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Beth Bader — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:43:01 +0000

The Latest on the Farm Bill
Michael Pollan sent an email to his subscriber list with his take on the Farm Bill that was finally passed after much delay, debate, a veto, a Congressional override. The short take is the bill contains no major subsidy reform. Pollan’s words on the subject:

Here’s what I think happened. Critics of farm-policy-as usual– and I count myself among them– did a much better job of demonizing subsidies than they did proposing alternative forms of farm support that would have won over some percentage of the farmers now receiving subsidies. The whole discourse depicting subsidies as a form of welfare — payments to celebrities, rich people in cities, mega-farms etc– convinced many farmers that the ultimate goal of the farm bill’s critics was to abolish subsidies, rather than to develop a new set of incentives that would encourage farmers to grow real food and take good care of their land. Had the reformers crafted proposals that were easy to explain and attractive to even just a segment of commodity-crop farmers, we could have made much more progress. Instead, faced with what appeared like a threat to their livelihood, the old guard hunkered down and defended the status quo, refusing even to negotiate on the central issues. Better alternatives could have split this block, and it was our failing not to devise and promote them. What the Old Guard did instead of negotiating a new system of farm support was what it has always done: pick off the opposition, faction by faction, by offering money for pet programs. The history of the farm bill has long been about such trade offs: Urban legislators support subsidies in exchange for rural support for food stamps. That Grand Bargain has now been extended to supporters of organic agriculture, local food systems, school lunch advocates, etc. The reason that, in the end, most of the activist groups wound up urging Congress to override the veto is that, by the end, they all had been given something they liked in the bill. You could put it more baldly, and suggest they’d all been bought off– that the $300-plus billion bill represents the exact price of buying off all the critics of the farm bill, plus the cost of maintaining the status quo. But this is how the game is played, and the fact is, some good will come of these programs, modest as they are– they will sow seeds of change and legitimize alternative food chains, or so we can hope.
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Environmental Defense Fund: Bothering to Save the Planet, One Step at a Time

Leslie Valentine — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:57:18 +0000

You swap out your light bulbs for energy-efficient ones, keep your house as chilled as a meat locker in winter, bicycle to work, eat little meat and drive a hybrid — yet nagging at you is this thought: Do my small actions make a difference? Author Michael Pollan says they do.

In last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine (4.20.08), Pollan wrote a provocative essay, “Why Bother? Looking for a few good reasons to go green.” In it, he wrestles with those lurking questions about our everyday choices to stave off global warming. Some excerpts:

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down…, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

He looks at the reasons we find for not doing anything: “There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing,” he writes.

And yet, he resoundingly concludes that those little things are worth the bother.

Eat Food. Not Too Much. Translated.

Beth Bader — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:07:39 +0000

So, when Michael Pollan set forth his short mantra on food, what did it all actually mean when you go to fill your dinner plate? For starters, we eat too much in general, and too much of the wrong things. Following are some very specific guidelines on actual portion sizes, and tips on eating right without dieting. I hate dieting.

First, some general “gut checks” you should keep in mind daily:

How many servings of each type of food we should eat each day
All the different colors and kinds of veggies, and if you are eating a variety
Small meals and healthy snacks work best for moderating blood glucose levels
When is best to eat, and what combinations of foods are best for you (eating proteins with carbs to balance sugars for diabetics, for example)
The true size of a portion, and sticking to it
The tremendous amount of healthy food you can eat for the same amount of calories as a small bit of unhealthy food

From My Bookshelf-Part 1

Lee Welles — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:07:16 +0000

As a writer of fiction, I constantly get the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer is, two places: I get out and play in the world a lot and I read a LOT! I wanted to share some of the books on my shelf, so that you too…can get inspired.

Food and food production was the first topic I tackled. I haven’t read it yet, but Michael Pollan’s new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, sounds excellent. I enjoyed listening to a recent interview with him on Talk of the Nation and have it on hold at my local library. Michael Pollan also did a fantastic job with An Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Many people are familiar with Pollan’s writing, but I wanted to make you aware of some titles you may have missed.

I believe I stumbled up Fat Land by Greg Critser first. Being a health and wellness consultant, the subtitle, “How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World,” is what caught my eye.