Agroecology: Welcome To The 1800's.

Paula Crossfield from Civil Eater posted a story in the Huffington Post which references a UN study that claims to solve the challenges of hunger in an organic manner.

I suggest you all read the HuffPo article, then read the study.  What follows is an analysis of that study.

Allow me to decode this report for everyone:

*Eliminate animal feed and use those inputs to make more human food. - This is entirely unrealistic, especially since it advocates feeding animals the scraps of food we don't want.  Basically, there won't be enough food for the animals, so there will be less of them.  Meat will be a delicacy reserved for the wealthy.

*Revert back to farm labor of the 1800's when people had to work all day to barely produce enough food for their families and caloric intakes were between 1,000 and 1,500 kcal/day.

*Sell all the food locally... meaning that everyone has to be a farmer.   -  The few that aren't farmers will pay huge premiums for the labor intense, niche market food.  This also means you have to eat the food that is grown where you live.  That could be rice or that could be cassava.  Don't like either?  Move... I guess.

*Spend more money and research on plant breeding, but singles out 'industrial ag'.  -  This is a thinly veiled knock on fertilizers, pesticides, and biotech.  Replacing all that will be the way we used to breed crop varieties... when we were all starving.  Breeding desired traits into crops using conventional methods does yield the same results as biotech... except it takes much longer.  Years longer.

*In place of fertilizers, which add nitrogen to the soil, they advocate natural means... of adding nitrogen to the soil.  -  Of course, the natural methods will work(it's nitrogen too) but not as efficiently.

This whole report reads like a fantasy wish list written by a few activists without any regard for reality.

To sum up the plan...
Everyone grow organic since organic costs more money and farmers will make more.
More people will then be needed to farm this way and we'll need much more farms.
Unfortunately, we'll still be short of food so the only animal production that can be tolerated is animals fed the scraps of food we don't eat.
The rest depends on magic, apparently.

This couldn't have been written by agronomists and crop science experts.

There are some good things in here.  For instance, they advocate the use of ponds and nitrogen fixing trees.  They do allow for some fertilizer use where organic methods are unavailable.

The worst of what this plan does, however, is tie poor countries to subsistence level farming so that they may never develop and grow wealth.

An Example Of How Food Hysterics Reason.

Mark Bittman wrote an NYT piece about McDonald's new fruit and maple oatmeal that was easily one of the dumbest attempted take-downs of a food item I have ever seen.

It was very Fox News-ish in how it conveyed facts without context.  By the time people figured out the whole truth? Damage done.

And damage was undoubtedly the intent here.  Sometimes it's foodists crapping all over whatever seems to be popular at the moment, but lately attacks are usually nothing more than thinly veiled anti-corporate vitriol.

The way Food Hysterics bring about a story can be understood in two recent examples; one example being Mr. Bittman's critique of McDonald's fruit & maple oatmeal... or rather, fruit & maple oatmeal's creator - McDonald's, and the other being Michael Jacobson's HuffPo piece on caramel coloring.

Food Hysterics start with their worldview and work backwards, shaping the story to meet their predetermined outcome.  Bittman's beef isn't really with the oatmeal, it's with McDonald's. He says, 'The leading fast-food multinational, with sales over $16.5 billion a year (just under the GDP of Afghanistan), represents a great deal of what is wrong with American food today.'  So right off the bat, you should know that everything you are about to read is a negative against McDonald's.

Food Hysterics then steal one of Fox News' more devious tricks by leaving out all context in the numbers they report.  Those numbers are reported in a way to reinforce the negative image they just established.  The reader leaves the article disappointed and outraged... but they really aren't too sure why.  Bittman starts naming the number of ingredients and calls them chemicals without explaining what they're used for.  Yes, I do realize he's being honest, but not totally.  See, everything is a chemical.  You're a sack of chemicals, your filtered water is chemicals(H2O), but he knows that people squirm when they hear that so it just fortifies his point.  He recalls facts that are out of context, saying that this oatmeal has only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald's cheeseburger.  

Correct, but let's do a quick experiment.  Without looking up the nutritional facts... tell me how many calories you think are in a McDonald's cheeseburger.  You have your guess ready?  It's 300 calories.  That means that McDonald's Fruit & Maple Oatmeal contains a gut busting 290 calories.  Oh my!!  That's a whopping 14.5% of your daily recommended amount of calories(based on a 2,000 calorie diet)!  Not very much, considering breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day.  But never mind the context... too late for that, he already has you running for the hills in fear of those massive cheeseburger calories.  If you order the oatmeal sans the brown sugar, you can get down to an ethereal 260 calories and only 18 grams of sugar(32 grams with).

Mark then makes a point that oatmeal should just be the oatmeal + water and we should have the options of whether we wanted our wholesome goodness ruined with things like fruit and 30 calories worth of brown sugar.  He even goes so far as emailing McDonald's to pose them this question directly.  Two incredible things followed: first was that he actually reported what they wrote back and second... he glosses right over it.

Incredible thing number one: “Customers can order FMO with or without the light cream, brown sugar and the fruit. Our menu is entirely customizable by request with our ‘Made for You’ platform that has been in place since the late 90s.”

Incredible thing number two... his response: 'Oh please.'

Oh please?  This must be the Food Hysteric's equivalent to, 'Yeah, but still'

'Did you hear that the moon landing was faked?'

No.  We really did land on the moon.

'No, it was faked.  They have multiple light sources and shadows where they shouldn't be.'

Actually, they recreated the lighting conditions and surface areas on the moon to scale and proved it was right.

'Yeah...but still'

It basically means you have no argument.

Yes the oatmeal is 10 less calories than McDonald's cheeseburger or the Egg McMuffin, but those sandwich's are only 300 calories, which means the oatmeal is only 290 calories.  Not only that but the Egg McMuffin is only 7.1oz while the fully loaded oatmeal is 9.2oz.  So for less calories you get a more filling meal.  If your lunch and dinner had twice those calories, you would have only consumed 1,450 calories for the entire day and would most likely be running a caloric deficit.

I know this is a long post but bear with me... on to Michael Jacobson and the Center for Science in the Public Interest( CSPI ).

Jacobson's story warns of the dangers hidden in cola(which they already have a huge problem with).  He starts by talking about food marketers as if there is some building in Minnesota where they all live labeled, 'Food Marketers' and they're in constant cahoots with one another.  He mentions how caramel coloring is made and is all too happy with telling us there is a reaction with ammonia involved, but doesn't go so far as explaining the science.  Funny, I thought science was in his organization's name?

You start to see the familiar pattern emerge of facts without context after giving away his true bias.  He goes on to mention how lab rats and mice were given the coloring and formed tumors.  What he doesn't mention and, more importantly, what he doesn't address in any of the comments was the toxicity.  One study put the minimum amount of 4-Methylimidazole that causes cancer in lab rats to be 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.  The most 4-Methylimidazole they found per 20oz cola was 213 micrograms or .213milligrams.  Let's say someone weighs 100 Kg, they would need to ingest 4,000 mg/kg of bodyweight to get cancer.  That works out to over 18,000 20oz bottle of cola in the same 2 year period as the rats.  Can you drink 9,000 bottle of cola a year?  If I really try, I can get down 48 12oz servings in a week.  So even though I am a heavy pop drinker, I would fall far short.

But it's not about the science, is it?  It's about scaring people into taking a specific action.  These food hysterics are using you and your misguided outrage to shape the world the way they see fit.

A Brief Discussion Of Food And Income.

Fair Food Fight, a food activist blog has recently caught my attention.  They mean well, I'm sure, but the premise of many of their arguments is flawed.

The reason for their flaws seems to be that they need their ideas to always prevail while making sure certain people are always seen , not just as in the wrong, but part of a concerted effort do some harm.

So the food companies(corporations), ag companies(corporations), the products they sell, and even the government are all part of the problem in their eyes.  This leaves little room for facts, which they didn't consider when they formed their ideology.

What follows is a comment I left on their blog, The Devaluation of Food, Farms and Our Future.  The blog touched on other things, but I took plenty of room just responding to their call to make food a higher percentage of our income.  Enjoy.

If you look at the history of agricultural and economic development, the percentage spent on food is a fairly accurate indicator of wealth in a country.

It starts at 100% or very close to it, where nearly everyone is subsistence level farmers.  People were very poor because all of their money went to buying food.  They were the ultimate locavores... except they were perpetually starving.  The food they grew was barely enough to keep them going and that was before they had to sell some for money to buy other things. 

So that extreme doesn't work.  People can't go pursue other interest, because their labor is needed on the farm.  Speaking of which, we needed to have a lot of kids because we needed the labor.

Saying that we need to spend more on food, doesn't necessarily mean that we'll go backwards as a nation, but it also doesn't mean we'll all weigh less.  It's a flawed premise, assuming it's the cheap cost of food that makes people heavy.  Over-consumption of calories is what makes people obese.  We over-consume because food is much easier to find, ready to eat, and because we are too poor to be secure in our food choices. 

As humans, we have ALWAYS eaten whatever we could find.  Until recently, we couldn't eat enough, because we could never find enough food.  So the real problem is discipline and restraint, a concept which humans are relatively new to.

You can craft a caloric budget that allows for the foods you want along with exercise to help keep the balance.  You can do this with the prices of food now and especially if food is even cheaper.

I think the proper way to look at this is to say that people don't make enough money.  When we live paycheck to paycheck, you are never completely sure you'll have enough to eat in the future or have the money to buy the food(as cheap as it is).  So what we do is search for the best values for our money to stretch our dollars.

So if your theory is correct then paying more for that food will make people buy less of it, but that ignores thousands of years of human instincts.  More likely, we'd just spend the extra money and seek out more calorically dense foods, rather than more nutritionally dense foods.  When I have lot's of money, I am not so concerned with getting enough to eat.  I can eat a light meal, knowing that more is available later.  But as a poor person, which I most certainly am, I am much more likely to go to a buffet and consume larger meals. 

So that's it.  I was searching for specific ag econ graphs showing caloric consumption over the years as well as Engel Curves showing income vs food expenditures, but I got bored.  Link this blog, and follow me on twitter @samvance  If you already follow me, get someone else to.

Zero Tolerance Extremism.

Once again, my blog title is a clickable link that goes to a food science resource.  Today's resource is the faculty list of UMass' Food Science Department.  I chose UMass because they were ranked as the top food science department for PhD students in the country.

Today I'd like to address the problems concerning zero tolerance in  the conversation about food.  It's a pretty common practice when people argue about anything, that they take the arguments to the extreme boundaries to try to make a point.  So any discussion of guns leads to a world where jack-booted thugs are raping your  mother while you're watching and powerless because you have no gun... or it's like a John Woo film and everyone is diving sideways in slow motion shooting everybody until we are all dead.

Get the idea?

By taking arguments about food out to the extremes, Food Hysterics hope to make their point while making you defend the most ridiculous scenarios.  Just think of the movie, Super Size Me.  In that movie, Morgan Spurlock wanted to prove that our(Western, mostly American) fast food diets are making us very sick/unhealthy/giving us feline AIDS/etc.  

Morgan Spurlock could have set up an experiment similar to what comedian Doug Benson did in his stonermentary, 'Super High Me'.  What Doug did was smoke pot several times a day, every day, for 30 days.  He followed that up with 30 days of no pot.  So Doug had two sets of data to compare.

What Spurlock did was not only eat McDonald's every meal, but he also(as the title suggests) Super Sized those meals.  The end.  This is very extreme and is meant to prove a point rather than honestly explore an issue.  For instance, if he wanted to be fair, he could have maintained his normal caloric intake but only ate McDonald's and compared the results afterward.  He could've binged for 30 days and then tried to lose weight for 30 days eating only McDonald's.  He could have brought a registered dietitian the McDonald's tray liner with the nutrition facts on the back and planned out meals that met his needs.  Nope, just Super Size it... all day... every day.  Nobody does that.  Nobody eats out for every meal.  Hell, I'll say that most people don't even eat every meal(like breakfast).

I get flamed* by several Twitter trolls** who are anti-everything except a small garden. I have a theory that most of it traces back to an anti-corporate sentiment(which makes me appear pro-corporate for calling out their extremist views) more than anything, but they have some odd views about food nonetheless.

I was asked what my thoughts were on chemicals in food. ???  I wasn't sure how to respond because I didn't know how much they understood about food.  Do they realize that all food is made of 100% chemicals?  Were they referring to gras food additives and wanted to belittle them by just saying the word chemical?

So I explain that things are added to food to improve the: taste, texture, color, mouth feel, shelf life, safety, or nutritional value.  The troll then wonders how many people, if polled, would say they wanted any chemicals added to their food.  So now we already went to an extreme - 'any'.  Of course, if that's how the poll were conducted, everyone would vote no.  It's a leading question.  If I do a survey where I ask people if they want to be shot through the air at 500mph, I'll bet I get nearly all 'No' responses.  Does that mean that commercial air flight should be outlawed?

When I get pulled into these back and forths, I can usually see where things are heading.  So the interrogation breaks down into profits for the food companies.  So now I'm a shill because I explain why things are added to food.  If I were a food technologist working for a large company that was needlessly adding things to food without merit, I would be pretty happy.  Why?  Because I would get to be the hero after I reformulate the products, ditching the wasted materials and saving that company a shitload of money.  I explain that companies won't spend money on unneeded ingredients.  The conversation later evolves into that person referring to everything he doesn't eat as 'shit' and says, 'people eat shit they get sick. This can be backed by 10's of 100's of studies - but of course you disagree.'

This conversation goes nowhere.  It's a horrible circle that makes him crazier and more paranoid while making me dumber for responding.  What people need to realize is that there is a lot of nuance in food science and food issues.  Can BPA hurt you?  Yup, in high enough amounts.  Last I checked, the highest concentrations were found in a 15oz can of French Style green beans... and you'd need to eat 1,000 cans to get sick from the BPA.

Nuance.

People have died from drinking too much water, but we need water to live.  We actually need fat and salt, just not so much.  So the conversation can't be about banning or eliminating things, it has to be about moderation and educational outreach.  I need the help of food scientists and food science educators out their reading this.  

We have politicians wasting our time talking about the aforementioned BPA, and they have needlessly banned potatoes from the WIC program, even though they are great sources of fiber and potassium.  We have people suing Taco Bell because the filling isn't 100% beef, without considering that 100% beef leaves no room for seasonings.  We have a lot of hysteria out there and people are starting to just believe the negative because they haven't seen food scientists go on Oprah or The Daily Show or The Today Show, but they see plenty of Michael Pollan telling them not to eat foods that their Grandma wouldn't recognize.

We need to get out their and call out the extremists with science.  Call them out when they make silly arguments and explain the science behind what's in food.  If you know a food science professor or food science professional, get them on Twitter.  Have them follow me @SamVance. Be warned though, you'll get bombarded with trolls who seem to have all day to try to tweet you down and then discredit anything you try to say.  Hell, I even have a mock version of myself on Twitter @shitSamVancesez

* Flame - to pick apart someone's comments on the internet, usually resulting in the dreaded 'Flame War', a heated exchange that goes on for quite some time.
** Troll - A person who seeks out someone to flame.  Trolls are usually limited to specific topics and not at all random.  They find someone commenting on their pet subject, then they start internet arguments(Flame Wars)

Traceability: Jet Packs of the Food Industry.

Lyndsey Layton wrote an article about traceability in the Washington Post today.  For those unaware, traceability is the idea that food companies can trace exactly which of their ingredients went into each of their products.  Of course, they already know what type of ingredient is going into a specific product, but they may not be exactly sure when that ingredient was received or what lot # is associated with that exact ingredient where it was shipped.

It's confusing, I know.  I'll try to explain a little better and also give my ideas on how this can work.

When the major food safety overhaul passed, it contained a provision that food companies must be able to track where all their ingredients came from and where it's going.  It sounds simple in theory, but there are complications involved.  It's basically how we think about jet packs.  As Joe Rogan said in his stand-up act, 'Where's the jet packs, bitch?!'  We've heard about jet packs since the 50's and yet it never comes to fruition.  We have the technology... so where are they.  Traceability has the same sort of dichotomy involved.  Small problems and a matter of organization make this simple matter, simply complicated.

Here is the situation:  A wheat farmer brings his wheat to market, where it is bought by a mill.  This mill takes in the wheat, cleans it, and mills it into flour.  The mill then sells this flour to one or many food companies for a variety of applications.  The food company may use this shipment of flour on one product, several products, or even several different runs of several different products.  To further complicate matters, the wheat may be mixed with other winter or summer varieties from other farms before it's milled, so if there is a problem with the flour, it can come from anywhere.  This situation is the same for peppers, cilantro, onions, or whatever.

What each buyer/seller in the supply chain must do is track the place they bought from and the place they sold to.  I see the solution involving either rfid tags or upc bar codes.  The original source i.e. farmer, prints a code to affix to any paperwork as well as to the shipment.  This code or tag, when scanned, stores their farm's establishment number as well as a lot number for that item, as well as a time stamp. The next person in line must scan this bar code/tag then print their own.  The tag they print out contains the code from the original source.  This tag/code is printed and affixed to every shipment that contains THAT source. Fast forward to a bakery that is baking multiple products that day and multiple products the next day.  When they got that ingredient in, they scanned the code/tag and replaced it with their own as everyone else has done in the supply chain.  So now their code shows the time location and lot number for that ingredient for EVERY step of the supply chain.  

This is where it get's tricky. The bakery is going to run brownies and two types of cookies with the ingredient.  For each product they create, they must embed a code/tag with the ingredient's information... which contains every step in that process for every ingredient.  This bakery has the codes tied into their inventory system so they can look up and see some sort of a flow chart that shows every step for every ingredient, which can become hundreds of locations/lot numbers.  They can also use this to ensure they're using 'first in, first out'.

Traceability has a number of logistical problems.  First is how to figure out how a system for the lot numbers.  It can't be whatever the farmer/plant manager comes up with because we can't have duplicate codes floating around.  So the lot numbers must somehow use part of their establishment number to differentiate.  Each entity must have compatible computer systems, but honestly, you can do this with an Excel spreadsheet and a bar code scanner gun.

The feds must be the leaders here or what is simple and a little complicate becomes impossible.  They must act on how this framework will exist and they'll need a lot of resources($$) to get it right the first time.  Republicans need to realize this and not fly off the handle and defund it because it grows the government.  You know what's worse than an overblown government?  An inefficient government.  This part of the regulatory system can be a huge bonus to the industry, but if we start smoking and drinking while this baby is in the womb, it's going to be born slow and defective.  So let the government spend the money and staff the agencies with smart people(I'm available) to piece this together the right way so it can run efficiently.

Cory Booker: A Tale of Two Budgets.

I meant to blog about either the lame Pepsi - Yale research fellowship non-controversy or David Zinczenko's scientifically bankrupt Yahoo! articles about the worst foods.

But I see a better opportunity to educate here using one of my Twitter followers now public example.

Some econo-wonks already know about Newark Mayor Cory Booker's budget troubles.  He's tens of millions of dollars in the red with his city's budget and is forced with making deep cuts.

See, the recession meant that people had less taxable income.  Coupled with declining property values and a foreclosure crisis, that means that a large, trying-to-grow city like Newark has much less revenue to work with.  Imagine you get paid hourly and you get your hours cut.  You had planned to use your next check to pay rent, utilities, and groceries, but your check is about 2/3 of what you expected it to be under normal circumstances.  What do you pay... or more importantly, what don't you pay?  That's what Cory Booker faces.

At the same time, Cory has come to terms with another out of control budget.  Cory used to play football, and according to his Facebook post, played at 265lbs.  Football players play very hard and lift weights, so they can normally eat what folks on the farm would call a free ration diet.  Muscle mass acts as a food furnace, craving calories to keep up the bulk.  Many football players have trouble later in life with finding a compromise between the level of activity(weight training and cardio) and caloric intake.  He says that he got down to 230lbs(where he says he wants to be), but ballooned back up to 295 while dealing with his other budget.

Cory Booker is a bold and brave person to post this info online to a cruel and unforgiving internet.  He stands at a vulnerable point in his weight loss, because he will hear advice from many people.  But that's the problem with that internet, isn't it?  It's something I call being Google Educated.  All the knowledge in the world and all the experts in the world are at our fingertips... but so are the crazies.  You can learn about dna or how pasteurization works, but you can also learn about various JFK conspiracy theories or how vaccines are bad for kids.

So I'm writing this for 3 purposes: 1. to write another post, which I haven't done in a while  2. to give tips to Cory in one place rather than annoying him through my Twitter account @samvance and 3. to dispel some myths and misinformation before America's Mayor gets corrupted by them.

#1

It's not what you eat so much as how much you eat i.e. your caloric budget.

Many people who mean well in the obesity fight tend to demonize certain foods.  They say crazy, unscientific things like 'Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize.' or 'stay away from processed foods and preservatives'.  It's the calories, stupid... For example, a Kansas State University nutrition professor lost 27 pounds in 2 months eating mostly snack cakes.  How did he do it?  Calories.

Cory weighs 287 right now according to today's facebook posting.  That means, Cory needs to consume about 3,444 calories with no extra calorie burning activities to maintain that weight.  Since Cory is a male, he takes his current weight and multiplies it by 12(women should multiply by 11) to get a very basic idea of caloric consumption.  If Cory is active, like running or shoveling snow for people, then he would need even more calories to maintain that weight.

Cory can use this knowledge to his advantage, however.  While similar in structure to a monetary budget, the mathematics of a caloric budget are the opposite.  More isn't better in this case.  So what can Cory do right now?  Two things; monitor and set a goal.  Luckily, Cory has started the process by selecting a target weight - 230 lbs.  

Using the calorie math, we can do a little algebra to determine about how much he needs to get reach his goal.   

His current weight is represented as follows: 287 * 12 = 3,444  

For his goal weight, we use the following: X = 230 * 12  X = 2,760

So if Cory limits his caloric intake to 2,760 calories a day and leads an otherwise sedentary lifestyle, he will eventually get down to 230 lbs.  That's a difference of 684 calories a day.  A pound of fat = 3,500 calories, so theoretically, every 3,500 calories he shorts himself will result in another pound lost.  This will take approximately 5.11 days to lose 1 pound and 291 days to lose the 57 pounds it will take to get to his goal weight with just a sedentary lifestyle.  

But we all know from his Twitter feed that he isn't a sedentary person.  This is where the monitoring come's in.  For one or two weeks before beginning this process, I suggest Cory keep a food diary.  I have one on an Excel spreadsheet I can send to him that I got from Dr. Mike Mangino, who taught FST 201: The Science of Food at Ohio State.  The chart should include the portion, nutrients, and caloric content of everything he eats as well as the length of time or distance for any physical activities.  All of these things show how much he energy he really expands.  This is important because he may eat way more than 3400 calories given the amount of activity, so his caloric goals must account for that.  Meaning that 2,760 would be the minimum amount of calories he needs to be at 230.  If he burns an additional 500 or 700 calories a day through walking the neighborhoods, running, and yes, even sitting in meetings, then those calories must be added back in.

This is important so you avoid what I call the Race To Zero, where people try to eat as little as possible instead of the appropriate amount.  This is one reason I object to David Zinczenko's crappy Yahoo! articles about the Worst Foods in America.

#2

Avoid processed foods? What does that even mean?  All foods undergo some level of processing. Ignore it, Cory.  Your concern is calories, protein, carbs, and things like potassium.

#3

Avoid HFCS? No.  Pop is a hindrance because it represents empty calories.  Sugar is sugar, so it doesn't matter if it's cane, HFCS, raw, or pureed guava.  You can have soda and still lose weight, but cutting pop for at least a while is something very easy to trim from your bloated caloric budget.  Drink 1% or skim milk(casein is an efficient protein), orange juice(Vit C, Potassium), or unsweetened iced tea(0 calories).

My tips:

Carb up in the beginning of the day and work in proteins a little at lunch and the rest for dinner.  Cream of Wheat or oatmeal, orange juice, and fruit start you off with energy and don't slow you down.

Snack time!  If you need a snack or two throughout the day, don't forget to count those calories, and try things like dried fruit, almonds, beef jerky, or a yogurt.  Bananas are good too.

Lunch - Some proteins but still mostly carbs. Tuna or chicken salad sandwich. Salad. Unsalted fries.

Dinner - Good time for protein.  Great low-fat options are chicken breast, fish, and turkey.  Lean beef and pork cuts are good, too.  

Not one of the first things people think of at the end of the day, but an omelet gives you all the amino acids your body needs to synthesize new proteins while you sleep and are a great way to add in other things that are rich in nutrients.

Potatoes!  Yes, Cory, potatoes are fine.  A great option for lunch and dinner, potatoes are sodium/fat free and high in fiber and potassium.  Potassium is very important in regulating cell fluids and blood pressure.  The average potato is only 110 so you can eat a lot and feel full.

Don't skip meals.  This creates that crazy strong hunger that causes you to overdo it on the next meal.

Don't deny, manage. It's a simpleton's route to banish foods that you like as if you're some foodaholic.  And you're not the Mayor Of Simpleton, are you? Have a cookie or a slice of cheesecake in moderation, just remember that those calories count.

Don't panic if you go over! If you blow your planned caloric budget for one day, then account for the overage for the rest of the week by shorting the calories a little more.

I hope this helps and doesn't come off as more unneeded, unsolicited advice.  As for the other budget, consult an economist.

Depouillage

Let's get this party started right.  Let's get this party started quickly... right?

I've had two food culture articles occupying tabs in my Firefox browser for a month now.  The first article appears in Newsweek and is written by Lisa Miller.  The other is an article in the Washington Post by Brent Cunningham & Jane Black.

Both articles assume things which are untrue and symptomatic of most American's ignorance about food.  Both articles make it seem that the best food you can get is at Whole Foods or a farmer's market and if you aren't lucky enough to afford that, you're stuck with high calorie, processed crap.  First off... everything is processed.  I know this is semantics, but the people who say this know nothing about how food is handled, so I know there is little room for nuance in their argument.  They really think some food comes out of a machine, but their Whole Foods foods come from some sort of virgin food birth.  It's Jesus after he's been individually quick frozen and packaged in environmentally responsible packaging... you know... like the pilgrims would do.

So they assume that A. everything else is processed and B. processed = bad.  They also assume that their foods are completely balanced and beyond reproach and everyone else's food is packed with calories and chemicals.

Brian Wansink from Cornell has been doing some very intriguing work on what he calls 'Health Halos' that may explain the Foodies ego toward their food and disdain for others.  Health Halo refers to the halo effect that is seen in sensory science.  For example a taste test on vanilla milkshakes may yield uncharacteristically high scores from someone who is a fan of vanilla.  The vanilla fan may give the shake higher marks for mouth feel and creaminess versus a fan of chocolate.  The Health Halo is where people grade food assumed to be of a higher quality or stature as healthier or lower in calories.  He demonstrates this perfectly in an experiment he performs on Showtime's Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Premium organic hypermarkets such as Fresh and Whole Foods exploit the ignorance of the liberal arts and Google Educated foodies that believe everything else causes obesity and disease.  Their ignorance costs them dearly.

In the Newsweek article, a family is said to spend $1,000 a month on their food.  What's more is the parenthetical caveat that states that $1,000 is roughly 20% of their monthly income.  Assuming this is post tax, that means this family makes about $80,000/year.  This is about 60% higher than the 2008 average income of $52,029.  So not only are they getting ripped off(organics are no healthier than conventional), but they get indoctrinated into this misinformation and talk people who are much less fortunate into forking over a much bigger percentage of their take home pay for these groceries.  These groceries then rake in the profits.  According to the Newsweek article(and because I'm too lazy to look this up myself), Whole Foods reportedly increased their profits by a whopping 58% last quarter.

People buy what they afford and if they live from paycheck to paycheck, watching calories takes a backseat to getting the most food for your dollar.  I've yet to make more than $29,000/yr(someone please help me right this wrong and hire me!) and have gone many weeks where I have to stretch my dollars.  I don't miss meals, though, and will readily buy dinner before making a credit card payment.  When my dollar is stretched the most, I buy ramen noodles, canned tuna, rice/pasta chub packs of 83/27 ground beef, whole pork shoulders, eggs, milk, potatoes, and apples/bananas.  Most of these foods are calorically dense.  If I go out to eat during an economic crunch, it'll almost always be a buffet and that will be the only thing I eat that day.  When I have more money, what do I do?  Less buffets, mostly the same types of foods, because I'm a picky eater, but I don't eat like it's the last day on earth. I also buy less groceries more often and will splurge on fancier items(like the Red Pepper Pesto at Giant Eagle).

I don't want to make this an Elite vs. regular Joe thing or a liberal vs. conservative thing, because I know conservatives that also blow their hard earned money on this bullshit.  I also don't want to come down on quality, but people must understand that quality has nothing to do with whether or not something is organic and is more a matter of statistical process control and sourcing better ingredients.  Of course, then we get into the industrial side and that's a whole other ball of wax.

Crap... I promised I was going to make this shorter.  Fuck.