Cookbook Mondays: In Celebration of Food Day

Today is Food Day. Now, do not confuse this with World Food Day, which took place last weekend. The U.S. version was founded by two congress people, seeking to rally public advocacy around reforming the domestic food system. Six basic principles make up the agenda:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms and limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment and animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote healthy by curbing junk food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

That is a hefty set of goals, but I encourage all of you to sign the petition on the website to garner as much support! In the meantime, it seemed like a good time to break out a cookbook I had acquired and not yet consulted: A Cook's Book of Vegetabales: Peas, Beans, Greens. This is an out-of-print Aussie cookbook focused on just what its title insinuates.

So I made this lovely dinner (and week's lunches) and forgot to take a photo (not very photogenic food, anyhow)! So, instead you get some old photos of an eggplant, and my contributions to Wellness Weekends on Diet, Dessert 'n' Dogs (both adapted from the aforementioned cookbook). I think this roundup1 is well-suited for Food Day, in so much as it promotes healthy meals and avoids the need to rely on factory farms by being completely animal-product-free!

Creamy Sweet Potato Polenta
1 orange sweet potato, washed and aerated with a fork
t tsp coconut oil
1/4 cup soy or almond milk
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup polenta
3 cups water

1. Microwave potato for 3-4 minutes, until soft but not dried-out.
2. Meanwhile, heat 3 cups of water to boiling, adding polenta at the beginning. Continue to stir and add liquid as necessary, until loses its coarse, grainy texture. Add cinnamon, salt and milk.
3. Mush potato and oil together until smooth. Add to polenta with a fork, and combine until even.
4. Serve warm.

Eggplant and Lentil Salad
1 medium eggplant, diced into 1/4 inch cubes
2 tbs olive oil (I tried a smoky one!)
1/2 small onion, finely diced
1/4 tsp ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup red lentils
1 cup vegetable stock
1 tbs red wine vinegar (optional)
1 tbs olive oil (good stuff, optional)

1. Place eggplant in a bowl with salt. Allow to sit for 30 minutes.
2. Heat 1tbs olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and cook for 2 minutes. Add eggplant and cumin. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, until onions are translucent and eggplant soft.
3. Remove mix back to a bowl. Heat second tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat.
4. Add garlic and brown for a minute or two. Then pour in vegetable stock and bring to a boil.
5. Cook lentils until soft and liquid is gone. Return eggplant to pan and cook for another five minutes.
6. Toss in vinegar and good quality olive, if so desired, before serving up.

Musings on Hunger (and Over-Indulgence): Stuffed and Starved

I have never experienced hunger. Sure, noon rolls around and I feel a little rumble in my stomach, but that’s not the same thing as a chronic emptiness and under-satiation. Well, over one billion people world-wide suffer from undernourishment and hunger. This does not even take into consideration famine events that result in fatalities and acute instances of hunger. About a month ago now (I know, tardy on the posting), I read a fabulous work that brought this subject more to the forefront of my thinking.

Raj Patel has done much of the thinking and researching for us on this topic. Stuffed and Starved addresses the inequities between the billion overweight and the billion underfed. But Patel also traces the evolution of our food system, of which the most notable transformations have occurred within the last century. With the advent of mechanization and chemical additives, the way society on a global scale approaches food has moved drastically from life-giving sustenance to capitalist consumer product.

His historical and political/economic analysis of the underwriting factors causing ailments of poverty and affluence blew me away. He looks at everything from increasing incidents of farmer suicides (yes, he commences with this cheery topic) to free trade agreements to the chemical and botanical components of what we eat. One of my favorite chapters detailed the birth and rise-to-power of the supermarket. And while you must read with a critical eye, as Patel most definitely falls firmly on the anti-industrial food system side, he introduces a wealth of issues to munch on (haha, pun intended).

One chapter speaks largely to the efforts of “conscious consumers” and how those to fairly trade and shop Whole Foods (sorry friends) may fall short. Patel posits that the latter, specifically, is “essentially trying to “refashion” our food system under the current large-scale infrastructure” (p.311). And although the Slow Food Movement now seems to epitomize “the kind of eating that is transparent and socially embedded in a way that industrially-produced food can’t be (p.281)”, that and other alternative foodie channels are often criticized as being elitist and upper-class. Considering the portion of my income that I now spend on food, I can understand where critics are coming from!

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Raj Patel
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By now, I think it’s clear that our food system is not only global, it is complicated. We think a lot about putting our dollar towards products that best support our values (and, unfortunately sometimes, our means), but rarely do we really contemplate how we arrived at a food industry so far removed from its roots and so bent on commercial gain.

There are many more topics in the book that are fascinating and simultaneously disturbing: the marketing campaigns and consolidation of large agri/food business (p.101; 104); the problems with the green revolution and how the second green revolution (genetic engineering) may not be the cure-all we hoped it would be (p.125; 136); and why our current food system is so darn vulnerable (p.294). It’s not all doom-and-gloom, and Patel does provide action items to make us all feel like we can DO something (p.303-315). But while consumers alone can make some impact, much of what needs to happen is on an institutional and political level.

Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2007.

So, sitting at home cross-legged on the sofa, munching on some cucumbers and tomatoes, I can say that I have been hungry but never HUNGRY.

Resources:

Stuffed and Starved Website

Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment

United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization

The End of Food

I generally read two books at a time: a non-fiction piece that exposes the depressing reality of our world, and a fantasy novel that provides an escape from everyday life. Well, I just finished my slap-in-the-face real world book - The End of Food by Paul Roberts. Knowing what I know about the food system and our global economy, I shouldn't have been at all surprised by Roberts' analysis. But, for some reason this book threw me off balance. Maybe it wasn't as peppered with optimistic tidbits as some others I have read; maybe it was Roberts' focus on the politics of the matter. Whatever it was, this is a dense, info-packed thought-provoker.

The treatise begins by recounting the evolution of Homo sapiens food consumption. This was actually one of my favorite parts (maybe because I am a bit of an anthropology nerd at times). Roberts tracks our progress from hunters and gatherers, to the advent of farming, and through our more recent industrialization of food production. For all our thousands of years experience in procuring and eating food, we have only recently begun distancing ourselves to such a great extent from our source of foods - although we have been manipulating crops and animals almost from the beginning.

This little historical bout quickly turned to a description and critical analysis of the development of modern industrial agriculture. Believe it or not, in less that 100 years, America has gone from a largely small-family-farmer agrarian society, to conglomerate consolidated industrial power. And along with this shift, our food has morphed into the almost unrecognizable. We learn about the political and economic underpinnings of this transition as well as its continuing development. From the grocery store shelves of highly processed corn products in a multitude of shapes, colors, and flavors, to the health consequences of the big business livestock industry, and finally to the impact of global food markets on world hunger, The End of Food covers as many bases as one book can.

Paul Roberts tries to take an unbiased approach of a journalist in unearthing and conveying the "true" story of our food system. I think he does a pretty darn good job of this, while still managing to scare the living daylights out of me. The harsh reality is not often softened with sunshine and rainbows, but it is not presented in a way that makes me want to curl up under a rock and just shut down. There is hope; there is a LOT of work to be done and a huge necessary reworking of our mentality and approach to food . But, there is hope.

If you enjoy food, care about the direction our food system is headed, and want a matter-of-fact explanation of our current and potential future situation, The End of Food is an excellent choice and a good (if not the fastest) read.