food museum blog

Hungry People on This Planet

Today is World Food Day. As reported by Reuters Africa,  "The world's leading crusaders against hunger voiced frustration on World Food Day on Thursday that the global financial crisis had overshadowed a food crisis tipping millions towards starvation. 

The World Bank predicts that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people in the world by 44 million this year to reach a total of 967 million."

Ellen Parry Tyler writes for Food First that, "The U.S. food system allows one in six children to go hungry for at least part of each month. Hungry children are not healthy and don’t learn as well as well-fed children. Poor families across our nation have been told to wait as global leaders analyze the causes and solutions to our current food crisis. Food banks face food shortages while the number of Americans showing up at their door is rapidly increasing. In the wake of the $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout, one wonders what our country could accomplish if $700 billion were instead spent on Main Street."

Today is also our thankfully well-nourished son's birthday. We cherish him, as parents the world over cherish their children. No parent anywhere should have to suffer a child's hunger.

Yes, We Have No Tomatoes...

You've all no doubt noted the current salmonella- tainted tomato debacle we're in, although apparently Florida's crop being harvested now has been approved for sale. Food safety is my number one Homeland Security issue, because I don't think Al Qaeda operatives are going to turn up in rubber dinghies on the Rio Grande or along Tampa Bay anytime soon. It's tough to maintain healthy food standards with on-going government cutbacks of budgets, inspectors and the lot.

Local supermarkets have posted notices about what tomatoes are presumed safe, though none are as pampered as my own bin-grown babies on my patio. But--in this Washington Post article, the Center for Science in the Public Interest does praise the FDA for acting swiftly to alert consumers and vendors of the 'mater problem. Still, the source of the contamination is unknown.

As the tomato is right up there with the potato as America's favorite veggie ( fries with ketchup?) I trust this latest saga will be ended soon. For regularly updated tomato reports click on the FDA page.

UPDATE:  Dana Milbank of the WaPost has an amusing take today on tomato-related hearings in the House Commerce subcommittee. I have enjoyed his political riffs during the Dem Primary and personally find humor in most subjects, especially pomposity and hypocrisy among our elected reps. But---- food safety is not a(n )hilarious topic, because if we can't fuel ourselves safely, then what? ( We can always turn to white pizza...)

" First we eat, then we do everything else."

(That's the little Heinz tomato guy pictured above. http://www.heinz.com/Promotion.aspx)

Slaughtering News From All Over, Plus, A Teapot Scandal?

Grateful that I do not have 150 feet of intestines tucked inside, as do manatees, I see that the current crop of free healthy product magazines are recommending a huge roster of "cleansing" items this winter, none of which would be needed if the magazines' audience were eating as advised in the first place, right?

But I digress---a slaughterhouse video from Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, CA, has prompted Los Angeles schools to withhold meat products from a company called Westland that buys meat from Hallmark, on the grounds that the "downer" cattle unable to walk towards their deaths were being dragged or pushed in, and thus might be suffering from diseases that could render their meat iffy for human consumption. Westland provides ground beef to the USDA's National School Lunch Program.  Many school systems around the US have chosen to reject meat from Westland, including some in Oregon and Florida.

( Meanwhile, rival groups in Kenya have been killing one another not only machetes, but also with bows and arrows. )

Japanese whalers, despite concentrated efforts to stop them, continue to slaughter whales with impunity, though Australian authorities now claim the video evidence they have will bolster their case against the spurious legal claim of the Japanese that they are taking whales for "research purposes."

Apparently The Teapot Museum of Sparta, NC, was the recipient of a $500,000 grant from the Federal Transportation office back in 2006, a fact now revealed to all and sundry with great derision. This report from 2007 says the planned new museum idea has been scrapped. Now as one who applauds any museum effort directed however tangentially at the subject of food, the stuff that sustains us, rather than at yet another monument to war and destruction, I must say that chunk of change would have been a fine first step towards the creation of the National Museum of Food & Farm on the Mall in Washington, DC. Read more about The FOOD Museum's proposal here.

Musings On Food for Dogs And Dogs As Food

Yesterday I treked through Costo with a membership-holding friend, the first time I had been there in over a year.  In the olden days before Trader Joe's arrived in town, I might have picked up maple syrup, smoked salmon, Cabot cheddar cheese in big blocks, giant bags of salad, maybe some red snapper, but this time, I walked out with kitchen trash bags and a large box of organic chicken doggie treats-"No wheat, no corn, no by-products!"--from Castor & Pollux, Lincoln, Nebraska.  ( The dawg approved.)

Later that night I read an excerpt in The Week from a piece by Steven Rinella in Outside magazine about his quest to eat dog, in Hanoi.  He eats grilled strips of sesame crusted dog, dog feet ( I blogged once about the dog feet platter that whipped past those of us at the vegetarian table at a banquet in China), even plain old boiled dog leg. And he is not happy, though he knows much of the world does eat dog. ( Apparently native people of the Americas once were hound chow hounds, if you will.  )

On his final day of eating dog---you can read the entire story here---he reports:

"I'm trying to will myself into a nonchalant attitude—just a guy in a restaurant eating his meal. I can't do it. I'm forcing it down, and it is not enjoyable. At this point, I've answered for myself the question I wanted answered: If your culture and your culinary curiosities go head to head, culture's going to win. It'll win even if you're rooting against it."

So---Even extreme eaters like Rinella cannot easily block memories of furry family pets while trying to reconsider them as food. 

And then there are feathered pets---I first gave up eating chicken when our zany, alert pet hen, Harold, wandered into my kitchen in Belgium one evening. Chicken breasts about to go in the oven for dinner were on the table. I picked her up for a cuddle, in the manner she liked, and realized ( duh!) that her scrawny little chest was an unsettling reminder of the breasts I had just dredged in flour.

Since that time over 30 years ago, I have indeed eaten some occasional chicken--the rosemary-infused organic roast chicken perfected by my pal on the Hudson River, for example--and the inadvertent hen that I try to skirt in one dish at my local Thai buffet, and, of course, I feed chicken to my pet.

If you get to know most any animal at all well--a dog, a pig, a lamb, a hen--then it's so...

"I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens."  Issac Bashevis Singer

( Dog pictured was the recipient of the organic chicken cookies, not a meal.)

Freegans, Food Waste, Trash Tours, and Hope for Peace

Catching up on dumpster-diving news this weekend,  I  read this piece about "freegans" in the LATimes, Sept. 11. It's about New Yorkers who hit the best supermarket dumpster areas right after the garbage is put out--out back of D'Agostino's or Whole Foods they apparently find some real gems, enough to create lovely meals, stock the freezer and so on.

It seems to me the prime drawback other than possible intestinal distress and the odd rat turd, is that you cannot plan a meal. It's like shopping for clothes at Goodwill--you may go there hoping for a short black blazer but end up instead with a t-shirt from the Hard Rock Cafe in Prague.

But I digress---the freegan mission is explained this way at freegan.info:

"Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able. "

Or, as former Barnes & Noble bigwig Madeline Nelson puts it in the LA Times piece,

""We're doing something that is really socially unacceptable," Nelson said. "Not everyone is going to do it, but we hope it leads people to push their own limits and quit spending."

So now we have "eating locally,"  the Joan Gussow, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, etc etc etc concept, we have No Impact Man, a New Yorker seeking ways to live off the grid, without plastic, t.paper, et al,  and the family that stopped buying anything from China for an entire year--A Year Without "Made in China,": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy, AND the freegans, who are truly pushing the envelope of how to get one's food. 

New York City throws away 50 million pounds of food a year--of that about 20 million pounds go to charitable groups.  Much more about massive edibles tossed away is chronicled at Jonathan Bloom's blog, Wasted Food.

To delve further into the freegan world you can follow up on these tips from the LATimes article.

"In recent years, Internet sites like Meetup.com have posted announcements for trash tours in Seattle, Houston and Los Angeles and throughout England. Some teach people how to dumpster-dive for food, increasing the movement's popularity. At least 14,000 have taken the trash tour for groceries over the last two years in New York. Another site, Freegankitchen.com, offers lessons for cooking meals from food found in dumpsters, such as spaghetti squash salad."

The late John Niederhauser, PhD, our friend and founding board member of The Potato Museum, said in his acceptance speech for the World Food Prize that feeding the world's people was the most critical challenge facing those who want peace in the world.

Younger persons around the world seem to be staking out eco-appropriate positions, pursuing "off the grid" projects--(I hope they are not all just out to write catchy, trendy books...) but where are the peaceniks? OR--  Is this the 21st century path to peace? 

Expressive Chocolate Statue Draws Ire

Apparently a statue of Christ on the cross made from 200 pounds of chocolate is mightily annoying the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. 

According to today's AP story,  "This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” said Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, a watchdog group. “It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding.”

Dubbed " My Sweet Lord," the piece is the work of Cosimo Cavallaro and is to be put on display this Monday at the Lab Gallery of Manhattan's Roger Smith Hotel. ( You can view the statue well on the artist's website. )

Again, according to AP, " Cavallaro, who was raised in Canada and Italy, is best known for his quirky work with food as art: Past efforts include repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying 5 tons of pepper jack cheese on a Wyoming home and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham."

Wow!

Since the hotel has been besieged by angry phone calls, it's possible the gallery may not go ahead with plans to display the 6 foot tall, anatomically correct chocolate Christ.

Can't help but wonder what will happen to all that chocolate....

Faux Fish?

A pork chop is a pork chop, a chicken wing a wing, a burger a burger.....BUT--Fish eaters can no longer feel secure that they know what they are eating. The US is doing DNA tests on fish entering the country because apparently fish fraud is a real issue. This has been covered recently in the Washington Post--but we were in Florida a few days ago, living this dilemma.

We had no doubts that what we were buying at the Star Market in Cortez, Florida was the real thing--Pomano, Snapper, Grouper and so on. Why?  Well for one, because it was an actual fish market.  And for another, we could see the fish carcases being cut up on a long table behind the sales case, scales flying, the egrets , heron and pelicans awaiting the fish market's detritus under the dock's pilings.

But when we passed through Sarasota, when we inquired what fish was being used for the fish sandwich at a joint perched over the marina, the waitress said Basa, a fish flown in from Asia, frozen.  "It's the new, new thing in fish," she said. ( Buyer beware-not all basa is basa....)

Oh.

We visited friends on their houseboat berthed near Orlando at Sanford, Florida on the St John's River. The local greasy spoon at the end of the pier featured a fish called "snook," a local Florida specialty. Or so we thought. The fish market guys back in Cortez had told us snook in a restaurant was not legal. Only the person who caught it could eat it and it could not be sold commercially.  Hmmm. The weary waitress at the spoony place said their snook came in from Lake Victoria in Africa, from their distributor.

We noticed a Sysco sticker on the cash register.

Oi vey.

Was snook in actuality Nile Perch?

Was the grouper we had eaten out in Bradenton really grouper, or was it  a version of Asian catfish, well disguised under the blackening seasonings we chose? Or maybe farm-raised white fish something from Missouri?

( Grouper ???? from groups.msn.com)

Britain to Test GMO Spuds--No, Not for Eating

Potatoes developed by the German company BASF  to have resistance to blight will be grown in trials in Britain next year.The GMO spuds will not be grown for human or animal consumption but rather for industrial use. ( The potato's starch is used in degradable plastics, cosmetics, medicines and more.)

Those in favor of GMO altered foods point out that  modifying the potato in this manner may well be preferable to the heavy spraying of chemical fungicides necessary to combat "late blight."  The fungus-like pathogen that wiped out potato harvests in Ireland in the mid 1800's continues to exist today in potato-growing areas around the world.

Many in Britain are opposed to the growing of any GMO food plants for any purpose.

According to today's Reuter's piece, " Britain's largest organic certification body, the Soil Asssociation, said, however, it was dismayed by the decision, adding there would be no market for GMO potatoes in Britain.

"The government is ignoring what consumers want to eat and their health and safety...The chances of anyone in the UK willingly buying GM potato crisps or chips are zero. This trial is a monumental waste of time and money," Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said."

For an overview of GM, take a look at this report from NewScientist.com.

Deep-Fried Flags Offend Museum Director

When an art student in Tennessee unfurled his latest project at the Customs House Museum in Clarksville, the museum's director, Ned Crouch, had a hissy fit and nixed it within 18 hours.

According to a report on CNN,  "The exhibit featured three U.S. flags imprinted with phrases such as "Poor people are obese because they eat poorly" and more than 40 smaller flags fried in peanut oil, egg batter, flour and black pepper."

"Art student William Gentry said his piece, "The Fat Is in the Fire," was a commentary on obesity in America. "I deep-fried the flag because I'm concerned about America and about America's health," Gentry said."

So, uh, William, what was in the egg batter?

( Left: An American flag worth eating from http://www.southernconnoisseur.com/desserts.html)

On Wasted $$, Indentured Kids, Fatter People, Healthier Fats, Hungrier People

OK, let's see...In today's news, $160 million is being spent in the U.S. on "attack ads," leading up to the November 7 midterm elections. What a marvelous use of what some would consider a good deal of money.

Meanwhile, the NYTimes reports on the growing issue of child labor in Africa and elsewhere, many of them working in agricultural or food-related businesses.

The article is built around a hungry, 6 year-old new conscript , forced to work in a fishing village in Ghana.

"...the children are indentured servants, leased by their parents to Mr. Takyi for as little as $20 a year.

"Until their servitude ends in three or four years, they are as trapped as the fish in their nets, forced to work up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, in a trade that even adult fishermen here call punishing and, at times, dangerous."

"A 2002 study supervised by the labor organization estimated that nearly 12,000 trafficked children toiled in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast alone. The children, who had no relatives in the area, cleared fields with machetes, applied pesticides and sliced open cocoa pods for beans."

"The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, estimates that 1.2 million ( children) are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually. "

Back in the US, an article by two academics from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, posits that an extra one billion gallons of gasoline is used up each year because cars are transporting "fatter Americans."

And KFC, ( Kentucky Fried Chicken,) is phasing out trans fats by the end of April in most of its US outlets. According to this report in The Guardian,

"KFC previously resisted change - in June, the chain said it had been using the same type of oil for 50 years and did not want to tamper with Colonel Sanders's "finger lickin' good" recipe. But it was hit with a lawsuit from the non-profit Centre for Science in the Public Interest, which maintains that trans fats contribute to 50,000 deaths annually in the US. The class action was in the name of Arthur Hoyte, a retired doctor who said he had eaten KFC's chicken without being warned of the health risks.

The Centre yesterday dropped the case and its executive director, Michael Jacobson, praised KFC: "What are McDonald's and Burger King waiting for now? If KFC, which deep-fries almost everything, can get the artificial trans fat out of its frying oil, anyone can. Colonel Sanders deserves a bucket full of praise."

Remember that $160 million?    

The number of hungry people in the world is increasing by 4 million per year

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization

(Rome, October 30,  2006) Ten years after the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome, which promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015, there are more hungry people in the developing countries today – 820 million – than there were in 1996, according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report released today  Noting that promises are no substitute for food, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today called on world leaders to honor a 10-year-old pledge to halve the number of hungry in the world by 2015.

From the World Hunger Education Service.

(AP photo of KFC employee devouring newly healthified fried foods.)