julia childless

Food-Industrial Complex

The second lens is how, since the 1970s, wages adjusted for inflation have stagnated, and starting about the same time—not coincidentally—the USDA switches policies and starts encouraging farmers to grow as much food as possible and you get this long period of declining food prices; you get this steady drop in food expenditures as a percentage of income. I don’t think you can run an economy with structurally stagnated wages without food being really cheap.

Food Fighter : CJR

Really, really great interview at the Columbia Journalism review with Tom Philpott of Grist, pointing out the class issues in food politics.

Freedom Fried

Today I am praising [KFC] for raising breast cancer awareness by selling pink buckets of chicken. For every bucket sold, KFC donates 50 cents to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization that raises awareness for breast cancer. Now some are saying this endorsement sends a mixed message, like Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, who argues, ‘They are raising for women’s health by selling a product that’s bad for health…it’s hypocrisy.’ No, madam, it’s hypoCRISPY. Besides, there’s an easy way to solve this dilemma. Yes, fried food may clog your arteries, so after you buy the chicken, everyone should also buy Campbell’s soup, whose AdDress Your Heart campaign raises money to fight heart disease. Of course, canned soup also has high levels of sodium, which can lead to kidney disease. That’s why you should load up on Coca-Cola, corporate partner of the National Kidney Foundation. Now sugary soft drinks can contribute to diabetes, so we all need to buy a Ford, global partner of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. And don’t worry that the trucks and SUVs hurt the environment, just buy a carton of Marlboro because Marlboro is a major partner of Keep America Beautiful. Of course, smoking causes cancer, so you want to fight back by buying a bucket of KFC. World saved.

Stephen Colbert, on KFC’s pink buckets of chicken (via brynnherman) (via izzibits) (via babyjane) (via crustyriotgrrl) (via loveandzombies)

Sometimes I love Stephen Colbert.

Pointer of the Day

Then, of course, there are migrant workers, who live an average of 49 years — sacrificing almost three decades compared to “normal” lifespan to bring us the endless bags of veggies and fruits we demand to keep our middle-class bodies all healthy and stuff. Parasite, meet host. I swear, the next snotty yuppie who has the guff to go on and on in my presence about how “those people” (i.e. people who have the gall to earn less than $50,000 a year) Eat Soooo Much Junk is gonna get a fair trade banana stuck in hir ear. Which sie will have to go to an emergency room to remove, and thanks to down-triaging will have to sit there in the waiting room with a banana in hir ear for five hours while everyone else points and laughs. Especially migrant workers’ kids.

What Does Health Care Reform Really Mean to American Fatasses? Part 2: Working Us To Death « fat fu (via amberlrhea)

So originally this just made me laugh—the only part I saw via Tumblr was “the next snotty yuppie…is gonna get a fair trade banana stuck in hir ear.” But then I went back in and read the whole thing (which is mostly about health care, actually, and is an interesting rant for other reasons) and realized the whole paragraph is worth citing—because it’s not only funny, it’s righteously pissed off. A 49-year lifespan?

Once again, your semi-humorous reminder that it’s not just the pesticides on your food you should be thinking about.

The Food Police

Food policing is an area in which all sorts of assumptions are made about class and ability status. It goes hand in hand with the idea that people have an obligation to be healthy, that all bodies are the same so there’s only one way to be healthy, and that there is virtue in eating “right” as dictated by current authorities in the food world. Like, say, Michael Pollan, who is editorialized fawningly in numerous publications all over the planet for his “simple” and “helpful” food rules.

this ain’t livin’ » Blog Archive » Before You Criticize the Food Choices of Others…

This is a pretty interesting post about what it may be like to prepare a “simple” meal a la Michael Pollan—if you’re a person with various disabilities. I’ve criticized the class assumptions of the “cook-it-yourself” lectures, but being an able-bodied person myself I never thought of it this way. Worth a read.

Shutterbugging

Some cameras, dear diners, now have a built-in “food” mode.

Alinea chef Grant Achatz, one of the nation’s most influential chefs, wrote in an online forum recently about the lengths diners will go to document their food — increasingly, with video cameras. He told of one diner whose camera was set on a tripod at the table.

Eye candy: Behind the lens with a food photographer :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Food

Shoot your own food porn! The Sun-Times is hosting a contest: if you take really really good pictures of your own food, then you can enter to win a half-day in the studio of another food photographer, watching HIM take pictures of food!

My head hurts. I think there’s probably a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too joke in here somewhere, but I’m missing it.

-Julia Childless

Around the Blogs with Julia Childless

Earth Day is a good opportunity to remember the tremendous discrepancies in who has access to fresh fruits and vegetables — and thus, who has the luxury of eating a healthy, balanced diet — in this country. My fellow bloggers and I have written extensively about so-called “food deserts,” where the number of grocery stores are dramatically insufficient for the number of residents. Too often, people in these neighborhoods rely on corner stores, where a bag of Doritos is cheap and available and a container of strawberries may not fit either criteria. As a result, federal, state and local governments have pushed to make healthy food more accessible. It’s a major part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” anti-obesity initiative, and her husband’s proposed budget for next year would dedicate $400 million to bringing fresh food to corner stores. But such efforts don’t do much good if the produce that makes it to poor neighborhoods is close to spoiling or has the potential to make people sick. A new study from Drexel University researchers published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that when stores in poor neighborhoods do get fresh produce, it poses both of those risks to buyers. After buying salad, strawberries, cucumbers and watermelon repeatedly over 15 months in the Philadelphia area, the scientists found that mold, microorganisms and bacteria were all more likely to be present on produce purchased from stores in poor neighborhoods than in wealthier ones. In other words, if you are a poor Philadelphian buying fruits and vegetables in your own neighborhood, chances are your produce will spoil faster and may give you food poisoning. How appetizing.

In Poor Neighborhoods, “Fresh” Produce Isn’t Always What it Seems | Poverty in America | Change.org

Yet another obstacle to getting fresh food into underserved neighborhoods.

-Julia Childhood

Around the Blogs with Julia Childless

Food is never just food. Food is love. Food is solace. It is politics. It is religion. And if that’s not enough to heap on your dinner plate each night, food is also, especially for mothers, the instant-read measure of our parenting. We are not only what we eat, we are what we feed our children. So here in Berkeley — where a preoccupation with locally grown, organic, sustainable agriculture is presumed — the mom who strolls the farmers’ markets can feel superior to the one who buys pesticide-free produce trucked in from Mexico, who can, in turn, lord it over the one who stoops to conventionally grown carrots (though the folks who grow their own trump us all). Let it slip that you took the kids to McDonald’s, and watch how fast those play dates dry up.

The Way We Live Now – The Fat Trap – NYTimes.com

Peggy Orenstein—she of the Femivore’s Dilemma—has a pretty good piece on rethinking her relationship to food as she raises daughters.

-Julia Childless