ColumnNew to Foodie Underground? Here are 5 of our favorite articles to get you started.

If you’re new to EcoSalon, you might not be completely familiar with the weekly Foodie Underground column. Yes, it’s about food, but it’s about all those things that are helping to shape the underground food movement, and take it from unconventional to mainstream. It’s not about fancy restaurants – although we do have respect for those that are pushing the envelope, truly serving local and committed to sustainable practices or expensive delicacies. Foodie Underground is a place to explore “democratized foodie-ism.” What’s happening at hole-in-the-wall joints and food carts across the country and how we can take advantage of it. Most importantly, how these evolutions and trends are shaping our food policy in general.

Ultimately, we all need to eat, and food lovers exist in all circles. You don’t need a big budget to eat well, just an eye to seek out what’s good, both for you and the environment. Our hope with Foodie Underground is that you’re inspired to push your own food boundaries just a little more; forage for mushrooms instead of buying them, host a locally sourced supper club or plant a neighborhood garden that your entire community can enjoy.

You may not think you love food, but we promise that Foodie Underground will at least give you some food for thought.

Here are some of our favorite reads to get you started.

“Appreciating Simple Food” – It’s easy to get caught up in ingredients and recipes, as we try to ensure that we’re eating well. But sometimes, we forget the most important thing of all: keep it simple and appreciate food for food’s sake. “So forget complex recipes, forget the latest gluten-free baked goods, just take some time to eat good, simple food with friends, maybe even throw in a bottle of wine for good measure, and give honor to the sustenance that your body needs.”

“Foodie Feminism” – Women are pushing boundaries in the food world. Female restaurateurs, farmers and bartenders are proving that we play a significant role in the food movement. “We as women have a lot of power, and when it comes to food, we have the potential to think smartly and creatively rather than be boxed in by conventional expectations.”

“The Replacements” – Cupcakes are a subject of serious contention for EcoSalon staff, but no matter what your take on the baked good, we can all agree that the trend has some competition. Macaroons, pies delivered by bicycle and a handful of other sweet treats are giving cupcakes a run for their money.

“Cycled Coffee“ - Foodies have an affinity for caffeine, and not only are they conscious about where it comes from, but they also are concerned with how they get it. Enter the cycled coffee crowd: people making a business of combining coffee and bikes. Love this idea as much as we do? Check out our San Francisco Food by Bike Foodspotting Guide.

“It’s Not What We Eat, It’s How We Eat It” -  “Before we had food science, we had food culture,” Michael Pollan said at a lecture in Portland earlier this year. We’ve become so obsessed with individual properties – omega 3′s, antioxidants, etc., that we’ve lost track of the bigger picture. So how do we change it? Start thinking about how you eat just as often as you think about what you eat.

Happy reading!

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

ColumnMichael Pollan discusses our unhealthy obsession with singling out foods for their individual properties instead of taking a more holistic approach.

What relation do we have to the food we eat?

As a society, we talk a lot about what we put in our bodies – Is it processed? Is it organic? Where did it come from? – but we talk far less about food and food habits as an integral part of culture. Often, we eat because we need to; because we need sustenance. When we view food as a commodity instead of a cultural good, we head down an unhealthy path.

This weekend Michael Pollan, known for his best selling books like In Defense of Food, came to town for a lecture. Over the past few years he has become one of the figureheads of the food movement, and I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on seeing him speak in person.

I grew up in a Pollan-esque household. Although my mother never put a name to her culinary policy, looking back it very much aligned with Pollan’s branded recommendation: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And yet even with a whole grain, leafy green background, Pollan has changed how I think about food.

For months after I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was acutely aware of what I put in my basket at the grocery store. Where had that asparagus been shipped from? Did I really need mangoes that had traversed a continent? Even worse, I took it out on my parents. Home one weekend, I raised my eyebrows and said to my father, “Do you know how much corn is in this salami that you’re eating?” I started referring to high fructose corn syrup as an acronym. I was verging on obnoxious, but that book got me thinking.

Pollan doesn’t take himself too seriously, poking fun at not only his audience (“Are you all sure you’re in the right place? This is the lecture on food, after all…”), but at himself and the food industry. To kick off the keynote speech of University of Portland’s Food for Thought conference, Pollan laid out two grocery bags from a store run he had made earlier to Fred Meyer. It was an assortment of mostly processed, packaged foods, boasting a plethora of goodness in the form of antioxidants, low fat and Omega-3′s. Yet the items were things like fruit pizzas by Eggo and chocolate Cheerios.

He reminded the packed auditorium that while we Portlanders may be blessed with farmers markets and organic produce that comes from our rich and agriculturally diverse Willamette Valley, most of our population is stocking their shelves with these products.

But Pollan’s message wasn’t to point out our obsession with bad food. It was to point out our obsession with attempting to make bad food sound healthy. Our path has ventured far away from a holistic approach to one based on looking at food as simply a collection of nutrients and vitamins. We’re seduced by packaging instead of sticking to foods that we know are inherently good for us – the foods that don’t need a branded, flashy box boasting the amount of vitamins and minerals are contained within.

“Before we had food science, we had food culture,” Pollan said. In the time that we’ve managed to identify phytonutrients and beneficial elements like Omega-3′s, we’ve gone from taking a holistic approach to food and singled out the parts we think are going to do us well, something Pollan refers to as “nutritionism.”

Maybe it’s because of time constraints, maybe it’s because we want an easy fix, but somewhere along the line of veering away from the multi-course dinner with friends and instead choosing a smoothie with antioxidant boosters in the car, we became very unhealthy. The truth is that it’s not just what we eat, it’s how we eat it. Or how we don’t eat it.

In focusing on the individual components of food products, we have forgotten to take a look at the bigger picture. The French Paradox, for example, is really no paradox at all, it’s simply a culture with a food tradition. Mealtimes are honored and you’ll never find a Frenchman snacking on a low-fat, sugar-free granola bar between meals.

Which is why it’s inspiring to see local movements focused just as much on serving up organic, fresh meals as they are about building community; putting effort into the tradition and relationships that happen around the food. The annual Big Lunch in England is an example of just that, a grassroots project is aimed at getting the whole of the UK sitting down and having lunch with their neighbor.

If we’re going to talk about the food movement, we have to think about the bigger picture. We’re in the midst of a health crisis, with chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease skyrocketing. Opting for the green tea-infused ginger ale instead of Coca Cola isn’t helping. It’s time to start thinking about our relationship to food and stop being concerned with individual food properties.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. With other people. In a way that respects and honors the food in front of you.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, finding what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones, Elizabeth/Table4Five

When potato farmers won’t eat the very potatoes they are farming and instead have a small backyard garden to grow a separate stash for their own personal consumption, something is clearly not right. This came to light when I read Michael Pollan’s section on potatoes in The Botany of Desire. The description of the farmer’s potato plants as “doused with so much pesticide that their leaves wear a dull white chemical bloom and the soil they’re rooted in is a lifeless gray powder,” is what really got me.

Like anyone with a concern for personal health and that of our environment, I strive to buy organic. However, this can add up to an eye-popping, hefty bill at the grocery store register. The question is, what food is most important to buy organic?

It seems the American’s love of the French fry, the perfect French fry, no less, created what’s become a disastrous need for the perfect potato. The resulting bumper-to-bumper monoculture crops of russet potatoes have in turn resulted in the intense overuse of pesticides.

What does this mean for the consumer? Most likely, any non-organic potato you buy has been repeatedly sprayed with harmful, poisonous chemicals. Still in the mood for those mashed potatoes? Reach for the stack of organic!

Image: adactio

As someone who lives and breathes food politics, agricultural sustainability and food justice on a daily basis, even I was surprised by some of the things I saw in this film. Food Inc. explosively details exactly how the food system serves the profit motives of just a few mega corporations, while failing to serve eaters, our health, the environment and the animals and workers trapped in the system.

In interviews, the filmmaker has said that he didn’t set out to make such a one-sided film but that the industries he profiled – Tyson, Monsanto, Smithfield, et al – wouldn’t agree to be interviewed or shown in the film. I don’t blame them. The information gathered from hidden cameras and interviews with brave individuals who don’t have a whole lot left to lose presents facts so damning and so incredible, it’s impossible to dispute them.

Anyone who agreed to talk on camera for this movie risked being sued. The mother who lost her young son to E. coli cannot say what she herself eats due to the risk of being sued for libel under the “veggie libel laws.”

Of all the food documentaries I’ve seen and food system exposés I’ve read, this film did a wonderful job of showing the human side of the injustices in our food system. Not just the environmental degradation or the lack of food safety, but the grinding human (and animal) oppression inherent in the system.

I was quite literally sick at the rampant and systemic injustices unleashed on farmers, farmworkers, animals, the environment and eaters as just a routine part of business-as-usual in the food industry.

If enough people see this film it could have the same impact that Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle had on the meat packing industry in the early part of the 20th century. I think there should be a campaign encouraging everyone who cares about food to take at least one person who doesn’t care about food to see this film: co-workers, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers”¦because if everyone sees it, nobody will stand for business-as-usual any longer.

In addition to the mother who lost her son due to tainted ground beef, the film profiles a variety of people, like ordinary working class citizens who would like to eat better than fast food, but cannot afford to; poultry house workers who toil under horrifying conditions and are utterly powerless (the industry recruits and buses workers from within Mexico); and farmers under contract to large corporations who have no say in how they run their businesses or treat their animals and who don’t even make a living wage.

A Tyson chicken farmer agreed to go on camera. She had her contract pulled because she refused to upgrade her chicken houses according to company specifications that would have prevented any light or air from getting into her already crowded, fetid and utterly nightmarish chicken houses. Chicken farmers make an average of only $18,000 a year as contract farmers for Tyson Corporation. If the chickens and the farmers are treated so poorly, can you imagine what the mostly undocumented immigrant processors are subjected to?

Then there’s the man who runs a seed cleaning business (which used to be common practice back when farmers saved seeds). Monsanto sued him. His crime? By cleaning seeds, he’s “encouraging farmers to violate Monsanto patents”.

Nevermind that these farmers are the last holdouts not using Monsanto’s seeds, and should have every right to clean and save the seeds they use. Scaring the hell out of any last resisters is this company’s way of ensuring complete and total ownership of the seed market. When the seed cleaner was sued, he lost most of his customers because they became fearful of being sued themselves. The man had only three acres of land to his name. He finally settled with Monsanto, rather than fight and risk losing what little he had.

There are many more stories like this, as well as enough examples of a different way of doing things, that you will leave the theater thinking more carefully about what you are actually buying when you buy food and inspired to support some of the mavericks out there who are doing it right.

At the end of the film, one farmer says that if the people start demanding better food, the farmers will step up and provide it. In fact, farmers would love to do so. Without the consumer’s support, the risk to farmers for switching to a healthier paradigm is too great. If farmers know they can make a living doing the right thing, they will. This is the one essentially hopeful fact about this film. We do have the power to change the system. It’s as simple as refusing to buy what the system is selling. Don’t know how? The film offers several easy ways to start as the credits roll. They’re also linked here.

Image: Senor Codo