In 2004, Morgan Spurlock‘s documentary film Super Size Me debuted. In it, Spurlock eats McDonald’s food for 30 days straight. This extreme experiment sought to document the adverse health effects of the all-to-common practice of over-eating fast food, using himself as test subject. Indeed, Spurlock gained weight, scared his doctors when his liver went south, felt depressed, lost sexual function and more. But the film also became a sort of watershed moment, shocking general audiences and thereby playing a big role in spurring growth of the food movement. I met Spurlock recently while picking up my weekly farm share (we belong to the same local CSA), and he kindly agreed to talk about the food movement, changes in the fast food industry, and how his McDonald’s binge has affected his long-term health.

McDonald’s has gotten a lot of heat since Super Size Me came out. I thought it was amazing, for example, how much media attention that non-decomposing Happy Meal photography project recently got. Do you think your movie inspired people to be more brazen in taking on fast food companies?

I think people were already questioning them. Maybe it gave them reason to know they would not get sued afterward! I do think the film did open people’s eyes, and at least opened the door to an even bigger conversation.

Are you surprised at how the interest in food and agriculture has grown since you made Super Size Me?

Yeah, I think there’s a big trend, which I am also joining. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), locally grown produce, whole farmshares and landshares are happening now. It seems like there has been, even a post-Slow Food movement–people wanting to get a healthier, better, more sustainable way of eating and living, which I think is fantastic.

You were an early pioneer of the food documentary. Do you ever consider making others?

There are great films that are out there that deal with food, [and] I think if there’s a way I can help champion some of those other filmmakers, I’d rather do that than go into making another food movie. For me, movies have to be something that if you don’t [make them], then you are going to go crazy. If you don’t tell this story, if you don’t put it on a page, if you don’t put it on film, then it is literally going to effect your brain from this moment forward. There may be something that comes along that kind of strikes me in that way, and if it does, I’ll have to tell it.

In what ways did making Super Size Me change the way you eat?

It was really after the film that I decided that I wanted to become part of a CSA, I wanted to support this whole locally grown movement. I think the biggest thing that happened after that movie was that it really turned me into someone who reads labels. It made me a really conscious consumer in a way I never had been, and I think that’s the greatest thing that could happen. I’m not going to tell anybody, hey, don’t eat fast food. I’m somebody who still loves to have a good burger, but I’m not eating a burger everyday. I may have a burger once a month.

Do you still eat fast food?

Never. [laughs]. When I am in California, I go to an In-and-Out Burger, and that is a fast food chain. But its a much smaller, and even more sustainable fast food chain. The meat when it comes in is still in a patty form, the french fries are still potatoes. There is a process of actually cooking food that happens at In-and-Out Burger. Part of the blessing of living in New York City, is that we can get all kinds of food fast. We can get good Italian food fast, we can get good Mexican food fast, I can get great Chinese food fast from a little mom-and-pop shop around the corner.

Have there been any long-term health effects following your McDonald’s binge?

I think the biggest thing is my ability to gain weight. Ever since making the movie, I can put on four or five pounds in a weekend so easily. Its incredible how my body has kind of lost its resiliency. Part of that comes with age, but it also comes with your body having all these additional fat cells that weren’t in your body before. As you create fat cells to store fat and you lose weight and those fat cells get smaller, they don’t magically vanish. They are still in your body, still swimming around waiting for you to overeat so they can store more fat.

For those of us who will never conduct such an experiment–Could you describe in one word how you felt physically after a month of eating only McDonald’s food?

Nauseous.

What do you think about the regulation of Happy Meal toys in San Francisco?

I think toys do make kids want to go to these places. But I think parents need to be brave enough to tell kids no. Parents need to claim some responsibility.

What needs to happen for fast food companies’ role to change in our society?

One of the things that is already happening is they are making companies put the calories and the fat content right up on the menus, which I think is a great idea. I think the more you can arm consumers with information, the more you start to leave the choice in their hands. In the movie we were trying to find the nutrition information [in McDonald's stores], and it was behind a door or in the basement. They didn’t even have it out. Its almost like they don’t even want you to know how bad the food is. [I think they should] let people know. Are people going to stop suddenly eating fast food? No. I mean, people haven’t stopped smoking cigarettes. That’s a product [that] when used correctly will kill you. So I think we need to arm people with as much information as possible and then ultimately let them make that choice.

You are from West Virginia. What did you think of Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution?

I love Jaime Oliver and I loved his show. [But] I think that there were people, even people I’ve spoken to, who were turned off by the fact that there was a Brit in America kind of telling them what to do. I think that threw off audiences quite a bit and made it less accessible than it should have been. I know they are getting ready to do another version of the show, and what I think would be great in this next season is to really empower people to grow their own food. Go into these schools and build community gardens, like Alice Waters did. Get the kids hands in the dirt, get the community’s hands in the dirt. Let them do things that not only support their schools but support their local communities.

What would be your last meal on Earth?

A home-cooked meal by my mom. She is such a great cook. I would have mom cook up some pepper steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. And I am a big pie fan, but I love her chocolate cake. I’d probably have her make a three-layer chocolate cake with white icing.

In a telephone briefing on Monday, the authors of the study discussed why their research is so important. They cited statistics compiled over the past year, which show that one-third of U.S. children and teens eat fast food every day, accounting for 16 to 17 percent of their daily caloric intake. “Eating at fast food restaurants is ingrained in our culture. That’s why the nutritional quality of these meals is so important,” Marlene Schwartz, co-author of the study said on Monday. Jennifer Harris, lead author of the study added that they uncovered how the barrage of fast food advertising has made kids think that this kind of food is “normal and expected.” Harris said: “Kids think that they should be able to eat McDonald’s all the time and this has a direct effect on obesity.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two-thirds of American adults and 15 percent of children are overweight or obese. The childhood obesity rate is above 30 percent in some states.

The researchers found that the average preschooler saw 2.8 TV ads per day for fast food, children saw 3.5, and teens saw 4.7. The ads are not limited to TV alone—children and teens are also viewing ads on-line, on the radio, and with in-store promotions and signs.

Indeed, the $4.2 billion dollars spent in 2009 on advertising by the fast food industry is working. The researchers said that 40 percent of parents report that their children ask to go to McDonald’s at least once a week and 15 percent of preschoolers ask to go every day. Another finding concludes that 84 percent of parents take their child to a fast food restaurant at least once a week while 66 percent reported going to McDonald’s in the past week.

According to Schwartz, part of the problem is that the current generation of parents is the first group to have grown up with fast food advertisements. The researchers said that the parents’ exposure to marketing makes them think it “normal” to take their children to eat at fast food restaurants as well.

The study also found that the industry specifically targets teens and minority youth more often and with less healthy items. African American youth saw at least 50 percent more fast food ads on TV in 2009 than their white peers. The researchers said that African Americans were also exposed to more websites and banner ads. “KFC and McDonald’s specifically market to African Americans through what they watch,” lead author Harris said. “We also found that Hispanic children, and especially preschoolers, are seeing a lot of ads on Spanish TV, particularly for McDonald’s.”

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center said this is particularly alarming since these are the populations most at-risk for obesity and diabetes. “The disproportionate marketing to these groups is concerning,” Brownell said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of obesity for African Americans is 51 percent higher than for white Americans, and the prevalence of obesity amongst the nation’s Hispanic American population is 21 percent higher than their white peers.

Children are clearly eating more fast food than they should be and the authors hope their research will help to devise strategies to curb this trend. “You can try education, but that doesn’t seem to be working, so that’s not the answer,” Brownell said. “Restricting or curtailing practices is something we need to do.” Brownell referred to the ordinance passed last week in San Francisco that only allows restaurant meals to include a toy when the meals meets certain nutritional standards and criteria. He hopes that other states and local jurisdictions will take similar actions.

When asked what parents could do, lead author Harris said, “The only way to control what kids are seeing is to turn off the TV. No matter what’s on, you’re going to see a lot of fast food ads.”

The tricky part of the debate revolves around the First Amendment. While the authors of the study would like to see advertisements to children and other vulnerable groups curtailed, corporations have the right to advertise. And while the fast food restaurants have pledged to offer healthier menu options, this doesn’t seem to be affecting what people are eating. The study found that just 12 of 3,039 possible kids’ meal combinations met nutrition criteria for preschoolers and 15 met nutrition criteria for older children. “You have to work hard to get a healthy side and drink with kids meals,” co-author Schwartz said. “You have to know it exists and you have to ask for it.”

These findings come on the heels of other shocking news released last week that the incidence of diabetes has reached an all-time high in Los Angeles County. The Department of Public Health report shows an increase from six-and-a-half to nine percent among adults between 1997 and 2007, for a total of 650,000 people with the disease. In addition, obesity rates rose from 14 to 22 percent, or to more than one in every five adults.

Schwartz, who along with her colleagues spent more than a year compiling this information told reporters, “All of this is really just the tip of the iceberg.”

This article is part of a regular column by holistic nutrition expert Kristin Wartman, in which she examines food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

On the 21st of September the Franco-Belgian fast-food chain Quick took the plunge, selling a certified organic burger– with Swiss cheese and locally-raised meat– for a cost of 2.50 euros each, 43 percent more than the traditional Quick burger. The burger will be available for eight weeks to measure demand. The company claims that it has worked for a year to procure the quantity of organic meat needed to fulfill the eight weeks of service. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the organic patty and onions are cut square instead of round, differentiating it from the non-organic version.

It is not surprising that the French market is moving in this direction. The government recently announced an additional six million euros would go towards helping farmers transition to certified organic agriculture, which can be costly for the farmer and takes five years in France. The French government has also set a goal of converting 20% of French agriculture to organic by 2020. It seems fast-food restaurants are seeing the handwriting on the wall.

While fast-food chains like Chipotle have staked their reputation on buying antibiotic and hormone-free meat stateside, and locally based fast-food chains like BurgerVille in the Pacific Northwest have focused on local, sustainable food and practices, larger chains like McDonald’s and Burger King have yet to acknowledge this market in any significant way. If American fast-food chains went organic, would you be more likely to buy their food? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

Tonight in Washington, DC, a provocative ad tying fast food consumption to heart disease produced by the organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) will air during The Daily Show and the local news. The spot features a woman crying over a dead man in a morgue, and in his hand is a hamburger. “I was lovin’ it,” appears on the screen, a play on McDonald’s slogan, and the voice over says, “High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian.”

According to the PCRM, the city has the second-highest death rate in the nation from heart disease, killing 1,500 annually. In addition, DC has more fast food restaurants per square mile than eight other similarly sized cities. The group hopes to leverage these facts to push for a moratorium on the building of new fast food restaurants in DC.

After tonight’s debut, the group hopes to air the ad in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Memphis. Take a look:

In the past 10 years more than 23,000 school children have become sick as a result of hundreds of food poisoning outbreaks in our nation’s lunchrooms. A recent investigation by USA Today found that the meat served in U.S. school cafeterias faces less testing and lower safety standards than the mystery meat in Big Macs and Whopper Juniors.

USA Today reporters discovered that meat served at McDonald’s, Burger King and Costco is tested as much as 10 times more often as the ground beef served in America’s school cafeterias. While fast-food chains take samples on their production lines every 15 minutes, the USDA only tests 8 times a day.

In addition to testing more frequently, fast-food chains also set more stringent limits on so-called indicator bacteria. In the case of generic E. coli, the USDA allows 10 times more bacteria than Jack in the Box!

This fact should be a national embarrassment to all members of Congress, USDA officials and meat industry executives who have allowed our nation’s school lunch programs to become the dumping grounds for cheap commodity products that feed the bottom line of corporate agribusiness.

Each year the USDA purchases more than $1 billion in cheap commodities as part of the federal contribution to the school lunch program. Regretfully, the USDA is driven by two factors: get the food for the lowest price and prop up prices for commodities that are in oversupply or are unattractive to business purchases. Not quality. In 2009 alone, the USDA purchased more than $151 million of commodity pork to prop up failing industrial pork producers. Even worse is the USDA’s purchase of “spent hens”, i.e. the worn out, diseased chickens of the factory farm egg industry, which not even KFC will serve to it’s customers.

Previous reports have estimated that nearly 30% of the more than 100 million egg-laying hens culled each year find their way into our children’s lunch via the National School Lunch Program. The rest ends up as Alpo.

Why is it that meat that should end up as dog food is being fed to our nation’s school children?

Fast Food Gets Taken to Court, Food Safety Wins

To find out why fast-food restaurants are doing a better job, one only need to look at the industry leader Jack in the Box, which USA Today says, “pioneered many of the safety standards now used across the fast-food industry.”

Seventeen years ago, Jack in the Box was on financial and PR life support as it was reeling from the notorious 1993 E. Coli outbreak at multiple restaurants across the West Coast that killed four children and sickened hundreds of customers.

A then unknown Seattle lawyer named Bill Marler found that Jack in the Box’s improper handling and undercooking of tainted hamburger meat was responsible for the outbreak. Marler’s determination to fight corporations who skirt U.S. food safety laws led to a $50 million class-action settlement and is a major reason why Jack in the Box and McDonald’s are leading the way in testing and proper handling of meat they serve their customers. Unlike the U.S. government, these fast-food chains finally decided that killing customers is bad for business. How long will it take the USDA to reach the same conclusion?

Unfortunately the meat industry killed reforms created at the end of the Clinton administration that would have rectified this problem.

Once Upon a Time – Bush Kills Clinton Era Reform

In 2000, Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman implemented a science-based “zero tolerance” policy on salmonella and E. coli in meat sold to U.S schools. Almost immediately, the industrial meat lobby started to squeal.

Within months of taking office, Bush officials were gutting Clinton’s new food safety policies in favor of Industrial Meat, which found the new regulations too “burdensome.” Rather than stepping up testing, the new Bush USDA proposed the irradiation of meat for school lunches and the creation of  “a system to weed out suppliers who did not meet standards.”

Unfortunately, this weeding out process has proven ineffectual.

In the past five years alone, at least six orders of ground beef sold to schools “exceeded the limits” of “indicator bacteria” which would have been rejected by fast-food restaurants.

Most recently, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn, the chairwoman for the House appropriations committee on agriculture and a champion for food safety, called for the temporary closure of a Fresno meat facility, and an investigation into Beef Packers Inc., the 7^th largest supplier of ground beef to U.S. schools. The Cargill-owned meat processor has a long history as a habitual violator.

DeLauro’s concern stems from the fact that the Beef Packers facility has failed to meet USDA standards more than 40 times in recent years and also had more than a million pounds of ground beef rejected due to salmonella contamination during the 2003-2004 school year alone.

Barely a week ago, Beef Packers Inc. issued their second recall for the year regarding meat contaminated with an antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella. In August, the California meat processing company recalled more than 800,000 pounds of contaminated meat. Somehow the USDA purchased 425,000 pounds of meat made during the same time frame as the contamination, even though 1 of 4 test samples tested positive for a virulent strain of salmonella, Newport, which food safety experts say should have disqualified that batch of meat from school lunches, but it did not.

For any parent concerned about their children’s health, these standards should be cause for alarm.

It’s Obama’s Turn Now – Time to Get it Right!

While this problem didn’t start in the Obama administration, it needs to end here. The quickest way for this to happen is for the USDA to stop providing cover for the meat industry and to start refusing to buy from the bottom of the barrel.

The good news is that Secretary Vilsack has promised “an independent review of testing requirements for ground beef” that the USDA sends to school.

The problem is: What will this “independent review” mean for food safety in America’s school lunchrooms? And who will do the review? Typically when the USDA, or almost any government body, calls for a “review” or to set up a panel to “study” an issue, it inevitably means invitations to “solve” the problem are extended to the very lobbyists who helped create it in the first place.

If the Obama administration wants to prove their determination to protect our children’s health, they can stop playing chicken with our children’s lives by catering to every agribusiness lobby that ventures their way and start standing up for the American people.

The USDA needs to appoint an expert panel that includes public health experts and a couple of the retail and restaurant food safety experts who are responsible for the high safety standards at McDonalds and Jack in the Box. Obama should leave the lobbyists and the professors whose research is paid for by industry out of this process. This is one time when most people can agree; our nation’s children must come first.

Fast food is the ultimate American invention — cheap meals for people on the go. But we’ve paid a heavy price for our national addiction — an epidemic of obesity, the destruction of our fragile environment, and the loss of community ties that are maintained by taking the time to prepare and eat food together.

Despite these negatives, the need for quick affordable food is undeniable in today’s world. But why on earth are McDonalds and its competitors our only option? Every single time I get hungry on the road, in an airport, or at a shopping mall I wish someone would open a healthy fast food restaurant… and it turns out the wait is finally over. Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food restaurant opened it’s doors for business in Berkeley at the end of July 2008.

The restaurant happens to be located right downstairs from my office so I was among the first to check it out (read my review here.) I’m pleased to report that Amanda’s is pretty much exactly what I’d been wishing for–the food is healthy (they have the nutrition guidelines to prove it, too), tasty, and affordable (a cheeseburger made with naturally raised beef and organic cheese is $4.50, baked sweet potato fries are $1.50, and a freshly made agave-sweetened soda is $1.75.)

Amanda’s also goes out of its way to reduce its impact on the environment. For example, they won’t sell bottled water since it creates too much landfill waste and takes a lot of petroleum to transport. Everything served in the restaurant is also fully compostable so any “trash” left over at the end of your meal can be deposited in one of the restaurant’s green bins that feed directly into Berkeley’s city composting program where it will become rich soil for local farms and city landscaping projects in a matter of months. The restaurant also tries to foster a sense of community with a series of events in the restaurant and around the neighborhood. The future of fast food has never looked so green nor so healthy!

Amanda is often behind the counter in the restaurant, filling orders alongside her team (the handwritten “Amanda” on her wooden name tag was the only thing that tipped me off.) I was curious to know more about how she’d gone about making her idea a reality and what her plans were for the future of the restaurant so I introduced myself. She was kind enough to meet with me and answer my questions late last week.

How did you come up with the idea for Amanda’s? What prompted it?

I’d wanted to someday run a business that had a social and environmental mission ever since college when I was inspired by a book I read by Tom Chapel, the founder of Tom’s of Maine. So I always had that in the back of my mind. I went into technology when I graduated from college because that’s where there was great opportunity to learn business — I figured I needed to learn about business first and then I could figure out how to bring in the social mission.

I went back to business school because I wanted to focus on businesses with a social mission. Stanford has a really great social responsibility/public management program. At first, I actually thought I wanted to work at Trader Joe’s because I love their products – a lot of them are organic and natural and they’re affordable. They also treat their employees well – it’s just a cool culture. But when I learned more about it, I found that it wasn’t very entrepreneurial and after being in the technology industry, I realized I had grown used to that. So I thought I would intern for a smaller company whose products I was really excited about. I ended up interning for Niman Ranch which is a natural meats company that was located in Oakland. And that was the summer that the movie Supersize Me came out and I also read Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation.

The summer I was at Niman Ranch, I did operations and marketing projects and got to do some ride-alongs on their delivery trucks. We came up to Berkeley and went to Chez Panisse and Whole Foods and some other really nice grocery stores and I realized that that quality of food was not reaching many people, and definitely not reaching the people Schlosser writes about in Fast Food Nation. So that’s when I started thinking about this need. Then I spent my second year of business school focusing on building a business plan for the restaurant, researching the market, and talking to everyone in the restaurant industry. When I graduated from business school, I decided to actually start implementing the plan.

Once you’d had the idea for the restaurant, what was the path to making it a reality?

I think almost everyone who saw the movie Supersize Me had the same idea – that was the clear reaction. But the restaurant industry is really challenging and a lot of people who had the same idea probably didn’t pursue it because it’s so tough – there’s a lot of competition and profit margins are slim — that’s what I found out after studying it more in business school. But I also knew that I had the passion to do it anyway.

There are just hundreds of people who’ve helped build this. The restaurant has my name on it but it’s definitely a community effort. In business school there were probably half a dozen classmates of mine and also people in other graduate programs helped put the business plan together. It was very well-researched which I think gave me confidence in it as well as giving a lot of other quality people the confidence to invest in the business both financially and with their time as advisers or as the consultants that helped design the menu and helped design the space.

Since I work right upstairs I walk past Amanda’s all the time and I also eat there often. It seems to be a melting pot of sorts. I see a pretty diverse mix of customers — Berkeley high students (who tend to frequent the non-healthy fast food joints in the neighborhood), UC students, local professionals, young parents, hippies, security guards, and other people who look like they’d be equally at home in the McDonalds up the street. Would you say that is an accurate description of your clientele? And is that what you expected?

It’s what I hoped! It’s interesting because we thought that women would be our core customer (and I think they still are though I haven’t spent enough time analyzing our customer base and actually counting customers) because women tend to care more about their health and make a lot of the restaurant decisions for their families and co-workers but it has been even more diverse than I expected. That’s one of the things I like about being in Berkeley–we’re not only bringing healthy food to people who already eat healthfully, there are also so many different people here that we can start actually making a change in the way some people are eating.

Have you considered listing where you source your different ingredients from on your menu or your web site?

It’s a balance, we try to talk about it on our web site but also not everyone wants to know. I’d rather source things locally (and it’s cheaper to do that!) but you can’t get organic tomatoes locally all year round or local organic apples so sometimes they have to come from New Zealand because we offer our apple fries all year long. It’s interesting — everyone is so enamored of Niman ranch. If you say you buy your beef from Niman Ranch, people automatically assume that it was raised up in Marin County but in reality their meats come from ranches all around the country. We source our meat with a local family-owned distributor that sources its meats similarly to the way Niman Ranch does. So if people ask, we tell them our beef is from the Midwest and raised all-naturally. The veggies are as local as we can get them – they’re sourced through a local produce company.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Well, one thing that I didn’t talk about is that everything we do, all the decisions we make in the restaurant are based on our goal of creating a healthy community. For example, when we’re deciding whether to buy local or to buy organic, that is what we use as our decision-making metric. This goal of a healthy community is something that we’re trying to foster with our own customers and with our employees – we got all our staff trial memberships to the YMCA and Funky Door Yoga to encourage them to exercise. And they’re really inspiring – most of them find more time to exercise than I do! Our team really makes us what we are – we’d be nowhere without them.

Photos: Eve Fox

Is it possible for a fast food chain, beholden more so to its corporate number crunching than its customers’ waistlines and heart valves, to be socially responsible, or dare I say, sustainable?

My gut is telling me no.

Yesterday in the New York Times, the business section focused on the recent surge in profits occurring at McDonald’s, and found that behind the upswing was a change in strategy.  All white meat chicken nuggets, apple slices, lattes, wi-fi, flat screens and a host of other targeted, customer-enticements are reinventing the hamburger shack, all seemingly a result of the blistering criticism received in the last 10 years from books like Fast Food Nation and the film Super-Size Me.

But is what McDonald’s is doing helping or hurting our movement to change the food system?

On one hand, sustainable food fighters can rejoice in the fact that our criticism matters.  We will not be left unheard in the debate on food.

But we aren’t primarily the ones we’re fighting this revolution for — we can grow our own produce, join a CSA, avoid the drive-thru in favor of our own kitchen’s fare or better dining.  Its those on the fence — who could be swayed to avoid corporate-sponsored food with its unpronounceable, prepackaged and preservative-laden ingredients — These are the folks who could make the largest dent in the policies coming out of Washington.  Without their determined protesting for more sustainable food, and their willpower to resist McDonald’s and their ilk, our movement has no legs.

That is not to say our numbers aren’t increasing.  But this article proves that there is some level of pacification that occurs when a restaurant chain greenwashes itself.

My husband and I have gone at odds over the British chain Pret-a-Manger (McDonald’s owned 33% stake in the company until February 2008), which could arguably be a more virtuous chain restaurant — they prepare salads and sandwiches in house, using occasional organics, and serve in more environmentally conscious packaging.  He would go out of his way to go there for lunch and a slice of their carrot cake (there are a few restaurants here in New York), while I’d rather pack a sandwich — with handshake-assured lettuce and tomato, and local farmer cheese.

This is partly because I didn’t want to support McDonald’s bottom line indirectly, and partly because I am convinced that it is impossible to have a virtuous fast food, especially if fast food still insists on world domination.  It seems inherently contradictory to have a chain of restaurants from coast to coast (and beyond) that source locally, seek out sustainably raised meat (and don’t focus on a meat-centric menu), buy organic, compensate employees fairly, keep prices low, produce food quickly without the aid of a deep-fryer and maintain an already cola and MSG-addicted customer base.  Cheap food and fair wages might only be possible if there is a garden on the premises, but then, what to do with the variety of vegetables grown?  For me, thinking Big in the food system always means a degradation of quality.

Eating Liberally (and sometimes Civil Eats) blogger Kerry Trueman recently discussed a similar topic — Wal-mart’s effect on the organic food market.  The giant box store has of course brought organic into the hands of many who might not otherwise have access.  But she asked the Ethicurian‘s Elanor Starmer whether this is a good thing.  Starmer described how big organic, the only firms large enough to provide on the scale Wal-Mart sells, are known for cutting corners, and by proxy lowering standards.

This blogger fears that both corporations’ attempts to be virtuous will only serve to dilute the fervor of our movement.  Let’s be straight — McDonald’s all white meat chicken nuggets are still coming from Tyson, the largest chicken processor in the nation, where one can only speculate at the quality of life and death given to each chicken. (They process 25 billion pounds of chicken, beef and pork annually).  And its not like those lattes are being made with fairly traded beans either.  And yet Wal-Mart and McDonald’s are the only two companies whose shares rose in 2008 amid what is shaping up to be a second go-around of the Great Depression.

To be truly sustainable, we need to think beyond the Ponzi schemes McDonalds and Wal-Mart are force-feeding us today, to setting up real virtuous roots for a conscious food future.  This means more farmers, more shaking the hand that feeds you, and better food. (Aaron French gives some great suggestions in his post today, too). We must not forget what we are fighting for: good soil, and the future of our species.

Photo: lalajean_g

Recently, the American public was issued a challenge by the folks at KFC (formerly “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” but “fried” just didn’t sound healthy). The fast-food joint argues in its latest commercial that you cannot “create a family meal for less than $10.” Their example is the “seven-piece meal deal,” which includes seven pieces of fried chicken, four biscuits, and a side dish — in this case, mashed potatoes with gravy. This is meant to serve a family of four.

I’m not really a competitive soul, but this was one challenge I could not resist. When it comes to food, America has been sold a bill of goods. We’ve been flimflammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked. We’ve been tricked into thinking that cooking is a chore, like washing windows, to be avoided if at all possible, and then done only grudgingly and when absolutely necessary. On the contrary, cooking is a vital, spiritual act that should be performed with a certain reverence. After all, we are providing sustenance to the ones we love — can anything be more important?

And don’t get me started on advertising. It never ceases to amaze me that, with the exception of political ads, people don’t focus on the falsehoods. Commercial advertising washes over people without the slightest analysis; we truly need a FactCheck.org for business advertising.

In the KFC commercial, a mother and two kids hit a grocery store for the necessary ingredients. When they fail to get them for under $10, Mom cheerfully announces, to the kids’ delight, that they are going to KFC. In these hard economic times, Colonel Sanders wants you to think that giving him your money is the cheaper way to go. I respectfully disagree.

The ingredients shown or mentioned in the ad include seven pieces of chicken, a five-pound bag of flour, and — in an oh-so-adorable scene featuring the son and a clueless store clerk — “seven secret herbs and spices.” The rest of the ingredients are presumably edited out for time.

The grocery store itself has the look of a somewhat higher-end place (read: more like a Whole Foods than a Wal-Mart). Since we don’t have a Whole Foods in Iowa, and I can’t get myself to give Wal-Mart money, I compromised and shopped at a local independent grocery called the Bread Garden Market. They do a nice job of splitting the difference between organic and everyday; in other words, they carry both Kashi and corn flakes, tofu and ground beef.

The recipes I used are available to anyone with access to The Joy of Cooking (mine’s the May 1985 edition).

I compared commodity products and organic ones, and calculated for each. The market had only one kind of chicken. It was far from the free-range, organic, local chicken I would normally use, but it was hormone-free from a network of family farms and faced nowhere near the cruel conditions suffered by KFC’s chickens. One of the latter would have been even cheaper than the $4.76 I paid for this one. In fairness I should note that the little girl in KFC’s ad asks the butcher for seven pieces, already cut up, but I have faith that a home cook can cut up a whole chicken. I should also note that KFC cuts chicken breasts in half, so there are 10 pieces in a whole bird (four breast halves, two legs, two thighs, two wings).

I rounded up everything I needed for chicken, biscuits, and mashed potatoes with gravy and totaled my costs, accounting for ingredients that were a fraction of a cent (small amounts of spices, for example) by rounding up to $0.01. I must admit I don’t know the seven secret herbs and spices, but as a professional chef, I know you can do an awful lot with salt and pepper. The bottom line? The KFC meal, including Iowa state sales tax of 6 percent, is $10.58. I made the same meal (chicken, four biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy) for $7.94 — and I got three extra pieces of chicken and a carcass to use for soup.

Even allowing for the whole batch of 24 biscuits, the meal still comes in at $8.45. In fact, using organic or other high-end items where the market carried them (flour, grapeseed oil, butter, milk), my total bill for the meal came to $10.62. Here’s a GoogleDocs spreadsheet of my prices in case you want to check my math or compare your own recipe.

I can already hear folks saying, “Sure, but how long did it take you?” Yes, it took a little longer than the drive-thru, but it is important to recognize the value of spending time preparing a good home-cooked meal. How is it, after all, that with all the modern conveniences afforded us in the 21st century, we still don’t think we have the time to do something everyone had time for until the middle of the 20th century?

In America, if we are what we eat, most of us are fast, cheap, and easy. We should aspire to be more, and gathering the family around the table is the best way I know how. Bring your family together around a home-cooked meal. Get them involved in the preparation. Do it so often that it’s no longer an unusual thing in your house. It’ll beat the drive-thru every time because it has the most important ingredient: love.

Photo: American family dinner, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1942 by John Collier, Jr.

[Cross-posted from Grist]

The short answer is: ‘no.’ But there is also a longer answer that can provide some texture, depth, and a feeling (possibly illusory) of understanding.

If you travel to Italy, you may find the locals passionately arguing the relative merits of the cuisines of Tuscany and Liguria and Calabria.  At a finer scale, each little valley has its own cheese, wine, olive oil, and way of seasoning a chicken, deeply rooted in tradition and slightly different from neighboring valleys. This, too, is subject to endless discussion and judgment.  Such is regional cuisine at its best.

The Italian experience is not replicated here. You will not find partisans arguing the merits of the cuisine of Sacramento compared to that of, say, Bakersfield or Redding.  The entire state shares the national food culture: Whopper and fries, large Coke and a Snickers bar, to go. And, as food is based in agriculture, the Whopper and fries can be seen as the fruit of industrial agriculture, that many-armed conglomeration of Monsanto/Cargill/Bank of America/Exxon/ADM/John Deere/Union Pacific/General Mills/USDA/Dow Chemical/Goldman-Sachs/Burger King and their multinational brethren. It is a system that is good for the shareholders but not so good for the land, nor for those who eat its food-like products.

Of course not all land in California is farmed industrially; there are plenty of farmers, mostly on small farms, following contrary and original philosophies, and harvesting crops of exceptional quality.  And there are chefs who recognize the culinary value of these farms and their products, and feature them in their menus.  Could this not be the basis for a regional cuisine?  Not yet. It fails on a number of points.

Regional cuisine is not so much the inspired creation of a chef as it the shared culture of an entire populace.  It is most likely to develop in geographic isolation, and in conditions of poverty, or at least austerity.  It also requires cultural continuity over generations.  The local wine of some little valley is the product of a particular strain of grapes, styles of trellising and pruning, the tradition of spreading ashes and duck manure in the vineyard on a particular saint’s day, the manner by which ripeness is judged, the kind of baskets in which the grapes are carried, the strain of yeast used in the winery, the type of wood used to make the barrels, the temperature, and five thousand other factors that jointly determine the character of the wine.  The result in turn must endure the judgments, prejudices, and endless discussion of the locals who will drink—or refuse to drink—the wine.  It takes generations for all of this to come into balance. The same goes for the local goats that make the cheese, the local varieties of wheat and rye, and the local style of grafting fruit trees.

Another feature of true regional cuisine is that it is repetitive.  You eat the same meal ninety nights in a row, and then, as the season changes, you eat a somewhat different meal for ninety nights in a row, and so forth, until soon the year rolls around and you’re back where you started.  Eating the same menu steadily for seventy years gives you a deep appreciation of its nuances and subtleties. Where there is a strong regional cuisine, everyone is an expert on food.

These conditions do not apply in Northern California.  We are a population of immigrants and nomads, constantly in motion.  Hardly any child follows the profession of his parent.  We value individuality and originality over cultural continuity.  We complain if we get the same meal two nights in a row. We have too much wealth, too much freedom, too high an opinion of novelty, and too little history. No matter how brilliant the creation of a chef using local ingredients, the cultural context is unsuitable for it to become the basis of a regional tradition.

This brings us to a paradox.  In our enthusiasm for regional cuisines we have dragged them home with us from every corner of the planet.  Within a few city blocks you will find Mongolian barbecue, Chinese take-out, sushi, curry, hummus, strudels, samosas, enchiladas, and innumerable other ethnic and regional specialties. But in the course of setting up this global smorgasbord, we have created a set of conditions that make it impossible for us to develop our own regional cuisine, rooted in our own agriculture and common experience. We lack the prerequisites of geographic isolation, scarcity, and cultural continuity.

This is not to say that it won’t ever happen. Globalization, which is so destructive of cultures, depends on cheap fuel and cheap food, two conditions that are rapidly disappearing.  We are seeing abandonment of trade agreements and the resurgence of mercantilism.  This is good news.  As the movement of goods and people around the planet becomes increasingly difficult and expensive, we may experience a revival of regionalism.  It could include Northern California. But not yet.