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The Minimalist on Food

I haven’t had a lot of time or patience for the food hysteria that…

by Andrew Potter on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 8:28am - 8 Comments

I haven’t had a lot of time or patience for the food hysteria that took hold of North Americans over the past five years; the ridiculous argument over organic versus local struck me as mostly a replay of the equally ridiculous debate over paper or plastic grocery bags, or incadescent versus fluorescent bulbs. What the whole debate has long needed is someone with a combination of real knowledge and good sense; and he’s finally arrived in the form of Mark Bittman.

There is more wisdom packed into his short piece from last Sunday’s Times than in the truckloads of books published recently. The smarts begins with the title and continues right to the end. Michelle Obama appears to have her head screwed on right as well. Good news all around.

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Bill Simpson

The organic food movement has been positive in reducing the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides and herbicides, but is negative in excluding GMO’s and in deprecating the role of food technology in processing, preparing and preserving food.
Dot

the equally ridiculous debate over paper or plastic grocery bags, or incadescent versus fluorescent bulbs.

You still sourcing your lantern whale oil from Japan, or have you switched to Iceland?

touquer

The entire case against plastic bags exposed as a product of poor citation: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece. Interesting stat: when plastic bags were banned in Ireland, garbage bag sales rose 400%.

Dot

Re: plastic bags. I would think the issue would be moot if the places banning plastic bags would allow incineration/power generation. Good source of energy (petroleum). If you’re burying them in a landfill, a wasted resource.

Animal deaths – I never considered that a decisive issue.

matt

Go organic and how much starvation would result? The intensive nature of modern agriculture requires chemical fertilizers and pest/herbicides.

That said, i agree with the idea of encouraging people to eat better. it takes as much effort to cook brocolli and drop a chicken breast in a frying pan as it does to serve a frozen pizza

Terry

Well, my parents have a farm of 1920 acres, which is about 1/4 of the size of the farms of prairie farms owned by people that are my generation. Amount produced per acre is about 1/3-1/2 less (if you know what you are doing) unless you have a serious infusion of cheap labour. Certainly high intensity agriculture is still cheaper than cheap labour, even if you were to import from Guatemala or something.

Really, organic products wouldn’t be as cheap as they are if there weren’t some rules being bent and broken. Organic food should be at least 3x the amount of commercial food in the store if it was as organic as most consumers think it is, even with the increased economies of scale over the last decade. It is a lot easier to re-brand than to change. Especially when your consumers are all parochial urbanites who don’t understand either food or agriculture.

Dot

Shaken, not stirred.
Two Yen

How about the stupid debate over bottled water?

There are many places where bottled water is an essential commodity. No matter what the environmental movement says, not everyone is always close to a tap of clean water.

Here in Japan a huge percentage of PET bottles are recycled. If the greenies don’t like bottled water all they have to do is put a 5 cent refund on PET bottles in order to encourage recycling. It’ll do wonders.