Speakers: Changing food industry can help fix other problems

[underpants]

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

President Barack Obama will need to confront the nation's food issues sooner or later because they are key to solving three major problems in the nation -- energy independence, the health crisis and climate change, author Michael Pollan said at last night's Richmond Forum.

Agriculture and modern processing use 20 percent of the total fossil fuel consumed in the nation and produce more greenhouse gas than any other industry, Pollan told an audience at the Landmark Theater.

Health-care spending in the U.S. has gone from 5 percent in the 1960s to 17 percent, while the amount Americans spend on food during that same time has decreased, from 18 percent to 10 percent, Pollan said.

In an interview before the forum, Pollan said one obstacle is the notion that eating better is too expensive. The food industry's business model is to start with the cheapest possible raw ingredients and pay farmers and workers "as little as you can get away with" and "add value through processing and packaging and novelty and sell it for as much as you can get," he said.

"That business model is fundamentally at odds with providing people with what they need -- which is simple, healthy food," Pollan said.

Read more: http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/FORUMCOPY_20090419-011002/259968/

[glowing]

1. There should be only 1 maybe 2 aisles in the store for processed food.

The rest, should be large varieties of fruits/ veggies/ grains. AND along with making our food better, perhaps we need to change our work model.. Many are without a job anyway.. make a 30hr work week, and parents would be able to prepare food.. not just throw crap in their bodies before they pass out from being tired.

[Mudoria]

2. 30 hour work week doesn't pay my bills

[glowing]

3. That's the problem; it should!!!

[Terry in Austin]

26. Right on!

[underpants]

4. $$$ and uncertainty

the model, although flawed as the speaker points out, works for now and no one from the distributors to the grocery stores to the consumer is comfortable making that leap just yet. We are working on it. My Sunday perusal of the coupons and ads shows me that everyone EVERYONE has some sort of "green" effort going. Even if they really aren't all that green really is one point but the other is that it is effecting change.

[defendandprotect]

6. Everyone understands the insanity of dragging food from California, Mexico, Peru . . . !!!

Processed food is deadly -- much of it loaded with salt - and absent nutrition.

I live in NJ, once the "Garden State" and we're lucky if we get NJ tomatoes!

Organic seems to also be moving ahead into clothing?

Noticed a lot of baby stuff which is organic now -- and the cotton is luscious!

People here in NJ are carrying empty bags into grocery stores to avoid plastic and

waste by reusing already used bags. I love Trader Joe's reusable bags!

Double two of them and they go on and on!

[defendandprotect]

5. More than agree with you . . . in fact, a five hour day is something most can handle . . .

double the minimum wage --- and let's return to concepts of SHARED profits for workers.

And, we're stretched beyond the normal 7 hour a day work day now ... we've been in a

downward spiral where workers have felt intimidated to work longer hours without added

pay.

[pattmarty]

11. Fucking Communist, pinko-fag!!!!!!! What do you want to do.........

.........make the world better for EVERYBODY??????:sarcasm:

[glowing]

24. I'd love to try. but I've learned enough to know many people don't value

my opinion, and really don't care that much about a better world. Some refuse to dream and accept reality.

[flvegan]

7. "simple, healthy food."

I'm going to bang on about this every time it comes up. Nutrition needs to be part of our educational curriculum. And not some program funding by the dairy industry, for Christ sake.

I like Pollan's work, and am continually impressed by him.

[underpants]

8. Basics

Gym
Home Ec
and Civics

Teach them the basics while they are in school and a lot of problems will take care of themselves

oh and the multiplication table-I am amazed at the number of professionals I have run into who can't do basic quick math

[4_TN_TITANS]

25. "Teach them the basics..." Dude, they aRe taught the basics

but kids forget what they don't use or think they won't need. Not enough parents reinforce and build on what their kids are being taught in school.

Sorry, I'm sensitive about the conversation being steered toward bad public education and teachers.

[customerserviceguy]

9. So does cooking

Are they still teaching it in schools anymore? I don't think a lot of younger people are learning it from their parents' generation anymore. If you learn how to make your own meals, you can keep out a lot of the crap, and have less expensive, better tasting food in the process.

[glowing]

10. many don't take or have the time.. When people come over to dinner

with my husband and myself, they beg for seconds and demand to know when we are opening up our own restaurant.. Seriously, its just good old home cooking, with the right herbs/ spices. My husband does get a little fancy every once in a while, but on the grill... not that hard. Its amazing how many people my age cannot cook. I dread going to some people's homes.. I normally make everyone eat first.. and take small portions while out. I also think it has a lot to do with attitude and care. We put love and time into the food. Soul food.

[tomreedtoon]

12. Schools stopped teaching practical skills decades ago.

When I was in junior high they had wood shops, and the teacher talked glowingly about the auto shops and the wood shops in the high school. He often had pieces sent up there to be planed.

By the time I got to senior high, those had been closed and shuttered forever. No home ec courses. Teaching girls (and some boys) how to cook, sew and the like was kept alive for about one year, then phased out for the more important school affairs like shutting down protests and locking restrooms.

They assumed we'd all be executives and would hire poor and stupid people (the ones in the vocational high schools) to do all the dirty work for us. Not only were they dead wrong (as teachers always are) but they helped create a generation of educational cripples who can barely wipe their asses without a diagram.

[customerserviceguy]

13. That's what I suspected

My son graduated from high school about ten years ago, and as we were out in a rural area, they still had home ec and shop. He didn't bother signing up for either, but between his stepmother and me, he was exposed to plenty of home cooking.

He used to spurn any efforts that I made to showing him some things about cars, but the irony is that today he manages an auto supply store!

[Kali]

16. sure - my kids all took "foods" classes

they learned how to mix and warm up food service crap for their future chain restaurant jobs and how to "cook" precessed shit to eat for themselves. Series. No nutrion, no shopping skills, nothing REAL from scratch.:mad: :puke:

[customerserviceguy]

19. Wow, that's a damned shame

Maybe we can set up some sort of "Survival Scouts" program (okay, cheesy name, just found it on the top of my head) that would teach kids cooking, recycling, making do with less of things, etc. It would help them learn from this recession/depression and make them better adults.

[DustyJoe]

18. yes they still teach cooking in school

my 11 year old grandaughter has brought me home a 'lot' of her home ec. made goodies. And as a doting grandfather I have eaten them all.

[bitchkitty]

23. Ha! My home ec goodies would have

killed my grandpa, if he hadn't already been dead. You're a trusting soul! ;)

[pipoman]

14. It's amazing how many retired people

opt for fast preprepared food over cooking in bulk and freezing. I have had 2 classes for retired people on this very subject, many have told me that they have never done it before.

[Two Americas]

15. fossil fuel and farming

What possible better use is there for fuel consumption than food production?

Also, it is not farming that is dependent upon fossil fuel. The use of tractors allowed people to move off of the farm and into suburbia. No oil, no suburbia. Farming will continue as before, but many will have to leave suburbia and move back to the farm.

Suburbia is what is unsustainable, not farming. Suburbia is what the use of fossil fuel in farming created. It is suburbia, not farming that is dependent upon fossil fuel.


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[Kali]

17. well, corporate ag is petro-dependant not just for equipment

but for artificial soil nutrition (fertilizers) and for extra-regional transporting of product

[Two Americas]

20. sure

But that is not a farming issue.

[msongs]

21. good things farms don't use fertilizer, gas powered tractors, electric powered stuff eh? nt

[Two Americas]

22. not sure what your point is here

I said that the use of fossil fuels for farming has enabled more people to leave the farm. That is the change. People who have left the farm are the ones dependent on fossil fuels, not the farmers. It takes a lot of fuel to feed all of those people and to get food to them. If they moved back closer to their food source the pressure to use fossil fuel would be greatly reduced. That would mean far more people working in farming. So long as people do not want to do that, it will be fuel-intensive to feed them. Poulan and other critics are the ones with the unsustainable lifestyles, not farmers.

The attacks on farming, cloaked in progressive garb, are politically reactionary and the acceptance of those ideas by people depends upon them being divorced from their food supply as no people have ever been, and profoundly ignorant about farming.

Farmers should be the last ones we take "fertilizer, gas powered tractors, electric powered stuff" away from, since they are using those things to feed people. Where else is there a better and wiser use of energy?

People's confusion about this is highlighted by the calls for converting productive farmland to energy farms - putting our ability to feed ourselves at risk for the sake of fuel production. That is social suicide. Wall Street loves it, and energy corporations are crawling all over farm country now and preying on financially distressed farmers. The first and most important need for fuel is to feed people. We could run out of fuel, but running out of food is much more serious. Food should always be seen as more important than fuel.


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