sold to you by an all-powerful food industry?
Worse, when the Times manufactures generalized and unsubstantiated opinions disguised as facts in order to fit this bias (e.g., "And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, [vegetables] are a relatively expensive way to fill a belly," an arrogant and false trope I've repeatedly read in the Times), people will once again just wring their hands--and again, not take action.
What should be a discussion about ideas and solutions becomes an enervating and circular "yes, but" argument.
I doubt the reporter who wrote this article has any idea of the enormous disservice she's doing to her readers. But the most pernicious biases are the ones that we have but don't know we have.
I'd like to gratefully thank readers Melissa Ortiz and Eurica Chang for spurring the ideas behind this post.
Related Posts:
Don't Fall Victim to False Logic With the Food Industry
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
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