I just finished reading “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” by Ellen Ruppel Shell. It was an eye opener. Ruppel Shell spends the first part of her book giving us a history of how we came to prize cheap over value and how the big discount stores came to be (hint: Sam Walton didn’t start it, he just “improved” on an existing idea). Then she shows us how much it really costs to be surrounded by cheap goods in terms of environmental degradation, the loss of craftsmanship and skilled labor, the loss of human rights, and the loss of the middle class in our country. She makes you think about whether you really are getting a deal on that $5 t-shirt.
Of course, my favorite chapter by far was the one on cheap food. I already knew quite a bit about the consequences of cheap food but she really drove the point home.
She starts by showing how our relentless drive for ever cheaper food is actually causing starvation in third world countries as they convert farmland they used to use to feed themselves into plantations of coffee, palm oil, and grain to feed livestock they themselves could never afford.
These countries are forced to import food to eat since the imports are cheaper than the cost of growing food themselves. Plus there is the lure of money to be made from exporting cheap coffee. Of course, this puts them in the precarious position of being totally reliant on agribusiness for all their food needs. If Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland decide to raise the price of inputs or sell corn to the ethanol market and prices rise (even a little bit), third world countries find themselves unable to afford food or to feed themselves.
Maybe you don’t really care if people far, far away are starving so you can eat a Big Mac for less than it costs to actually grow the grain to feed the cows and make the bun, but you should. We all pay the cost of cheap food.
If you’ve ever tried to grow any of your own food, I’m sure you’ve wondered just how the food we buy can be so cheap. One of the answers to that question is subsides. In the past 10 years, the government has given almost $200 billion in farm subsidies. Don’t think that money goes to help your local farmer. Instead three quarters of that money goes to the biggest of the big in the agribusiness world. Our tax dollars are spent on miles and miles of cheap corn and rice and wheat which in turn is fed to livestock raised in feedlots in the most inhumane and unnatural surroundings so that everyone can eat lots of cheap meat. That multi billion dollar number doesn’t even include the tax breaks on oil and petroleum products that make herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers and the fuel to run the huge farm equipment necessary to manage miles of monocrops cheap.
Another part of the cheap food equation (and really the cheap everything equation) is cheap labor. By paying farm workers almost nothing to grow and harvest our food, large farms keep their costs low. But we pay the price for that as well. Keeping things cheap means keeping constant downward pressure on labor costs. We are seeing the results of that pressure in the growing divide between rich and poor in this country. It’s not just the migrant workers who pick your flavorless tomatoes in the middle of winter who are seeing their wages drop. It’s you and me as well.
And if you don’t pay people very much to grow and process your food and you make them work in unsafe and unhealthy work environments, how careful do you think they are in handling your food? Guessing from the increase in food borne illnesses in the past decade, they’re not very careful.
Of course these increases are also due to the fact that just four companies control 80% of meat production in this country. They’re producing hamburger meat that contains bits of thousands of different cows and are sending those same burgers all across the country. If just one tainted piece of meat gets in a batch, food borne illness spreads across the country with it. Also, the waste from so many animals in such tight quarters can’t be reabsorbed into the land and so gets into the groundwater or is used on crops, greatly increasing the incidence of disease.
Americans spend less on food than any other industrialized country, just 6% of our disposable income. The amount we spend has been dropping for over a generation. Some of this is due to increased efficiencies and new technologies and growing techniques but most of it is due to subsides and cheap labor.
It is sad to think that you can get 3000 calories per dollar spent on M&Ms and only 30 calories per dollar for spinach. It’s no wonder that so many of us are overweight or obese. We are biologically programmed to get the most calories for the least amount of effort and effort in this case could be translated as money. We are paying the price for this as well, with soaring health care costs and debilitating disease.
Lower wages, higher health care costs, greater food related illnesses, food insecurity, and less healthy food are all results of our striving for the cheapest food we can find.
So what can we do to change these trends? Some of the answers have to come from the government. We need to stop paying subsides to a few grain crops and start making healthy food more affordable for everyone.
On a personal level, I first recommend reading the book. The author does a much better and more comprehensive job of showing how our search for Cheap is making us poor in so many ways. Then start really thinking about your food and where it comes from. Try eating in season when local food is fresh and abundant. Buy local whenever you can (even if it costs a little more, that money stays in our community and may wind up back in your pocket when the farmer comes into your business to shop). Educate yourself about what you are eating (ask whether the shrimp you’re buying is causing huge environmental damage in Thailand or supporting small independent fishermen or whether your milk is from cows treated with hormones in huge, crowded dairies or raised on small farms by caring farmers). Cook for yourself using the healthiest ingredients you can afford. Eat lower on the food chain. Spend more time with your food and enjoy the better and fresher flavor of local fare instead of sitting in front of some screen being fed advertisements for cheap food. Demand food that reflects your values and beliefs not just your pocketbook. By voting with our dollars, we can change the system.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Bliss in a Bowl
Corn, or at least industrially produced corn, has been getting lots of bad press lately and rightly so. Michael Pollan dissed it in “Omnivores Dilemma”. The documentaries “King Corn” and “Food, Inc.” pointed out that we humans are starting to be composed of corn; it’s so predominant in our diet.
It’s fed to feedlot cattle, much to the detriment of the cows and the nutritional value of the beef. It’s made into high fructose corn syrup (which has recently been linked to the obesity epidemic) and about 50 other ingredients that are found in packaged food.
It’s been genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of pesticides without much research into the ramification of those changes. The pesticides and herbicides needed to grow mass amounts of the stuff are poisoning ground water in Iowa and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The huge swaths of monoculture corn farms cause erosion of farmland. Best of all, we taxpayers help fund all of this with subsidies to the giant corporate corn growers. It deserves to be vilified.
But not all corn is industrially produced and not all corn should be avoided. After all, it was responsible for sustaining Mesoamerica for millennium; it can’t be all bad. In its natural state (i.e. not high fructose corn syrup) it is a whole grain, high in fiber and low in fat, sodium and sugar. Fresh corn on the cob is one of the greatest pleasures the summer has to offer.
But the kind of corn that gives me the most pleasure all year long is popcorn. In fact, these articles might never get written without popcorn (I’ve got a bowl full of the hot tender nuggets on my lap right now, and yes it does tend to make the keyboard messy). There’s something about popcorn that helps me think and write clearly.
Of course, all that thinking got me wondering about the popcorn itself. I knew that popcorn is a special variety of corn but that’s about all. How long has it been around? What’s the physics behind the transformation from hard, tooth-breaking seed to fluffy goodness? And what other fascinating things about popcorn could I find in my research? I had to find out.
It turns out that popcorn might have been the first variety of corn developed in Mexico, or at least the first method of cooking it. Corn, or maize as it’s known in most of the world, was domesticated about 10,000 years ago from a grass. There may be no other crop that humans have changed more in their domestication. It’s hard to reconcile a fat ear of corn with a grass, but a grass it is.
Ears of popped corn have been found in archeological sites and I can only imagine the surprise on the first person’s face when the “garbage” she threw into the fire started exploding. Maybe at first she thought the gods were angry but I’m sure she changed her mind after she tasted it.
Of the five general kinds of corn, three of them will explode when heated. Dent and flint corn will form a crisp puff but come nowhere close to the expansiveness of popcorn. What makes popcorn do its thing is the composition of the hull (yes, the bits that get caught in your teeth and gums). The popcorn hull conducts heat much faster than other types of corn while at the same time being quite a bit stronger. When you cook popcorn, the heat is quickly transferred to the inside of the kernel (the endosperm). The starch and proteins in the endosperm rapidly reach the boiling point. They soften and give off moisture that turns to steam. All that steam builds up pressure against the hull until it reaches seven times the external pressure and then, POP, the kernel explodes and all that soften endosperm expands with the loss of pressure. The endosperm quickly cools and solidifies into white crunchy goodness.
If you suddenly have an urge for some, please feel free to stop reading for a moment and go make yourself a bowl. Pretend like its intermission at the theater.
Popcorn is a bit picky about the conditions under which it will pop to perfection (and there is some controversy about what constitutes a perfectly popped kernel but I’ll get to that in a moment). The kernels should be heated to right around 380 F. Anything cooler and the moisture inside the kernel that forms the steam that causes it to pop will evaporate before it gets hot enough. The kernel won’t pop and you’ll end up with “old maids” (a technical but slightly offensive term for completely unpopped kernels). Anything hotter and the starch and protein closest to the hull will get too hot and rupture the hull too soon, causing incomplete popping. The result is those barely opened kernels at the bottom of the bowl that my dentist would call teeth breakers and I consider a delicacy (maybe we should call them old geezers just to even the score).
Moisture content is just as important as temperature. Too dry and you’ll end up with all old maids. Too moist and the corn will pop but not very much and will be really chewy. To insure your popcorn stays at the right moisture content (14%), keep it in an airtight container in a cool dark place but not the refrigerator. If you do happen to come across a batch of kernels that have dried out and won’t pop, you can actually reconstitute them by adding a few drops of water to the jar and waiting a few days to see if they pop. If not, add a few more drops and repeat until they do.
Do you have any of that popcorn left that you made at intermission? If you don’t go make another batch, I’ll wait. If you do, take a look at the popped kernels, called flakes in the popcorn industry. There are two general shapes the flakes take. One is more rounded with most of the hull intact on the bottom. The other has lots of wings and the hull is spread out over all the wings in little pieces. There are probably combinations of the two shapes as well. Now bite into one of the round pieces, called mushroom flakes and then into one with wings, called butterfly flakes. The butterflies are noticeably more tender while the mushrooms are chewier.
Here’s where the controversy over what is a perfectly popped kernel of corn comes in. The mushrooms are much sturdier kernels and can hold up to packaging and forming into other confections like caramel corn but they are a bit tougher. The butterflies are fragile but take up more volume and have a better mouth feel. While the popcorn industry is trying hard to decide which is best and breeding popcorn to yield one or the other, I’ve decided I like them both (actually, until I wrote this article, I never noticed a difference).
Now I need some floss.
Vicki Reich lives and pops popcorn in Sagle. She eats at least one bowl of stove popped corn for each article she writes for the Reader. She had to have two for this one. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com
Sarah’s Popcorn
My friend Sarah makes the best popcorn. I’ve never been able to reproduce it but here’s what she told me she does.
Olive Oil
Popcorn
Tamari
Brewer’s Yeast
In an old, heavy bottomed 4 quart pot used exclusively for making popcorn with a loose fitting lid (or if you don’t have one of those at least a heavy bottomed pot with a loose fitting lid) pour in some olive oil. Use approximately 1/3 cup oil for 1 cup popcorn. Turn heat to medium high. Place 4-5 kernels in the oil and close the lid. When those kernels pop, add the rest of the corn, put the top back on and gently shake the pot. When those kernels begin to pop, start shaking the pot again and keep shaking until the popping slows to one or two every 10 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Sprinkle with tamari and brewers yeast to taste. Dive in.
It’s fed to feedlot cattle, much to the detriment of the cows and the nutritional value of the beef. It’s made into high fructose corn syrup (which has recently been linked to the obesity epidemic) and about 50 other ingredients that are found in packaged food.
It’s been genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of pesticides without much research into the ramification of those changes. The pesticides and herbicides needed to grow mass amounts of the stuff are poisoning ground water in Iowa and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The huge swaths of monoculture corn farms cause erosion of farmland. Best of all, we taxpayers help fund all of this with subsidies to the giant corporate corn growers. It deserves to be vilified.
But not all corn is industrially produced and not all corn should be avoided. After all, it was responsible for sustaining Mesoamerica for millennium; it can’t be all bad. In its natural state (i.e. not high fructose corn syrup) it is a whole grain, high in fiber and low in fat, sodium and sugar. Fresh corn on the cob is one of the greatest pleasures the summer has to offer.
But the kind of corn that gives me the most pleasure all year long is popcorn. In fact, these articles might never get written without popcorn (I’ve got a bowl full of the hot tender nuggets on my lap right now, and yes it does tend to make the keyboard messy). There’s something about popcorn that helps me think and write clearly.
Of course, all that thinking got me wondering about the popcorn itself. I knew that popcorn is a special variety of corn but that’s about all. How long has it been around? What’s the physics behind the transformation from hard, tooth-breaking seed to fluffy goodness? And what other fascinating things about popcorn could I find in my research? I had to find out.
It turns out that popcorn might have been the first variety of corn developed in Mexico, or at least the first method of cooking it. Corn, or maize as it’s known in most of the world, was domesticated about 10,000 years ago from a grass. There may be no other crop that humans have changed more in their domestication. It’s hard to reconcile a fat ear of corn with a grass, but a grass it is.
Ears of popped corn have been found in archeological sites and I can only imagine the surprise on the first person’s face when the “garbage” she threw into the fire started exploding. Maybe at first she thought the gods were angry but I’m sure she changed her mind after she tasted it.
Of the five general kinds of corn, three of them will explode when heated. Dent and flint corn will form a crisp puff but come nowhere close to the expansiveness of popcorn. What makes popcorn do its thing is the composition of the hull (yes, the bits that get caught in your teeth and gums). The popcorn hull conducts heat much faster than other types of corn while at the same time being quite a bit stronger. When you cook popcorn, the heat is quickly transferred to the inside of the kernel (the endosperm). The starch and proteins in the endosperm rapidly reach the boiling point. They soften and give off moisture that turns to steam. All that steam builds up pressure against the hull until it reaches seven times the external pressure and then, POP, the kernel explodes and all that soften endosperm expands with the loss of pressure. The endosperm quickly cools and solidifies into white crunchy goodness.
If you suddenly have an urge for some, please feel free to stop reading for a moment and go make yourself a bowl. Pretend like its intermission at the theater.
Popcorn is a bit picky about the conditions under which it will pop to perfection (and there is some controversy about what constitutes a perfectly popped kernel but I’ll get to that in a moment). The kernels should be heated to right around 380 F. Anything cooler and the moisture inside the kernel that forms the steam that causes it to pop will evaporate before it gets hot enough. The kernel won’t pop and you’ll end up with “old maids” (a technical but slightly offensive term for completely unpopped kernels). Anything hotter and the starch and protein closest to the hull will get too hot and rupture the hull too soon, causing incomplete popping. The result is those barely opened kernels at the bottom of the bowl that my dentist would call teeth breakers and I consider a delicacy (maybe we should call them old geezers just to even the score).
Moisture content is just as important as temperature. Too dry and you’ll end up with all old maids. Too moist and the corn will pop but not very much and will be really chewy. To insure your popcorn stays at the right moisture content (14%), keep it in an airtight container in a cool dark place but not the refrigerator. If you do happen to come across a batch of kernels that have dried out and won’t pop, you can actually reconstitute them by adding a few drops of water to the jar and waiting a few days to see if they pop. If not, add a few more drops and repeat until they do.
Do you have any of that popcorn left that you made at intermission? If you don’t go make another batch, I’ll wait. If you do, take a look at the popped kernels, called flakes in the popcorn industry. There are two general shapes the flakes take. One is more rounded with most of the hull intact on the bottom. The other has lots of wings and the hull is spread out over all the wings in little pieces. There are probably combinations of the two shapes as well. Now bite into one of the round pieces, called mushroom flakes and then into one with wings, called butterfly flakes. The butterflies are noticeably more tender while the mushrooms are chewier.
Here’s where the controversy over what is a perfectly popped kernel of corn comes in. The mushrooms are much sturdier kernels and can hold up to packaging and forming into other confections like caramel corn but they are a bit tougher. The butterflies are fragile but take up more volume and have a better mouth feel. While the popcorn industry is trying hard to decide which is best and breeding popcorn to yield one or the other, I’ve decided I like them both (actually, until I wrote this article, I never noticed a difference).
Now I need some floss.
Vicki Reich lives and pops popcorn in Sagle. She eats at least one bowl of stove popped corn for each article she writes for the Reader. She had to have two for this one. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com
Sarah’s Popcorn
My friend Sarah makes the best popcorn. I’ve never been able to reproduce it but here’s what she told me she does.
Olive Oil
Popcorn
Tamari
Brewer’s Yeast
In an old, heavy bottomed 4 quart pot used exclusively for making popcorn with a loose fitting lid (or if you don’t have one of those at least a heavy bottomed pot with a loose fitting lid) pour in some olive oil. Use approximately 1/3 cup oil for 1 cup popcorn. Turn heat to medium high. Place 4-5 kernels in the oil and close the lid. When those kernels pop, add the rest of the corn, put the top back on and gently shake the pot. When those kernels begin to pop, start shaking the pot again and keep shaking until the popping slows to one or two every 10 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Sprinkle with tamari and brewers yeast to taste. Dive in.
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