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Ezra Klein 
Thu Jul 16, 2009 at 01:48:42 AM PDT
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Ezra Klein argues that industrialized food tastes good. Well, not all of it, certainly, but The Cheesecake Factory? They engineer that stuff to taste good. And ditto for quite a bit of the food consumed in America.
Here's the thing, though: Heroin feels really, really good (so I hear) and yet we don't all do it. Why? Well for those of us who haven't tried it, we understand that the unpleasant effects it will have on us will, in the long run, outweigh the pleasure. People I know who have tried it found out the hard way that it ultimately leads to more pain than pleasure.
I don't deny that much of the stuff I won't eat tastes good. I know it tastes good. I spent the first 24 or so years of my life eating it. Right now, my food does more than just taste good though. I FEEL good. Tonight I had a craving for gelato and I thought about it realized that if I ate it, my stomach would hurt A LOT. So I didn't eat it. When I'm in the habit of eating gelato and other sweets, I've got a much greater tolerance for it before my stomach hurts. You need a few weeks of healthy food - only a few weeks - and then you'll realize that you feel better when you eat well. There's more than just taste to determine our food decisions.
By the way, check out this graph from Ezra Klein. It's the percentage increase in health care costs between 2001 and 2006 for people classified as "Normal" weight, overweight, and obese:
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Fri Jun 26, 2009 at 10:01:14 AM PDT
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Ezra Klein wants to get rid of the ag committee. After Peterson's recent behavior in holding up and watering down the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, I can't say I blame him. But I don't agree with his logic. He says that the committee was established at a time when agriculture accounted for a much larger part of our economy and it's now outdated. That's not true at all. We all ate when the committee was established, and we all eat now. Our food came from farms in the past, and our food comes from farms today. The committee has equal relevance today as it did when it was established. Furthermore, we don't get rid of the committee on Indian Affairs just because Native Americans are a small percent of the population.
You know what I am for though? Let's do what California's Senate did. Make it a Food & Ag committee. Give eaters a stake in the committee. Take the chairmanship away from Collin Peterson and swap out a large percent of the committee members so that the representation is more proportional to the make-up of the entire country. Relatively few people live in districts with Big Ag interests, and many more people live in districts affected by food safety problems, epidemic levels of diet-related health problems, and other issues related to eating. Why should the eaters be entirely shut out of the legislative process as we are now?
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Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 22:29:30 PM PDT
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Today the USDA released a report on food deserts. The report was the result of a 1-year study, required by the 2008 farm bill. While those familiar with the term "food desert" know immediately what the report is about - areas of the U.S. where healthy food is unavailable - it's also important to note that the term has garnered some controversy lately. Another term I've heard offered up instead is "food apartheid," to highlight the injustice of the situation. The Washington Post's Jane Black uses another term: food swamp... areas that are totally saturated with fast food, convenience stores, and liquor stores that peddle junk. More on the report's findings below.
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There's More...
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Wed Apr 08, 2009 at 16:18:58 PM PDT
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- Is Iron Paws sending me subliminal messages? He just sent me this article about a vegan woman denied her "ILVTOFU" license plate choice because it could be misinterpreted as I Love To F-U.
- Alternet challenges us to be extreme locavores by foraging for our food.
- Natasha Chart says they can't feed us oil forever. Yeah, but it sure looks like they are willing to try...
- Paula Crossfield agrees with me that Bryant Terry's new book Vegan Soul Kitchen totally rocks!
- I loooove Civil Eats posts on local food in various regions of the country. Check out this one on Southern sustainability about a blogger's trip to Georgia for their organics conference.
- I got reeaaallly excited about this post entitled "future fruits" about heirloom apples in Madison, WI. My favorite apple grower in Madison is Ellen at Future Fruit Farm. Could it be that she was now famous on the Internets? Alas, it was not the case (although it's still an article worth reading). Looks like it's up to me to go back to Madison to give Ellen her 15 minutes of fame.
- Ezra Klein writes about making tsimmes (and later gives an update). Ezra, can I recommend my family's recipe?
- OK, that's it. Look at this mouthwatering picture. I AM going to make matzoh ball soup just as soon as I can find a vegetarian recipe for the stuff.
- Philpott takes on Bittman over red snapper - one of the most endangered fishies out there, and one that Bittman is still, apparently, eating.
- Why is this president different from all other presidents? It's not what you might think... Obama is holding a passover seder!
- The lovely ladies of the Ethicurean are making compost.
- Check out this really cool piece from Fooducate about Passover and Easter shopping trends.
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Tue Feb 24, 2009 at 20:34:24 PM PST
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Let me toss my $.02 into a debate between Ezra Klein and Tom Lee about school lunch. Is $5 too high to ask? Lee calls it "ridiculously high" but Klein counters that McDonald's meals can cost $5 so if you can give a healthy lunch to a kid who can't afford it for that amount, why not?
To Lee, consider this: Currently the average amount spent per lunch is $2.88 but the reimbursement rate that schools get from the government is $2.55. Of that money, only $1.00 actually goes to pay for food - the rest is equipment and labor. So a $5 reimbursement rate would be something more like $3 actually spent on food with the current amount of equipment and labor. But what if we used another dollar of that to pay for actual lunch ladies and real kitchens to prepare real food for the kids? Is $2-$3 in food costs per meal really that excessive?
Moreover, what savings will we experience down the road if we make this investment in our children? Less discipline and better learning in schools because the kids are better nourished? Lower health care bills and less time out of work in the future because the kids are healthier? (To Klein: The eating habits children form last a lifetime. McDonald's knows that - it's why they have happy meals.) Money spent on school lunch is an investment; we just don't see that right now because we've been doing such a poor job investing in children's health for so long.
I don't think $5 per kid per lunch is too much to spend IF the $5 is going to result in a truly healthy lunch. And in that case, I think it's more a matter of will than affordability - you can buy healthy food for $5 but you can also buy the same junk and just more of it. I also think that $5 per kid per lunch is a very high amount to ask for given that the current rate is about half that. But is it worth it? Hell yeah! What is more worthwhile than the health of our children?
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