Three years ago, I went to work undercover in America's food system. To the extent that I was motivated by journalistic intrigue, I wanted to see how the country's vast industrial food system worked. But more than that, I had a bone to pick with foodies.
The breaking point came at a post-conference party in California, when a young man I'd noticed photographing his artisanal cocktail earlier started chatting me up. When I said I wrote about food and class, he told me that if poor people would just make food a priority, their lives would be better. I asked what he suggested for people earning $8 an hour, and he replied that poor people had cable television. Perhaps they could get rid of that.
I'd had a couple cocktails myself, and so maybe that's why I blurted out, "What, are you giving up your precious iPhone to buy heirloom tomatoes?" Then I delivered what, in my tipsy haze, I probably thought was a scathing coda: "People like you are why everyone thinks good food is elitist!"
I stalked off; I imagine the guy was befuddled.
My anger--inappropriate at a professional gathering, not to mention pointless--telegraphed my upbringing. I was born to working-class parents in Michigan, infuriated at East Coast snobbery while I went to NYU on scholarship, and--once I secured a rent-stabilized apartment, keeping rent affordable--had ended up working as a reporter covering welfare reform and low-wage jobs in New York City. I grew up without much money and spent my days reporting on the lives of people who had even less: welfare clients, child care center patrons, teenagers who'd dropped out of school and didn't have jobs.
It drove me mad when I started to hear foodies wax rhapsodic over local produce, going on to imply, not-so-subtly, that to buy it was a measure of character and moral standing. I grew up eating processed food during the week, fresh stuff on weekends--that's how it works when you're being raised by a working, single dad--but that didn't mean my family didn't care about food; it was just what was easiest. And the families I now reported on? They cared about their meals and health, but they were mostly eating what was easy--readily available, affordable, tasty. My family and the ones I reported on weren't immoral. We were just broke and stressed.
So, really, when I started reporting The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, I was a woman on a mission. Yes, I wanted to see how the food system worked from farm to plate; but and that was a ruse to explore, as a journalist, how our food system works--or doesn't--for the families I grew up with and the ones I met in my work.
Here are nine things I learned:
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Kerry Trueman: Going Undercover In The Belly of Our Beastly Food Chain
I've been working on a blog project about the food desert (mostly in Chicago) for several months now. I started largely because I got annoyed at the Martha-Stewart-style "only the best will do" snobbery I see in the food world. I figured out you can make really good food with whole ingredients - even if your only grocer is the drugstore.
It need not be an either/or choice between eating made-from-scratch meals by standing over a stove at the end of a long hard day, OR relaxing with a microwaved tray of processed convenience food. What's so hard about throwing together the ingredients for a large pot of stew on a Saturday morning, simmering it for hours while you do something else, then dividing it up into individual portions and freezing them? You can come home from work on a weeknight, grab a serving from the freezer, microwave it for a few minutes - and VOILA! - home-cooked, made-from-scratch "fast food"!
A crockpot is not a necessity, but if you want to make a small, one-time investment you can pick one up pretty cheaply at a discount store.
I realize meat and vegetables can be pricey, and it's ridiculous that you have to spend three-quarters as much money, even at Walmart, for a single red bell pepper as for two burgers off the dollar menu at the fast food restaurant, but remember that adding some brown rice, barley, or dried beans to a soup or stew can go a long way toward "stretching" the meal, and those items are dirt cheap. While not a fan of a grain-based diet myself, at least these whole grains and legumes are better for you than the refined white flour bun on a fast food burger.
We are two French filmmakers working on a transmedia documentary about Detroit. You can read about our time spent at the Brightmoor Youth Garden, over at our website: http://www.detroitjetaime.com/2012/01/03/smores-in-brightmoor-detroits-urban-farming-delights/
I grew up working in the berry fields - 25 cents a flat (12 boxes - FULL) 35 cents if you stayed the whole season, top pickers could make about $5.00 a picking day (about 4 hours)--- now, farmers must pay a wage and not set minimum amounts to be picked PLUS deal with the whining, and the kvetching -------------------- could go on and on -- bottom line (and it is about the bottom line) stop blaming farmers!
Corporate agribusiness "farmers" have more in common with Wall St. bankers than they do with family farmers. It is this agribusiness food manufacturing that has destroyed the American diet.. We are buying food-like (Michael Pollan's word, I believe) products which arrive from the farm via the manufacturing process on the supermarket shelves. Eat at your own risk.
www.inspiredhomecooking.com
Just a few examples -
President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms.
Tom Vilsack, Monsanto shiII appointed Secretary foi Agriculture.
Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods.
Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is now the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Islam Siddiqui, Vice President of the Monsanto and Dupont-funded pesticide-promoting lobbying group, CropLife, is now the Agriculture Negotiator for the US Trade Representative.
Rajiv Shah, former agricultural-development director for the pro-biotech Gates Foundation (a frequent Monsanto partner), served as Obama's USDA Under Secretary for Research Education and Economics and Chief Scientist and is now head of USAID.
Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who took Monsanto's side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case, has been nominated to the Supreme Court.
Ramona Romero, corporate counsel to DuPont, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
DuPont's lengthy record of lies, crimes and misdeeds are well known, and the company's efforts to deceive the public and cover-up risks of its products continue to this day..."