My Veggie Sense Is Tingling

I don’t want to get my dander up too far about this, but there is the most [asinine article about irradiation]( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/business/02irradiate.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1) in the NY Times today.

It opens with the spurious notion that nine years before the spinach and peanut scares, the food industry was working their worry dolls over the health of the public. I remember way further back than nine years ago, the debate of irradiation had started- it was in food magazines as early as 1992. The basic issues raised then, though, still remain unchanged, and I don’t think the answers are in dispute:

- What is irradiation really doing to our food? (We don’t actually know)
- What’s to keep food processing plants from using it as a crutch to avoid maintaining the sanitation of its plants and the health of its workers? (Nothing)
- How will people react to a pork chop that can last a month? (Poorly)

Of course, the article asserts right up front that “the federal government says that it is safe,” which of course we can believe, right? Because all the studies were done with government dollars by independent labs that were in no way beholden to the food industry, right? While we have some idea about what irradiation does to food (including destroy nutrients), just like PCBs, styrofoam and margarine seemed safe at one time, we have absolutely no real idea about what eating irradiated foods does to our bodies. The studies are light, the timeframe is short and the funding is biased.

As for the responsibility of these companies, let’s not forget that- since the USDA gets about $7 a year for inspection funding and that their advisors come largely from agribusiness- the more or less self-policing that goes on in the food industry has already led us to salmonella, e coli and botulism scares all over the country. I think RD from Boston, commenting on the NY Times site, said it best:

>It would be akin to using “febreeze” to clean a room while ignoring the underlying cause (i.e. rotting garbage you should have taken out a week ago)

If you honestly believe that widespread irradiation will not lead to degradation of sanitation in American food processing, you really don’t understand how this works. Let’s not forget we could have predicted [the peanut scare]( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27peanuts.html
).

As for people reacting poorly to irradiated food, it can only help. Whether it’s hard science or heebee-geebees, I don’t really care. Keep that shit away from me.

The thing that made the article so unbelievably incomplete, however, was an utter lack of mention of the problem that has led us to the issue of irradiation: our wholly unsustainable food supply.

In our effort to get lettuce from California and grapes from Chile out to us in the hinterlands, we burn up oil in transport and plastics for packaging; we have to process much of it to keep it from spoiling on its long journey (and to monetize it as much as possible); and finally we have to put untold money and effort into government agencies that have to inspect this very long supply chain to make sure that we’re not poisoning ourselves, which of course we are.

This system, however, is a fly swatter wielded against the rhinoceros of the food industry. If we actually paid enough inspectors to go out and inspect the packing and processing facilities that output the majority of the food in this country, our food would cost as much as it does *everywhere else in the world*. This is what I mean when I say we don’t pay enough for our food. We don’t factor in the environmental costs of pesticides, the economic cost to our farmers, but most frighteningly of all, *we don’t factor in the simple, unadulterated fact that none of the food produced in this system is truly safe*. **The health of our food supply cannot be guaranteed in the current model; that cannot be disputed.** A dangerous food supply is an unsustainable food supply.

Lest you think I have blinders on to the failures of local agriculture, I grant that things can go wrong on every level. However, it is much easier for a farmer to keep track of even a few hundred acres of production than it is for all the government in the world to keep track of millions. And what’s more- and this is what kept our society safe since time immemorial- is that if local agriculture were the rule (as it was until 1940) and the spinach produced in California were tainted with E Coli, then *only people in California would get sick*. Does this suck for people in California? Yes, but it is then a *local* health issue. It doesn’t cause a nation- or world-wide scare.

Discussing the pros and cons of irradiation until we are blue in the face does not relieve us of the onus the question: why do we need it? The New York Times, of all media, should be able to ask such a question.

Eat Local Challenge- when it’s freezing out

Welcome, everyone, new reader Another Joe. Here’s an excerpt from his comment on the recent post ["Progress."](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/346):

>I’m thinking of joining a local CSA, but I have the luxury of living in Central California. You[r] essay got me wondering, though, about the relative difficulty of eating locally year-round if one lives in the Upper Midwest or other frozen climes.

Well, the long answer to your question is Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food. The short answer to your question is that there is not one state in the union (including Alaska) that does not have a year-round growing season.

There is, admittedly, no local citrus in Milwaukee, likewise local sugar or coffee, but that kind of limited-supply trading has gone on for thousands of years. There are, however, literally hundreds of crops which start in March and grow well into December, not to mention dozens more that will grow throughout the year.

It’s true: cabbage, kale, squash, chard, spinach, celery, radishes, leeks; all have hardy varieties that grow through full winter. In fact, there are squashes that won’t flower above freezing, frostberries (just like they sound) and black radishes which grow *only* in winter. And all this is without even mentioning that you can grow lettuce in a greenhouse just about anywhere, too.

In addition, there is something called “cold storage” which the older among us, or country types may recall as root cellars. This is a hybrid indoor-outdoor storage method where produce of various hardy kinds are harvested in the cooler months, then go into storage that protects them from the elements, but does not insulate them, usually partially dug into a hill or in the cellar of a barn. This is absolutely by no means the same thing as refrigeration, however. Refrigeration acts by condensing moisture out of the air, and therefore out of your vegetables. You counteract this in your refrigerator with plastic bags or crisper drawers. Those things, however, hasten mold growth and mess around with the vegetable or fruit’s natural moisture stasis, as anyone who’s put a potato in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for too long can tell you. The right kinds of things put into cold storage will last for months.

Every farmer in an appropriate climate has a root cellar, and this provides the farmer’s market (and hence you) with apples, pears, onions, garlic, potatoes and other goodies throughout the winter.

Will you see baby arugula in February? No. Asparagus? No. You’ll see new fire lettuce and black kettle radishes, and you should be happy to see them. A varied diet is the way to health, and getting all the nutrients we need. Iceberg lettuce from Chile and a vitamin don’t taste good, aren’t good for your health, aren’t good for the planet, nor are they good for your local economy. Go to [localharvest.org]( http://www.localharvest.org/) and see just what it is that your local farmer has in store for you.

A chocolate cow?

I went to elementary school with a girl named Jamie Moran. I can’t remember what year it is or anyone’s birthday, but I remember her vividly, because she was absolutely convinced- and endeavored to convince me- that eggs were made of milk. This was not an attempt at irony, or some confusion with a Cadbury product, she believed, and may still, that eggs are made of milk.

For real.

Thinking back on it now, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to me. Americans have no idea where the food they eat comes from. I’m not talking about farm kids here; I’m talking about the majority of people in this country who live in the suburbs and are walking type-two-diabetes-time-bombs. This is not by accident, agribusiness has added this element of opacity to food production for a reason. I’m quite certain that they don’t believe people want their animals treated inhumanely, want their meat stuffed full of rBGH and antibiotics, want their food supply endangered by biologically modified plants or want every independent farmer in America driven off of their land. There is a chance that some of these things might bother people.

I can’t help but wonder if this distance from something so elemental to us as humans hasn’t contributed to the distance that’s between us and one another. Stay with me here. I don’t think people respect cooking as a social institution anymore. I’m not talking about going out to dinner in a restaurant, that’s not- by definition- cooking. That’s not making something for the people in your life. I once said to a friend that I was only capable of two emotions: rage and cooking. Perhaps that’s slightly overstated, but in a sense, cooking is, or at least was, a mode of affection. I can understand why people may have lost interest in cooking. As our attention to celebrity chefs and food porn has grown, the ingredients this mania espouses have become more expensive and largely lowered in quality. Maybe you can find heirloom tomatoes on supermarket shelves, but if they’re hard as rocks and it’s February, who cares? Moreover, if all you do is watch or read about David Burke making foie-gras-beluga-truffle-platinum dumplings, you may rightly wonder why anyone would want to come to your house for spaghetti.

I’m sure this is the beginning of a lifelong rant, but I will leave it here for now. Food for thought.