I’m reading three books at once right now: Unhinged by Sarah Graves, which is just a pleasant mystery for reading on the porch after the doings of the day, the newest edition of Guerilla Marketing for work, and What to Eat by Marion Nestle.
What to Eat is an enormous tome. I don’t think she’s going to say anything new about what a person ought to eat, but if you are interested in economics, agribusiness, and so on, you will find this book fascinating. She begins with the one thing all nutritionists agree on, all the time: fresh produce. Eat it. But she talks about the economics of it, the cold chain, the reason marketing produce isn’t worthwhile, why we should choose organic and locally grown produce, why we think fresh produce is expensive (it you think so, reexamine that belief — the average cost of those five essential servings per day is 64 cents), why we in Hamburger-a-go-go-land don’t eat fresh vegetables, and the truly startling information that one third of all the vegetables eaten in the United States are french fries, potato chips, and iceberg lettuce.
I had just heard that farmers at the beginning of the 20th century produced 2000 calories worth of food for every gram of oil used, whereas now that number has switched — it now takes over 2000 grams of oil for factory farmers to produce one food calorie. The Omnivore’s Dilemma put it more succinctly: we might as well just sit down to bowls of petroleum.
But the thing that particularly caught my attention was the explanation of how grocery stores work. Guerilla Marketing works with my own concept of marketing: be very good at what you do, and share that information with your customers.
This is not how grocery stores work. They have byzantine systems that ensure that what you pay them has very little connection with what you receive from them. And they make so little money from the foods that you should eat for health that they are really in the business of selling you unhealthful foods. Oh, and nonfood stuff, though Nestle is not discussing that. Nestle says that the problem of poor nutrition in this country is about the fact that there are no economic benefits to good nutrition. Not even to the insurance companies.
Our marketplaces are as complex as our medical system. Reading about either one makes me feel that it is too complex to do anything at all about.
My vegetable garden, the farmer’s market, the local bakery, the meat market — these things keep me out of the system to a large extent, and that seems good.
However, last night I found myself in a discussion of isolationism and World War II. The people talking were all old enough to remember it, so I kept quiet and listened.
They were talking about Roosevelt’s attempts to get the United States to join in the war, and how hard it had been. They were saying that the American attitude of isolationism had been dangerous, and it was fortunate that we had entered the war before it reached “our shores.” We never use the expression “our shores” except in the context of war.
I was surprised by this. One man said, “Even when Britain was brought to her knees, people resisted. Where did they think Hitler would go next?”
So when I read about our current system of agribusiness and my mind boggles, I may be entirely wrong to think that I can just opt out of it and that will help in some way. It seems impossible to sustain our economic system as it operates. When I read these things, it seems like spinning plates — inevitably it will crash. My idea of relying as little as possible on the system may be untenable, just as American isolationism might have been untenable, for all I know.
I suppose this is why it is good to have a novel to read at the same time, in case of excessive mindboggling.
LOL yes excessive mind boggling is never a good thing, but you did bring up some very valid points. I’d love to be able to rely more on our own garden – lord knows with three acres we have more than enough land to do a veggie garden – but I know me and how lax I get in keeping it up and then there is the issue of the first time we don’t get stuff out of there on time and it rots…I get pissy and toss in the towel. I need to find a way to make it more meaningful to me I suppose just with kid and aunt issues it all seems so overwhelming right now:::sigh:::
I wish I had the time to take care of my garden effectively. In Oregon, I could, in essence, garden all year, but it takes quite a bit of time. Now that I am going to be a writer, I think that gardening will, once again, take priority in my life. The feel of the dirt, the smell of the dirt… yummmy. RYC: I heard someone say that comment about children being pets, too. And I can’t remember who. I was chatting with a few of the women in my class yesterday and they were talking about how they are nannies and their sisters are nannies. One woman’s sister nannies for a well-off family. Apparenlty, the husband works astronomical hours, but the wife does not work. She has “book club” and similiar interests. The sister of my student works 40 hours per week and rarely does either parent spend time with the children. Unfortunate.
Interesting. I want to read it!
I need to find out how to get the word out about my website, and haven’t a clue where to begin. Do you think Guerilla Marketing would help with that?
Or, from your recent studies, do you know of another book that would be better?
I’m not sure that what you are supporting is economic isolationism. Relying on local produce makes sense is it is possible. But you are not harming the huge agricultural giants that supply things like grain to the rest of the world. In NZ we used to be able to buy meat (mainly lamb and mutton – cos of all the sheep you understand
) at reasonable prices but it is now one of our major exports (it always was but now a large proportion of our mutton goes offshore and we have to pay far more for our meat now than we did when I was a kid) NZ has a climate that can only support certain types of fruit and veges growing – most of our citrus fruit comes from Australia and the US. Apples and stonefruit do well here but now most of those go overseas as well. And of course there is kiwi fruit (that used to be called Chinese gooseberries)…We have access to fruit all year around (and the fact that red meat is more expensive) now because of global exporting so some good comes out of globalisation. We can eat less red meat, and more fruit now which apparently is better for our health. (Offset however by burger, fried chicken, and pizza franchises also imported from the US…The only ‘fast food’ we had access to as kids were fish ‘n chips and pies)
You don’t have meat pies!? Your description is correct. One sort of pie we have is pastry with meat and/or veges as a filling. There is a much larger range of these now then there used to be when I was a kid and they are healthier (less fat) and tastier now. Of course you don’t have an equivalent to fish ‘n chips shops over there either. Fish ‘n chips are still my favourite fast food but I only get them once every couple of months or so as the chips are considerably more substantial than any you get from pizza, burger, or fried chicken stores.
I need to promote my commercial site, but I have to get things straightened out with it first.
I used to be able to make changes/additions from any computer. But they “upgraded” it, and now it’s useless. It’s carved in stone. I can’t change anything or add anything. I need to figure out how to deal with that first.
I’ve about made up my mind to see if I can sell some stuff on Etsy first to raise the money to help get an effective website up.
Thanks for the suggestions, though. I’ll check the library.
WRT meat pies: Pasties and our small pies are pretty much the same. Pastry and filling very similar, just different shapes. You can get mutton pies (I love them) but as they have more grease than other pies a lot of people avoid them. I only have one every now and then. Most of our pies (the ones that we can carry in one hand) have mince or steak or chicken in them. We also have the sort of pies you describe, more family size with sweet or savoury fillings.