Real food is...dangerous??

My mother recently sent me one of those little tidbits of email wisdom that plague the internet from time to time, confusing people. I emailed her my thoughts, but thought I might just as well expose the rest of you my little rant. First, here's the gist of the email:

Written by Zola Gorgon - author of several cookbooks..
Watch out for those spoiled onions. I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, makers of mayonnaise. Mullins is huge, and is owned by 11 brothers and sisters in the Mullins family....
The guy who gave us our tour is named Ed. He's one of the brothers. Ed is a chemistry expert and is involved in developing most of the sauce formula. He's even developed sauce formula for McDonald's. Keep in mind that Ed is a food chemistry whiz. During the tour, someone asked if we really needed to worry about mayonnaise. People are always worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's answer will surprise you..
Ed said that all commercially-made Mayo is completely safe. "It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. No harm in refrigerating it, but it's not really necessary." He explained that the pH in mayonnaise is set at a point that bacteria could not survive in that environment. He then talked about the quint-essential picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on the table and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick.
Ed says that when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials look for is when the 'victim' last ate ONIONS and where those onions came from (in the potato salad). Ed says it's not the mayonnaise (as long as it's not homemade Mayo) that spoils in the outdoors. It's probably the onions, and if not the onions, it's the POTATOES. He explained, onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion. He says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your refrigerator. It's already contaminated enough just by being cut open and out for a bit, that it can be a danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you put in your hotdogs at the baseball park!).....
For some reason, I see a lot of credibility coming from a chemist and a company, that produces millions of pounds of mayonnaise every year.'

First of all, do you really want to take advice about what to eat from the man who invented McDonald's special sauce? Seriously, what's in that stuff? I'll tell ya:

Big Mac® Sauce:
Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative), spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).

I've bolded the parts that aren't actually food, or that are likely to be genetically modified. Now I'll ask again, are you going eat what this guy tells you to eat?

Chemists know about chemistry. They know how to make something smooth, last for all of eternity, keep it moist, add fake taste, add colour, change the texture. Incidentally, all of these things are already there if you just eat actual food. The fact that a company produces millions of pounds of something every year is not an indication that it's good. It's an indication that they have good marketing. (The sauce above is a great example.) It's also not an indication that it's safe. Think about how much deli meat Maple Leaf produced last year, or how many jars of peanut butter came out of the Peanut Corporation plant in Georgia.

Which brings me to my second point. Are you really going to take advice about what to eat from a man who considers the fact that commercial mayonnaise will never spoil, even if unrefrigerated, a good thing? What does it take to make it last indefinitely, given that mayonnaise is supposed to be made by whipping raw egg yolk, vinegar, and oil (I know, I've made it from scratch). These things spoil, and so they should, but give me homemade any time. If it doesn't spoil, you should worry. It's a good general rule to never eat anything that won't spoil, because that's a pretty reliable sign that it's not really food but something a chemist concocted in a lab.

Another good rule for eating (and life for that matter) is to never put anything in your body if you don't know what it is or where it's come from.

To address the safety issue, I suspect what this guy is talking about is the fact that onions grow in the ground and thus get dirt on them. Depending on how you're farming, there could be all sorts of things in that dirt (another good reason to know where your food comes from). Even if the onions are washed off, something could remain on the skin, which will then get into the onion once your slice it from the outside in. Because onions are very moist, they are a great bacteria growing medium. This, however, is not unique to onions. This is why there have been problems in the past with contaminated melons. Slicing moves whatever is on the skin to the inside edible part. I guess we're just more likely to leave a cut onion in the fridge.

Breaking down the silos

A couple of weeks ago, I had the great opportunity to be part of a panel discussion following the screening of a new documentary call FRESH here in Vancouver. I encourage everyone to see this film if you get the chance. There are no more screenings scheduled for Canada, but you can arrange to host one, or order a copy of the DVD for yourself. Here's what it's about:

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

It's a fantastic film, and presents a really positive view of what is hopeful in the food system. Ana the director gets her point across while leaving the viewers with a sense that the food industrial complex is not the only way forward.

Not surprisingly, a lot of what came up in the film reminded me of the issues I'm trying to address in my thesis, and the quintessential farm imagery of the silo really triggered some thoughts. In the film, Iowa farmer George Naylor (of Omnivore's Dilemma fame) talks about how the natural cycles that sustained the farm for generations were broken when the silos were put up on his farm. In academia, this metaphor of silos is used to describe how we operate in disciplines that lose connection with reality by not communicating with one another. Scientists and academics love to pull out one little piece of a puzzle and study it in isolation, and then attempt to relate the findings back to the real world. Efforts for transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and crossdisciplinary research try to reconnect research to reality. In reality, this tends to be a lot of rhetoric because the Academy and all its associated institutions are set up to operate within disciplines, or silos if you will.

To bring this back to the food issue, the silos on farms across North America are a fantastic representation of the way we have distanced ourselves from our food. This separation - of food from nature, of people from food, of farming from community - is my hypothesis of what is wrong in food around the world. It can be connected to issues of hunger, nutrition, obesity, social structures, and the list could go on. By putting grain into silos, we lose sight of it. When we lose sight of something, we lose control over it. When we lose control, we lose knowledge of what is really happening. When we lose knowledge, we lose any sense of real choice. The silos represent the start of wide scale industrialization, standardization, commodization, professionalization*, .....ization, ....., that contribute to a loss of food culture and the sense that our environment is something 'other' than ourselves.

We put food into silos and forgot where it came from. Everything changed in the way we eat once those silos went up, and as a society we didn't notice. The power over what's to eat shifted away from the farmers who grow the food to the corporations who sell it. They try to control nature by industrial agriculture and our diet by mass processing and marketing. When we put up silos, whether literally or figuratively, we distance ourselves from the natural world, and we aren't going to figure things out until we break them down. That's why we need the heroes, visionaries, and activists - those people in FRESH, and the ones I've been working with for my thesis - to drive this movement to help us reconnect, remember, and rebuild our cultural, ecological, and social connection to food.
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*By professionalization, I'm referring to the way we have passed authority over knowing what to eat to medical professionals who offer dietary guidelines that are so complex that nobody knows what to eat any more without professional advice. These guidelines are a victim of scientific reductionism and are based on nutrients and not foods, and arguably, further separate us from what we eat.
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Look what I made!

In all my talk about the importance of connecting to our food, I try to do what I can to reconnect with mine. Usually this comes though in the way I acquire (i.e., buy) food, but I'm trying my best to step outside the usual retail system whenever I can. Food to me should be elevated beyond something as base as unconscious financial exchange. I think we can become far more nourished by our food if it comes with some measure of effort, a little bit of thought, and through some kind of human connection. I'm not about to ditch my city digs for a farm (for many reasons, one of which being I would likely starve to death), so here's what I've been doing in lieu.

• I go to the fabulous Vancouver farmers markets when they're in season.
• For the second year in a row, I've joined a CSA with a cooperative farm for produce during the summer and early fall. (CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you buy a share in a farm in the spring and in return get a share of what is produced. We are shareholders in the true sense: we put up some of money to help the farm get going during planting time, and we share in both the risk and produce of the season. If it's a terrible growing year, we don't get a lot of edibles for our money, but we do get to know that we've taken a tiny bit of the burden off a group of farmers who are struggling even in good times. If it's a great year, we get the bounty of that in exchange for taking that risk and paying up front. My share is with a cooperative farm Fraser Common Farm in Abbotsford, which also happens to be the home of one of my research partners for my thesis project.)
• This year, I am proud to say that I am one of the founding shareholders in the Urban Grains CSA. This is a CSA that produces local grain...a rare find in these parts. Apparently the early settlers of the Lower Mainland of BC grew a lot of wheat and other hardy grains. This is no prairie, but if the settlers didn't grow their own, they would have starved. (It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that there are a number of conditions beyond our control - natural disaster or trade disruption being the most likely - that could bring us back to a similar state. And it's even more important to remind ourselves how absolutely unprepared we are for that kind of occurrence.) So, Urban Grains is trying once again to grow grain for human consumption around Vancouver. A local couple got the idea, found some heritage seed grains, and found a farmer willing to plant them. We members have put up some cash to get things going, and with a little luck and a hopefully dry summer, we'll each have 20 kilograms of freshly milled hard and soft wheat flour in the fall. Cool!
• One of my favourite new places to get food is a little shop down the street called Home Grow-In. A farmer from the Okanagan Valley opened this little place in my neighbourhood on a residential streetcorner. She sells only locally produced plants and food products. They don't take debit or credit, only cash or cheque. I was buying some strawberries and bread there yesterday and realized I was short on cash. It was no problem...I just took my stuff home and dropped off the rest of the money the next time I biked by. I bet they wouldn't let me do that at Whole Foods.
• And last but not least, I'm putting a twist on a popular Vancouver pasttime and "growing my own". My little city balcony is just about filled with pots of edibles at various stages of growth. I'm already on my second seeding of mesclun greens. There's a lovely zephyr squash just about ready to be picked, lots of herbs, kale and chard, some edible flowers (marigolds and nasturtiums), and tomatoes and onions on the way. I'd love to add a chicken and a goat, but I'm worried that my landlord downstairs might frown on that.... I am, however, putting my underground parking space to good use and raising worms. (Not for eating....my newfound omnivorousness hasn't quite gone that far yet!) They are eating my food waste and I am putting their waste back onto my plants as yummy compost and compost tea.

One of the things that been a great motivator - as if I needed any motivation to increase my personal food supply - is a group called VanGrow. We like to think of ourselves as something between a peasant movement and a gardening support group. It all started after a neighbour and local restauranteur, and owner of my favourite Indian restaurants Vij's and Rangoli, decided it was time to get more connected to both food and community and put an open invitation in the Vancouver Sun for people interested in joining her. We still haven't figured out what we are, but so far it's a loose collective of people interested in food and growing food, and interesting in sharing the experience with others. We share stories, ideas, skills, and seeds. Some of us got together to inoculate some logs with shitake spores and should have a nice crop of fresh mushrooms in the spring. It's pretty amazing to see how a group of complete strangers can come together over cups of tea and, in a few short months, create a movement of almost 200 people interested in doing more about their own personal food supply.

Respecting the flesh

Anyone who follows the news in Canada will no doubt have heard the recent flurry of news/uproar/vilification/praise over Governor General Michaëlle Jean's recent consumption of seal at an Inuit ceremony in Rankin Inlet. For those of you who have had your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed while yelling "lalalalalalalalalala" for the past week: our über-cool and highly respectable Queen's representative was visiting Inuit communities in the north and, as GGs are wont to do, attended a cultural ceremony. So what, you say? This one happened to be the celebration of a seal harvest during which the freshly caught seals are skinned and partially eaten, raw. The most important parts of the seal and eaten right away: elders first, dignitaries second, etc. So, when the elders had been served and Michaëlle (if I may use her first name) was offered a piece of the heart from the seal she was learning how to skin and gut, she did what any woman of respect and manners would do in such a situation and accepted the kind and generous offer. And she said she enjoyed it.

Well. As one could imagine, that's when all hell broke loose. Somehow, this act of participating in a ceremony that shows great respect for the animals who are sacrificed to keep a people alive, and that shows equally great respect for the history and culture and collective wisdom of that people, has been interpreted by Europeans and animal rights activists as barbaric and cruel. Now, anyone who knows me will know that (1) I am a huge defender of the sanctity of all sentient beings (i.e. I recently hand-picked several hundred red wiggler worms out of a defunct vermicompost pile to avoid throwing them out with the ill-fated semi-composted waste material), and (2) I don't think having respect for life demands the vilification of the seal hunt, sealers, and those who depend on them for culture, livelihood, or food.

I'll try to contain my ranting on the matter and leave you to follow the Globe and Mail reports. But I must pass comment. Michaëlle was well aware that her actions would be interpreted as a support of both the Inuit and the Newfoundland seal hunt. She was also aware that the seal hunt is an essential part of both cultures, and that if done in a respectful manner it is no worse than any other form of hunt. By fully participating in the post-hunt ceremony, she was making a very clear statement to the Inuit (remember them? the people who really matter in all these shenanigans) that their way of life, their culture, and their way of eating is okay. It's good. It's right. Imagine the importance of this message to a people whose culture and way of life was nearly destroyed by the Canadian settlers, a people whose food supply has been contaminated with methylmercury and persistent organic pollutants by the actions of more southern cultures, a people who are trying to preserve what they can of their traditions in the face of western culture and its social fallout, a people who survive on what is available in their very harsh environment. Imagine then, the message that she would have sent had she refused the seal heart. In the simple phrase "no, thank you" she would have been telling the Inuit people that their way is not good, that their food is not good enough, and they should change to be more like the people who created so many of their current challenges. She would have been offensive and rude to her hosts. That is not the role our Governor General.

I have one final question for those who would have the GG's head, or heart:
Would her participation in the ceremony be interpreted as such an act of evil if it were a deer, or if chickens or cows were a common ceremonial beast of the Inuit? I think not.

The Great Unlearning

It seems that life of late, and really since I started my PhD, has been about undoing. At the risk of embarking on a rant of academic drivel, the existential journey I call a dissertation has become about deconstructing my entire education. This all came about because of my efforts to do a dissertation based in the social sciences after years of training and work in the health sciences. Suddenly I found myself dealing purely with thoughts and ideas, with maybe a little qualitative data thrown in to back them them up — quite a shift from that other world where numbers reign supreme and you throw in a few token ideas at the end in the "interpretation and application" section of a research report, taking care of course not to say something that couldn't be referenced back to some form of data elsewhere.

It was a very conscious choice to stick to the thoughts and ideas brand of research for my PhD. The more I learned about epidemiology and data, the more I understood how easily numbers can be manipulated — not falsified, just purposefully interpreted — to give the answer that best fits with one's worldview. It seemed to me that it made more sense to be up front about these biases and openly acknowledge the fact that ideas and opinions are very influential in the creation of research, so I set off on my search for understanding about the relationships between food, society, and culture in the facing of changing political and economic worlds. Still, even though the rationale for qualitative work resonates more closely with my heart, I have struggled and felt pulled in two different directions. I had been thinking this was simply the result of doing something for which I lack in training and experience, having to learn a new way of doing as I went along. It quickly became clear that I was not only learning how to do things in a new way, but I really had to unlearn everything I'd been taught.

A scientist walks into a coffee shop and sits down with three anthropologists.....

Something happened last week that made me realize this is something more. I joined a small thesis writing group in an effort to break down the mental walls that were preventing me from moving forward. I was sitting in a cafe sharing writing troubles with three anthropologists. I described all my difficulties in applying social theory to my work and how it was keeping me from beginning analysis of all my interview data (something I've been ranting about for 3 years now). They asked where the initial idea for my research came from, and I started in about The Decline of the Modern Cookbook* and the social determinants of health. They looked at me slack-jawed and told me I already had a theoretical perspective and I should just get on with it and ignore Foucault, Bourdieu, Levi-Strauss, critical theory, post-structuralist constructivism, and all that.

Theoretical problems solved, we moved on to analysis. My science brain figured I needed a detailed paper trail of 'proof' for everything I claim to have found through my research. (I should note here that this is not because I think that's necessary, but because I thought nobody would consider it legitimate research otherwise). Anyway, I learned that anthropologists consider spending months in a place, interacting with people, interviewing them, observing what happens, and then clarifying what you learned from that to be entirely legitimate. No need for complicated software and pages on end of code (which of course, would be constructed in my mind, but somehow the codification process lends legitimacy to those folks who think social research is 'unscientific'). So, I told them the main things I learned and why, and suddenly I'm halfway to an outline for my thesis and a plan for how to write it up.

Unscientific Un-learning

All this got me thinking. A lot. And I think I've learned a few things about myself and the academic process in general.
1. Most mainstream education has the effect of slowly killing our creativity. I thought this happened in university, but I think it began much sooner. In high school I used to skip my science classes to attend music rehearsals. Back in grade one, there was some concern about my progress on account of shoe tying issues. To the educational system, I wasn't good at tying shoes. To me, they just didn't appreciate my creative methods. I mean, my shoes never fell off....

2. The loss of food culture and cooking skills and knowledge — all the things that led to my thesis research — are related to a loss of culinary creativity and the homogenization of diet. Interestingly, around the time I was being criticized for creative shoe tying, I was given the Beatrice Potter Natural Foods Cookbook to which I attribute the origins of my intense attraction to good food.

3. There's something going here between my own creative processes, my dissertation, and food. Somehow it's all going to connect. Oddly enough, it was the sense that my education was killing my creativity that led to my dropping out of music school way back when, and ultimately to my scientific education. I've decided to reclaim it by learning to play the tabla. This has the nice side benefit of having a connection to Indian culture and spiritual traditions, which conveniently will be a major theme in my thesis.

I of course have no hard data to prove any of this.

*Some fodder for a future post, where I show how cookbooks in the 1980s began to look more like IKEA furniture assembly instructions than guides for preparing food.