Best Article I Read Today
Big Food vs. Big Insurance - Michael Pollan
Actually it was yesterday. Great article. He mentions research done on foodsheds, a term with which I was heretofore unfamiliar. I wanted to learn more, so I did..
A foodshed is the region between where food is produced and where it is consumed. Our foodshed is basically the entire world, as the food we consume is from all over. The foodshed to which Pollan refers, however, describes local farmland surrounding a city. The goal is to utilize a city’s regional foodshed to provide as much food to feed its inhabitants. This helps
- the environment - by decreasing transportation costs
- public health - as food is fresher, less processed, less subject to pesticides
- the local economy - by creating local employment opportunities
I hear a lot of people state these things, but I’ve never seen any evidence. For instance, glancing at the article on Local Food in wikipedia, I see lots of sources cited for things like the fact that there is greater carbon footprint from local food, but no sources cited for food taste and quality. I’m aware of studies that show no difference between organic and nonorganic for these items, but I don’t know of any for local vs. nonlocal. I feel the difference between local and nonlocal often cited by people is actually a difference between a farmer who cares deeply about their product and one who grows en masse. When a restaurant buys straight from a farm, generally that farmer has a personal relationship with the restaurant and is excited about the crop. If a farmer is just growing a shit ton of stuff though, it doesn’t make a difference whether he’s down the street or in California for these things.
You can cite local employment, but people in St. Louis eating locally would just take as many jobs away from New York.
I believe in having your own garden. That’s a good thing. If you’re lucky enough to have ethnic neighbors, you can trade food and get some pretty interesting stuff you’ve never heard of. Despite our food being international, we miss out on a lot of the food local to the traditions of many of the regions that grow our food. Community supported agriculture can similarly present some interesting food and you can often request special things be grown. And the farmer again cares about their product (which has nothing to do with local vs. nonlocal).
And beyond all that, as discussed by Michael Pollan in his article, the actually important thing is HFCS, sugars, etc, that are invading the diet of many americans, especially those who are poor. When he mentions studies of “foodsheds” improving health in those communities, many of those studies look at things like The Food Project, an urban agriculture project that involves teens from some of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. And the food is sold at Farmer’s markets where Food Stamps (now SNAP) are accepted. So kids are paid to get involved with learning how to grow food and their parents are able to buy it. Note, this is food where the people working on it care about it, which has little to do with being local, that’s just a coincidence. These programs expose these kids to food beyond McDonalds and frozen dinners from the grocery store. Fresh food is expensive, so a surprising number of them never learn to eat healthy. As a middle class child, I sometimes find it hard to believe that not every kid has their parents force healthy food on them (or have them work in the garden, as my parents and grandparents made me), but being in the urban poor is just something beyond what I can relate to. Talking to some kids who went to Camp Harbor View in Boston, it was the first time some of them had seen the ocean in their 12 years of life, despite it being only a $1.70 ride away from their neighborhood. Programs that expose the urban poor to these things are immensely valuable in breaking the fast food cycle.
