Two-pronged

I have recently become interested in fan-activism--as an educator I find it extremely intriguing to see what motivates young people. I have had extensive theoretical debates (with myself and others) regarding the current fashionable movement, but this news story crossed my desk the other day and then I saw foodies blogging about this. And I think that's pretty damn curious (and I mean that in a friendly way).

It raises interesting questions for me about what actors and actions will be mobilized and who their target recipients are...

...the stale taste...

I'm sorry, but this: "The Privileges of China’s Elite Include Purified Air"

reminds me of this: Perri-Air

and also this: Orwellian much?

namely because of this quote: “Breathing clean air is a basic human need,”
All are equal, but some are more equal than others apparently.

Joe's "Movember"

Before

In an effort to raise awareness about prostate cancer and men's health more generally, Joe and his colleagues have joined the movember movement. This translates to growing facial hair...or put differently, throwing out the razor for the month of November. While I have some misgivings over the effectiveness of this approach, I can see how the normally clean shaven faces will be a conversational point, as varying degrees of mustache and beard are expressed. Moreover, to participate you have to start from scratch...so for the first time in 8 years Joe will be without goatee, that will definitely be shocking (mostly for me I think).
This does seem rather a momentous occasion does it not?

After

The politics of the plate

After unveiling a new (and useless) food pyramid five years ago, the USDA has recently released the new plate.

I find this to be equally useless. Yet simultaneously, it demonstrates better how different food lobbies prefer the food pie to be sliced up (carved? apportioned? cut?)

The recommendations that come with the new plate are short:  Balance your calories by eating less, increase your fruit, veg and whole grain consumption and change from sugary drinks to water, whole milk to 1% milk and high sodium to low sodium. Frankly, I'm surprised the USDA got away with saying 'water instead of sugary drinks.' For the government, this represents a pretty strong push away from the high-fructose corn syrup merchants, yet as Marion Nestle has pointed out, this lumps fruit juices in with energy drinks and sodas, which is potentially unhelpful.

These recommendations smack of a processed food society and implies several things: 1) everything comes with a nutrition facts label; 2) cow's milk should be part of a normal human diet; 3) people have an understanding of what whole grains are (and dairy/protein for that matter); 4) that the fundamental problem with our eating is that we eat too much...just to name a few. Furthermore, by consistently separating these things out into their own sectors, the fact that nutrients to not hold to these borders is lost; for example: protein is a nutrient and is found in many food items such as dairy...

And forgive me here, because I'm going to go Foucault on you, but this is an approach that has the USDA asking people to police themselves. It's a model to change behavior, indicating that it is personal food choices that are responsible for the problems of obesity, under-nutrition and hunger. I firmly disagree with this standpoint, to be sure, our choices influence such things, but this obscures issues of access, race, class and etcetera.

Again, this guide to "healthy eating" is an industry staple, serving the interests of companies, not people (oh wait, I forgot that corporations are people too). This serves capitalism, not diet. It allows large conglomerates to make unfounded health claims (heart-healthy cereal, immunity boosting yogurt and so on) and privileges the purchase of processed (labelled) foods. It also relies on these companies to make such claims, allowing Proctor & Gamble, Kraft and Coca-Cola to educate the public--through advertising--about what food is.

french fries are good for you...

Since I've been back in school I've started a small collection of ads from the big Ag companies. I don't come across them too often in my daily reading material...but when I do...oh man.
This troubles me exceedingly.


This first ad campaign comes from ADM and has the tagline..."you're body can't tell the difference." They are currently being sued over this ad campaign (US District Court) by sugar distributors, disputing that claims of High Fructose Corn Syrup being equated to real sugar is false advertising. This campaign is a jumpstart for the rebranding and relabeling of HFCS as corn sugar to deal with all the bad press it has gotten. Imagine when all the packaging changes from saying HFCS to 'corn sugar' how the consumer imagination will change.

Frankly, I can't worry too much for ADM, since corn syrup and HFCS are in a plethora of processed foods (as this picture gently reminds us), and people are unlikely to give those up anytime in the future. Although the 'real coke' and 'throwback pepsi' campaigns, which feature cane sugar probably have the execs shaking in their boots.


This next one hits a number of levels for me.
First, the idea of "fitter french fries"...that's right up there with heart-healthy cocoa-puffs. That getting rid of that 'trans-fat risk' is all that is needed to make it possible to eat french fries all the time.
Second, the normalized sounding altruism around this campaign, which is targeted at keeping people interested in fast food through explaining the use of new "non-hydrogenated oils" in the creation of that french fry we all know and love.
Third, the idea that tampering with canola seeds on a genetic level is the answer.
Fourth, the idea of growing more canola to accommodate this new 'non-hydrogenated demand' (yes, yes it's an edible oil, but think of what foods we could be growing instead)
Fifth, that once again, technology (whether it be through different processing methods, genetic manipulation, chemical use whathaveyou) is the answer to issues related to food and agriculture.

 And my all time favorite, from Monsanto. This was a full page ad spread in the New York Times, which I now have taped to the wall of my office. Again, the claim that Monsanto has anything to do with sustainable agriculture makes my skin crawl. Campaigns like this speak to the desire of global ag to convince its audience that we have used up our available resources (land, water, soil) and must turn to technology to create greater yields, efficiencies and fixes to this problem.
Nevermind the fact that the industrial processes perpetuated by big ag are largely the culprit in water pollution (including salinization), soil degradation (read: topsoil loss, desertification, toxicity) and the use of large tracts of land for the production of corn and soy that goes to feed meat and cars.
Again, the altruism that this campaign speaks to, "improving farmers lives" absolutely slays me...as if putting the "latest science-based tools in farmers hands" is an amazing feat to counter the twin issues of climate change and the impoverishment of farmers worldwide.

Lest we forget, profit is the bottom line here.
Accumulation for the sake of accumulation

While recovering from running a conference....

I learned a bit more about social media. Meaning, I hung out on our twitter feed and facebook pages looking into what other people said about the content of the conference.
We had a dedicated team of folks doing social media, including twitter, facebook and 30 second video spots with our attendees: "what does food justice mean to you?"
The delightful and amazing food advocate, Naomi Starkman of Civil Eats has already posted 'twitvids' (look at me with my lingo) for folks to peruse.

er...you can read more tidbits by using this 'hashtag:' #foodjustice

Although I tend to be critical of a soundbite approach...my weekend was bound up in soundbites as I moved from session to session making sure everything was running smoothly. I did see the entirety of all of our keynote panels, plenaries and dialogues and for that I am grateful. I also took the time to sit in on many of Sunday's sessions, which were in the easily navigable Law Center. Due to the spatial configuration of the Monday program in the student union (and having three concurrent sessions), I saw less of the program and spent more time running between rooms. But it all worked out brilliantly for me. Being behind the scenes allowed me to engage with our attendees on a much deeper level.

That said, for me, the most critical soundbites of the conference are these (and they come from a variety of speakers)...telegram style:

We must redefine deliciousness. stop. Fair Trade can be thought of as a food sovereignty strategy that cooperatives use to defend rights to land. stop. activist research is essential. stop. migrant farm workers are among the most food insecure. stop. farming for sustenance versus farming for subsistence. stop. must understand the first green revolution before beginning a second one. stop. biotech is a ponzi scheme. stop. there exist wheat anarchists in France. stop. re-decentralization of wheat. stop. Gates supports biotech, he's building a new empire. stop. NAFTA is killing Mexican farmers. stop. climate change. stop. structural racism. stop. there cannot be shame-based culinary education. stop. we must have a biodiversity of movements. stop. to have sustainable cities, must have sustainable agriculture. stop. anti-food. stop. industrial agriculture is a food desert. stop. at brink of seed famine. stop. 

I have come away from this conference blissfully exhausted; bowing under the weight of many thanks and congratulations; (which I am still not quite sure I deserve) and with a keen eye to the future.

In a beautiful synchronicity, I was able to share food at breakfast, lunch and dinners with our attendees, literally breaking bread with world renown food activists and local farmers, students and educators. I was able to share my own work, research interests and activism while asking questions.I shared food and thought. Deliciousness and hope.
As soon as I get my voice and energy back, I'll be a force to reckon with.


p.s. Oakshire got a bunch of good press for their delicious sponsorship via "liquid justice" - a special thanks to John for making this beautiful logo for us:

USDA should put its money where its mouth is.

Marion Nestle recently highlighted on her blog the disparity between the percentage of USDA subsidies that go to certain food sectors and the propaganda of the USDA dietary guidelines. Her brief discussion comes out of a larger study completed by the Produce for Better Health Foundation. The section that I was most interested in (Disconnect between USDA Spending Priorities and Public Health Goals) analyzes the extent to which the allocation of USDA spending on the major food groups is congruent with their endorsement of the 2005 dietary guidelines for people living in the US.

The methodology for their statistics on this is interesting (check out page 10-11 of the report), as it is rather difficult (as was pointed out to me by Scott) to compare subsidies to daily food intake. But I think that it is an interesting thought experiment and I was extremely happy to see that they had broken down the information visually.

Wow, look at the blue one. The meat group dominates spending, as does the grain group (a double whammy, as it were, as the majority of subsidized grain in the US goes to meat production), the only close to reality spending versus advocacy is in dairy and fats.

Caution: may cause giddiness

I have recently undertaken acupuncture treatment, something I had been talking about with Joe for awhile, and then finally decided to do.

My conversations with Joe centered around alternative treatment more generally, but one of my questions in this context was whether an ancient treatment from China/Japan could be equally successful for people living in a different cultural context? Put differently, I wondered if the impact of acupuncture would be as dramatic for folks who did not have the same everyday life (read: diet, exercise, sleep patterns etc.) of the culture that the treatment was cultivated in?

At this point the question seems rather moot, I absolutely enjoy the treatment. Whether it can be a comprehensive preventative medicine is beside the point...I have never achieved such a relaxed state. Laying on my back on a table with needles sticking out of me brings the matrix to mind, perhaps, but after a few minutes my body/mind finds a place between waking and sleeping that is positively sublime.

Yesterday I walked to my midday appointment from campus, knowing full well I had to return to my office and finish my last paper of the term.
I didn't think about it once. In fact, I emerged from the office stifling giggles. I felt positively giddy.