2013-05-26T00:13:59-04:00 Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=jerusha-klemperer Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jerusha Klemperer Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1220055 2012-01-20T18:02:30-05:00 2012-03-21T05:12:01-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ The Daily Meal put out a list of America's 50 Most Powerful People in Food and the jumble of powerful people was by the site's own admission very subjective and a bit random but also a) a great indication of the schizophrenia at work in our food system right now and b) enough to make your head spin. Well mine, anyway.

At the bottom of the list we see urban farming hero Will Allen, Slow Food USA leader Josh Viertel, food safety champion Bill Marler, cookbook author turned food movement advocate Mark Bittman. A trip up the list towards number 1 introduces some more high profile characters including several celebrity chefs (especially ones with important social agendas like local food sourcing, ending hunger, addressing child health) and then increasingly, especially in the top 10, the CEOs of all the major industrial food giants: Cargill, McDonald's, Monsanto, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Tyson....

This duality of sustainable food advocates on one end and industrial food giants on the other shows the growing power of each of the poles of our food system: at one pole the increased consolidation and commodification of food (and hence power of Big Food), and at the other pole the increased interest in and passion for sustainable, fair food. Like two muscles growing at the same time. But a bicep bulging bigger and bigger while a pinky muscle grows impressively, too. A bicep vs. a pinky....?

And then what exactly does it mean to have power over our food system? When it comes to food, local power can have so much more meaning than a broader national/international power. I highly doubt that a fancy Chicago chef like Grant Achatz is having much power over the life of someone in urban Mobile, Alabama, for example. In my life, NYC Greenmarket is probably the most powerful force in my food system--they have created an infrastructure that brings food from farms to my urban "backyard."

In the life of some lucky children in 10 states around the country, their FoodCorps service members--who bring them into the garden each week and who do taste tests for them with squash "fries"-- might be the most powerful person in their food worlds. Or maybe their mothers. Or their grandmothers.

As is often the case with food, it's often most interesting when it's local, and personal.
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Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
"Does it really have to be this hard?" I asked myself.

My story is particular to me, of course, but all over the country there are people trying to put food on the table and asking themselves "does it really have to be this hard?"

I was living, at the time, in a neighborhood with few supermarkets. The ones within a long walking distance were either very expensive or lacking the seasonal produce I craved. So on weekends I would hike over to the big farmers' market. But at the farmers' market I always find myself of two minds. In one moment I am buying something and can't believe how much I get for so little money; the next item I pick up gives me sticker shock. How can both of these things be true?

When people ask me: "Doesn't the food you eat (some mix of local, sustainable, organic, etc.) cost so much more than "regular" food?" I protest and agree at the same time. When they say "Doesn't cooking from scratch take a lot of time?" I remember the awesome pasta I cooked the other night that took 7.5 minutes. But also the weekend of foraging I did going from one store to the next.

I live in New York City; I make a living wage; I am not trying to feed a family; I work on these issues for a living. If I find it hard/tiring/expensive sometimes, what must other people feel?

In the spirit of this conundrum, Slow Food USA launched the $5 Challenge last week.

The economy is tanking. We're all stressed about money and we're all stressed about time. And yet. Every day there are people all over the country who find a way -- despite the challenges of access, affordability, and time-to cook healthy food on a budget. It's not easy -- especially at first -- but they've developed tips and tricks for stretching their food dollars, and decreasing the amount of time it takes to make a fresh and delicious meal. This campaign seeks to learn from those people, to share their wisdom -- and then work together to make eating this way a reality for everyone every day.

So, on September 17, take the challenge: get together with family and friends and cook a "slow food" meal for less than the cost of fast food. Know how? Teach others. Want to learn? This is your chance. You can host a potluck where nothing costs more than $5. You can cook for a crowd and charge $5 at the door. You can cook with your family for less than $5 per person.

Now I recognize that $5 is actually not a small amount of money -- but it is the cost of a typical fast food "value meal," so we figured that was a good starting place for cooking up a meal that reflects your values.

Next week we'll be rolling out a page where you can share your tips and tricks -- and read the ones that other people have submitted. The idea is to embrace this crazy conundrum (the one I call the "It's easy, it's hard" conundrum) -- to find ways to make eating "slow" easier, while also acknowledging what makes it hard. Understanding the hard part and how to fix the hard part ... is the hard part. And it's where we've all got our work cut out for us.

Let's start by taking the challenge.

[This post originally appeared on Civil Eats.]]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.848870 2011-04-15T17:23:21-04:00 2011-06-15T05:12:01-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
Happy Birthday! Don't be mad, but I didn't get you anything. It's not that 56 isn't a big important milestone. It means you're old enough to retire! (Something to consider?)

One of the first birthday parties I ever went to was at a McDonald's. It was Tiffany's party, on the lower level of a Manhattan McDonald's. We had balloons on the backs of our chairs, and were served ice cream cake at the end.

It wasn't my first time in a McDonald's, though. I grew up across the street from you and one of my first foods was a McD's french fry. I loved the little paper bag they came in, how it became translucent with fryer grease as I slowly made my way through the bag. I loved the chairs and how they swiveled on their axes, allowing me to spin half way around and back again, bopping my head from side to side and sucking on a fry like it was a lollipop.

This was in 1978 or so, when you were a young 23 year-old company, and just beginning your world travels. I gotta say, it was kind of a genius move, McDonald's, inviting little kids in for parties, inscribing McD's into our earliest memories of celebration. You lured me in with Happy Meals (it's true! They make you happy!); kept me occupied with plastic toys; left me grinning with each sweet, salty,greasy bite. Left me so hungry for McDonald's I sought you out on a family vacation to France.

I must confess, though, that something happened to me. You probably didn't notice and I can't say exactly how or why it happened, but I stopped spending birthdays with you. I haven't even visited for so much as an order of large fries in what might be close to 20 years. And not to get you really p.o'd but it's not that I don't eat french fries, it's just that I don't eat them with you.

But enough about me -- this is about you! You've come a long way since opening that first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. And while I'm not sorry that we've parted ways over the years, I figured I'd take a moment to say "Happy Birthday" McDonald's -- hope you get to eat an apple pie in celebration (baked, these days, not fried).

Best,
Jerusha
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.800749 2010-12-27T07:19:13-05:00 2011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/

The intersection of food, culture and class is a conversation we might finally be ready to have. In the course of 2 short weeks The Washington Post, Newsweek and The New York Times all ran articles about how class and food divide us, or don't. At the same time, Sarah Palin fused food and politics, pitting herself against Michelle Obama and her anti-obesity initiative. Now maybe you didn't think trying to reverse diet-related disease was political, but I assure you, now it is.

I can grow herbs on my windowsill: When I need a break from the din of politics, I can water my plants. I have thought of myself as a city girl with a black thumb but it turns out that with a few false starts (tomatoes from seed were too difficult for my first experiment) and a little bit of focus, I can grow mint and basil. If I can do it, anyone can. Next year, peppers.

People feel passionately about food safety legislation. How safe is my windowsill food? And will the government soon make it illegal to grow it? After two years snaking through Congress, the Food Safety and Modernization Act (S 510) preoccupied the minds of food activists/farmers/freaks/frenzied backyard gardeners for the past three months. Each time I blogged or tweeted or posted on Facebook about it, the debate raged. Opinions ranged from the truly lunatic and paranoid to the curious and concerned. Actually I was cheered by all this--is the age of apathy over?

Politics is slow, frustrating and important work. The Food Safety Bill passed! And then didn't. And then passed again. The Child Nutrition Bill passed! With funding coming from food stamps. Wha? All these ups and downs could be enough to make a food fighter lose steam and lose faith. But we are just at the beginning; the Food and Farm Bill is around the corner. We must keep spirits high and keep focused as we head into the New Year.

Food has become a political player in NYC. Speaking of the new year, mayoral campaigning will begin in earnest in 2011. In the past year Manhattan Borough President Stringer and City Council Speaker Quinn have both produced reports on how to address food systems issues in NYC. Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg is revising PlaNYC (his plan for a "greener, greater New York") and it sounds like food will finally be incorporated this time around. Will the next mayoral election in this town be all about food?

Cookbooks live on: Despite the arrival of apps like Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," and despite the proliferation of terrific food blogs that could keep us steeped in free recipes until the dawn of time, people are still buying cookbooks. Me included! Did you know that food books are one of the only book sectors on the rise? I learned that in 2010 at a panel about the future of food writing; apparently the future of food writing still lies in books.

Consolidation is at the root of a lot of our problems. Also on the rise are Tyson's profits. And Smithfield's, and Purdue's, and a few others. But not many more than that. This past year the Department of Justice and The USDA held a series of workshops on antitrust in the food system. They examined how the consolidation of production, processing and distribution into the hands of just a few big companies has affected farmers and consumers alike. The short version is that prices are rising at the supermarket but farmers are earning less and less; local food is hard to find and there are fewer and fewer small-mid scale farmers. Now we all sit back and cross our fingers, wondering: will anything come of these workshops? Will 2011 be the year that someone finally thinks antitrust issues in food & agriculture are as important as antitrust issues in computers & technology?

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Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ A nice piece of grilled fish is supposed to be the healthy menu option. A few pieces of tuna sushi were just what the doctor ordered right? With fears about mercury levels in fish, concern about seafood from China, and news of the impending extinction of the Bluefin tuna (the yummy one) due to overfishing, many of us have seafood anxiety on the brain. It can be hard to make sense of everything you hear when you're trying to navigate your health and the health of our seas.



These guidelines first appeared on Well and Good NYC]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.537358 2010-04-15T18:26:27-04:00 2011-05-25T16:10:21-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ the music artist)? I, for one, know that he makes good dance music, he likes tea, and he's an outspoken vegan. So how did he end up editing a book with a contribution by Paul Willis, Mr. sustainable hog farmer? And did they drink not-too-sweet organic peach tea to seal the deal? It seems like food politics may have made some super strange bedfellows here.

We are at an interesting moment, I think, one in which the vegans are trying a new tact. Sensing a possible ally, they have decided to team up with the sustainable food movement in order to improve animal welfare and decrease the number of animals suffering at the hands of big ag. It's a pretty darn good match. After reading Gristle: from factory farms to food safety, composed of 15 pieces on the negative environmental, health, community, financial and global impacts of industrial animal production, it's hard not to feel that you must opt out of the system entirely. For some--like me--that means choosing to eat less meat and to be careful about where that meat comes from and how it is raised. For others it's going to mean giving up meat altogether.

Moby and Miyun Park, who has long worked on farm animal welfare issues, collected these 15 pieces and organized them by type of impact (e.g. health; worker rights; climate change) to create a kind of primer. They gathered a quirky assortment of contributors--determined perhaps by six degrees of Moby?--including food movement warriors like Frances Moore Lappe, Danielle Nierenberg and Meredith Niles to talk about global and environmental impacts; love-him-or-hate-him Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to talk about the true, hidden costs of cheap meat; Canadian ultra-Marathoner Brendan Brazier to talk about being a powerfully capable athlete living only on plant protein, and the bodily health that comes from skipping all those antibiotics and growth hormones.

The takeaway at the end of the read is disgust at a system of food production that could be failing humans, the physical environment and animals so comprehensively. The vegan handbag/shoe designer and the pork producer can agree upon this, as can any reader with a conscience and a heart.

This post first appeared on Civil Eats]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.462613 2010-02-15T15:04:22-05:00 2011-05-25T15:30:22-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ Mark Bittman's NY Times article with Jim Lahey's phenomenally easy bread recipe, but it took sitting down with Erway's new book, The Art of Eating In, for me to get cracking.

Right around when I was reading Bittman's article, Cathy Erway was making a radical decision; in this capital of restaurants, in this city of buying and spending, she was going to stay in and cook. Every night for 2 years. So while other twentysomethings blogged about which new restaurants they'd tried, she chronicled her home cooking adventures on Not Eating Out in New York. But there are a million home cooking blogs out there--why did hers capture people's imaginations? Why did it capture mine?

Well it turns out that the somewhat odd and haphazard parameters she set up for her experiment allowed her to explore (and then blog about) NYC's emerging DIY food renaissance. She discovered and then immersed herself in a world of cook-offs, takedowns, park foraging, underground supper clubs, and dinner parties. She even hung with the dumpster-diving freegans once or twice. In the process she became entrenched in a new community of bloggers and foodophiles, becoming a kind of mini-celebrity herself. You know, "that girl who decided not to eat out anymore."

And this is a young girl, a cute girl. One who the fellas might want to take on a date. In this town, a date basically equals a restaurant trip. What's a girl to do? I am reminded of the Beavans of No Impact Man, and how when they gave up eating out, they sort of fell in love with dinner parties and family time. Erway, too, reminds us--both on the blog and in her book--that there are many more fun and creative ways to court a person than going to a restaurant. Her #25 reason for not eating out? Creative dating.

She also learned that if you are making your own food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you had better get good at it, and learn new techniques and discover your creative side. What she makes plain is that cooking is fun, yes, and delicious, yes. And it will also save you a hell of a lot of money. And you'll also create less waste--something she actually calculates, by ounce, in her book. And guess what, you'll also probably spend more quality time with people, and build community and make new friends and be healthier all around. The blog and the book inspire through storytelling, hence the bread dough growing on my counter and the parsnip pancakes I am making for dinner tonight.

Speaking of inspiration: next week, to coincide with the release of Erway's book, the Huffington Post is challenging their readers to do as Cathy does by pledging to stay in and cook for a whole week. To my grandparents, one-time residents of the Brooklyn and the Bronx, respectively, this would have seemed preposterous--what the hell else would you do? To our generation of New Yorkers, accustomed to buying egg and cheese on the way to work, salad bar for lunch and sushi for dinner, this is an honest to goodness challenge. I have signed up and I can already foresee my failure.

But I can also foresee the homemade lunches I am going to bring to work, and the way I'll lure people to my house with promises of free homecooked food. And I'll console myself by remembering that, in the end (SPOILER ALERT), Erway's message seems to be that eating out does have its place; but it works best as a treat.

Let's not eat alone: I dare you to take the Huffington Post's challenge with me; for inspiration, supper club tips and recipe ideas, check out Not Eating Out in New York and The Art of Eating In.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.411793 2010-01-05T13:45:53-05:00 2011-05-25T15:05:19-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
On The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart asked Michael Pollan to distill the 64 rules from his new book Food Rules, down to one simple statement. "Eat food," Pollan replied with a smile. They both chuckled.

Some might wonder: if it's that simple, why does Pollan keep popping out books like this? Why write a "short, radically pared down book" (his words) full of rules? As he explains in his introduction, the 64 rules are basically 64 short paths back to "eat food." This book clearly speaks to overwhelmed and confused folks, not to Pollan's faithful readers and acolytes who, by now I presume, are starting to understand the larger picture of our food system.

Pollan is the master of communication, and he somehow manages to produce a list that is decidedly not dogmatic, full of cultural expressions rather than scientific suggestions. Many are retreads. For example, if you read "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," you won't find much new to chew on. But this book has great potential to reach a broader audience. It is, as Jon Stewart described it, "fun-sized." It's small, easy to palm, and easy to understand. It's organized into three sections that act as tiers of engagement: section 1 tells you what to eat ("food," remember?). Once you're eating that way, section 2 can help you figure out which foods to consume. Finally, section 3 tells you how to eat them -- and "chew" isn't an exaggeration. A bunch of them come down to chewing and it helps you realize just how far many Americans have traveled from the whole process we call eating.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.402248 2009-12-28T13:33:52-05:00 2011-05-25T15:00:22-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ the blog of an amazing 12-year-old named Orren Fox. He asked me to explain why I care about food/why kids should care about food.

I think it's hard to tell someone why they should care about something. When I meet someone who doesn't give a damn about what they eat, I think about my own indifference to, say, football. Someone could sit me down and make me watch Rudy, or explain until they're blue in the face why this sport above all others is a prism for the human spirit or something like that. I am guessing, though, at the end of it all I'd still not really care that much about football.

So, is it possible to get someone to care about food? To put time into learning how to cook? And are the reasons a kid should care about food any different from why an adult should care about food? I believe strongly that we have a responsibility to provide kids with the tools to care, but I feel the same way about adults.

Anyway, for Orren's blog I came up with the following list:

I love cooking because I love ingredients: I get such a thrill from visiting farms and seeing how food grows. The first time I saw asparagus growing I was shocked to see the spears popping right up through the dirt. How had I not known that? At the farmers market I love seeing brussels sprouts still attached to the stalk, getting a lesson in how they grow, while I'm shopping. I love eating something when it's fresh -- right off the vine, right off the farm. The taste is unbelievable.

I love cooking because I love transformation: Cooking is science meets magic. Anyone who loves a good science experiment or an art project can appreciate the magic of a sharp raw onion sautéing down into something sweet and sugary. Or the incredible transformation of fresh basil, oil, parmiggiano cheese and pine nuts into pesto, a personal favorite of mine.

I love cooking because I love to share, to express my affection for friends and family through home-cooked meals: Cooking for people is a way to get people to hang out with you--it's true! When you offer people home cooked food, they come in droves and the conversation flows and by the end of the meal everyone knows each other a bit better, and everyone feels taken care of.

It turns out that there are unexpected side benefits, too.

Health: When you cook for yourself, you eat healthier. I don't do it for that reason, but it's a nice perk. Home cooking tends to use way less fat (er, butter mostly) and way less sodium than restaurant food or processed food in cans or the like. Also home cooking never uses weird ingredients/chemicals you can't pronounce. No nutrition labels necessary.

Knowledge: Understanding how things grow and how they get to our plate helps us understand community health, science and nature, and increases our connection to the earth and our awareness of ecological issues.


]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.286316 2009-09-15T15:08:00-04:00 2011-05-25T14:05:19-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
Maybe it was this hard-earned (and hard-learned) lesson that led me initially to avoid Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me. It reeked of gimmick, and seemed on the outside to offer no takeaway lessons. Nobody eats fast food all three meals (right?) so what could be the point?

I did see the movie later and had to admit that I was wrong. It turned out that the parameters of his experiment were more rigorous than I expected, and it also turned out that setting an extreme goal yielded behavioral and biological results that could be extrapolated for meaning in the not-so-extreme. And it turned out that, in truth, the way many Americans were/are eating is extreme. And I was forced to confront that extremity.

Similarly, I was wary of No Impact Man. I admired the gesture, and appreciated its Thoreauvian allusions (did I just make up a word?), but I wondered if there was anything of merit for me in there. Again, similarly, I had to admit I as wrong.

Colin Beavan, as you may have read, did a year-long experiment in which he -- and his wife and infant daughter -- tried to live in their Manhattan apartment with zero environmental impact. He blogged it, chronicled it on Good Morning America, and let a documentary film crew follow him around.

Now, the movie is in theatres, and the book is on shelves.

They gave up a lot -- electricity, coffee, toilet paper, transportation that wasn't self-propelled, non-local foods, etc. -- but in the process tried to show that it wasn't about deprivation, but how much you could give up and still be really happy. And actually the quest for happiness was the part that really interested me.

That and the fact that while it wasn't explicitly a movie about food, it turned out to be largely so. Maybe that's because the production and distribution of our food has such an enormous carbon footprint; maybe that's because their lives became largely about food procurement and preparation (i.e., when you eliminate take-out and introduce cooking, food becomes a much bigger part of your life). Whole swaths of the film center on the greenmarket in Union Square, on the community garden on LaGuardia Place and Bleeker, and on two farms that NYC-dwellers know well, Hawthorne Valley and Ronnybrook.

And so maybe he makes some critics cranky. They wonder why -- if sustainable food enthusiasts and advocates (like blogger Kerry Trueman who has a nice lil' cameo; or Majora Carter from Sustainable South Bronx; or Mayer Vishner, the community gardener who takes Colin under his wing) have been living this life for quite some time now, composting, and eating local food, and forgoing bottled water -- why we should care about this self-professed "guilty liberal." They might wonder along with Beavan himself, if he is "self evolved, or just self-righteous." They might wonder, like Mayer the gardener, if he is "dishonest or delusional" in believing that his lifestyle choices will somehow cancel out his wife's job at Business Week, propelling the capitalist machine.

Meh -- those questions don't really bother me so much. I liked watching these two regular people play around with change, with having less and discarding less, and with what it means to take individual action towards a global goal. I was most interested in Beavan's wife Michelle's journey, her humor and frustration, her quiet expression of loss of the part of her that loved to buy things, and realizing that she was left with a hole to fill. With what?

With time at the neighborhood park; with household chores like cooking and washing that are taking longer, but are suddenly more fun; with family time; with book reading by candle light; with dinner parties with friends; with charades and Scrabble. I dunno, but it sounds like a good time to me.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.279414 2009-09-08T12:19:36-04:00 2011-05-25T14:00:22-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
It¹s not like I have never picknicked on Labor Day before, but this one was different. I was there for Slow Food USA's Time for Lunch campaign and its National Day of Action to get real food into schools. Our potluck was an "eat-in," and it was one of over 300 that took place yesterday from Maui to Maine, from Mississippi to Michigan.

About 10,000 of us all care enough about what our country's children are served in schools that we came together to make a public statement that it's time--overdue really--to give schools the resources they need to serve real food to our kids. These pictures give you a sense of the diversity of events that happened--there were fiddles and turkeys, hula hooping and cake walks. But what made it different is that there were also banners, and posters, letter writing and rallying cries. Let's tell our legislators that "Hey now! It's Time for lunch!"

Here are some photos from events around the country.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.238459 2009-07-17T17:58:18-04:00 2011-05-25T13:40:22-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
Let's take home cooking. Cathy Erway, on her delightful blog Not Eating Out in New York, got me thinking about this when she posted Reason #33 (to n.e.o.i.n.y) a few weeks ago: "To Preserve a Dying Art." For me, that is reason enough. I don't want to see a world without home cooks any more than I want to see a world without hand-knit sweaters or handcrafted furniture.

Cooking for ourselves is something people did for hundreds and hundreds of years and now we don't do it. The loss of this in our culture strikes me as profound. I don't have stats to show you about why it's a loss, why it's not the same to buy prepared foods from the fancy grocer counter and plate it up as your own. I just know that cooking connects me to my food; that it is, for me, a form of grounding meditation (and a damn fine time to drink a glass of wine); that it saves me money on my lunch each day; that serving it to people connects me to them, is an expression of my affection for them; that talking with dinner guests about how I made the food and where I got the ingredients engages us all.

[n.b. as a side note: I'm cheered by Jane and Michael Stern's rebuttal to the disappearance of American food culture, and I agree with their assertion that "traditions evolve." I like evolution, just not disappearance (which is why, I suppose, I am still hopeful for the continuation of the human species, in spite of our rank stupidity)].

One more example is disappearing plants and animals (let's call it biodiversity). Should I care that there were once 14,000 varieties of apple and now I can only see about 6-10 at a farmers market, and 2-3 at a super market? I do. I can give you the ecological reason I care, and I can give you the reasons centered around taste but more simply: monoculture scares me. On an intuitive level, I like diversity.

So then, if something feels wrong in my gut, if I can intuit that it is no good, how important is it to have facts and figures to confirm that?

A good example: genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Signing onto a recent campaign against Monsanto last week got me thinking about this. The European Union has banned them, the US hasn't. Why? Well, it's complicated, but let's say the simple reason is that the US says that there is no definitive evidence yet that genetically engineered foods are bad for you. For me, as an individual, it is enough that they freak me out (putting aside the dire environmental impacts for one moment). I don't want people splicing fish genes with tomato genes and then trying to feed it to me. Call me crazy.

Another good example: pesticides. I don't want 'em. And while I can't point yet to definitive studies that indicate they will for sure kill me, I'm ooked out enough to say "no thanks."

Is this the same part of me that clings to the past? That tries to preserve old traditions simply because they're old? I know that the pro GMOers will try to paint me as anti-science, and I re-buff that. But I don't have any hard facts to back that self-assertion up. Ha.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.219405 2009-06-23T11:47:41-04:00 2011-05-25T13:30:21-04:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
Tuesday, a few hours after I put up my grumpy post about Obama not mentioning food in his health care talks, he proved me wrong by getting up in front of the AMA and saying that junk food is causing obesity and obesity causes disease and resulting medical costs: "That's a lesson Michelle and I have tried to instill in our daughters with the White House vegetable garden that Michelle planted. And that's a lesson that we should work with local school districts to incorporate into their school lunch programs." Bingo!

Wednesday, Michelle got in on the action, harvesting lettuce and peas in the White House garden, talking about food and wellness, telling the press that "these are issues that I care deeply about, especially when they affect America's children." Hello!
Both of them mentioned the connection between food and health, and both mentioned kids. No accident, since this year, the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that governs the National School Lunch Program, is up for reauthorization. It's making its way through Congress as I write this--and for the first time in a while I have the sense that the President knows it exists.

The National School Lunch Program provides a meal to 30 million children every school day. Right now it is a sad mirror of the broken food system outside the school walls. It's a fast food mart masquerading as a school cafeteria--I've been kind of horrified to learn what they're serving there, and to learn that they're using the peddling of crappy chicken nuggets, brand name pizza, and soda to help balance school budgets.

If it is, as the Prez insists, time for change, let's do something about it; we can do better.

By giving schools the resources to serve real food, we can teach 30 million children healthy eating habits that will last throughout their lives. That's a major down payment on health care reform. By providing 30 million children with locally grown fruits and vegetables, we can dramatically reshape the way this country grows and gets its food. By raising a generation of children on real food, we can build a strong foundation for their health, for our economy's health and for America's future prosperity.

That's why a group of us are organizing a National Eat-In for Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009. On that day, people in communities across America will gather with their neighbors for public potlucks that send a clear message to our nation's leaders: It's time to provide America's children with real food at school.

To get the whole country to sit down to share a meal together, we're going to need the help of all kinds of people: parents, teachers, community leaders, kids and people who've never done anything like this before. We're asking everyone to pitch in, starting today--because with the President calling for health care reform and the First Lady planting a garden on the White House Lawn, we've got an opening to pass legislation that grants 30 million children the freedom to grow up healthy.

Check it out.

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Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/ The Omnivore's Dilemma, and he was feeling the Michael Pollan rapture. He even talked about it in an interview with Joe Klein, saying "our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that ... are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."

So what gives? He's been all over the place this past week putting forth his health care plan and I haven't heard one word about food, and how preventative medicine--in the form of real food down the hatch--could save this country tons of money, while saving lives.

I recognize that, say, the Farm Bill is not what's under discussion right now and that there is an order of operations in Washington. The Child Nutrition Act, however, is making its way through Congress. Discussions around its reauthorization have revealed that Senator Harkin (D-Ia) understands the connections between what our kids eat and how their health fares; I know our First Lady also gets it. So why no mention from our POTUS in the health care talks?

Well, there's the whole tax on sugary soft drinks debate, but this misses the point. Please explain to me the logic of agricultural subsidies that make soda really cheap and then adding a tax on to said soda to make it expensive again (n.b. major oversimplification).

I was pretty excited when Obama read The Omnivore's Dilemma, and not just because it meant he was a potential President who would actually read. It's summer time now, a great time to read a book, or even head to the movies, say. Might I recommend he go for a refresher and see "Food, Inc.?" It hasn't opened in DC yet, but maybe on their next date night, he and Michelle could fly back to NYC and check it out.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.194711 2009-05-04T14:13:44-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

Jerusha Klemperer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerusha-klemperer/
In Mexico, regular Coke is made with cane sugar and it is delicious. A glass bottle of ice-cold Mexican Coca-Cola is not to be missed. Here in the US Coke is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup, something I really don't care for on a whole lotta levels, including its taste. It leaves a slick sugary burn on the back of my throat, and frankly -- blech. (for more on the merits of South American Coke, check out this post on the Atlantic Monthly Food Channel). So, here in the US I forgo regular Coke, and I opt for the Diet, with its Nutrasweet tang (for more about the sweetness levels in various fake sweeteners, read this article in the Times Dining Section).

After a brief bout with the cancer (a little one, "the best kind," said the oncologist), I looked at my life and asked myself where this could have come from. Logically I knew that sometimes cancer comes uninvited, with no place set at the table and no friendly welcomes. But what if, what if, I wondered, there was something I was eating/drinking/doing that brought this on?

By that point I was a pretty much a model of real food eating--mostly organics, almost nothing processed. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink much, and I exercised like crazy. All of which, I realize makes me sound pretty un-fun. But, but I'm a blast, I am! I digress...

In a medical-panic-fueled-frenzy, I wondered if my Diet Coke thing--let's call it that--was the problem. Sweetened with the questionable aspartame, laden with fake colors, nutritionally bereft, but oh-so-good with a slice of pizza, was Diet Coke the culprit?

I quit cold turkey, finally started guzzling water like you're supposed to, and felt pretty darn good about. Sure there was the fact that I now had no vices, and had maybe lost the little bit of edge I once possessed. But I felt like I'd cut out a little pernicious growth of hypocrisy, just like my doc had snipped out that pesky tumor.

This lasted six months.

In the 2 years since, I have gotten on and off the ol' soda wagon more times than I can count. And when I titled this post "quitting soda cold turkey," it was more aspirational than real, and I'm just now as I write this going through a trying-to-kick-it cycle. Or thinking about trying to kick it, maybe, say, after the weekend. Or maybe the following weekend. We'll see.

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